Murder in a Cathedral Read online

  ‘Not even maidenly indelicacy?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Grimly he continued. ‘I know very well that you wish to maroon me down here to act as some kind of undercover agent. As I told you on Friday night, it is out of the question. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘You’re so hysterical. Calm down. It’ll all work out. Now come on, it’s time we turned back. David will be looking for me. I think I’m supposed to be gracing the top table.’

  ‘You’ll fit in. In fact the more I look at you the more I think you resemble not just a bishop’s wife, but an archbishop’s. You have that indefinable air of righteous authority.’

  ‘Jolly good. Just the effect I was aiming at. It’ll put the fear of God into them.’

  ‘Into whom?’

  ‘Never you mind. Now off we go.’ She accelerated. ‘Oh, and by the way.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re not dining alone tonight. David wants to see us privately after all this is over, so I promised him we’ll have dinner with him in the palace. Just the three of us.’

  ‘What’s going on, Jack? Surely he should be dining with all sorts of visiting dignitaries—archbishops, and so on.’

  ‘No. He pleaded weariness caused by his bereavement. It worked like magic. They all backed off instantly from sheer embarrassment.’

  Amiss shook his head in wonderment. ‘It’s really amazing. Even the clergy in this country can’t cope with death.’

  ‘Aha. That’s because when it comes to a clash between their essential Englishness and their religiousness the Englishness wins. And that,’ she added, with a smirk of satisfaction, ‘is as it should be. First things first.’

  ***

  ‘Get her!’

  Following the gaze of his neighbour, Amiss focused on a willowy man in a beige linen suit whose clerical collar appeared incongruously above a yellow shirt and a red waist-coat with an oriental design.

  ‘It’s not fair. That’s Gladys. She’s just trying to show us all up, silly old queen.’

  Taken aback at this explosion of camp from a scholarly-looking, orthodoxly clad cleric, Amiss said nothing.

  His companion sniffed loudly. ‘Honestly. Some people! See if I care. She’s just vulgar, she is.’ He looked at Amiss appraisingly. ‘Who are you anyway?’

  Amiss put his hand out. ‘Robert Amiss.’

  ‘Yes. But who?’

  ‘I’m here accompanying a friend of the bishop.’

  ‘Which one?’

  Amiss felt a fit of pomposity coming on. ‘You have the advantage of me. You are?’

  ‘You mean you don’t recognize me? Most people do. Haven’t you seen me on television? Father Cecil Davage, known to my friends as Beryl.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t see religious programmes.’

  Davage tossed his head. ‘Just because I’m a canon doesn’t mean I haven’t any other interests. Haven’t you heard of Forgotten Treasures? Five past seven on Fridays.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I don’t see television much. What kind of treasures are these?’

  ‘All kinds of treasures.’ Davage sounded irritable. ‘Pictures, antiques, architecture, artefacts of all kinds. What they all have in common is that they are glorious pieces of Victoriana which were cast aside during the wicked, philistine postwar decades and only recently restored to their glory. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me. I’m a bit of a national institution now. Like the queen.’ He tittered. ‘Anyway, who’d you come with?’

  ‘Lady Troutbeck.’

  ‘Oooh, you are lucky. I’ve seen her on television getting up left-wing noses.’ He craned his neck around the lunchers. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Up there beside the bishop. Hard to miss.’

  Davage spotted her, took in the sartorial splendour of her herringbone suit and purple frills, and tittered again. ‘Looks my type.’

  ‘You mean she looks like a Victorian monument?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I mean she’s flamboyant. If you’ve got to have women, at the very least they should cheer things up.’

  ‘She certainly does that.’

  ‘So what’s she doing with you?’

  Amiss repressed the desire to rebuke this little wretch for impertinence. He was after all the guest of a guest. ‘Lady Troutbeck and I are old platonic friends.’

  ‘What do you mean old?’ Davage looked him up and down. ‘You’ve hardly a line on your face. Either you’re under thirty or you’re on the monkey glands.’ His gaze shifted back to the cleric in the beige suit. ‘Now who is she talking to?’

  ‘Is that a colleague of yours?’

  Davage sniffed again. ‘I suppose that’s what you’d call her. She’s a canon called Fedden-Jones—though the Fedden bit is bogus. Myself I call her a silly old tart.’

  Unable to think of an appropriate response, Amiss fell back on the banal. ‘A very beautiful cathedral if I may say so. I’m only sorry that I didn’t get a chance to look at the inside properly.’

  Davage beamed. ‘Now there’s a place that’s full of hidden treasures. Maybe you and your friend would like me to show you round later on?’

  ‘How very kind. But wouldn’t that be a nuisance?’

  ‘No. I’d like to. No one else appreciates that place the way I do, not since poor dear Daisy died. Well, even before that…not since she went gaga.’

  ‘Daisy?’

  ‘Our darling dean, Reggie Roper.’

  At this moment the empty chair to Amiss’s left was pulled back. A slim thirty-something blonde in a neat navy dress and jacket sat down and smiled at Amiss. ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘I’m a visitor from London—a friend of a friend of the bishop’s.’ He extended his hand. ‘Robert Amiss. And this is Father Davage.’

  ‘I know Canon Davage.’

  Davage turned away from Amiss and began to prattle to the woman on his right.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Tilly Cooper. I am privileged to be the dean’s wife.’

  ‘The new dean?’

  She smiled sweetly. ‘The late dean would have been a little old for me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. I wasn’t thinking straight. And he wasn’t the marrying kind either, I gather.’

  ‘Let us not talk of the past. I forget what is behind and run towards the goal in order to win the prize of being called to heaven.’

  Amiss was gripped with dread. ‘Quite. Er…have you been here long?’

  ‘Only two weeks. That’s why nothing has yet changed. There is much to be done, but the Lord has given us the strength to face every challenge. Are you saved, Mr Amiss?’

  Amiss’s nerve deserted him. ‘Er, um, ah, no, um, that is, well, I’m just ordinary Church of England.’

  She smiled her saintly smile and took a sip of water. The waiter came up behind her and offered wine. ‘No, thank you. I need no stimulants.’

  ‘I do,’ said Amiss faintly. ‘White, please.’

  ‘It is wonderful to know that God has shaped you for a divine purpose. And that is what he has done for Norm and I…’

  ‘Me,’ said Amiss automatically.

  She was puzzled but polite. ‘Norm and you? Well, yes of course you are welcome to help with God’s work.’

  Amiss blenched. ‘Which is?’

  ‘To drive out the Antichrist,’ she said darkly.

  ‘Who is where?’

  She shook her head. ‘This is a joyful day and we must dwell on what is joyful. How often do you go to church to praise the Lord and where do you go?’

  ‘I’ve been on the move a bit. Haven’t got a regular church.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘London.’

  She clapped her hands. ‘Thank you, Jesus! Now you see what I mean about the divine purpose. We have just left our Battersea church, but it is in the best of hands. You must go there and hear the good news. When Norm took over four years ago few people came to the church, for the people had lost their way. When I joined him in matrimony there were many hundreds. By the
time we left there were thousands of worshippers praising Jesus. And Bev Johns, who helped Norm with the great work and is our friend in Christ, is Norm’s successor and full of the holy spirit.’ She put her hand on Amiss’s arm. ‘I must introduce you to him. Look over there. Do you see him? The vital figure sitting close to the door.’

  Amiss obligingly craned round. ‘Do you mean the chap with the ponytail?’

  ‘Yes, yes. That is Bev.’ She gazed earnestly at Amiss. ‘Bev saves souls from hell like a man possessed by God.’

  She slid her hand down Amiss’s arm and clasped his wrist. ‘Promise me you will seek out Bev’s church.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not a churchgoer.’

  ‘You must not be afraid. Jesus drives out fear. And the Church of St John the Evangelist is into Christianity, not Churchianity.’

  Amiss felt sick. ‘I’m sure it does excellent work.’

  She let his hand go and addressed herself delicately to her melon. ‘It is true that we have been the means of bringing people to the Lord. But I say that in no vainglorious spirit. We are but humble vessels and the Lord works through us.’

  Amiss looked covertly and longingly towards Davage, who was engaged in animated conversation about a decorated commode he had uncovered in a junk shop the previous week. There was no respite. For the duration of the meal, in her South-London-overlaid-with-irritating-gentility accent, Tilly Cooper praised the Lord, repented of her sins, struggled towards the light and spoke in numbing detail of the manner in which she and Norm and Bev had acted as a team to bring to God the old, the spiritually lost and those rejected by a materialistic and degenerate society.

  By the time the waiter arrived with coffee—which Tilly of course eschewed—she was discoursing on the happiness brought to her by her Bible-story classes for children. ‘I write them little songs,’ she explained. ‘It is a great joy to me that they seem to help them. They clap their little hands and warble along.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘Would you like me to sing you the latest?’

  ‘Now? Here?’

  She giggled. ‘Very low, of course.’

  Anything was better than her conversation, thought Amiss. He tried to look overjoyed. ‘What fun! Please go ahead.’

  In a low, simpering childish voice she sang:

  ‘If you pray most every day Jesus takes you by the hand And leads you to the smiling land Where even little daisies pray.’

  ‘Delightful,’ said Amiss faintly.

  ‘Oh, no. That’s only the opening verse. It’s the chorus I really want you to hear:

  ‘So smile, smile for Jesus, join his daisy chain.

  Say nay unto the devil’s wiles and be a daisy for our Lord

  And there’ll be miles and miles of smiles For you and you and me.’

  ‘My goodness. You really wrote that yourself.’

  She flashed her excellent teeth. ‘All by myself.’

  ‘How wonderful. The children must have loved it.’

  While Tilly expanded on just how much they loved her and her little songs, he looked around desperately for release, and to his delight, caught the baroness’s eye. He signalled distress and she jerked her head in summons. He swallowed the last of his wine and stood up. ‘It has been a great pleasure, Mrs Cooper. But I fear I must leave you now. Lady Troutbeck has need of me.’

  ‘But I must take you to meet Bev, so that he can personally invite you to come and worship with him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper, but I must follow the path of duty. Another time perhaps.’

  ‘Then you must promise me you will go to his glorious church to praise the Lord this very Sunday, for you never know the day nor the hour when you may be called to God; you must be ready.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She pressed a card into his hand. ‘Take this and go with Jesus!’

  Amiss bowed, turned and tapped Davage on the shoulder. ‘I’m just off for a word with Lady Troutbeck.’

  ‘I’ll meet you both at the cathedral door in thirty minutes.’

  ‘I can’t promise she’ll be there. But I will.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll thcream and thcream and thcream till I’m thick if she doesn’t come. I’m just dying to meet her.’

  ‘I will certainly pass your message on.’

  ‘That’s a good girl.’ Davage smiled a feline smile and turned back to talk of matters Gothic. As Amiss walked joyfully away, he heard Tilly ask the waiter where he went to worship Jesus. It was a small consolation to hear him answer that Mohammed was his prophet.

  Chapter 4

  The baroness was waiting impatiently by the French windows. ‘Come on. Into the garden. I’m going mad.’ She barged out and didn’t slacken her pace until they were out of sight of the dining room and sitting on a secluded bench in the corner of the rose garden.

  ‘What about the speeches? I enquire only from curiosity, you understand. I have no desire to hear them, but your absence might be noticed.’

  ‘There aren’t going to be any. David persuaded the dignitaries that he wouldn’t be able to keep the upper lip stiff if there was any public speaking. Naturally they panicked and agreed to keep their mouths shut.’ She pulled out her pipe and assorted paraphernalia. ‘I thought there were some old fools in Cambridge and the Lords, but this beats the band. I’ve just been subjected for more than an hour to some ancient episcopal dunderhead wittering on about the iniquities of ordaining women and thus preventing us from linking up once again with his nibs in Rome.’

  ‘Did you put him right?’

  She finished cramming tobacco into her pipe, took out of her capacious handbag a box of extra large matches and—aided by much vigorous sucking and blowing—lit up. ‘I was a bit constrained, to tell you the truth. Divided loyalties.’

  Amiss looked at her in amazement. ‘Good God! Are you trying to tell me you don’t know whether you are or are not in favour of ordaining women?’

  She threw her right leg over her left and clasped her ankle. ‘It’s not like me, is it? But, you see, I was against ordaining women because all change is bad where institutions are concerned, but I’m in favour of it because if I were religious I’d be bloody furious if anybody was trying to stop me becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. Or pope, for that matter. Besides, I have a female friend who’s been priested and when you like someone, general principles are overthrown.’

  ‘What do you mean all change is bad? In practice you’re a fucking subversive. Look at the way you revolutionized St Martha’s, for God’s sake.’

  ‘That wasn’t revolution: it was accelerated evolution with a simultaneous return to old-fashioned scholarly values. Besides…’ She looked unhappy. ‘There’s a problem with women. I’ve a nasty feeling that they’re not sufficiently appreciative of flummery. They have a ghastly tendency to be high-minded, austere and proponents of egalitarian clap-trap. I would worry that women would be resistant to mitre-wearing and processing around the place in fancy frocks.’

  ‘Female royals go in for that enthusiastically enough.’

  ‘Not the real royals. They do it for duty. The queen’s never happier than when riding around in the rain wearing a headscarf and the Queen Mum was to be found wading through Scottish trout streams up to her arse in icy water until she was in her early nineties.’ She scratched her midriff moodily. ‘Remember the grim austerity in which St Martha’s was gripped before I took it by the scruff of the neck?’ She shook her head. ‘So as I said, I’m ambivalent.’

  ‘Where do you stand on gays and lesbians being ordained?’

  ‘Can’t be having that. Not officially, anyway.’

  ‘You rotten old hypocrite.’

  ‘I’m not a hypocrite. I don’t mind clerics doing—within reason—what they like in private, but they should shut up about it. Sexuality should not define us. The church shouldn’t ask and the aspirants shouldn’t tell. I don’t want the C of E riven by sexual politics. Sometimes it’s right to brush issues under the carpet.’

&n
bsp; As Amiss’s voice rose in indignant liberal refutation, two polite-looking couples came round the corner. At the sight of a young man haranguing an elderly woman whose vast hat was shrouded in smoke from her pipe and whose knickers were clearly visible under her rucked-up skirt, they were gripped in a community of embarrassment.

  The baroness waved at them airily. ‘The trouble with you, Robert, is that liberal wetness at times fatally undermines your common sense. Make an issue of sexual orientation, force confrontation over ordination, and one of two things will happen. The conservatives will win and thousands of decent and effective homosexual priests will be driven out of the Church of England or the radicals will win and there’ll be wholesale defections of straight clergy and flock. Which do you prefer?’

  ‘I’ll reserve judgement. You really have a remarkable gift for portraying liberals as nihilists.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Fortunately, I can’t hang around any longer arguing my shaky and ill-informed position, for I must run. One of my lunch companions wants to prance me round the cathedral. And he’s dying for you to come too.’

  ‘Nothing doing. Far too much to get on with. I’m off to the hotel to make phone calls and order people around.’

  ‘He’ll be very disappointed.’

  ‘Tell him I’m playing hard to get. Enjoy yourself. And pick me up around seven.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Amiss coldly. ‘I forgot to pack a crane.’

  ***

  ‘Come in.’ She was lying on her bed in a silk paisley dressing gown watching the news and sipping what looked like a whisky and soda. ‘Grab a drink.’ She waved towards the fridge.

  Amiss helped himself to a gin and tonic and fell into the armchair. She pressed the remote control. ‘Nothing to worry about. The world appears to be in no more of a mess than it was this morning, despite my absence from the centre of things.’

  Amiss closed his eyes.

  ‘You’re looking a bit dazed.’

  ‘You’d be dazed if you’d had the Father Davage tour.’

  ‘Smart of me to avoid it. What’s the matter? Aggressively queer, is he?’

  ‘Coots run from him.’

  ‘He wasn’t making passes at you in the cathedral, was he? Even I would think that in rather poor taste.’