Blood Brotherhood

by Robert Barnard

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to guess, then? From — from the usual practice of your — people?’ There was silence.

  ‘I think it probable,’ said the Bishop, slowly and with some dignity, ‘that I may have gone out some time shortly before midnight. But I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ernest Clayton.

  ‘I would be obliged if you would spare me further questions on the subject,’ said the Bishop, bowing, clearly in farewell, to Clayton, who rather against his will rose to go. The interview was at an end. Clayton decided that the person the Bishop of Mitabezi most reminded him of was not his fellow bishop, of Peckham, but Father Anselm. They both had the power, in the most adverse circumstances, of making one feel very worm-like indeed. Clayton wondered if this was how Pontius Pilate was made to feel.

  • • •

  Dinner was a meal less fraught with heavy silences than lunch had been. Father Anselm was absent, and High Table speculated rather daringly on the substance of his interview with the new investigator. The Bishop reported on his session with the new man, and judiciously summed up his impressions of him. Clayton noticed that, now the crisis was over, the Bishop was beginning once again to assume a natural air of dignity and authority. Soon, he guessed, he would begin avoiding those who, like himself, had seen him at his worst moments and had the chance to spy out his weaknesses. His report on his interview was delivered not as to fellow-suspects, but as to the lesser clergy of the diocese. He ate well.

  So did Simeon P. Fleishman. But then he always did: he ate copiously, with the air of a man who wished he’d thought to bring along a supply of cream biscuits to the Community; he eyed other people’s plates and did not scruple to ask for their leavings. He was also talking more expansively today, and was much taken up in his mind with the abrupt departure of Chief Inspector Plunkett.

  ‘Naturally I haven’t liked to say anything in any way derogatory,’ he said, ‘being a visitor to these shores, but he wasn’t how we in the States conceptualize a typical British policeman.’

  He shovelled into his mouth a whole roast potato and masticated it massively.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Philip Lambton. ‘We have some shreds of reputation left, then.’

  ‘Some case,’ said Fleishman reflectively, through his potato, ‘when the cop goes off his head and starts heaving altar plate around! I’d sure like to have seen that!’

  It seemed an odd sentiment, even from a non-denominational clergyman. Philip Lambton felt obliged to say, ‘Not my idea of an entertaining show,’ and Bente Frøystad agreed: ‘Hardly. Quite apart from anything else, they might have been damaged. And they must be priceless!’

  Simeon Fleishman forked a thick slice of beef into his mouth, and slowly shook his head.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said, without the slightest sign of embarrassment. ‘They weren’t of any great value. I gave them the once-over. They were all silver plate, and reproductions of a relatively inexpensive variety. The insurance company won’t go broke over that little lot.’

  ‘Popped the silver, eh?’ said the Bishop, delighted. Then he realized that this was hardly a dignified reaction. and he twisted his mouth back into a serious shape. ‘Of course this is a fairly recent foundation,’ he said. ‘Very likely they have no great stock of plate.’

  The table considered this.

  ‘I have every sympathy with the parishes who are selling their plate and using it for pastoral purposes,’ said Stewart Phipps, who, given half a chance, would have sold off any valuables his parish might possess and sent the proceeds to striking Cowley car-workers. ‘The idea of a rich church is a hideous contradiction in terms.’

  ‘Very likely that is what has happened here,’ said the Bishop authoritatively. He caught the eye of Ernest Clayton, and both of them were thinking the same thing: ‘Very likely, my foot!’

  And the Bishop was also wondering: ‘Wouldn’t it be better if the police were told nothing of this?’

  • • •

  Detective-Inspector Croft had been on several murder cases, and in his experience they divided themselves into three kinds: murders that sprang from an atmosphere of violence in which the victim lived or had strayed — the Belfast or Glasgow type of murder; murder for money; and murder where the victim was asking to be murdered. Since the Community of St Botolph’s presumably bore no resemblance whatever to the Gorbals or the Crumlin Road, and since money played little or no part in the lives of the brothers, it was to be presumed that this murder was of the third type. In some way or other — possibly quite unconsciously — Brother Dominic was asking to be murdered. Croft therefore considered it a vital preliminary to any more detailed investigation that he should get some idea of the character of the dead man.

  It was not altogether easy. We get our impressions of other people’s characters from their behaviour to their wives and families, to their superiors and inferiors at work, to people they meet on trains and in pubs. In the Community of St Botolph’s much of this everyday side of human nature had been wiped from the slate. Much of the day was spent in prayer, contemplation and silent work, apparently, and though in these activities the brothers may have laid themselves bare to their Lord, they did not make things easy for a mere mortal police inspector. Croft had got very little from Father Anselm beyond that Brother Dominic was dedicated to his vocation — as presumably all the brothers were — and a highly efficient administrative assistant. The Bishop had said almost nothing, though Croft’s sensitive nose had caught a slight whiff of de mortuis. . . Now, once again, he was getting very little of any use from Brother Hamish.

  Brother Hamish sat in the chair, his hands clasped together, his eyes sometimes in his lap, sometimes at the far wall, never for more than two seconds together looking straight at Croft. He found it difficult to sit still, and in his posture there seemed perpetually to lurk an incipient wriggle. Was it this that reminded Croft of Uriah Heep? He found it difficult to think of Brother Hamish as a man with a vocation. On the other hand, his daughter went to the local Catholic school, and he had met among the teachers some fearsome nuns whom it was extremely difficult imagining having any vocation other than for the prison service (force feeding branch). Not that Brother Hamish was in any way formidable, as they were. In fact, he wondered if Brother Hamish’s vocation to retire from the world arose from an inability to live successfully in it.

  ‘Of course he was enormously dedicated,’ said Brother Hamish, looking momentarily at Croft, then down to the carpet. ‘You might call him an ascetic. He had no doubts about his vocation, and he was totally satisfied with his life here.’

  ‘Does that mark him off from the other brothers?’ asked Croft, curious.

  ‘We’re only human,’ said Brother Hamish. ‘It’s only natural to have doubts now and then. Or regrets.’

  But not, apparently, Brother Dominic.

  ‘Was he popular with the other brothers?’ asked Croft. Brother Hamish’s excessively mobile eyes seemed to cloud over.

  ‘Forgive me — I find it difficult to think in those terms,’ he said after a pause. ‘That is rather a worldly way of looking at things: he wouldn’t have thought in those terms himself, and therefore I too would rather not.’

  Croft decided it was intended he feel rebuked. He amended his question. ‘Were his relations with the rest of you perfectly friendly?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly. Of course.’

  ‘He spoke freely with you?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Though you must remember that we speak very little here,’ said Brother Hamish.

  ‘Naturally, I quite understand that. What do you know about his past life, before he entered the Community?’

  Croft caught Brother Hamish’s eyes in the middle of their travels, but got nothing from them, except an indefinable suggestion of shiftiness. He felt Brother Hamish had been expecting the question.

  ‘Nothing whatsoever. We do not talk of such things unless any brother particularly wishes to do so. Some few do — some to
excess now and then — but most of us prefer not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We have given up all that,’ said Brother Hamish, his eyes diving to the floor again. ‘Our minds are on other things.’

  ‘Would you say,’ said Croft experimentally, ‘that most people came here as a result of some experience in the world — some disillusioning or tragic experience, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Brother Hamish, wringing his hands, and now definitely wriggling. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. I believe that most of us have always been interested in religion, and that we have found our vocation gradually — sometimes quite young, sometimes after living in the world for a time.’

  ‘That’s how most people get to come here, is it?’

  ‘I would guess so,’ said Brother Hamish carefully.

  Croft decided to shift the questioning. ‘There were three of you attending the symposium, weren’t there?’

  ‘That’s right. We always send along what you might call a token force to these things, to show interest. Father Anselm suggested I might go along because I had worked at one time in a dockland settlement. Personally I find these things break my routine in a rather unfortunate way, but still, the discussions were most interesting.’

  ‘And then there was — ’ Croft consulted his list — ‘Brother Jonathan. I’ll talk to him, of course, but perhaps you could tell me what his reason was for attending.’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t get a great deal out of talking to him,’ said Brother Hamish. Why did Croft get the impression that there was a note of concern in his voice? ‘He’s very old, and — not to put too fine a point on it — nearly senile.’

  ‘An odd choice, surely?’

  ‘Not really, Inspector, when you understand our little Community.’ Brother Hamish leaned forward, and his watery, restless eyes seemed to ooze sincerity. ‘He is our oldest member, and greatly honoured by us all for that reason alone. He has been here more than forty years. In his time he has been a man with a very good brain. He was a schoolmaster at a highly respected school — very highly respected. Of course he is conscious that his brain is not what it was, but he does make very great efforts to keep contact with things. We thought it would please him to be asked to go along to the discussions. We thought it would make him feel useful and wanted.’

  ‘I see. It sounds a very kindly idea. What about Brother Dominic, then?’

  ‘Oh, it was natural that he should go along. He almost always did. He had the best brain of all of us — apart from Father Anselm, of course.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Then he was clever.’

  ‘Intelligent would be the word I’d use,’ said Brother Hamish, with a darted glance from the floor to Croft.

  ‘How did this — intelligence show itself? You seem to have so little contact with each other that I wonder on what basis you make a judgment of that kind.’

  ‘That’s very easy, Inspector,’ said Brother Hamish. ‘You will understand that we have all entirely renounced the world. When we do talk among ourselves it is almost entirely on spiritual matters. When we have crises, they are crises of belief, and in that case, of course we go to each other for help. In these circumstances one can judge immediately the quality of a man’s intelligence. It is at such times that it shows. Brother Dominic’s was formidable. In discussion there was no one to touch him. In quelling nagging doubts he had superb authority. The Community will miss him sadly.’

  It was an impressive tribute. Was it the whole truth? Croft regretted that he continued to find Brother Hamish a less than impressive witness.

  • • •

  The evening at this time of year was usually the pleasantest time of day at St Botolph’s, and in some ways the most beautiful. The heat of the scorching July days declined into a pleasant warmth, and the moors plumped themselves in the mellow evening light. It was one of those summers that doesn’t happen in England, except in the romantic poets. After dinner that same evening Ernest Clayton — rather pleased, perhaps, that the Bishop now needed him less — took a brisk walk to the farthest limits of the walls, and then made his way back around but within them, thinking of the murder, and weighing the possibilities as to whether the symposium delegates or one of the members of the Community was to be considered the most likely murderer.

  He went over in his mind the various members of the group. Who would have had the sheer nerve to do such a horrendous thing? Not the Bishop, surely? And would Philip Lambton? Of the others, all, probably, would possess the physical strength, granted Dominic was asleep when he was attacked. On the other hand, Randi Paulsen would have had to move the wardrobe from her door — hardly possible without being heard. Discarding her, he let his mind play over the other suspects, and from them to the anonymous mass of brothers.

  As far as the physical set-up of the murder was concerned, he felt sure that the Inspector would consider the most likely culprit to be one of the group. On the other hand, psychologically it must surely seem more likely that the murderer was one of Brother Dominic’s fellow monks. Contemplating this latter possibility, he put himself in the Inspector’s shoes and asked himself a question: if one of the other brothers wanted to murder Brother Dominic, would he be most likely to do it at a time when the Community had guests in some number, or when the brothers were on their own? He came to the conclusion that if the murder was to come out into the open and be investigated in the normal way, it would be better to do it when there were guests. On the other hand, if it could be hushed up within the Community, then it would be better to do it when they were alone.

  He immediately dismissed this last thought. The situation did not arise. The murder had been done when there were guests. He had no reason to accuse Father Anselm of being capable of hushing up a murder in the Community.

  And yet he did think Father Anselm capable of hushing up a murder.

  He remembered the Bishop’s account of his conversation with Father Anselm on that terrifying night. He wondered why the more he thought of Father Anselm the less he —

  And then he saw the figure again. Clayton was by now nearly back to the main building, and he had just turned a corner in the outside wall. Previously concealed, he could now be seen, and see. And between him and the large wooden barn stood the figure he had seen and been puzzled by the day before the murder. Here he was again, hooded, robed, sandalled.

  For a few seconds he was speechless, and in that second the figure disappeared into the barn. Speeding his steps to a gentle run, Ernest Clayton rapidly gained the barn, and flung open the door. It took him some seconds for his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom.

  ‘I say,’ he said feebly. Then he saw that directly opposite him was another door, and it was swinging on its hinges. He sped over and threw it open.

  Two or three hundred yards away, speeding round the wall of the monks’ dormitory wing like a dark angel, was his man. There was no chance of getting hold of him now. But that last glimpse had made Ernest Clayton quite sure who it was he had seen.

  It was the corrupted cherub to whom he had given a lift in his car.

  CHAPTER XII

  GIRDING UP LOINS

  AFTER COMPLINE Ernest Clayton and the Bishop got together, and talked late into the night. The subject admitted of an infinity of interpretations, and the Bishop seemed inclined to procrastinate. The first thing Clayton had to do was to convince him that something must be very wrong indeed at the Community of St Botolph’s.

  ‘But there is nothing intrinsically suspicious in a young man you knew in the outside world turning up as a monk here,’ said the Bishop of Peckham with a sort of wheedle in his voice.

  ‘You don’t know the young man,’ said Clayton. ‘He has vile manners, foul language and an obscenely twisted mind.’

  ‘ “The wind bloweth where it listeth”,’ said the Bishop tentatively.

  ‘The only thing blowing in this young sprig is a strong current of hot air,’ said Clayton firmly.

  ‘That’s often the type who d
o get religion all of a sudden,’ said the Bishop sadly. ‘The Church is one of the last professions where people feel obliged to listen to your opinions, however boring and ludicrous they are, and I suppose that’s why.’

  ‘True in general,’ said Clayton, ‘but not at St Botolph’s. If we are to believe Father Anselm, ninety per cent of the day is spent in silence, which wouldn’t suit this little lad one bit. The point really is this: I gave this boy a lift when I was on my way up here. That was one day before I first saw him within the Community’s walls. When I spoke to him he said nothing about coming here, though he was talking to a clergyman, and talking about religion (or what he imagines to be religion). He said he was coming to Hickley, but no more than that. Whenever I have seen him here, he has immediately panicked and vanished. Why?’

  The Bishop pondered. ‘No reason suggests itself,’ he said.

  ‘He is dressed as an ordinary brother,’ said Clayton, ‘but I have never seen him eating with the rest.’

  ‘You could be mistaken there,’ said the Bishop. ‘When they’re all together they look like one indistinguishable mass of humanity. Like Chinese, you know, only one mustn’t say so. It’s only when you come to talk to them individually that you come to start noticing individual characteristics.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Clayton. ‘Perhaps I should try to get a closer look at breakfast time. But even if he is with them, it won’t alter the main point as I see it.’

  ‘And — er — what is that?’ asked the Bishop, plainly with a degree of apprehension.

  ‘That there is more going on in this monastery than meets the eye.’

  There was a silence of some seconds. The Bishop had known that Clayton must be thinking along these lines, and he was himself beginning to find some such conclusion irresistible. It was, nevertheless, as unwelcome a conclusion as could well be. He had already resigned himself to the fact that for some time to come he would be, in popular estimation, the Bishop involved in ‘that murder case at the monastery’. He had, in fact, already settled it in his mind that it would be well for the present Archbishop not to resign at seventy, but to soldier on for a few years longer, so completely did he see his chances as having been ditched for the immediate future. But more pessimistic than this a cheery soul like the Bishop could not willingly be. And if, in addition to the murder, he were involved in the uncovering of something fishy at St Botolph’s (and however pure his motives and however above reproach his conduct in the affair, his merely being involved would be enough for at least one of the newspapers for whom he was a bête noire) then he would be forced to say goodbye to his chances for ever. Even the headlines that would come to be written made him blush to the very lobes of his ears to think of. He was beginning to regret more and more the over-close relationship he had formed with Ernest Clayton since the murder. If only he had managed to stand on his own two feet.