Amendment of Life (6 page)

‘Now left again,' the commanding elderly voice came clearly over the ether.

There were, Sloan realized now, no points of reference inside a maze. The two policemen would have been lost in minutes had not Miss Pedlinge been telling them where to go next.

‘And again,' she said.

‘If we go on like this, sir,' muttered Crosby mutinously, ‘any minute now we'll be back where we started.'

‘Now turn right,' came the voice upon the instant, demolishing any theories anyone might have heard about always keeping to the left.

‘Ah,' said Sloan. Suddenly the path in front of them splayed out into a circle of yew hedge. In the middle of this was a statue of a woman. ‘Would this be Ariadne, I wonder?' he murmured aloud.

Detective Constable Crosby shook his head. ‘No, sir,' he said confidently. ‘There's no sign that this young lady here's wearing a ball of wool.' He took another look and blinked. ‘Or anything else, come to that.'

‘Ah,' said the disembodied voice. ‘I see you've got to Pasiphaë at last. You're getting warmer…'

‘Which is more than can be said for her over there,' said Crosby sotto voce, pointing to the statue. ‘If she's not frozen stiff, then she ought to be. Not a stitch on.'

‘Pasiphaë was the daughter of the sun god Helios,' the two policemen were informed by the old lady inside Aumerle Court.

‘Then you'd think she'd feel the cold all the more, wouldn't you, sir?' said Crosby insouciantly. ‘So why have they got her in here without anything on?'

‘Artistic licence,' said Sloan briefly. He made another mental note. As far as he could tell, neither Miss Daphne Pedlinge, nor her carer, Milly Smithers, had recognized the body, the first sight of whose clothing had brought Captain Prosser out in such a cold sweat. He could, he realized, be wrong about this: the old lady had been cool and collected enough – to say nothing of experienced – to have concealed the fact. ‘Keep moving, Crosby.'

‘Pasiphaë was the wife of Minos,' went on the scholarly voice of Miss Daphne Pedlinge. ‘In the first instance, that is. The bull came later—'

‘What bull?' asked Crosby.

‘And she was also the mother of Androgeos,' Miss Pedlinge continued. ‘His statue is the one you should come to next, gentlemen. Take the further path after the next turning—'

‘Can't wait,' said Crosby.

‘You'll have to,' said Sloan grimly, ‘if you don't listen and pay attention to the lady's instructions.' He led the way forward. ‘Follow me—'

‘And now turn sharp right,' came the voice through the radio telephone.

‘This way,' intruded another sound, this from much nearer and much louder. ‘I'm over here,' carried on a man's voice plaintively. ‘Pete Carter. With a dead woman. Can't you get to me any quicker, whoever you are?'

‘Police,' said Detective Constable Crosby. ‘That's who we are and we're coming.'

‘Then take the second left,' ordered Miss Pedlinge, ‘that should bring you straight to Androgeos.'

‘There he is,' said Crosby as they turned left into another round space in the maze. He inspected a conspicuously male statue. ‘All boy, isn't he?'

‘So I should hope,' said Sloan, ‘with a name like that.'

‘What?' The Constable looked puzzled and then his face cleared. ‘Oh, I get you, sir.' Crosby grinned. ‘So that's where the word “androgen” comes from, is it?' He took a longer, more considering look at the statue. ‘Well, I never…'

‘Androgeos', they were told in uninflected tones from the upper room at Aumerle Court, ‘beat all-comers in the games at Athens.'

‘I can believe that,' said Crosby, brightening. ‘Fine-looking fellow, isn't he?'

‘So they killed him,' said Miss Pedlinge.

‘For winning?' said Crosby. The Berebury football team were always celebrated for their victories. With a vengeance. ‘That's pretty dire.'

‘Do come,' pleaded an unhappy voice from behind a nearby hedge. ‘I don't like it here.'

‘You're nearly at the centre of the maze now, Inspector,' said the voice from the window. ‘Keep going.'

‘Puts a whole new light on those Berebury versus Luston football matches, doesn't it, sir?' said Detective Constable Crosby, demonstrating how a classical education could broaden the mind. ‘Being killed for winning, I mean.'

‘Losers like the last word,' said Sloan briefly. ‘Come on, we must be nearly there.'

‘Just one more turning,' said the old lady.

‘Here,' called out Pete Carter, ‘I'm over here. Can't anyone hear me and come?'

Sloan plunged ahead, taking the last twist in the path at speed.

The two policemen reached the centre of the maze with disconcerting suddenness. The statue there was neither human nor animal but a strange amalgam of both – half bull, half man.

‘You've got to the Minotaur now,' said the detached voice over the airwaves. ‘The Minotaur, you will remember, was the legendary outcome of a liaison between Pasiphaë and a bull.'

But Detective Inspector Sloan wasn't taking in Greek legends. He was trying to listen to the agitated observations of Pete Carter while at the same time looking down at the dead body of a woman. It was lying at the feet of the Minotaur.

The educated elderly female voice had not finished its spiel. ‘And, gentlemen, as I said before, arriving at the figure of the Minotaur traditionally represents the end of man's quest to the centre of the labyrinth, which is, of course, a metaphor for death…'

*   *   *

‘I'm very sorry, Mr Dean,' Barry Wright was saying. His official title was Clerk of Works at the Minster in Calleford, although he would have much preferred to be known as a manager of some kind. Other people knew what managers were and did: they managed. Nobody knew precisely what lay within the responsibilities of the Clerk of Works; except those living in and around the Minster Close.

There, of course, was the rub.

Barry Wright's early attempts to get his job title modernized had foundered on such intangibles as the Minster Statutes, various early Cathedral Measures Acts and a multitude of precedents established by decisions taken by the Greater Chapter over the last millennium.

His own later attempts to have his duties and responsibilities defined more exactly had had a simpler outcome: in essence they comprised doing whatever the Dean wanted him to do. And sooner rather than later.

He was standing outside the Deanery now with the Dean, the Very Reverend Malby Coton, and the Bishop of Calleford. They were all looking down at a bizarre assortment of bones and feathers and scribblings in black chalk on the Deanery doorstep.

‘I've already been on to Double Felix at Berebury today on behalf of Canon Willoughby,' explained Barry Wright, trying not to sound too defensive, ‘to arrange for some more security lighting, but I'm afraid they aren't able to deal with the matter immediately.'

‘Ah,' said Malby Coton.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Dean, but they said that something important has come up this morning and they're all tied up for the time being.' Wright made an effort not to sound too placatory either when he added, ‘They'll come round as soon as they can, I'm sure.'

The Dean treated this remark, as he did all other communications of whatever nature, with impeccable courtesy. ‘Thank you, Mr Wright.' He turned and indicated Bertram Wallingford, who was standing at his side. ‘The Bishop tells me that there has been a similar – er – intrusion in the Palace garden.'

Technically and traditionally, the Bishop's house lay outside the Close, but its garden abutted the perimeter wall, a gate in the wall giving easy access to the Close and the Minster. It hadn't always been so. In fact, the gateway between the two properties had been walled up more than once over the ages, but not since 1485. It was during the Wars of the Roses when the Dean and the Bishop had last had a major row, one having been unfortunately a Yorkist and the other a Lancastrian.

‘There was the body of a garrotted rabbit on my doorstep,' said Bertie Wallingford accurately, ‘amongst other things. I don't know how it got there.'

The Clerk of Works took the reference to this intrusion to be a reflection on the Minster's security system, which was also one of his manifold responsibilities, and hastened into speech. ‘I've already had a word with the nightwatchmen, Mr Dean, and they were not aware of there having been any intruders in the Close last night.'

‘Ah,' said Malby Coton gravely.

‘But there must have been,' said the Bishop, more given to saying what he thought than the Dean.

Barry Wright said, ‘The men assure me, your Grace, that they did their rounds as usual, but naturally they are unlikely to have noticed anything of – er – this particular nature, especially in the dark.' The Clerk of Works stared down uneasily at the odd collection at his feet. He was no theologian, but even he was aware that these items betokened something that was not Christian. ‘One of the men did say he'd heard an odd sound very early this morning, but he didn't find anything to account for it. He thought it might have been a cat—'

‘But it wasn't,' Malby Coton prompted him gently.

‘No, Mr Dean?'

‘No, Mr Wright. It was the bleat of a young goat in Canon Shorthouse's garden.'

‘A tethered goat,' put in the Bishop. His wife had hastened back home in search of something for the goat to eat and drink.

‘A goat in the garden? But', protested Wright, ‘the Canon's away on a sabbatical.'

‘That's right,' said the Bishop. ‘He's giving the Lanenden Lectures in Paris…'

‘To be called “The Albigensian Crusade Reconsidered”,' said the Dean.

‘Should be very interesting,' said the Bishop, momentarily diverted.

‘The Minster,' said the Dean suddenly. ‘There isn't—'

‘No, Mr Dean,' Barry Wright was reassuring. ‘I had that checked out first. No one's been in there that shouldn't have.' He thought again and added clumsily, ‘Nor done anything in there that they shouldn't have done either.'

‘That's a relief,' said Malby Coton, relaxing visibly. ‘We wouldn't want to have to close the Minster and be arranging for a reconsecration at short notice.'

‘Or an exorcism,' said the Bishop.

‘Just as well,' said the Dean. ‘Isn't Canon Short-house our diocesan “Deliverance from Evil” specialist these days?'

‘So he is,' admitted the Bishop. ‘I'd forgotten that for a moment. Don't get a lot of call for exorcism in the ordinary way. That's for the best, too, since he's abroad.'

‘What we should be arranging', said the Dean in a businesslike way, ‘is a briefing for our public relations people.'

‘Hush it up, you mean, Mr Dean?' said Barry Wright.

‘No, no,' said Malby Coton. ‘That wouldn't do at all. Get our oar in first is what I mean. Whoever's done this will soon spread it about anyway. We'll give our version to the local paper straight away and before anyone else.'

‘With photographs,' added the Bishop, who had once gone to a talk on the Church and the media.

*   *   *

Photographs or, rather, the summoning of the police photographers, Dyson and Williams, was one of the things on the mind of Detective Inspector Sloan, too: one of the many things.

The figure on the ground was lying face down in front of the statue of the bull and it was by no means photogenic. Moreover, it was lying in a position which suggested that it had been carefully placed at the feet of the bull, rather than simply cast down in front of it.

‘She's dead,' repeated Pete Carter unnecessarily. ‘I keep telling everyone that she's dead.'

‘Do you know who she is?' asked Sloan. There was no doubt about the woman being dead. What she had died from wasn't so immediately obvious. He noted automatically that as Captain Prosser had seemed to recognize her, then it must have been from what she was wearing, since her face was still hidden from view.

Pete Carter shook his head. ‘Never set eyes on her until I turned that corner there and came into this bit of the maze.'

‘Miss Pedlinge,' asked Sloan through his radio, something stirring deep down in the vestigial memories of his schooldays, ‘isn't there an old legend about tributes to a bull somewhere?'

‘Sacrifices, you mean,' she said promptly, her voice coming clearly over the air. ‘Oh, yes indeed. The Cretan Minotaur demanded a tribute of seven youths and seven virgins…'

‘She's not a virgin,' said Crosby, pointing at the body of the woman, ‘at least, sir,' his face producing a ruddy blush, ‘not if that wedding ring is anything to go by.'

‘Miss Pedlinge,' said Detective Inspector Sloan into his radio telephone, ‘will you please switch off now? I am going to have to ring Berebury for further assistance.'

‘Over and out,' said the old lady unexpectedly before the line went dead.

Chapter Seven

‘We've found the body of a woman, sir,' reported Detective Inspector Sloan over the air to Superintendent Leeyes. ‘It was just where Miss Pedlinge said we would find her. Name unknown to us.'

‘We've got a woman just reported missing,' barked back his superior officer. ‘Name of Margaret Collins.'

‘It's quite difficult to estimate her age, sir, as we can't see her face … not without turning her over, that is, and we can't do that until Dyson and Williams get here.' The two police photographers were on their way. ‘And Dr Dabbe.' Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe was the forensic pathologist for East Calleshire and he was on his way, too. But he would beat the photographers to it. He drove more quickly than was good for him or anyone else.

‘She was twenty-five last birthday,' said Leeyes. ‘If she's the missing woman, that is.'