Murder in a Cathedral (11 page)

The interval consisted of smoked-salmon sandwiches, more champagne and scandal and a return to the box in even higher good humour. There was an abrupt change of mood during the lingering death scene, for the baroness became immersed in the unfolding tragedy and sobbed piteously. As the curtain went down, she blew her nose loudly, leapt to her feet applauding vigorously and shouted, ‘Bravo, bravo!’ Flinging what remained of their inhibitions to the wind, her companions followed suit.

As they left the box, Wainwood extended his arm skittishly. ‘May I?’ and escorted the baroness merrily down the staircase. Amiss and Lady Wainwood brought up the rear. ‘Interesting woman. I didn’t quite gather what she does?’

‘Ex-civil servant. Now mistress of a Cambridge college.’

‘Good heavens. You surprise me.’

‘What would you have guessed?’

‘Difficult. Lion tamer perhaps. Or impresario.’

‘I see her rather as an international smuggler.’

‘Actually she looks rather like an old-fashioned character actress. Margaret Rutherford or someone. But a sexy version, of course.’

‘Sexy? You think she’s sexy?’

‘You’re too young, I expect. But I saw the way Elwyn was looking at her. There’s no accounting for these things. I think it’s got something to do with pheromones. Anyway, I bet she’s quite active in that department.’

‘I’m not taking the bet,’ said Amiss. A vision of the beautiful, black, silky body of Mary Lou Denslow swam past his eyes and filled him with suppressed desire and resentment. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

Chapter 9

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Amiss was roused by the telephone.

‘Enjoyed that, didn’t you? Bloody good supper, too.’ The baroness smacked her lips. ‘I like lobster.’

‘Wha… what… what time is it?’

‘Late. It’s very late. Six-fifteen and I’ve only just begun the drive to Cambridge.’

‘Jack!’ Amiss’s wail was heartfelt. ‘I didn’t get to bed till after two. And then Rachel rang and we talked for half an hour.’

‘Lazy lie-abed. Get up and get going to Westonbury. And don’t forget.
Cherchez la femme
.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The bird. Whatshername. Alice Thingummy. You’ve got to charm her.’

‘Is that what you woke me up to tell me? Have you forgotten that you told me that last night at some length.’

‘You might have forgotten. You had a lot to drink.’

‘I had a lot to drink! That’s rich coming from you.’

He had lost her. ‘I’m off. It’s time I gave Mary Lou her alarm call.’ Her voice rose several decibels. ‘Halfwit!’

‘Who?’

‘Can’t talk. Got to teach him a lesson.’ The phone went dead.

Amiss groaned, rolled over and tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep.

‘It’s very nice to have you back, my dear Robert. Plutarch and I missed you. But I’m pleased you had a pleasant time. Did Jack behave?’

‘In her own fashion, brilliantly. Fedden-Jones is mad about her and I’m shining in her reflected glory. It’s saved me a great deal of time trying to win his confidence by sucking up to him.’

The bishop beamed. ‘There you are. She can be very good when she wants to be.’

‘Which is insufficiently often.’

The telephone rang. ‘Dr Elworthy’s residence,’ said Amiss.

‘Have you seen her yet?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Jack…’ Amiss saw the bishop’s worried face. ‘I mean, for goodness sake, Jack, I’ve only been back five minutes.’

‘Get on with it. Stop lounging about.’

‘Car phones should never have been invented,’ remarked Amiss as he put the receiver down. ‘Or at the very least they should never have been made available to Jack. She seems to be unable to drive anywhere these days without bombarding half the world with instructions.’

The bishop smiled gently. ‘I expect the novelty will wear off. What is she so anxious about?’

‘Wants me to get to know Alice Wolpurtstone. Seems to think she might be a key player in the chapter. Being new and all that. They could do with a conciliator.’

‘She might well be that. She seems a pleasant girl, from the little I’ve seen of her.’

‘Cecil introduced us in the close last week. She looked a bit like a startled faun.’

The bishop’s eyes had strayed back to his book. Amiss left him to it and went off to extract information about Alice Wolpurtstone from his new ally.

‘What I can’t understand, Dominic, is how you came to elect a female canon. I’d have thought the late dean and the rest of you would have died resisting the monstrous regiment.’ Fedden-Jones looked a little embarrassed. ‘I was myself not in favour of female ordination, I have to admit. But it wasn’t a huge matter of principle with me. In fact… oh, I suppose I might as well tell you the story. Now that we’re friends.’

Amiss smiled encouragingly. ‘Good. I’d rather get the story from you than from Cecil.’

Fedden-Jones wrinkled his nose with distaste. The only thing Cecil is a good source for is Cecil. Oh, and Victorian bric-a-brac, of course.’ He poured them both a second cup of tea. ‘Two reasons. I wanted to rub Paul Newman’s nose in it…’

‘Sorry? I’m not with you.’

‘Paul Newman. The canon who decamped to Rome over female ordination. Miserable little wretch. It really upset dear old Reggie. And then we needed a dramatic gesture. You see there was a lot of rumbling in ecclesiastical circles about the gay image of Westonbury.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Yes. Exacerbated by that ridiculous lady chapel. That wouldn’t have got through if I hadn’t been away and poor Reggie hadn’t been getting a bit gaga.’

‘Why didn’t you get the picture moved to somewhere more private? And that daft canopy?’

‘Oh, because I was more concerned to get Alice elected to the vacant job and I did a deal – the lady chapel would stay as it was in exchange for Cecil’s vote for Alice.’

‘And why did you want Alice?’

‘I thought it would be good for our image – muddy the waters a bit.’

‘I suppose that’s logical. So what were Alice’s credentials for the job?’

Fedden-Jones fidgeted. ‘She’s the daughter of a friend. Actually she’s Lady Alice Wolpurtstone, though she doesn’t use the title.’

Amiss had some difficulty in suppressing his grin. ‘So you knew her well?’

‘No, I didn’t. But I knew her parents well. And I thought, well, with such good breeding, you can’t go wrong.’

As some recent tabloid headlines about heirs to great titles floated through Amiss’s mind, he suppressed yet another grin.

‘I was staying with Toby and Cathy Wolpurtstone one weekend when Cathy happened to mention that she wasn’t at all happy with Alice’s state of health. Apparently she’d been in one of those awful inner-city parishes as a team vicar, living in squalid quarters with drug addicts turning up before breakfast. Cathy was anxious that Alice be transferred to somewhere more salubrious. That’s when I got the idea. Two birds and all that.’

‘Had you met her?’

‘She came down for a brief visit that weekend to conduct the christening of a neighbour’s child and she seemed just right. Not like one of those awful women priests in Crimplene suits speaking in estuary English. She was nicely turned out and she officiated well – had the vain pomp and glory of the world renounced in great style. Nice voice too.’

You mean right accent, thought Amiss. ‘You weren’t worried about how she might react to the ethos here?’

‘Oh, you mean in case she turned out to be homophobic. No, I had no worries there. Cathy had mentioned with some distaste that Alice had spent far too much time helping out at an Aids hospice.’

‘Married?’

‘No. That was another plus. It leads to trouble. Priests’ husbands don’t know how to behave. Anyway, I went back and did the deal with Cecil, so that was two to one. Jeremy didn’t care and went along with it after some musical bribe or other. Then Trustrum woke up and for once tried to fight it on the grounds that there was no precedent for female canons, but he gave up when he realized everyone was against him. Reggie was horrified at first, but I managed to calm him down and convince him he’d hardly notice her. Anyway he was beyond caring much about anything but his memorial plans.’

‘It was all surprisingly painless, then.’

‘Except for Alice, who didn’t like the idea at all.’

‘Why not?’

Fedden-Jones sighed. ‘She’s an idealist.’

‘Ah, yes. I can see how that must have been a bit of a blow. Thought life here would be too easy, I suppose. So how did you crack that problem?’

‘Toby Wolpurtstone made a point of running into the bishop – Elworthy’s predecessor, that is – in the Lords and told him he was worried she might crack up. Toby’s been helpful before now on the fund-raising side of things, so Hubert was minded to help and use his influence. He called her in and told her she was to take this offer. She was upset, but he told her he gathered she was being moved from her inner city in any case and indirectly threatened her with what Toby had told him she dreaded most: a prosperous suburb with few contemporary problems.

‘He told Toby she was pretty obdurate, but he finally sold it to her by telling her she would simultaneously strike a blow for women, awaken the chapter to the need for greater social responsibility, and indicated she might be able to provide spiritual comfort to the New Age travellers who – as I’m sure you’ve noticed – infest Westonbury. That clinched it.’

‘And is she happy?’

‘I don’t really know. I don’t see her round the close much and she’s never opened her mouth at chapter meetings. But I’m afraid I don’t think so. She looks a bit depressed. Of course it didn’t help that up to now she’s only been allowed to celebrate mass in a side chapel. Reggie just wouldn’t tolerate a woman officiating at high altar, and since he died, Trustrum and Cecil have kept her there.’

He looked a little guilty. ‘I’ve probably not done what I should for her. She might be a bit lonely. Obviously I had her round for sherry, but frankly she turned out not to be my type. She talked very seriously about witness and ministry and that sort of thing and I didn’t know where to look. No appetite for gossip.’

‘But her presence has helped on the PR front, presumably?’

Fedden-Jones shook his head. ‘Not yet, I fear. You see it turns out that she’s an enthusiastic member of the C of E Gay and Lesbian Association.’

‘She’s a lesbian?’ Amiss began to laugh but checked himself at Fedden-Jones’s evident distress.

‘It’s not very helpful, as you can imagine. I can’t bear to think how the dean will react if he finds out. There was a very embarrassing moment at the lunch after the enthronement when some innocent asked him what he thought about ordaining gays and he rather excitedly began to quote Leviticus.’

‘Sorry, Dominic. I’m not up to speed on the Old Testament.’

‘It’s about how men lying with men is an abomination.’

‘It would seem that one knows where one is with the dean.’

‘I’m trying not to think about him. Now, would you like me to ask Alice over for a drink?’

After spending an hour in her company, Amiss was little wiser about Alice Wolpurtstone, though he could detect her unease at Fedden-Jones’s questions about mutual friends and cousins of cousins. She was polite but unforthcoming; it was not clear whether she was contemptuous, embarrassed or simply very shy. Amiss made a little headway when he asked her about her previous job and she spoke haltingly about the sense of purpose she had found in working in an inner city. However Fedden-Jones clearly found this conversation both boring and unpleasant, so it was abruptly curtailed. Alice made her excuses as early as was decently possible and departed, leaving Fedden-Jones shaking his head and complaining that she had taken after neither of her delightful parents.

There was no sighting of Alice the following day, and she didn’t answer her telephone, so instead Amiss found a spurious reason to ring Canon Sebastian Trustrum and received an invitation to call. ‘Come at three-forty-five for an hour. That’s my time for seeing people.’

Trustrum’s home was a shrine to order, a house in which no object was ever misplaced, let alone mislaid. It was short on possessions, other than a few shelves of books and some photographs of Trustrum with various ecclesiastical notables. But in its own way it was a little gem, for in its furniture and appurtenances it was frozen somewhere round the 1890s.

Trustrum, it emerged, was extremely proud of his establishment’s imperviousness to change. ‘I’m pleased to say,’ he explained, ‘that for the last few generations this house has been inhabited by people who understand about tradition. None of this mad modern passion for changing things. I never know why people want to do that.’

Much of the fixtures and furniture proved that one of the great advantages of not changing anything was that fashion had a tendency to come round and embrace the old again. Trustrum’s Victorian bathroom, which would have been a laughing stock in the 1950s and ’60s, was full of artefacts now much sought after. All over smart London the well-to-do were rooting out modern plastic bathroom suites and installing porcelain lavatories and old iron baths with claw feet. And these days too, many people were coming to regard fitted cupboards as rather naff. Admittedly, Trustrum’s refusal to instal central heating kept him in a minority, but his Georgian fireplace and blazing fire would have gained many admirers.

‘Would you care for a cup of tea? I always have tea here at four o’clock. Except in summer, that is, when I have it fifteen minutes later.’ Trustrum, it rapidly became clear, was a man whose passion for routine would have been understandable in someone who had clocked up fifty years in a particularly strict jail.

It wasn’t just his timetable that was rigid; so too was its content. Coffee could be taken only in the morning, tea only in the afternoon, beef was reserved for Sundays, chicken for Mondays, fish for Fridays and so on. The dishes were specific too. The fish was always plaice, the lamb always cutlets, the chicken always grilled.