Death in Holy Orders (5 page)

He had spent only three summer holidays at the college. His father had exchanged ministries with a priest from a difficult inner-city parish to give him at least a change of scene and tempo. Dalgliesh’s parents had been unwilling to immure him in an industrial city for most of the summer holiday and he had been invited to stay on at the rectory with the newcomers. But the news that the Reverend Cuthbert Simpson and his wife had four children under the age of eight, including seven-year-old twins, had turned him against the idea; even at fourteen he had longed for privacy during the long holiday. So he had agreed to accept an invitation from the Warden at St. Anselm’s while being uneasily aware that his mother thought he would have shown a more generous spirit by offering to stay and help with the twins.

The college had been half empty, with only a few overseas students choosing to remain. They and the priests had taken trouble to make his stay happy, setting up a wicket on the stretch of specially mown grass behind the church and bowling to him indefatigably. He remembered that the food had been greatly superior to school meals and, indeed, to those at the rectory, and he had liked his guest-room even though it gave no view of the sea. But he had most enjoyed the solitary walks, south towards the mere or north towards Lowestoft, the freedom to use the library, the prevailing but never oppressive silence,
the assurance that he could take possession of every new day in unquestioned liberty.

And then, during his second visit and on the 3rd of August, there had been Sadie.

Father Martin had said, “Mrs. Millson’s granddaughter is coming to stay with her in her cottage. She’s about your age I think, Adam. It might be company for you.” Mrs. Millson had been the cook, even then in her sixties and certainly long since retired.

And Sadie had been company of a sort. She was a thin fifteen-year-old with fine corn-coloured hair which hung down each side of a narrow face, and small eyes of a remarkable grey flecked with green which on their first meeting stared at him with a resentful intensity. But she seemed happy enough to walk with him, seldom speaking, occasionally picking up a stone to hurl into the sea or suddenly spurting ahead with fierce determination, then turning to wait for him, rather like a puppy chasing after a ball.

He remembered one day after a storm, when the sky had cleared but the wind was still high and great waves were crashing in with as much vehemence as they had during the dark hours of the night. They had sat side by side in the shelter of a groyne, passing a bottle of lemonade from mouth to mouth. He had written her a poem—more, he remembered, an exercise in trying to imitate Eliot (his most recent enthusiasm) than a tribute to genuine feeling. She had read it with furrowed brow, the small eyes almost invisible.

“You wrote this?”

“Yes. It’s for you. A poem.”

“No it isn’t. It doesn’t rhyme. A boy in our class—Billy Price—writes poems. They always rhyme.”

He said indignantly, “It’s a different kind of poem.”

“No it isn’t. If it’s a poem the words at the end of the lines have to rhyme. Billy Price says so.”

Later he had come to believe that Billy Price had a point. He got up, tore the paper into small pieces and dropped them on the wet sand, watching and waiting for the next tumbling wave to suck them into oblivion. So much, he thought, for poetry’s famed erotic power. But Sadie’s female mind, in achieving its
elemental ends, operated a less sophisticated, more atavistic ploy. She said, “Bet you daren’t dive off the end of that groyne.”

Billy Price, he thought, would no doubt have dared to dive off the end of the groyne in addition to writing verse which rhymed at the end of each line. Without speaking, he got up and tore off his shirt. Wearing only his khaki shorts, he balanced on the groyne, paused, walked over a slither of seaweed to the end and dived headlong into the turbulent sea. It was less deep than he thought and he felt the scrape of pebbles rasping his palms before he surfaced. Even in August the North Sea was cold, but the shock of the chill was only temporary. What followed was terrifying. It felt as if he were in the grasp of some uncontrollable force, as if strong hands were seizing him by the shoulders and forcing him backwards and under. Spluttering, he tried to strike out, but the shore was suddenly obliterated by a great wall of water. It crashed over him and he felt himself drawn back, then tossed upwards into daylight. He struck out towards the groyne, which seemed with every second to be receding.

He could see Sadie standing now on the edge, arms flailing, her hair streaming in the wind. She was shouting something but he could hear nothing but the drumming in his ears. He gathered his strength, waiting for the wave to advance, making progress, then desperately trying to hold on to it before the backward tug lost the few feet he had gained. He told himself not to panic, to husband strength, to try and catch each forward movement. And at last, foot by painful foot, he made it and, gasping, clutched the end of the groyne. It was minutes before he was able to move, but she reached down her hand and helped pull him up.

They sat side by side on a ridge of pebbles and, without speaking, she took off her dress and began rubbing his back. When he was dry, still without speaking, she handed him his shirt. He remembered now that the sight of her body, of the small pointed breasts and the pink and tender nipples, had aroused not desire, but an emotion that he now recognized as a mixture of affection and pity.

Then she said, “Do you want to go to the mere? I know a secret place.”

The mere would still be there, a stretch of dark, still water
separated from the lively sea by a bank of shingle, its oily surface hinting at unfathomable depths. Except in the worst storms, the stagnant mere and salt sea never met across that shifting barrier. At the edge of the tide the trunks of black fossilized trees stood like totem poles to some long-dead civilization. The mere was a famous haunt of sea birds, and there were wooden hides concealed among the trees and bushes, but only the most enthusiastic bird-watcher ever penetrated to this dark and sinister stretch of water.

Sadie’s secret place had been the wooden hulk of a wrecked ship half embedded in the sand on the spit of land between the sea and the mere. There were still a few rotting steps down to the cabin, and there they had spent the rest of the afternoon and all the days that followed. The only light had come from slits in the planking, and they had laughed to see how their bodies were striped, tracing the moving lines with their fingers. He would read or write or sit back silently against the curved wall of the cabin while Sadie imposed on their small world her ordered if eccentric domesticity. The picnics provided by her grandmother were carefully laid out on flat stones, the food to be ceremoniously handed to him and eaten when she decreed. Jam jars filled with water from the mere held reeds and grasses and unidentified rubber-leaved plants from fissures in the cliff. Together they scoured the beach for stones with holes to add to the necklace that she had strung on cord along the cabin wall.

For years after that summer the smell of tar, of warm rotting oak combined with the tang of the sea, had held for him an erotic charge. Where, he wondered, was Sadie now? Probably married with a brood of golden-haired children—if their fathers hadn’t been drowned, electrocuted or otherwise disposed of in Sadie’s preliminary process of selection. It was unlikely that any trace of the wreck would remain. After decades of pounding, the sea must now have claimed its prey. And long before the final plank was tossed into the advancing tide, the string of the necklace would have frayed and, at last, finally broken, letting slip those carefully gathered stones to fall in a heap on the sand of the cabin floor.

I
t was Thursday, 12 October, and Margaret Munroe was writing the final entry in the diary.

She carried her notebook from the table and placed it in the drawer of the bureau. Then she changed her spectacles for the pair most comfortable for watching television, switched on the set and settled herself in the high winged armchair with the remote control resting on its arm. She was getting a little deaf. The noise swelled alarmingly before she adjusted the volume and the introductory music came to an end. She would probably fall asleep in the chair, but the effort of getting up and going to bed seemed beyond her.

She was almost dozing when she felt a draught of cooler air and was aware, more by instinct than by sound, that someone had come into the room. The latch of the door clicked down. Stretching her head round the side of the chair, she saw who it was and said, “Oh, it’s you. I expect you were surprised to find my light still on. I was just thinking of going to bed.”

The figure came up behind the armchair and she bent her head upwards, looking up, waiting for a response. And then the hands came down, strong hands wearing yellow rubber gloves. They pressed against her mouth and closed her nose, forcing her head back against the chair.

She knew that this was death but she felt no fear, only an immense surprise and a tired acceptance. To struggle would have
been useless, but she had no wish to struggle, only to go easily and quickly and without pain. Her last earthly sensation was the cold smoothness of the glove against her face and the smell of latex in her nostrils as her heart gave its last compulsive beat and was stilled.

O
n Tuesday, 17 October, at five minutes to ten precisely, Father Martin made his way from the small turret room he occupied at the south of the house, down the twisting stairs and along the corridor to Father Sebastian’s study. For the past fifteen years, Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. had been set aside for the weekly meeting of all resident priests. Father Sebastian would make his report, problems and difficulties would be discussed, the details of next Sunday’s Sung Eucharist and of other services in the week would be finalized, invitations to future preachers decided upon and any minor housekeeping matters disposed of.