Idol Bones

by D M Greenwood

  ‘I’m looking for Nick,’ Theodora said. ‘Fiddling with his favourite toy, the sound machine aloft, and then off until Evensong.’ Tristram did not look at her.

  ‘I looked in the cathedral but didn’t see him.’

  Tristram changed to folding cassock albs and stacking them neatly on the table. His movements were rapid, expert, charged with energy. His oddly set head made it easy for him to look over other people’s. He often seemed, Theodora realised, to be addressing an audience unseen by his interlocutors. Since Tristram did not seem disposed to offer help, Theodora tried again.

  ‘Has the dean’s death made life difficult for you here?’

  ‘It’s increased the numbers attending services. As you doubtless saw, the eight o’clock Eucharist this morning reached double figures for the first time outside a major festival.’

  Theodora, who had attended the early service, had no means of measuring the usual turnout.‘Ghoulishness or a genuine turning to God?’

  ‘I would not presume to penetrate human hearts,’ Tristram smiled at his unseen audience. ‘You must have gathered that the dean will not be much missed in many quarters.’

  ‘Why?’ There was no point, Theodora felt, in beating about the bush with this subtle snake. If she was to get a feel for motives, never mind the opportunities, she would have to blunder about a bit and see what was thrown up.

  Tristram suddenly expanded as though he felt the need to run off the lead for a bit. Had he bottled up emotions too long, Theodora wondered.

  His high, clear voice sounded as though he were lecturing a group of students in elementary theology.‘It’s a question of charity, isn’t it? Without which we are told we are nothing worth. Charity and sincerity. Let all your discourse be sincere, your converse as the noon day clear.’

  ‘And the dean’s wasn’t?’

  ‘You saw him at his party. He found it difficult to relate to his equals. He needed to feel he was in control and that everyone acknowledged it.’

  ‘You sound as though you’d suffered from that.’ As soon as she said it she realised she’d made a false move. Tristram spared her a single glance from his fishy eye.

  ‘He thought of vergers in a Trollopian mode of resourceful NCOs who would wash his car and be glad to do a bit of buttling for a fiver on the side.’

  ‘You didn’t see your duties in those terms?’

  ‘I have absolutely no objection to turning my hand to any task. Nothing demeans the pure spirit.’ Tristram smiled again to the audience just above Theodora’s head. ‘I spent five years at a public school which still expected lower school boys to fag. No, what annoyed the dean was that I clearly didn’t regard him as my superior, morally, intellectually or socially. He simply happened to have a different job from me. I wasn’t deferential. He couldn’t cope with me.’

  ‘How did it show itself?’

  ‘I doubt if I should have lasted much longer here if he’d lived.’

  ‘Would you have minded?’

  ‘It’s convenient for me at the moment. I have my own reasons for wanting to retain my connexion with the Church.’

  Theodora glanced at the Remington … ‘It’s good copy, isn’t it?’

  ‘If I ever wanted to write, I think I could hardly do better,’ Tristram replied gravely. ‘Few would believe the extremities of behaviour of its senior professional members.’

  It was Theodora’s turn to smile. ‘I would … I was born into a clerical family. However, I’m wasting your time. I’d better see if I can find Nick.’

  Henry Clement, the suffragan bishop, the most senior cleric in the diocese in the absence in America of the diocesan bishop, put the Bow Examiner down on his desk. In spite of the crocuses and snowdrops prettily showing beneath the wych elm in the centre of his view from the Quecourt library window, he felt as though a huge weight was pressing on his head and chest. All his life, from his earliest manhood, he had laboured without sparing himself to support and extend the Church’s work as he had been brought up to understand it. He’d graduated from participating in to presiding over meetings without number, from PCCs and Deanery synods, church lads and industrial missions to general synod committees and cathedral chapters. His gentleness, his modest scholarship, his seamless courtesy and, he admitted it, his family connexions had made it almost inevitable that he should end a bishop. He had not had to strive or jockey. He wore his rank most becomingly. There was no trace of vanity or pomposity. He had no taste for administration but he had cultivated a life of prayer which irrigated his every choice and utterance. He knew himself respected, even loved. Intellectually he had never doubted the central truths of Christianity that salvation can come only through the imitation of Christ in innocent suffering.

  He conceived the Church as the natural home of the good-willed and well-mannered. There was no problem which could not be solved by recourse to one or both of these. Of course he had noticed that times had changed. People were less mannerly than previously. This had not seemed to him to require an alteration in his own excellent conduct. It occurred to him sometimes that society wanted the Church to change but he could not think in what ways it could or ought to do so, without bringing the whole traditional edifice tumbling down. Did the Church’s social and political structures reflect the religious teachings of its founder? Of late he had wondered. He looked again at the Examiner’s offending article. What was it all for if the modern world treated the Church like this?

  ‘Death of a Dean Ushers in New Age’ ran the headline. It was not quite an obituary, though passing reference was made to the tragic and unsolved death of the dean. But, in the main, the article was an attack on the cathedral as a repository of Christian values. ‘What do they do?’, was the recurring theme of the writing, where the ‘they’ clearly referred to the chapter. ‘Do they comfort the bereaved? Do they house the homeless? Do they teach the ignorant? Do they foster scholarship? Are they patrons of the arts?’ The writer hammered on, placing his resounding ‘no’ in capital letters in answer to each question. ‘Do they live the simple lives of the Franciscan, setting us an example of humility and poverty and inspiring the world by the quality of their own lives?’ The writer didn’t even bother to put a ‘no’ in answer to this one. ‘Do they offer regular and uplifting worship to Almighty God?’ his peroration thundered.‘Not recently, as those who attended the late dean’s installation will remember. What they are quite good at is filling in their entries in Who’s Who and paying their subscriptions to the Athenaeum. They have yet to learn that rushing from meeting to meeting is not the same as work. They fill their diaries but not their minds,’ the author concluded with a Churchillian flourish. ‘They fill their coffers by persecuting the innocent and powerless. Our readers will recall that the strip of land, on which the little group of do-gooders called the Hollowmen are encamped, is due to be sold over their heads by the owners. Those owners are the dean and chapter of Bow St Aelfric cathedral. They intend to put up some much unneeded office blocks. It all seems a long way from Jesus of Nazareth. Do we need new blood in the Church of England?’ the writer ended by inquiring. ‘Do we even need a new religion? Has the time of the Janus come?’

  The bishop blanched. Then with unwonted decisiveness he picked up the telephone, managed after only two attempts to dial the right number and wondered if it would be at all possible for Miss Braithwaite to spare him a moment of her valuable time. Had she by any chance seen the article in the Bow Examiner?

  Theodora, ensconced happily with a coffee cup beside a large wood fire in the clerical flat, a pile of Canon Millhaven’s documents in front of her, pulled the paper across the table. Her eye skimmed the column. Good undergraduate stuff, she thought. She rather admired the rhetorical devices. Plenty of vigorous hatred there as well as one or two pertinent questions.

  ‘I wondered whether you’d made any progress in the matter of discovering the authorship of these things?’ For the bishop, the tone was almost sharp.

  Theodora was glad she was on the
phone and did not have to deal with the eye contact as well. ‘I have a theory,’ she answered cautiously.

  ‘To what effect?’

  ‘I think it may be a member of the cathedral staff.’

  ‘By staff, I take it you do not mean clergy.’

  ‘No,’ said Theodora, ‘I don’t think it’s one of the clergy.’ She forbore to say that with the dean dead she hardly thought any of them could turn a sentence to match those of ‘Pathfinder’.

  ‘I see. That does indeed account for his knowledge, though it does not excuse his ingratitude.’

  It occurred to Theodora to wonder for what the non-clergy staff were supposed to be grateful. Beautiful buildings perhaps but when you’d said that, you’d said it all.

  ‘Look,’ Theodora said, stung to honesty and plain speaking in the light of the bishop’s skimpolery.‘First, I can’t for certain prove what I suspect. It all depends on a typewriter face. Secondly, what do you want to do with him or her if you do know who they are? Thirdly, if, as I think likely, this may be a last blast, why not let well alone?’ She did not add the fourth possibility, that he should actually address the criticism made in the articles and at the very least consider the point of view of the unbelieving world.

  There was a silence while the bishop chewed this one over. Finally he said, ‘You mean it might do the church more harm than good to uncover the writer?’

  Theodora mentally congratulated him on his grasp. ‘It’s a possibility,’ she admitted, ‘would you not say?’

  ‘But what if these attacks are connected with the dean’s murder?’

  Theodora could hear the reluctance in the bishop’s tone. She commended his courage in facing the possibility. Say he was right, say someone, a madman, a neurotic, was writing these things, say the dean had discovered his or her identity and the person simply slit the dean’s throat to avoid being unmasked. Theodora caught herself up. The tone of the articles though passionate was rational, eminently sane. She had to admit it was no more than was being said by the enlightened in both parish and diocese … She felt it safe therefore to say, ‘It’s simply, as I said, that I lack proof.’

  ‘Did you say something about a typeface?’ The bishop’s tone was milder as though he’d ceased to blame her for the insolence of the writer.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a typed copy of the “View from a Pew” article,’ said the bishop briskly. ‘I picked it up from the new machine in the cathedral office on Monday.’

  The devil you did, Theodora did not say. ‘Might I have a look at it? I could call this afternoon if you were agreeable.’

  ‘I am entirely at your disposal,’ said the bishop whose diary, though not it was fair to say his mind, was empty.

  Canon Riddable gazed at Inspector Spruce with disbelief. Why wasn’t the man frightened of him? Riddable had always found that if he shouted loud enough and thumped the table hard enough, people (pupils, laymen, fellow clergy) had scuttled for cover. He had brought throwing tantrums up to an art form. It served him as a pattern for most human intercourse. Mrs Perfect could have told them. For some reason he couldn’t at all fathom, on this occasion the technique hadn’t worked. He had invoked his tutelary deities, the bishop, the chief constable, to no effect. The man just went on gazing at him, repeating the same horribly threatening question. Perhaps the fellow hadn’t understood that he was a residentiary canon.

  ‘You’ll appreciate, Inspector,’ his tone was almost forgiving, ‘that I’m a member of chapter here. I’m a residentiary canon. I have,’ he smiled deprecatingly, ‘a certain amount of clout.’

  Spruce nodded, his face expressionless. ‘The time of your return from the dean’s party …’ he began again.

  Riddable interrupted him. ‘I’m simply not prepared to allow this line of questioning to continue. I find it totally unacceptable.’ Surely the fellow would get the point.

  Spruce continued to gaze at him. ‘We’re investigating a man’s murder, Canon.Your dean’s murder to be precise. Times are very important.You’ll appreciate that. Now, your time of return from …’ he began again.

  Riddable leaned forward suddenly and banged the desk with the flat of his hand. ‘I thought I had made myself clear. If you suppose this sort of behaviour will get you anywhere, you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.’ He leaned back with finality, appearing to suppose the interview was now at an end.

  Spruce thought how very pleasant it would be to take the oaf by the ears and shake his eyes out. He caught himself up. How contagious violence was. So often in his career he’d seen the beer glass shoved into the face, the boot swinging towards the head on the ground. All of a piece, bullying, only a matter of degree. It starts behind the bike sheds and ends apparently in canons’ stalls. He was disconcerted, though, to find it in the Church when it was his own profession which was so often accused of practising it. He gave no appearance of having noticed anything odd in Canon Riddable’s behaviour. ‘You say you returned to the Precentory with Mrs Riddable at twelve-ten.’

  Riddable rose to his ungainly feet. He was breathing heavily as he swerved towards the door. In front of it stood Sergeant Mules, foursquare. For a moment it looked as though the canon might take a swing at him. Mules was hoping he might. Riddable said without turning round, ‘Tell your man to get out of my way.’

  Spruce allowed quite a long pause, judging that the adrenaline which the canon had summoned to work himself up to make a physical gesture would evaporate. Then he said very quietly. ‘There’s a police car outside, Sergeant. We’ll be taking Canon Riddable to the station for questioning.’

  Riddable hesitated. Spruce, who knew that if he let up the pressure for a moment, the canon would bounce back like Toad, said, ‘I take it you have no objection to coming down to the station to help us with our inquiries?’

  ‘Look,’ said Riddable, his tone suggesting he was making allowances for a too importunate curate, ‘I can give you ten minutes’ maximum. I’m absolutely up to my eyes. The diary,’ he gestured, ‘is choc-a-bloc.’ He shook his head as though burdened with a cabinet minister’s commitments. He sat down again. Mules relaxed.

  ‘Well now, Canon,’ Spruce too had changed his tone. It suggested he was dealing with a backward child unable to make connexion at the abstract level but with whom he was prepared to be patient. How much of Riddable’s temper was simulated, he wondered, and how much real, the inadequate reaction of an inadequate man. He felt sudden pity for him. How appalling to be Riddable. Had he killed the dean? He had the temper but not the guts. Certainly not the guts to drag the body from the Deanery door and lay it out in front of the Janus. However, in the light of what Theodora had said there might be a motive worth probing and he was not disposed to let Riddable off the hook again, given his nasty manners. He’d see how far he could push him about times, then he’d turn to the other matter.

  Carefully Spruce took him through the times.

  ‘You were seen returning to the Precentory later than the time of twelveten.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose that,’ Spruce was parodying Riddable’s diction. He rather enjoyed that. But in the end, even with the threat of being taken to the station hovering unspoken between the two of them, the most that Riddable would agree to was that he’d left Mrs Riddable at the Precentory and gone back to see the dean about a chapter matter.

  ‘What time did you finish your interview with the dean?’ Riddable agreed to twelve-thirty.

  ‘What did you go back to see the dean about at that time of night?’ ‘Chapter business.’

  ‘What business?’ Spruce pressed. For a moment it looked as though there was going to be a return to the I-am-not-prepared-to line. Then Riddable thought better of it. Riddable was beginning to mumble. His secretary could have told Spruce that when Riddable mumbled he’d given in.

  ‘You’ll appreciate, Inspector, that the dean was new in office, new to his post. I had to put him right on one or two points, senior clergy an
d all that.’ Riddable’s tone suggested that the conversation had moved on to a more socially intimate level.

  ‘What about?’ Spruce asked again.

  Riddable looked desperate. ‘Service times,’ he said at last. ‘I had to set him right on the times of the services.’

  Spruce looked incredulous. ‘How?’

  ‘He wanted to lengthen them,’ said Riddable with distaste.

  Spruce allowed himself a smile of disbelief.Then he pulled a file towards him and took out the note he’d received from Theodora just before he’d started the interview. If he couldn’t quite clinch the affair with Riddable in the matter of times, perhaps he could do something in the line of motive. Theodora’s note read, ‘Ivan Markewicz, editor of CHR, says Dean Stream advised rejection of Riddable’s article on grounds of poor quality. Ivan had communicated this to Riddable.’ Spruce took his time to read the note through again. He was determined to control the tempo of the interview. He guessed Riddable felt most comfortable making his point, or hurling his abuse and then marching out before he had to listen to alternative views. He’s been thoroughly spoilt, Spruce thought suddenly, reverting to the judgements of his childhood.