Amendment of Life

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Losers like the last word,’ said Sloan briefly. ‘Come on, we must be nearly there.’

  ‘Just one more turning,’ said the old lady.

  ‘Here,’ called out Pete Carter, ‘I’m over here. Can’t anyone hear me and come?’

  Sloan plunged ahead, taking the last twist in the path at speed.

  The two policemen reached the centre of the maze with disconcerting suddenness. The statue there was neither human nor animal but a strange amalgam of both – half bull, half man.

  ‘You’ve got to the Minotaur now,’ said the detached voice over the airwaves. ‘The Minotaur, you will remember, was the legendary outcome of a liaison between Pasiphaë and a bull.’

  But Detective Inspector Sloan wasn’t taking in Greek legends. He was trying to listen to the agitated observations of Pete Carter while at the same time looking down at the dead body of a woman. It was lying at the feet of the Minotaur.

  The educated elderly female voice had not finished its spiel. ‘And, gentlemen, as I said before, arriving at the figure of the Minotaur traditionally represents the end of man’s quest to the centre of the labyrinth, which is, of course, a metaphor for death…’

  * * *

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Dean,’ Barry Wright was saying. His official title was Clerk of Works at the Minster in Calleford, although he would have much preferred to be known as a manager of some kind. Other people knew what managers were and did: they managed. Nobody knew precisely what lay within the responsibilities of the Clerk of Works; except those living in and around the Minster Close.

  There, of course, was the rub.

  Barry Wright’s early attempts to get his job title modernized had foundered on such intangibles as the Minster Statutes, various early Cathedral Measures Acts and a multitude of precedents established by decisions taken by the Greater Chapter over the last millennium.

  His own later attempts to have his duties and responsibilities defined more exactly had had a simpler outcome: in essence they comprised doing whatever the Dean wanted him to do. And sooner rather than later.

  He was standing outside the Deanery now with the Dean, the Very Reverend Malby Coton, and the Bishop of Calleford. They were all looking down at a bizarre assortment of bones and feathers and scribblings in black chalk on the Deanery doorstep.

  ‘I’ve already been on to Double Felix at Berebury today on behalf of Canon Willoughby,’ explained Barry Wright, trying not to sound too defensive, ‘to arrange for some more security lighting, but I’m afraid they aren’t able to deal with the matter immediately.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Malby Coton.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Dean, but they said that something important has come up this morning and they’re all tied up for the time being.’ Wright made an effort not to sound too placatory either when he added, ‘They’ll come round as soon as they can, I’m sure.’

  The Dean treated this remark, as he did all other communications of whatever nature, with impeccable courtesy. ‘Thank you, Mr Wright.’ He turned and indicated Bertram Wallingford, who was standing at his side. ‘The Bishop tells me that there has been a similar – er – intrusion in the Palace garden.’

  Technically and traditionally, the Bishop’s house lay outside the Close, but its garden abutted the perimeter wall, a gate in the wall giving easy access to the Close and the Minster. It hadn’t always been so. In fact, the gateway between the two properties had been walled up more than once over the ages, but not since 1485. It was during the Wars of the Roses when the Dean and the Bishop had last had a major row, one having been unfortunately a Yorkist and the other a Lancastrian.

  ‘There was the body of a garrotted rabbit on my doorstep,’ said Bertie Wallingford accurately, ‘amongst other things. I don’t know how it got there.’

  The Clerk of Works took the reference to this intrusion to be a reflection on the Minster’s security system, which was also one of his manifold responsibilities, and hastened into speech. ‘I’ve already had a word with the nightwatchmen, Mr Dean, and they were not aware of there having been any intruders in the Close last night.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Malby Coton gravely.

  ‘But there must have been,’ said the Bishop, more given to saying what he thought than the Dean.

  Barry Wright said, ‘The men assure me, your Grace, that they did their rounds as usual, but naturally they are unlikely to have noticed anything of – er – this particular nature, especially in the dark.’ The Clerk of Works stared down uneasily at the odd collection at his feet. He was no theologian, but even he was aware that these items betokened something that was not Christian. ‘One of the men did say he’d heard an odd sound very early this morning, but he didn’t find anything to account for it. He thought it might have been a cat—’

  ‘But it wasn’t,’ Malby Coton prompted him gently.

  ‘No, Mr Dean?’

  ‘No, Mr Wright. It was the bleat of a young goat in Canon Shorthouse’s garden.’

  ‘A tethered goat,’ put in the Bishop. His wife had hastened back home in search of something for the goat to eat and drink.

  ‘A goat in the garden? But’, protested Wright, ‘the Canon’s away on a sabbatical.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Bishop. ‘He’s giving the Lanenden Lectures in Paris…’

  ‘To be called “The Albigensian Crusade Reconsidered”,’ said the Dean.

  ‘Should be very interesting,’ said the Bishop, momentarily diverted.

  ‘The Minster,’ said the Dean suddenly. ‘There isn’t—’

  ‘No, Mr Dean,’ Barry Wright was reassuring. ‘I had that checked out first. No one’s been in there that shouldn’t have.’ He thought again and added clumsily, ‘Nor done anything in there that they shouldn’t have done either.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Malby Coton, relaxing visibly. ‘We wouldn’t want to have to close the Minster and be arranging for a reconsecration at short notice.’

  ‘Or an exorcism,’ said the Bishop.

  ‘Just as well,’ said the Dean. ‘Isn’t Canon Short-house our diocesan “Deliverance from Evil” specialist these days?’

  ‘So he is,’ admitted the Bishop. ‘I’d forgotten that for a moment. Don’t get a lot of call for exorcism in the ordinary way. That’s for the best, too, since he’s abroad.’

  ‘What we should be arranging’, said the Dean in a businesslike way, ‘is a briefing for our public relations people.’

  ‘Hush it up, you mean, Mr Dean?’ said Barry Wright.

  ‘No, no,’ said Malby Coton. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Get our oar in first is what I mean. Whoever’s done this will soon spread it about anyway. We’ll give our version to the local paper straight away and before anyone else.’

  ‘With photographs,’ added the Bishop, who had once gone to a talk on the Church and the media.

  * * *

  Photographs or, rather, the summoning of the police photographers, Dyson and Williams, was one of the things on the mind of Detective Inspector Sloan, too: one of the many things.

  The figure on the ground was lying face down in front of the statue of the bull and it was by no means photogenic. Moreover, it was lying in a position which suggested that it had been carefully placed at the feet of the bull, rather than simply cast down in front of it.

  ‘She’s dead,’ repeated Pete Carter unnecessarily. ‘I keep telling everyone that she’s dead.’

  ‘Do you know who she is?’ asked Sloan. There was no doubt about the woman being dead. What she had died from wasn’t so immediately obvious. He noted automatically that as Captain Prosser had seemed to recognize her, then it must have been from what she was wearing, since her face was still hidden from view.

  Pete Carter shook his head. ‘Never set eyes on her until I turned that corner there and came into this bit of the maze.’

  ‘Miss Pedlinge,’ asked Sloan through his radio, something stirring deep down in the vestigial memories of his schooldays, ‘isn’t there an old legend about tributes to a
bull somewhere?’

  ‘Sacrifices, you mean,’ she said promptly, her voice coming clearly over the air. ‘Oh, yes indeed. The Cretan Minotaur demanded a tribute of seven youths and seven virgins…’

  ‘She’s not a virgin,’ said Crosby, pointing at the body of the woman, ‘at least, sir,’ his face producing a ruddy blush, ‘not if that wedding ring is anything to go by.’

  ‘Miss Pedlinge,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan into his radio telephone, ‘will you please switch off now? I am going to have to ring Berebury for further assistance.’

  ‘Over and out,’ said the old lady unexpectedly before the line went dead.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘We’ve found the body of a woman, sir,’ reported Detective Inspector Sloan over the air to Superintendent Leeyes. ‘It was just where Miss Pedlinge said we would find her. Name unknown to us.’

  ‘We’ve got a woman just reported missing,’ barked back his superior officer. ‘Name of Margaret Collins.’

  ‘It’s quite difficult to estimate her age, sir, as we can’t see her face … not without turning her over, that is, and we can’t do that until Dyson and Williams get here.’ The two police photographers were on their way. ‘And Dr Dabbe.’ Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe was the forensic pathologist for East Calleshire and he was on his way, too. But he would beat the photographers to it. He drove more quickly than was good for him or anyone else.

  ‘She was twenty-five last birthday,’ said Leeyes. ‘If she’s the missing woman, that is.’

  ‘And dead, I would say at a guess, sir, under twenty-four hours,’ plodded on Sloan. ‘Dr Dabbe’ll tell us, of course, when he’s got here.’

  ‘And missing’, came back the Superintendent cogently, ‘since yesterday afternoon … we’ve got the husband here at the station now telling us all about her not having been with their little son at the hospital overnight like he thought.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘In that case a formal identification would be a great help. If,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘visual identification is possible. From what can be seen without touching the body, it might be that the face is damaged. There’s some blood about. Not a lot.’ There was something curious about the blood around the face that he had automatically registered but not yet explored in his mind.

  ‘And the cause of death?’ asked Leeyes, never one to prevaricate.

  ‘Not immediately apparent, sir,’ said Sloan cautiously.

  ‘And what,’ Leeyes asked irritably, ‘in the name of all that’s holy, is this woman who may or may not be Margaret Collins doing lying dead in a maze at Aumerle Court at Staple St James instead of being a good mother in the children’s ward at the hospital?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan turned and regarded the Minotaur and the figure lying prone in front of it. ‘I couldn’t say, but I understand, sir, that a load of ancient symbolism is attached to reaching the very centre of a maze and thus getting to the statue of the Minotaur…’ He hesitated. The extent of the Superintendent’s knowledge and of his ignorance were both equally unknown, and it was very dangerous to presume either. The man was an aficionado of adult education classes and he could as easily have attended one on Greek myth and legend as the one called ‘French without Tears’ which had kept him – and the lecturer – busy the last winter. Sloan took a deep breath and resumed his narrative. ‘The Minotaur, as you know, sir, is half bull and half man.’

  Something resembling a strangled snort came over the ether.

  ‘… and,’ hastened on Sloan, ‘he – it – was said to have been the object of human sacrifice in ancient times.’

  ‘If you ask me, Sloan,’ grunted Leeyes, ‘it’s a load of whole bull, not half and half.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sloan. So the Superintendent hadn’t done a course on Greek mythology, then. Perhaps it was just as well.

  ‘And we are, may I remind you, Sloan, now in the early twenty-first century.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He looked back at the Minotaur. ‘Would it be possible, sir, to have a description of the woman who has been reported missing?’

  ‘The husband says his wife’s about five foot three inches tall and slightly built.’

  Sloan made a note of the height of the missing wife given by the husband.

  Leeyes grunted. ‘Actually this David Collins said everything in metric, but five foot three is how tall she really is.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ So much for ‘French without Tears’ and the twenty-first century.

  ‘Husbands don’t always know, of course, Sloan. Can’t be absolutely sure and all that. In my experience,’ he said largely, ‘the longer they’ve been married, the less well men can describe what their wives look like.’

  ‘And what was she wearing?’ asked Sloan, ignoring this tempting marital bypath. The woman in front of him fitted the physical description, all right, and that was enough for him to be going on with.

  ‘When this fellow left his wife at the hospital yesterday afternoon,’ carried on the Superintendent, ‘she had on a blue cotton blouse, deeper blue jeans and summer sandals. She was carrying a white cardigan and a largish white handbag.’

  The dead woman in the maze was dressed in a blue outfit and wearing a white cardigan. Perhaps, Sloan thought, she had put the cardigan on when it had turned cool. She still had one sandal on. The other was lying on the ground as if it had been kicked off by its owner. He looked around about him, turning his mouth away from the telephone connection with the Superintendent. ‘Crosby, see if there’s a white handbag lying about anywhere—’

  ‘It’s over there,’ interrupted Pete Carter, jerking a finger. ‘Saw it as soon as I got here. I haven’t touched it. Mind you,’ he added virtuously, ‘in the ordinary way, I’d have picked it up and handed it in, like always. You’d be surprised what people leave behind in the maze…’, he averted his eyes from the deceased, ‘by accident, I mean.’

  ‘Sloan, are you still there?’ The radio started to make spluttering noises. ‘Sloan, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And this woman had shoulder-length brown hair. Does that confirm anything?’

  ‘In a way, sir. This woman has shoulder-length brown hair, which is why we can’t see her face very well.’

  ‘The husband,’ said Superintendent Leeyes, ‘seemed to think his wife’d been under rather a lot of strain lately.’

  ‘We’ll be looking into that, sir, naturally—’

  ‘And while you’re about it, Sloan, and out there in Staple St James, you can send Crosby over to Pear Tree Farm at Almstone. It’ll save another journey out into the country and get him out from under your feet.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘They’ve had a young kid taken from the farm yesterday—’

  ‘A child?’ Sloan stiffened. An abduction was the very last thing he needed now or at any other time.

  ‘A young goat – and they’re very upset about it. Right up Crosby’s street, I should have thought.’ He gave the seal-like bark which did duty for his laugh. ‘Getting their goat, instead of mine…’

  * * *

  Captain Prosser was waiting with Kenny Prickett where Sloan had left him. He was standing strained-faced but silent as the Detective Inspector and a very subdued Pete Carter emerged from the maze. Prosser tightened up his stance, bringing his heels together immediately he saw the policeman emerge.

  ‘I shall want to interview everyone living at Aumerle Court and on the staff here,’ announced Sloan baldly.

  ‘Certainly, Inspector,’ said Prosser, his eyes on Sloan’s face.

  ‘Especially anyone with access to the maze yesterday,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Found something, have you?’ said Kenny Prickett informally. ‘There now, I didn’t think Pete here would holler for nothing. Not Pete.’

  Pete was silent.

  ‘He hasn’t,’ said Sloan, noticing Prosser run a tongue over dry lips. ‘And I’ll need that bin of yours kept untouched from now on, as well as his. The
forensic scientists are going to want to examine that.’

  Kenny backed away from his refuse bin as if it had been alive. ‘You’ve found someone then—’

  ‘And I’ll have to have a proper chat with you and your mate,’ said Sloan, one eye still on Jeremy Prosser. He turned and said to the estate manager, ‘And with you, too, Captain Prosser, if I may…’

  The man stiffened. ‘Of course, Inspector.’

  ‘One of the things I would like to know’, said Sloan, ‘is why there isn’t a map of the maze available.’

  ‘You might well ask,’ said Prosser.

  ‘Dr Dabbe,’ said Sloan, ‘who’s our forensic pathologist, will be here any minute now and he’s going to want to get in there quickly.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ Captain Prosser said thickly, ‘but it’s not quite as simple as that—’

  ‘And I would have thought’, pressed on Sloan, ‘that there would have been a plan of the maze in your files.’

  ‘So there should have been,’ replied Prosser smartly, ‘but Miss Pedlinge won’t hear of it.’

  ‘Likes to keep in charge, does Miss Daphne,’ observed Kenny Prickett.

  ‘Miss Pedlinge’, said the Captain stiffly, ‘has given me to understand that she regards the maze as her own province.’

  ‘Keeps all the estate papers in the Long Gallery,’ Prickett informed them, ‘so that Mr Bevis can’t get his hands on them when he comes over.’

  ‘Mr Bevis?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Her great-nephew,’ said Kenny. ‘He can have everything when she’s gone, Miss Daphne says, and not a minute before.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sloan, tucking the name away in his mind.

  ‘I have also been given to understand that Mr Bevis is Miss Pedlinge’s heir,’ put in Captain Prosser.

  ‘I see,’ said Sloan.

  ‘He’s a bit of a lad,’ said Kenny Prickett. ‘Always was.’

  ‘I see,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan again, adding Bevis Pedlinge to his mental list of those to be interviewed.