An Act of Evil (19 page)

When
they returned in the early evening, the crowds had gone from the fair and the dusk-washed meadow was spread with its remnants. Boy Scouts were collecting litter, a collapsed marquee was a sprawl of crumpled canvas, stalls were being dismantled again. Everything stopped as the time approached for the plays to begin. The only activity was far off on the opposite bank of the Verta where a handful of people moved about the scaffolding on which were fixed the fireworks that would end everything.

There
was a wide area between the platform bearing the seats and the stage which was filling with people finding spaces to sit on the grass. Maltravers and Tess took their seats immediately behind the Bishop and his wife. The Bishop turned to speak to them.

“
I’ve heard what happened today,” he said confidentially as they leaned forward. “I’m sorry.”

There
was a distinctly uneasy feeling about the gathering on the platform, sitting in an awkward silence in contrast to the chattering people on the grass below. As they waited for the performance to start, conversation became increasingly difficult.

“
It’s a great pity they could not arrange for the plays to be performed by members of the ancient guilds who originally put them on.” The Bishop was doing his best to ease the strain everybody felt by talking to the Dean who sat on his left. “Noah’s Flood was done by the Verta watermen of course and the carpenters did the Crucifixion which was an obvious irony. I can’t remember all the others. The tanners did the Temptation, the weavers the Judgement and the glovers the Adoration of the Magi. Of course the difficulty would be finding sufficient numbers following those trades today. Who was it did the Creation? The bakers I think. That might have been possible to arrange.”

Maltravers
glanced around the seats which were now nearly all full. All the cathedral clergy had arrived and there were several other faces he was sure he had seen in the Chapter House and at the Dean’s garden party. As his gaze passed over them, his eyes paused when he saw Madden towards the back, who gave him a barely courteous nod of acknowledgement. He looked down among the crowd on the grass and thought he could recognise Jackson but, like all the others, the figure had his back to him. The voices went silent as a spotlight, placed on the roof of the Refectory behind them, abruptly threw a pool of light onto the centre of the stage and the plays began.

Into
the light, a crowd of about thirty robed men and women slowly moved in a tight group then parted to reveal Jeremy Knowles in their midst, his costume almost a caricature of the classic image of Satan with pointed tail, curved horns and trident. He crept to the front of the stage like a spider and peered slowly round all the audience, then swept his trident round in a slow arc embracing them all in a web of evil and smiled knowingly with satisfaction. He whirled and raised his arms aloft towards the group which had formed like a choir behind him, then monstrously conducted them to speak.

“
Crucify Him!” they shouted in obedient unison. The Devil turned back and bowed to his audience, indicating the mastery he had achieved over Man.

The
Vercaster Players, who had impressed Maltravers already, rose to even greater heights as they portrayed the final terrible events of Christian legend. Christ betrayed and abandoned, crying in despair from the Cross, then slumped and deflated in death before striding in triumph from the tomb. But there was still the Devil to pay.

The
plain backcloth of the stage suddenly fell and coloured spotlights danced on painted flames in the midst of which Knowles was coiled like a serpent ready to strike. Between the two principals, a crowd of souls swayed in confusion, now tempted by the Devil’s cunning, now sweeping back to Christ’s promise. Finally, as Knowles’s cajolery turned to threats, they gathered behind Christ, who raised his white robed arms to cast a long shadow that engulfed his enemy. Knowles became berserk, his voice now a shriek.

“
Where is my power?” he screamed, then staggered backwards and collapsed. As every eye was riveted upon him he lay writhing on the floor like a man consumed by a fit. Suddenly the ground gave under him — there was a sheet of canvas covering a hole in the stage — and he vanished down it to an explosion of noise and bursts of crimson and purple smoke out of which emerged the figure of God. It was the dawn of Doomsday.

Tess,
who had been as enthralled as anyone by a piece of spectacular and imaginative theatre, felt Maltravers grip her hand fiercely. She turned to him and he was transfixed with a look of total shock.

“
Christ Almighty!” he said. “Where the hell is he?”

He
leapt to his feet, looked swiftly all around and then roughly barged past people between him and the steps leading down from the platform, ignoring cries of protest and outrage. Behind him Madden rose as well and onstage the man playing God looked uncertainly towards the commotion. Maltravers leapt down the steps in one bound, grimacing when pain shot back into his leg as he landed, then overcame it as he dashed towards the Chapter House and round back into Punt Yard. He hammered at the door which was opened by Jenny. Upstairs he could hear the disturbed Rebecca crying.

“
Has anyone been here? Have you heard anything?” The urgency in his voice dumbfounded the girl who shook her head blankly.

“
Damn him!” Maltravers looked helplessly round the yard.

“
Don’t open the door again,” he ordered and raced back towards the south transept.

His
pounding footsteps echoed round the slype as he ran to the door leading into the Chapter House. He turned the handle and pushed violently but it was locked. He went back through the silent cloisters and burst into the south aisle of the cathedral itself, the massive vaulted nave empty and hollow as he looked desperately around, panting for breath. In the turmoil of his mind he now knew there was no logic in his search. There was nobody in sight as he sped through the nave and out of the west door, stopping at the top of the cathedral steps. Impatience and frustration were feeding his rage as he surveyed the emptiness outside. He was about to run back to where the plays were continuing when he heard a creaking sound behind him. On one side of the porch was the door leading to the top of Talbot’s Tower. Normally it was kept locked, now it shifted slightly on its ancient hinges.

He
scrambled up the narrow staircase that corkscrewed through the stonework, his shoulders spasmodically bumping against the walls. The steps had deep concave impressions worn by centuries of use and several times he stumbled, swearing. He passed the point where a small plaque marked the spot where Bishop Talbot had collapsed and died. At the top of the steps was a low wooden arched door with a latch operated by a ring of rusty twisted iron. He grabbed it and turned, then hurled the door open and stepped, gasping for breath, onto the wooden platform which capped the top of Talbot’s Tower.

From
the rope of the flagpole in the centre hung Diana’s head, tied by its long hair. On the opposite side of the battlements a figure crouched in a crenellation with its back to him.

“
You evil bastard!” Maltravers forced the shout from his aching lungs.

Matthew
Webster turned his head, his face livid with madness and fury.

“
Evil?” he shrieked back. His arm shot out and pointed a quivering finger accusingly at Diana’s head. “She was evil! She mocked God in His own house and spoke the words of your blasphemy!”

Maltravers
slumped against the side of the door as a great weariness overcame him. He felt sick. For a long moment the two men looked at each other across the twenty feet between them.

“
Give yourself up,” said Maltravers. He pushed himself upright and stepped slowly towards the flagpole, an immense sadness on his face. Webster gave him a final look of total vindictiveness and was gone. Maltravers leapt across to the edge of the tower and looked down to see him crash face upwards onto one of the flying buttresses on the north side and heard the crack as his back broke. For a few seconds his body lay there like a rag doll, then slowly slid down the incline of the buttress to the ground. Maltravers heard a scream from behind him. Tess was standing in the doorway, her face frozen in horror at what she saw. As he crossed to her she wrenched her eyes away and clasped her hands over them. He took her in his arms and gently stroked her hair.

“
It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It’s all over now.”

Below
them the Mystery Plays had ended and five hundred voices began joyfully to sing Blake’s
Jerusalem
. Across the Verta came the crackle of igniting fireworks and three great rockets streaked upwards to explode in white chrysanthemums of light.

“
Go on down.” Maltravers turned Tess so she could not see the flagpole. “I’ll follow you in a moment.” She stepped back through the door and began slowly to descend the stairs.

Maltravers
untied Diana’s hair then carefully wrapped her head in his jacket. As he turned to follow Tess a piece of stone with a flint embedded in it about the size of a tennis ball caught his eye. He picked it up and took it down with him. Halfway he met Jackson who looked at his face, then turned back without a word. In the porch Maltravers handed the jacket to the sergeant.

“
Don’t open it here,” he said. “Where’s Tess?”

“
She went into the cathedral. What’s that?”

Maltravers
glanced at the piece of stone he was holding, then went to where the fallen masonry from the tower was kept. The piece that had hit him was on top. He looked at it, turned it over, then placed the piece he was holding into a gap in its edge.

“
You were asking me about this when something interrupted us,” he said. “He tried to kill me as well.”

As
Maltravers entered the nave, Tess was a lonely bowed figure sitting on a chair by the aisle. He walked softly up and sat down next to her. She was holding in her fingers the Talbot’s Tower brooch, which she had unpinned from her shirt, savagely bending it backwards and forwards. It suddenly snapped in two. She gazed at the pieces for a moment then buried her head in Maltravers’ shoulder as he put his arm round her. The silent building was filled with the sound of her sobbing.

Chapter Sixteen

ON THE TOP floor of Matthew Webster’s home was a small locked room, inside which the police found the mutilated remains of Diana Porter. Pinned to her dress was another type-written Biblical text, this time from Exodus Chapter 22, Verse 18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. By the body was a meat cleaver on the wooden handle of which were found traces of her blood.

On
the table by Webster’s bed, along with his Bible and a book on the Revelation of St John the Divine, was his diary. The entry for the Sunday on which Diana disappeared read: “The woman is dead. Thanks be to God in whose eyes His servant is obedient.” The only other entries were for appointments connected with his work or the festival. At the end of the garden which, like the adjacent Dean’s, was thick with trees, police found a ready-dug shallow grave. The awful picture was completed with swift and sudden finality.

“
There is only one matter which we may still need to investigate,” said Madden. His eyes flickered across the attentive faces of Barratt and Jackson. “Did Webster actually jump off the tower? There were no independent witnesses as to what happened.”

“
Mr Maltravers is quite emphatic in his statement,” Barratt replied. “He assumed that Webster thought he was going to attack him. He knew he was caught without any means of escape so he decided to take his own life.”

“
When Mr Maltravers suddenly…” Madden paused, then spoke the next words contemptuously, “solved the crime, he immediately decided to take matters into his own hands instead of informing the police.”

“
He saw that Webster had gone and was anxious to find him before he could do whatever he was planning and get away with it. He said there was no time to explain his suspicions and if we had just discovered Miss Porter’s head on the flagpole we might never have found who did it.”

“
You believe this…somewhat fanciful explanation of how he suddenly realised it was Webster?”

“
He was right, sir. I’m sure he had not deliberately kept anything from us. He was more anxious than anyone that Miss Porter should be found. He feels guilty that he didn’t realise the truth sooner.”

Madden
made no comment. Every aspect of the case annoyed him. The pointless manhunt for Powell, the wasted cost of sending two men to Los Angeles to question Sinclair, the massive police operation which had achieved nothing. And finally the solution coming from the one man who had never left his mind as a suspect. His mind was tormented by not knowing what happened on the top of Talbot’s Tower.

“
A report will be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions,” he said. “He will decide if further action is necessary. All officers to return to normal duties.”

In
the incident room a policewoman was methodically plucking the coloured pins marking reported sightings of Arthur Powell from the map of Britain and carefully dropping them into small cardboard boxes.

In
Los Angeles, Peter Sinclair, who had been told that two police officers were flying from England to talk to him, received a phone call saying the interview had been cancelled because Diana’s murderer had been found. He immediately made a transatlantic call.

“
Just to let you know, sweetie, that they’ve found whoever it was,” he said when the woman answered. “So now I don’t need an alibi and I’m going to let everyone know what I was really doing. You can lie through your teeth now but I’ll make damned sure your husband gets the message that you screw around.”

The
line went abruptly dead and she stood holding the receiver as her husband entered the room.

“
Who was that?” he asked.

“
Wrong number.”

*

His face drained and grey, the Bishop looked an old and fragile man. He personally opened the door to Maltravers and Tess as they arrived at the Palace following his request to see them before they left Vercaster. He took them through to the lounge where his wife served coffee. Maltravers traced the floral pattern of the easy chair with his finger as the Bishop spoke.

“
There is nothing I can say, except that we share your grief. I wanted to tell you that again before you left us. Matthew was a tortured and unbalanced young man but none of us realised it. I am very conscious of the fact that it was I who brought him to this cathedral.” There was an uncomfortable silence which the Bishop finally broke himself. “I’m still not altogether clear as to how you finally realised it was him.”

Maltravers
sat forward in the chair, his coffee held in both hands.

“
One odd thing triggered it all and at that instant I saw everything. I’ve had to consciously piece it together again since and what appals me most is that I knew so much but didn’t realise sooner. Perhaps if I had…”

“
Mr Maltravers you must not reproach yourself,” the Bishop interrupted. “What did you know?”

“
I expect it started right at the beginning. The first thing I was told about Matthew Webster was that he was zealous, over religious. It seems blindingly obvious now what the effect of Diana’s performance would be on such a person. I had written it to stimulate, to put accepted beliefs in a different light. He was appalled by it and the fact that it was performed in the Chapter House made it more offensive to him. Then, to make matters worse, he saw people like yourself and the Dean congratulating Diana and me afterwards, praising what he could only see as blasphemy.

“
The process was repeated at the Dean’s garden party the following afternoon, everyone congratulating her again. It’s fairly clear what must have happened. He went back to his own house next door and must have called Diana to the fence from his own garden when he saw her standing alone after most of the other guests had left. Whatever happened then would have been hidden by the bushes but they found a wound on her head indicating that she had been struck.” The Bishop closed his eyes as if in pain.

“
By now he was seeing himself as God’s instrument of revenge,” Maltravers went on. “That was the phrase he used to us when we were talking about the hunt for Powell. He had killed Diana but other people had to suffer. We were the next when he nailed her hand to the door in Punt Yard.”

“
But how could he have done that?” objected the Bishop. “That is one thing I cannot see. The Dean told me that he and his wife walked with Matthew from Cathedral Close and met you on the way to the cathedral. For the entire evening Matthew was at the organ and there was no interval. He came straight back into the nave at the end and you all left together.”

“
The first point is that nobody could see him from the nave,” explained Maltravers. “His communication with the conductor was through the television camera. There wasn’t an interval but the soloists sang the piece from Stainer’s
Crucifixion
unaccompanied. I’ve timed it since on a recording Michael has and it lasts just about three minutes. That would have been time for him to leave the organ and go out through the door in the Lady Chapel on the south side. I used it myself once and it’s directly opposite the front door of Michael and Melissa’s house. The nail holding the hand was not hammered home. It wasn’t so much a case of him not wanting to make too much noise, it was that he had time for only one quick blow before going back. There was no audience in the transepts or anywhere behind the choir screen so the chances of him being seen were minimal.

“
One other thing is that when we met him on our way to the cathedral he was carrying a music case. Melissa remarked that she thought he would have known what he was going to play by heart. Diana’s hand and the hammer and nail were in that case; the police have found bloodstains on the inside. Sending the other hand and the hair through the post was no difficulty. It only takes about half an hour to reach North London by car.”

Despite
his grief and shock, the Bishop was becoming interested in Maltravers’ explanation.

“
You said you knew other things?”

“
One thing that seemed totally irrelevant at the time but which now appears significant is the conversation I had with him about misprinted Bibles. I was making a joke of it all but he said something about such things being regrettable as it was the word of God. I let it go out of my mind at the time but it was another indication of his narrow views.”

“
Are you saying he also took the Latimer Mercy?”

Maltravers
shrugged. “There’s no sign of it in his house but it’s the obvious conclusion. Its presence in the cathedral — remember it was kept near the organ where he would frequently have seen it — would have been offensive to him. Perhaps the approaching festival and the fact that even more people than usual would see it made him do something. That must have been the start of it all. One thing that Jackson and I discussed more than once was the possibility of a link between the Latimer Mercy theft and Diana, but we couldn’t see one.”

“
Do you think he destroyed it?”

“
I’m not sure. He’d have had to balance the fact that it was misprinted against the fact that it was a Bible. I don’t think any of us could understand how his mind worked so we can’t know what he would have decided.” Maltravers finished his coffee and carefully placed the cup and saucer on the table beside him. “It doesn’t matter anyway. What does matter is that at one point he gave himself away and I didn’t see it.”

“
Neither did I, nor Michael,” Tess said quietly. “And you were in no state to notice things.” The Bishop looked quizzically from one to the other.

“
Tess is talking about the day he tried to kill me with a lump of masonry he threw off Talbot’s Tower,” said Maltravers. “The piece I found on top of the tower on Saturday night must have broken off as he pushed it over. We came up to the cathedral from Hibbert’s Park and we would have been clearly visible from some distance away. He must have seen us approaching, grabbed one of the collection of pieces that had fallen previously — the one he chose isn’t as heavy as it looks — and taken it up to the top. After throwing it at me he went down the tower staircase and back into the cathedral relying on the obvious fuss outside to give him cover. He then must have gone out of the north transept and along the alleyway that leads to the town centre.

“
The people in the shop where he bought the violin strings say they remember he spent quite a while in there and drew particular attention to the time. It would have been an alibi if he needed it. He then walked back round the other way to enter Punt Yard from the main road end. I think he might have been planning to call at Michael and Melissa’s house on some pretext and make a point of saying he was on his way back from the shop. In fact, he coincidentally met Michael on the way.

“
The mistake he made — and got away with — was when Michael told him to go and investigate the fallen stone.” Maltravers paused. “He never asked where it had happened. It could have been any one of three sides of the tower and how could he have known which one?”

“
You’re making him sound a very callous and deliberate murderer,” the Bishop remarked. “I regard him more as an irrational young man. Would he really have been so calculating?”

“
He had a sense of mission. He was carrying out what he saw as the will of God. I find that so irrational and self-deluding in the light of what he did that I think cunning would have been a part of it.

“
The only thing that seems out of character is that he used Talbot’s Tower at the end, although it occurred to me that technically the extension might not actually be consecrated. Bishop Talbot died on his way up to perform the service.”

The
Bishop shook his head. “No. That service would have been one of dedication and acceptance of the extension. Perhaps it was never carried out later but the land on which all parts of the cathedral stands is consecrated and nothing can alter that.”

“
I wonder if Webster realised that?” said Maltravers. “It seems that the tower would have served his purpose as the final act of vengeance on as many people as possible who had approved of what happened in the Chapter House. He was obviously going to haul the rope up and horrify them with the sight. The man had turned evil with madness.” He was about to add more but Tess shot him a warning glance and he remained silent about the awful things men did in the name of a carpenter’s gentle and mysterious son.

“
There is a particular matter I wish to raise,” the Bishop said after a pause. “The Dean has made the suggestion and I said I would ask you. If there are no objections from her family, it would…give us some comfort if Miss Porter were to be buried in the cathedral precincts. I don’t know how you both feel about it.”

Maltravers
’ emotional reaction was too confused for him to reply but Tess spoke for them both.

“
Diana was entranced by your Chapter House and gave her greatest performance there,” she said. “Whatever we may feel, I think she would have wanted it. It’s very kind of…” Her voice suddenly broke on a hiccup of emotion and her hand flew to her mouth. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.” She stood up and walked swiftly from the room, followed by the Bishop’s wife. The Bishop, half risen from his seat, sadly watched the door close.