Caroline Minuscule (7 page)

Amanda got up, switched on the lamp and drew the curtains. The curtains were old and faded; the cotton velvet was now a restful blue. Dougal looked at them.

‘He sounds a bit mad,' said Amanda briskly. ‘How much money is there?'

They counted half each. Dougal was glad of the activity. He noticed that his hands were behaving as if they belonged to someone else. There was nearly a thousand pounds more than the eleven hundred which Hanbury had promised.

‘The trouble is,' Amanda muttered thoughtfully, ‘you can't laugh off two thousand quid as a hoax. Nobody could afford jokes that cost that much.'

‘Oh, it's not a joke,' Dougal snapped. Amanda looked at him in surprise and he hastily apologized. The letter had disturbed him; it had been painful to read. But he didn't want to tell Amanda that, as she would point out firmly that such feelings were stupid. Instead, Dougal remarked that the deaths of Gumper and Hanbury weren't the usual stuff of comedy and that it seemed more likely that either Hanbury was mad (whether alive or dead) or he was not only dead but also had been telling the truth. He was starting to examine the evidence in favour of and against these alternatives when Amanda said yes, he was probably right, but she did wish he wouldn't talk so pompously.

‘I think he was on the level,' she continued slowly. ‘I mean, no one's
that
irrational. Or not in that way.'

Dougal agreed, trying, on the whole successfully, to ignore the fact that she had called him pompous. It wasn't the first time. She often said it when he had had a few drinks and was enjoying the sound of the syllables spilling out of his mouth. Perhaps he was. His mind returned to the problem facing them. He wondered aloud whether there was any risk that he himself had been noticed by whoever had killed Hanbury – Lee or one of his employees. Amanda said no, in the voice of one thinking of something entirely different, and if he had been seen in Hanbury's company he would probably have heard from Lee by now. No doubt she was right, thought Dougal, but he wished she could have sounded a little more concerned.

‘What are we going to do about it, then?' she said. Dougal was grateful for the ‘we'. He looked at her and thought she looked bright with excitement; what made him apprehensive made her look more beautiful.

‘Either we spend the money and forget Hanbury or – well, go to Rosington, I suppose. That's the only possible thing we can do. The whole business points there, doesn't it? The manuscript, Vernon-Jones and Hanbury's letter. We could just have a weekend there – look round, see where he lived. Maybe we'll have a stroke of luck . . . we wouldn't even know how to sell the bloody things if we got them.'

‘Don't be so gloomy, William. We'll go tomorrow.' Amanda smiled at him and Dougal realized that she had got what she wanted and he was back in favour. And, thinking about it, the prospect of a day or two in a cathedral city seemed very attractive. If they were reasonably cautious there could be no actual danger. Could there?

T
he red Mini had a whimper in its engine and pieces of chewing gum clinging to the ledge beneath the dashboard. Amanda spent much of the journey to Rosington delivering a tirade against drivers who had previously hired the car; cruelty to defenseless machines brought out all her humanity.

Most of their route lay along the A1, a road which Dougal disliked intensely. It was like a tendril of the suburbs crawling northwards, an overgrown offshoot from the North Circular which carried the memory of Neasden and Edmonton up to Scotland.

Dougal wriggled uncomfortably in the passenger seat. He was wearing a new tweed suit, chosen by Amanda, and had had his hair cut. Amanda had insisted that they look respectable. Dougal found that respectability made him itch.

He tried to distract his mind by running over the facts he had learned about Vernon-Jones. They were distressingly few. He had done his research in West Hampstead Public Library, using
Crockford's Clerical Directory
and
The Times
for January 24, which contained Vernon-Jones's obituary.

Little had been added to their meager stock of information about the Canon. Born 1911, educated at St Paul's and St John's College, Cambridge. Ordained Deacon in 1933 and Priest in 1935. Prison chaplaincies led to appointments on various royal commissions connected with penal reform. Canon of Rosington in 1961 and a CBE in 1975.

The obituary concentrated on his prison work . . .
his views on this and on surrounding social issues aroused much debate both within and without the Church of England
.

Amanda turned the Mini on to the B road leading to Rosington. The dark, flat countryside lapped like a black tide towards the road. For three years at Cambridge, Dougal had lived on the rim of the Fens and failed to come to terms with the remorseless way they slid into the chilly waters of the North Sea.

Amanda started singing extracts from
The Sound of Music
.

The road began to rise. Rosington was perched on a rocky outcrop in a sea of fertile mud. The Mini's headlights picked out a sign:
Rosington Urban District Council
, it read,
WELCOME TO ROSINGTON
,
Twinned with Vermeuil-sur-mer
. Beneath the words was a crude picture of the west front of the cathedral, the great rose window above the door framed by a deeply recessed Norman arch with seven members.

The darkness gave way to the yellow glare of street lights. They found their hotel by the traffic lights near the cathedral. Dougal had discovered a town guide at West Hampstead library and booked a room by telephone on the strength of the Crossed Keys' advertisement:
400-year-old hostelry mellowing in the shadow of the Minster . . . medieval charm with modern comfort
.

The hotel was on the corner, with what looked like the main shopping street separating it from the cathedral on the right. To the left of its dingy Georgian facade was an archway, through which Amanda edged the Mini, leading into a courtyard which served as the hotel car park. As she killed the engine, the rain began to drum down with sullen persistence, running down the windscreen like a miniature waterfall.

Amanda shivered. ‘It's spooky.'

Dougal reached over and took her hand from the steering wheel. It was an uncharacteristic remark for her to have made – Amanda thought people imagined their nightmares (which of course they did) because she herself had never had one. ‘I know,' he replied, feeling unusually large and protective. ‘Hammer horror. Should we wait for the phantom ostler or go and find the ghostly butler?'

‘Oh, shut up. My umbrella's on the back seat, I think.'

Normality was restored. Dougal reached round and extracted the umbrella from the clutter which, even after a few hours, littered the back of the car.

He clambered out and struggled round to the boot. Amanda gathered up their belongings from the interior, turned up the collar of her coat and wrapped a headscarf round her hair.

‘We'll have to go round to the front door,' she said as she handed him the briefcase containing, among other things, Dr Pooterkin's magnum opus. ‘If there's a way in from here, it's been blocked by those crates of empties.'

They ran round to the main entrance and into the light and warmth of the hall. To the left was a doorway leading to a nearly empty bar. On the right was a number of chairs and sofas, chintz-covered and elderly, grouped round a fire. Only one chair was occupied – by a large but fragile-looking clergyman in a charcoal suit, reading the
Church Times
. In front of them was the reception desk, flanked by a flight of stairs on one side and a notice board on the other. Dougal took an immediate liking to the place: it looked comfortable and was shabbily pleasant on the eyes.

A large woman – in breadth rather than height – looked up from behind the reception desk as they came in, pushing the
Daily Mirror
aside and patting her perm.

‘Good evening,' she said. ‘Can I be of any assistance?' Then, more naturally, ‘Filthy night, innit?'

‘Yes,' agreed Dougal, uncomfortably aware of a drip on the end of his nose and the puddle which the umbrella was making on the carpet. Just in time, he remembered the name he had given over the telephone. ‘Our name's Massey.' He hoped it didn't sound as untrue as it felt. ‘We telephoned this morning to book a room for the weekend.'

Amanda sneezed, which galvanized the receptionist into action. ‘Bless you! A hot bath and a large Scotch was what my late husband used to swear by. Not that it did him much good in the end. Heart attack. Put the umbrella in the stand over there, love. Massey, you say? Room seven. Sign here, would you?'

Dougal scribbled his new signature in the book. He decided to retain his christian name; a change of surname was unexpectedly confusing, and more radical alteration would become unbearably complicated. He gave an address in Belsize Park, NW3.

‘Are you eating here this evening?' enquired the receptionist. ‘Dinner's between seven and nine.'

‘Um,' said Dougal, looking at his watch: coming up to half-past six. ‘Yes.' He looked at Amanda. ‘Shall we say around seven-thirty?'

The receptionist eased her bulk from behind the desk and led the way up the stairs. ‘We're thin on company, being this time of year,' she remarked over her shoulder. ‘Picks up just before Easter usually. You've got a nice room, though I say it myself. Lovely view of the cathedral.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' said Amanda, who was immediately behind the receptionist's plump and swaying rump. ‘We're particularly interested in the history of it and so on.'

‘Plenty of that here,' said the receptionist proudly. ‘Why, we often get scholars and people down from college. One of them – American, he was – stayed here for
three
months to write a book about it. And nothing but the best, must have been made of money. Nice gent, though. Always regular and ever so clean and serious. Wouldn't stop telling you things, either. “Mrs Livabed” (that's me, Annie Livabed), he used to say, “there have been Livabeds in Rosington for nearly as long as that cathedral. A Livabed was deputy bailiff of the Abbey farm five hundred years ago.” “You're having me on,” I said, not that it was my family (I was born in Islington, matter of fact), but no, says Mr Pooterkin, it's all there in black and white in one of those documents he was studying. Just shows you, dunnit? Here we are.'

She unlocked the white-painted door of number seven and showed them in. It was a big, warm room (central heating must be one of the modern comforts, thought Dougal, and wondered where the medieval charm came in). The decor and furnishings looked as if they had been designed in 1952 by someone with conservative tastes; but they were clean. There was a large double bed with pillows enough for six people and a candlewick bedspread.

‘Bathroom's in here, dears. You have to pull the chain twice if you want it to flush. Everything you need?' Mrs Livabed began to back out of the room like an ocean liner tugged backwards out of harbour. ‘Just let me know if there's anything you want.'

When Mrs Livabed had left, Dougal went to the window. They were on the first floor. Immediately below was the street of shops they had noticed from the car. The shops were closed and the pavements deserted, except for a black mongrel padding purposefully opposite. A lamp gave enough light to read the sign above the chemist's on the corner: High Street. Behind the ridges of the roofs was the great shadow of the cathedral. It was impossible to pick out any details: it was equally impossible to avoid knowing it was there. Dougal swallowed, feeling his Adam's apple bouncing in his throat. It must, he thought, do strange things to you, living in a town with that stone mountain in its middle. He drew the curtains.

‘I like this,' said Amanda.

Within half an hour they were down in the bar. They had a corner table, from which they could see out into the hall and the lounge area. The elderly clergyman was still in the armchair in front of the fire, but the angle of his
Church Times
had altered; the paper covered his face and the upper part of his torso. Dougal said he represented the Church Dormant and Amanda said wasn't it touching that someone that age should take the trouble to give his shoes a polish like that, while someone of Dougal's age didn't even own a set of brushes and a tin of polish. They then debated what the old man was here for – was he a resident, a retired and widowed local vicar perhaps, or merely passing through on a tour of the cathedrals of England?

As Dougal went up to get a menu from the barman, two men came in. He didn't look up, though his mind vaguely registered an impression of bright suits and chunky gold jewellery.

‘Two large whiskies,' said one of them to the barman. ‘On the rocks.' Then, to his companion, ‘If you've got nothing better to suggest, you're about as much use as Hanbury, and that's the truth.'

‘A
ct naturally,' Dougal had said to Amanda, and they did their best to eat roast duck and chocolate mousse as if the two men, who soon followed them from the bar to the dining room, were as insignificant to them as the pattern on the wallpaper. They shared a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé over the meal and later had coffee in the lounge. The Church Dormant was nibbling at Dover sole in the dining room, so they had the fireside to themselves. Dougal had had to suppress an urge to flee upstairs. But they would never learn anything if they went back to their room, and in any case, unless either of the two men was a mind reader, there was no reason to retreat in panic. Dougal bought a histoy of the cathedral from Mrs Livabed at reception; the worst problem in the dining room had been the difficulty of finding suitably neutral subjects to talk about. It had been all too easy to lapse into a strained silence, with ears trained on the two men three tables away.