The Black Seraphim (30 page)

“Do I gather you’ve been eavesdropping again?”

“Certainly.”

“In that case,” said James, who was beginning to lose his temper as well, “you heard the truth about Brookes. The whole truth. How he not only killed the Archdeacon, in a particularly cruel and unpleasant way, but how he helped to swindle poor old Mrs Henn-Christie. He was meant to be acting as her adviser and he
recommended
her to take a twentieth of what he knew her land was worth. I find it more difficult to forgive him for that than for the murder.”

“And who the hell asked you to forgive him? Did you think you’d got some God-given right to judge people? Forgive? When I hear a meddling little doctor use words like that, it makes me squirm.”

“Am I to assume from that,” said James stiffly, “that any arrangements we had made are cancelled?”

“Marry you, you mean? How could I marry you when I couldn’t even trust you?”

“Very well,” said James, in what he hoped was a dignified voice. “There’s nothing more to be said, is there?” He stalked to the door and out into the hall without looking back.

The Dean was waiting by the front door and held it open for him. James felt that something must be said, but could find no words. The Dean saved him the trouble. He laid one hand on his arm and said, “When we are young, James, our lives are ahead of us. We have the three great gifts of faith and hope and love. When we grow old, when most of our hopes have proved liars and love is cold, there is still faith. I have found it to be a strong rock. I hope you will, too.”

James said, “Thank you,” absent-mindedly and walked off down the path to the road. What had not escaped him was that the Dean had, for the first time, addressed him as James. He wondered whether that devious man had meant anything by it. He was more interested in this than in the Dean’s words. He crossed into the precinct.

After he had spoken to Dora Brookes, he had realised that he could not face her again and had packed his few belongings and left his bag at the school cottage. The next train to London was in two hours’ time.

The bell for morning service had just stopped. He made his way toward the west door of the Cathedral.

The Dean watched him go. Then he closed the front door gently and made his way to the dining room.

He found his daughter in tears.

The Dean was not a man who was sympathetic to tears, particularly in his own family. He said, in a voice which had the effect of a cold douche, “Crying won’t help. I assume you’ve stamped on the aspirations of that young man, who would, incidentally, have made you an excellent husband.”

Indignation getting the better of her tears, she said, “How could I marry him? He doesn’t think like a human being.”

“I’ve heard a number of silly statements in my life, but I’m not sure that doesn’t take first prize. Do you suppose that all human beings think in the same way? He’s a doctor and a scientist, so naturally he thinks like one.”

Amanda said, “I know, I know. But when you were talking next door, I suddenly realised what it must have been like for Henry, alone in that room. Knowing what a horrible death it was, nerving himself to do it. All right, he was guilty, but was that any reason to drive him into a corner, to condemn him to such a wretched, miserable death? Had anyone the right to do that?”

The Dean said, “I can assure you that Henry Brookes was neither wretched nor miserable when he took his own life. He was triumphant.”

His daughter stared at him.

“If the Superintendent had been less intent on finding out what was in the parts of that letter that I didn’t read to him and had listened more carefully to the parts I did read, he’d have realised that what Brookes said was impossible. Quite impossible. How could anyone, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and moving through a crowd, pour poison into it without being noticed half a dozen times? The idea is ludicrous. The poison was in the cup already. Put there by his wife. She had only to cover it with coffee, hand it to her husband and tell him to take it to the Archdeacon.”

“You mean she planned the whole thing?”

“Not the whole thing, no. It was her husband who brewed the poison. But he was a weak man. He’d never have brought himself to use it. When the Archdeacon asked him for his accounts, his nerve gave way altogether. He told his wife everything. About the money and about the poison. But she was the one who decided to use it. She was Lady Macbeth: ‘Give me the daggers.’”

“And you saw her putting it into the cup?”

The Dean looked at his daughter curiously. He knew exactly what she meant. He said, “It would have raised a difficult question for me if I had seen her, wouldn’t it? But, as a matter of fact, I saw nothing.”

“Then how can you possibly know all this?”

The Dean was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I know because Dora Brookes came round early this morning and confessed to me. She wanted to know what she ought to do. I instructed her that she must say nothing to anyone. If she did say anything, the sacrifice her husband had made for her would be wasted. I realised that it would be difficult for her to keep quiet, perhaps almost intolerably difficult. That was the cross
she
must bear.”

The Dean paused again. Then he said, “I have broken the seal of the confessional by telling you that much. You will, of course, say nothing to anyone. But I considered that you ought to know, so that you would not blame Dr Scotland for what happened. Brookes realised that as soon as suspicion swung toward him, it must involve his wife. In fact, as soon as people started thinking clearly about it, they must have realised that it was her hand that put the poison in the cup. That was what he was determined to prevent. That was why he killed himself.”

James had very little recollection of the service. It was taken by one of the diocesan clergy. As he was leaving, Masters shook him by the hand and said goodbye as though he was certain he would never see him again.

When he went to collect his bag, the cottage was empty. He walked past the school cottage, past Canon Maude’s house, across the corner of the school playing field toward the High Street Gate.

On the heels of the rainstorm, autumn had come with a single stride. Summer had been wiped out with one ruthless stroke of the scene painter’s brush. The white vapour which the storm had left behind hung so close above the sodden earth that the roof of the Cathedral was shrouded and the top of the spire was invisible. As James paused for a moment to look back, he saw the file of black-cloaked choristers emerge from the north porch, march across the precinct lawn and whisk into the school. The door banged shut behind them.

The curtain was down. The play was ended.

He turned away to walk to the station through streets that seemed unnaturally empty. Had any of the people he passed been curious enough to look closely, they would have seen a twenty-four-year-old doctor with tears in his eyes.

The Dean took a chair from the summerhouse and, carrying it in one hand and his stick in the other, hobbled down the garden path toward the river. The sun was shining, but October was over and a week of November had gone. He thought that there would not be many more days that year for sitting out.

As the grass was still soft, he placed the chair carefully on the flagstones at the very edge of the river. The water had sunk back into its bed and was clear again, a little below its winter level and running sweetly; as sweetly as were the Dean’s thoughts.

He was tolerably certain that all was now well again between his daughter and Dr Scotland. Penny Consett had acted as a go-between, flitting like an industrious bee between the parties. He knew that long conversations had taken place on the school telephone. Lawrence Consett was going to get a shock when his next telephone bill came in.

He did not think that James had suffered any serious injury. A rebuff to his feelings, a touch of not altogether disagreeable sadness. It was what the French poet Alfred de Musset had called a blessed wound,
“une sainte blessure; que les noirs séraphins t’ont faite au fond du coeur,”
adding, with French cynicism, that nothing made a man feel so big as a sustaining diet of sorrow. The black seraphim had given James no mortal wound.

The Dean smiled gently at the thought. It would suit him very well to have his daughter off his hands. He was already in touch with the secretary of the Church of England Missionary Organisation. Now that Amanda was of marriageable age, it would hardly be suitable for her to accompany him on the assignment he had in mind.

After the death of Chairman Mao, the Chinese Republic had become more willing to accept European missionaries. People had suggested that this was because, if anything went wrong, it would provide them with a useful supply of hostages. The Dean did not disbelieve this, but was prepared to risk it. He was anxious to study the Chinese mind, which had, he thought, many affinities with his own.

For it was time to quit Melchester. He had never intended to stay long and he could now go with the comfortable conviction that he was leaving solid benefits behind him. His two candidates for the vacant canonries seemed certain to be appointed. Solid men both, they would fight to the last ditch against swindlers like Sandeman and his crowd. In any event, that particular gang had gone to earth and were unlikely to show their faces for some time. After the Dean had, with considerable relish, read out the passage in Brookes’ letter which named them, Grant Adey and Sandeman had both been forced to resign from the Council. Driffield’s punishment had been more subtle. Two letters from Elliot Macindoe calling his attention to certain unfortunate expressions in his article on the inquest had been sufficient to extract from him a handsome sum of money in lieu of damages. This was being spent on a set of new copes. They would be ready in time for the great Christian festival of Easter. It would be an appropriate moment for the Dean to announce his resignation.

There had been lesser ripples. Mrs Henn-Christie was contemplating legal proceedings against Gloag to make him repay his ill-gotten gains, but the Dean did not think that she would get very far. Grey, unnerved by the excitements, had decided to retire. This had a happy side to it, since Masters, who was altogether a better man, had withdrawn his resignation and taken the senior post.

Rosa had called on Lady Fallingford and had been rebuffed.

The Dean’s eyes were half closed against the sparkle of the sun off the water. Now he opened them again. Surely there had been a movement in the clump of weeds under the opposite bank?

A long pointed nose emerged from the green fronds. It was his old friend, the cannibal trout. It slid off down stream. The Dean watched it with affection.

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Inspector Hazlerigg

Patrick Petrella

Luke Pagan

Calder & Behrens

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