Mortal Spoils

by D M Greenwood

  ‘Archie,’ Theodora genuinely felt gratitude, ‘it is good to see you, I mean in the flesh after all this time. And champagne! You shouldn’t have.’

  ‘I owe you, sweetie. The Ecclesia Place mess is an absolute dream. Won me lots and lots of useful friends and interesting enemies. Do you know a man called Morely-Trump? Amazing how eager people are to put the boot into the poor old C of E.’

  Theodora dolefully agreed.

  ‘Well, the top brass really are so pig stupid. They should stick to religion.’

  Tom bounded into the room. He held a good-looking ham wrapped in cellophane, clearly not trusting Theodora’s ordnance. ‘Feared you might be vegetarian,’ he said honestly. ‘Will my bike be all right chained to your rails?’

  ‘With the number of police spread over Betterhouse at the moment, I think it might be.’

  ‘Goody.’ Tom looked at the table spread with approval. ‘Who else is coming?’

  ‘You know Archie Douglas.’

  ‘I do now.’ They smiled at each other. Perhaps they might like each other. Theodora preferred her friends to get on.

  ‘I’m really grateful for all that insider info on Ecclesia Place. It sounds absolutely incredible.’

  ‘As an organisation it could really do with a SWOT analysis,’ Tom was embarked and earnest, ‘but of course you can only do that, one, against a set of agreed aims and two, with the full co-operation of the personnel. Neither of which …’

  ‘Ah,’ said Archie, always eager for new knowledge but a bit out of his depth. Theodora for once positively welcomed Oenone’s light tapping on the stairs.

  ‘Theo, and Archie Douglas, isn’t it? And Mr Logg, Tom, I assume. How very nice to meet you in the flesh at last. We’ve heard so much about you.’ Oenone took charge. ‘I know you’ve no ice, Theo, so we’ve brought some for the wine.’ She indicated Geoffrey staggering through the door with what appeared to be a hamper. Theodora hadn’t seen one of those in years. Glasses were filled.

  ‘To our hostess in her new house,’ said Geoffrey. Theodora allowed herself to think how very charming Geoffrey was and suppressed the thought that he was wasted on Oenone.

  ‘Now,’ said Oenone, drawing them round her in Theodora’s room. ‘Geoffrey and I want to know all about it. Who, for example, has been interviewed by the police?’

  ‘I have,’ Archie, Tom and Theodora answered together.

  ‘Tell,’ said Oenone to Archie.

  ‘Well,’ said Archie, ‘a man called Inspector Semper tracked me down at the Independent about lunchtime yesterday, Thursday. I’d just sold the idea of an article on the C of E being used by politicians for political ends as per instruction,’ he nodded at Theodora, ‘when this chap Semper turned up fresh from unearthing your Archimandrite from his tomb in your churchyard.’ He grinned at Geoffrey. ‘Well, of course I had to reveal my sources.’

  ‘Which led the excellent inspector to me,’ Tom took up. ‘Sources close to Ecclesia Place, as they say. I must admit I had a really most agreeable time with Semper. He seemed to me to be remarkably quick on the uptake, not at all like the police I met as a student.’

  Theodora wondered what police those would have been. Perhaps he had peddled his bicycle furiously in Reading in a built-up area.

  ‘Well,’ Tom was pressing on, ‘I was all for doing it very quietly and offered to take him to the Calf and have a private chat. He didn’t want that. He made quite an interesting remark, I thought, about the need for openness and how it “might do the top brass good to see that nothing could now be hidden.” In fact he quoted Latin at me which I didn’t quite get. “Nil inulta remanebit”?’ Tom looked at Theodora.

  ‘It’s a line from the Dies Irae, a canticle sometimes sung at a Requiem Mass. It speaks of the Day of Judgement on which nothing shall remain unavenged. What a very educated policeman, or perhaps a Roman Catholic. And how apposite!’

  ‘So we did it in style.’ Tom took pleasure in the memory. ‘He got Ashwood to show him up and told him to ring Clutch and tell him that when he’d finished with me he’d like to have a word with him. By the time he’d come up the main staircase and penetrated to my loft, his presence was all over the Place. Of course there was nothing at that point generally known about the discovery of the body.’

  ‘So what were you able to tell him?’ Oenone kept him on task.

  ‘I told him about my finding the body and then losing it. I told him about the photograph of the true Archimandrite and the presence of the false one. I told him about the machinations of the C of E which their records suggest have been prompted by the Foreign Office for strictly nonreligious ends.’

  ‘And what was his response?’ Geoffrey was curious.

  ‘He clearly thinks he can get us all, at the very least, on the grounds of failing to report a death, i.e. tell them about the body. He wants more proof as to the canon or canons having moved it after I had moved it. Also there is something about impersonating, but he wasn’t too clear whether that was an offence. I think he feels impersonating foreigners doesn’t count. And anyway I didn’t know anything about the impersonation until much later and if Clutch knew about it, he would only be assisting in it. They’d have to find the false Archimandrite and take him in.’

  ‘Dear me, does that mean they’ll prosecute you?’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so.’ Tom was enthusiastic. ‘The whole prison culture thing, a closed institution, is absolutely fascinating. Lots and lots of research to be done in that area. And of course it would be interesting to see how Clutch etc reacted to prison conditions.’

  ‘I had a friend who did a stretch at Ford,’ Archie said conversationally. ‘He said it was far more exclusive than your average public school nowadays.’

  ‘And more comfortable,’ Geoffrey offered.

  ‘Not hard,’ agreed Archie, who thought of his hideous years at Loretto.

  ‘Can’t they do anything else to put an end to Clutch and Co.?’ Was she being vindictive? Theodora wondered.

  ‘It isn’t an offence apparently to work for the Foreign Office’s interests.’ Archie was dry.

  ‘Not even if you don’t declare to your own institution that that is what you’re doing?’ Oenone was indignant. In some ways, Theodora thought, Oenone had an absolutely straightforward sense of honour which had nothing to do with social advancement.

  ‘That’s for the Church to decide, as Morely-Trump might say.’

  ‘Much depends on how the Archimandrite died.’ Tom held out some hope for the women. ‘At the moment they don’t know. If it wasn’t natural causes, we may all of us be in a different establishment from Ford.’

  ‘How did the body get from the Place to the tomb?’ Archie inquired.

  Theodora looked at Geoffrey. ‘Will you or shall I?’

  ‘I do feel responsible for Anona,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘We all feel responsible for Anona,’ Theodora reassured him. ‘It’s a way she has. She’s terribly successful at it.’

  ‘Anona was married to Truegrave.’ Geoffrey got to the point. ‘The marriage broke up three years ago.’

  Oenone leaned forward and said in a low voice to Theodora as though it might be offensive to the gentlemen, ‘She found he preferred men to women.

  ‘I’m amazed he could be acceptable to either,’ Theodora murmured back.

  ‘She’s never really got to terms with it,’ Geoffrey went on. ‘Gilbert says she talks about waiting and how important it is to keep actively waiting, sort of concentrating on the objects of affection to such a point of intensity that they are drawn back to you.’

  ‘I’ve known Labradors like that,’ Oenone contributed. ‘They concentrate so hard on a dish on the table that that dish is drawn towards them.’

  Theodora thought how love blinds even intelligent men since Geoffrey appeared to find this fatuousness perfectly acceptable. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘she devised a plan to draw Bernhardt back to her by getting hold of things he might w
ant.’

  ‘The cross,’ Theodora offered.

  ‘Gilbert knew about that.’ Geoffrey was almost apologetic. ‘She apparently came over here to your flat one lunchtime, it must have been Tuesday, and found the door had been forced. She asserted that the cross was lying around.’

  ‘A gross distortion of the truth!’ Theodora exclaimed. ‘She must have gone through my Barbour pockets to find it. It is quite incredible that the local talent should break in and take nothing from me but that a churchwoman married to a senior cleric should stoop to thieving.’

  Tom thought her values were most attractive and unusual. He smiled and hoped to hear more.

  ‘How did she connect it with the body?’ Archie wanted to know.

  ‘Maggie found the body,’ Tom said unexpectedly. ‘Semper shared that fact with me. Or at least he didn’t quite put it like that. He said that traces of boat pitch had been found on the suiting of the Archimandrite and these had been traced to a rowing boat which is used by Maggie.’

  ‘So she came across it in the rubbish outside the Place on Monday night?’ Theodora said.

  ‘Of course, it would look quite reasonable to Maggie to put it in a tomb in a churchyard. After all, that’s where bodies usually go.’ Tom liked the rationality of the thing.

  ‘Where Anona found it,’ Theodora concluded.

  ‘No. Maggie was friendly with Anona,’ Geoffrey said. ‘They used to go on boat trips together in Maggie’s dinghy. Maggie thinks the river has healing qualities. She saw Anona’s need and catered for it. So when she’d brought the Archimandrite’s body on its last journey, she pottered across to the Foundation and rooted out Anona to give her a hand at the burial in the tomb.’

  ‘But Anona said something about Bernhardt coming and finding it there. What did she mean?’

  ‘Anona knew quite a lot about Bernhardt’s affairs and his movements. I gather she was in and out of the Place fairly often. She knew that he was heavily involved with Azbarnahi affairs.’

  ‘The smell,’ said Theodora suddenly. ‘The smell in my room and the smell in Truegrave’s office. It was Anona’s scent. She did his office over.’

  ‘Right. And what she found was that a deal had been struck with one of the Turannidi scions.’

  ‘To the effect that?’ Archie leaned forward.

  The telephone bell startled them. Theodora leaned over. ‘It’s for you,’ she said to Tom. ‘Inspector Semper.’

  No one made any attempt not to listen.

  When he had finished, Tom turned back to them. ‘They’ve found he died from a heart attack.’

  ‘So you probably won’t go to prison,’ Oenone said.

  ‘Pity,’ said Tom. ‘Some other time I hope.’

  Obsequies

  ‘Political power is not the same as spiritual power.’

  The cold draught ruffled the leaves of the sober wreaths and the white lilies which decorated the church. The west window of St Sylvester’s caught the pale November light and refracted it through the greens and golds of the Kempe design to make a carpet of blurred colour on the floor under the tower.

  ‘Only death comes from confusing them.’ Geoffrey’s quiet tone had no trace of rhetoric. He spoke the sober truth, Theodora thought as she watched him from her deacon’s stall. It had been a difficult service to arrange, she’d heard. The Diocesan had been told to have a memorial service for someone he had never met, the Archimandrite of Azbarnah, and of whom, she suspected, he might not have approved. He’d rung the Foreign Office for help and got someone called Morely-Trump who had emphasised that relations with Azbarnah were really terribly important and that since the Church had made such a mess of them, it would indeed be only civil to hold some sort of service in memory of the dead prelate. Though of course it was entirely a matter for the Church. The Diocesan had done his best. He’d had a long discussion with Geoffrey; he’d been briefed by the Archbishop. He’d thought of ringing Ecclesia Place for help but then remembered. Canon Clutch had had a heart attack and was in hospital. Canon Truegrave’s tragic accident in the private plane of a member of the Turannidi family over Mount Dovraki had taken him from the scene. As for Canon Teape, there had been silence at the end of the telephone. It had emerged that the Canon was in a remand prison, something to do with evasion of customs duty on antique stolen goods.

  ‘Political power,’ Geoffrey continued, ‘is imposed from without, spiritual power comes from within. Political power rests ultimately on force and fear; fear that we shall lose something precious to us. But mortal spoils cannot save us. What can be taken from us was never ours, never precious or worthy in the first place. Religious power, on the other hand, working within our very souls, stems from God alone, Who is closer to us than our own skin.’

  Theodora looked down at the scattering of disparate souls sitting well apart from each other in the huge church. At the back were five slab-faced men in fur coats who she supposed must be representing the Azbarnah side of things. Nearer the front she glimpsed Anona, wearing a black headscarf framing a pallid face and vacant eyes, sitting next to Gilbert Racy who looked lost in prayer. On Anona’s other side sat Oenone gazing supportively at her husband. Behind her in a new-looking overcoat was Tom Logg, taking it all in, interested, curious about someone else’s work space. She felt a rush of gratitude that there were such innocent, uncorrupted souls as Tom still about. Next to him, looking pious, was Archie Douglas. It was really rather good of him to turn out given that he was now such a rising figure on the box.

  ‘The political life, the life of the secular world, is the life which builds up the ego from the outside, which tempts us to define ourselves by our talents or possessions or place, by the amount of fear we can inspire in others, by the number of people we can coerce. The religious life is the steady effort to erode that grasping ego, from the inside, through the life of prayer and discipline. It is the Church’s task to teach us how to live that religious life. It is the Church’s only task; it is only the Church’s task.’

  Theodora thought of Canon Clutch who had followed his ego to the point where he had become the creature of his own vanity and made himself the willing tool of people who had far from religious ends. She thought of Canon Truegrave who had wanted to be a power in some strange political land. She thought of Canon Teape who had collected church silver and wanted to enlarge his collection so much that he’d not cared at all about the means of doing so. They had seen death, the death of a priest, as an inconvenience, an irritating accident to be got round. They’d shuffled the body of a human being around as though it were meat. And in so doing they degraded both it and themselves. Tomorrow the Diet would vote to decide whether and in what form the connection with the Azbarnah Orthodox Church would continue. Would politics or religion prevail? she wondered.

  Theodora was aware of two late entrants. Maggie was shuffling down the south aisle followed by – who would that be? Of course, Trace, Kevin, from the servants of Ecclesia Place, the poor who shall inherit the earth. How very nice to see them. She wondered if she should offer Maggie her basement for the winter as an alternative to the bench outside the Place.

  She meditated on the nature of political power within the Church which she loved. Of course it was a temptation to bishops and senior clergy besought by the importunate media to say, and by desperate politicians to do something which would heal the world’s ills. But what was the point of Christianity if it could not help them to resist such temptations, to reject the urgencies of the world? All the Church could properly say was, pray, reflect on scripture, cleanse and renew yourself through the sacraments and only then should you act. What TV commentator, what politician would want to hear, would comprehend, such advice? The world wanted instant remedies on its own terms. Bishops should not pander to such desires but did. They took their purple and their privileges and paid the world in Caesar’s coin. No wonder they came a cropper.

  She glanced up at the memorial plaque for Thomas Henry Newcome who lay
buried in the chancel of this Church of St Sylvester which he had spent his fortune to build. The inscription read: ‘In memory of Thomas Henry Newcome 1820–1891 who by his life and doctrine set forth God’s true and lively word.’ It was a simple epitaph for a complex character. He had founded a religious order the purpose of which was to support parish priests in poor areas. What would he have made of this strutting of clergy on national and international stages where they were only too likely to be duped by men far more unscrupulous than they? She thought of Geoffrey about whose talents and priorities she had no doubt. But where would Oenone steer him? And where, she was beginning to wonder, did her own path lie? How and where could she most fruitfully contribute?

  ‘The key is freedom,’ Geoffrey was concluding. ‘In the end, political power must fail, for we must embrace freely, and without the coercion of fear or desire, the life of worship, the life lived towards God. Unless we can freely choose to do this, all is dust and ashes.’

  Theodora thought of her almost empty house. Was that a step in the right direction?