The Grail Tree (16 page)

‘I mean, so we’re fighting for sanctified love?’ I didn’t like that plural. ‘How can I help?’

I thought a minute or two, then decided to trust her. ‘Tell me all you know about old Henry and this cup thing.’

‘Have you somewhere we can go?’

‘Martha’s?’ I suggested lamely.

‘Possibly not,’ she said, frowning. ‘There are too many people there. Your cottage.’

‘Are you sure?’

She fell about laughing. ‘Yes, I’m sure, Lovejoy. Even without a chaperone.’

When I have somebody like Sarah home I’m always embarrassed. Not that I’m uneasy fetching a woman in. In fact, trying to achieve this occupies a large part of my waking hours. It’s just that women of Sarah’s class will never complain about the state you’ve got yourself into, the way somebody like Lisa does, for example. But that only makes the general grubbiness seem worse. And the more you try to cover up, the worse things get. I said to look about if she wanted and started to brew up. She went out into the garden.

‘I don’t like to do much to it,’ I explained to forestall her when I knocked on the window to call her in.

‘So I see.’ She was smiling again. ‘No gardener.’

‘Well, it’s done nothing to me.’ I carried a cup for her. She sank gracefully on the divan without giving it a glance.

‘How wise you are, Lovejoy.’ She didn’t appear sardonic to my brief look. As I went into the alcove for
mine I realized she’d caught my eye. ‘It’s time to make amends.’

‘Eh?’

‘Come and sit down.’ She folded her legs under her. You can’t help admiring the way their legs finish up in curves and sleek lines. I did as she said and stared gravely somewhere else. ‘I must apologize. When first we met I supposed you were a . . . a chiseller.’ She brought it out with a gratified smile.

‘No need to apologize.’

‘Yes, there is.’ She pulled a face after a sip and moaned. ‘How absolutely
terrible
.’

‘It’s the water,’ I said defensively. ‘They put chemicals in for our bones.’

‘I was insufferable.’

‘Forget it.’

‘I think Thomas would have been kinder to you – if I’d not been so suspicious the day we all met.’ She took off her hat and dropped it carelessly aside. I like how they loosen their hair. ‘As I see it, Lovejoy, Henry’s hitherto useless friends – Thomas, myself, Martha and her unsettled niece Dolly – ought to do what we can to help.’

‘How?’

‘Let’s be practical.’ She rose and wandered about the room. ‘Your garden’s unkempt, and your cottage. But that might be explained by your . . .’ She paused, then added, ‘Your – shall we say – solitary mode of life.’ I knew she’d spotted some of Lisa’s things. I thought I’d hidden most of them. ‘You can afford a car, of sorts. You are therefore not destitute. On the other hand you are obviously less than affluent, despite your intuitive gift where antiques are concerned.’

‘Maslow asked why I don’t make a fortune.’

‘That’s because the man’s an imbecile,’ Sarah said. She sat down, doing the leg twist thing again, almost as if she hadn’t noticed my difficulties when she attracted my attention this way. ‘I’ll pay you.’

I paused at that. She was smiling.

‘An allowance, Lovejoy. Nothing sinister.’

‘Antiques?’ My mind began to race happily ahead into those meadows of buying and selling where antiques blossom like flowers in springtime, but she was shaking her head.

‘While you find what actually happened to Henry.’

‘And his Grail?’

‘That too. But it comes second, a long way second. Agreed?’

I told her I agreed, though I had no right. Antiques naturally come first every time.

‘I’ll have my agent send you a weekly sum, payable from now.’

‘Er, can I have some on account?’ I asked, trying to be off hand. ‘I’m a bit strapped at the minute.’

She laughed and clapped her hands delightedly. This is an unusual response but women are odd.

‘And tell me about this thing Henry lit candles for.’

She did, only getting into her stride after she’d rolled in the aisles some more while giving me a week’s advance.

Henry Swan, Thomas Haverro and James H.C. Devonish had been undergraduates together at Selward College, Cambridge. Mainly for religious studies of the Established Church, it had tolerated Thomas when he had bumbled his way into the medical faculty across the way. In contrast, James and Henry went straight but only Henry served the Church. Devonish went to
become adviser in the prison service and worked gallantly for malcontents till he died in a road accident. Sarah was the result of a chance meeting with an old friend. Though much younger than Devonish, she’d married him and they’d had a few years of happiness together before the accident.

‘James told me about the Grail,’ she told me reflectively. ‘I remember it quite clearly, the odd story, even the words he used. An open, lovely man. But it was only in our last year he explained.’

As undergraduates the trio went on holiday to Berwick. A crumbling old church by the lovely Northumbrian shore captured their romantic imagination and they made quite a thing about trying to have the authorities restore it. Naturally, as with all such brave attempts, they failed. But it was there that they came across the Grail. With romance burning in their youthful souls they decided to adopt it there and then.

The church was obviously derelict. That particular bit of coastline is favoured by curious spells of beautiful pacific weather, dull gold sunshine and skies clear to the planets and back. The seas were clean and dark, the sea stones tumbled sharp in heaps on miles of crisp sands where birds fly flock after flock and distances from each inlet to the horizon seem infinite. I know the whereabouts of the ruined church but couldn’t recall having seen it.

‘South of Berwick?’

‘James described it as a few miles from the Tweed estuary. He said you could see the sandbanks clearly from the churchyard. They used to cycle out and have picnics on the shore.’

An elderly man met up with them one day, the second holiday they took in those parts. He had heard
of their attempts to rescue the old church and sought the trio out. He told the youngsters he had the Grail, passed down according to tradition from hand to hand. Listening to Sarah’s second-hand account, I had more sense than to ask how it had got from ancient Jerusalem to modern Berwick.

‘That’s near Holy Island,’ I remembered suddenly. ‘Lindisfarne.’

This long promontory runs into the ocean from the coast, roughly south-east. At the end is a cluster of houses, a post office and an old monastery. It’s where the magic and mysterious Lindisfarne Gospels hail from, those dazzling intricate pages made and embellished by the devout hands of saints themselves. I shifted uncomfortably. All of a sudden silly old drunken Henry seemed less daft.

‘This old chap –?’

‘Was the last priest of that particular church.’

‘Shouldn’t he have given it in? Surrendered it to the local archbishop, something like that?’

‘He distrusted the Church. He feared the Grail would be lost, derided –’ She shrugged. ‘Henry felt the same. That’s the reason James never took a parish.’

In a way I could sympathize with a tired over-stretched bishop, facing his millionth report of the Grail’s finding, knowing as he wrote the report it was only the start of another epidemic of identical reports.

‘And did this bloke just haul it out of his pocket and hand it over?’

‘No. It took a year,’ Sarah explained. ‘He insisted on having them stay in his house and talk, explain their motives, beliefs. James used to joke about it, said it was worse than his Cambridge Finals.’

The elderly priest showed it them. From Sarah’s description they were all chastened, Henry most of all. I suppose, reading between the lines, three young students can’t really be blamed for a certain amount of cynicism. Maybe they’d even secretly joked about the mad old parson among themselves, in the same way as I’d thought how cracked Henry was.

‘James was partly convinced,’ Sarah said. ‘Henry was utterly sold. I can imagine it. The very beauty of the idea
is
transfixing, after all.’

‘And Thomas?’

‘Well, scientist,’ Sarah said defensively. It made me look at her. She laughed, embarrassed, for once caught out of her stride. ‘He was bound to disbelieve, wasn’t he? He went along with the other two, though. Paid his share.’ I couldn’t help thinking. Sarah and Thomas Haverro . . .?

‘Paid?’ My voice must have sounded ugly because she cooled me with a brief chilling stare.

‘Nothing like that, Lovejoy. It was a gift. In trust.’

She began to explain.

The cup was merely battered old pewter, ‘shallow as an eggcup’, James Devonish had described to Sarah. It had come to light somewhere in the Great Civil War, about 1643. Unaccountably, the legend stuck like glue to the little vessel. It apparently seized the religious admiration of the time throughout the district. It became a small focus of local miracles, was even worshipped. Pilgrimages were made. At the Restoration, a Mercian prelate threw his conviction behind it and had a tiny silver casket constructed to contain it. The casket was tree-shaped, probably intended as a religious symbolism.

‘It was sealed in,’ Sarah said. ‘You could only see
through the crystal trunk. The cup was fixed.’

‘Crystal windows, like an old lantern has?’

‘Yes. That was how James explained it.’ I switched the fire on to give us something to stare at. I was scared of interrupting Sarah’s flow of reminiscences. Her face looked quite beautiful, lit by the red glow and smiling wistfully. ‘Before then,’ she went on, ‘it had just been on a tiny gold plinth.’

‘And after?’

‘Oh, as it was handed on each generation seemed to have added to it.’ I said I didn’t follow. ‘Well, made it more precious,’ she said. ‘Remember, I never saw it. But the old vicar had a list of the main things that had been done.’

‘Are we still talking about a small pewter cup?’

‘Why, yes, of course, but I suppose the value of the casket was extremely high.’ I cleared my throat and blinked a few times. The fire was drying my eyes. ‘Because of the additions, you see.’

I saw all right.

‘
Who?
’

‘I can’t remember all the names James told me. Different jewellers and suchlike, down the ages.’ She smiled reflectively. ‘Thomas Tucker was one. Another was called Sweet. Those made me laugh.’

‘And
they
did some work on the Grail?’ My throat felt raw.

‘Yes. It must have been beautiful.’

‘Do you remember any other names?’ Tom Tucker’s about 1692. Sweet was one of many West Country silversmiths of that name spanning the period.

‘Hester somebody.’

‘Bateman?’

‘That’s it. And Fabergé, of course, in later years.’

I went giddy. She couldn’t remember any more, but I’d been told enough.

The idea was almost infallible. Where a ‘worthless’ object needed to be preserved, impress succeeding generations by decorating it. A wealthy generation would expend enormous wealth on a religious relic, a poor lot much less. But for Hester Bateman, that extraordinary silversmith, to add a mystical silver decoration to the work of the other geniuses like Sweet and Tucker, and for that to culminate with the brilliant Russian designer Fabergé . . .

‘He was the last,’ Sarah said sadly. ‘Before the Great War. The old vicar’s father had taken it to St Petersburg.’ I thought, Dear God. ‘Henry had plans for us to put money together and add at least a token piece of art to the Grail. It came to nothing, though. Such a shame.’

I questioned her back and forth but got nothing more. The original crystal casket had become the trunk. Different workers had added branches, leaves, jewels for fruit. And inside the priceless tree the battered pewter cup which legend said was the Grail itself. It was in a small wooden box for carrying.

‘James told me the order in which the various additions were made,’ Sarah explained. ‘But I can’t possibly remember.’

‘Jesus!’

We sat and watched the fire. Sarah’s the sort that you never see putting lipstick or powder on. We held hands.

‘Er, Sarah. You and Thomas . . .?’

‘Well.’ That laugh again. ‘After James died, Thomas asked me. I refused. We were close at one time. I decided to live alone.’ She glanced across the firelight at me, smiling. ‘I found the role of a viable widow at
least as . . . worthwhile as the wife of a hard-working doctor.’

All my suspects were vanishing one by one. And now the commonplace myth was turned into a sober reality. Sanctification by use, Henry had called the process, I thought bitterly. But his precious Sanctification had taken place at the hands of several artistic geniuses over some three hundred years at least. The motive for sinking Henry’s barge was no longer hidden. It was clearly and utterly greed. I felt ill. How bloody typical of our modern day. Absolutely bloody typcial. We can’t even be wrong right.

‘Are there no more people who might have known?’

‘Well . . . no. Not really,’ she said, hesitating. ‘Thomas never married. I know for a fact James told no one but me. Martha’s been the same, very much in the dark and reticent. Although . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I often wonder about Thomas’s nephew.’

‘Does he live locally?’

‘Why, yes. Alvin. You know him, though of course he’s perfectly trustworthy –’

‘Alvin?’
I suddenly didn’t like this at all.

‘Alvin Honkworth. An attractive sort, but –’

And Sarah went on to say how pleasant Honkie was . . . Now I had the missing motive, greed. And now maybe the killer as well. And a splitting headache, because didn’t Maslow say that Honkie was the one suspect who had a cast-iron police-documented alibi?

As Sarah left we arranged for me to report in on my progress. She was putting her hat on in the hall when I opened the cottage door. Betty Marsham’s smile faded as she saw past me into the light.

‘Good evening, Lovejoy.’

‘Er, why, hello, Mrs Marsham!’ I cried jovially, in an instant panic. ‘I’m afraid your Regency floral-painted butler’s tray hasn’t arrived. Would tomorrow do?’

‘Certainly,’ Betty said, falling in. ‘Would you please telephone me without delay?’