Blood Brotherhood

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  That’s the first hurdle over, said Ernest Clayton to himself. Aloud he said: ‘Of course this is part of a larger pattern. Tell me, do you completely trust Father Anselm?’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of going around mistrusting people,’ complained the Bishop, half-way between a whine and a bluster. ‘He is the superior of this order, he was appointed by Leeds, and I don’t go around expecting that people will turn out to be . . .’ He expired into silence, and then he said: ‘Well, no. I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Clayton firmly. ‘So the next question is, what do we do?’

  The answer that presented itself to the Bishop’s mind was ‘nothing’, but he felt that it had to be skilfully wrapped up. ‘The important thing,’ he said, ‘is to avoid scandal to the Church.’

  He means ‘do nothing’, said Clayton to himself. Aloud he said: ‘These days that’s next to impossible. And more often than not trying to avoid scandal only brings it down in double quantity on your head. Think of Watergate.’

  ‘I do not see that the cases are remotely comparable,’ said the Bishop stiffly, obviously not relishing the implied comparison with the unfortunate Richard (at least he’d had the Presidency, he said to himself, and I never have).

  ‘I don’t intend any comparison,’ said Clayton. ‘I merely wanted to point to the difficulties involved in keeping the lid on a thing like this. Say there is something going on here. Say you get rid of three or four of the brothers, and perhaps shift Father Anselm. You sit back and thank your stars how easily the whole thing has sorted itself out. Then the brothers begin to talk. Have you noticed what terrible blabbermouths ex-nuns and monks are? They’re worse than de-frocked priests. And they seem to think that release from their vows of silence releases them from any obligation towards common sense too. Mark my words, once outside these walls, they’d head like homing pigeons for Fleet Street, and the next thing you knew, all the gory details would be splashed on the front page of the Sun.’

  The Bishop was beginning to think Clayton was a very uncomfortable companion. Of course what he said was true, but nobody likes having the comforting lies they have fed themselves with dashed so brutally from their lips. ‘The important thing is to keep the Church’s hands as clean as possible,’ he said.

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Clayton. ‘Now, how do you suggest we should proceed?’

  ‘Well,’ said the Bishop, very slowly, ‘I suppose the best first step would be to approach Father Anselm. Take him aside and confront him with our suspicions.’

  ‘And what if he simply denies there is anything out of the ordinary going on?’ asked Ernest Clayton, mentally adding: And what if he manages to reduce you to a quivering jelly as usual?

  ‘That,’ said the Bishop wrapping the shreds of his dignity around him, ‘will depend on the convincingness of the denials. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to prejudge the issue. We have to approach this thing in a completely calm and judicious way. He may have a completely convincing explanation for the presence and behaviour of this young man.’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ said Ernest Clayton. ‘And if he hasn’t?’

  By now the Bishop was finding Clayton distinctly over-importunate. He ended the conversation almost brusquely. ‘The thing we must try to avoid is a police investigation. If they don’t uncover anything in their murder enquiry, then you can be quite sure it’s no business of theirs. It’s Leeds’s diocese, his pigeon. If Anselm’s answers are unsatisfactory, I shall put the matter before Leeds, and leave him to take what action he thinks fit.’

  Getting well clear before the investigation starts, said Clayton to himself. He had a vision of the Bishop publicly washing his hands on Peckham Rye.

  • • •

  Inspector Croft looked at the knife. It was a strong, tough affair, mass-produced, but highly efficient. The lab boys had said it was of a type much used by the more serious type of fishermen. Not meant to be used on tiddlers, but on the bigger fish. There were no fingerprints on it, but the blood was of the same group as Brother Dominic’s. There could be little doubt that he was the latest fish that this murderous little weapon had had to cope with.

  Where had it come from, how had it come to hand? The knife used by the Bishop of Mitabezi on the unsuspecting lamb had come from High Table. It had been used for carving a joint of beef that evening, and the fingerprints of both bishops were on it. If Mitabezi had proceeded from human to animal sacrifice, he had been very much more circumspect about the human part of the operation. If it was one of the other delegates, or one of the brothers, where had they got the knife from? Had they brought it with them? Did the brothers fish? That seemed a possible line of enquiry. Not within the Community walls, that was certain, for there was no river or stream. Still, Croft knew they went outside now and then. And fishing did seem to him a peaceful, gentle occupation for a monk, though fish might not agree.

  He shook his head. On the whole it seemed unlikely he would get anywhere with the knife. None of the delegates would admit bringing it. Would any of them have mentioned it in conversation before the murder? Hardly. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have used it.

  He got up, looked around Father Anselm’s austere little study, and went out into the dark corridor. Here, perhaps, one of the brothers had lurked when Father Anselm had locked up for the night. He considered the idea quite dispassionately — it did not give him the shivers, as it had the Bishop of Peckham. Probably the room where the symposium meetings were held was a more likely place. If, of course, Father Anselm had in fact locked up. The permutations of possibilities were endless. At any rate he was clear in his mind that the main part of the building offered sufficient scope for someone with iron nerve — and the injuries to Brother Dominic irresistibly suggested just such a person — to hide in, to await a suitable time to commit the deed. On the other hand, there was the question of the brothers’ wing.

  The entrance to this wing was down another short, dark corridor just off the main hall. It was sealed off from the main building by a heavy door with bars and bolts. Croft inspected the lock and the bolts. Both seemed to be in regular use. Once inside he was confronted by a steep flight of stairs. The ground floor of this wing, he had earlier ascertained, housed the heavier farming implements, with some modern equipment for repair work, and a car. There was no direct access from the upper storey. At the top of the stairway was a small landing, and leading off from it two dark corridors. The brothers’ cells were on either side of these. They were all very small, smaller than Brother Dominic’s, and they were furnished only with a bed, a hard chair, a rough shelf, and such devotional articles as the various brothers had brought to them — crucifixes mostly, and many statuettes of the Virgin Mary. By no means all the cells showed signs of habitation. All the outer ones were used: these were obviously preferable, having small windows, though they were above head level. Only a few of the inner ones were in use, and these had skylights which could just be opened by standing on a chair. Croft stood on one, hauled himself up to the frame, and peered out on to the roof: a fit man could no doubt get himself up there, but he would have to take a rope or knotted sheets to negotiate the drop. The outside rooms were somewhat easier, but only a smallish man could get through the windows (Croft couldn’t see Brother Hamish doing it, for instance, since his figure was of the pear-drop variety, and in general he seemed too soft and flabby), and here too one would need some kind of rope to reach the ground.

  Back in the main building Croft set Sergeant Forsyte and a couple of constables to inspect the windows and skylights for signs of human egress, but he was not hopeful. All things considered, he thought it more likely that if it was a member of the Community he was after, he had hidden in the main building.

  But from a purely practical point of view he had to agree with the view of Father Anselm, that the most likely murderer would be one of those who slept in the main building. Which left one with the highly puzzling question of motive.
r />   • • •

  The next morning Clayton conducted his survey of the assembled brothers. He inspected as he went in those few who were already seated; he hid the spoon for his boiled egg, and went down to borrow one from a table where one of the brothers had seemed to bear a faint resemblance to the corrupted cherub (but his fair hair turned out to be pitifully thin, and his childish wire-rimmed glasses destroyed the idea at once) and at the end of the meal he walked slowly through the four tables of eating brothers with the Bishop of Peckham, the two of them deep in conversation about the phenomenon of geographical inertia. All in all Clayton got a good look at every man seated there.

  Middle-aged men, with the light of faith in their eyes; young men, dulled, characterless; good-looking men with something of the dead brother’s inhuman efficiency in their eyes and mouth; old men and soon-to-be-old men, looking like other old men in the outside world; sad faces; contented faces; cunning faces; bland faces; pimpled faces; bored, discontented, rebellious faces; behind the conformity of the coarse brown robes, what was to be seen? A cross-section of humanity. If you looked at the faces in a government department, you would see precisely the same things.

  Deep in the nearly meaningless conversation, which had involved several stops for point-making and gesticulation, Clayton and the Bishop finally gained the shade of the little cloistered rooms off the main hall.

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ said Clayton to the Bishop. ‘We’re going to have to confront Anselm.’

  • • •

  ‘They were rather obvious about it, didn’t you think?’ said one brother sotto voce to another.

  • • •

  Inspector Croft was on the phone to the Chief Constable. Sir Henry Abbotsford had taken a personal interest in the case since his dramatic phone call from the Bishop of Peckham. It seemed likely to provide a fertile topic of conversation (the word Sir Henry used to describe his holding forth) at future meetings of bodies whose committees Sir Henry graced. And the Chief Constable shared the universal human instinct to want to find out what goes on behind closed doors, whether those doors belong to a Whitehall department, a jail, a monastery, or Buckingham Palace.

  ‘It’s an odd case, in every possible way,’ Croft was saying, with all the appearance of finding this phone call expendable. ‘The idea of a random collection of people coming to a monastery and one of them bumping off one of the monks — it takes some swallowing.’ He allowed Sir Henry a short interjection. ‘Well, yes, bumping off one of the lambs is pretty way out too, but it’s the human being that brought us on to the scene.’

  ‘You do think it’s one of the guests at the Community, then?’ asked Sir Henry.

  ‘As far as I can see, anyone here is a possibility. It would be easier for one of the guests to do it, or Father Anselm. Perhaps that’s why I have this hunch that if it was one of the brothers, either he was in cahoots with Father Anselm, or Anselm has a good idea who did it. Just a hunch, no more. But there’s no doubt about it, Anselm is an immensely impressive figure. And of course one would have to have a lot to go on before one started charging the head of a religious order with a crime like murder!’

  ‘The main thing is, Croft,’ said Sir Henry Abbotsford, ‘be discreet. We can thank our lucky stars the Plunkett business seems to have been got over without the press getting on to it. But they’ve already begun to show a more than routine interest in the case. By tomorrow they may have descended on Hickley like a flock of vultures. That’s why I say there must be absolute and complete discretion.’

  ‘I quite understand, sir,’ said Croft. ‘As far as the press is concerned, the story is that I’ve been on the case from the beginning. And if I uncover anything nasty, I suppose I’m to keep the lid on it if I possibly can.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Sir Henry. He added hopefully: ‘Have you uncovered anything nasty?’

  ‘Not yet,’ admitted Croft. ‘Apart from the body, of course, which was not a pretty sight. Really I haven’t got anywhere at all yet. And I feel I’ll have to let all these visitors go on Saturday, or not too long afterwards. That was when they were due to go home anyway.’

  ‘I suppose this symposium thing has gone by the board, has it?’ asked Sir Henry.

  ‘Oh, yes, completely collapsed. No regular sessions planned. They pray a bit, of course, but most of the time they seem to be mooning about and getting on each other’s nerves. It’s a bit of a laugh really. “The Role of the Church in the Modern World” they called this do. I’m afraid in the event they’ve found the modern world has been too much with them.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re letting them go, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I feel I have to. But in the meanwhile I’m trying to get reports from their local police on them — as many details as possible on their backgrounds, careers, marriages — all the local gossip, in fact.’

  ‘It should make good reading,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ asked Croft dubiously. ‘And of course I’m finding out what I can about the victim. I have a few basics — name, address, school and so on. There are no near relatives, I understand, but I should be able to find someone who knew him outside. Of course there is no police record on him.’

  ‘But remember, above all be discreet,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘You can count on me,’ said Croft, hanging up.

  But how could one be discreet about a police investigation of the private lives of a collection of churchmen, two of them bishops and two of them women? It would be the talk of the various parishes and dioceses for months. And if the case wasn’t solved, there was going to be a lot of dirt left around — clinging, one might say, to the whited sepulchres.

  CHAPTER XIII

  CONFRONTATION

  THE ATMOSPHERE WAS definitely deteriorating. Since the departure of Plunkett the delegates had somehow been less willing to talk about the murder investigation and the questions Inspector Croft had put to them. Since the maniac had been taken off, things had somehow become more real.

  They had therefore been forced back as a topic of conversation on religion — hardly a subject to bring out the best in anyone. As they lounged around the lawn after breakfast Philip Lambton probed Randi Paulsen on her attitude to drink, dancing, ritual, and a whole range of subjects on which the Anglican Church would claim to have liberalized its attitudes over the last century. Randi’s replies, replete with the sourest kind of smug bigotry (and accompanied by the fearsome smile), were not to his liking.

  ‘It’s like Cromwell’s England!’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize there were still churches like that outside the nutty-fringe groups. And to think of them existing in Scandinavia!’

  ‘At least we understand that our job is to spread the gospel,’ snapped back Randi Paulsen, viciously flicking at the switch of her smile, ‘and not to run a second-rate variety agency.’

  Watching the exchange, and almost purring with pleasure, was Bente Frøystad.

  ‘I get the impression,’ said Ernest Clayton to her, ‘that you are not a great admirer of your fellow churchwoman.’

  Bente Frøystad shrugged and grinned. ‘We get on, because we have to. There are only a handful of ordained women in Norway, so inevitably we see each other a fair bit. And for the immediate future, I have to travel back with her. You know, she’s what in your terms I suppose should be called very low church. We have something of the same sort of divisions in our church too. Therefore she does not approve of me — she thinks I’m much too high, and progressive, and ceremonial, and permissive and all that sort of thing. She keeps trying to drive me into a corner and make me confess I’m in favour of abortion on demand. She has a desperate need of something to tut-tut about. Actually I’m not in favour of it, but I’m certainly not going to tell her that. She’s really very stupid — and a vicious little prig to boot.’

  Not a bad summing up, thought Ernest Clayton, though certainly not a kind one. He turned to the Bishop of Peckham, who was feigning deep interest in a conversation with Simeon P. F
leishman and trying not to catch his eye.

  ‘Perhaps it’s time we went to look for Father Anselm,’ said Clayton taking his arm.

  ‘Oh — do you think so? Isn’t it rather early?’

  ‘No — it’s ten o’clock.’

  ‘I suppose not, no. Where will he be, do you think? Now he no longer has an office.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ said Ernest Clayton determinedly.

  • • •

  Oddly enough the first background report to get through to Inspector Croft was one of the foreign ones. Dictated to the Leeds police from the police station in Bergen, it was the report on Randi Paulsen. It was written by the local lensman, the sheriff of her little parish, and had been translated in Bergen.

  ‘Randi Paulsen has been at Svartøy now during one and a half year,’ the report ran. ‘At first was many unwilling to have woman priest, and it was much opposition. However, since coming has such opinions changed. Miss Paulsen is a very active and enthusiastic leader of Christian activity in the community. She has undertaken many new projects, and her preachings and her teachings are very popular. She also does much visiting with the sick and the older peoples. She has fought strongly against the looser element in the community and has in this way done much good works particularly against alcohol misuses and sexual things. Speaking as a practising Christian I would say that Miss Paulsen has transformed Svartøy in her time here, and it is impossible to think of her in connection with police investigation.’