Ritual Murder

by S. T. Haymon

  “Hang on,” Jurnet objected. “PC Hubbard’s on duty. There’ll be someone there right through to day-light.”

  “Your police-constables can’t follow them into their bedroom.”

  “Neither can you,” the other pointed out reasonably. “Let me get you home, Rabbi. Mrs Weisinger won’t let her husband do anything silly.”

  “Love,” said the Rabbi, “as you yourself may have noticed, incorporates every other quality except judgment.” Having found the release point for the belt, he got his feet down on the ground at last and levered himself out of the car. “No need for you to wait, Ben.”

  Jurnet said nothing, but parked the car once more straight with the kerb. He caught up with Leo Schnellman as he turned the corner again into Shire Street.

  “What the—!”

  Music sounded along the street, dimly-lit save where light spilled out from the Weisingers’ wrecked shop-front. The two men could see the police-constable standing on the pavement, his face turned towards the interior, his mouth open.

  Was it music, though? There was something odd about the sound; a jangling, not quite a tune, yet that tune vaguely familiar. And now somebody was singing, a woman, in a voice that was a ruin haunted by the ghost of a glorious past.

  Leo Schnellman was murmuring something under his breath. Hebrew, Jurnet thought, though he could not be sure. The music grew louder, the woman’s voice more confident. In the upper storeys along the street lights were appearing, curious faces at the windows. By the time the detective and the Rabbi reached the Patisserie the Weisingers had swung into full stride. Karl sat at the white-painted piano, his hands bouncing up and down the keyboard with energy and determination. His white gloves lay on the floor, tossed among the broken glass. One hand on his shoulder, his wife stood behind him, peering forward at the sheet music, part of the delicately nurtured lady’s repertoire, open on the stand.

  “Picture you upon my knee—” Lise Weisinger sang, tears, of which she appeared unaware, coursing down her cheeks. “Tea for two and two for tea—”

  Her husband at the piano seemed to be watching what his dreadful claws were up to with the amused indulgence of a disinterested spectator.

  “Me for you and you for me

  Alone!”

  On the Titanic, Jurnet reflected, watching from the shadows at once exalted and humbled, they had opted for a hymn tune. No one could say there wasn’t a wide choice of music for a shipwreck.

  Lise bent down and kissed the back of her husband’s neck. Karl turned over the page and the two launched themselves into a spirited approximation of Lazybones. Infected by the prevailing joy PC Hubbard joined in the chorus in a resounding baritone. At an upper window someone clapped.

  The Rabbi’s face was radiant, and now Jurnet could hear the words.

  “If I bring happiness upon you, give thanks: and when I bring suffering, give thanks also.”

  As if by common consent, the two men turned away together, without making their presence known. Ensconced in the car again, driving back to the synagogue, Jurnet could not resist asking, “And if He brings suffering and happiness together at the same time, what then?”

  “That’s easy. Thank Him twice over.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I’ve been having a word with the Chief,” the Superintendent began urbanely. It was the opening move of a game Jurnet could have played blindfolded, so many times had the two of them played it together. “He says you’ll have to have help. What do you think?”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  The Superintendent looked as though he could not believe his ears.

  “You feeling all right, Ben?”

  Jurnet, though not in humorous mood, permitted himself a smile. What he ought to have said, abiding by the rules, was, “I believe Sergeant Ellers and myself can cope, sir,”; from which point on the exchanges would develop gracefully towards a conclusion acceptable to all participants, the Chief Constable included. Jurnet, who hated to work with anyone beside Ellers, would agree to join forces with Inspector So-and-So and Inspector Such-and-Such; the union being postponed for a period long enough, with luck, to enable the Jurnet-Ellers team, unaided, to bring the investigation to a successful close.

  Today, for all he cared, the Superintendent could put his murder where the monkey put his nuts.

  “I said you should have taken sick leave.”

  Jurnet, who knew that, in actual fact, he would howl blue murder if the Superintendent took him off the case, pulled himself together. “I’m OK, thanks. It wasn’t the murder itself I was thinking about. More the attendant circumstances.”

  The Superintendent got up from his chair and strolled over to the window. He pushed it open and let in the sound of birdsong.

  “I know what you mean. Child killings are usually the simplest. Sex and domestic violence—and there you’ve got 99 percent of them. But not Arthur Cossey. He’s a pebble, thrown into a pond and making ripples that spread wider and wider.” He came back to his desk and sat down again. “What I had in mind was this: to bring pebble and ripples, if I may mix my metaphors, under one umbrella, the handle of which will remain firmly in your hand. That should give at least the appearance, if not the reality, of a team at work. Which I trust—” the Superintendent finished with an air of demure mischief—“will prove satisfactory to both you and the Chief Constable.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Hale and Batterby are already dealing with the demo. You’ll have to fill them in on this brick-throwing caper. By which I mean, have a jar with them from time to time. Even make use of their services, if you can bring yourself to do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get along with you!” the Superintendent exclaimed. “Don’t take any longer than you have to.”

  “No, sir,” replied Jurnet, repressing the urge to say more. The bloody twit! How long did he think he intended to take?

  “By which I mean, I know you won’t take a minute longer than you have to.”

  One of the best, the Superintendent.

  With the best will in the world, Mr Hewitt, who had been Arthur Cossey’s form master, was not being very helpful.

  “His friends?” repeating Jurnet’s query. “D’ you know, offhand, I can’t think of a single boy—” He broke off, a rueful expression on his good-natured face. “I take it as a shocking reflection on my own performance. Hang it, it’s my business to know who a boy’s friends are!”

  “Unless there aren’t any.”

  “Oh, come now! We may not be entirely a happy band of brothers, but there’s a team spirit, a camaraderie.” Mr. Hewitt finished, a little forlornly, “He was, of course, a very quiet boy.”

  “So everyone tells me. Bright, was he, at his school work?”

  The schoolmaster pursed his lips.

  “Difficult to say. Mediocre, so far as marks went, but one had the impression of a lively intelligence at work, if only he could be persuaded to use it. He was good at art, but hopeless at games—” Mr Hewitt’s tone left no doubt as to which of the two activities he considered the more important—“and then, of course, there was the choir. Mr Amos always said we hadn’t had a Song Scholar with a voice of that quality in years.” With dawning relief, “Mr Amos is the person you should be speaking to, really. His relationship with the choristers is, in the nature of things, so much more personal than is possible in the Cathedral School proper.”

  Jurnet came out of the Cathedral School into the Upper Close, his ribs responding with a sympathetic twinge to the sight of the late battlefield. There seemed to be rather more visitors about than usual. The Dean and Chapter were on to a good thing, had they only the sense to take a lesson from history: 50p to see where the deed was done: two sainted little buggers for the price of one, half-price for children and senior citizens. Just let some old biddy cry out that her arthritis was cured, and they had it made.

  The detective joined the thin stream of people filing into the nave, his face turned resolut
ely away from the memorial inscription in the corner by the door. The vergers moved about busily, looking, in their long gowns, as if they rolled on casters. At the bookstall Miss Hanks had as much business as she could handle.

  A rumble sounded from the organ loft, followed by a fluting chord, and then another, heavy with authority. Taking the sounds as an invitation, Jurnet made his way along the north aisle, past the grey-boarded enclosure whose admonitory “Private” was now fortified with a corral of hurdles lashed together with lengths of chain. A large notice proclaimed uncompromisingly: NO ADMITTANCE.

  The door to the organ loft was open. Jurnet went up the stairs as quietly as he could, hoping to find at the top the man he was looking for. Presumably there were others besides Mr Amos who came out of the woodwork from time to time to tootle on that oversize tin whistle.

  As the detective came out on to the floor of the organ loft, Mr Amos swung round from the console.

  “I’m afraid nobody’s allowed—” He broke off, blinked with eyes slow to read just from the concentrated light over the keyboard. “You were with the Dean—”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  “No,” Mr Amos replied, with a simplicity that had Jurnet completely off-balance. “It’s simply that you have a memorable face. Just the same—” he wagged a finger in reproof, as Jurnet could imagine him wagging it at his choristers—“the organ loft is strictly out of bounds to members of the public.”

  “I don’t know that I’d qualify as that, exactly. My name’s Jurnet. Detective-Inspector Jurnet. I’m a police officer.”

  “Oh dear!” said Mr Amos compassionately. “How awful for you!”

  “There are worse fates.”

  “I’m being silly,” Mr Amos declared. “It’s my besetting sin. Do please stop me if I do it again. It always happens when I’m preoccupied.”

  He half-turned back to the console, and ran a loving hand over the manuals. “Something’s not quite right with the General Cancel. And I’m not all that happy about the Great Tomba either. And now—” as if giving his attention to some other mechanism not functioning as smoothly as one might wish—“you want to ask me some questions about that poor murdered child.”

  “A few, sir, if you please. What I’d like to have from you first, though, is a bit about the choristers’ Sunday routine. What time they have to turn up, and how it goes from then on.”

  “That’s easily told. Morning service starts at 11, and I require the choristers to be in the Song School, robed, by 10 sharp. We’ve never had any difficulty. The boys are often here early, either to play games in the cloister, or to do their prep. So far as I’m concerned, however, to rush hotfoot into the House of God at the last minute, and expect to sing Tallis or Aylward as they should be sung, is simply not on. There has to be an interval, however brief, between the Kingdom of Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  “In that interval, what do you do?”

  “We have a little under an hour, usually. The Song School is at the far end of the cloister. We have to allow sufficient time to organize ourselves into a crocodile, walk the length of the cloister to the door in the south transept, and take our places ready to process with the clergy to the altar and the choir-stalls. To make the most of such time as we do have, I generally begin with a few exercises to clear the throat and head. We may sing a few bars of an anthem or a canticle. Nothing set. A calm, relaxing time that always seems to end too soon.”

  “What do you do—you yourself? See the choristers into the stalls, then nip up here to play the organ?”

  “Gracious, no! The procession has to make a proper introit, so that everybody in the cathedral is made aware that something wonderful is about to happen. Once I’ve made sure the choir has assembled itself in proper order I leave them, and hurry here to play the procession in.”

  “It can’t be the easiest thing to play the organ up here and conduct the choir down there at the same time.”

  Mr Amos gave his jolly laugh.

  “It’s lovely! Only wish I could do it all the time.” Explaining, “I’m only the Vice-Organist. Dr Hurne, our Organist, is touring the Continent, giving recitals. Last Sunday—” the man’s utter lack of envy was indeed lovable—“he played in Cologne Cathedral! What do you think of that! Everybody says it was a triumph! You really should make a point of coming along to hear him when he gets back. Oh dear—silly me again!” Mr Amos sighed. “I do apologize. I had no right whatever to assume you were not a regular cathedral-goer.”

  “Not all that regular,” Jurnet returned, poker-faced. “You cathedral people, on the other hand,” he went on, turning the other’s faux pas, rather cleverly, he thought, to his own purpose—”obviously you have to attend when you’re needed, feel like it or not. But how many services do you attend that you don’t have to?”

  “Such as last Sunday morning’s Communion you mean?” the little man stated, rather than asked. “Yes, I was there, at 8 o’ clock, in St Lieven’s chapel.” He added, “I expect you will also be interested to hear that I was in the cathedral a good deal earlier than that. Not much past 7.”

  “Indeed, sir? Any special reason?”

  “For the very special reason that I would rather be there than anywhere else in the world.” Mr Amos looked at the detective with eyes of a transparent candour. “I live in the Lower Close—one of those houses which were recently turned into flats. I have no wife, I live alone, and I am a confirmed early riser. Once awake, I find that my thoughts invariably turn to this place, and, more often than not, as soon as I have got myself dressed, my feet also. These spring mornings—” his eyes brightened just to speak of them—“the cloister is absolutely delightful! Shadow and chill at first, and then comes the moment when the sun clears the eastern wall—magic!” In the voice of one promising a great treat, Mr Amos exclaimed, “You really must come one morning and see for yourself!”

  “I must do that.” Then, “How do you get into the cloister so early?”

  “From the Song School. I have keys to both doors, of course—the one that opens into the Close, and the one on to the south cloister.”

  “What about the cathedral proper? Could you get into that, if you wanted to, before it opens for business?”

  “Certainly. I also have a key to the Prior’s Door into the south transept. Not that I used it on Sunday. The cloister was so lovely, and so quiet. For once, none of the boys was there to play their games—traditional, but so noisy! I sat until it was almost 8 o’ clock. By then, the Prior’s Door was unlocked anyway, and I went directly to Communion.”

  “Did you notice anybody about in the nave as you crossed the transept?”

  The Vice-Organist shook his head.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” Again he lifted to Jurnet eyes that were disturbing in their utter lack of guile. “I was on my way, unworthy as I am, to partake, if only symbolically, of the body and blood of Our Blessed Saviour. Called to such a feast, do you really expect me to notice who was and who wasn’t about in the nave?”

  Somewhat at a loss, Jurnet turned away and looked over the chest-high panelling which fenced in the organ loft, discovering that, from that vantage point, it was possible to see down into the Little St Ulf dig. The actual excavation was cut off by part of the hoarding, but the table was visible, and some bowls and sieves piled haphazardly in a corner. Turning back to Mr Amos, who had followed the direction of his gaze, the detective was taken aback to see that the man’s eyes were full of tears.

  Jurnet said awkwardly, “It’s hard to accept the violent death of a child.”

  Mr Amos nodded, and a tear fell down upon the sandy hairs that coated the backs of his strong little hands.

  “Even a boy like Arthur,” he said.

  “I can see,” Mr Amos said, “that I must get this over and done with. Otherwise you’ll be wondering whether it was I who killed him.” The Vice-Organist looked down at his clasped hands, his head a little to one side. “Poor Arthur! Poor little boy, so odious a
nd corrupt!”

  Startled, Jurnet said, “If that’s what you thought of him, I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

  “To be cut off in sin, with no possibility of repentance—is not that the most terrible fate of all? To die young and still not innocent?”

  Jurnet demanded, “What did he do?”

  “He never was an attractive boy—” the other appeared to go off at a tangent. “A pale mean look and a mean, slope-shouldered body. Hard to believe a frame so unlovely could house a voice of such angelic purity. If you had heard him in Tallis’s Canon—!” Mr Amos broke off and shook his head in affectionate bemusement.

  The detective, trained to listen, said nothing. The Vice-Organist, exactly as if the other had made some observation, went on, “Ah! You’ve noticed I began by talking about Arthur’s looks, and I imagine you find that suspicious—understandably so, you who must spend so much of your time in dark places. So when I say further that not only do I love my boys for their divine gift of song, but that I find the physical beauty, equally God-given, of the well-favoured ones as great a delight to the eye as the other is to the ear, I may well confirm your worst fears.” The man regarded Jurnet comfortably. “You will think me ridiculously naive, I’m afraid, but Arthur was the first to bring home to me the construction the outside world might put upon my unthinking admiration of young male beauty.”

  “Threatened you, did he?”

  “Please!” Mr Amos put a protesting hand. “Now you’re thinking badly of him, when pity is what’s called for. For myself, I’m immensely grateful to him for trying to blackmail me as a homosexual. It really doesn’t do, does it, to go through life a moral simpleton?”

  Jurnet refused to be deflected.

  “So he asked you for money?”

  “He importuned me to buy him an easel and a set of oil paints. If I didn’t, he said, he would write to the Dean and complain that I was sodomizing the choristers.”

  “What did you do?”