See no evil, p.13
See No Evil, page 13
“Father, he tried to end his own life. When I was still living at home, I found him in the bath with his wrists cut. I had to call an ambulance. When he was found dead, my first thought was that he’d committed suicide.”
“Bron, I have to ask you this. Is it your belief that he was killed because he was writing a book about the massacre he witnessed? If he was the only witness to that atrocity, someone must have had an interest in silencing him.”
Bron shook his head wearily. “Why should anyone have wanted to kill him over that? There were so many massacres, so many violent deaths. Half of Europe seems to have met a violent end. And it wasn’t as if my father’s war history was a secret. Perhaps Paul really believes that, but everyone knew he’d witnessed a massacre.”
“Everyone?”
“It was the only way he could bear it, I suppose,” Bron retorted, a little tersely. “He talked incessantly on the subject when he returned home. I’ve heard that story so many times, I feel as though I saw it with my own eyes! He talked and talked; no one in our vicinity could possibly have failed to know. Then suddenly, he stopped talking about it. He went completely the other way. He wouldn’t speak of it anymore; he wouldn’t answer any questions. Perhaps that was the shock hitting him at last. I don’t know.”
Gabriel stepped back as Bron got to his feet. “Perhaps I really am barking up the wrong tree here,” said Gabriel, following Bron out of the room. Bron had glanced at the clock and realised it was lunchtime; the shift from one room to the next would provide a useful distraction to both of them. “It just seems too much of a coincidence that a man like that would die and all the notes of his books be stolen or destroyed soon after.”
Bron looked at him in disbelief. “Who said my father’s notes had been destroyed? The police didn’t have the decency to tell me anything about that!”
Gabriel winced at the thought of yet another mistake he had made. There was no going back: “The police will only just have found out,” Gabriel explained, jolted by the sudden cool of the hall after the warmth of the drawing room. The dining room door directly opposite was open, and Gabriel could see a table draped in a white damask cloth, neatly laid out with a generous lunch by Mrs Whitcomb, who stood waiting patiently for them. “Oh dear, perhaps it isn’t important after all. I’m afraid Paul returned home to find that some thug had been in and ransacked his study. All the notes were being held there for safekeeping.”
Bron strode past Gabriel into the dining room and sat down without waiting for his guest to sit. Gabriel sat down uncomfortably opposite him, feeling his appetite waning with every passing second. “A fat lot of good Paul Ashley was at keeping things safe, by the sound of things! Those notes are irreplaceable!”
“Paul did say that Victor had spoken to him at great length about the events, and he thought he could probably still write the book. I can’t help thinking that if the two of you were to get together—” A single, forbidding glare from Bron made it abundantly obvious to Gabriel that the two men would never get together for anything.
“I’m sorry, Father,” said Bron, pouring Gabriel a drink, “but short of finding Dr Mengele working at the nursing home, I think it singularly unlikely that my father’s misadventures have anything to do with the matter. Murder always comes down to love or money. There was no love in my father’s life and sadly, very little money either.”
Gabriel smiled appreciatively at Mrs Whitcomb as she served him a bowl of soup. He had had some extremely awkward meals in his life, but this luncheon promised to be one of the worst.
It was just after three that Gabriel arrived back at the presbytery, in time to find Fr Foley playing patience at the kitchen table as his afternoon tea brewed. “Afternoon,” greeted Fr Foley, without looking up from his cards. “Good of you to drop in. Could you smell the tea and cake all the way from the crime scene?”
“I’m sorry,” said Gabriel, sitting down opposite him. “You would not believe what’s been going on. Mrs Martin insisted on taking me back to the house. Then Paul Ashley had a break-in. I had to ask Bron Gladstone a few questions, and I’m not sure he’ll ever speak to me again now. Then I had to send a telegram—”
“It’s all right, son,” Fr Foley said, cutting him off, “I don’t need an inventory. Have you ever considered the morality of cheating at patience?”
Gabriel smiled, knowing he was forgiven. “It’s always seemed pretty pointless to me, given that one plays the game against oneself. But then, I suppose, in the end any cheating is cheating against oneself. Which makes all cheating pointless.”
“Thank you for your contribution,” answered Fr Foley, throwing down his remaining six cards. “Do you have time for a cuppa before you vanish into thin air again?”
“I won’t, thanks. Bron did at least give me a good lunch, even if we ate in virtual silence.”
“I think this is a plot,” commented Fr Foley, pouring a small quantity of milk into his mug. “Carry on like this and you’ll be so unpopular with absolutely everyone, you’ll have to return to your abbey to avoid a lynch mob.”
“I hope no one actually wants to string me up from the nearest tree,” said Gabriel, picking up the deck of cards for want of anything better to do. “I’ve always wondered why detectives are never murdered in crime stories. I mean, if you think about it, the killer is trying to cover his tracks, so why not go after the person who is trying to track him down? You never hear of anyone trying to knife Hercule Poirot in a dark alley. No one dropped cyanide into Sherlock Holmes’ afternoon tea.”
Fr Foley hesitated to pick up his own tea. “Thank you for that. Case going badly, is it?”
“I’m not getting very far, if that’s what you mean.” Gabriel had begun to shuffle the cards, sorting them into their suits, starting with the aces. He knew it would madden Fr Foley, who was terrible at shuffling cards and would keep getting a predictable hand for the next twenty games he played. “I cannot seem to get the measure of the man. The dead man, I mean.”
“I’ve barely heard a good word said about him, for what it’s worth,” said Fr Foley. “Always troubles me when people speak ill of the dead. If a man can’t win some sympathy when he snuffs it, something must have gone wrong.”
“That’s the thing,” lamented Gabriel, busying himself searching for the three of hearts. “The only person who seems to care he’s dead is a young man who had something to gain from his friendship with him. If Paul Ashley could have got his name on the dust jacket of a book alongside a formerly well-known writer, it would have done his career the world of good. Now it’s unlikely the book will ever be written, even though Paul claims he can still do it. But what he’s feeling can hardly be described as grief. The only one who cried was his granddaughter, and I’m fairly sure her tears were for her mother, not him.”
The men sank into silence, Fr Foley watching Gabriel working his way systematically through the deck of cards. “I would say, `What you sow you reap,’ but that sounds a little harsh under the circumstances. Nobody deserves to be killed like that.”
“Have you ever broken a belt?”
Fr Foley had become quite used to Gabriel’s random questions during the time Gabriel had been living with him, and he didn’t miss a beat. “Unless you count my father’s through overuse, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not at all what I mean.”
“I suppose I’ve had a few wear out in my time. The odd buckle breaking on me. Dare I ask why?”
Gabriel got up and picked up his knapsack, which he had left carelessly by the door. The broken belt was coiled up under his folded pyjamas, like a toothless old snake in a charmer’s basket. He held it up in front of Fr Foley. “What does that look like to you?” he asked.
“Where did it come from?” asked Fr Foley, glancing impassively at the exhibit. “I assume you didn’t remove it from the corpse.”
“Molly found it in his room. The leather’s not worn; it was obviously cut. It just seems like an odd way to remove a belt when one could just as easily unbuckle it.”
Fr Foley shrugged. “You’re making rather a meal of this, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“It’s odd, and it was in the dead man’s possession,” answered Gabriel. “Of course I’m making a meal out of it.”
Fr Foley reached out to take it and examined it more closely, though Gabriel suspected that he was merely going through the motions of looking at the thing to appear interested. “You know what this reminds me of?” said Fr Foley finally. “It looks like something a doctor or nurse would do.” He drew an invisible line up the side of his body. “You know, when some poor soul’s suffered a horrible accident, they just cut through his clothing to reach the injury.”
Gabriel pondered the possibility as he put the belt away. It was a plausible suggestion. In fact, it was the only halfway plausible suggestion Gabriel could think of, the alternative being that he was chasing the wrong scent as usual. He shook his head impatiently. “I am swimming through a shoal of red herrings,” he added. “Of course, the thought has occurred to me that some complete stranger might have killed him. Applegate must also be considering the possibility. He was alone in misty woodland. Private land, of course, but anyone could have slipped in undetected.”
Fr Foley busied himself putting the cards away. “I suppose it’s a question of whether anyone actually would. It’s not like a man being mugged on a London street after dark. Or someone falling foul of a pickpocket. Those sorts of crimes happen in cities and large towns. No one would have been skulking about that quiet land waiting for some hapless individual to walk past.” The playing cards neatly stowed away in their carved wooden box, Fr Foley returned his full attention to Gabriel. “Was he robbed?”
“Not at the site, certainly.” Gabriel sat down gingerly opposite Fr Foley. “You’re not going to like this, but I wonder if I might be excused for a couple of days?”
“Days?” echoed Fr Foley. “What are you up to?”
“It may be nothing, but you see, I have to find out. I need to return to the abbey to ask Abbot Ambrose something. But then I may need to go on to London. I’ve an old chum in town whose a—”
“Why would anyone want to go to London?” Fr Foley paused. “I’d forgotten—of course, you were a Londoner, weren’t you?”
Gabriel nodded. “I know it’s a long way to go, but I need some information or I’m never going to get to the bottom of all this. And I’ve a friend at the Albion Museum who might be able to help me.”
Fr Foley was clearly itching to tell Gabriel to forget about the whole thing, but he knew that the man would be impossible to live with for weeks if he were prevented from following this particular trail. He was a bloodhound in search of meat. “Leave me your diary so that nothing gets forgotten,” he sighed. “Come back as quickly as possible. I need you back before Sunday.”
Gabriel was on his feet and running out of the room to the stairs before Fr Foley could say anything else. He hurried up to his room, snatched up a clean set of underwear and hurried back downstairs, discreetly tucking his undies into the knapsack he had not yet unpacked from his last adventure. He hovered sheepishly in the doorway of the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you could lend me the train fare, could you?” he asked quietly.
Fr Foley stood up, walked wordlessly over to the petty cash tin he kept on the windowsill and handed it to him. “Come back in one piece, and we’ll say no more about it,” he said, patting Gabriel affectionately on the shoulder. “I don’t like what you said about killers turning on the detective. Fortunate you’re so bad at it, really.”
10
It was already dark by the time Gabriel set off, the nights drawing in as early as four in the afternoon at that time of year. Gabriel’s bicycle had no lights, a detail he had failed to consider until he was speeding down the road with no way to warn any oncoming driver of his precarious presence. He had no problems after the first helter-skelter stretch of blind bends and heart-stoppingly steep downward cambers on the way out of town. Like many ancient towns, it was built on a hill and all roads out spiralled downwards, but after that, Gabriel reached the old Roman road across Salisbury Plain and his way became smoother, wider and—mercifully—flatter.
Gabriel kept as close to the edge of the road as possible, fearing that a motorcar might creep up behind him and fail to catch sight of him in the headlights before hitting him, but the road was eerily quiet. It was only when he was forced to stop to catch his breath that Gabriel remembered: it had been market day yesterday, and the road would have teemed with traffic of all kinds. The day after was like the day after a feast day at the abbey: quiet, lazy and a little mournful. The Plain was in the hands of the armed forces, but beyond it, isolated farms were dotted about—mostly dairy, but there were two piggeries Gabriel knew of—all desperately trying to keep their heads above water. There was an old saying that a farmer’s belt had notches all the way around, but Gabriel wondered how many of those families would go to bed hungry tonight.
Gabriel got going again, taking his time getting back into his stride. He felt the first raindrops touching his face as he neared Stonehenge, nodding to that glorious pagan monument to heaven knew what as he picked up his pace. It was another three miles to the abbey, and he was desperate to get there without looking like a drowned rat.
As it turned out, the rain was nothing more than a light drizzle, but it was surprising how quickly Gabriel found himself getting wet, cycling through a thin mist of raindrops. First, the damp coated his hair and clothes; then it began to seep steadily through the fibres of his coat and down his neck, chilling him to the bone. Within a mile, he was shaking his head constantly to keep the tiny raindrops out of his eyes. When he crossed the hamlet of Little Coombe, Gabriel dismounted the bicycle and walked through the narrow, uphill lanes, across a bridge beneath which the river was already swollen and fast flowing, threatening to flood the nearby cricket pitch.
The streets were almost deserted already, the five hundred or so inhabitants of the hamlet sensibly indoors. Gabriel could see chinks of light between partially closed curtains and the odd tattered trail of red, white and blue bunting still hanging from the occasional house, relics of the impromptu street party held to mark the marriage of Princess Elizabeth late the previous year. Gabriel felt himself lingering as the road levelled off again and the houses melted away, leaving him surrounded by pitch darkness as far as the eye could see. It was the worst penance of winter, those long, long hours of darkness, when the sun set so early; teatime felt like a midnight feast. He cycled off, through the darkness and drizzle, thinking fondly of the welcome he would receive from his brothers before the hour was out.
“Good heavens, man, you look like a drowned rat!” exclaimed Abbot Ambrose when Gabriel stepped through the door into the great man’s study. “What were you thinking of, walking all this way?”
“I didn’t walk, Father Abbot,” said Gabriel, bracing himself to stifle his shivers. Now that his pulse had slowed down, he felt cold again. “I cycled here. It’s almost easier in the dark; I had the road to myself.”
Abbot Ambrose gestured for Gabriel to sit down and looked across at Father Dominic, the infirmarian, who had accompanied his old friend into the room. “I think Dom Gabriel might be in need of a change of clothes,” said Ambrose. “I wonder if you could see to it, please. I think he’s about the same size as you.”
Dominic smiled. Gabriel was indeed about the same height as he, though thanks to a limp from childhood polio, Dominic appeared to be several inches shorter. He was also at least ten years older and blamed the encroachment of age for his widening girth and rapidly greying hair. “Is that all, Father Abbot?”
“I daresay you’re hungry after your trek?”
“Well . . .” Gabriel had been brought up never to impose and certainly never to admit to hunger, which might place the host under an obligation to feed him, but he was too afraid to lie to Abbot Ambrose. He was starving.
“Perhaps you could also go down to the kitchen and find a little something for Gabriel to eat,” Ambrose instructed Dominic, before turning his attention back to Gabriel. “I presume you will not attempt to make the same journey back this evening?”
“Actually, I need to get to London,” Gabriel explained, then realised that the two men were glancing at him in confusion. “It’s quite urgent. I came here only because I needed—”
“You’ll be going nowhere tonight,” ordered Ambrose. “Wherever you think you’re going, you may set off in the morning.”
Dominic shuffled back towards the door and left, leaving Gabriel with that uncomfortable feeling he remembered from his days at the abbey of having lost a guardian angel somehow. He folded his arms and looked back at Ambrose’s egg-like head, wondering if it would be impertinent to talk first. He was spared the bother by Ambrose. “What are you up to, Dom Gabriel? I assume Fr Foley knows you’re here?”
“Oh yes,” Gabriel assured him, “and he knows about my plan to go to London. I shouldn’t have troubled you at all, Father Abbot, but I’m afraid something rather awful has happened, and I wanted to ask your advice.”
Ambrose’s expression softened immediately. It was not the first time Gabriel had got himself into a scrape, and Ambrose knew from experience that it was generally not Gabriel’s fault. “What troubles you?”
Gabriel felt himself relaxing. “Have you heard about the murder of Victor Gladstone?” Ambrose shook his head. “An elderly man was found dead in the grounds of the house where I was a guest. I shan’t bore you with the details, but I’ve been doing a little digging around. This object was found among his files and papers. I wondered if you knew what it was.”
Gabriel took out the amulet he had wrapped in a clean handkerchief and had concealed about his person, placing it gingerly on the desk between them. He unfolded the handkerchief like a magician about to amaze everyone. Ambrose looked steadily at it, then put on his reading glasses and picked up the amulet to look at it more closely. “Where did you say you got this?”
