‘You knew Archie at Oxford, didn’t you?’
It was a measure of Oenone’s desperation that she looked to Theodora. It was no good. Clutch wasn’t to be diverted.
‘The media,’ said Canon Clutch reverently, ‘are terribly important. And I can’t agree with you, Gilbert,’ the tone was both comradely and patronising, ‘about the Azbarnahi Orthodox Church. Of course Papworth scarcely begins to comprehend the political ramifications. That’s not the function of archbishops.’ He laughed to show how he forgave them their limitations. ‘However I am myself monitoring affairs there very carefully.’
So that makes it all right then, Theodora thought. She was surprised by Gilbert’s venom and his persistence. Was it directed against the Azbarnahis or against Clutch?
‘Cheese,’ said Oenone valiantly. ‘Theo, I wonder if …’ Theodora rose and followed her out of the room. Oenone ran a hand across her brow. ‘Do clergy usually behave as badly as this?’
‘I have known it,’ Theodora admitted. ‘Though I think Clutch is a fairly extreme example.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of Clutch so much as Gilbert. I’d no idea he felt as he does. Are he and Clutch personal enemies?’
‘If they weren’t before, they will be now, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I always thought Gilbert was rather reserved and mannerly.’
Theodora could only wonder at someone who could interpret Gilbert’s intention to have every human encounter on his own terms as either reserved or mannerly. ‘Greek meets Greek.’
Oenone was grim. ‘Who carries more clout?’ she asked, an amateur to a professional.
‘In the Church? It’s an interesting question. It depends what you’re after. For certain sorts of living in the Catholic tradition, Gilbert. I think Clutch may have more pull in the evangelical area.’
‘Who’s in control at the moment?’
‘Evangelicals.’
‘Right,’ said Oenone. Her tone indicated she’d made her decision. Clutch it would have to be. ‘God, it’s all so complicated,’ Oenone complained. ‘I was brought up among soldiers who are paragons of simplicity and rectitude compared with this lot.’
Theodora was sure she had a point. ‘Do you want both the Stilton and the Brie?’
‘Yes, if you don’t mind. The Brie’s a bit overripe.’ Oenone sorted the plates in what Theodora remembered had been her and Geoffrey’s joint kitchen in former days. Oenone had redone it in accordance with the best modern taste; stripped pine was everywhere.
‘Did you say Truegrave was looking in?’
‘I hope to God he comes soon.’
They were halfway across the hall when the front doorbell rang.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Dinner
Canon Truegrave was a hairy man, not in the sense that he had a lot of hair on his head – there, indeed, the growth was sparse. But what there was of it, widely dispersed across his cranium, had great presence, due perhaps to its quality which was that of strong grey wire. On other areas of his person, in the ears and nostrils, for example, hair sprouted out in greater and softer abundance. Over the back of his hands, curly black bristles disappeared up his cuffs leading, as it were, the eye of imagination upwards to speculate about whither the growth extended and finished. Was he hirsute all over? He wore a wide clerical collar which stood out at some distance from his raddled and none too clean neck. In one ear, Theodora noticed, there nestled a hearing aid.
‘How’s the old high Slavonic coming along, Bernhardt?’ Gilbert leaned across the table and addressed the hearing aid. Old friends or old enemies? Theodora wondered as she helped Geoffrey to carve and then hand a plate of pheasant while Oenone saw about the wine.
Truegrave gazed at the plate in wonder. Were they really offering him food? ‘Thank you, thank you, yes, yes, certainly a little more. A leg would be most acceptable. Old high Slavonic is not an easy language,’ he said severely to Gilbert, who nodded in sympathy as though beating time to a tune he knew well. Canon Truegrave chewed rapidly along the leg, which he held in one hand over the plate and brought his jaws to engage with by leaning forward.
‘But it’s very necessary, isn’t it, Bernhardt, to be able to communicate with the Azbarnahis?’ Teape tried the other, the nonhearing- aid ear. ‘Their liturgy is in it, isn’t it?’
‘Thank you, potatoes would be very welcome,’ responded Truegrave.
Theodora glanced across at Oenone in sympathy. Would she lose her nerve?
But Oenone was made of sterner stuff. If Canon Truegrave was an eater, and he was clearly that, she’d make sure his needs were catered for. Gravy, beans, carrots, redcurrant jelly, all were marshalled in the canon’s part of the table. He did not, Theodora noticed, bother with a napkin in its normal prophylactic function, using it rather at the conclusion of operations in the manner of a bath towel to scrub his lips, the front of his jacket and the surrounding table. There was a palpable sigh of relief from the rest of the diners as he concluded his course.
‘Cheese?’ Oenone inquired.
Canon Clutch took the precaution of cutting more of the Brie before releasing it in Truegrave’s direction. Possibly Clutch had dined with Truegrave before. The table abandoned any attempt at conversation and gave itself up to the spectator sport of gazing fascinated as Truegrave worked through the Brie, looked round for Stilton, was passed Stilton and looked round for biscuits. Finally, running his index finger round the back of his teeth, he leaned back in his chair, tapped the hearing aid back into place (perhaps it had worked loose in the course of his exertions) and appeared to change gear for conversation. Obviously a man who did one thing at a time, Theodora concluded.
‘How did you come to miss the photocall for the Church Times on Monday after the meeting with the Archimandrite?’ Theodora’s question was unexpected to the rest of the table and drew every eye to her. But Truegrave took it in his stride.
‘A lot of clearing up to do. Concordats make for work. Not that there are that many of them,’ Canon Truegrave admitted.
‘And what brought us to make this one?’ Geoffrey had caught Theodora’s interest.
Canon Teape sniggered. ‘Bernhardt’s interest in old high Slavonic.’
‘It’s the most enormously important political step,’ Canon Clutch began.
Canon Truegrave either hadn’t heard them or didn’t care. ‘I’ve known Mikel since the old days of Kursola.’ Canon Truegrave seemed to think that this sufficiently explained why the whole of the Anglican Church should be committed to entering into theological and financial relations with a branch of Orthodoxy of which little was known.
‘Mikel?’ Oenone was the one who had no Church background. ‘I thought he was called Georgios.’
‘He took Georgios as his ecclesiastical name when he was put in.’ Truegrave seemed happy to talk about the topic. ‘I knew the whole family,’ he pressed on. ‘His grandfather had a lot of land in the Northern Province.’
‘A landowning family?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘Oh, enormous, and branches in commerce in the south.’
‘But communism?’
‘Not quite the orthodox Marxist-Leninist kind.’
‘You mean it never did away with private property?’
‘Does any regime, ever? Just shuffles it about a bit, in my experience. Though in the case of the Turannidi family they managed to shuffle it about among themselves.’ Canon Truegrave seemed to find that admirable.
‘And the Church?’
‘Ah, the Orthodox Church has some marvellous stuff. Almost untouched by outside influences. Tremendously patriarchal but none the worse for that.’
Theodora saw that Clutch agreed that that was all right too.
‘The landed families provide the priests as well as the generals. The Turannidi have had the Archimandrite’s office now for six or seven generations.’ This clearly made it all right. Theodora was beginning to feel glad she didn’t live in Azbarnah.
‘You’ve spent a lot of time there, haven’t you, Bernhardt?’ Canon Teape’s tone was again opaque to Theodora. Was he setting Truegrave up or genuinely admiring?
‘Lots of contact.’ Truegrave was complacent.
‘What happened to that chap who used to come and stay with you?’ It was Gilbert this time.
Canon Truegrave looked vague. ‘So many of them. Nephews of Mikel. One or two research students from the university at Vorasi. I give what help I can.’
‘I never know where you stack them, Bernhardt,’ Canon Teape pressed on, ‘in that tiny flat of yours.’
‘Bernhardt has a flat under the flight path for Terminal Two at Heathrow,’ Canon Clutch was jocular, ‘so he can depart for foreign parts at a moment’s notice.’
‘Always keep a bag packed,’ Canon Truegrave agreed.
‘Fruit? Dessert?’ Oenone seemed to have recovered enough from the spectacle of Truegrave’s assault on the previous courses to venture further down the menu.
Canon Truegrave perked up. ‘Fruit,’ he said hungrily. ‘Dessert. How very welcome.’
‘What were his boots like?’ Tom turned the single malt in his hand and pushed his back against the packing case on which the TV rested in the flat in the Stowage. St Sylvester’s clock had struck midnight. He’d paced up and down the Stowage for an hour waiting for Theodora to return from Geoffrey’s dinner party. They’d slid up the stairs almost surreptitiously.
‘Interesting you should ask that. He was badly turned out. Suit not of the cleanest, collar could do with a sponge-over but Canon Teape’s boots were good enough to have come from …’
‘Shotter and Cobb?’
‘Right. But there is just one thing. The boots we found were what size?’ Theodora asked.
‘Biggish, say size ten.’
‘Canon Teape’s feet, on the other hand, looked to me smallish, say six or sevens.’
‘So the ones we found must have been specially made to Teape’s orders but for the corpse.’
‘Looks like it,’ Theodora agreed.
‘How usual is it for clergy to wear boots?’ Tom asked.
‘I had a cousin who rode to hounds and wore them to early service under a cassock – without spurs of course. But those were long boots not short ones like these. I’d have thought it quite rare.’
‘You did ask him where he had them made, didn’t you?’
‘I really felt I couldn’t do that to Oenone. It was all quite fraught enough. Clutch and Gilbert had a spat early on. Then Geoffrey and Clutch had a run-in. Then Truegrave attacked the food as though fresh from a gulag. Furthering Geoffrey’s career is going to be a tiresome business.’
‘Odd to use a meal to further a career,’ Tom commented. ‘Eating is for eating.’
‘Not in Oenone’s world. Or Canon Clutch’s either, I wouldn’t have thought.’
‘But you did learn that Canon Truegrave has contacts with the Archimandrite’s family, the Turannidi. And, as I said, the photograph in Truegrave’s book is of the body on the chair not of the chap who signed the concordat and appeared on telly.’
Theodora poured herself more coffee and thought how much she liked Tom. He’d passed no word of blame for the loss of the cross, had waited until she’d got coffee and kicked her shoes off before either questioning her or offering her his own new intelligence. She considered his self-control admirable, given what the top brass had thought it allowable to do in the previous three hours.
‘What are the possible permutations?’
Tom reached for his organiser and clearly felt happier with it in his hand. He tapped in the equation, ‘X equals the true Archimandrite’.
Theodora watched with interest then continued, ‘The man who signed the concordat is really the Archimandrite but the photographer in the book made a mistake or the photograph is wrongly captioned. Or …’
‘Or …’ Tom took up the tale from his organiser, ‘the photograph is right and the corpse is the true Archimandrite and the concordat signer is the false Archimandrite.’
‘When did Truegrave meet the Archimandrite on Monday? Was it when he first came at four o’clock?’
‘I assume so. I mean the Archimandrite flew in on Sunday night, according to the schedule I was given by Clutch. I don’t think Truegrave had an appointment before that.’
‘But Truegrave knew the Archimandrite well. He said so this evening.’
Tom was baffled. ‘So if he met the false Archimandrite over the conference table he ought to have known it wasn’t him.’
‘Unless, as I said, the photograph was a mistake or wrongly captioned.’
‘Or unless Truegrave wasn’t surprised.’ Tom completed his equation.
‘Meaning?’
‘Truegrave and the false Archimandrite are in collusion.’
‘Over what?’
‘Over the corpse of the putative Archimandrite and his boots with hollow heels.’ Tom looked at his organiser as though he didn’t want to believe it. ‘Have we got all the variables?’
‘Quite enough for the moment.’ Theodora was firm.
‘So we need to know the movements of Truegrave well prior to the concordat meeting, say from Sunday evening onwards, as well as the movements of Teape and Clutch just before the meeting. It would also be helpful to be a bit clearer about the degree of relationship between Truegrave and the Archimandrite, the true one and the false one.’
‘And what Truegrave did after the concordat meeting. Do I gather you think Teape, Clutch and Papworth stayed together all the time from the close of the meeting until the photocall and the TV interview but that Truegrave disappeared soon after the meeting?’
‘Right. Someone besides me moved the body between three and the Archbishop poking around in the carpet at four. And they had to have a reason and they had to have an opportunity.’
‘I think you mentioned Canon Clutch’s secretary.’
‘Myfannwy. Yes. She might give us Clutch’s movements. And the porters, Trice and Ashwood, might be able to give us Teape and Truegrave’s if they were in the building.’
‘If you take the porters,’ Theodora said, ‘I’ll have a word with Teape.’
‘Why?’
‘He might know about the captioning of the photograph in Truegrave’s book.’
Tom stretched his arms behind him and leaned forward. ‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight, is there? I should go home.’
Theodora smiled at him. He looked very young with his concentrated absorption in a single task, like a choir boy.
Through the open window came the sound of a ship’s siren, immensely melancholy. Theodora thought of the unclaimed corpse. Why did no one miss it, cry out for it, want to mourn it? It seemed a terrible omission. She realised it was taking on mythic proportions in her imagination. In her tired state and her discontent with the attitudes of the members of the dinner party, the corpse seemed to stand for all the things the Church wouldn’t acknowledge, the inanity, the irrelevance of politics.
‘You should go home,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll walk you to the end of the Stowage in case the foxes get you.’
Companionably, equals, partners, no strife or dominance between them, free of the games-playing which obsessed their elders and joined in a common enterprise, albeit an odd and disquieting one, they made their way from the house. Theodora propped the damaged door to behind them as they stepped out into the cool night air. The smell of the river came up from beyond the wall. It refreshed and drew them. Tom steadied his bicycle with one hand and caressed the stone with the other. Water chafed the steps downstream. Theodora became aware of another sound, the creak and splash of oars. She could just see a shape bending rhythmically forward and back, pulling away from the bank, making good speed as the craft entered the current. In the bow of the boat, catching a gleam of light as it moved out into the channel, was a shopping trolley.
‘I didn’t know Maggie was an oarswoman,’ Tom said.
‘Not the time or place for shopping either,’ Theodora agreed.
CHAPTER NINE
The Office
The water from the miniature watering can dropped accurately round the stem of the pelargonium, darkening the compost. Myfannwy Gwynether felt it doing the plant good. She was a nurturer by nature. She turned the plant round so the other side got the light. Fair dos, she always said. Next she produced a feather duster from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and ran it over her desk and windowsill. On her desk were framed photographs of the twins, one of her husband, Dennis, and a nice black and white of the cottage in Cwm Riath to which they would retire in three years’ time when Dennis finished at the DHSS. The photographs were arranged on crocheted mats. Mrs Gwynether’s hobby was macramé.
It was an orderly, it was a genteel environment, Mrs Gwynether felt. She sought the integrated life. At the office she liked to be reminded of her family; at home she enjoyed talking of her work for the Church. She made it sound as though the institution was in her debt, which, in a sense, it was, though it repaid her by allowing her to feel she was at the centre of things. Canon Clutch was a very important man who often had contact with people whose names appeared in newspapers and whose faces cropped up on the telly. ‘We work very closely with every branch of Government,’ Canon Clutch had told her. And indeed she had his diary to prove it. Lunch with permanent private secretaries at the Foreign Office, the occasional state banquet and livery company dinner were known of. Only yesterday he’d said, ‘We have consultative rights with HM Government in a number of fields,’ and he’d smiled his collusive smile. ‘I make sure we hold them to it. These politicians need watching like hawks. If they’re going to use the worldwide network of the Anglican communion, they’ll have to pay for it.’ Mrs Gwynether had not quite understood this one but over the years she’d got used to a certain degree of hyperbole in Canon Clutch’s utterances. She attributed it, pleasant woman, to his getting carried away with an enthusiasm for his work.
It was a tiny office with something of the quality of an eyrie, a tower room where spells, or anyway something, was woven. There wasn’t actually a cauldron in the corner but there might have been. If you stood in the small square in the middle of the room you could more or less reach everything else in it. The desk with two telephones, the two filing cabinets, the computer table and the hat stand were all under Mrs Gwynether’s hand.
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