by S. T. Haymon
“Not so good.”
The Professor turned round. There was a silence. Then, “American, I think you said? How’d he ever get mixed up in something that couldn’t possibly concern him?”
“Oh, but it did. It concerned him very much. He’s a Jew.”
“Is he, by Jove!” There was another pause. When the Professor resumed, his voice held a distinct note of pleading. “I’m sure you understand, Inspector, that one simply has to assume that all men are civilized—all one’s countrymen, anyway—much as one has to assume that any aeroplane we board will bring us safely to our destination. The fact that we know perfectly well there are some men who are barbarians, and some planes which will inevitably, in the way of things, fall out of the sky, must not be allowed to dislodge that working hypothesis without which ordered life would be unthinkable. I’m sure you take my point.”
“Assume all men are civilized,” Jurnet returned stolidly, “I’m the one’d be down at the Job Centre. Anyone who assumes that goons like the English Men are civilized human beings has got hold of the wrong assumption. To put it bluntly, sir, it’s all but impossible to credit that an intelligent person like yourself wouldn’t have foreseen the possible consequences of that broadcast.”
Professor Pargeter’s lips twisted under his moustache, sending it a little askew.
“‘All but impossible’—for that pinhole of misgiving, much thanks! It can only mean, I take it, that you are not yet quite ready to arrest me for the murder of Arthur Cossey.”
Jurnet ignored the thrust.
“Are you absolutely sure you didn’t know the boy?”
“I am absolutely sure, just as I am absolutely sure that my sexual proclivities are not such as to make me the slightest danger to juveniles of my own sex, whether known to me or not. Mind you—” the blue eyes were mocking—“I’ve often felt that even a modest predisposition to pederasty would have done wonders for my understanding of the Ancient Greeks.”
Ignoring the bait, Jurnet said, “I understand you have a key to the Bishop’s Postern, the little door in the north transept?”
“I do, and so do Miss Aste and Mr Epperstein. If you tell Flossie I had duplicates made he’ll have, deo volente, conniptions. Coming into the cathedral by our separate ways, it’s been simply not on for only one of us to have a key, with the likelihood of keeping the other two hanging about in the cold of early dawn. And speaking of Miss Aste—” the tone had become measurably less genial—“she telephoned me. Was it really necessary to harass her with your questions the way you did? The child was really upset.”
“Detective-Sergeant Ellers spoke to Miss Aste.” Jurnet, who had his own, not very creditable, reasons for deputing his assistant to question the Honourable Liz, nodded to the little Welshman. “I hope, Sergeant, you’ll be able to reassure the Professor that, despite what he may have been told, no harassment of any kind took place.”
“Can’t say that, sir!” Sergeant Ellers declared roundly. “Any amount of it! Only, not her—me! All but reduced me to tears. I threatened to complain to the Chief Constable, actually, if she didn’t give over.”
“Didn’t give over what?” The Professor spoke as if he could guess.
“Telling such almighty whoppers.”
“Oh, that!” The Professor smiled. “Liz always tells lies. You must never believe a word she says. She tells lies the way some people are left-handed. It’s as natural to her as breathing.”
Ellers lamented, “And there was I, thinking she was doing it on purpose! I couldn’t understand how she could deny she’d even been in the cathedral on Sunday, when she bumped into you and Mr Jurnet on the way out, large as life. Something about picking up some slides, Mr Jurnet said.”
“She keeps them up in the triforium,” Professor Pargeter said, “along with all the other photographic stuff. The dust down below in the dig would ruin them.”
Jurnet asked, “The triforium?”
“The gallery over the side aisles. Liz has been documenting our progress. She’s a very talented photographer.” The man hesitated, then spoke with a certain urgency. “She wasn’t at the tomb, though. You can take my word for it even if you can’t take hers. I pressed her particularly, because it seemed to me on the cards that if she had gone there for some perfectly innocuous reason, and caught sight of that dreadful carcass, she might well prefer to blot the whole thing out of her consciousness—nothing sinister, a perfectly understandable reaction—and swear she’d never been near the place. But in fact she hadn’t.”
“Then perhaps,” Jurnet suggested, “she also told you what she did with the slides. She wasn’t carrying anything she could have put them in when she ran into us, and that dress she had on certainly wasn’t hiding anything. If she’s the little liar you say, what makes you so sure she was telling the truth to you?”
The Professor said, “I’m the exception that proves the rule. Liz never lies to me. We have an understanding.”
“I thought you might.”
“Did you, now?” The Professor threw out his arms in a gesture between impatience and amusement, and subsided into an armchair, from whose depths he gazed up at the detective in mischievous contemplation. “Lord, what it is to be a policeman, with a mind like a sewer! Let me tell you, your Little St Arthur could never have put the bite on me, even if he had had ideas in that direction. My life is an open book—only available for perusal in the back room, true, but known to altogether too many readers for any ill-disposed person to attempt to earn a quick buck out of keeping it off the front pages.”
Jurnet observed, “Odd that you should think to associate a mere child with blackmail.”
“Suspicious, is that what you mean? I don’t see why not. I believe the little brats to be capable of anything and everything their elders and betters get up to. But to get back to putting you in the picture, Liz’s mother—Viscountess Sydringham as is, Mrs Mallory Pargeter as was—was my first wife. There’ve been a couple of others since, but not so you’d notice. Laura was the only one who amounted to a row of pins. Only, unfortunately for me, she fancied a title. When Sydringham came along I could no more stand in her way than I’d have expected her to stand in mine if they’d offered me the Directorship of the BM. Very decent chap, Sydringham.”
Jurnet waited, knowing there must be more.
“Very decent chap, Sydringham,” the Professor repeated. “Devoted to Laura and the children—Liz and her brother Mallory, my godchild. Quite understands that Laura and I like to get together over a cup of tea every now and again, to talk over old times.” He arched his fingers together, and pressed the resulting edifice gently against his lips. “I can’t be sure about Mallory,” he said. “They had a Royal at Sydringham for the shooting. His bag was seventy-five brace of pheasant, six hares, and Laura. But Liz—” He sat smiling.
“She has beautiful blue eyes,” said Jurnet, looking down into Professor Pargeter’s blue eyes.
“That’s not all she has, by God!” The Professor’s face shone with pride.
“Does Miss Aste know of your true relationship?”
“Nothing’s ever been said, though my guess is she can put two and two together as well as the next person.” The Professor chuckled. “Not that it’s stopped her trying to get me into bed, just for the hell of it.”
“And do you approve of Miss Aste’s association with Mr Stan Brent?”
“What makes you think I’m in a position to either approve or disapprove? I have no locus standi. But I’ll tell you this—” the Professor jumped up, invigorated by the birth of a new idea—“if you’re looking for a murderer, there’s your ideal candidate!”
“Brent? We’ve nothing to connect him with Arthur Cossey.”
“Go on!” urged the Professor. “Stretch yourself! You can dream up something if you put your mind to it. What if I tell you he’s a pimp, supplying choirboys to half the diocese, and that young Arthur demanded an increase in his cut, or else? Or—how’s this?—the lad found Liz and Stan having
it off on the High Altar, and threatened to tell Flossie.” He looked at the detective, and once again the dismaying boom of his laughter filled the room. “Don’t look so outraged! I was only illustrating the possibilities of creative detection.”
“Not in my contract of employment. We have to stick to the facts, I’m afraid.”
“Well may you be afraid! No more dangerous beasts lurk in the undergrowth, lying in wait for the hapless wayfarer.”
“They’re all we’ve got,” returned Jurnet, losing patience. “Or haven’t, as the case may be. A child has been killed, and it’s my job to find out who killed him. It’s as simple as that.”
“I’m glad it’s simple.” All trace of mirth had vanished from the Professor’s handsome face. He paced thoughtfully across the room to a desk placed between two windows; and then, with the sudden movement of one who has come to a decision, bent down, opened a drawer, and took out a small packet which, returning, he held out to the detective.
“What is it?” But already, out of habit and experience, Jurnet had the packet to his nose, sniffing.
“Heroin, I suppose. Or opium. Cocaine? Don’t ask me. I’ve no knowledge of such things, I’m glad to say.”
“Where did you get it? You know it’s an offence even to have it in your possession, unauthorized?”
“Come now, Inspector! You’re a narrow man, but not, I think, a small one. I took it out of Stan Brent’s anorak. He was up in the triforium with Liz—helping her fix a camera, or so they said—and then the pair of them went outside for a smoke. After they’d gone, I went up to the gallery to see what they’d been up to—as if I didn’t know! It’s really not an easy part to play, that of father incognito.” His voice sounded heavy as he explained, “She keeps her photographic gear packed round with big squares of foam rubber. Quite a serviceable mattress they make, laid out side by side on the floor. In the circumstances I felt no compunction about going through the anorak pockets.”
“You ought to have turned it in to us at once.”
“What do you suppose Liz would say to my shopping her fancy boy? I warn you, Inspector—if you now, in your wisdom, decide to make something of it, I shall deny all knowledge of the stuff, and furthermore, make allegations of corruption against you and the good Sergeant here that will sound so convincing you’ll end up believing them yourself. No: I present you with this abominable dust merely as my own modest contribution to that hoard of facts by which you seem to set such exaggerated store. Murder in the nave, dope in the triforium: it seems to me not inconceivable that there may be a connection. Cathedrals aren’t what they used to be in my young days.”
The gravity splintered, the clown reassumed his motley. Unless, thought Jurnet, it was the other way round: the gravity the mask the clown the man. “But then, with Flossie and his go-go girls at the Deanery, who’s to say what’s possible and what isn’t?”
Chapter Thirteen
Jurnet let Jack Ellers drive him back to his semi, but there he slid gingerly into the driving seat, grimacing as his ribs came into contact with the steering wheel. He refused to come in for the hot drink Rosie had waiting.
“Give me hell, she will,” the little Welshman pleaded. “She’s always lecturing me on how the quickest way to get on in the Force is to suck up to your superior officers.”
“Clever girl! You do that.”
“Yes, sir! Even those without the bloody sense to know what’s good for them, sir?”
Jurnet laughed and drove away. He was feeling much better. The night air had cleared his head. The pain in his ribs had quietened to an ache he would quite miss when it stopped altogether. It was even comforting, in a funny kind of way, to be reminded of the reality of one’s own body; to know one was more than a dark shadow in a dark car speeding through a darkened city like something out of Phantom of the Opera.
He wound down the window and enjoyed the wind on his face. Past the shops and the Georgian houses that 200 years earlier had been suburbs themselves, and now formed a silent reproach to the housing estates beyond, Jurnet turned into the driveway of the Norfolk and Angleby Hospital, savouring, as always, at the back of his throat, the faint taste of apprehension which dated back to his operation for an appendix ruptured on Angleby Secondary football ground at the age of fifteen.
In the corridor outside the intensive care unit, the young American girl sat, still wearing her English raincoat. A police-constable a little further along the line of chairs got to his feet.
The girl smiled when she saw Jurnet, and raised a slim hand.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” The detective returned the smile, and, turning a little away, directed a questioning glance at the police-constable. The man shook his head slightly and, at a gesture from his superior officer, resumed his seat.
The girl said, “He’s going to be OK, you know.”
Jurnet sat down beside her.
“That’s fine! When did they tell you?”
“They haven’t—yet. I just know.” Reassuringly, “Don’t bother with thinking up the right words. I’m not kidding myself along. Mort and I just happen to be on the same wave-length, I guess. We communicate. I guess all people in love are the same.”
The stab of envy that pierced Jurnet’s chest set his ribs throbbing afresh.
He asked, “Is there anything we can do for you? There ought to be a WPC—”
“Policewoman, do you mean? She’s gone over to the hotel to pick up my things. They say I can sleep right here. Everyone’s been so kind! I hate to cause so much trouble. Though I guess it’s Mort, really, that’s caused it. That boy,” she said fondly, “he’s never happy unless he’s setting the world to rights.” With a glance at the detective’s bruised face, “Too bad he had to get you mixed up with it.”
“All in the day’s work,” said Jurnet, “and I reckon the first blow was struck a good many years before Mort got his in. Now—what about you? We can get in touch with the American Embassy, and they’ll get on to your people in the States—”
The girl considered, then shook her head.
“I don’t think so. If Mort was going to die it would be different. As it is—” she blushed, charmingly. “I guess you would call us elopers, if that didn’t seem such a quaint old word in this day and age. My Dad’s mad I married Mort, and Mort’s folks are mad he married me.” She turned on Jurnet eyes wide at the absurdity of it. “Mom was OK, though. She said to Dad, ‘For Christ’s sake, honey! It could’ve been a nigra!’”
Not until he had parked his car outside the synagogue and noted the light shining from a second-floor window did it occur to Jurnet that the Rabbi might be in bed.
Just the same, he pushed the bell button.
Immediately Taleh gave tongue, and in a little while Leo Schnellman, in baggy pajamas, came downstairs and opened the door wide. The detective’s remorse at having disturbed him spilled over into his greeting.
“Rabbi—it’s past midnight! How many times do I have to tell you to keep the door on the chain?”
“What is this—testing?” The Rabbi smiled. “Job, in the land of Uz, had four doors to his house, so that no one need ever have trouble finding the way in, and you expect me to whimper ‘Who’s there?’ through the letterbox?”
Jurnet came into the synagogue lobby, carefully shutting and bolting the door after him. Already he could feel comfort spreading like balm through his battered body.
Leo Schnellman said, “As it happens, I stayed up for you. I saw the television news, and I thought you might look in.”
“I’d have been here earlier, only there were things to do.”
“Of course.” Leading the way upstairs, “The coffee should be hot still.”
In the living-room Jurnet sat down on the leather pouffe and cradled the mug of coffee in his hands. Taleh came as usual to lay his head across the detective’s knees.
The Rabbi stood, legs apart, on the hearthrug, a fat man in rumpled pajamas. He made no reference to Jurnet’s bruised face, mere
ly asked, “Is the coffee drinkable?”
“Fine.” The detective took one sip and no more. He sat with head bowed, looking into the mug as if he saw something of importance mirrored in the dark fluid. After a little he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to let the lessons go for a bit.”
“I understand.”
Jurnet burst out, “What gets me is the way the kid’s getting lost! Not enough he’s dead, he’s getting buried under a dung-heap of religion, and politics, and God knows what else. He’s become a symbol. And he isn’t. He’s a kid. A poor dead kid.”
“You’re wrong.” Leo Schnellman shook his head. “He’s a poor dead kid and a symbol. Denying it isn’t going to alter the fact.”
Jurnet glowered at him. It was not what he had come to hear. He said, “I knew I could rely on your shoulder to cry on. I suppose you’ve got it in for me because I had young Master Epperstein over the jumps.”
“Don’t be stupid!”
Jurnet stared for a moment; then reddened, and looked away.
“I’m sorry. I need to get to bed.”
“Yes. But first we’ll have some fresh coffee.”
Mosh Epperstein had drooped languidly on his chair in the interviewing room, his long arms dangling between his legs, and inquired, “Is it always this dead boring, being run in by the fuzz? Where’s the high drama I’m always reading about?”
“You’ve been reading the wrong books.” Jurnet kept his tone impersonal. “And let me put you right. You haven’t been run in. We are simply seeking your help, just as we are seeking the help of a great many concerned citizens in order to discover the perpetrator of a brutal crime.”
“So that’s what it is! You could’ve fooled me. Just how that confers on you the right to give me the third degree—”
“You have been reading the wrong books! Suppose you clear up the misunderstanding by telling us exactly what you were doing in the cathedral on Sunday, and then we can both have the pleasure of bringing this interview to a close.”
“I already told you. I’m a Matins buff.”
