Arrest the Bishop?

by Peck,Winifred

  “… Oh dear, here’s Mums come to stop me, because she says they can hear every word in the dining-room, and Mack’s choking over his fish-bones. I thought he’d quite pass out when he saw those black chiffon pyjamas ... all right, Mummy, I’m coming. Good-bye, sweet, and be good, and don’t you go murdering anybody! … Hullo, Tonks! What’s up with you? You look as if you’d swallowed a mouthful! Have you found another corpse?”

  With that Judith flashed into the dining-room, cast her lovely smile on the company, made a face at the pudding, and declined fish. It was left to Bobs to read on while the company watched Mack leave the room to interview Tonks, and return to summon the Chancellor away with him, with a wholly ominous expression. “Moreover, my brother, thou talkest of ease in the grave, but hast thou forgotten the Hell whither murderers go,” concluded Bobs, as the dreadful meal ended at last.

  There was a break after lunch during which the candidates were at leisure to exercise themselves, or relax in the comfortable sitting-room set apart for their use in the new wing. The Chaplain’s room was by convention barred to them, save by special appointment, but to-day they could hardly be blamed for drifting in, one by one, to ask what was up. Their curiosity had of course been partly gratified by the talk of the staff, by questions from the police, by Judith’s artless prattle, and by prayers for the soul of Thomas Ulder in Chapel. But when one, Jim Wright, of that curious type who always is on the spot in every accident or row, appeared to ask what Mack was doing in the Chancellor’s bedroom having a first-class row, Bobs had no answer. His one desire was to get hold of Dick and hear all his news, but Dick had been summoned upstairs to two very angry combatants.

  There could be no doubt that the police had gone beyond their province. It was true that a general consent had been given to a search for Ulder’s missing bag and papers. It might be reasonable that, as the Magistrate lived ten miles away across country on roads made inaccessible by the snow, Mack was justified in making preliminary investigations. But the fact remained that he had, at the moment, no legal warrant, and that he had forgotten to ask leave before he set himself to search Judith’s room. Still less had he for the further step which his men had taken. Tonks and Corn had been bidden to make a more thorough investigation upstairs, directly after the servants’ hall dinner, while the house party were still at luncheon. It was over the result of these operations that Mack and Chancellor Chailly stood facing each other now like angry bulls, while Dick stood miserably regarding the curtains of the fourpost bed and the tapestry hanging on the wall of the low Jacobean room: these had been acquired by Mrs. Broome at Jumieges, they were probably fakes, but they only too suggestively represented the murder of Holophernes.

  “My rights and wrongs won’t come into question, sir, when this is exhibited in Court!” Mack held up a bottle triumphantly as he spoke.

  The Chancellor was evidently taken at a disadvantage. As he began to splutter out his declaration that every gentleman had a right to take his own sleeping draughts, without reference to the police, and that if the small bottle, labelled with his own name, were empty it was merely because he had finished it the previous night, Mack’s interruption reduced him to incoherence.

  “Sergeant Tonks, in the presence of Constable Corn, found this bottle on the top of that high tallboy, hidden well out of sight, bearing your name on the label. Are gentlemen in the habit of keeping their medicine bottles in such concealment? Are they in the habit of arriving on visits with practically empty medicine bottles? Have you any statement to make about this discovery, sir, or will you insist on the presence of a solicitor? For I need not warn you that—”

  “I expect Chancellor Chailly would have no objections to telling us the nature of the medicine!” Dick felt obliged to interpose—thankless as the task would be. “Surely it is very unusual for an ordinary sleeping draught to contain morphia at all? I am sure the Chancellor will let us see the prescription.”

  “Well, I won’t,” stormed the Chancellor, adding in a slightly changed voice, “because I can’t! Why should I? This fellow has no more right—”

  “You see, sir,” broke in Dick pacifically, “this is a liquid, and the glass in Ulder’s room which has gone for analysis certainly contained a sediment.”

  “So does this!” said Mack triumphantly, holding the bottle up to the light. “As Mr. Chailly won’t help us”—he sniffed at the bottle—“we must judge for ourselves. What do you make that smell, Dick?”

  “Liquorice,” began Dick feebly, as the Chancellor broke into a new storm of rage. “Excuse me, sir, but surely it would be simpler to give Major Mack the prescription and explain—”

  He broke off as he saw Tonks staring with meaning at the top of the tallboy. That absurd attempt at concealment hardly suggested a simple explanation.

  It was not really unnatural that the old gentleman was unwilling to tell the story of his folly when at last he had calmed down enough to see that it was inevitable. It involved, indeed, so eccentric a course of action, and the truth of his tale would be very hard to prove.

  “It was after my poor wife went—I couldn’t sleep, and my boy was home on leave from India. He’d got hold of this stuff from a native doctor, rather a quack, I fancy. Couldn’t get it made up here, because there was—well, opium in it for one thing, and our doctor wouldn’t look at it. Lyall, my boy, had got a good big jorum left, and he bottled some up for me when I’d promised him only to use it in emergencies. I hadn’t touched it for months, but Christmas is a trying time when you’re old and alone, so I put a little into this bottle—it had cough mixture once, I fancy, and that’s what the smell comes from! Packed it myself in a hurry, and the whole thing spilt!”

  “Well, Soames would remember that, and might even trace the damp paper,” suggested Dick to cover Mack’s snort of incredulity.

  “I didn’t like the look of the butler and didn’t let him touch my things,” said the Chancellor, looking at his green baize brief bag despairingly. “I threw the damp paper in the fire myself.”

  “But you’ve got the original bottle at home, sir?” suggested Dick.

  “Yes, if my housekeeper hasn’t thrown it away, but she’s a devil for cleaning up! My boy’s got the prescription, I suppose, but he’s in Quetta at the moment. And if you want to know”—he turned furiously upon Mack—“that’s why I put the blasted thing up there, because I knew there’d be hell to pay in questions once you got your blasted search warrant, sir! And allow me to remind you, you have not got it, and I had no need to answer any questions at all, and why I did the devil knows!”

  “Isn’t it just as well, sir,” suggested Dick in his unsought, unofficial role of peacemaker. “I mean, you’ve only got to ring up your housekeeper, and get the original bottle sent to be analysed, to prove it had no connection with the case.”

  “We’ll do that,” began Mack jealously, but had the wit to stop. No use to estrange the law still further, and the Chancellor was giving his unwilling consent to Dick.

  “Though the stuff may be full of morphia for all I know, or opium may have the same effect as morphia. Certainly a quarter of the prescribed dose sent me off to sleep the clock round, and let me tell you, Major, I did not waste any of it on Ulder!”

  “I’d like a talk with you, Dick,” said Major Mack, pursuing his young friend, as he tried to escape down the passage. “This your room? Another of these old fancy pieces?” So Mack contemptuously designated the gay little bachelor room, with its oriel windows, rose chintzes and carved, unstained oak furniture. “All much too fancy for my taste. You should have seen Mrs. What’s-her-name’s room, all gilding and velvet, and reeking of Russian cigarettes and gardenia scent and violet powder! Come and have an honest pipe downstairs!”

  “I must get out a bit, sir,” said Dick desperately. The snow had stopped, the sun was shining, and through the open window came that deceptive scent of spring which is sometimes suggested by the purity of snow. The thaw would not last, the Chancellor, a weather prophet, ha
d said, and there would be a gale, if not a blizzard, by night. But now the ruins lay white and gold against the purple smoke of elm trees beyond, and the primrose radiance of the sky. Bobs and Sue were standing on the terrace below, young and smiling, freed for the moment from the dark shadow of the Palace. “Don’t you want me to try to get a line on Staples? He’s probably in the grounds somewhere. Or will you see him yourself?”

  “That little red rabbit I saw at lunch? You said you’d get his story out of him, and I’ll interview him when I’ve had your report. We’ve far bigger fishes in the net!”

  “I suppose,” said Dick desperately, as he turned to go, “that it’s no use trying to persuade you that no one you’re thinking of can conceivably have murdered Ulder? You know as well as I do that the innocent behave very much as the guilty would in a shock like this. I could feel your suspicions in your interviews this morning—you could almost make me share them! But do believe me when I say that a man who’s given his life to God, and served God all his life, couldn’t be guilty of such a crime. Clergy may be weak, inefficient, quarrelsome, lazy, anything you like, for they’re only human, but—”

  “What about Ulder?” cut in Mack.

  “What about him? He was bad through and through, may God have mercy on him, but the—the clergy you’re thinking of have led consistent lives of piety and upright principles.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mack, joyfully embarking on his favourite and wholly untenable criticism of the Anglican Church. “I’m going to look into the Bishop’s record at St. Blaze. Why was he asked to resign? And your Canon was little better than an unbeliever to begin with! No, I’ve had this out with friends before, Dick, and I hold to it that it’s the danger of your Church to tamper with morals. The Catholics at least are hide-bound: they obey their Pope and priests. My Church lets each man take his stand on the Bible and its teaching of right and wrong. The Episcopal party,” declared the heir of John Knox with relish, “choose what they like out of a pack of old Church Fathers, and put their ritual and party politics first and morals last. I’ve seen it again and again! Oh, I know you think I’m a bigoted fool,” (Dick nearly acquiesced openly) “but I keep an open mind, mark you! I’ve got my eye on the Chancellor, in fact his behaviour and his absurd tale are the most suspicious so far, apart from that appalling young woman Judith, but I feel in my bones—oh, well, time will show—I’ll see it does! You go and see this Staples and report later—and send Tonks to me—there’s endless telephoning and certificates and papers to see to at once.”

  “I say, Bobs,” said Dick, “do you think you could possibly contrive some funk hole for me? I think I shall go batty if I can’t shake off Mack’s conferences and enquiries and interviews and telephones, and his preposterous criticisms of our Church!”

  “He does seem to have fallen for you, Dick, doesn’t he, Sue?” grinned Bobs. “What’s the big idea about you?”

  “He’s short-handed, thinks I’m honest, and I saw him bring down a stag royal fifteen years ago,” returned Dick briefly. “Also I think he hopes a little detective work here will send me back to M.I., of which he thinks well, and save me from the Church, of which he thinks very poorly. What these chaps imagine we did in M.I., I can’t think. I can’t make him see that I came here to make my soul, not to nose out a criminal.”

  “Dick, who does he think did it?” Sue’s face was shadowed again now and her eyes appealing, but Dick could only shake his head.

  “Honestly I don’t know, and if I did I couldn’t talk about it. Come into the sun and let’s forget it all for half an hour.”

  “I know just the place for you anyway if it’s not too cold!” (How did Judith come to have so obedient and accommodating a stepsister? Any other girl but Sue would have plagued him with questions!) “Father’s famous summer parlour, Bobs!”

  “By Jove, yes! Best pick up gumboots in the garden-room first, though, for it’s on the rough grass! It gave me a laugh,” Bobs went on to confide aside to Dick as they stamped on tall rubbers, “considering the sort of use kings of Israel put these places to in the O.T.! It was an infernal bore when the Bishop went off there to work and pray undisturbed, for I had to bring all the notes or telephone messages across, of course.”

  “Well, no one’s to do that for me,” said Dick.

  It was only by slow degrees that archaeologists had been digging up and identifying the remains of the large precincts of Evelake Palace. The ruins of the Abbey itself were in excellent order; every pillar base had been dug up, the crypt cleared, the fragments of wall and buttress, windows and tombs built up reverently, the turf mown and rolled. The east reredos, above the stone altar, was almost intact, saved probably by the high garden wall of the refectory and dormitories. The cloisters, in sun and shadow round their snow-whitened lawn, were so exquisite that the three who crossed them now exclaimed in pleasure; while seagulls, driven far inland by the storm, fluttered and swooped at their approach, as if they were the ghostly hands of monks, fluttering the scattered leaves of their vanished missals. A holly tree, rich with scarlet berries and glistening leaves, guarded a broken gate way and “Oh the rising of the sun, Oh the running of the deer,” hummed Sue suddenly, as if the holy spirits of the dead had exorcised all immediate troubles for a moment. But beyond the cloisters the scene changed. The war had interrupted the work on the old Abbey kitchens and offices: elders, nettles and brambles had grown up unchecked. The outer wall here guarded the summit of a low hill, and below it the little West Country river Eve, in full spate from the moors, roared and rattled below them. A cloud obscured the sun and a gust of cold wind swept up the open arch of the old slype. Everything was grey and battered, tangled and rank, save for the little turret at one corner.

  “But we’ll have all these paths tidied up soon, now that the war is over,” said Sue with her mother’s optimism.

  “The bottom part of the turret is a mess with just a wooden stair up to the Bishop’s den,” said Bobs, viewing the dismal little place with disfavour as he tried the handle. “Locked, of course! We must get the key from Soames.”

  “Come back by the shrubbery then,” said Sue. “This way—”

  “The shrubbery! Shades of Mr. Woodhouse! I’d forgotten this, Sue! This is the most complete place in the world; it represents every century!”

  “I expect it was the Victorian bishop with a lot of children who made it,” suggested Sue, “so that they could be sent off to hide in it!”

  She had led them across the rubble and overgrowth, through an arch out of the ruins, where most decorously a path between laurels and rhododendrons led circuitously to the back of the Palace. At the angle of the new wing a wide door opened on to the formal garden, overlooked by the drawing-room on one side; from the other the path wound round the terrace which skirted the full length of the whole building.

  “I’ll go on and get the key from Soames,” said Bobs, hurrying on to the door in the Bridge wing which opened into the pantry.

  “What are you doing, Dick?” Sue looked round from the chocolate-cake effect of the dark earth beds beneath their snow icing, to see Dick staring up at the drawing-room windows, and at the winter jasmine bush which was making a pathetic pretence of yellow buds below.

  “Oh, just geography. Is that one of the drawing-room windows?” As Sue looked up instinctively Dick jerked a bit of paper off one of the long clinging sprays and pocketed it. “You don’t use that room much, do you, Sue?”

  “Just for big parties in winter, lately. We haven’t really been able to keep it warm. Mummy loves it, so we do often have tea there. But we don’t often sit there after dinner.”

  “You didn’t last night, I imagine, with all that was happening?”

  “No one sat anywhere exactly, did they?” sighed Sue. “I expect the fire was let out there. But be careful, Dick, or I’ll begin to ask questions!”

  “Hang it all, the idiot’s lost the key!” Bobs rejoined the two beside the jasmine, just as Dick was wishing that he co
uld ask Sue a great many questions which would seem pointless to her. “At least he says it’s in a drawer in the Bishop’s room! I’ll have a look there to-morrow, Dick. We ought to be going in now, I suppose?”

  “There is Judith calling me,” said Sue. “Did you ever know any one with such a carrying voice?”

  “Luckily not,” said Dick dryly. “I think I’ll take a turn in the garden, Bobs. I can’t quite fancy going back to Mack’s Shorter Catechism yet.”

  The sun was low now, and the arabesque of the box-edged squares and circles, innocent of any growth but patches of sinister purple hellebore, were not particularly inviting. In this yew-hedged square the old gardener worked his own formal will, leaving the further lawns and Mrs. Broome’s herbaceous borders contemptuously to his underlings. For a minute Dick reviewed it, as the sun faded, rather than sank, into the threatening clouds. For a moment he saw gloomily in it a parable of the Church, set and formal, snow and ice-bound: for a moment that simile of a hymn which haunts all ex-pupils of ancient religious foundations came to his mind—“As now the sun’s declining rays,” (no wonder the two short verses made it a popular choice!) “So life’s brief day is sinking down”—and he thought of Ulder viewing yesterday his last sunset. Then he stretched himself, smiling suddenly at the memory of Sue’s little pagan Christmas carol and its ecstasy in birth and rebirth, felt for his pipe, and returned to the jasmine bush.

  “I suppose a fall of snow might have done it,” he reflected, looking at the projecting stone lintel of the window above him. “It looks as if something heavy had bumped down on it recently: would snow scrape the branches apart? I’m not gardener enough to know! If it weren’t for this cursed snow one might have seen footsteps, but they’d all be wiped out. Shall I put Mack on to this, and suggest the whole thing might be an outside job after all?”—But his reasons against that were pretty conclusive.