‘The River Tiber flowing with much blood,’ said he and Plunkett in unison. It was all too much. The Bishop rose, inclined his head, and made for the door.
• • •
The Bishop of Peckham was momentarily exhilarated by his decisive action in walking out of Father Anselm’s office, which Plunkett’s presence had somehow transformed in his mind into something resembling Alberich’s cave. But the feeling did not last. The decisive action had to be followed up by further decisive action — the removal of Plunkett. And, as so often at crisis moments of this kind, the Bishop’s resolve turned to jelly. He was really the sort of bishop Elizabeth I liked to deal with.
His instinct was, as had become a habit recently, to consult with Ernest Clayton. He pottered around the grounds and buildings of the Community in search of him, and finally found him in the room which they had used for their few symposium sessions. He was talking to Simeon P. Fleishman, but at the Bishop’s approach the American evaporated, in so far as it was possible for so substantial a figure to do so.
‘What do you make of our Simeon?’ asked the Bishop, so as not to bring out his problems too immediately and appear too dependent.
‘A clerical crook?’ hazarded Clayton, who knew perfectly well what the Bishop really wanted to talk about. ‘To be perfectly honest, I can’t make him out. Outside of matters of finance he seems irredeemably stupid. Even with our present shortage of clergymen he’d never get to theological college here. One wonders what on earth his sermons would be like. Probably something like Denis Healey’s, I suppose. But what about you? How did it go?’
‘Dreadful, dreadful,’ said the Bishop. ‘A long inquisition concerning my various heresies, done in a very unpleasant manner — almost as if he were a reporter for one of the sensational Sundays. Then he veered round on to coloured immigration, I forget how, and somehow I seemed to be responsible for that too. I’m the “enemy within”, whatever he may mean by that.’
‘And about the case itself?’
‘Nothing. Less than nothing. He didn’t seem in the least interested. I’m afraid I’m forced to agree with you. The man is completely off his head.’
‘Then he must be removed,’ said the Reverend Clayton briskly.
‘You think so?’ said the Bishop nervously.
‘How else will the thing ever be cleared up, and us let out of this place? If we don’t get a competent man on the job, it will hang around us like a dirty smell, and people will be gossiping about it behind our backs for years to come.’
The Bishop seemed to hear his hopes of an Archbishopric evaporate into the blue with a flap of angel’s wings. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Well, we could start by finding out who the Chief Constable is,’ said Ernest Clayton. ‘Surely in your position you usually find you can go to the top?’
‘True,’ murmured the Bishop complacently, and followed Clayton out of the meeting-room, through the dim cloisters, and out into the sunlit expanse of the Great Hall.
‘I thought so,’ said Ernest Clayton, looking towards the main door, where Sergeant Forsyte was posted, looking hefty and useless and bored. ‘See what you can get out of him.’
The Bishop was quite unsure of the manner he should adopt to Sergeant Forsyte, though he needn’t have worried, for the good sergeant had more than an inkling of what was on his mind, and a limitless desire to help. ‘I’m awfully sorry to trouble you, Sergeant,’ said the Bishop, dancing from foot to foot in his embarrassment, ‘but I wonder if you could — in short — if you could tell me the name of the Chief Constable of the Riding?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the good sergeant, who didn’t know how to address a bishop, but oozed servility instead. ‘It’s Sir Henry Abbotsford, of Kirkby-le-Dale.’
The Bishop skipped gleefully back to Ernest Clayton. ‘It’s Harry Abbotsford,’ he said. ‘I met him at one of the Brontë Society do’s — the trip to Scarborough on the Anne Brontë one hundred and fiftieth Anniversary, I think. What a stroke of luck!’
‘Then you must get on to him,’ said Ernest Clayton.
The Bishop, fired with conspiratorial zeal, jumped to find Sergeant Forsyte suddenly at his elbow.
‘The phone number is Kirkby-le-Dale three five six nothing,’ said the Sergeant levelly, looking straight into the Bishop’s eyes.
‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ said the Bishop to his retreating figure. ‘Much obliged.’
‘Right,’ said Ernest Clayton. And then they both stopped in their tracks.
‘Where do I phone from?’ said the Bishop helplessly. ‘The only phone I’ve seen is in Father Anselm’s room.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Ernest Clayton, ‘I’m sure that’s the only one. How stupid of us not to have thought of that. I suppose I could drive you into Hickley.’
‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ said the Bishop. ‘They might not let us out — and it would look as if we were running away.’
They both thought for a moment.
‘Peckham,’ said Clayton thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if you were the last. There’s no one after you alphabetically. It could be he’s left his office — though heaven knows what he might be planning to do next.’
They skulked along the cloisters and ducked into the semi-darkness, watched by the benevolent eye of Sergeant Forsyte. As luck would have it, they were no sooner in the murk of the corridors than they heard the sound of a door being opened. Standing quite still in the long shadow (the Bishop thought that perhaps last night someone had done exactly the same thing, in exactly the same spot, and the thought nearly set his teeth chattering) they saw Chief Inspector Plunkett emerging from Father Anselm’s office, his suspicious little eyes darting everywhere. After a moment of indecision, he started off down the little passageway leading to the chapel.
‘Now,’ whispered Ernest Clayton. ‘Kirkby-le-Dale three five six nothing. I’ll keep watch at the corner, and I’ll cough twice if he comes out of the chapel.’
The Bishop darted into Father Anselm’s office, and a moment later Ernest Clayton heard him riffling through the telephone directory for the dialling code.
It was early afternoon, and the Chief Constable had just risen from his after-lunch nap. Such a situation did not normally find him in his best humour, but he dearly loved a Lord, and a bishop was the next best thing. So he my-Lorded him with great geniality, and listened to his story.
‘Of course I realize,’ said the Bishop in a low, earnest voice, terrified lest Alberich should return to his cave and clobber him with a Nibelung’s hammer, ‘that a complaint at this stage may seem very premature. But when the man arrived his manner seemed strange, and in the course of the day it has become stranger and stranger. I must say that many of us feel that he is quite literally mad.’
‘In what way mad?’ asked the Chief Constable, perhaps wondering whether Plunkett was wandering round in white satin, distributing flowers.
‘He’s spent his entire time asking us about our religious views, and shouting and snarling at us if he doesn’t approve of them. He’s made no investigation whatsoever of the case, as far as I can see. And he’s absolutely obsessed about colour.’
‘Colour?’ said the Chief Constable, seeming to take more notice.
‘Coloured people. He practically foams at the mouth when they’re mentioned. For some reason he seems to think I’m personally responsible for letting them into the country, though beyond the odd remark on Any Questions? I don’t recall that I ever — ’
‘Oh, dear, that’s bad,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘We’re having to be very careful about anything of that kind. We’ve had very strict directions from the HO.’
‘And of course the Bishop of Mitabezi is here.’
‘Oh, good lord, a coloured bishop,’ said Sir Henry in disgust. ‘Well, look, I’ll get on to this, and if — ’
But Sir Henry was interrupted by a noise which even he, in Kirkby-le-Dale, couldn’t fail to register. The Bishop, so much closer, pra
ctically jumped out of his gaiters. It was a thunderous clang of metal, and it reverberated around the narrow corridors, and was speedily followed by further, lesser clangs, all of which left their little shivers of noise behind them, as if they were part of an acoustics experiment.
‘One moment, Sir Henry,’ said the Bishop in his normal voice, and scooted for the door. His intention was to make for the open, but at the end of the corridor he saw Ernest Clayton, who beckoned.
‘Come on,’ he said, and the two went hurrying down the long dark passage which led to the chapel, Clayton keeping a comfortable lead. The door was open, and they stood in the doorway, incredulously watching the figure inside.
Chief Inspector Plunkett was standing to one side of the chapel, his hands on his hips, apparently contemplating his handiwork with satisfaction. He was at the entrance to a tiny side-chapel, hardly more than a box, with a William Morrisy stained-glass window. The plate from the altar of this chapel had been hurled to the floor, and the altar cloth dragged after it. A heavy candlestick was still rolling in a sea-sick manner down the side-aisle, and as they watched he reached for a statue of St Botolph, in a small niche.
‘Idolatry!’ barked the Inspector, to the heavy oak rafters. ‘Confounded, damnable idolatry!’ And he hurled the statue to the ground.
Then, doing a sharp, right-angled turn, he strode in his military way towards the high altar.
‘We must stop him,’ whispered Ernest Clayton urgently to the Bishop. But they made no move, whether from understandable doubts of their own capacity to hold the madman, or from a desire to see him struck by celestial lightning for his sacrilege perhaps neither of them quite knew. Reaching the altar, and uttering meaningless little grunts of hatred and contempt, Plunkett seized the massive silver pieces one by one and, casting them down with a certain sense of theatre, sent them crashing and hopping down the altar steps and across the chapel floor. He seized the Sanctus lamp, but was prevented by its chains from hurling it to the floor. Instead a superb brass crucifix fell victim to his Cromwellian zeal. The pieces rang out richly and impressively, and the Inspector sent them on their way with more incomprehensible cries, this time of triumph, presumably over popery.
Finally, hearing sounds from the other end of the corridor which they thought might be Father Anselm, the Bishop and Ernest Clayton decided they could remain quiescent no longer. They advanced purposefully across the chapel just as Plunkett seized the last of the pieces on the altar, a heavy candlestick, and began sending both it and the altar cloth skidding across the chapel floor.
But, progressing up the wide central aisle, the Bishop and Clayton found themselves confronting not just the heavy candlestick, which rolled towards them like distant thunder, but also a lesser object, which skimmed out of the altar cloth and across the floor at them. It scraped the candlestick with a metallic shriek, and finally landed up not far from the door, in which now stood framed the figure of the head of the Community of St Botolph’s. The three clerics stood looking at the object.
It was a long, sturdy, deadly-looking knife, and its blade was brown with blood.
It looked as if Inspector Plunkett had found a clue at last.
CHAPTER XI
NEW BROOM
THE DOWNFALL OF Plunkett was done cleanly and speedily — it resembled the whirlwind denouement of farce rather than the long-drawn-out catastrophe of tragedy. At a glance from Ernest Clayton the Bishop had scooted out of the chapel, leaving Clayton to guard the knife from the attentions of both Father Anselm and Inspector Plunkett. Regaining the phone he gave a hurried, urgent account of Plunkett’s desecration of the chapel, and Sir Henry Abbotsford emitted a howl of anguish. Within twenty minutes Chief Inspector Plunkett was walking towards the gates of the Community, flanked on either side by a policeman of inferior rank: to all appearances he was simply going about his ordinary business, but it was noticeable how close his two supporters kept to him. Within half an hour his former deputy was in charge of the investigations, and had taken over Father Anselm’s study.
The whole operation went very smoothly, and would have impressed the delegates very favourably with the efficiency of the British police force, if they could have forgotten that it was they who had employed and sent Plunkett in the first place.
Inspector Croft was a very different type from his former superior. He was not hysterical, he was not obsessed, he was not incompetent. What he was, positively, was more difficult to pin down. He was rather larger than Plunkett, and certainly better looking, but further than that one would be cautious of going. There was something indefinite about his features — they merged into each other, they made no gestures, they were far from easy to describe. Even his eyes were bluey, greyish, almost light brown, and his hair was not quite blond and not quite brown. His manner was a perfect match for his appearance. He asked questions deliberately, listened carefully to the replies, and watched the subject of his interrogation from under rather heavy eyelids.
The conclusion was irresistible: a real investigation was going on. The reactions of the principal suspects were interesting to observe. All of them, naturally, had to express relief that something intelligent and intelligible was being done at last, after the Keystone Cops antics of Chief Inspector Plunkett. But there were, Ernest Clayton felt, degrees of relief. And degrees of apprehension as well. Interesting, too, were the consequences for the cohesion of the group. In their contempt for and dislike of Plunkett they had all been more or less united (though Randi Paulsen had stood somewhat outside the group on this); but now that they were under a real investigation, this unity seemed to crumble, and the tensions and incipient animosities which had been a feature of the first two days of the symposium seemed bubbling once more under the surface, and about to erupt.
Inspector Croft began, as was logical, with the murder, and had from the Bishop of Peckham and Father Anselm an account of the circumstances, and of the nature of the symposium which had brought the diverse people to sleep in the guest-rooms of the Community. The Bishop, in his interview, was direct, detailed, and (so far as it went) frank. If he concealed some of his emotions on the fateful night, that was only human. He was, thought Croft, a good witness on facts, and an intelligent if superficial judge of character. Father Anselm was excellent on the bare facts, but he was not sure he would trust him on character. He was, throughout the interview, dry and formal, not given to expansive detail or explanation. And when Inspector Croft, who was no fool, asked the inevitable question, he got a direct reply, cool and as short as the subject allowed:
‘You went to his room at ten to two,’ said Croft matter-of-factly, and looking at him from under his hooded lids. ‘What was the reason for that?’
Father Anselm gazed directly at him, with his unrevealing eyes.
‘We have a tradition at St Botolph’s that we are always available to any of our brothers in spiritual distress,’ he said. ‘Since the coming of the women within our walls, I have been in a state of considerable doubt and perturbation. I went to Brother Dominic so that we might discuss the matter, and eventually pray for guidance together.’
‘I see,’ said Inspector Croft, and went on to the circumstances of the finding of the body.
• • •
In the flurry caused by the change-over in investigator, Ernest Clayton slipped up to the guest wing to have a few words with the Bishop of Mitabezi. Mitabezi was no longer in bed: he had resumed his normal dress (canonicals), and when Clayton knocked he was prowling round the limited confines of his room. He did not know what Clayton had been quick to observe — that the policeman who had been stationed outside his door during the brief reign of Plunkett was now occupied in conveying that deposed monarch into exile, or, to be more precise, to the safe keeping of a nursing home well known to the police force. The Bishop did not quite know how to receive his visitor. He had, in fact, hoped that when the investigations were completed he would be allowed to have himself conveyed from the Community without the need to meet any of his fell
ow delegates again. Ernest Clayton, too, was somewhat at a loss, so the interview was a prickly one.
‘I need hardly say how frightfully sorry we all are about this,’ he said, sitting down on the bed in obedience to a reluctant gesture from the Bishop. ‘I thought you’d like to know that the maniac who’s been running the case has been taken off it — he went completely off his head. No doubt that will be some relief to you.’
The Bishop of Mitabezi looked at him doubtfully. ‘I suppose that means I shall be interrogated again?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Clayton. ‘Very unpleasant for you, no doubt. But no doubt you are as anxious as the rest of us, or more so, that the truth should be established — and at least there is some hope of that now. In any case, so far as I can see you are the one of us least under suspicion.’
There was a pained silence. ‘Perhaps,’ said the Bishop of Mitabezi, ‘but I should greatly prefer not to talk about it again.’
Ernest Clayton (who was fond of animals) nearly said that he would doubtless also prefer not to have done what he had done, but glancing up at the Bishop he thought better of it. There was something about that fleshy bulk that spelt power, and a refusal to brook opposition. A man not lightly to be disagreed with, certainly not lightly to be crossed. In his own environment a man whom high position was not likely to make humble, but increasingly arrogant. Nevertheless, he was not now in his own environment, and he was at something of a disadvantage, and Ernest Clayton decided he would nevertheless ask his question. He did it with a degree of awkwardness, and without looking at his man.
‘One thing I’d like to know,’ he said. ‘It’s rather important, all things considered, when you went out to — when you went out. The point is, you see, the door was left unlocked, and anyone could have got into the main building. This would widen the field of suspicion considerably from the members of the symposium — it could even mean an outsider might be involved. I suppose you wouldn’t remember — ’
‘No,’ said the Bishop of Mitabezi.
Blood Brotherhood Page 11
