Caroline Minuscule (10 page)

Dougal groaned to himself. He loathed dealing with children, especially younger ones: you never knew what they would do or say, though you could be certain that it wouldn't be decently veiled by clouds of glory.

Amanda, however, was not an only child, like Dougal, but one of a large family. She knelt down and asked the letter flap what its name was, whereupon the letter flap closed abruptly with a gasp. Three seconds later it opened again, revealing a pair of large blue eyes which stared unblinkingly into Amanda's brown ones.

‘Hullo,' said Amanda.

‘You've come about the Mothers' Union,' accused the voice.

‘No, we haven't,' replied Amanda, quick to seize an advantage. ‘We've come to see Mrs Munns.'

‘You can't. Mummy's in the garden.'

Footsteps could be heard approaching on the other side of the door. The letter flap closed.

‘Lina! What are you doing? Is there someone there?'

‘I think there
might
be,' said Lina dubiously. ‘I can see eyes.'

The door opened. A woman in her thirties smiled at them. Dougal realized that much of the impression of girth she gave was due to her clothes: faded slacks, wellington boots and a windcheater which probably covered several layers of jerseys. Amanda scrambled to her feet and Dougal failed to launch into his prepared speech, partly because of Mrs Munns's appearance. He had thought that the widow of a clergyman, a pillar of local society no less (as far as he had thought of her at all), would be an ironclad, matronly figure, with her hair in the severe control of a bun. Mrs Munns in reality had a frizzy perm, a bright red windcheater and the mobile features of an exceptionally charming monkey.

‘Has Lina been keeping you there for ages? I'm so sorry. I was in the garden, you see. Not gardening – banging nails into the back gate: the local teenage Mafia rode a motorcycle into it on New Year's Eve. Not that they meant any harm – I think one of them was showing off to his mates, pretending to be that Evil Whatsisname. Lina, don't suck your thumb in public, darling, and can you go and let Rowley in, I left him in the garden trying to find something edible in the compost heap. Anyway, what can I do for you?'

Mrs Munns smiled brilliantly at them again and gently detached Lina, who was clinging to her windcheater, and propelled her towards the rear of the house.

‘Well. Our name's Massey – I'm William, this is Amanda. We're staying at the Crossed Keys for a night or two. We're thinking of trying to do a television documentary on Rosington – I'm a freelance writer – and Mrs Livabed at the hotel suggested we come and see you. I hope we've not come at an inconvenient time.'

‘Oh no, I've finished the gate now, at least as far as I ever will. We really need a new one, I suppose, but that's a matter of leaning on the cathedral maintenance people, which is a bit like planting oak trees – you don't really expect to see the results in your lifetime. But do come in. Would you like some coffee? I was just about to have some myself.'

The prospect of coffee was very attractive. Dougal had nearly forgotten the reason they were there. Mrs Munns ushered them through a tiny panelled hall into a sitting room which looked out, through french windows, into the garden. Mrs Munns left them there, having taken their coats.

It was a comfortable room. The furniture suited it, from the Queen Anne bureau in the corner to the homemade bookshelves which lined the alcoves on either side of the fireplace. Dougal and Amanda sat on the sofa which adapted itself to their contours. There were several Victorian watercolours on the wall, mostly of Rosington, so far as Dougal could tell. The room seemed very quiet.

Claws clattered on the flagstones of the hall. The door gently opened and an elderly black spaniel appeared. He sniffed at each of them in turn, and, having received a scratch behind the ears from both Dougal and Amanda, evidently considered the civilities to be over, for he sat down slowly in front of the empty fireplace and blinked reproachfully at the absence of heat.

Amanda whispered, ‘That must be Vernon-Jones's dog . . .' but was prevented from saying more by Mrs Munns, who came into the room with the coffee.

‘You've met Rowley, I see. Disturbingly well-bred, isn't he? Probably an eighteenth-century earl in his previous incarnation.'

‘He's lovely,' said Amanda. ‘How old is he?' Dogs, Dougal thought, were an even safer subject of conversation than the weather.

‘He's over eight years old now. Age just seems to make him more stately. The only person he unbends a little with is Lina. We've only had him for a month or so, in fact.'

‘Ah, yes.' Dougal seized the opening. ‘Mrs Livabed mentioned he used to belong to Canon Vernon-Jones.' Rowley raised his head a fraction above his paws. ‘We were reading his guide to the cathedral last night, actually, and Mrs Livabed told us he had died recently. She suggested we come and see you – not just for the history angle but for information about Rosington as a whole.'

‘You'd better tell me more about what you want to do,' said Mrs Munns calmly. ‘How do you like your coffee?'

They all had their coffee black, which drew from Mrs Munns the approving remark that she couldn't understand why most people had to murder the taste of perfectly good coffee with milk and sugar. Dougal and Amanda explained the idea behind the documentary between them. Mrs Munns asked sharp questions, and Dougal found that it was impossible to be as vague as with Mrs Livabed. In the end, they presented themselves as tyros in the business – Dougal merely claimed the credit for the script of the Traditional Crofter's Breakfast Cereal advertisement, which showed a kilted Highlander quoting Burns to a bowl of oats with Loch Lomond in the background.

‘You know the sort of thing,' he finished, ‘a combination of predigested culture, nostalgia and the past adapting to the pressures of modern society, in the context of cathedral cities. It would be nice to have someone like the Poet Laureate introducing each programme. Have a shot of the tomb of the Jacobean Dean next to a shot of the girlie magazines in the newsagent's in the High Street. Snippets of history, lots of pretty pictures and portentously meaningful reflections on present day trends.'

For a moment Dougal wondered if he was being too flippant, if he had misjudged the character of his listener. But an impish grin flashed across Mrs Munn's face.

‘The idea sounds as if it should make someone a good deal of money. But I don't really see what I can do . . . you seem to have everything pretty well worked out already.'

‘Well,' said Dougal, before he was interrupted by the doorbell.

‘Oh, God,' said Mrs Munns. ‘Do excuse me.'

T
hey agreed sometime afterwards that the moment when Lee walked into Mrs Munns's sitting room was the moment when they should have left Rosington and put their involvement with Caroline Minuscule into the mental lumber room reserved for memories one wants to discard.

It was at this point that their belief in coincidence became untenable. Lee in the hotel was one thing; Lee in the cathedral was another; but Lee at Mrs Munns's house, though explainable by the fact that he could have discovered Vernon-Jones's connection with the widow as easily as they had, was carrying synchronicity too far.

Hindsight later suggested that Lee must have started thinking about them then. Not that his behaviour on the occasion had been in any way disturbing – he introduced himself as an old friend of the Canon's, curious to know how he had died. (Mrs Munns had accompanied him to the hospital after his final heart attack, and was firm in her assertion that the dying man had never regained consciousness.) Lee recognized Amanda, and Dougal by association, and was politely interested in the projected series. He had accepted a cup of coffee – with milk and sugar.

Lee was pleasant to everyone; soft Irish charm oozed out of him, so much so that Dougal found it hard to remember that the man's eyes were narrow and cold, and that his voice had the flatness of an automaton's. Without Hanbury's letter, it would have been difficult to think badly of him.

He left before them, but Dougal and Amanda followed soon afterwards. Mrs Munns lent them the authoritative history of the cathedral – Vernon-Jones's chief source – and they arranged to return at tea time tomorrow and discuss the projected programme in more detail.

Dougal found the interlude at Mrs Munns's refreshed him, even though it got them no further. It was hard to be worried about the possibility of evil in that comfortable room with the central tower framed in the window and Lina chattering away to herself on the stairs. Lina was five, Mrs Munns told them, but small for her age; she was very imaginative – ‘One's own child always is!' It was difficult to keep up with the identities of her toys, which were subject to ruthless and frequent alteration. At present she ran a bus garage in a model of the cathedral. It was necessary to be particularly deferential to her largest teddy bear who had been installed as Queen Mother on Wednesday.

‘Lives in a world of her own,' said Amanda with a laugh. ‘Like William.'

Afterwards, Dougal and Amanda strolled through the close arguing about Vernon-Jones. She was finding it increasingly difficult to equate the popular, septuagenarian canon with the
éminence grise
of the criminal information world.

Dougal supported Hanbury – largely on the grounds that money and murder lent an air of plausibility to his interpretation. And, if Hanbury was right about Vernon-Jones's past, he was probably right about the existence of the diamonds.

The walk through the close failed to bring them any inspiration. They saw the original of the Rosington Augustine in the Chapter House museum. In Infirmary Lane they found Bleeders Hall. The house was shuttered and deserted. The guidebook said the monastic leech had plied his trade there, which Dougal thought was an appropriate description of the house's last occupant.

If nothing else, the walk gave them an appetite for lunch.

As the only other occupant of the dining room of the Crossed Keys was the Church Dormant, slurping soup of the day in the corner, they felt able to discuss the morning's progress, such as it was. Mrs Munns had been friendly but had produced no revelations. The original of the photograph had been completely uninformative – Dougal argued that it might well be irrelevant: ‘Maybe the photo was given to Hanbury and the key to some sort of cryptogram to Lee. It could be a Cardano grill.'

‘What?' Amanda looked puzzled.

‘It's a sheet of paper the same size as the page with numbered, letter-size windows. You put the two together and read off the letters which aren't blocked out, in the order shown. And there's your message . . . I read about it in an annual I had for Christmas when I was ten.'

Amanda laughed. ‘But if codes were Vernon-Jones's hobby, you'd expect something much cleverer. He wouldn't have wanted to make it easy.'

But none of this was helpful: they simply didn't know where to begin. Dougal was aware that Lee's presence had brought a touch of fear to the proceedings, which was sapping his enthusiasm. Secretly he admitted to himself that he wanted to leave Rosington, but found it impossible to say to Amanda: ‘Look, I'm scared. We're leaving this afternoon.' Those dark, fine eyebrows would arch themselves and . . . oh, God, why was he such a coward? It made him angry and despairing at the same time. All of which led quite naturally to him resting his elbows on the table and saying quietly:

‘I'm going to break into Bleeders Hall this evening.'

Dougal left the hotel at seven-thirty promptly. By this time the inhabitants of the close should be sitting down to their evening meals, watching television or listening to the concert in the cathedral.

He was well prepared physically for the expedition. He was wearing the duffel coat, jeans and a pair of boots with soles which were not only air-cushioned but virtually noiseless on hard surfaces. During the afternoon he had bought a small torch, some brown paper and glue, and a pair of fine rubber gloves. He had felt self-conscious about it, for life was imitating art, but in the absence of any other model, what else could life do? His purchases were distributed among his pockets.

With Amanda he had reconnoitered the rear approach to Bleeders Hall before doing the shopping. The house had a small garden, bounded on one side by the building itself; the second and third walls divided it from neighbours' gardens, while the fourth separated it from Canons' Meadow. This was a large, bumpy field which sloped down to the river. It was the site of the monastic fishponds: shallow, grass-covered depressions marked the spots where carp and pike had waited for the fatal Friday. The eastern border of the meadow was formed by Bridge Street, a long thoroughfare which ran parallel to the river. There were two entrances to the meadow from the close which the public could use: one was a narrow footpath which ran from the door at the southeast angle of the cloister, skirted the Canon's residence at the southwest corner of Infirmary Lane and debouched into the meadow by way of a stile; the other lay in the south part of the close, remote from the cathedral.

The occupant of Bleeders Hall had access to the meadow by a door set in the garden wall. Dougal had tried it, but found it locked. The wall itself, however, had not looked an impassible obstacle. It was perhaps seven feet high, but it sloped gently inwards with age and the mortar which held the jumble of stone and brick had in places crumbled away, leaving convenient holes for the hands and feet. Peeping surreptitiously through the keyhole, Dougal had seen the house itself – a back door on the right, and three large windows on the left. The windows were unshuttered and within easy reach of the ground.

Dougal set off down the High Street, feeling at once lonely and conspicuous, as if he were a leper wearing a placard round his neck in a crowd. It had not been a pleasant afternoon. Having announced his plan, Amanda's enthusiasm had made it impossible to change his mind. She wanted to come as well, but Dougal had opposed this, strongly and successfully. She was far too valuable to be risked and in any case he preferred to go alone. If he had to be afraid, he would rather be so without witnesses. She would dine at the hotel, keep an eye out for Lee and, if necessary, explain his absence by saying that he had succumbed to Nausea in F-sharp Minor.