by S. T. Haymon
Mr Amos opened his eyes wide, as if the question astonished him.
“Nothing, naturally.”
“You didn’t think of having him up in front of the Dean as a lying little so-and-so?”
“But then he would have been expelled without a doubt. And his mother is a widow, of very modest means. I could not bring myself to jeopardize a boy’s future on account of a youthful venality which, with God’s help, he might outgrow. Especially as I felt myself in some degree culpable, in having behaved in such a way as to put the idea into the child’s head in the first place.”
“So what happened?”
“Oh, he wrote his letter, just as he said he would. Anonymously.” Mr Amos looked at the detective hopefully. “I think that was a good sign, don’t you? It showed, wouldn’t you say, that he already had some misgivings? A stepping back from the brink?”
Jurnet chose not to leave the man that comfort.
“Gave himself an out, is how I’d interpret it. In case things went against him. What did the Dean do?”
“He sent for me, of course. To ask if I had any idea who might have written it.”
“Not whether the charges it contained were true?”
Mr Amos bowed his head.
“That too.”
“And you still didn’t give the boy away?”
“How could I? When challenged directly on the point, I had to say I thought I knew who was responsible; but that, equally, I did not feel able to pass the name on.”
“And how did the Dean take that?”
“He was not pleased.” Mr Amos’s troubled expression deepened. “Will he have to know now that it was Arthur?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s put two and two together already. You understand,” Jurnet insisted, “that I myself am quite unable to give any undertakings of any kind.”
“I understand.” Mr Amos sighed. “It’s just that it seems such a pity, now that he’s dead and can do no more harm.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Jurnet. “He’s not doing too badly so far.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Wet,” said Christopher Drue. In the shadowy cloister the boy’s voice had an odd, sweet resonance. “If you really want to know, Arthur Cossey was the most awful drip.”
Jurnet said, “I really want to know.”
The boy hesitated and then—or so it seemed to the detective—decided to give his questioner his trust. Jurnet, who saw the decision mirrored in the vivid young face across which thoughts and impressions chased each other like clouds before the wind, was foolishly glad of it.
“I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,” the boy went on, “and I am awf’ly sorry for him. I’m sure I shouldn’t like to be murdered, whatever sort of drip I was—but it wouldn’t be honest not to tell the truth to a police officer, would it?”
“It wouldn’t be honest not to tell the truth to anyone.”
“Oh, yes, sir! But especially a policeman. I mean, you could do things if I told lies.”
“Like shutting you up in a dungeon and putting you on bread and water? Let’s hope it won’t come to that! Mr Amos couldn’t think of anyone who had been what you might call real friends with Arthur; and you were the nearest thing he could get to it. Mostly, I think, because you walk in line together in the choir. So don’t worry. I’m not expecting to hear you two were like David and Jonathan, if you know who they were.”
“Yes, sir. The Bible. Jonathan got killed too, didn’t he?”
“So he did. I should have known they teach you scripture in the Cathedral School. What Mr Amos did say was that whatever you might think of Arthur, he had the impression that Arthur thought the world of you. Was that right?”
Christopher nodded gravely. A dark lock of hair flopped over his forehead. “He had a crush on me. He followed me about everywhere, like a dog. Even if I went to the loos. It was an awful bore. He’d never take no for an answer.”
“Why didn’t you want him for a friend?”
The boy concentrated with drawn brows.
“I didn’t like him in the first place because he was who he was in the first place. I mean, you can’t like a drip, can you? Nobody can.”
“It is hard,” Jurnet conceded. “Just the same, were there never times when you let him join in with whatever it was you were all doing?”
“We let him play marbles with us. He was rotten at it, but he used to buy all the special kinds—not the ordinary 35p a bag ones, the big ones you buy separately. Some of them cost 35p each! Arthur was the only one with money to buy marbles like that.” Christopher chuckled. “We always won them off him, though.”
“Where did he get the money from, do you know?” The boy looked startled, as though the question had never before occurred to him. “I mean, his mother’s not well off, from all I gather.”
“He had a paper round,” Christopher suggested doubtfully. Then, with a brilliant smile, “But you’ll find out about it, won’t you, being a detective.”
Jurnet grinned.
“I’ll do my best. Now, what about weekends and school holidays—did you ever see him then, out of school?”
“Not if we saw him first! Sometimes, if we were standing about with our bikes, he’d come up and want to go riding with us. Do you know, he had the best bike of anybody in the form—seven speeds—and he still couldn’t keep up for toffee!” The child laughed merrily. “It never took us long to give him the slip!”
This glimpse into the jungle of childhood prompted Jurnet to observe, though with careful detachment, “That must have upset him a bit.”
“Upset Arthur!” Plainly, the possibility had not occurred to his school fellow. “Nothing upset Arthur. He was always smiling. We once thought of asking his mother if he smiled when he was asleep, but we were afraid she might not like being asked. Mr. Hewitt was always on at him to take that silly grin off his face.” Coming so close to the detective that a rosy cheek rubbed against Jurnet’s jacket, he added, a little breathlessly, “Why, he even smiled when—”
“When what?”
“I don’t know whether I ought to tell you.” Then, “Will you tell Mr Hewitt?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Or Mr Amos?”
“So long as you aren’t going to tell me it was you who killed him.”
“It was something worse, in a way,” Christopher asserted solemnly. “Well, not worse, but—” He broke off and tried again. “It was only because he was always saying how much he liked me and how there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me—”
“So?”
“So one day when he said it we were in the Lower Close, and a lady was there, walking her dog. And just as she went past us the dog sat down and did its business.”
“Well?” demanded Jurnet.
“Well, I was so sick of hearing there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do, so I said—” the boy’s face was completely hidden now, pressed into Jurnet’s jacket—“so I said, if you mean it, then eat the dog’s do.” Another pause. “And he did. And he was still smiling. It was all over his hands, and some of it was smeared round his mouth, but he was still smiling.”
“Are you very angry?” the boy ventured at last, when the silence had been prolonged. The cloister lawn sparkled in the sun. Had the old monks, Jurnet wondered, been allowed out there, or had they been condemned to promenade these freezing alleys, mortifying the flesh for the love of God? Had they loved God enough to eat dog shit in His Name?
Did he, Jurnet, love Miriam enough to do it, should she call for such a bizarre proof of his passion? He knew he never could; and he stood, silent, shaken with envy for the great love Arthur Cossey had borne for the boy at his side.
Jurnet said, “I’m not angry at all.”
“Just the same, if I’d known he was going to be killed, I’d have tried to like him. I don’t know if I could, really, but I’d have tried.”
“No one can say fairer than that,” said Jurnet, returning, with a
n effort, to the matter in hand. “The choir, now—let’s chat about that a little. It must mean a lot of extra work.”
“I don’t mind. I like the singing, and learning about music. And I quite like going into the cathedral in a procession and dressing up in a cassock and ruff and a white surplice on Sundays.” With a rueful little laugh, “One thing—I won’t have to tell Arthur about his ruff now.” He explained, “We have to bring our fresh things to Saturday morning practice so everything’s ready for Sunday. Only my mother—she’s a lecturer at the University and too brainy for house-work—doesn’t understand about starch. Some weeks my ruff’s so stiff it’s like a board; and other times—though she’s used exactly the same amount, that’s the amazing thing—it flops all over the place, and you’d swear, if you didn’t know, it hadn’t been starched at all. Well, last Saturday was one of the floppy days, and Mr Amos gets into such a stew about floppy ruffs you can’t imagine. So when I came into the cloakroom on Sunday and saw Arthur’s still hanging on his peg I thought he must be staying home with one of his colds—he was always getting sniffles—and so I borrowed it.”
“Taking a chance, weren’t you? It could have been he was just later than you arriving.”
“And then he’d have been stuck with my floppy old thing and have to lump it!” Christopher giggled. “He wouldn’t have minded—because he had such a crush on me, you see. Anyway, Arthur was never late. I’m the late one, ’specially on the Sundays Mummy and Dad drop me off on their way to golf.” After a little, “I hope Mrs Cossey won’t mind. I put the ruff back after the service, but of course she’ll have to launder it, now it’s been worn. She does them so beautifully I wanted my mother to pay her to do mine at the same time as she did Arthur’s, but Mummy thought it might hurt her feelings, I don’t know why. She does cleaning for some people we know in the Close so I shouldn’t think she’d mind.”
“Do you know Arthur’s mother?”
“Not really. I went to tea with him once. He kept asking till I had to.” At the sight of the boy’s face, screwed up in an expression of humorous disgust, Jurnet suppressed a smile. “It was awful!”
“Grub below par?”
“Oh no—quite the opposite! There was ham, and trifle, and at least four kinds of cake and pastries—”
“Doesn’t sound too bad to me.”
“It was so fussy! Mrs Cossey had put a lace cloth on the table, and there were fancy serviettes and she was all dressed up—and I mean, it wasn’t as if it was a party. It was only me!”
“Perhaps you were a party to Arthur and his mother, if nobody ever wanted to go home with him.”
The boy reddened. There was a quiver in his voice as he said, “I’m sorry now, truly I am. But then—”
“Then he was just a drip with a crush on you. Don’t blame yourself. We all do things we’re sorry about afterwards. After all, you did go in the end.”
“It was awful!” Christopher said again. “After tea we went upstairs to his room so he could show me his pictures. Can you think of anything more boring? Every time I said I ought to be getting home he’d bring out another lot. I said I’d be honest. Well—” the curly head came up, the thick-lashed hazel eyes looked solemnly at the detective—“even if I’d known he was going to be murdered, I don’t think I could ever have gone there again. It was so boring I thought I’d die.”
“Never mind,” said Jurnet. “At least you can console yourself with the thought that you did Arthur a good turn while he was still alive to enjoy it.”
“I think he enjoyed it. At any rate, he kept on smiling.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mr Harbridge, peering through the glass panels let into the upper half of the Prior’s Door, saw Jurnet making his way up the worn steps from the cloister. He opened the door and let the detective into the cathedral. In his wide-skirted gown with its broad black belt and white tabs at the throat, the verger looked damaged but dependable, his face only a little less bruised than Jurnet’s. A plaster was still in position on the back of his head.
He looked out over Jurnet’s shoulder and across the cloister to the south-east corner where the sturdy form of Christopher Drue could be seen disappearing through the entrance into the Song School.
“Young Chris been chatting you up, I see.”
“Or vice versa. He’s a live wire all right.”
“That he is. Any mischief afoot in these parts, ten to one he’s at the bottom of it.”
The tone was affectionate, and Jurnet, who had also felt the powerful charm of the boy’s personality, looked at the man with a kindly regard.
He demurred nevertheless. “There’ve been a few things happening here lately that are hardly child’s play.”
“‘Kids’ jokes, I mean. Like the time someone stuck price tags on a couple of hundred kneelers we’d piled up in the north aisle during cleaning. ‘Reduced to £1.75’—that’s what some joker put on them. Poor Miss Hanks, nearly driven mad she was with people wanting to buy’em.”
“And that was Christopher’s doing?”
“Can’t say it was, can’t say it wasn’t. But it don’t stop me having my own opinion.” The verger chuckled. “Caught him out red-handed, though, couple of weeks ago. Not to say green and yellow an’ sky-blue-pink!”
“How’s that again?”
“Coloured chalks. Caught him colouring one of the tombs in the ambulatory. It’s got a design of leaves and such, and to tell you the truth I thought it quite an improvement. Brightened it up something wonderful. Still, we can’t encourage that sort of thing or there’d be no stopping the little perishers. So I made him fetch a dwile and a bucket of water and wash it all off. Stood over him till he done it, even if he did miss his games period.”
“He couldn’t have thought much of that.”
“Oh, he took it all as a great joke. That’s the kind of lad he is. ‘No hard feelings, Harby,’ he said to me when I finally let him go, and he stuck out his hand to shake, cheeky as you please. You can’t help liking him, even when he’s driving you up the wall with his merry tricks.”
“Not like young Cossey. Not the most popular boy in the school, so far as I can make out.”
The verger said, with a certain truculence, “Arthur was a very quiet boy.”
“So everybody says. That’s what makes it so puzzling.”
“I shouldn’t ’a thought myself,” said the verger, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “that the maniac as did for Arthur examined him first to find out how he was for conversation.”
Jurnet objected, “I don’t know why not. Once you dream up your madman there isn’t anything he mightn’t do, since you’ve already made up your mind he’s off his rocker to begin with. If it’s a madman you want,” he concluded amiably, “make sure he behaves like one. Unreasonably.”
Harbridge stared.
“You think what was done to Arthur reasonable?”
“Definitely. Sick but sane. The product of a reasoning mind. Little St Ulf’s grave, the star of David, the mutilation—in my book it all adds up to a deliberate composition, a work of art designed to evoke a carefully programmed response. So let’s forget the maniac, shall we? Which brings us back to my original question. If Arthur was such a quiet little boy, minding his own business, what possible reason could anyone have for killing him?”
After a pause, during which a large lady, all agog, asked the verger to point out exactly where the little boy was murdered, Harbridge said, “I could think of a few.”
In the FitzAlain chapel they were safe enough from interruption. Visitors to the cathedral tended to keep to the main routes, treating the byways with the distrust of motorists coming upon a road not marked on the map. Smiling in his sleep, Bishop FitzAlain slept on his tomb undisturbed.
Jurnet, looking about him, nodded in the direction of the brown paper still cellotaped to the wall. “Might as well get rid of that now. I’ve been meaning to tell the Dean, but what with one thing and another—” The verger made no comment. “Ever
since I found out what an artist Arthur was,” the detective went on, “I can’t help wondering if that wasn’t some more of his handiwork. What do you think?”
Harbridge said with bitterness, “Nothing about that little stinker’d surprise me. There! I’m glad it’s out.” The verger looked at the detective, a line of anxiety deepening between the eyes. “Thing is, I don’t want to say nothing that’ll hurt Sandra.”
“Oh, Mrs Cossey! I didn’t know you were on first-name terms.”
“What name terms d’you reckon a man ought to be on with his own sister-in-law?”
Jurnet said, “Don’t be so prickly. No one’s getting at you. Just don’t expect me to be psychic. Nobody told me Arthur was your nephew.”
“Not by blood he weren’t! Twenty-eight years ago come September I married Beryl Cossey. Wasn’t to know, was I, Arthur’d come into the bargain.”
“So your wife’s Vincent Cossey’s sister?”
“Was. Died five years ago next July the 15th.” The sparse intelligence encompassed a world of loss. “Different from Vince as chalk from cheese. Leave it to me, I wouldn’t have had Vince on the doorstep, let alone ask him in. But you know women. Vince was her little brother, all the family she’d got, and families have to stick together even if they hate each other’s guts. Never could see the point myself.”
“Know what you mean. How did your wife feel about Mrs Cossey—Sandra?”
“They got along all right. Not that Sandra didn’t drive her round the bend with her finicky ways. But she made Vince a good wife, far as he gave her the chance. He was all bets, booze, an’ birds before he got married, an’ he didn’t see no cause to change after.”
“Wonder a chap like that ever married at all.”
Harbridge smiled for the first time.
“Oh, that was Sandra’s doing. Got herself in the family way.”
“You don’t say! Wouldn’t have thought her the type myself. Anyway, I didn’t think that one worked any longer.”
“Maybe not, outside of the Close. Here, we still keep to the old ways. Sandra said, if Vince didn’t make an honest woman of her, she’d go to the Dean and Chapter and tell them what he’d been up to, out of working hours. Vince was a first-class mason. I’ll say that for him, making good money at the time—that was when all that work got done on the presbytery, it must be fifteen, sixteen years ago—and he didn’t want to risk losing his job. He felt the way we all do. Once you’ve worked in the cathedral you don’t want to work anywhere else.”
