Murder at the monastery, p.29
Murder at the Monastery, page 29
part #3 of A Canon Clement Mystery Series
‘Oh, yes, missing that major sixth. It had gone so well up to then.’
‘But no reaction when Dominic started to sing instead of Paulinus. I just wonder why.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Try.’
Aelred thought for a moment. Then he said, ‘You are like Samson in the Temple, Daniel, righteously pulling down everything around you.’
‘Why didn’t you say something? You knew Paulinus was not in church when Bede was killed. Didn’t you ask yourself where he was?’
‘No,’ said Aelred. ‘When you are the shepherd of the flock – you should know this, Daniel – you take care over the questions you ask.’
‘Because the answer might inconvenience you?’
‘Because one has more important concerns than the – I think it almost a vanity – solving of puzzles. And that becomes habitual. Do I want to know everything? No, it doesn’t serve. There are wolves, and foul weather, and ditches, and I must bring all safely into the fold.’
‘Speak the truth with heart and tongue. Not just with the tongue, but with the heart.’
‘A counsel of perfection, Daniel. No one does, no one could.’
‘I’m not asking for perfection, Aelred. Just for truthful witness when someone has been murdered.’
‘I did not know Bede had been murdered.’
‘But you suspected. And you knew Paulinus was not in church when he died. What did you make of that? Or did you turn away from a truth too difficult to contemplate?’
Then Aelred surprised Daniel. He was silent for a moment, then stood and turned to face him. Then he knelt and bowed his head.
Daniel made the sign of the cross over him.
16
Canon Dolben, while well-beloved, had never felt it necessary to introduce elements of captivating interest in services. This Sunday morning there was the added misfortune of him forgetting it was Remembrance Sunday, only realising his mistake when everyone arrived at church wearing their red poppies. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, when Margaret Porteous reminded him that it was the custom, initiated by him between the wars, to read out loud the names of those who had gone out from Champton to fight for king and country and not returned.
Bernard, unaccompanied by his kin, endured the service from a sense of duty but without good grace, miserably thinking of the half-case of claret this dreary ordeal was costing him, until he realised no sermon would be preached that day. He perked up so much he let out a satisfied grunt when the old canon started reading out the names of the glorious dead and then felt uncomfortably disloyal to their memory.
Then they had to rush to the war memorial to meet Gilbert Drage, representative of the Royal British Legion, in time for eleven o’clock and the Last Post, which Christian Staniland used to play on his trumpet (but he had become an atheist after his O levels and would have no part in it now). So after welcoming the faithful few who had come to remember ‘the fallen of two wars’ Canon Dolben started the hymn that they sang only on this day, obscure when he first chose it and now all but forgotten. It was not only unmemorable, but also pitched unhelpfully high, so nobody at all joined in until the big finish of the national anthem.
Daniel timed his arrival at Champton House to coincide with tea. He left his bag at the bottom of the back stairs and in a spirit of meekness looked round the door of Mrs Shorely’s room to check in, but she was not there. Hilda and the puppies were, and he knelt over their enclosure and cooed at them. Hilda stirred from her exhausting motherly duties and licked his hand, which made him suddenly sad again and he had to compose himself, then brace himself, before walking into the library.
It was nearly a full house. Bernard, Honoria and Alex were there – no Nathan – his mother and Theo were there, and Canon Dolben. All conversation stopped when he appeared in the doorway, but toujours la politesse, and Bernard said, ‘Ah, the return of the prodigal!’ and was so pleased with this unusual flash of brilliance that it mitigated the resentment he had yet to express. Audrey came scooting over. ‘Dan, Dan,’ she said. ‘Oh, we’ve missed you!’ He bent to kiss her on both cheeks. She put her arm through his as the others enclosed him in a circle of welcome in front of the fire, which glowed red and crackled.
‘Good to see you, Dan,’ said Theo, punching him on the arm with gruff affection.
‘So much to tell you,’ said Alex, making wide eyes.
‘Thank God you’re back,’ said Honoria.
‘Dear man, dear man! Will you be officiating, then, at Evensong?’ said Canon Dolben, with the unmistakable anticipation of a clergyman hoping to get out of something.
And then Daniel was suddenly attacked at rug level by Cosmo, who hurtled across the floor yelping with excitement, ran around him in circles, and jumped up almost as high as his knee in his delight at their reunion.
‘We’re hearing the most EXTRAORDINARY stories about your adventures in the monastery,’ said Alex. ‘You seem to be as adept at sniffing out murder as a pig after truffles.’
‘It was not quite the retreat I had in mind. But . . . I never cease to be surprised by what one discovers in monastic life.’
‘We’re glad you have returned to parish life,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s felt like an age since you disappeared. That’s a quarter to five striking and I don’t suppose you really have time for anything before you need to get ready and resume your duties?’
‘I have a sermon that has gone unpreached, Father,’ said Canon Dolben. ‘It is not on the theme of remembrance, but you might like to preach it if you have not had time to prepare one of your own?’
‘Let us savour the moment for what it is, Canon Dolben,’ said Bernard quickly. ‘The wanderer has returned – and on this day when we remember the many who did not return – no need for gloss or paraphrase.’
Daniel certainly felt no need to preach during that Evensong, for he knew no one minded a sermon not being preached, and Remembrance Sunday rather took care of itself, with no need for commentary from the pulpit. Theo read the lesson from the Old Testament, from the fifth chapter of Nehemiah. which he pronounced to rhyme with ‘anaemia’ (Daniel, like Aelred, looked up). ‘“So God shake out every man from his house,”’ declaimed Theo, in a way that made Audrey think of I, Claudius, ‘“and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, even thus be he shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation said, Amen.”’
The less attentive among the congregation thought this an instruction, rather than a recitation, and repeated the ‘Amen’.
Something would need to be said, Daniel knew, sooner or later; an explanation for his disappearance, and perhaps an indication of his intentions, once he knew with clarity what they were. He felt a sudden surge of feeling for his parishioners, whose welcome home was generous and unaffected, his absence making their hearts fonder.
The Magnificat followed, Dyson in D, sung so long and so frequently by the choir, and the choirs that preceded them, that everyone more or less finished together and in the same tonal world, but Daniel was not really listening, for he was thinking about the lesson, and what befalls us if we do not perform our promises to God, and how he had been shaken out as thoroughly as a dog’s bed after its moult. Back within the cloister he quit before he made his vows, he had discovered what it was to be empty. But always we begin again, and he had begun again, picking up the plainsong thread he had put down a quarter of a century ago. There it was, waiting for him. Where would it lead?
After the service, he stood just beyond the church porch in the chilly darkness receiving the good wishes and welcome-backs of his parishioners, from Dora Sharman in her crocheted bonnet, and Anne Dollinger, who asked to speak to him at his earliest convenience, from Councillor Staveley with the politician’s insistent handshake, and Miss March, who held back a little, shook his bare hand with her gloved hand and gave a modest smile – as effusive an expression of warmth as she could manage, he thought.
He was looking at his watch to calculate his chances of mustering the traditional Sunday-night supper of soup and a sarnie from Champton’s kitchens. Maybe he would also cast an eye over the TV repeat of that morning’s ceremonies at the Cenotaph? The last to leave filed past, his mother, and Jane Thwaite, who had given an element of support for the singing of the hymns and canticles at the organ, clutching two shopping bags of wizened medlars she had been bletting in the flower room since Harvest Festival.
‘Hello, Daniel, lovely to have you back,’ said Jane. ‘Fancy some medlar jelly? Your mother and I have heaps!’
‘Thanks, Jane,’ he said. ‘I would.’
‘What a few weeks it has been! I hope you are going to have a chance to just . . . relax, regroup . . . re-engage?’
‘I hope so. But we have to go – Mum, if we’re quick we can make the Cenotaph. I think it’s on at a quarter past seven.’ He offered Audrey his arm.
‘Darling, I think I’ll make my own way back,’ she said.
‘Why?’
She looked down the path towards the lychgate, where Neil was sitting on the low wall under the lamppost, which cast its illumination over the threshold between Champton’s sacred and secular jurisdictions. Daniel’s heart gave a lurch.
‘Let me give you a lift, Audrey,’ said Jane. ‘I’ve brought the car.’
Daniel found his cloak, switched off the lights, locked the church door behind him and walked down the path to the lychgate.
‘Glad you’re back,’ said Neil. ‘But well done, Dan, another mystery solved, another killer collared. And what a collar!’
‘Thank you, Neil. But it’s not what I’m really for, is it? That’s enough collaring for me. I need to get going.’
‘Can I walk you home?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Daniel.
‘Come on then.’
Neil launched himself off the wall with his easy grace, a quality that Daniel loved and desired, and it was a bittersweet thing to behold. So was Neil’s off-duty appearance, in jeans and a bomber jacket, like someone from the SAS poorly disguised as a civilian. That was stirring, too, until Daniel considered the contrast with him, in his high collar and long black cloak. ‘Who Dares Wins’ walking beside the minister endued with righteousness. Whatever had he been thinking?
‘How’s the rectory coming on?’
Neil was looking across the churchyard at the dark mass of Daniel’s house.
‘The decorators are in tomorrow. Mum is flushed with triumph. Insurers, Bernard – all in line.’
‘She’s amazing.’
‘She is.’
‘How did you leave things at Ravenspurn? I guess not business as usual.’
‘Actually, yes. Pretty much. It is not every day a community’s novice master is arrested for murder – and possibly war crimes – and the abbot offers his resignation, but . . . well, whatever it is, it doesn’t interrupt the routine. Nothing does. War, terror, want, epidemics, power cuts. They just keep going.’
‘Yeah,’ said Neil, ‘but you don’t go through something like that without it taking its toll.’
‘But they endure, because whatever happens they carry on doing what they’ve always done, like a ship sailing through a storm. Steady as she goes. Can you see that?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
They walked further into the park. It was a dark, clear night, the sky was full of stars, and the moon, nearly full, was reflected in the lake.
‘Beautiful,’ said Neil.
‘“And spangled heavens, a shining frame. Their great Original proclaim.”’
They carried on towards the house. The lights were on in the library. Drinks, thought Daniel, and he wondered if he could skip that and find somewhere to sit with his mother and the dogs and watch television and sip Heinz tomato soup from a mug, and things would be back to normal. Steady as she goes.
‘It’s very you,’ said Neil.
‘What is?’
‘Ravenspurn.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You come into focus when you are there.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Daniel.
‘Like you said, there’ll always be a part of you that’s still there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Seriously, what would your life have been like if you had stayed?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’
‘Do you think you would have been an Aelred? You’re very alike.’
‘That doesn’t feel like a compliment right now,’ said Daniel.
‘I don’t mean it like that, I mean . . . horses for courses.’
They walked on.
‘Why did you leave?’ Neil asked.
‘I thought I knew, but I’m not sure now.’
The house loomed before them, mismatched roofs and battlements and chimneys and pediments and cupolas, bluish in the moonlight.
‘Dan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Could you imagine going back?’
‘Unanswerable question, Neil.’
They stopped at the door that led to the back stairs.
‘Are you coming in?’ Daniel asked.
‘No.’
‘Ah. The warrener’s cottage?’
‘No. I came to see you, Dan.’ Neil knew what he was going to do.
‘Oh. Thanks.’
There was a scrabbling at the door from the inside, and Cosmo’s yelp, and then a deep sniff, and then more scrabbling, and more yelping.
‘I’d better . . .’ said Daniel, but he did not finish what he was going to say because Neil pulled him towards him, took his head in his hands and kissed him.
In the study, Jove softly jumped from the bookshelf onto the floor. He made his way across the rug to Bernard, who was sitting in his armchair looking at the fire, on his second brandy and soda. The cat brushed against his leg, once, twice, and started to purr.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following:
Theodore Keschner.
Ross Campbell.
Kyle Sutherland.
David Fairley.
Euan Keatinge.
Stuart Palmer.
Katy Albert.
Catherine Muirden.
The Earl and Countess Spencer.
Deb Price.
Fr David Povall SSC.
The Community of the Resurrection.
Juliet Annan and all at Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Tim Bates and all at PFD.
Hebden Bridge Local History Society.
Also by The Reverend Richard Coles
FICTION
Murder Before Evensong
A Death in the Parish
NON-FICTION
Fathomless Riches
Bringing in the Sheaves
The Madness of Grief
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Richard Coles 2024
The right of Richard Coles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 4746 1 2739
www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Coles, Richard, Murder at the Monastery
