Read Death in Holy Orders Online
Authors: P. D. James
Death in Holy Orders (55 page)
And still they stood. And then, almost casually, as if this were a summer day and the sea a shimmering stretch of blue and silver under the radiance of the sun, Gregory dropped the coat from his shoulders and dived.
For Kate the two minutes of confrontation had seemed interminable. She had stood immobile, as if every muscle were locked, her eyes fixed on the two motionless figures. Involuntarily but carefully she had edged forward. The tide swept over her feet, but she was unaware of its cold bite against her legs. Through stiff jaws she had found herself muttering and cursing,
“Come back, come back. Let him be,” urging with an intensity which must surely reach Dalgliesh’s unyielding back. Now it had happened and she could act. She stabbed out the college number and heard the ringing tone. There was no reply, and she found herself mouthing obscenities she would never normally have uttered. The ringing continued. And then she heard Father Sebastian’s measured tones. She tried to keep her voice steady.
“It’s Kate Miskin from the beach, Father. Dalgliesh and Gregory are in the water. We need the boat and an ambulance. Quickly.”
Father Sebastian didn’t question her. He said, “Stay where you are to mark the place. We’ll be with you.”
And now there was an even longer wait, but one she timed. It was three and a quarter minutes before she heard the sound of cars. Gazing across the leaping waves, she could no longer glimpse the two heads. She ran to the end of the groyne and stood where Gregory had stood, oblivious to the waves slurping over the post and the slash of the wind. And now she had a sudden sight of them—the grey head and the dark, only a couple of yards apart—before the sleek curve of a wave and a burst of spray hid them from sight.
It was important to keep them in view if she could, but from time to time she glanced towards the steps. She had heard more than one car, but only the Land Rover was visible parked at the edge of the cliff. It looked as if the whole college had arrived. They were working swiftly and methodically. The doors of the shed had been opened and a launch pad of slatted wood rolled out over the gritty slope of the beach. The rigid inflatable was pushed down it, then lifted, with three men each side. They ran with it to the edge of the sea. She saw that Pilbeam and Henry Bloxham were to make the rescue and felt a little surprised that it was Henry instead of the stronger-looking Stephen Morby. But perhaps Henry was the more experienced sailor. It seemed impossible that they could launch the craft against this crushing weight of water, but within seconds she heard the roar of the outboard engine and they were heading out to sea, then coming towards her in a wide sweep. Again she had a brief glimpse of the heads and pointed towards them.
And now neither of the swimmers nor the boat could be seen,
except momentarily when it crested a wave. There was nothing more she could do, and she turned to join the group running along the beach. Raphael was carrying coiled rope, Father Peregrine had a life-belt and Piers and Robbins had hoisted two rolled canvas stretchers onto their shoulders. Mrs. Pilbeam and Emma were there, Mrs. Pilbeam with a first-aid box and Emma with towels and a pile of bright-coloured blankets. They came together in a little group and stared out to sea.
And now the boat was returning. The sound of the engine was louder and it suddenly appeared, rearing high on a wave before plunging into the trough.
Raphael said, “They’ve got them. There are four on board.”
They were coming in fairly strongly now, but it seemed impossible that the boat could survive in so rough a sea. And then the worst happened. They no longer heard the engine, and saw Pilbeam desperately bending over it. And now the boat was powerless, thrown from side to side like a child’s toy. Suddenly, within twenty yards of the shore, it reared up, was for a couple of seconds motionless and upright, then capsized.
Raphael had tied the end of the rope to one of the uprights of the groyne and now, fixing the other end round his waist, went into the sea. Stephen Morby, Piers and Robbins followed. Father Peregrine had thrown off his cassock and now hurled himself under the advancing waves as if this turbulent sea were his element. Henry and Pilbeam, helped by Robbins, were managing to fight their way ashore. Father Peregrine and Raphael took hold of Dalgliesh, Stephen and Piers of Gregory. Within seconds they were thrown on to the bank of shingle, and Father Sebastian and Father Martin hurried forward to help drag them up the beach. They were followed by Pilbeam and Henry, who lay gasping while the waves broke over them.
Only Dalgliesh was unconscious, and, running to where he lay, Kate saw that he had struck his head against the groyne and that blood mixed with sea water was running over his torn shirt. There was a mark on his throat, red as the flowing blood, where Gregory’s hands had grasped him. She pulled off the shirt and pressed it against the wound, then heard Mrs. Pilbeam’s voice. “Leave him to me, miss. I’ve got bandages here.”
But it was Morby who took control. He said, “Let’s get the
water out of him first,” and, turning Dalgliesh over, started resuscitation. A little apart, Gregory, naked except for a pair of shorts, was sitting with his head between his hands gasping for breath, watched over by Robbins.
Kate said to Piers, “Get some blankets round him and a hot drink into him. As soon as he’s warm enough and fit to understand what you’re doing, charge him. And put the cuffs on him. We’re not taking chances. Oh, and you may as well add attempted murder to the main charge.”
She turned again to Dalgliesh. Suddenly he retched, spewed water and blood and muttered something indistinct. It was then that Kate was first aware of Emma Lavenham kneeling, white-faced, at his head. She didn’t speak but, catching Kate’s glance, got up and moved a little apart, as if realizing that she had no place there.
They could hear no ambulance arriving and had no idea how long it would take. Now Piers and Morby lifted Dalgliesh onto one of the stretchers and began trudging with it to the waiting cars, Father Martin at Dalgliesh’s side. The group who had been in the water stood shivering, blanket-wrapped, passing a flask from hand to hand, then began making their way towards the steps. Suddenly the clouds parted and a frail ray of sunlight illuminated the beach. Watching the young male bodies towelling their wet hair and jogging to restore circulation, Kate could almost believe that this was a summer bathing party and that at any moment they would begin chasing each other across the sand.
They had reached the top of the cliff, and the stretcher was being loaded into the back of the Land Rover. Kate was aware that Emma Lavenham was at her side.
Emma said, “Will he be all right?”
“Oh, he’ll live. He’s tough. Head wounds bleed a lot but it didn’t look deep. He’ll be discharged and back in London within days. We all shall.”
Emma said, “I’m going back to Cambridge tonight. Will you say goodbye to him for me and give him my best wishes?”
Without waiting for a reply, she turned away and joined the little group of ordinands. Gregory, handcuffed and shrouded in blankets, was being pushed into the Alfa Romeo by Robbins.
Piers moved over to Kate, and both of them looked over to Emma.
Kate said, “She’s going back to Cambridge this evening. Well, why not? That’s where she belongs.”
Piers said, “And where do you belong?”
He didn’t really need an answer but she said, “With you and Robbins and AD. Where did you suppose? This is my job, after all.”
AN END AND A BEGINNING
D
algliesh came to St. Anselm’s for the last time on a perfect day in mid-April in which sky, sea and the quickening earth conspired in a soft compliance of settled beauty. He drove with the car roof down, and the rush of air against his face brought with it the essence—sweet-smelling, nostalgic—of the Aprils of boyhood and youth. He had set out with some misgivings, but they had been thrown off with the last eastern suburb, and now his inner weather matched the calm of the day.
The letter had come from Father Martin, a warm invitation to visit now that St. Anselm’s had been officially closed. He had written: “
It will be good to have the opportunity to say goodbye to our friends before we leave, and we are hoping that Emma will also be with us for the April weekend
.” He had wanted Dalgliesh to know that she would be there; had he also warned her? And if so, would she decide not to come?
And here at last was the familiar turning, easy to miss without the ivy-clad ash. The front gardens of the twin cottages were massed with daffodils, their brilliance in contrast to the soft yellow of the primroses clumped in the grass verge. The hedges on each side of the lane were showing their first green shoots, and when, with a lifting of the heart, he first saw the sea, it stretched in untroubled bands of shimmering blue to a purple horizon. High overhead, unseen and hardly audible, a fighter aircraft shed its tattered ribbon of white across a cloudless sky. Under its radiance the mere was a milky blue, unthreatening and peaceful. He could imagine the gleam of shining fish sliding beneath that untroubled surface. The storm on the night of the Archdeacon’s murder had broken up the last timbers of the sunken ship, and now not even that black fin of
wood remained, and the sands stretched untrodden between the bank of shingle and the sea. On such a morning Dalgliesh couldn’t even regret this evidence of time’s obliterating power.
Before turning north along the coastal road, he drew to the edge of the cliff and switched off the ignition. There was a letter he needed to read again. He had received it a week before Gregory had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Archdeacon Crampton. The writing was firm, precise and upright. There was no superscription; only on the envelope had Dalgliesh’s name appeared.
I apologize for this writing paper which you will understand is not my choice. You will have been told by now that I have decided to change my plea to guilty. I could claim that my reason is to spare those pathetic fools, Father Martin and Father John, the ordeal of appearing as witnesses for the prosecution, or my reluctance to see my son or Emma Lavenham exposed to the somewhat brutal ingenuity of my defence lawyer. You will know me better. My reason is, of course, to ensure that Raphael doesn’t all his life suffer the stigma of suspicion. I have come to realize that there is a very real chance that I might be acquitted. My lawyer’s brilliance is almost proportionate to the size of his fee and he early made it plain that he was confident that I could get away with it, although he was careful not to use those particular words. I am after all so very middle-class, so very respectable
.
I had always planned to be acquitted if the case ever came to court and had no doubt that I would be. But then, I had planned to murder Crampton on a night when I knew Raphael would not be in college. As you know, I took the precaution of calling in at his set to check that he had in fact left. Had I found him in his room, would I have gone ahead with the murder? The answer is no. Not that night, and perhaps never. It is unlikely that all the conditions necessary for success would have so fortuitously come together again. I find it interesting that Crampton died because of Raphael’s simple act of kindness to a sick friend. I have noticed before how often evil comes out of good. As
a parson’s son you are more competent than am I to address this theological conundrum
.
People who, like us, live in a dying civilization have three choices. We can attempt to avert the decline as a child builds a sand-castle on the edge of the advancing tide. We can ignore the death of beauty, of scholarship, of art, of intellectual integrity, finding solace in our own consolations. And that is what for some years I have tried to do. Thirdly, we can join the barbarians and take our share of the spoils. That is the popular choice and in the end it was mine. My son’s God was chosen for him. He has been in the power of those priests since he was born. I wanted to give him a choice of a more contemporary deity—money. Now he has money, and will find that he’s unable to face giving it away, not all of it. He will remain a rich man; time will show whether he remains a priest
.
I imagine that there’s nothing I can tell you about the murder which you don’t know. My anonymous note to Sir Alred was, of course, designed to stir up trouble for St. Anselm’s and Sebastian Morell. I could hardly have expected that it would bring to the college the most distinguished of Scotland Yard’s detectives, but your presence, so far from deterring me, added challenge to expediency. My plan to entice the Archdeacon to the church worked perfectly; he could hardly wait to view the abomination which I had described to him. The tin of black paint and the brush were conveniently ready for me in the sanctuary and I confess I enjoyed my vandalizing of the Doom. It’s a pity Crampton had so little time to contemplate my artistry
.
You may be wondering about those two deaths for which I was not charged. The first, the suffocation of Margaret Munroe, was a necessity. It required little planning and her death was easy, almost natural. She was an unhappy woman who probably had little time left, but in that time she could have done damage. It didn’t matter to her whether her life was shorter by a day, a month or a year. It did matter to me. I’d planned for Raphael’s parentage to be known only after St. Anselm’s had been closed and the
furore of the murder had died down. Of course you early realized the nub of my plan. I wanted to kill Crampton and at the same time throw suspicion on the college without providing conclusive evidence against myself. I wanted the college closed early, preferably before my son was ordained, and I wanted his inheritance to be intact. And, I must confess, I also took pleasure at the prospect of Sebastian Morell’s career ending in suspicion, failure and ignominy. He had ensured that mine should end in just that way
.
You will wonder perhaps about the unfortunate death of Agatha Betterton, another unhappy woman. But that was merely taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity. You were wrong if you thought that she was at the top of the stairs when I made that telephone call to Mrs. Crampton. She didn’t see me then. She did, however, see me on the night of the murder when I was returning the key. I could, I suppose, have killed her then, but I decided to wait. She was, after all, regarded as mad. Even if she accused me of being in the house after midnight, I doubt whether her word would have stood up against mine. As it was, she came Sunday evening to tell me that my secret was perfectly safe. She was never a coherent woman but she gave me to understand that no one who had killed Archdeacon Crampton had anything to fear from her. It wasn’t a risk I could take. You do realize that you wouldn’t be able to prove either of those deaths? Motive isn’t enough. If this confession is used against me I shall repudiate it
.
I have learned something surprising about murder, about violence generally. It’s probably known to you, Dalgliesh; you are after all an expert in these matters. Personally I find it interesting. The first blow was deliberate, not without a natural squeamishness and some repugnance, but a matter of summoning the will. My mental process was unambiguous: I need this man dead; this is the most effective way to kill him. I had intended a single blow, two at most, but it’s after the first strike that the
adrenalin surges. The lust for violence takes over. I went on striking without conscious will. Even if you had appeared at that moment I doubt whether I could have stopped. It is not when we contemplate violence that the primitive instinct to kill takes over, it is only when we strike the first blow
.
I have not seen my son since my arrest. He has no wish to meet me and no doubt it’s just as well. I have lived all my life without human affection and it would be awkward to indulge in it now
.
