Murder in a Cathedral Read online

  ‘Frankly, David, you don’t seem to have given anything much thought.’

  He looked stricken.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Thoughtless of me. Considering what you’ve been through, you’ve done well just to survive the last few months.’

  ‘Do you know anything about the Reverend Alice?’ enquired Amiss gently.

  The bishop’s brows knitted. ‘Seems a nice woman.’ He delved back into Crockford’s. ‘Thirty-five, educated Bristol University. A three-year gap, then studied at theological college in America; she came back here seven years ago and was ordained deacon, then priest two years ago and then a canon just a few months ago.’

  ‘America indeed. Oh, oh,’ said the baroness.

  ‘Oh, really, Jack,’ said Amiss. ‘Curb your prejudices just for once. People can have studied in America and still be sane, you know.’

  ‘Only Mary Lou. What else do you know, David? What qualifications did she have to secure such a ground-breaking appointment?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But Cornelia heard she was elected to replace a canon who defected to Rome last year because of his opposition to women priests.’

  ‘That was a splendidly bitchy revenge, I have to say,’ observed the baroness. ‘What are her ecclesiastical politics?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t understand any of it except that it’s all going to be awful if Dean Cooper starts the crusade he’s threatening.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘To weed out what he calls depravity, indulgence and Romanism.’

  ‘Crikey. That’ll keep him busy.’

  ‘It’s not funny. I’m afraid of what he’ll want to do to the services and the music.’

  ‘Why did he allow today’s service to go ahead in that form? I’d have thought he’d at least have cut the incense ration.’

  ‘It was all set in stone before he arrived, Robert. And with the archbishop coming he couldn’t have risked a row, I suppose.’ He rocked back and forth. ‘It’s going to be dreadful. My auxiliary bishop is not very sympathetic, and pays no attention to what goes on in the cathedral. And I don’t even have a domestic chaplain in whom I can confide. When I told him last week that I was glad we now ordained women and could see no argument against female bishops, he marched straight upstairs, packed his bags and left. His last words were that he was going over to Rome.’

  The baroness got up, went over to the bishop and put her arm around him. ‘You poor old thing. You must be very miserable.’

  ‘I would feel completely desperate if it wasn’t that Robert’s going to help me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You’re not?’ The bishop’s voice was agonized.

  ‘I just can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said the baroness. ‘It’s only temporary.’

  ‘Look, David, it’s not that I wouldn’t like to be of use, but what you need to help you in Westonbury is a holy hit squad—not an atheist who doesn’t know the difference between a cathedral and a synagogue.’

  ‘My dear young man, above all other attributes I require someone with no ecclesiastical axes to grind. From what I’ve seen of you and from what Jack’s told me, you’re ideal—intelligent, discreet and honourable. Surely a job as a temporary researcher-cum-personal assistant will help you financially while you seek permanent employment.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘And you’re understanding.’

  To Amiss’s horror, the bishop began to cry. ‘Without a confidant I will go mad.’

  The baroness pulled his head onto her ample chest and patted him on the back. ‘There, there.’ She glared at Amiss. ‘How could you be so heartless?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘I give in. When do I start?’

  Chapter 6

  ‘It’s all very well for you, you double-crossing…’

  ‘Son of a bitch?’ suggested the baroness affably. ‘Oh, shut up whining. You know you’ll enjoy it. You’ve been secretly pining for something interesting to do. Stop griping and look over there and marvel.’

  Amiss’s gaze climbed slowly up the opulently lit exterior of Westonbury Cathedral to where—several hundred feet up—darkness fell just beyond the top of the highest spire. Further up again was an expanse of star-studded darkness. There was no sound except faint lapping from the distant weir, until the baroness murmured, ‘“By night an atheist half believes a God,”’ and they began walking again towards their hotel.

  ‘I suppose I might enjoy the peace of it all.’

  ‘Of course you will. Besides, Plutarch needs a change of air.’

  Amiss’s serenity was shattered. ‘Oh, bugger, I’d forgotten about her. Wouldn’t she be better off with you?’

  ‘This is a much better environment. It might have a lasting spiritual effect.’

  ‘I can’t just import her into the palace. She might tear its fabric apart.’

  ‘You misunderstand that animal. It’s confined spaces and sudden shocks that make her cross.’

  ‘Cross is not the word I would have chosen. How about vindictive? Vicious? Destructive? Murderous? I’ve seen her lay whole rooms waste and make grown men cry.’

  ‘You made a grown man cry this evening.’

  ‘Not by scratching him.’

  ‘No, by refusing him succour—temporarily, at least. And that’s typical of you. Plutarch is a passionate creature whose sins are sins of commission. You, on the other hand, tend towards the cold-blooded, so yours are sins of omission.’

  ‘That’s preposterous crap.’

  ‘It is not. Take, for instance, your treatment of Plutarch. You deny her love. Admit it, you hardly emanate affection. Poor little thing feels unwanted.’

  ‘She is bloody well unwanted. And highly inconvenient and expensive to boot. I am dutiful towards her and she treats me, at best, with disdain. Anyway, all this is bollocks. I grant you she gets on well with you, but even when billeted at St Martha’s she still creates mayhem from time to time.’

  ‘Only through an excess of youthful high spirits.’

  ‘The high-table salmon?’

  ‘Healthy appetite and discerning palate. No more than I’d have done myself in her shoes.’

  ‘“Rem acu tetigisti,” as Jeeves would say. You get on so well with her because you are two of a kind.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve already squared it with David. He likes her. Said she’d be company.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Stop arguing. Tell you what. I’ll deliver her personally on Sunday when I come down to hear Norm the Noodlehead preach. I’m in need of a good laugh. I look forward to enjoying the occasion with you.’

  ‘I won’t be here.’

  ‘What do you mean you won’t be here? You said you were coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll be going back to London on Saturday evening, so as to be ready the next morning to attend festivities in Battersea chez Bev.’

  The baroness looked blank.

  ‘Norm’s successor. He sounds potentially very entertaining. Davage met him this morning and squeaked apoplectically about his awfulness. Apparently he likes to be known as the Rev. Bev.’

  The baroness began to protest volubly, but Amiss cut her short. ‘Just shut up, Jack. I’ve a long-standing date to spend Sunday next with Ellis Pooley. He and Jim were so tied up with the Wimbledon serial murderer that we haven’t had a chance to meet for ages. I have absolutely no intention of welshing on the arrangement. You should be patting me on the back for combining business with pleasure by persuading him to suss out Norm’s past.’

  The baroness chuckled. ‘So be it. I would give a lot to see young Master Pooley leaping around being saved.’ She sighed. ‘In fact you now make me envious: I expect you’ll have much more fun than is likely to be on offer from Norm’s Old Testament ravings.’

  ‘I expect so too. From what Tilly told me, the Rev. Bev is not to be missed: charismatic, joyful and ready to heal at the drop of a cassock, apparently.’

  The baroness yawned. ‘Good
, good. Norm looks a bit dour by comparison. Still, I will extract from the occasion what entertainment I can and trust you to do the same.’

  They turned into the hotel grounds. ‘Now how do you suggest I square Rachel?’ enquired Amiss. ‘She’s becoming increasingly tired of what she calls my Flying Dutchman approach to life.’

  The baroness stopped and looked grimly at him. ‘Tell her to accept you for what you are. If she doesn’t enjoy your adventurousness, ingenuity and dash, then she doesn’t deserve you.’

  He went to bed comforted.

  ***

  ‘So now to the matter of the dean’s memorial,’ he wrote to Rachel.

  ‘I am told that the major inspiration for this was an immense monument in Winchester Cathedral to one of its Victorian bishops, who was clearly a chap with ideas above his station and whose memorial includes four sizeable angels carrying the bier and a vast eagle poised at the great man’s feet—presumably to carry his soul to heaven.

  ‘Plans for Dean Roper’s memorial were drawn up three years ago by his protégé, the perpetrator of the lady-chapel picture. The sketches show a marble effigy of Dean Roper clad in full ecclesiastical regalia, coloured in where appropriate with purple and gold, his body being borne by six winged youths in extremely brief togas. At the dean’s feet is a representation of the martyrdom of a hunky St Sebastian, who seems these days to be the patron saint of gays. The underside of the canopy is painted with murals of what were presumably the dean’s favourite biblical events, many of which seem to involve an excessive amount of romping of the David and Jonathan kind, a few more martyrdoms (was the dean into S&M I wonder?), and what the bishop said were the apostles skinny-dipping in the River Jordan, while John the Baptist and Jesus—turned out for decency’s sake in posing pouches—get on with the baptism in the corner.

  ‘Not surprisingly, English Heritage emitted a scream of anguish and refused to countenance having such a monstrosity in the cathedral, whereupon the dean and his chums took legal advice and discovered that there was nothing stopping them from erecting it in the garden of the deanery. So the decision was made to put this gay grotto in a reasonably discreet spot in the northwest corner. The foundations were laid, the plinth was put in position and the sculptor got to work.

  ‘Dean Cooper found out about it, saw the plans, denounced it as satanically inspired and then discovered that his predecessor, a scion of a major brewery, had left to his successor a bequest of a million pounds to be spent on whatever improvements to the cathedral he wanted; the loot would not be released until this gay grotto was in place. That news caused Norm to cave in, so he’s not completely incorruptible.

  ‘So you can see that there is much to interest me. Try and look upon what I’m doing as a form of paid social work. I promise the post has been redirected, and my calls diverted and I won’t pass up any interviews for real jobs.’

  He reread the long letter, grimaced and typed:

  ‘Do I hear words like “pushover,” “feeble,” and “Troutbeck’s office boy” rise uncharitably once more to your lips? Pshaw! That is just because I have become too accustomed over the last few years to apologizing and pretending that I am being pushed into that which secretly I really want to do. So please disregard any wimpery in this letter, any suggestion that I am a piece of flotsam tossed hither and thither on the tide that is Baroness Troutbeck’s will (what a fucking awful metaphor!) and accept instead that I am willingly grasping the opportunity to help prop up a great national institution. And at the very least it’ll be a lot better than moping at home.

  ‘I must end now. I’m off to Westonbury tomorrow, so this is the only opportunity to assuage my curiosity by visiting Norm and Tilly’s old church; Ellis, my anthropological companion-in-arms, is due to pick me up any minute.’

  Pausing only to add endearments, Amiss put his letter in an envelope, addressed it to Rachel care of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for forwarding in the diplomatic bag and stamped it just as the doorbell rang.

  ***

  Amiss and Pooley arrived at St John the Evangelist’s ten minutes early to find that there was no parking space within several hundred yards. By the time they entered the vast Victorian church, there was only just standing room: the nave was chock-a-block with worshippers singing lustily along with a male guitarist and three women with tambourines. The man wore sandals, jeans and a flowered shirt, and the women floaty smocks of the kind that went out of fashion when Flower Power died in the seventies. The tune was Dylanesque and the voices poor—but what really horrified Amiss were the words of the refrain:

  ‘When they come and listen to us sing to God aburve, They’ll know we are Christians by our lurve, by our lurve.’

  He avoided Pooley’s eye.

  This song appeared to be the culmination of the superannuated hippies’ gig; when they finished, the lead singer raised his guitar towards the heavens and called, ‘Praise the Lord.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ yelled the congregation.

  The Flower Children scampered off into the well of the church and were instantly replaced by a West Indian steel band, which danced onto the platform. Although they were more to Amiss’s musical taste, their sound—augmented by even more tambourines—was so deafening as to cause him actual pain. Unable to identify any more than occasional words like ‘Lord,’ ‘suffer,’ and ‘save,’ he let the sound wash over him, wriggled himself into a better vantage point and watched for audience reaction.

  Tilly had been right. There was no denying that this was a wildly enthusiastic congregation. And what was more, there was nothing uniform about its members. Middle-aged, middle-class trendies, washed-out teenagers, down-and-outs and clean-cut Mormonesque types were all singing along lustily, their faces full of joy: Amiss and an increasingly tightlipped Pooley seemed the only spectres at the feast.

  The din ceased, the band dispersed and a single light shone onto a youngish man in a bright yellow tunic who had just materialized in the pulpit. Amiss recognized him as the Rev. Bev by his black ponytail and the three rings in his left ear.

  ‘Brothers and sisters! God is love!’ He threw his arms out and motioned to his congregation to respond.

  ‘God is love!’ they parroted.

  ‘Hallelujah!’

  ‘Hallelujah!’

  ‘Louder, louder. Hallelujah!’

  ‘Hallelujah!’

  As the din died away, a hulking skinhead with spots gazed so threateningly at Amiss and Pooley that on the next round of ‘Hallelujahs’ they participated enthusiastically.

  Bev’s voice fell several decibels. ‘Hey,’ he crooned. ‘Hey, hey, hey.’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ shouted the congregation.

  ‘How do we know that God loves us?’ he enquired. There was a dramatic pause. His voice rose. “Cos he’s told us so, that’s how! In his very own story!’ And in a crescendo: ‘In his very own—his very own book!’ At which he picked up a volume from the edge of the pulpit and waved it over his head. ‘And this is it. The Holy Word of God! God’s own book! The Bible!’

  He put the book down and looked sternly at the congregation. ‘Now why did God give us this book?’ They gazed back expectantly. ‘So we would read it, of course! Not to leave lyin’ there! He gave it us so we could build up the muscles of faith.’

  He moved his head slowly from left to right and surveyed each section of his flock sadly. ‘But you’re just not building up those muscles the way God wanted, are you? You’re lazing about. Your muscles are all flabby.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘That’s not what God wants.’ He bunched his fists and flexed his impressive pectorals. ‘This is what God wants from you. He wants you all to build big muscles and be champs!

  ‘You know how a wrestler gets to be a champ?’ Again he surveyed his listeners slowly, this time from right to left. ‘I see you all know the answer. First he works out to build up those muscles. And then he practises wrestling against ever stronger and stronger opponents. He’s always preparing himself to meet the next
one.’

  He brandished the Bible again. ‘This is your own private work-out equipment—a present from God to you. Exercise, exercise, exercise. Build up those big faith muscles. And then you’ll be ready to wrestle with sin.’

  His voice fell dramatically. ‘When you’re strong enough, you’ll be ready to take on the great enemy himself. Yes, brothers and sisters, when you’ve got the faith muscles of a Mr Universe, you can throw the Great Satan himself!’ His voice rose. ‘And if we’re all champs and we wrestle him together, we’ll be able to put our feet on Satan’s neck and count him out!

  ‘That’s our holy mission! That’s what God wants us to do. That’s why he gave us the equipment.’ He gazed round. ‘Now, you know how you feel when you give someone a present and they’re not grateful enough? It bugs you, doesn’t it? And it bugs God too when he looks down and sees you leaving the exercise bike of faith gathering dust in the corner of your soul.’

  The congregation shuffled in a shamefaced way.

  ‘But this isn’t just bugging God. It’s committing suicide. ‘Cos if you ignore God’s exercise bike you won’t have the muscles to climb into heaven when you die! Think of that! You’ll be looking at the staircase and you won’t have the strength to climb up to God! Jesus will be standing at the top with his arms open to you, and you won’t be able to reach him.

  ‘There’ll be a place for you somewhere else, though. You don’t need muscles to tumble down the mine shaft to hell. And as you fall towards the devil and the lake of eternal flames, you’ll be crying out in despair. “Oh, God,” you’ll be crying, “I’m sorry I didn’t work-out when you gave me the chance. Save me.”’

  He shook his head gloomily. ‘But God won’t hear you. ‘Cos when you fall down the mine shaft to hell, you’re not on line to God any more. Only to Satan.’

  Even Amiss was feeling rather guilty and depressed by this time. So, like the rest of the congregation, he was relieved when Bev Johns decided to lighten the tone. ‘OK, OK. That’s enough of the’—he raised his index fingers and mimed quotation marks—‘“Bad News.” Now for the’—he repeated the business with his fingers—‘“Good News.”’ Then he leaped in the air. ‘Jesus is our friend!’ He motioned to his hearers. ‘Let’s hear it for Jesus!’