Mortal Spoils

by D M Greenwood

  The breeze was getting up, she noticed. The plane tree which afforded shelter to the bench would protect her if rain came and it was a good deal cleaner and more spacious than dossing under the arches with drunks and madmen. ‘Never got a moment’s peace to yourself,’ Maggie said aloud as she drifted, she hoped, towards Eden.

  There were no street lamps immediately outside the side entrance to Ecclesia Place. So Theodora trod on the saucer of dog meat and milk left earlier by Maggie for her cats. Tom fumbled for keys and Theodora thought, what am I doing at five past midnight entering the heart of Anglican government to find the body of a missing, perhaps murdered, putative bishop? There were people paid to do this sort of thing. They were called police. Was this unknown young man’s career so important that it should involve her losing a night’s sleep?

  ‘Do you know the Place well?’ Tom inquired over his shoulder.

  ‘Only bits of it. I easily get lost when I stray beyond the library or the refectory.’

  ‘Good refectory,’ Tom said. Nobly he put thoughts of hot sweet coffee and rounds of buttered toast from him. Since finding the body he’d not been able to eat. He was two meals behind.

  ‘How about alarms?’ Theodora asked as Tom put his shoulder to the door.

  ‘If you enter with a key they don’t go off.’ Tom was reassuring.

  The Church was evidently unable to imagine a mind so depraved that it would stoop to duplicating keys.

  ‘What did he look like, your body, your bishop?’ Theodora asked as they stumbled inside and closed the door behind them. They paused for a moment then Tom set off down the lightless corridor. Theodora felt rather than saw his tall back and followed close behind. After about twenty paces he halted and fumbled for the light. An ungenerous forty watts nickered into activity and illuminated a flight of what was evidently a back staircase. They set off to the first floor.

  ‘Five foot six or seven. Barrel-chested. Strong growth of black hair flecked with grey and a beard neatly trimmed. Square hands, a bit rough round the edges, calloused skin. Perhaps a gardener.’ Tom assigned a suitable hobby for an Anglican bishop.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Late forties, early fifties perhaps.’

  Theodora sensed that that was quite old in Tom’s book.

  ‘He smelt of something too,’ Tom added. ‘Camphor? Boot polish? Yes, that’s it. He had a very nice pair of boots on.’

  ‘Boots?’ Theodora pictured the sort her father’s gardener had sported in rural Oxfordshire: heavy black with an enormous tongue jutting out the top and strong laces which were, nevertheless, always breaking.

  ‘Very smart pair of jodhpur boots or Chelsea boots, something like that. Brown.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ said Theodora, genuinely scandalised. ‘With a clerical black suit?’

  ‘S’right.’

  Theodora, the product of eight generations of Anglican priests, reviewed the vast network of priestly cousins, uncles, friends of both, contemporaries at university and theological college, acquaintances from conferences and training sessions, and tried to bring into focus any of the forty-odd Anglican diocesan bishops who might fit the description. No one sprang to mind. ‘Could he be a suffragan?’

  ‘Could be. Or, who else has bishops?’

  ‘Church of Wales, Church of Ireland, Church of Scotland, American Episcopalians, and what used to be called colonial bishops.’

  ‘Oh heck,’ said Tom. The place was awash with people yesterday.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. What made you think he was an Anglican bishop?’

  ‘The pectoral and the ring.’

  ‘What colour was his shirt?’

  ‘Black. Oh, I see what you mean. It ought to have been purple for one of ours.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So either he was an RC one, which is unlikely, there weren’t any on the guest list, or else an Azbarnahi.’ Tom groaned. ‘I don’t know which is worse, one of our lot dead or one of their lot.’

  Theodora could think of no way to console him.

  At the top of the stairs, Tom turned the light off, pushed through a swing door and turned right.

  Theodora, who had a good sense of direction, was immediately lost. Tom paced confidently forward switching lights on at the beginning of corridors and off at the end of them. It was odd, Theodora reflected, that so orderly and methodical a boy should have lost his head in the matter of a dead bishop. On his present form he should have reached for his mobile phone and called the porters. Was panic all that had prevented him?

  ‘What about times?’ Theodora asked. ‘When did you find the body exactly?’

  ‘I had a late lunch, then I went to check the conference arrangements. It must have been about two-thirty.’

  ‘And what did you do after you’d rolled him in the rug and stowed him in the Turnbull Chamber?’

  ‘I came out of the Turnbull Chamber. I remember hesitating and deciding to go back to my own room. I wanted to think things out. But then I remembered that the quickest way to my room was up the staircase from the Turnbull Chamber and I really didn’t fancy going through there again. So I was sort of havering when I saw the top of Canon Clutch’s head coming up the main staircase.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘No, he had someone else with him. I only saw the top of his head but I think it was Canon Teape.’

  ‘The Place archivist?’

  ‘Right. Do you know him?’

  ‘Our paths cross in the library from time to time. What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t want to meet them head on, so I retreated back to the conference hall.’

  ‘Which was empty?’

  ‘Yes. No. Ashwood was there.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Moving in more chairs.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘There’s a store behind the platform.’

  ‘So at a rough estimate, at about the time you found the bishop dead, Clutch, Teape and Ashwood were all in the offing – as well, of course, as you.’

  ‘Well, yes. But remember, the man must have been dead for a bit.’

  ‘How warm did he feel?’ Theodora asked clinically.

  ‘Not very. I mean, it’s difficult to tell. I was sweating so much myself.’

  ‘But he wasn’t cold, rigid?’

  ‘No, he was sort of lukewarm and floppy,’ Tom said.

  Growth continues until death, Theodora thought irrelevantly as a remark of a medical acquaintance floated into her mind. ‘Rigor sets in about half an hour after death depending on the ambient temperature,’ she said.

  ‘Which was warm. It’s been a mild autumn and the heating goes on on October the first regardless of need. It’s one of the things they could really cut …’ Tom trailed off.

  The corridor terminated. They stepped out on to a landing which ran round the whole breadth of the building. Grey light filtered in smudgily from the glass dome overhead. Theodora leaned over the balustrade and gazed down at the flight of steps which met the landing about twenty yards away. She could just make out the marble of the ground-floor hall below. She tried to imagine it as it had been at three in the afternoon as Canon Clutch and Teape came up the steps and Tom retreated back into the conference hall. ‘I’ve been here before, I think,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t know how to get here unaided. Why is it such a difficult building to come to terms with?’

  ‘It’s asymmetrical. The site is really a trapezium. The difficulties for the architect were enormous, given that he had to make it impressive and still accommodate fifty-odd offices. They had a bomb here in forty-three which took out the north corner, which did nothing for the structure when they rebuilt after the war on too little money. The site was waterlogged too. You may have noticed the library and archives in the crypt are damp.’

  ‘It does the manuscripts no good,’ Theodora agreed.

  ‘Originally the site belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury and it had a
Dominican house on it in the fourteenth century. Some of the underdrawing can still be seen. It was probably quite dry enough until they embanked the Thames in eighteen seventy. Then of course it disturbed the water levels and the old drainage couldn’t cope.’

  ‘How very knowledgeable of you,’ said Theodora who knew all this.

  ‘I took an optional unit in workplace environments with special reference to physical features influencing the dynamics of human interaction. Frankly, unless they blow the whole place up and start again, I doubt they’ll ever get functional working practices in place. Too many individual offices and not enough seminar rooms. A sort of physical reflection of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It affects working practices. Not enough interaction. Knocking a few walls down and partitioning some of the bigger offices, which is what the builders are currently at, is just tinkering.’

  Theodora was impressed. Tom had categories for what she knew by instinct and observation. ‘Have you tried your theories on cathedrals or parish churches?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘There’s an interesting movement at the moment to try to deny what churches are for by reordering their interiors, making them matey, user-friendly, comfortable. The worst put in carpets and coffee bars, even the best tend to ignore the high altar. An air of apology clouds all.’

  ‘That so?’ Tom was interested. ‘Might be a PhD there.’

  Theodora looked at the two doorways to the conference hall and to the Turnbull Chamber. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re just putting off the evil hour.’ They paced round the landing and pulled up outside the doors. The chair stood empty and solid below the theatrical bishop’s portrait.

  ‘Did you take the bishop, or whatever he was, to the rug or the rug to the bishop?’

  ‘The first.’ Tom moved towards the door to the Turnbull Chamber. They had spoken in hushed tones. Why? Theodora wondered. Was it the still lingering presence of death?

  There was no sound from anywhere in the building as they stepped through the door. Once inside, however, there was a soft whirring and then a series of clunks and groans. Theodora recognised the sound of clerical central heating stirring into action, presumably controlled by thermostat. The room had no outside windows and only a smudge of light followed them through the open door. Theodora ran her hand down the panelling and pushed. There was a click and a flutter of purplish light from the two fluorescent bars in the ceiling. Theodora surveyed what looked like a builders’ yard. Breeze blocks and mixing boards, open bags of sand and cement, ladders and paint tins covered the area. The rug, still partially unrolled from the Archbishop’s handling, lay a little way into the room. They approached it cautiously in step. Theodora gazed at the tree of life which had earned the Archbishop’s commendation. She knelt down and scrutinised it. She was aware how much more the police and forensic people would have been able to deduce than she.

  ‘There’s no trace of blood,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘I said, there was no wound.’

  Theodora looked again. ‘What there is, however, is cement, powdered cement.’

  ‘So?’

  Theodora indicated the layout of the room, the space from the door to the carpet. ‘The floor is clean from the door to here. The spilt cement starts over there.’ She gestured towards the torn bag spreading its powdery contents halfway down the room. ‘Did you walk over there when you rolled him in the rug?’

  ‘No. He was a dead weight. I had it in mind he’d be easier to retrieve if I didn’t put him too far from the door.’

  ‘And the Archbishop came in from there.’ Theodora nodded towards the door on the left which led to the conference hall.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the door to stairway two?’

  ‘Over there.’ Tom indicated the third door in the room on the opposite side.

  ‘So the Archbishop wouldn’t have crossed the cement trail either. Or did he get as far as door three?’

  Tom mimed thinking. He went to the left-hand door and paced from it, then bent over and held the rug. ‘No, he didn’t cross the trail. Handling the rug was the only thing he did in this room.’

  ‘What about the rest of the party?’

  Tom thought again. ‘I was at his right hand. His chaplain was on the other side. There was a group of other clergy in the door who didn’t actually come in.’

  ‘And at that point the Archimandrite’s lot came into the conference hall behind?’

  ‘Right.’

  Theodora got up carefully and made her way across the room. ‘The cement must have come off the shoes of someone standing on the carpet who came across the trail from the third door.’ She bent down again. Grey particles could be seen near the jamb of the door. ‘He went through that door with, presumably, the body in tow.’

  Tom nodded agreement.

  ‘Which he dragged rather than carried,’ Theodora said, opening the door and surveying the back staircase which fell away from them into darkness. ‘Where does it lead?’

  ‘Corridor at the back of the refectory.’ Tom switched the lights off in the room, clicked on the staircase lights, and started down.

  Halfway down there was another deposit of cement, small but unmistakable. At the bottom of the stairs they pulled up.

  ‘Which way?’

  Tom did his trick with the lights again, off behind and on in front. The corridor, narrower than those on the upper floors, stretched towards a fire door about twenty yards away. On their right were glass-paned doors through which could just be discerned the grills and counters of the refectory servery. Slowly, eyes on the floor, they edged down the corridor.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tom.

  They reached the fire door and Tom put his hand to the bar. He hesitated. Then he put his hand to the door itself. It opened quietly.

  ‘He came this way then,’ Theodora remarked, taking the inference in a moment.

  ‘And had to leave it open,’ Tom agreed.

  Together they emerged on to the paving of the short alley at the end of which was the embankment court. Quickening pace, they strode past the paladins and more builders’ clutter. Just before they emerged into the court, Theodora, whose eyes had not left the ground, touched Tom’s elbow. She bent down and picked up a dark shape. She turned it over and then offered it to him.

  ‘A brown leather boot, quality wear and nearly new. Come on.’ He broke into a run. The lights of the embankment court made them blink. Tom raced ahead and reached the balustrade which marked the river. It came to his waist. He placed his arms on top and hitched himself up and peered down into the Thames. Theodora joined him. Twenty yards of undisturbed mud glittered and sucked and smelt under the cloudy sky. In the distance the shrunken stream of the river raced in a deep channel.

  ‘Springs,’ said Theodora. ‘Very low tide.’ She glanced downstream. A pleasure boat, lights blazing but no band playing, was gliding down the receding tideway. She felt a wave of tiredness as great as physical pain sweep over her. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘The Fatted Calf, tomorrow. Twelve fifteen. Yes?’

  She nodded and turned upstream to Betterhouse Bridge.

  Maggie watched as the two figures parted and went their separate ways. That was the second couple she’d seen emerging from Ecclesia Place tonight. Trade must be brisk in the Church for them to be working night shifts.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Foundation

  ‘… Thy servant Elizabeth, our Queen, that under her we may be godly and quietly governed, and to all they that are put in authority under her that they may truly and indifferently administer justice to the punishment of wickedness and vice and the maintenance of Thy true religion and virtue.’

  Theodora in her deacon’s stall followed Geoffrey’s quiet voice as he made his way through the eight o’clock Communion service in the parish church of St Sylvester Betterhouse. Tuesday was Prayer Book day and the congregation was Prayer Book: five very old women, two oldish men a
nd one very young girl whom Geoffrey had recently prepared for confirmation. Geoffrey’s wife, Oenone, Theodora noticed, was not present. Geoffrey, she knew, had hoped she might be drawn into the worshipping life of the church. But Oenone had kept her teaching post at a smart independent girls’ school in Kensington. She came to parish Mass on Sundays. Midweek church-going was alien to her; and probably inconvenient in its timing, Theodora had to admit to herself in all justice.

  Theodora put thoughts of Oenone out of her mind. That way lay danger. After all, Geoffrey, she admitted, ran a good parish. He had had to build from nearly nothing and he did it by keeping his eye on well-defined goals. His naval training stood him in good stead. Worship, the offering of the sacraments and the example of the spiritual, prayerful life was his aim. Theodora discerned that he was without worldly ambition. He saw the Church as giving entry to a supernatural reality of supreme value, not as patching this world’s politics or social services. Of course he prayed for the Queen’s Majesty, for the state of Church and nation. But that did not mean he saw the Church as a political organisation. They prayed, she and Geoffrey, from a deep sense of England whose people had a right to their prayers.