The Salisbury Manuscript

by Philip Gooden

  ‘Just because we’ve found a body in a solitary place which a man was accustomed to visit doesn’t mean that body and man are one and the same, Miss Scott. After all, it could be that a second individual had an interest in that burial place. In fact, we know a second individual had an interest because one of them had to kill the other in order to leave the first one there. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘You mean that Andrew North might be the murderer himself,’ said Tom, ‘and that the body which isn’t yet identified could be someone else?’

  ‘I am not going to start accusing people of murder, Mr Ansell, without a little more evidence. You should be glad I follow that policy. Remember, sir?’

  And of course Tom did remember his treatment at Foster’s hands, fair treatment on the whole, when he’d been put in Fisherton Gaol.

  ‘Has either of you seen Walter Slater?’ said Foster, in an unexpected change of subject.

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘He lives at Venn House, doesn’t he, with his aunt and uncle?’

  ‘He does normally,’ said the Inspector. ‘But he hasn’t been there since the night of his uncle’s murder.’

  ‘Perhaps he has gone back to his father’s house in Downton,’ said Tom.

  ‘No. I have established that Walter Slater is not at Northwood either.’

  ‘His church? He is a curate in the town.’

  ‘Yes, at St Luke’s. He was seen there the morning after his uncle’s murder but he has not been sighted since.’

  Despite the warmth of the Selbys’ drawing room, and the sense of having eaten and drunk well at the end of a long and anxious day, Tom Ansell experienced a sudden chill. He had liked Walter Slater on the strength of a single meeting. He hoped nothing had happened to the fellow. Of course, there was another explanation why the curate might have gone missing after Felix’s murder but Tom was reluctant to give it house room.

  ‘By the way, Miss Scott,’ said Foster, ‘where is your godfather? Here we are sitting in his house and warming ourselves by his fire and drinking his brandy, but there is no Canon Selby.’

  ‘He had to go out on business, I believe,’ said Helen. ‘Church business, that is.’

  ‘Just as long as he hasn’t disappeared too,’ said the Inspector. ‘Well, I’d better be making myself disappear. I will keep you informed of any discoveries we make about the body from Todd’s Mound. But don’t go tripping over any more remains, Mr Ansell.’

  After Foster had gone, Tom and Helen remained sitting near the fire, sipping at their brandy and musing over the events of the day.

  ‘How do you suppose this second murder of Mr North is connected to the murder of Canon Slater, Tom?’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t.’

  ‘It must be.’

  ‘It’s only in a story that deaths and murders have to be tied together.’

  ‘So you think there are two different murderers wandering about Salisbury, Tom? That makes things worse.’

  ‘No, I don’t really think there are two murderers. The law of chance and probability would argue against it.’

  ‘But as a certain lawyer said to me this afternoon, ‘I’m not sure that law has ever been enacted in Parliament.’’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Tom. ‘Tell me I don’t really sound so pompous.’

  ‘You don’t. Not very often anyway. Now you tell me something. You said you had a look inside this book, this memoir, which Canon Slater wanted to entrust to the firm. Now the book has gone, taken by whoever killed him, I suppose. So the book must have contained something valuable, some secret maybe. What did you see in it?’

  Tom recalled glancing through the Salisbury manuscript, reading the anecdotes about Byron and Shelley, the other little item about the woman who’d danced in the nude and posed for George Slater and his friend. The reference to the prostitute in Shepherd Market and George’s fears that he’d contracted some disease from her.

  Tom said, ‘It was an interesting book.’

  ‘I can see from your expression, Tom, what “interesting” means. It means scandalous and compromising, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, there were some stories in the memoir about meeting famous poets and the like. There was a story about Shelley sailing a boat on a pond made out of a fifty-pound note. The boat, I mean, not the pond.’

  ‘But there were other, less respectable things too, Tom. Was the Canon’s father’s book like the kind of thing they sell in Holywell Street?’

  Tom might have asked Helen how she knew about the type of books which were for sale, on the sly and under the counter, in a particular stretch of Holywell Street near Exeter Hall in the Strand, but he saw the look on her face – somewhere between amusement and determination – and said, ‘Yes, there were some details in George Slater’s memoir which would not be publishable. Adventures with women of a certain sort, and so on.’

  Helen put down her brandy glass and clapped her hands in delight.

  ‘Why, Tom Ansell, I wish I had had a sight of the – whatd’youcallit? – the Salisbury manuscript!’

  ‘That’s as may be, Helen, but a brief glance was enough to tell me why the Canon wanted the book out of his house and in safekeeping in our vaults.’

  ‘He could have destroyed it without going to all the trouble of summoning you to Salisbury.’

  ‘He would not destroy it because he had too much respect for the past, but neither did he wish to keep it. He wanted it to be seen by no one except his nephew Walter. Walter was to have the final decision on what happened to it, but only after his uncle’s death.’

  ‘And now his uncle’s dead and the book is gone.’

  ‘I don’t see how the book gives a motive for his murder though.’

  ‘And I don’t understand,’ said Helen. ‘Everything you’ve said suggests that the Salisbury manuscript was somehow dangerous. Why, it might have contained something about the Canon himself.’

  ‘Then why did he allow me to look at it? Anyway I don’t think old George Slater would have had much to say about a son who went into the Church, except a few words of dismissal or contempt.’

  They were silent for a moment, trying to work their way through the tangle of confusion and doubt.

  ‘No, no one would have killed to get it,’ said Tom. ‘What it contained was compromising, true, but the writer was dead and the events he referred to took place many years ago. But I can see it the other way round. Felix Slater might have resorted to – to extreme measures to keep the book.’

  ‘Even murder?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom, surprising himself as he said it. The residentiary canon might have looked like a venerable churchman but he had been tough and wiry as an old bird. Perhaps ruthless underneath it. ‘But there’s a problem. He didn’t murder anyone. He was the victim.’

  ‘So perhaps Canon Slater was murdered after a tussle.’ said Helen. ‘Perhaps he was killed by someone who wanted the book.’

  ‘Which wouldn’t be of much concern to anyone outside the family. Who didn’t know what was in it. Walter had never seen it while Felix Slater told me that his brother Percy passed it over to him as part of his father’s effects, though some years after old George Slater died. I got the impression that Percy hadn’t been interested.’

  ‘You said you went to see Percy and that he wanted the stuff back.’

  ‘That’s true. But I think he was saying it out of a general dislike of his brother and the wish to cause trouble.’

  ‘Couldn’t this Percy Slater have gone to the Canon’s house and demanded the manuscript back? Couldn’t there have been a fight and so on?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Tom, sounding to himself like Inspector Foster in a cautious mood. ‘Only there were no signs of a fight or a struggle in his study. He was taken by surprise. Someone he trusted, or someone he knew at any rate.’

  ‘What about Mrs Slater?’

  ‘Amelia? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Because she’s a woman, Tom? And because we all know that the gentle sex cannot plunge the
knife in any more than they can be familiar with the books for sale in Holywell Street. So is Mrs Slater some pious clergyman’s companion, retiring and docile, like my godfather’s wife, Mrs Selby?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Tom carefully. He recalled that Helen hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of Mrs Slater. ‘It’s a strange kind of union. Mrs Slater is half Italian. Apparently Felix met her when he was travelling on the Continent. Met her in Florence where she lived with her parents. When they died she came to England and she . . . she . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, how Percy Slater put it was that she threw herself on Felix Slater’s mercy since she had no one else to turn to. And so they married and have lived in Salisbury ever since.’

  ‘Happily ever after?’ said Helen.

  ‘That’s what Percy said. Only he spoke the words with a kind of sneer. I thought perhaps he was envious of his brother. Mrs Slater is an attractive woman, Helen.’

  ‘I can tell that by the way you refer to her. But isn’t it odd, Tom, that she should have travelled from Florence to “throw herself on the mercy” of a cathedral canon?’

  ‘Maybe they had some kind of understanding. But we’ll never know, since I’m not going to ask her and he is dead.’

  ‘We’re going round in circles here,’ said Helen. ‘Talking of understandings, Tom, we were having a conversation before you left London . . .’

  Tom got up and went over to where Helen was sitting on the other side of the fire. He knelt down and took both her hands in his. Her hands were warm.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be on one knee though?’ she said.

  Tom was about to say that this wasn’t, perhaps, the most propitious moment to be talking about marriage and that he merely wanted to be near her when they heard the front door closing quietly as someone came into the house. Before Tom could rise to his feet again, the door to the drawing room opened. It was Eric Selby. If he saw anything strange in the sight of the young lawyer kneeling before his god-daughter, her didn’t say so.

  In fact, he said nothing, but simply stood in the doorway with a peculiar, abstracted look in his eyes Underneath his shovel-hat, his white hair stuck out in disordered tufts as though he’d jammed the hat on in a hurry.

  Eventually Helen said, ‘What is it, Uncle? What’s wrong?’

  The Drawing Room

  Earlier that evening Henry Cathcart had had a visitor. It was Bessie from Venn House. She was wearing a black armband and a doleful face. She carried a letter from Mrs Slater. Henry had of course written a note of condolence to the widow. Now he had a reply on black-lined notepaper, asking him to call on her straightaway. She did not have to say that she was not free to leave her home. A new widow is not at liberty to come and go as she wishes, not without exciting comment.

  It was the early evening. Cathcart waited a short while to allow Bessie to get well on the way back to Venn House before setting off there himself. It was the first time he had been to West Walk since the night of the murder. He was admitted by Bessie, who put on a mild show of being surprised to see him. Mrs Slater was sitting in the drawing room. She was dressed in mourning and reading a book. She looked quite composed. She closed the book and put it on the arm of her chair.

  ‘Mr Cathcart, how good of you to come.’

  ‘How are you, Mrs Slater?’ he said, noting that she had not called him by his first name.

  ‘I am – how do they say it? – bearing up.’

  ‘Bearing up’ was his wife’s expression, he thought. He went to stand opposite her but took care not to come too close. He debated for an instant leaning forward to take her hand, which was covered with a thin black lace glove, and kissing it. But now did not seem the moment. He was conscious of how warm the room was, even warmer than Constance liked her sick room.

  ‘It must be terrible to have to stay in this house,’ he said. ‘It is my home,’ Amelia said. ‘I feel quite safe with the servants. And there is Eaves.’

  ‘Eaves?’

  ‘The gardener.’

  ‘But forgive me, Mrs Slater, the gardener does not sleep in the house, does he?’

  ‘Oh no. But he is within call. It is only a shame that Achilles is not still alive. He would have been company for me.’

  Cathcart remembered that Achilles was her little pug. It had died some time in the beginning of the year. If he thought it strange she should be regretting the death of her dog rather than her husband, he did not say so. There was no doubt that she looked good, that she looked very good, in mourning clothes.

  ‘You haven’t seen Walter, have you, Henry?’

  ‘Walter? Oh, your nephew.’

  ‘Yes, my nephew.’

  For the first time, Cathcart observed marks of pain on the woman’s face. Amelia’s wide, mobile mouth was set in a rigid line. Her forehead, which was partly concealed by the black trimmings to a little hat, was creased as if she were trying to remember something.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen Walter, not since the night, the terrible night when . . . when . . .’

  ‘When it all happened,’ she completed his sentence.

  ‘Do you think something has happened now?’ he said. ‘To Walter?’

  ‘I pray not. It is simply that no one has seen him for a day or more. His bedroom has not been slept in.’

  ‘You have informed the police?’

  ‘Inspector Foster knows. I believe he has been looking for Walter too.’

  ‘I expect he’ll turn up soon.’

  ‘I don’t want him to turn up soon,’ she said, her hands suddenly bunching into fists on the arms of the chair. ‘I want to see him now.’

  ‘You should not worry,’ said Cathcart. ‘Walter is a fine young man.’

  She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘You are right. I should not worry. Walter is a fine young man.’

  Amelia rose from her chair. She moved closer to Henry and said, ‘But, my dear Henry, I think it is you who should worry.’

  Cathcart was aware again of the heat of the room. He was so struck by the way she had addressed him – my dear Henry – that he scarcely noticed the rest of her words. Eventually he said, ‘I? Why should I be worried?’

  ‘Because you left something behind on your last visit here, on the very evening when poor Felix was killed.’

  ‘What did I leave?’

  ‘This,’ said Amelia Slater, moving away and reaching for a little reticule lying on a nearby table. ‘I put it here for safekeeping.’ She opened the beaded bag and brought out a pale silk handkerchief, a man’s one.

  ‘Is that mine?’ said Cathcart.

  ‘It must be,’ she said, making a show of scrutinising the handkerchief. ‘There are some letters embroidered on it. Ah, here they are. ‘H.G.C.’ I do not know of anyone else with the initials H.G.C. Do you know of anyone else?’

  She held up the handkerchief by a single corner.

  ‘And now I look more carefully, Henry, I see that there are some specks of colour on the handkerchief. They look like specks of blood.’

  ‘It is blood,’ he said quickly. ‘I remember that I nicked myself while I was shaving that morning. Some of the blood must have got itself on the handkerchief.’

  ‘Tut,’ said Amelia Slater. ‘And you, one of the leading citizens of the town and one of the most prosperous too, could not afford to provide yourself with a fresh handker-chief for the day ahead?’

  ‘I meant to, I expect,’ he said. ‘ But I probably just stuffed it in my pocket and forgot about it.’

  ‘Ah well,’ she said, continuing to watch the handker-chief sway gently a foot from her face. It was as if she was conducting a hypnotic experiment on herself. ‘No doubt you have had a lot on your mind, Henry.’

  Was he supposed to cross the few feet separating them and retrieve the handkerchief? Cathcart was reminded of a child playing a game. Suddenly he’d had enough. Something about the situation – whether it was the heat of the room or Amelia’s high-handed treatment of him or something less specific – r
eminded him of his wife Constance. He made to snatch at the handkerchief but at the last instant Amelia let it fall from her fingers so that it appeared she had surrendered it. He stuffed it into his coat pocket.

  ‘I must have dropped it,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, but where?’

  ‘Outside Venn House somewhere. In the porch.’

  ‘No, Henry. It was found inside, quite close to the door of Felix’s room. Bessie saw it but was too frightened to pick it up. She told me instead. So I picked it up – and now I have dropped it again – into your hand.’

  ‘Amelia . . . Mrs Slater . . . I am not sure what you are saying.’

  ‘I am saying nothing, Henry. I am too busy thinking of the death of poor Felix and of how I require another mourning outfit.’

  ‘What you are wearing now looks – looks fine to me. Sober and dignified and in the fashion, if I may say so.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Amelia, making an up-and-down motion with her hands from the top of her black-bonneted head to the tips of her black shoes, ‘no, no, all of this I am wearing is – how do they say it? – ‘cobbled together’. Yes, cobbled together.’

  ‘Then you would like to come to my shop and select something more à la mode?’ he said.

  ‘I should like nothing better than to visit your delightful shop, Henry. But, as you know, a widow is barely allowed to move a step outside her own room after the death of her spouse. She is as good as walled up like a bad person in a fairy story. As if she were the one guilty of his death! So, no, I cannot visit your shop. But I would be grateful, more grateful than I can show you at the moment, if you could send some of your people here to Venn House to see to my needs. No, do not send your people but come yourself.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

  Now, despite the heat of the drawing room, Henry Cathcart felt cold. Cold and angry. Amelia put out her black-gloved right hand as a sign that he might kiss it, also that their interview was over. He kissed her hand, but automatically, without thought.

  She said, ‘What does it stand for, the G?’