Copyright & Information

The Black Seraphim

First published in 1984

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 the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105281	9780755105281	Print
0755131770	9780755131778	Kindle
0755132149	9780755132140	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The plot," wrote Keating, "is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings." It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: "I always take a latish train to work," he explained in 1980, "and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.". After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Quote

Modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

Prologue

When Dr James Pirie Scotland fainted, he did so in the most dramatic manner, at the conclusion of a lecture on Morbid Anatomy which he was giving to the students of Guy’s Hospital. He tumbled off the edge of the rostrum and hit his head on a gallows from which was hanging a fully articulated skeleton.

Twenty medical students, faced with a problem to which there was no answer in their books, proceeded to suggest twenty different courses of action, mostly inappropriate. Fortunately, one of them had the sense to summon the sister on duty, who packed Dr Scotland off to the nearest private ward.

By the time she had got him there, he had more or less recovered and felt deeply ashamed of himself. Sister Lewthwaite was firm. She said, “That’s a nasty cut in your head. It’ll need stitches. I’ll get the houseman to look at it.”

Dr Scotland put his feet on the floor and said, “Really, Sister. Absolutely stupid of me.” He tried to stand up and sat down again abruptly.

“As I thought,” said Sister Lewthwaite. “Concussion. If you’re going to be sick, the basin’s under the bed.”

In the end it was the Medical Registrar who pronounced the verdict. He said: “There’s nothing organically wrong with you, James. Nature is presenting the bill for six years of overwork. What you need is a month’s holiday. Somewhere right away from all this.” He dismissed, with a wave of his hand, the grimy stones of South London, which were baking under the September sun. “The isles of Greece, or the mountains of Kashmir. Or if you can’t afford that, a cottage in the wildest part of Dartmoor.”

“I don’t know that I can afford even that,” said James sadly. “But I’ll think of something.”

It had been a hard six years; made harder by an almost complete lack of money. His mother, who had been widowed when James was six, had once said to him: “Other people have money. The Scotlands have to get by on brains.” And so it had been. A good Secondary Modern School, which had allowed him to specialise in physics, chemistry and biology, followed by a scholarship at Oxford. At the end of his first year, at his tutor’s suggestion, he had transferred to the medical school. Here he had discovered a sense of vocation and had worked very hard indeed, winning both the Beaney Prize and the Gull Exhibition in pathology. During his year as a houseman he had continued to read; savage, solitary evenings bent over his books and papers while his contemporaries were drinking beer and making intermittently successful efforts to seduce the nurses.

By now the authorities had their eyes on this earnest young student. A junior registrarship in the Pathology Department had been his for the asking. He had combined the job with tutorial work.

His next move had been to the Poisons Reference Section at New Cross Hospital. Here he had spent a hard but happy year. Much of his time had been spent in considering the toxic properties of everyday things. Of bleaching powders and almond oil and turpentine and white spirits; of the weedkillers and insecticides in people’s toolsheds, the kerosene and antifreeze in their garages, the foxglove and laburnum in their gardens, the yew trees and the nightshade in the hedges.

In the earlier years, after a hard day’s work, sleep had dropped on him as soon as he had tumbled into bed. Now he seemed to have lost the knack. Sometimes tunes would be running in his head. Hymn tunes mostly. A verse would sing itself a dozen times over. When he went to sleep, the nightmares started. He seemed to be living in a world which was pitch black but shot through with occasional bursts of unwholesome brightness. It was in these bright intervals that he realised that the men and women who thronged about him were all evil. All of them. The half-smile on their faces when they handed you the cup or the glass indicated that they knew there was something unhealthy in it; but you had to drink. Then came the burning sensation in the mouth and throat and he would wake up, his heart beating double time and his forehead damp. Sometimes, but not often, he would be sick.

“At least a month,” said the Registrar. “Better two. We’ll call it sick leave. On one condition: You take no books with you.”

“Not detective stories, then. Too complicated. Straight thrillers, if you like. Cowboy stories. Romances. Or take up fishing. I’m told it’s very relaxing.”

When the Registrar got home that night and told his wife about it, she said, “He doesn’t need relaxing. He needs shaking up. I’m sure he’s a very worthy young man, but he’s dug himself a groove and buried himself in it. That’s all right when you’re fifty. Not when you’re twenty-four.”

“Something violent and different. You were lucky. You had that call-up in the Infantry.”

In the empty twelve months between leaving school and starting at Oxford he had taken a temporary job teaching at the Choristers’ School at Melchester. He had chosen it because his cousin, Lawrence Consett, was headmaster. James had found that he enjoyed teaching, as a change from being taught; and Latin and French and history as a change from physics and chemistry.

“Put you up for a month?” said Lawrence. “No difficulty. To start with, you can share the school cottage with Peter Fleming. You remember Peter? Furbank has broken his ankle, stupid fellow, and won’t be back until around the end of the month. After that, there are one or two people I can think of who’d be happy to give you a bed. Our Chapter Clerk – Henry Brookes – was telling me only the other day that he had a spare room now that his old aunt had popped off at last. You could make some arrangement with him for bed and breakfast and get your other meals out.”

One

The bishops wore cardboard mitres. The castles had straw hats with ribbons of red and black. The knights carried riding crops and the kings and queens had paper crowns.

“The white queen is Mrs Henn-Christie,” said Peter Fleming. “Her husband was Archdeacon when you were here before. A little man with a white beard like a goat. He fell off his bicycle and ruptured his spleen. The white king is Canon Maude. He’s the one the choristers call Aunt Maude. The black queen is Lady Fallingford and the black king is Archdeacon Pawle.”

A piece of sailcloth, painted in sixty-four squares of black and white, had been pegged out on the Theological College lawn. There was a contraption at each end like the folding ladder used by a tennis umpire. A middle-aged clergyman was perched on the nearer one and a much older clergyman on the one at the far end. Both were armed with megaphones.

A boy stepped two paces forward and one to his right and tapped the occupant of the square on the shoulder. He was grinning as he did so.

The capture of Mr Consett was greeted with heartless laughter from a line of boy pawns who had already been taken and were squatting on a bench alongside the playing area.

“Of course, this is only a rehearsal,” said Peter. “On the day they’ll all be wearing proper costumes. Some of them are magnificent. The two queens particularly. Mrs Henn-Christie has promised to wear the pearl tiara which belonged to her great-grandmother.”

It was the third week in September, but the sun had lost none of his summer strength. Most of the men who were watching were in shirt sleeves. Two girls, seated together on the far side of the square, were in thin summer dresses. One was a well-rounded brunette. The other was fair and slight.

“The plump one is Penny. She’s the head’s daughter. She’s man-hungry.”

“If she’s Lawrence Consett’s daughter, she’s my first cousin once removed.”

“She was away in Switzerland, being finished. The first cosy little chat you have together she’ll tell you all about it. It sounded to me like a mixture between a brothel and a school of mountain warfare.”

“That’s Amanda. Dean Forrest’s daughter. The Forrests came here about two years ago. Same time as the new Archdeacon.”

“The one on the ladder at the far end is old Canon Lister. I recognise him. And this one must be Canon Humphrey. He came just before I left.”

Canon Humphrey was considering his next move. He did not seem to have much room for manoeuvre. While he was thinking about it, James looked around. Living chess. That was part of the Melchester tradition. He remembered reading that in the last years of Victoria’s reign the great Bishop Townshend had played a game against the Hungarian master Ramek. In that game the kings and queens had been the Marquess and Marchioness of Bridport and Lord and Lady Weldon of Kings Sutton. The meanest pawn had been an esquire of the county.

It seemed to be checkmate. Canon Humphrey waved a hand at his opponent and climbed down from his perch. The Archdeacon said, “It’s no good, Francis. We’re charging people a pound to come in. If Tom’s going to beat you in under twenty moves, they won’t feel they’ve had their money’s worth.”

“Then we’ll have to fudge it,” said Canon Humphrey. “Hello. Don’t I recognise you? You used to teach at the school.”

Tea had been laid out in the refectory. The pawns were already making inroads into the sandwiches. Canon Maude came bouncing in. He was exactly as James remembered him. Large, moist and pink. As soon as he was sighted, the nearest chorister picked up two plates and offered them to him. Canon Maude patted him on the head and said, “Poor little pawn, so soon captured.”

“You’re being neglected,” said a girl’s voice behind James. “The boys are such horrid little pigs. They scoff most of the food themselves. Anyone would think we starved them. Andrew, bring those sandwiches here at once.”

One of the black knights rescued a plate from a smaller boy and brought it across. He smiled in a friendly way and said, “I recognise you, sir. We were both new together.”

“And I wouldn’t like to bet on which of us was the more scared,” said James. He thought for a moment. “Then you’re either Andrew Gould or David Lyon.”

“One does,” said Andrew. He sounded like a middle-aged man regretting his lost youth.

“Andrew’s Bishop’s Boy and head of the school now,” said Penny. “What about getting us both a cup of tea?”

Penny focused friendly brown eyes on James. She seemed to approve of what she saw. She said, “When you were here before, I don’t believe we met.”

Andrew returned carrying a cup of tea in either hand. He was closely followed by Lady Fallingford, who cut out James from under Penny’s guns with the expertise developed in a hundred social engagements. She said, “Your grandmother Marjorie Lovett was one of my greatest friends. We were at school together, at Oxford. You must come and have tea with me and tell me all about her.”

“I didn’t know her well,” said James. “She died when I was four. I remember her as a little black bundle that jingled when it moved.”

Lady Fallingford gave a cackle of laughter. She said, “Monday, then. At half past four. You know where I live. River Gate Cottages. Just inside the wall. Mine is the one at the far end. You mustn’t be late, because we shall all be going on to a recorder session at the Humphreys’ afterwards. Now, come along and let me introduce you to Claribel Henn-Christie. Her husband was the last Archdeacon. Happy days they were!”

Since their move had brought them to within easy earshot of the present Archdeacon, James felt that this might have been more tactfully expressed. Lady Fallingford swept him past and introduced him to the spindly lady in a violet frock who was still wearing the white queen’s paper crown set at a rakish angle.

“Did you see that?” said Andrew Gould to David Lyon. “Penny thought she’d got her hooks into Dr Scotland and then Lady F. pinched him.”

Len Masters, the junior verger, was behind one of the long tables serving tea. The boys admired him because he opened the batting for the Melset Cricket Club and liked him because he did not report them for minor infractions of discipline.

James could see that Penny was waiting to recapture him as soon as Lady Fallingford let him go. He was dangerously en prise. He needed a blocking piece. One of the black bishops was chatting up the Dean’s daughter. James knew his face well, but the name had escaped him. Think. Brookes, of course. Henry Brookes, the Chapter Clerk. The solid woman beside him was his wife, Dora. A woman of many talents. An arranger of flowers and an excellent cook. The plates of cakes on the table were probably her handiwork. He remembered, too, that she had been at some time a nurse. When the matron had succumbed to an epidemic which was decimating the school, Dora Brookes had stepped in and substituted competently for her.

As soon as Lady Fallingford released him, James sidled across and introduced himself.

“Nice to see you back,” said Brookes. “I gather that Lawrence Consett’s giving you a bed for the time being. When he has to throw you out, we’ll be happy to put you up – did he tell you? We’ve a spare room now that Alice is gone.”

“Do you know Amanda? Her father is the Dean. It was old Dean Lupton in your time, of course. He retired two years ago and died very soon after.”

“I can’t think why it was,” said James, “that everyone always referred to him as ‘poor Dean Lupton’. But they always said it as though it was rather a joke.”

“That’s because he spent all his time being sorry for himself,” said Dora Brookes, in the robust tones of someone who classed illness as a sign of weakness.

“He’d no particular reason to be sad,” agreed Brookes. “The Deanery is an excellent house and the stipend is good. Better than Salisbury or Winchester. And he had private means as well.”

James had been examining her covertly. His first reactions were medical. He thought she could have done with more flesh on her bones.

“That depends on who does the giving and who does the taking. In the old Dean’s day it was a lot easier, I believe.”

Amanda glanced across the room at the little group by the window. It was composed of theological students and its focal point was Archdeacon Pawle. He seemed to be telling a story. As he spoke, the contours of his plump face shifted, hills changing to valleys, valleys to hills. The only fixed points were two shrewd black eyes.

“My dear!” said Dora Brookes. “You mustn’t take any notice of her, Doctor. She says the most terrible things. The fact is, she doesn’t like the Archdeacon.”

“A lot of people admire him greatly. He’s done wonders for the administration of the Cathedral since he took over from Henn-Christie, who never really thought about money at all. Isn’t that right, Henry?”

Her husband, who had clearly been thinking about something quite different, said, “What’s that? Yes. Splendid man, very thorough.”

“He’s not a clergyman,” said Amanda. “He’s an accountant. When he says his prayers at night – if he does say them – I expect he finishes up, ‘And may my profit and loss account come out on the right side and my balance sheet balance.’”

Henry Brookes laughed. His wife said, “I’m sure he’s a good man at heart.”

“If there’s any goodness in him,” said Amanda, “it’s buried deeper than the sixpence in the Christmas pudding.”

“Oh, it does. Sometimes I dream about it. I’m sure that food’s the most important thing in most people’s lives. Women, anyway. Much more important than sex.”

“You’re a doctor. You understand about these things. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I’m a pathologist. If I was a psychiatrist, I might be able to answer your question.”

Amanda said, “Funk,” and grinned. The grin exposed a row of gappy teeth and turned an ordinary face into an attractive one. Now that he was close to her, James could see that he had been wrong about her hair. It was not blonde. It was long and a very pale auburn.

“Why is it,” she said, “that doctors never give you a straight answer to a straight question? Like politicians.”

Amanda said, “Oh?” and thought about it. At that moment there was a diversion. A door at the end of the room swung open and a man came limping through. He was six feet tall and carried himself in a way which gave effect to every one of his seventy-two inches. His hair, which was snowy white, hung down on either side of his deeply seamed face. A beaked nose, a mouth drawn tight, as by a purse string, a chin which continued the straight ascetic line of the nose with none of the flabbiness on either side which is normal in men past middle age. It was a face, thought James, which had experienced suffering, but got the better of it.

The crowd parted as he came forward, supporting himself on a rubber-tipped stick. He made straight for Amanda, stooped forward and presented her with a ritual kiss. Amanda accepted it with becoming demureness, managing to wink at James as she did so. She said, “This is Dr Scotland, Daddy. He used to teach at the school. He’s come down here to recuperate.”

“And what better place to do so than in the backwater of a cathedral close? Did the game go well?”

The Dean had made no attempt to lower his voice. If the Archdeacon heard the exchange and the laugh which followed from the little group which had gathered around the Dean, he gave no sign of it. His eyes twinkled as merrily as ever, his bland voice continued its discourse.

The Dean said, “I shall have to drag you away from this delightful entertainment, my dear. We have letters to write.” He turned to James. “Amanda is my secretary. In the old days the Dean had a staff of seven. A secretary, a butler, a housekeeper, two maids, a gardener and a coachman. Now Amanda is factotum.”

“True. We have a half-share of Miss Pilcher. We must count our blessings. A terrible woman, but a worker.”

He offered his arm to Amanda. The crowd fell back. Two of the choristers competed for the honour of holding the door open. When he had gone, the room seemed half empty.

“I’m on duty at the school until six,” said Peter. “After that, I think we might drift down to the town and find a drink.”

At half past ten that night he was sitting in front of the open window of the school cottage. “What I’d forgotten about,” he said, “was the silence.”

“When I go back to London for the holidays,” said Peter, “it takes me a couple of days to get used to the noise there. Our family house is in St. John’s Wood, which is reckoned to be pretty quiet, but this—this is out of the world.”

They could just hear, as if it were the humming of distant bees, the cars passing the Bishop’s Gate on their way through Melchester to the south. The Cathedral bell beat out the quadruple strokes of the half-hour.

“In the days when I was reluctantly receiving instruction in science, I was taught that there are certain elements which are harmless by themselves – inert is, I believe, the technical description – but if you combine them, you get a mixture which is volatile and explosive.”

“I must say the Archdeacon did look a little bit bloated. A Bishop Bonner, do you think?”

“The man who burned a lot of other bishops in Bloody Mary’s reign. His cheeks were said to be glutted with the flesh of martyrs.”

“Lovely,” said Peter. “I’ll try that on the boys. Glutted with the flesh of martyrs. They’ll enjoy that. They don’t care much for the Archdeacon.”

“His only known vice is gluttony. He lunches frugally, but in the evening he eats and drinks enough for three. Personally, I rather like him.”

“Not a very good life, medically speaking, I thought. But that’s no reason for unpopularity.”

“When I asked Amanda, she said that the Archdeacon was really an accountant.”

“I suppose it is a fault for a clergyman to think more about money than he does about his soul. But someone’s got to do the thinking. A cathedral is a business. It owns a lot of property and employs a lot of people. Someone’s got to find the money. It won’t drop down like quails and manna from heaven. The old Archdeacon, Henn-Christie, was a sweetie. But I doubt if he could add two and two.”

“I don’t think he’s simple in any way at all. He’s a tough character. Before he came here, he’d spent most of his life on missionary work in the remoter parts of Africa and India. The boys seem to have got hold of some pretty odd stories about it all. Exaggerated, I don’t doubt. But he’s certainly a man who’d put sanctity above silver.”

“At the moment, the Dean’s got the edge. Francis Humphrey, the Subdean, is on his side. And so is Tom Lister. He’s the old boy we saw performing this afternoon.”

“Right. And he’s not only good at chess. He’s the only real scholar Melchester’s got. He reads Greek and Aramaic and Syriac and any other old language you can put your tongue to. You ought to look at his entry in Who’s Who sometime. Dozens of books on comparative philology and things like that.”

“As a matter of fact, I did get hold of one, out of the sixpenny box in the marketplace. Perfect bedside reading. After one page I invariably fell into deep slumber.”

James laughed and yawned at the same time. He felt tired, but he was not sure that he was quite ready for sleep.

He said, “All right. That makes it three to one. So what about number four?”

“Number four’s Canon Maude. He doesn’t count. He’s just an old softy.”

James laughed and yawned again. He decided that perhaps he was ready for bed. It had been a long day.

As he drifted into sleep, his thoughts kept wandering back to the chessboard. In his imagination the pieces on it grew to more than human size. Black knights and white knights pranced on real horses around the keeps of formidable castles from whose battlements kings and queens looked down.

At one of the slits in the wall stood a girl with hair that was more auburn than blonde. It was long hair. It hung down almost to the ground, as though it was inviting James to use it as a rope and climb up it.

By the time the Cathedral clock beat out the strokes of eleven, he was asleep. It was the earliest he had got to sleep for a long time.

Two

At the age of fourteen James had imagined, for a few months, that he might become a professional organist. He had a natural ear for music, and a friend who played the services at the local church had encouraged him to practise. At the end of a short flirtation with music, his common sense had shown him the gulf which is fixed between an amateur who can play an instrument and a professional who does play it, and the colourful ambition had been discarded. But he had retained his love for the most solemn and powerful of all musical instruments.

In the year he had spent at Melchester, he had made a friend of the little Canadian sub-organist, Paul Wren. He noted from the service sheet that, though still shown as sub-organist, his name now stood alone, and James assumed that Paul’s predecessor, Dr Tyrrel, had been promoted. As he took his place in the Choir stalls for matins, he was able to see the back of Paul’s head and to catch an occasional glimpse of his face in the mirror beside the console.

The Jubilate was Purcell in B flat and the Te Deum Vaughan Williams in G. There was no doubt about the mastery of Paul’s playing. It spread strong invisible threads from the organ loft to the choir. James thought he had never heard them sing better.

The responses were being intoned by a young clergyman whose face James recognised. He finally placed him as the white bishop. His voice had a strong male clarity, a great improvement on the Vicar Choral of six years before who had bleated like a sheep. The sermon was preached by Canon Maude, who forgot to switch on the microphone in the pulpit. It was only when the head verger managed to turn it on for him that his words became audible. From what they then heard, James thought that they had lost very little.

After the service the officiating clergy and the regular members of the congregation, most of whom had seats in the Choir, trooped through the cloisters and into the Chapter House. Betty Humphrey, the Subdean’s wife, Dora Brookes and Julia Consett were pouring a brown liquid from large jugs into plastic mugs. It tasted vaguely like coffee.

Francis Humphrey, catching sight of him, came across and said, “I meant to invite you, but forgot. We’ve a recorder party tomorrow at six, on the West Canonry lawn, if the weather stays fine.”

“Lady Fallingford mentioned it. I was wondering exactly what a recorder party might be.”

“Nothing to do with tape recorders, I can assure you. They’re sort of wooden flutes. Have you never seen one? My wife and I take the treble and tenor, and Miles Manton, our Cathedral architect, takes the bass. The accompaniment is a viola da gamba. What Shakespeare calls a viol de gamboys. Paul plays that and coaches all of us, too.”

“He’s a remarkable musician. He was only assistant organist when I was here last. I was glad to see that he’s got the top job now. What’s happened to Dr Tyrrel?”

“He’s gone to Kings. I agree with you about Paul. I only wish it was the universal opinion.”

James noticed that when he said this, Canon Humphrey turned his back on the company. They were in a corner of the room and the clatter of voices screened them.

“Several reasons. The Archdeacon’s a traditionalist. His musical taste seems to begin and end with Stanford in B flat. Paul likes to experiment sometimes with something a little more modern. There I support him. There’s been plenty of good church music written this century.”

“I’m sure you’re talking scandal,” said Penny Consett. “Otherwise why are you both standing in the corner like a couple of naughty boys?”

“We were talking music, not scandal,” said Canon Humphrey. “Dr Scotland was saying how much he enjoyed Paul’s playing.”

“Isn’t he sweet?” said Penny. “Just like a hamster with a little blonde beard. Much nicer than Tyrrel the squirrel.”

“An anthropomorph is someone who thinks of animals as people and people as animals.”

“Most of them are, when you come to think of it. The Archdeacon’s exactly like a—”

Canon Humphrey coughed loudly. The Archdeacon, who had surged up behind them with a coffee cup balanced in one hand, said, “Dr Scotland, isn’t it?”

“Come to revisit the scenes of your youth? Not thinking of resuming a scholastic career?”

“An excellent notion.” He swung around on Penny. “Tell me. What am I exactly like?”

Penny had the grace to blush. Then she said, “We were just saying that most people were like different animals. I was going to say that you were like a grizzly bear.”

“Not bad. Not bad at all.” His little black eyes twinkled. “Ah. Here comes our organist. None of your modern trash today, I was glad to note, Wren.”

“I never play trash,” said Paul shortly. He pushed past, toward the coffee table. The Archdeacon looked after him thoughtfully. A grizzly about to pounce? James wondered.

The crowd was thinning out now. James hung around unobtrusively. He wanted a word with Paul and managed to time his exit so that they reached the door together. Paul looked at him blankly for a moment, then smiled.

He said, “James. I hardly recognised you. You look at least twenty years older.”

“The sturm and drang of medical life. Someone was telling me that you’d got a new console.”

“Not new. But the old one’s been pretty comprehensively rebuilt. It was finished just before Tyrrel left. Would you like to see it?”

He followed Paul up the narrow winding stairs into the organ loft: a snug cabin, with curtains shutting it off on three sides and on the fourth the gleaming bank of five manuals and the hundred ivory-headed stops like a hundred little serving maids in mob caps waiting for orders.

James settled down on one end of the bench with a contented sigh and said, “You know, I’d be happy just sitting here all day. It’s like being on the bridge of a ship. How I envy you. I saw, by the way, that you’d got the top job now.”

“He’s a bastard,” said Paul. “A clever bastard and a busy bastard, but a bastard nonetheless. You know what he’s got against me? I’ve got the wrong letters after my name. I’m not A.R.C.O; I’m A.R.C.C.O.”

“Not to him. I’m an associate of the Royal Canadian College of Organists. Get the difference?”

“When you play the way you do, it shouldn’t matter if you were a member of the Timbuktu College of Organists.”

“I’m not sure that it really does matter all that much. But he uses it as a handle to get at me for other things. You heard what he said just now. None of your modern trash. When we did the Joubert Te Deum – and the choir really sang it beautifully – all he said was: ‘Joubert – South African, isn’t he? Another of your colonial maestros.’”

“What really sticks in his throat is that my promotion was backed by the Dean.”

“If you searched the ecclesiastical firmament with a powerful telescope,” said Paul solemnly, “I doubt you could find two men further poles apart. You probably think I’m biased. Maybe I am. I happen to like the Dean. He’s not perfect. Far from it. He’s tough and ruthless and devious as all come, but I reckon he puts his faith and his church first. It’s led him into some pretty wild places before he came to roost in this hen run.”

“His last posting was in Ethiopia. That’s where he got into bad trouble with guerrillas. They broke his leg for him. But he got back at them somehow. There are about six different versions of the story. I’d like to hear the truth sometime.”

“I must admit,” said James, “that it’s hard to visualise Archdeacon Pawle living a missionary life among savage tribesmen.”

Paul said, “Let’s be fair. If his idea of religion is a round of boring tea parties, that’s his lookout. No. What I object to is his notion of turning religion into a business proposition. Do you know, he had the nerve to say to me: ‘People like to hear the things they’re used to. That’s what most of them come to church for. If you play all this modern stuff, you’ll never bring in the paying customers.’ Paying customers. Good God! Just as though a cathedral was a stall in a circus and he was outside beating a drum and shouting: ‘Roll up, roll up. You want the old stuff – we’ve got it!’”

His little beard bristled and he looked so indignant that James couldn’t help laughing. He said, “You mustn’t take it too seriously, Paul. If he’s a musical Philistine, that’s his misfortune. Most people in a place like Melchester would be on your side over a thing like that. They appreciate good music.”

“Unfortunately, most people don’t have a say in the appointment of the Cathedral organist. The Archdeacon does. And he’s got a nephew at Worcester who’d like the job.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then James said, “I suppose you couldn’t . . . I mean, people would think it odd if they heard you practicing.”

Paul switched on the power and pulled out a few stops, one of which James was delighted to see was labelled claribel flute. If he ever wrote a novel, he thought, that should be the name of the heroine.

The gilt angels on top of the far bank of organ pipes, with their golden trumpets to their lips, seemed to be dancing in time with the music.

More than half the attraction of the traditional liturgy lay in its music. Perhaps the Archdeacon was right. Perhaps people did come to church just to hear the things they were used to.

Be ye sure that the Lord, he is God. It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.

That was the Dean speaking. That was the faith that made saints and upheld martyrs. When you had stripped away the overlay of formalism and ceremony and superstition, that was the rock on which the church was built. If you truly believed that, you could go anywhere and dare anything.

In the times that followed, James sometimes found himself looking back at Paul and himself, together in the organ loft, above the empty Cathedral, in the sunshine which streamed through the east window over the high altar and lit up the dark corners of the clerestory.

That afternoon, having lunched in the town, James was coming back into the Close with no idea of how to spend the afternoon when he ran into a flock of blue-and-gold caps, shepherded by Peter.

The pecking order, he observed, was unchanged. A line of senior boys was echeloned on each side of the master who was taking the walk. The two immediately beside him were the black knights, Andrew Gould and David Lyon.

David Lyon made way for him and he fell in beside Peter. He had evidently interrupted a serious debate.

“It’s no good fussing about these things,” said Peter. “Everyone has to economise these days. That’s what inflation does to you.”

“It depends how heavy they are. Three like Piggy . . .” He indicated a fat boy waddling ahead of them. The fat boy turned his head and grinned. James realised that most of the boys had arranged themselves so that they could hear what was being talked about. It was a sort of ambulatory parliament.

“Is this a problem in mathematics?” he said. “Like if two men dig a well in four hours, how long would three men take?”

“It’s more practical than that. Last term when we went to away matches, parents who were spectating used to come in the school bus. The—” Peter had been going to say Archdeacon, but changed it at the last moment “—the Finance Committee decided that they ought to pay their own fares, so three of them who had cars got together and offered to take the whole team, provided the school paid for their petrol. The Finance Committee is still trying to work out whether they’ll save money on it or not.”

“He’d spend all his time patting them on the head and telling them his corny jokes,” said the fat boy.

“We all know who he’d want sitting beside him,” said a boy out on the flanks. “He’d want Bottle.”

Andrew gave a shrill whistle, like a shepherd calling in a sheepdog, and a small boy came trotting back. His hair, James noticed, was almost the same colour as Amanda’s. He had the guileless face which fills old ladies with sentiment and experienced schoolmasters with suspicion.

“Sorry, sir. Canon Maude said I was like a Botticelli cherub and they’ve been calling me Bottled Cherry ever since.”

“All right,” said Andrew. “You’ve said your piece. Back you go. He pretends to be annoyed about it,” he explained to James. “But he isn’t really. It boosts his personality.”

Later, as the disorganised army ambled out of the River Gate and into the road leading out of Melchester and into the countryside, the conversation turned to the agreeable topic of murder.

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” said the fat boy. “Mr Fleming told us. You examine dead bodies to find out who killed them.”

“You’re cutting a few corners there,” said James. “I do carry out autopsies – post-mortems – in routine cases. And I’ve helped the pathologist at Guy’s once or twice in criminal cases. Not necessarily murders.”

“When you do a – what did you call it? – an autopsy, does that mean cutting the chap open?”

“Well,” said James doubtfully. The boys seemed to be genuinely interested. “It would depend what you were looking for.”