Idol Bones

by D M Greenwood

  Tim was appalled. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Ben, don’t.’

  ‘Just testing,’ Ben said clutching at a phrase he’d heard. Tim’s tone frightened him. They stood in a row as though about to start some ritual. Ben looked up at Tim. Tim swung round to face Theodora, looking for help with something he could no longer cope with.

  ‘Ben,’ she said gently over the top of Tim’s head. ‘Have you learned to tell the time?’

  Ben gazed at her for a moment, rather, Tim thought as he surveyed the two of them, as the mouse had looked at him a few moments ago. Then to Tim’s surprise Ben burst into tears.‘It was the half that comes after twelve,’ he said through his gulps.

  ‘Yes,’ said Theodora. ‘I see. Did you make a mistake the first time you told us?’

  Ben nodded, looking away from her. Then suddenly he turned his face towards her, his large grey eyes full of sincerity, and said, ‘But I did see someone coming from the cathedral later. I mean after Daddy had come home.’ He looked at Theodora as though inviting her to question him. She would have none of it and simply looked steadily back at him.

  ‘I saw the man who does the digging, the archaeologist,’ he paused, ‘and before him there was a lady. I don’t know which one. I couldn’t see her very well.’

  He smiled at Theodora with real pleasure.

  Spruce turned in his pacing of the Deanery hall for the seventh time. He looked up at the face of the long-case clock. It ticked steadily back at him. It was indecent, Spruce felt, that the clock should tick on when its owner was dead. He looked round the hall. Its floor was of polished grey stone, the risers of the uncarpeted wooden stair were shallow, the panelling which covered all four walls was a foot taller than he was. Portraits of past deans marched up the staircase and round the gallery above. He was aware how much the building imposed its own style of living. Only certain sorts of movement, only certain ways of thinking were possible here. That’s why buildings are important, he thought, they tell us how to behave. He thought of the cathedral. Then he thought of the dean. Had the dean felt this? Had he welcomed it or had he been daunted by it as Spruce was?

  He was depressed by how little he knew of the dean forty-eight hours after his murder, how little progress he’d made towards solving the crime. All the information he’d been able to gain was on data base, every statement, every address, even a graphics diagram of the scene of the murder. He was fast, he was accurate. He was known for both. But he had no pattern. The cathedral, the Janus, the Hollow, how did they relate to each other and to the murder of, presumably, a religious man, anyway a professional churchman?

  The police still had no certain timetable of his movements prior to his death. No weapon had been found, no motive had come to light. None of the suspects looked all that suspicious. He’d started the day with a testing twenty minutes with his superintendent who’d admitted in a fatherly way that he’d been leant on by his chief constable. The bishop suffragan had inquired, Canon Riddable had complained, the diocesan secretary had wanted to know, the chancellor (whatever that was) of the diocese had suggested. In a word the diocesan establishment had united to make matters as difficult and unpleasant as possible for him and his men. They’d none of them been able to add to the sum of knowledge about the crime: clerical convenience and importance appeared to be their first and only consideration.

  The more he contemplated these cathedral clergy the less he understood them, their attitudes and presuppositions seemed to belong to another world. What did they think they were doing? He compared them with his own father who had been a methodist lay preacher all his working life. When he wasn’t organising the local union and raising funds for the Wesleyan old people’s home, he’d dug his allotment, all of which his son still thought admirable activities. Spruce’s eye caught that of a seventeenth-century dean who had been painted standing beside a Deanery window with a view of the double-towered cathedral in the background. In the portrait the dean’s hand rested on a skull. That’s more like it, Spruce said to himself. That’s more of the proper religious attitude. That’s what they should be doing for us, for themselves, nowadays, reminding us of death. Nothing like a good memento mori.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting,’ said Theodora as she pushed the Deanery door closed behind her. ‘I’ve just met the Riddable children.’

  ‘The question is,’ she concluded when she had shared her information with Spruce, ‘can we trust young Riddable this time about the timing of his father’s movements and his observation of these two other people, presumably Fresh and a woman?’

  Spruce nodded. ‘The little tyke. What did he think he was doing first time round?’

  ‘Shopping his father for murder.’

  ‘Not a pretty boy.’

  ‘Not a pretty father, by all accounts.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Spruce recollecting. ‘How would you say that left us as regards Riddable as a suspect?’

  ‘If we can rely on Ben for the timing it means that he couldn’t have done it. If we can’t rely on Ben then he might have done it. And if we believe Ivan Markewicz Riddable had a motive.’

  ‘What exactly did your friend Markewicz say?’ Spruce inquired.

  ‘He told me Riddable had asked him to publish this thing he’d written. Markewicz didn’t think it was up to scratch but didn’t quite like to say so off his own bat. So he sent it to the dean and asked him what he thought. The dean was quite eloquent, according to Ivan, on how bad it was. So Ivan felt strong enough to refuse the article and told Riddable what the dean had said.’

  Spruce grinned. ‘Was that tactful, or usual even?’

  ‘Neither, but I gather he didn’t care for Riddable who exercised his usual charm of manner and managed to be both arrogant and importunate. He told Ivan three times that he was a residentiary canon and seemed to suppose this guaranteed the quality of his writing.’

  ‘The point is, would Riddable’s being angry at the dean about the article be a motive for murder?’ Spruce sounded doubtful.

  Theodora shook her head.‘Only if one assumes a quarrel. I can imagine Riddable killing someone in anger by accident. I can’t imagine him cutting a man’s throat and lugging him thirty yards to deposit him in front of the Janus.’

  Spruce sighed. ‘If it weren’t clergy, I’d pull him down the station and lean on him. But what with the superintendent and the chief constable and uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, I do really need more than a scholar’s tiff and a seven-year-old liar’s fantasies to go on.’

  Theodora sympathised.‘What about the alternatives? The archaeologist Ben Riddable mentioned.’

  ‘I’ll have another go at Fresh,’ said Spruce.‘In his statement of yesterday, he said he’d left the close about eight-thirty in the evening and gone to see a bee-keeper at Quecourt. He got back to the Hollow about midnight. The bee-keeping bit was right enough. The Hollow I’m not so sure about. The woman, what’s her name. Parish, Stella Parish, had thought she’d heard Fresh come in but wasn’t sure.’

  Theodora marked the interesting fact that she’d supposed that Stella and Oliver shared a bed and if Spruce’s statement was right, they didn’t. How very careful one did have to be.

  Theodora prowled round the hall, pacing the path that Spruce had taken a moment or two previously. Spruce squatted on the bottom step of the stairs. ‘What about the woman figure Ben says he saw in addition to Fresh, if it was Fresh? Would that be Canon Millhaven?’

  ‘There aren’t many other women in the close. Mrs Riddable says she was tucked up in bed.’

  ‘What’s the order of appearance then if we trust Ben?’

  Spruce ticked it off on his fingers. ‘The party ends circa midnight and the Riddables come home together across the close. That’s according to the Riddable daughter. Then Canon Riddable goes back to tell the dean the services are too long. He returns according to Ben at half past twelve. Then also according to the Riddable daughter, the dean comes out of the Deanery and heads towards the cathedral, time, soon afte
r the return of her father, say twelve-forty. After that Ben, if he’s telling the truth, sees the dean come out of the cathedral followed by, presumably, Fresh and an unknown woman, possibly Canon Millhaven.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Stroke of one?’

  ‘Too many ones,’ said Theodora.

  ‘There’s the one for twelve-thirty, the one for one and the one for onethirty.’ Spruce recited like an incantation. ‘The one for one-thirty is too late because the dean’s watch tells us he was dead by ten past one. The one for twelve-thirty is too early, if we believe the Riddables that they were all back in the Precentory by then. What we’re looking for is people who were about and murderously inclined at one a.m. Fresh and Millhaven perhaps.’

  Theodora contemplated the idea of either of those killing the dean and thought how very much she did not want it to be the case She thought of Geoffrey’s information about Tristram Knight which she had not yet shared with Spruce.

  ‘Would it be a good idea,’ Theodora said hesitantly, ‘to check with the vergers again, Knight and Nick Squires to see if they noticed anyone else lingering from the party?’

  Spruce recognised her feelings. ‘Yes. Meanwhile I wondered if you could bear to go through the dean’s effects with me. In particular we got some stuff out of his safe which I’d like your views on. It’s time we had a motive.’

  ‘What have you got on the dean’s background?’ Theodora inquired as they mounted the stairs.

  ‘Precious little. His parents are dead. He was an only child. His executors are his bank. He’s got a cousin in Canada who gets his cash, about eight thousand. His college gets his books. The furniture here, I gather belonged to the old dean who left it to the Diocesan Board of Finance on the understanding it should stay in situ.’

  Theodora was amused. ‘Perhaps the old dean was worldly enough to realise his successors might not have large private incomes and affluent inheritances. You need such big pieces to fill rooms this size.’

  Two floors up they came to rest in the dean’s bedroom. There was nothing in it, nothing, that is to say, to reveal the character of the man. There was a narrow single bed, a table which held the English Missal and an Office Book with the purple marker for Ash Wednesday in place. Over the bed was a small crucifix.

  Theodora looked round with embarrassment. ‘It is the ultimate in voyeurism, judging a man by his effects.’

  ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ said Spruce who perhaps felt her scruples as a criticism of his own trade.

  ‘It’s not at all the same thing,’ Theodora snapped. ‘Would you care to be judged by your waistcoats?’

  ‘Talking of clothes,’ said Spruce equably, ‘there’s nothing in his wardrobe except clerical dress. Would you say that was usual?’

  It was on the tip of Theodora’s tongue to say that she wasn’t in the habit of peering into the closets of celibate priests. Did the man not realise there were limits to her knowledge of clerical matters? ‘It does seem a bit extreme,’ she admitted cautiously.

  Her eye swept the room. There was nothing personal in it, nothing to link him to anything except the church. Was this bareness the austerity of a disciplined life, or had he feared just such an intrusion as this and determined that there should be no evidence to convict him? But convict him of what, Theodora wondered. Then she recalled Stella’s anecdote about the St Crispin’s refuge and her previous remark: ‘He lacks moral courage.’ Certainly he lacked the courage to make any personal display. He was content to live amongst another man’s inherited furniture and had on his own account wanted to add practically nothing. She took in the shelf above the wash handbasin in the corner of the room. Shaving brush and soap, toothbrush and powder and hand soap were neatly arranged. Surely he must have been the last man in England to use coal tar soap.

  In the study on the ground floor there was the same feeling of a life lived out of very little. The books were solid reference texts, Hastings, Cross, a selection from Migne, an anthology of passages from modern Christian Catholic theologians. It was a collection for someone who wanted to show knowledge rather than to explore or possess it.

  Spruce busied himself with keys to open the old-fashioned safe in the far corner of the room. Theodora wandered about trying to recall how the room had looked when she had glanced in on the night of the party. Her eye was caught by a box file balanced on the bookcase shelf beneath a gap from which it had clearly been taken. Idly she pressed the spring catch and glanced at the contents. It was filled with letters and press cuttings. Both stretched back over thirty years. The letters seemed to be all congratulatory. ‘Vincent, thank you for a really excellent sermon, packed with meat in your usual style’, read one card bearing the address of a lately deceased Bishop of London.‘Dear Father, it was such a comfort to have you take Jeremy’s funeral,’ read another. Mixed in were press reports of his public appearances, the odd gossip columnist mention, a thoughtful review of a reissue of his early anthology of spiritual advice “Saving Souls” from the Church Times. The last cutting laid on top of the pile was the Bow Examiner’s report of his installation. Was this his one concession to personality?

  Theodora was about to replace the file in its place, when her eye was caught by a cutting yellower and older than the ones which surrounded it. The headline leaped at her. ‘St Crispin’s Refuge: Volunteer Helper Speaks Out’ ran the headline. It went on, ‘Stella Parish, 28, a volunteer helper for three years at St Crispin’s by Wapping Steps roundly condemned the church authorities for closing the Refuge yesterday. “There’s no danger,” she told our reporter on the steps of the refuge “and it’s made half a dozen very vulnerable men homeless.” We contacted one of the inmates, Tristram Knight, a former RN gunner …’. Theodora stopped. She turned to Spruce who was having difficulty with the lock of the safe. Swiftly she scanned the rest of the brief report. Then she closed the file and replaced it.

  ‘You can read a balance sheet I take it,’ Spruce said as he placed the gleanings from the safe on the dean’s desk.

  ‘Can you look at this lot and from your experience of how “Friends of the Cathedral” funds work, let me know what you think?’

  ‘The only experience I’ve had of cathedral finances was as a very junior deacon attached to the cathedral in Nairobi.’

  ‘Well, see what you make of this,’ Spruce pressed.

  Theodora found his faith in her knowledge of clerical matters, whether of the sartorial customs of Anglo-Catholic clergy or of the financial practices of cathedrals, rather touching. She took a pencil and sheet of paper from the immaculate pad on the dean’s desk and set to work.

  Half an hour later she leaned back in the chair. ‘I suppose you want me to say that Archdeacon Gold is either very slipshod or downright dishonest?’

  Spruce smiled with relief. ‘I thought I’d get your impression before we set an accountant on. Now, would the dean have known that Gold was fiddling the books, do you suppose?’

  ‘It would be unusual for these things,’ she indicated the sheets of figures, ‘to be in the dean’s private safe unless he was scrutinising them. They would more usually be kept in the cathedral office.’

  Spruce smiled contentedly. ‘Would the dean have revealed that knowledge, if he had it, to Gold?’

  Theodora tapped her pencil on the paper pad. ‘Presumably you haven’t questioned Gold?’

  Spruce shook his head. ‘Not about any previous conversation he might have had with the dean prior to the party. His statement about his movements on the night of the murder after the party, you may remember, claimed he spent the night at Brian Brace’s, the chairman of the County Council Finance Committee. However, in the light of this we’ll have another go at him and see if we can crack it. I’d like to get somebody charged with something out of all this even if it’s only fraud.’

  Theodora smiled at him pityingly. ‘You won’t manage that,’ she said confidently. ‘The church will never press charges. He wouldn’t be allowed to go on as an archdeacon, bu
t he’d not be sent for trial.’

  Spruce was scandalised. ‘But it’s dishonest.’

  ‘Maybe, but the Christian tradition stemming from St Paul advises no recourse to pagan law courts to settle disputes between Christians. This is nowadays transmuted into “no dirty linen in public”.’

  ‘The clergy have got to be seen to be morally irreproachable even if they’re not.’

  ‘A less charitable way of putting it,’ said Theodora serenely. ‘I’d concentrate on the murder. Could the man who came out of the cathedral after the dean on the night of the murder be Gold?’

  ‘I thought young Riddable said it was Fresh or anyway the man who dug up the Janus?’

  ‘But is he reliable?’

  Spruce sucked his teeth in irritation. ‘I’m going to have to get a WPC and go over that young man, however much I don’t want to.’

  ‘You mean you’re afraid of what his father might do to him?’

  ‘I could get his mother to be with him. Would you think that might make it easier for him?’

  Theodora considered what she knew and what she felt about Mrs Riddable. ‘She’s deeply manipulative, in my view. So it would depend on what game she was playing with whom as to whether she protected her son.’

  ‘God rot the clergy,’ Spruce burst out in irritation.

  ‘They can be aggravating,’ Theodora agreed without rancour as she rose from her chair at the dean’s desk and prepared to depart. ‘By the way, when I came to the party on Tuesday night, I seem to remember I saw a very large desk diary or day book open on this desk. You haven’t found it, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ said Spruce morosely. ‘We haven’t.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Servants’ Quarters

  First there was the sound of music. Those who had attended the dean’s installation might have recognised Bow Youth Silver Band. Nick pressed the button on the machine and there was a whirring sound. ‘If we do not have God in our hearts, then we have nothing in our hearts,’ said the light, clipped tone of the late dean as he ended his sermon. Nick’s long finger hovered over the control button as the sounds continued. He pressed the fast forward then the playback button. This time there was a woman’s voice and the dean’s answering it. Both voices were angry. There were a couple of clicks and then silence.