An Act of Evil Read online

  Jackson nodded then lifted the lid of the case, which Maltravers could see had been forced open with a screwdriver or similar instrument.

  “You didn’t protect it very well, sir,” he commented.

  Michael looked uncomfortable. “We have a somewhat radical Dean who feels excessive security has no place in the church,” he explained. “If he had his way, I imagine he would leave the entire building unlocked day and night.”

  “I think you’d find we’d disapprove of that. The average villain isn’t noted for his piety.” Jackson sniffed and closed the lid. “Very well. On the face of it, we may assume it was taken for, or by, a specific person. When did you discover it was missing?”

  “About ten o’clock this morning. One of the ladies who serves in the tourists’ shop noticed it. As far as we know, it was there last night.”

  “And the cathedral was locked overnight?”

  “Certainly,” said Michael, making it clear he did not approve of the Dean’s open-house preferences.

  “No sign of a break-in to the building?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware.”

  “An inside job,” put in Maltravers adding an unnecessary note of drama to his voice. Jackson smiled seriously.

  “Possibly,” he said in the tone of a professional being patient with an amateur. “What time does the cathedral close in the evening?”

  “About eight o’clock at this time of year.”

  Jackson’s next questions were thoughts spoken aloud. “So, possibly late in the evening…nobody would have specifically checked? No…or this morning after the cathedral opened…or during the night.” He paused for a moment, thinking silently. “Very well. We’ll need to talk to everyone who has a key for any of the doors.”

  Michael looked horrified. “But some of them are very senior clergy,” he protested. “You’re surely not suggesting…”

  “Everyone who has a key,” said Jackson impassively. “Perhaps one has been stolen,” he added, to defuse Michael’s indignation. “We’ll also want to talk to all the staff who work in the cathedral. They might have seen something suspicious. You have guides?”

  “There are no guided tours as such, except for parties who make their own arrangements,” said Michael. “But there are a number of people who walk around the building and explain things to visitors.”

  “Are they told to keep an eye out for anything untoward?”

  “They’re not formally told, but I’m sure they understand that they should.”

  “Right,” Jackson closed his notebook and slipped it into his pocket. “You have a rota showing who was on duty yesterday afternoon and this morning?”

  “Yes,” said Michael. “It’s on a notice-board in the shop. I’ll show you.” All three of them turned back towards the south transept.

  “Of course,” said Maltravers. “Any suggestion as to the motive would be a great help.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jackson. “But lacking any definite evidence, that’s a matter for speculation. In the meantime, we’ll have to follow the usual channels of inquiry.”

  Jackson collected the constable who was still standing guard at the transept door and told him to take the names from the guides’ rota list. A small, slightly globular man carrying a small case walked in and joined them.

  “Morning,” he said. “Higson. Fingerprints. Where?” Long sentences were clearly not his habit.

  “Just round that corner,” said Jackson, pointing. “Wooden case on the left. You can’t miss it.” Higson, without further expenditure of words, walked briskly on.

  “I would have thought that case would have been smothered in fingerprints,” said Maltravers helpfully. “People have a habit of poking at such things.”

  “Procedures,” Jackson said briefly. “We’ll need a statement from you as well, Canon Cowan. Perhaps you could come to the station later today?”

  “Well, yes, although I don’t know that I can…”

  “And of course the person who first discovered the theft,” Jackson interrupted. “Is she still here?”

  “No, she was rather upset by the incident and I sent her home.”

  “Well, we don’t need to trouble her immediately, but perhaps you could bring her down when you come later.”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed Michael, as legal authority overcame ecclesiastical dignity. “After lunch?”

  “Thank you, sir, that will be fine. Just ask to see me when you arrive. Mr Maltravers.” With a brief nod Jackson departed.

  “I must go and tell the Dean what has happened,” said Michael. “What did you want anyway?”

  “Nothing, I was just passing the time,” Maltravers replied. “Diana and Tess are due in about an hour and I’m going to collect them.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” The imminent arrival of expected guests seemed to take on the proportions of great misfortune for Michael with common larceny breaking out on hallowed ground. “I’ll see you all at lunch.”

  After he left, Maltravers walked back to where the taciturn Higson was performing the mysteries of his art on the empty display case and watched him thoughtfully. His instant reaction of feeling offended was still with him; while he quite regularly disputed accepted religious beliefs, he respected anything enriched by antiquity and found the traditions of the church in language, architecture, ceremony and behaviour, attractive. The Latimer Mercy had been printed in Henry VIII’s final infected years and corrected — if Jackson’s interesting theory was correct — before Spenser, Marlowe or Shakespeare were born, and possibly by the man whose ringing words of certainty as the flames ate his body five years later, were a clarion call of faith triumphant which Maltravers could not share but did respect. It belonged to no man because it belonged to all men and its removal dismayed him; putting aside all other considerations, it was a book and to Maltravers a book was a holy thing. But why, he reflected, had it been taken? He had an uneasy feeling that the motive was sinister.

  The same thought, but this time as only one among several possibilities, was going through the mind of David Jackson as he drove the short distance back to Vercaster’s main police station, his mind revolving about what had happened and what had to be done. Check with county headquarters to see if the theft fitted an established pattern of crimes; extend inquiries to other police forces for the same thing. But this was a very specific theft, probably with a customer waiting. All air and sea ports would have to be alerted and Customs told to watch for it. On balance, it was probably going out of the country so Interpol would need to be informed. It was an odd one. Petty theft and major bank robberies shared common factors of recognisable greed, following obvious patterns which made up nearly all of police work. Anything that would not fit the norm had its own unique reasons behind it, and there lay difficulties. Jackson’s great virtue as a detective was that he kept his mind open; the wealthy secret collector was one obvious theory but was there something else? Strange crimes, he reflected, were done by or for strange people for unknown and very personal motives. How strange and how personal was impossible to fathom and in such darkness anything might lie.

  Chapter Two

  CLUTCHING A BAG of what he hoped were satisfactory avocados, Maltravers watched one of the regular London trains draw into Vercaster station, quite certain that, by the mysterious laws which govern such things, he was standing on that part of the platform farthest removed from the carriage out of which Tess and Diana would alight. In a changing and unreliable world, he was reassured to discover that he was right when two figures appeared as far north along the platform as he was standing to the south.

  Tess, he observed as he walked towards them, was wearing an unaccustomed hat, presumably because of memories from her childhood when for a woman to enter a church with her head uncovered brought sidelong glances which were the metaphorical equivalent of being stoned as an adulteress. Her relationship with Maltravers went back to a dinner party where a well-meaning hostess had thoughtfully paired them off individually with tw
o other people and had been quite upset to discover that her ability to read personalities was appalling. Like Diana, Tess was also an actress, but without the innate flair or inclination for fortuitous publicity; she looked rather like Billie Whitelaw. Diana, carrying with difficulty a suitcase of amazing proportions for an overnight stay, was dressed as A Well Known Personality if not Actually A Star, in a purple billowing dress with her long blonde hair looking as casual as only great expense and trouble could make it.

  “Augustus, darling!” she cried excessively. “Have you been waiting awfully long?”

  “Stop playing the grande dame, silly woman,” Maltravers replied equably. “They’ve got more sense in the provinces.”

  “Sorry.” And the Diana Porter Maltravers had great faith in immediately surfaced. “God, I’ve got to learn to stop it.”

  “And you’d better stop saying ‘God’ as well. The company you’ll be keeping doesn’t throw Him around so casually.”

  “I shall be pious and pure as a nun.”

  “That,” said Maltravers, kissing her briefly on the cheek and stepping round her to greet Tess, “will be a remarkable performance even by your standards.”

  He took Tess’s case and Diana’s modest portmanteau and staggered ludicrously for a few paces.

  “Thank God it’s only a one-woman show,” he remarked.

  “Now you’ve said it,” said Diana accusingly.

  “What? Oh, God. Yes, well it doesn’t matter with me. There’s a general feeling that I’m beyond redemption anyway. But you have a reputation to live down.”

  In the taxi back to Punt Yard, Maltravers told them about the Latimer Mercy theft.

  “What a senseless thing,” said Tess.

  “That’s how it appears, but I think there may be a very strange sense behind it,” Maltravers replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s so pointless, there has to be a point,” he said. “It can’t be sold, so why steal it?”

  “Obviously some eccentric wants to keep it in his private collection and pore over it in secret.”

  “Then may his soul and his progeny rot,” said Maltravers fiercely. “He’d be the sort of specimen who would make me want to believe there really is a Hell.”

  “It worries you, doesn’t it?” said Tess.

  “It…offends me.” Maltravers used the word again with growing layers of feeling behind it. “And, yes, it worries me in a way. Putting aside the nutty collector theory, I find it…disturbing.”

  Diana, whose affection for and knowledge of Maltravers fell only just short of Tess’s, was equally sensitive to his feelings and changed the conversation to the festival as they completed their journey.

  Melissa, with the miraculous gifts of a housewife, had transformed her home from the semi-disaster zone Maltravers had left earlier into neatness commensurate with its Georgian elegance, reassembled Rebecca into a presentable infant and herself into a Canon’s wife.

  “Hello, you must be Diana,” she said as she opened the front door. “Come in and I’ll show you your room and you can change.” With businesslike hospitality, Diana was escorted upstairs. “Hello, Tess,” Melissa called backwards. “Augustus will look after you.”

  Tess watched Melissa disappear upstairs. “Your sister still doesn’t approve of me,” she remarked.

  “She disapproves of us both,” said Maltravers. “Divorce is regarded in clerical households as contrary to the Almighty’s scheme of things and adultery is generally frowned upon. We are in separate rooms.”

  “Separate rooms, for God’s sake!”

  “Not so loud. They are next to each other — and Melissa arranged that.”

  Tess gave a ladylike grunt of grudging approval.

  “I expect there’s grace at mealtimes,” she added as a final sideswipe.

  “Yes. And in any man’s house I will respect his feelings.”

  “Don’t be pompous. Let’s go upstairs and ...”

  “Enough, woman!” shouted Maltravers. “There is a child in the house.”

  Rebecca, the child in the house, was the catalyst of an unexpected revelation. Diana, whom Maltravers had never associated with children, sat on the floor with her, full of genuine interest and Rebecca, clearly deciding that anyone who looked like a fairytale princess was to be instantly trusted, responded at once. While Melissa completed the preparations for lunch, Maltravers and Tess observed the pair of them with amazement until Michael returned.

  “At this point in the play, a cleric enters the room,” said Maltravers as he did so. “He looks concerned.”

  “Good morning, Tess,” said Michael, ignoring him. “And I presume this is…?”

  “Oh, hello. I’m sorry I can’t get up but, as you see, I’m rather busy,” said Diana from the floor.

  “This is not a role I expected you to play,” said Maltravers.

  “No, not many people do,” Diana replied with an odd smile and returned all her attention to Rebecca.

  “And how did the Dean take the news?” Maltravers asked Michael.

  “Very badly. He does not want the church highly protected because he feels it does not finally matter if anything is taken…”

  “After all, you can’t steal God,” Maltravers put in.

  “Quite. But he’s still shocked when something disappears, particularly if it’s one of the cathedral’s treasures. Anyway, we’d better have lunch. I have to see the police with Miss Targett.”

  “You’re joking!” Maltravers laughed.

  “Of course I’m not. You were with me when that man Jackson asked us to go.”

  “No, no, no. I mean there isn’t really someone called Miss Targett is there?”

  “To make matters worse,” said Melissa entering the room, “there are two of them. The Misses Targett. Come on through, lunch is ready.”

  Over a collection of cheeses, cold meats and salad, conversation turned to Diana’s performance in the evening. It was to be held in the Chapter House and was called “The Cross on the Circle”. Maltravers and Diana refused to be drawn when they were asked what the title meant.

  “You’ll have to wait and see,” Maltravers said.

  “I would have thought it was fairly obvious,” said Michael, fishing fastidiously in the remains of the salad. “The circle is the world and the cross is Christianity on top of it.”

  “A most shrewd interpretation,” said Maltravers, keeping his face immobile and Diana kicked his ankle under the table, just as the meal was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

  “That will be Miss Targett,” said Michael glancing at the clock.

  “She whom I must meet,” said Maltravers. “I’ll go, and I promise to restrain myself.”

  When he opened the door a young and concerned looking clergyman stood on the step.

  “Not Miss Targett, I presume?” said Maltravers.

  The cleric’s face gave a twitch of bewilderment. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m sorry. We were expecting someone else. You obviously want to see Canon Cowan.”

  “If it’s convenient,” said the young man. “I’m sorry to arrive unexpectedly, but…”

  “Not at all, although I’m afraid he’s going out shortly.” Maltravers pulled the door fully open. “Please come in and I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  The visitor’s immediately obvious concern had rapidly transmuted into positive distress. Maltravers noticed the nervous trembling of his fingers; his face, which had clearly never known plumpness, became increasingly unsettled. He ran a hasty, agitated hand across his neatly-cut black hair and seemed uncertain what to do.

  “Oh, if he’s going out…I don’t wish to…I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Maltravers decided that firmness was needed to prevent him spiralling into virtual hysterics.

  “I insist,” he said. “This is obviously important.”

  “Well, if you’re quite sure…” Plainly the cleric was not sure of anything. Feeling that actually hauling him inside the house
would be excessive, Maltravers extended a friendly arm which caught him in an invisible scoop of hospitality.

  “I am quite sure. Come in,” he said briskly. “I think the study would be best,” he added, having landed his frightened fish. “I’ll go and fetch the Canon.”

  He herded the visitor into Michael’s study which lay immediately off the hall, by the front door, then paused as he returned to the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you are…?”

  “Matthew Webster. The cathedral Succentor.”

  “Of course,” said Maltravers, although there was no of course about it, and went to inform Michael.

  “Off Targett, as it were,” he said as he re-entered the kitchen. “One Matthew Webster to see you and I have the distinct feeling it’s urgent.”

  “Matthew Webster?” said Michael. “What on earth does he want?”

  “That I didn’t discover but he’s in your study.”

  “Didn’t you tell him I was busy?”

  “No. You’re not, and even if you were I would have suggested that you see him. He is a very anxious young man.”

  Michael made some ill-defined sound of impatience, a loose alliance of a sniff and a grunt, and went out of the room.

  “What’s troubling Matthew now?” said Melissa with the air of a woman who has been much tried.

  “It’s obviously nothing trivial,” replied her brother. “The man’s on a knife-edge.”

  Melissa sighed. “He frequently is. He’s very…earnest is Matthew. Everything is taken very seriously. He lives in a state of perpetual drama. Even the Bishop finds his sincerity trying at times.”

  “You’re making him sound like a saint,” said Maltravers. “And I’ve always thought they must have been a pain in the neck to live with. Who is he anyway? I don’t remember meeting him before.”

  “He’s our Succentor — the first time we’ve had a deputy Precentor. The Bishop appointed him after finding when he ordained him that Matthew has a particular talent for music. He’s a very good organist as well and is unofficial deputy to old Martin Chamberlain, which is invaluable at the moment because Martin’s been in hospital for weeks.” She sighed. “But his faith can be somewhat over-fervent. Whatever he’s come about it’s probably only of burning importance to himself.”