The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (38 page)

‘Michael, you are a good man,’ said Anselm. ‘You are a moral man. A civilised man. And you nearly killed me. Speak to your brother. Tell him about the confusion of voices and how you lost your own. Talk to him about the still, small voice; what you heard, what you did and what you wish you had done. Look back on that regret in the light of what you nearly did to Peter Henderson. There’s a truth in there waiting to be found.’

Michael Goodwin had had the opportunity to reflect since Anselm had last seen him, sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen at Morning Light. Then, in the aftermath of what he’d nearly done, he’d been confused, unable to understand an experience that had overtaken him in the short distance between the door and the sitting room.

‘I still don’t know what happened,’ he said, speaking more to Anselm than Nigel. He wasn’t ready yet to take his brother all the way back to that Belfast tenement. To speak of Eugene and Liam and Father Doyle. He first had to share this overwhelming insight that had crashed upon him.

‘Twice in my life, I’ve heard a sort of voice,’ said Michael, eyes strained as if he were swimming under water. ‘Inside my head. It called out my name. On both occasions I didn’t want to know what it was going to say. The first time I closed my eyes and fired, the second I ran away like hell. Each time it was like an ambush. Afterwards, when I
did
try and listen, there was nothing … absolutely nothing … so I thought this voice of mine, this sound in my head, was just my imagination, a fantasy. And then…’

Michael fell quiet.

Anselm waited. Nigel looked at his brother, hands joined with distressed understanding.

‘And then … in Jenny’s house … I followed the same route I’d taken in Donegal. I was doing it again, following the same pattern, intending to do what I wished I’d done the first time around: silence someone whose death would solve so many problems’ – he paused, squinting at the slash of orange, bright now, above the jagged black treeline – ‘but as I set off down the corridor, I heard myself again’ – Michael suddenly looked at Anselm as if he were haunted – ‘it was my voice, talking to me: “Michael, Michael, Michael…” and this time I couldn’t stop myself listening and it simply said what I’d always known to be true but had run away from, for the sake of Eugene and Liam and all the misery I’d seen in Belfast. It said, “This is wrong” … that’s all, very, very quietly, just as I raised the gun. And I knew it was true … that it was wrong now and it had been wrong then but I couldn’t stop myself. And, you know, it was Peter who once tried to tell me. And I hadn’t been able to listen.’

Michael had finished: he was staring at the dying light with eyes that ached for the simple days of rough and tumble on the lawn. And this – thought Anselm – is why you could reach Timothy after his mother’s accident: you recognised his early exile from pranks and silly laughter. The days when lemon drops simply tasted bitter.

‘Mike, speak to me.’

It was Nigel, hoarse and demanding. It was the older brother, arriving home to find his little brother devastated by the mess on the floor: broken heirlooms; breakages their parents would never forgive. There’d been an accident.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I can’t, Nigel.’

‘Tell me about Eugene and Liam, please.’

‘I can’t.’

‘I’ll understand.’

‘I just can’t. I’m—’

‘You can,’ interposed Anselm. He turned to Michael. ‘You told me. And now try and turn to your family. At Larkwood we call it an “opening of the heart”. It is very painful. But it’s the only way to build relationships with depth.’

Michael pulled his eyes away from the sky and stared at the shimmering water; but he didn’t speak.

‘We’ll go to Harlingen together,’ said Nigel, more ordering than suggesting. ‘We’ll take your car back and stay there for a while. As long as it takes.’

‘And when you return,’ said Anselm to Nigel, after a long pause, a pause that expressed Michael’s consent, ‘talk to Peter. Maybe you could help him understand your brother’s desperation, how he could be driven, out of love, disappointment and despair, to a kind of madness. Peter is a changed man. Perhaps now’s the time, at last, to have that “intelligent disagreement over moral questions”. If you can build a bridge to him, then in time maybe everyone else might be able to cross over … even Emma.’

Ordinarily Anselm would not have been so liberal with his advice. He felt impertinent. But Jenny had asked him to try. And this was his one brief chance.

‘There’s one last thing,’ said Anselm.

He put his hand beneath his scapular and slowly pulled out the Browning.

Michael turned his whole body to one side, not wanting to see the dreadful thing, not wanting to be harrowed again by the memory of Liam’s young face, his outstretched hand and all the confusion that followed.

Anselm was about to hurl it in the lake, when Nigel grabbed his arm. He took the gun, walked past Anselm and put his arm around his brother’s shoulders.

‘Mike, take it.’

‘I can’t, I can’t.’ Michael’s voice was strangled and sobbing.

‘You can, Mike, here, take it for the last time.’

Michael shook his head, his shoulders heaving in a chilling upsurge of grief and regret.

‘Do you want me to do it for you?’ asked Nigel, quietly. ‘I’ll throw it, if you like, but you’ve got to watch at least.’

Michael nodded and turned to the sparkling water, still under his brother’s arm. After a still, charged moment, Nigel tossed the pistol high in the air. It span, black against the sky, turning and turning until, with a short swallowing sound, it vanished for ever.

Anselm could not forget Doctor Ingleby. He wanted to know the answer to the conundrum: where did the truth lie? With the spoken word, uttered in the ruins of Leiston Abbey, or in the letter written before he’d even got there? The first had been given to Anselm in secret; the second publicly, for the world.

It was an important question.

A vital question.

Because if Doctor Ingleby didn’t kill Jenny, then it was Timothy. And if it was Timothy, then it begged the question as to why Doctor Ingleby would assume responsibility. Either way, one of them had committed murder.

Reflecting upon the matter during Lauds, Mass, Vespers, Compline and ‘Sailing By’, Anselm found himself drawn repeatedly back to the meal he’d shared with Doctor Ingleby in the former Chapter House. With each recollection, the eating and drinking assumed an increasingly ritual aspect, something to which Anselm had been blind at the time. What had seemed to be an admittedly peculiar picnic became something of a ceremony whose full meaning was known to Doctor Ingleby alone. Driven to understand its significance, and hoping to clear the ambiguity between word and text, Anselm contacted Olivia; and she put him onto Pat Randall, one of the detectives charged with examining the circumstances of the doctor’s death. She even gave him access to the house outside Needham Market. An interesting if puzzling picture had begun to emerge for the investigating officer.

Doctor Bryan Sheldon Ingleby qualified as a general practitioner in 1968, starting his career at a practice in St John’s Wood, London. On his way to work he’d stumbled on the Beatles preparing to cross Abbey Road – the iconic shot, with Paul McCartney walking barefoot, holding a cigarette in one hand. Doctor Ingleby had held Paul’s shoes and socks, giving him a light just before the Fab Four had walked onto the zebra crossing. John Lennon had wanted him in the picture, leading the way, but for some daft reason Doctor Ingleby had said no. He’d instinctively recoiled from the limelight, and in so doing had lost his place in history. Doctor Ingleby had recounted the story to everyone the police had contacted.

As it happened, the young Bryan was more of an opera fan. He’d already married the much younger Maxine, a German, who worked in management at Covent Garden. There was some talk among the detectives as to whether Maxine or her husband had ever met Jenny Goodwin while she was based with the Royal Ballet. There was no evidence either way, save that for six months Jenny, Maxine and Bryan had milled about the same building. Perhaps they’d crossed each other in a corridor. It was a tantalising possibility.

At around the time that Jenny had met Peter, Maxine had disclosed to Bryan that she’d been seeing a colleague. Someone well known to him. A close friend, actually. For well over twenty years he’d argued with Bryan about the merits of Sutherland over Callas, Bryan not spotting that Maxine was carrying out a vaguely similar exercise about the men who shared her emotional life. In the fallout Bryan had let Maxine’s lawyers come up with a settlement and, wanting a quick resolution, he’d signed the papers not caring if he’d been taken to the cleaners or not. All he’d wanted was enough capital to buy a small property in rural Suffolk. They’d been childless. And this had been a great pain for him. Maxine had said no. Told him all they needed was each other.

Motoring towards his own retirement he’d taken over a sole practice in Needham Market. Very quickly his reputation grew. At the time of his death, he had 732 registered patients, many travelling significant distances to see him. All of them knew the Abbey Road story. All said he was like a father to their children. He’d worked for years at the Grove Hospice in Leiston, soon becoming a vigorous and dedicated trustee. By his last will and testament all his assets had gone to the hospice, subject to a proviso that if declined, the RSPCA would become the sole and absolute beneficiary. He’d given his net worth to life, be they human or animal. Tributes had poured into the local press. Opinion was divided upon what he had done.

Only, of course – thought Anselm – he might not have done it.

Detective Inspector Randall had been to see the General Medical Council. Doctor Ingleby’s record was clean. Not a single complaint. No investigations, procedures, warnings or disciplinary action of any kind. Nothing. He’d written a number of articles in the
Lancet
on palliative care and end-of-life issues, and while he’d raised pressing questions about intervention and patient choice (with frequent references to Magellan), there’d been no evidence that Bryan Ingleby was a man who would support or oppose assisted suicide, be it inside a possible law or outside existing legislation. Nothing to explain why he might have cooperated with Jennifer Henderson (in the terms set out in his letter).

‘Mystifying,’ said Anselm, quietly, in the conference room at Martlesham.

‘You can say that again.’ DI Randall went to get more coffee. Back at the table, he ate another biscuit, crunching it with a surprising level of aggression. ‘He was a really organised bloke, everything in its place, all the boxes ticked, never late for a tax return and yet we couldn’t find any record for the insulin – coming in or going out. There’s none missing. Which doesn’t add up to much, because he could have got it from…’

Anselm nodded, reaching for the milk, but he’d drifted off, involuntarily. He’d seen Doctor Ingleby – Bryan now – raising his glass of wine in the Chapter House. He’d seen the mystery in his eyes.

Where was the truth, Bryan? On your lips or on the paper?

After a sandwich from the canteen, DI Randall drove Anselm to the house off the Barking Road. He stayed outside, keen to smoke. Technically he’d given up the week before but he’d found a packet in the glove box that morning. Waste not, and all that. He’d smoke the lot, one after the other.

Anselm clipped the door shut behind him. The house was chilly now and silent. All the atmospheric warmth had gone, even from the cherry-red carpet. The painting of the elephants, once rousing, seemed banal, a predictable tribute to an endangered species. The life in the building had seeped away. Anselm went straight to the study. He pressed
PLAY
, turned the volume down and sat on the chair facing the roll-top desk. Callas began quietly:

‘Deh! Non volerli vittime del mio fatale errore…’

Anselm listened, gazing around the room. He opened a drawer and shut it again. He reached for the pipe but then thought better of it.

‘What am I doing here?’ he said, quietly. ‘What do I hope to find?’

Only the truth. I want to understand our meal together. Because afterwards you made me your messenger.

Just then, a movement caught his eye. DI Randall had struck a match in the garden. As he looked through the window, Anselm’s eyes fell upon the blue shed with the yellow door and the windows blocked by drawn yellow curtains. Bryan had spent his last afternoon out there, doing spring’s work in autumn. All of a sudden Anselm was standing by a royal-blue Sunbeam Singer Chamois and he heard, once again, that bemused voice:

‘I’ve spent almost forty years in medical practice … in the surgery … at patients’ houses … at the hospice. And do you know, after all that, what’s best and true of me lies in a garden shed. Odd, isn’t it?’

The shed door was unlocked.

Inside, Anselm saw a rake, a hoe, a spade, bags of compost – everything you’d expect – neatly organised for the coming season. But what gripped his attention was the chair – one of the collapsible canvas chairs that Bryan had brought to Leiston Abbey. The other was leaning against the back wall beside the table. A sheaf of papers and a pencil had been left on the seat. Picking them up, Anselm sat down and began reading by the light of the open door.

Bryan had been reading various oaths, ancient and modern, written to frame the ethical standards that govern medical practice. He’d compiled them into a bundle and stapled it together. Certain phrases had been marked with the pencil.

The first text was the ancient Hippocratic Oath, considered by Anselm on the day he’d begun his investigation, convinced that Jennifer Henderson had been murdered. Bryan had underlined: ‘I will give no deadly drug to any, though it be asked of me…’

Anselm turned the page.

This was the Prayer of Maimonides. Bryan had isolated one sentence: ‘Thou hast chosen me to watch over the life and health of thy creatures.’

Next came the World Medical Association Declaration of Geneva, as revised in May 2006. Bryan had marked ‘I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity’ and, lower down, ‘I will maintain the utmost respect for human life.’