by Ian Sansom
‘Still now, Captain Swing.’ The body stilled. ‘So, gentlemen, what do we have here?’ He picked up a small salmon-pink ticket. ‘A ticket stub for the cinema. I see. In Norwich.’
‘Rather a long way to travel to a cinema, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Morley. ‘And why would a man travel all that way to see the latest film, do you think?’
‘It was a film he wanted to see?’
‘Possibly so. Or perhaps a film he didn’t want to be seen seeing.’
‘Something …’ I began.
‘What?’ said Ridley, looking at the cinema ticket.
‘Something … unsavoury?’ I said.
‘I don’t know exactly what you mean by unsavoury, Sefton, but, yes, I suppose that is what I mean.’
‘I hardly think so,’ said Ridley. ‘He was a vicar.’
‘So was the vicar of Stiffkey,’ said Morley.
Morley stood examining the rest of the contents of the reverend’s pockets: some coins, a pocket penknife. He arranged them on the table.
‘What do you think, Constable? Anything significant?’
Ridley stared at the contents of the reverend’s pockets, as though he were a haruspex examining chicken entrails. He was unwilling to hazard a guess.
‘I can’t see anything significant there, but—’
‘Quite right,’ said Morley. Ridley looked relieved. ‘But if you come close to the body, Constable, there’s a smell.’
‘A smell of what?’ Ridley backed away again.
‘I don’t know,’ said Morley. ‘Something apart from the obvious … Come here, Sefton. Can you smell anything?’
I came closer to the reverend’s body and sniffed. Nothing.
‘No? Ridley. Come here, man. Don’t be squeamish, come on.’
Ridley came closer and sniffed also. Nothing.
‘Well, perhaps I’m imagining it.’ He sniffed. ‘Lily of the valley? Daphne? Chrysanthemums? Can’t quite put my finger on it. Something … We really need a botanist. Or someone in medicine.’
‘There’s the professor,’ said Ridley.
‘Professor?’
‘Professor Thistle-Smith. Lives in Blakeney House. Retired.’
‘Well!’ cried Morley. ‘I wonder you didn’t mention him before, a real live professor on hand to assist us.’
‘I didn’t know we’d be needing a professor,’ said Ridley.
‘One always needs a professor, Ridley, doesn’t one? Always. Can’t have enough of them professing, eh? Proffing. Proffering. Profiteering. What did you say his name was?’
‘Thistle-Smith.’
‘A double-barrelled professor, Sefton!’
‘I could go and fetch him,’ said Ridley. ‘He’s only five minutes away.’
‘Perfect,’ said Morley. ‘Professor Double-Barrelled will have this all cleared up in no time and we’ll be on our way! Marvellous! Should we perhaps stay here by the body?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Ridley, who then realised that this might be a problem. ‘I suppose … Someone better had. But you won’t touch anything?’
Morley held up his hands, and his pen.
‘Dictum meum pactum, sir.’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’ said Ridley.
‘He won’t touch anything,’ I said.
Ridley left, Morley continued to examine seemingly every mote and speck of dust in the room, and I, exhausted again from Morley’s strenuous mental exertions, and with a pounding headache induced by a lack of pills and tobacco, excused myself to go outside to smoke.
CHAPTER NINE
THE WOMAN, HANNAH, was outside in the graveyard. She looked up as I approached. She’d clearly been crying – you could see tears clinging to her eyelashes – but her gaze was somehow dry and flat, entirely unemotional. Her eyes were dark, like proverbial pools: Morley would later describe them as ‘private’ and ‘turbulent’. Her hair was tied back tight off her face, which made her face shine, without shadow. She wore no make-up. Her hands seemed dirty, stained bluish, yellow, as if she had scraped her face clean. She was perhaps twenty-five, twenty-six years old. You could see her breathe as she spoke.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘You’ve been here the whole time?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you. I’m fine, thank you.’
I handed her my handkerchief. She wiped her hands first, and then her face.
‘Would you like me to escort you somewhere, perhaps?’
‘No. I can’t leave if … his body is still in there. Someone should be with him.’ There was in her voice some slight hint of something foreign; I couldn’t help but stare at her mouth as she spoke.
‘Mr Morley’s in there with him, madam. He’ll look after him.’
‘Cigarette?’
I patted my pockets. I didn’t like to scrounge, but, ‘Thank you,’ I said.
I lit her cigarette, and then my own, and since there seemed nothing else to do, we fell into step together, and slowly paced our way around the churchyard.
‘How long had you known him?’
‘About five years.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘I came when … It was my job to help around the house.’
‘Ah, yes, we were just there, with Mrs Snatchfold.’
She didn’t respond.
‘You don’t get on?’ I asked.
She turned as we walked and stared at me – that frank look again. ‘We get on very well. Who did you say you are?’
‘Sefton. Stephen Sefton. I work with Mr Morley. I’m his assistant.’
‘I see. Like me.’
‘Perhaps … A little. And Mrs Snatchfold said your name was Hannah?’
‘Hannah Tuchosky, yes.’
‘It’s a lovely name.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not a Norfolk name?’
She threw her head back. ‘No.’
‘A foreign name?’
‘Yes, Mr Sefton. If you must know about me, my family came here in 1932. From Germany.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’
She laughed her dry, pitiless laugh.
‘“Pry.” Pry. Nobody around here means to “pry”.’ And then she suddenly stopped walking, turned her body fully towards me, and stood in my way. ‘Do you know Rilke?’ she asked. ‘The Duino Elegies?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A little … I think.’
‘“Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus den Engel Ordnungen?”’ Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?” Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’ I wasn’t sure.
‘He’s committed suicide, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid it looks like it.’
‘Do you know how?’
‘It looks like hanging. But we’re waiting to find out now.’
She took both my hands in her own – her hands were warm, and so soft – and stared at me for what seemed like a long time, waiting to tell me something else. But she did not speak, and indeed refused to say anything more before Ridley arrived back at the church with Professor Thistle-Smith, a vast, lumbering man in his sixties, dark-suited, cheeks florid, panama hat in hand, with rich, exaggerated, almost fruity features that might have been painted by the great Arcimboldo himself. The professor ignored Hannah, looking past her, and round her and over her, I noticed, but introduced himself courteously enough to me, and I accompanied him with Ridley back inside the church, the professor wheezing his way up the stairs, growing ever more crimson as we approached the vestry, where he did not for a moment balk or hesitate or flinch at the sight of the hanging body, but instead strode over, wheezing all the while, staring at and sniffing around the corpse.
‘Oh dear,’ he said, breathing in deeply, like a seething wind, ‘oh dear … oh dear … oh dear.’
Morley stood close by, watching him; Typhon, he referred to him as later, in private, another of his references.
‘I wondered, Pr
ofessor, if you could smell anything … different?’
‘No, can’t smell anything unusual,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Morley.
‘Quite sure. Apart from the fouling, of course – perfectly normal in these cases.’
‘So you’re familiar with such incidents?’
‘I am, indeed, sir. Thirty years as a Professor of Medicine – one becomes accustomed to all sorts of cadavers in all sorts of unpleasant states and forms. Nothing odd or unusual here that I can see. Seen it all before.’
‘Except of course in this instance you knew this particular cadaver before its death?’ said Morley.
The professor stepped back from the body then and peered at Morley, as if seeing him clearly for the first time. ‘I’m sorry, sir. You seem not to have introduced yourself. You are?’
‘Civis Romanus sum. Swanton Morley, at your service.’
‘Morley, eh? And can I ask exactly what are you doing here, Mr Morley?’
‘I’m here writing a book, actually, Professor, and we happened to be passing—’
‘Happened to be passing?’ The professor exchanged suspicious glances with Ridley. ‘I see. A book?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Novelist, are we?’
‘No.’
‘No. You don’t look like a novelist.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment, sir.’
‘Not intended as one,’ said the professor. ‘And you’re the chap who found the reverend’s body?’
‘Not exactly, Professor, no. Mrs Snatchfold found the body, and we then found Mrs Snatchfold. So we are one – if you like – step removed from the discovery.’
‘One step removed?’
‘Quite so. But you knew the reverend well, yourself?’
The professor was busying himself, wandering around the body, fascinated.
‘I’m a congregant here, Mr Morley, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Ah, I’m Methodist myself,’ said Morley.
‘Hmm,’ said the professor disapprovingly. ‘You may not know then, Mr Morley, that in the Church of England – unlike the Methodists – we tend not to befriend our reverends.’
‘Dead or alive,’ said Morley.
‘Indeed.’
Ridley, meanwhile, seemed to have overcome his initial distaste for the body, and was also looking closely at the reverend.
‘So you think he definitely killed himself, Professor?’ he said.
‘That would be my opinion, yes,’ said Thistle-Smith. ‘Is that all?’
‘We’ve someone coming from Norwich who’ll perhaps want to speak to you. I hope that’s all right.’
‘Of course. Ugly business,’ said the professor. ‘You know where to find me, Ridley?’
‘Yes,’ said Ridley.
‘And I’m sure your colleagues will be keen to speak to Mr Morley as well,’ said Thistle-Smith as he made for the door. ‘First at the scene of the crime and what have you.’
‘Second, actually,’ said Morley.
‘So you said. I’m sure your colleagues will be very keen to talk to him, won’t they, Ridley?’
‘Actually,’ said Morley, ‘we were hoping to move on. We have a tight schedule to keep, with the writing of the book.’
‘I’m sure you have, Mr Morley. But I assume there are strict police procedures to be followed, are there not, Ridley?’
‘Oh yes, Professor,’ said Ridley, who was clearly beginning to sense where Thistle-Smith’s suggestions might be leading. ‘I’ll have to ask you, Mr Morley, and your companion, to remain here until my colleagues arrive.’
‘You’ll be needing a death certificate, isn’t that right, Constable?’ said Thistle-Smith.
‘I think so,’ said Ridley.
‘Have you sent for Dr Sharp?’
‘No, I haven’t. Would it help if I were to go for him?’
‘I think it would, young man. I think that would be most helpful. Perhaps I should stay with our … witnesses here, and make sure nothing happens to the body …’
There followed a stand-off between Morley and Professor Thistle-Smith, as we waited for Dr Sharp. The few words they exchanged were challenges and retorts rather than conversation proper, the reverend’s body hanging between them as referee and witness.
‘Who are you, exactly, Morley?’ drawled the professor, who had drawn up a chair by the table, while Morley and I remained standing; it felt as though we had been summoned before a court.
‘Who am I?’ asked Morley.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, I’m not sure I understand your question, Professor.’
‘Don’t understand my question?’ Professor Thistle-Smith’s large face drooped in an expression of deep contempt, his features changing from the merely unpleasant to the unmistakably menacing. ‘Really?’ He straightened up in the chair and took a deep, gargling breath. ‘Don’t know who you are? Hmm. Interesting. I, for example, am a farmer, landowner, retired professor, of solid yeoman stock, a magistrate, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners, a Knight Grand Cross of the Supreme Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem, and a Knight Grand Cross of the Military Order of the Collar of St Agatha of Paterno. And I am simply asking … in similar kind, sir, Who. Are. You?’
‘I see. My apologies. Davus sum, non Oedipus. My name is Swanton Morley, sir. I am a journalist and author.’
‘Journalist as well, are we, eh, as well as an “author”? Which newspaper?’
‘The Daily Herald, sir.’
The professor snorted. ‘Muck-raking rag,’ he said.
‘I think of it rather as a working man’s paper,’ said Morley. ‘And—’
‘I’ll make up my own mind about the quality of the Daily Herald, if you don’t mind, Morley. Self-made man, are we?’
‘We?’ said Morley.
‘You,’ said Thistle-Smith. ‘Obviously. Not me.’
‘What little I have achieved I have achieved by my own efforts, yes.’
‘Well, well done you, but some of us do not want to live in a self-made man’s communist republic, thank you very much, where everyone has to read the Daily Herald.’
‘That seems unlikely,’ said Morley.
‘Not if you and your lot get your way.’ The professor spoke with singular force. ‘And what about this book you claim you’re writing?’
‘It is a major literary project—’ began Morley.
‘Ha!’
‘Called The County Guides, in which my assistant and I travel the country and produce a guidebook to each of England’s counties.’
‘Ha!’ The professor snorted again and stared at the two of us as if we were obvious impostors. ‘Ridiculous. You’re going to live till one hundred and twenty, are you?’
‘Dum spiro spero,’ said Morley.
‘What?’
‘It’s Latin.’
‘Some of us left Latin behind with other childish things when we left medical school, Morley. So in English, man, in England. What did you say?’
‘While I breathe I hope,’ said Morley. ‘Though at the moment, obviously, we are being prevented from working on the project while we wait here with you for the police.’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ said Professor Thistle-Smith, who had clearly perfected his vile sneer over many years.
‘Might I perhaps ask about your relationship with the reverend, Professor? Seeing as we’re here?’
‘You might, sir. But you might not get an answer.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you now? All I will say is, if he’d taken the church any lower, it would have been crawling.’
‘Too low for your tastes then?’ said Morley.
‘Too. Low. Indeed. Sir.’
‘And personally?’
‘Personally? Though I can’t see that it’s any of your business, I’ll admit I didn’t much like him,’ said the professor.
‘I see,’ said Morley. ‘And was it mutual?’
‘Mutual?’
‘Did he not like you?’
‘I know what mutual means, sir. I’m not a bloody idiot. And nor am I a mind-reader. Are you?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Clearly. So I have no idea about the reverend’s feelings towards me, Mr Morley. And, frankly, could not care less. A gentleman does not speak of such things.’
‘Quite so. But …’
After about fifteen minutes of this rough jousting, Dr Sharp arrived. ‘The superlative little doctor,’ Morley later called him: he was brisk; efficient; sober in manner and in suit. He greeted Professor Thistle-Smith warmly and Morley and I watched as they examined the body.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ said the doctor, echoing the professor’s words.
‘The professor here thinks he died by hanging,’ said Morley.
‘Yes, I think we can safely assume so, gentlemen,’ said the doctor, ‘although of course we’d have to perform an autopsy to be absolutely sure. There’s not a lot we can do here.’
‘Will you perform the autopsy?’ asked the professor.
‘If Ridley here approves.’
‘I see no reason why not,’ said Ridley
‘Can I ask when?’ said the professor.
‘It would probably be this evening,’ said Dr Sharp. ‘By the time I’ve seen my other patients. Perhaps eight o’clock. Would that suit, Constable?’
‘Of course, if it suits you, sir.’
‘And would you mind if I attended?’ said Morley. ‘Purely for the purposes of research, you understand. I write a number of books and columns.’
The doctor looked dubious. The professor was scowling. Ridley picked up the hint.
‘I don’t think that would be appropriate, Mr Morley,’ he said. ‘Under the circumstances.’
‘Which circumstances?’
‘My colleagues will be wanting to speak with you this evening, sir, so you’ll have to make yourself available for them, if you wouldn’t mind. And then if everything is in order you’ll be able to be on your way.’
‘And we wouldn’t want this getting out to the papers, would we, eh?’ said the professor.
‘I wouldn’t dream of writing about it,’ said Morley.
‘Anyway,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m sure we could let you know about the results of the autopsy, if you’re interested, Mr Morley. Couldn’t we, Constable?’
