Body in the Transept (3 page)

“Mrs. Martin?”

I turned to Mr. Nesbitt’s voice. “I’m over here, by the door. Can you see my flashlight?” Still moving as I looked back, I stumbled over something at the foot of the altar. Why, someone had left a bundle of vestments there! Or could it be . . .? As I fought for balance the tiny flashlight flew from my hand, brightened again, and swung its light crazily over the scene. The last thing I saw before it fell and extinguished itself for good was yet another gleam. The gleam, from among the heap of garments, of a fixed and staring eye.

M
Y RECOLLECTION OF
what came next is spotty, a series of images, snippets of sight and sound, each as hard-edged and vivid as a flash photograph.

The first memory is the scream, an obscene sound, a terrifying, shocking outrage that crashed off stone walls, echoed and re-echoed from vault to pavement, splintering the Christmas peace. Only when Mr. Nesbitt reached me and took both my arms in his strong hands did I realize it was I who was desecrating the night. The sudden knowledge that one is making an utter fool of oneself can be as effective against hysteria as a wet towel in the face. I stopped with a kind of strangled gargle, gulped once or twice, and tried to speak.

“I—is it—” My voice trembled as much as my knees. This was ridiculous. Pull yourself together, old girl. I took several deep breaths, hugged myself tightly, and tried again, without much more success. “I can’t quite see—but there’s—something—”

“Sit down.” It was not a suggestion. He lowered me firmly to the floor. “Stay there.” I suppose I obeyed, but this is one of the transitions I’ve lost. The next I remember, I was standing up and someone had organized some light—feeble but blessed—and people were gathering.

I saw the dean, half in and half out of his cassock, his clerical collar springing wildly free of a single button, but with dignity and authority unimpaired. The growing crowd—vergers, clergy, a few straggling parishioners, the choirmaster, and a gaggle of eager choirboys—parted like the Red Sea as he moved quietly through them, his raised hand stopping the boys in their tracks.

“Why, Mrs. Martin,” he said mildly. “Whatever is the matter?”

Several hundred watts of electricity could hardly have dispelled the age-old shadows; a single lantern was woefully inadequate. But what light there was gave me, in one horrifying instant, an all too-clear picture of the thing lying at the foot of the altar. I tried to speak, but the thin thread of sound couldn’t be heard beyond my own lips.

It was Mr. Nesbitt who said, as one accustomed to being obeyed, “You’d better send the boys away, Dean.” He had moved to block their view. “We have something of a problem here. Will you and one of the vergers stay, please, while I call for some assistance. No one must touch anything. And perhaps someone—oh, Margaret, good. Could you take Mrs. Martin to some place where she’ll be comfortable, and stay with her for a bit? She’s had a nasty shock.”

Authority recognizes authority. Margaret Allenby, the dean’s wife, moved toward me while the dean gave the choirboys into the keeping of their director and shooed the lot on their reluctant way. Then as he came closer his face turned so white that I started babbling. “It’s all right, Dean. I mean it’s not the ghost or anything. It’s just a real person, a real dead person, that is. I think it must be Canon Billings, you see, and surely nobody could look like that and be alive, could they?” At the end of which remarkably silly speech I looked down again at the cassock on the floor, and the thing in it, and everything began to collapse in on itself and draw down to a single point of bright light.

I
INSIST THAT
I didn’t quite faint. I’m
not
a fainting person. The idea made me so indignant that I rallied a bit. Someone, probably the dean’s wife, shoved me down onto the altar rail and pushed my head between my knees, and the world opened out again. But it apparently took me a while to focus, because by the time I realized how extraordinarily uncomfortable I was and tried to get off that miserable stone perch, nearly everyone had gone. Mrs. Allenby was sitting awkwardly beside me, an arm around my shoulders to make sure I didn’t fall, while the dean, with a green-faced junior verger, kept watch over the body. The dean looked extremely tired and worried, but his lips moved silently and I realized that he was performing part of his ritual for the dead.

“There, now,” said Mrs. Allenby as I raised my head. “Feeling better, are you, dear?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. I cleared my throat. “Fine. Really. I think I’d better stand up, though. My bones won’t take that rail anymore.” My firm assertion of independence was spoiled by a totter that nearly landed me on the floor. Mrs. Allenby tactfully held me up until I could stand more or less on my own two feet. This time I kept my eyes steadfastly away from the foot of the altar.

“Well, my dear, what a frightful thing!” Mrs. Allenby launched into a gentle flow of talk, insulating me with words from too much thought. “I’m sure I don’t know
what
I’d have done, finding him like that, poor man. Now you’re to come with me—can you walk a bit, do you think?—and have a little restorative. I know they
say
it isn’t the thing, but I maintain a spot of brandy is steadying in a crisis, and Kenneth always keeps some here, because you never know, do you? That’s right, just round old Stephen’s tomb,
here
we are. That’s the most comfortable chair; I know it looks ready for the scrap heap, but it’s lovely to sit in, at least till it comes to the getting out, and then I always need a hand up. Now you drink this right down.”

She handed me a small glass of liquid fire, and if I didn’t “drink it right down,” I certainly sipped gratefully, and it helped.

As did my surroundings. I was in the small room set aside for people who turned up at the cathedral with problems too urgent to wait for an appointment with one of the clergy in his own office. The room was a perfect example of that kind of dignified, self-assured shabbiness that the English upper classes specialize in. A faded, once-fine rug lay on the floor. Cracked leather chairs provided, as promised, solid comfort. It was a pity the fireplace held only an electric heater instead of the crackling logs that belonged there, but the warmth was welcome. It seemed a place of peace and rather solemn good cheer.

After an interval the dean entered the room, his calm, quiet manner not quite hiding his worry. Accustomed all his life to dealing with human failings, familiar with every sin in the calendar, he was nevertheless badly shaken by the sudden death of his own canon in his own cathedral. He came straight to me, with Mr. Nesbitt right behind him.

“I see my wife is looking after you, Mrs. Martin.” His voice was filled with sad kindness. “I’m so sorry you should have had this dreadful experience. Are you feeling better?”

“Quite all right, thank you.” Social lies are useful; if you say often enough that things are fine you may begin to believe it. “But, oh, Dean, I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself. I suppose everyone in the place heard—”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Allenby soothingly. “The acoustics in this place are very odd. I shouldn’t think anyone in the nave heard a thing, and we managed to shoo away most of the people who turned up. And how could you possibly help it? I’m sure it would have been a terrible shock to anyone, finding him in the dark that way.”

Mr. Nesbitt cleared his throat, and the dean took over.

“Yes, of course, Alan. I’m afraid, Mrs. Martin, if you’re really feeling yourself again, there are some questions Mr. Nesbitt needs to ask you. This is the chief constable of Sherebury, who happened to be in church tonight, and came round to help. . . .”

“We’ve met,” I said, pleased to hear that my voice sounded almost normal. “But why . . .?”

“The police in this country,” Mr. Nesbitt began, “as you may not know, Mrs. Martin, must investigate all cases of sudden death, even when we have no reason to believe it’s anything but an accident.” He sounded apologetic. “It’s a shocking time of night, I know, and I do quite realize that you’re feeling a trifle upset, but I’d like to ask you just one or two questions.”

I was flooded with instant, foolish apprehension. How many mysteries had I read with just those words addressed to the chief suspect? Idiotic as it was, I had to swallow hard before I could respond with anxious cooperation.

“Of course I’ll do anything I can to help. Not that I really know anything, but ask whatever you like.”

“For a start, how did you happen to—be in the chapel? It’s out of your way to the door.”

I felt sure he had started to ask how I happened to fall over the body, and I was grateful for the euphemism. “Oh, that was the candlestick. It was on the floor, and it glimmered, sort of, in the light of my flashlight. So I picked it up to put it back . . .”

“Pity you picked it up, in the circumstances, but a perfectly natural thing to do. Can you show us, later, just where it was?”

That little shudder of apprehension came again. I tried to ignore it. “It was awfully dark, but I’ll try. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what did I
do
with it? It was heavy, I remember—I suppose I dropped it when—”

“It’s all right, dear.” Margaret Allenby intervened again. “You did drop it, but we found it, it’s quite all right. It fell on—that is, it wasn’t dented, or anything of that sort. I always thought that pair particularly hideous, anyway.”

I didn’t care to follow up all the non sequiturs in that speech, and apparently Mr. Nesbitt didn’t either. He sighed. “If you can show me where you put it, Margaret, I’ll have to have it checked for fingerprints. Not a bit of use, of course, that heavy carving won’t show a thing, but one goes through the motions. I’m afraid I’ll have to have your fingerprints as well, if you handled it, and Mrs. Martin’s. For comparison.”

My nerves tightened another notch, but Mr. Nesbitt let that drop for the moment and addressed the dean.

“Now, Kenneth, if I might just ask about the door to the cloisters. Isn’t it usually kept unlocked?”

“Usually, but not lately,” the dean answered promptly, as I registered the first-name basis, concentrating on the apparent social standing of chief constables to avoid more uncomfortable thoughts. “With the electrical work they’re doing in that transept, it’s so dark we didn’t think it safe for the public at night. Of course all the doors, the public ones at any rate, have new locks so that they can always be opened from inside. In case of fire, you know. I must say I wasn’t sorry to abandon the old keys, great medieval things a foot long that weighed pounds! We kept them, naturally; they’re in a display case in the library. I’m so sorry, Alan,” he added, catching Mr. Nesbitt’s eye. “You’re not interested in my keys.”

“Well, not the old ones, actually, but I do need to know who has a key—a new key—to that door.”

“Yes. I have a complete set, naturally. The rest of the clergy and staff have only the ones they need. To tell the truth I’m not really sure exactly who has what; there are so many people involved and the head verger looks after that side of things. I know Canon Billings often used the cloister door, since his house is on that side of the Close, so he probably had a key. Mr. Swansworthy will know.”

I rather doubted that. The head verger was nearly eighty and definitely past most of his duties, but he stubbornly refused to retire and the dean was too softhearted to insist. It seemed to me most unlikely that he kept close track of the keys. However, it was none of my business, and I was far too tired to bring up anything that might keep me there any longer than necessary.

The dean went on. “I do see, of course, what you’re getting at. This is certainly more your province than mine, but I should imagine the canon let himself in that door and then stumbled over something in the dark and hit his head. I blame myself very much for not organizing a small light—”

His wife interrupted. “Now, Kenneth, you know perfectly well it’s not your fault. If Jonathan Billings had been where he was supposed to be, getting ready for the service . . .” Her tone left no doubt about her opinion of the unfortunate canon, and the dean sighed.

“But, my dear, we don’t know when he came in. When we missed him, just before midnight Mass, nobody remembered seeing him for hours. And darkness comes early at this time of year. He might have been on his way
out
, after the children’s service, for a cup of tea.”

Mr. Nesbitt nodded. “In fact, I think he has been dead for some time. The medical examiner will be able to tell us more definitely, but I should say five or six hours at least. So you may be quite right, although if that’s the case, I do rather wonder why he wasn’t found earlier. Did you look for him yourself?”

“I had a quick look round, but of course I had to prepare for the service. I believe the vergers did rather a thorough search, at least so far as it’s possible to search a place like this in a hurry and in the dark. No one knew what to think when he turned up missing; it was completely unlike him to be irresponsible.” So that’s what the vergers had been up to when I was trying to find a seat. All except for the officious Mr. Wallingford, who found dripping candles more important than a missing canon.

“Well,” said Mr. Nesbitt with the hint of a sigh, “we’ll have to go a bit further into the search, as well as the matter of when he was last seen alive, but I think morning will do for those things.”

The dean looked startled. “Not
this
morning, surely. That is—Christmas Day?”

“We’ll make it as brief as possible, I promise, and as discreet. I’m sure you realize we must collect as much data as possible while memories are still fresh. We’ll save everything we can for Saturday and push on with other things, meanwhile.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m truly sorry, Kenneth. I know it seems unnecessarily intrusive, but rules are rules; we do have to try to establish the cause of death. You can trust me to make sure my men don’t make more of a nuisance of themselves than they have to.”

He took a deep breath, turning back to me, and I saw how tired he looked. “Mrs. Martin, I know this may be difficult for you, but may I ask if you touched or moved the body at all?”