Caroline Minuscule (16 page)

Or they could leave like lambs to the slaughter and try to make a deal with Lee – to trade information for immunity. God knew, the diamonds now seemed insignificant enough; they were like something you wanted a long time ago when you were quite a different person, and now you couldn't even remember why you had wanted it. But would Lee consent to that? After having their room searched, he must already know most of what they knew. But did he know how to use it?

‘Pardon me, Padre,' said a familiar voice behind them.

Lee had moved into the attack.

‘Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your sermon.'

Mr Prenderpath stopped in mid-sentence and swung round. ‘People always say that to priests.' His eyes raked Lee up and down, like a farmer inspecting his neighbour's bull and finding it wanting. ‘Especially those who don't usually go to church.'

The venom, Dougal supposed, was due to the fact that Lee was a stranger who showed no outward signs of being of any use to anyone. But Lee's blunt, bland face remained unchanged. ‘Och, Padre—' he was beginning, when an interruption occurred.

The fox terrier, who had been foraging among the eaters with unlovely persistence, had managed to seize a leg of chicken from Mr Black's unguarded plate. Judging that the size of the prize warranted a rapid retreat, the dog shot across the room with a fine disregard for intervening human legs, and took refuge under the armchair in which Mrs Burnham slumbered. The chair juddered under the attack. Mrs Burnham jerked awake.

‘Oh, Sophie,' said Molly Burnham from the other side of the room, ‘you shouldn't.' She sounded unconvinced.

‘Sophie?' echoed her aunt. ‘Bloody dog. I call her Oaf.' She peered towards her ankles, between which protruded Sophie's snout; the chicken leg was now no more than an undigested memory.

Mrs Burnham snorted and reached for her sherry. Ignoring the people around her, she then picked up her glasses and the
Sunday Times
. ‘Mr Prenderpath!' she said to the room at large. ‘Come here.'

The chaplain shrugged and obeyed. Dougal could hear Mrs Burnham saying, ‘Now, my man, let's see if you're as clever as you pretend to be.' Prenderpath murmured something deferentially. ‘Rubbish!' the querulous voice continued. ‘It's the crossword – a prize one. Only six more clues to go, so pull up a chair and start thinking.'

Lee smiled at Dougal and Amanda, reminding Dougal of a lupine grandmother fortuitously left alone with two Little Red Riding Hoods. ‘It was a grand sound, wasn't it,' he said, ‘all those voices raised in the praise of God. Now, Mr and Mrs . . . Massey, we need to have a chat.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about—' began Dougal.

‘Yes you do. I thought I'd eliminated the competition. Then I began to wonder when I found you with the Munns woman. And last night I knew for sure. So I'll need a lot of answers, okay?' The smile broadened. ‘You know what happens to people who don't give me answers. Remember Jimmy Hanbury?' The memory seemed to give Lee pleasure.

‘How did you know we were here?' asked Amanda.

‘Slipped that flat-faced waitress a tenner when we got to the hotel. She heard you mention Charleston Parva this morning . . . Christ, you kids are careless.'

‘The professional's opinion of amateurs?' Dougal knew it was a silly thing to say, but he had to speak, to prove he still could. It was a token gesture towards the skimpy remnants of his self-respect.

Lee gave no sign of having heard him. ‘We'll leave together. We can talk in my car.'

‘What if we don't?' Amanda stared at him, her chin rising.

‘You won't get far in that clapped-out car of yours, even if you reach it. These people won't want to know you if you try and disturb their little party with a cock and bull story you can't prove. Face facts, can't you? We're going to do business sooner or later. The sooner it is, the less you're likely to get hurt. You're playing with the big boys now.'

And then what? Dougal wondered. You throw away the peel when you've got the juice from an orange. Especially if you don't like leaving litter around.

‘Molly!' Mrs Burnham hailed her niece like a taxi. ‘Dear Italian has broken nails in U.S.A.'

This gnomic observation cut through the conversations in the room and quelled them all. ‘Blank – A – blank – O,' she continued, with the air of one making a necessary but unwelcome concession to the stupidity of her listeners, ‘three blanks – A – blank. Well?'

‘Carolinas,' said Dougal automatically. He had often noticed that, when his mind was crumbling before a crisis, it compensated by working rapidly and well in other directions.

Molly Burnham, homing towards her aunt with an anxious expression on her face, smiled warmly at him. ‘Carolinas,' she echoed, bending towards Mrs Burnham, enunciating each syllable with care. ‘Isn't Mr Massey clever?'

‘Humph! Don't make faces at me, gel. I can hear perfectly well.' She settled her glasses more firmly on her nose and beckoned Mr Prenderpath.

Molly Burnham drew Dougal aside. ‘Thank you so much. She gets so fractious after going to church. Her only real interest in life now is finishing that damn crossword. Last few clues are always sheer hell for everyone else around.'

Dougal stared at her, hearing the words with only half his mind. An idea had just come to him, a theory of such simplicity that it must be right. It increased their desperate need to get away from Lee. A wild notion of how this might be accomplished, based on the sticker on the Morris Traveller's window, occurred to him, but it was so far-fetched that he discarded it. An instant later, he realized he'd have to try it; there was no alternative. He glanced over his shoulder: Amanda and Lee were apparently deep in conversation.

‘Miss Burnham,' he hissed. ‘There's something I must tell you. You remember you were asking about that man with Amanda? His name's Lee. He was telling us what he does for a living.'

The gratitude on Molly Burnham's face had given way to surprise, which was itself followed by a look which seemed to suggest that she feared Dougal was on the fringe of some unforgivable
faux pas
. Sophie, as if sensing her mistress's distress, heaved herself up and waddled over.

‘He works at a lab near Cambridge. Privately funded experimental biology. He enjoys his work.
He cuts up animals
.'

In the long pause, Dougal tried to calculate the odds against Miss Burnham being so fanatical an antivivisectionist that she would set at nought the laws of hospitality. Even if she threw Lee out, he thought gloomily, it would only delay their confrontation.

‘Mr Lee,' she said at last. Lee looked up and smiled encouragingly at them. Dougal swore to himself. Molly looked upset, but not angry enough to cause a scene.

Then Sophie began to growl.

The fox terrier must have been alerted by some nuance in her mistress's voice. The growl became a snarl as the dog started to advance.

Lee turned pale. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He backed away.

‘Sophie!' cried Molly Burnham and grabbed the dog's collar, which had little noticeable effect on her implacable progress towards Lee.

It was easy for Dougal and Amanda to slip away in the confusion. As they reached the hall, Mrs Burnham's senile treble could be heard above the hubbub: ‘Go on, Oaf, sick 'im, you stupid dog.'

They ran across to the Mini. While Amanda started the engine, Dougal pulled out his penknife and began to savage the valves on the tires of the Lancia. When air was escaping from two of them, he climbed into the Mini's passenger seat.

‘Back to Rosington. Quick.'

Amanda, to his surprise, obeyed. After a few miles, she broke the silence between them. ‘You fool,' she said, ‘talk about taking risks. What would've happened if it hadn't worked?'

‘Something nasty. But it did work. What we couldn't have even hoped for was that Lee would be afraid of dogs.'

‘And why Rosington? Though I suppose it's the last place Lee would expect us to go to.'

‘Because it's where the diamonds are. I'm sure of it. Look, Hanbury's clue was a photo of a manuscript written in Caroline Minuscule and connected with Rosington. Especially with the cathedral. We chased over here because Charleston Parva translates Caroline Minuscule.' Twenty years of academic conditioning made him add, ‘Well, more or less. But suppose the name of the village was a deliberate blind. Suppose Vernon-Jones meant the connection to be made, to confuse Lee and/or Hanbury, so they would end up thinking the name of the script was an irrelevancy.'

‘All right, I suppose.' Something in Amanda's voice made Dougal look at her, made him realize they were both exhausted.

Enthusiasm returned. ‘I think Vernon-Jones counted on all his silly clues, and his reputation for deviousness, to cloud the obvious. And the answer is obvious. It's right in front of us, like the Purloined Letter.
Seek and ye shall find
. Who are the people he was closest to in Rosington? Connected with the cathedral? Who has got a
model
of the cathedral? And whoever heard of someone christened
Lina
?'

‘I
t sounds awful,' said Mrs Munns, who was wearing pink dungarees and lying on the hearthrug beneath Lina, ‘but George, my husband, actually preferred small congregations when he was Precentor here. He used to say that a crowd ruined the acoustics in the choir. Not that there are many – that place is like a vaulted bathroom – the sound keeps bouncing back.'

Dougal stretched out his legs and settled himself deeper into the sofa. He was at last warming up. They had spent nearly two hours in the Mini, most of the time parked in a side road on the outskirts of Rosington, waiting for half-past four and congratulating themselves on having failed to cancel the arrangement to have tea with Mrs Munns.

Really, he thought lazily, no one would think she was the relict of a clergyman, with all the phrase implied. He must try not to look at her. She looked about seventeen in this light. Amanda had an almost infallible instinct for detecting when he found someone else attractive and tended to object. Which was silly, of course, because the attraction was either a purely aesthetic response or a sort of public hangover, and in neither case was it accompanied by the desire to do anything about it.

They had arrived at her house punctually, pinched with cold and the fear that Lee or Tanner might have seen them as they trekked across the town. (Taking the Mini to the door would have been much too risky.) She had told them to call her Katie because being called Mrs Munns made her feel like somebody else. She had quickly produced tea, biscuits and fruit cake in the sitting room (‘We skip the bread and butter stage on Sundays because of having to go to church').

The way in which Katie Munns both expected and welcomed them came as a shock. It was as if Bleeders Hall last night and Charleston Parva today had never existed in the real world, the world of drawn curtains, a glowing coal fire and a pot of tea which might reasonably be expected to stretch to three or even four cups all round. No, Cedric and Lee belonged in limbo, unlike the second piece of fruit cake which he was lovingly consuming.

Amanda asked Katie about the recipe. ‘It's the sherry that does it. And the brandy. But you can't be mean about quantities . . .'

Lina had rolled off her mother and was trying to tie Rowley's front paws together with a piece of string. The spaniel was dozing, retaining just enough consciousness – not much was required – to frustrate her efforts when necessary.

It was time to implement the plan they had agreed on the way here. Dougal was to engage Katie Munns in conversation, while Amanda concentrated on Lina. The opposite strategy would have ended in immediate failure.

More general topics of conversation – the weather, Rowley, today's service in the cathedral and the fruit cake – had been suitably aired, so Dougal felt justified in raising a few points concerning the history of the cathedral. Katie responded at once; Dougal suspected that, since Vernon-Jones had died, she had been forced to leave her hobbyhorse in the stable, and she welcomed the chance to exercise it. They argued about the legend that the original central tower had been deliberately undermined by Abbot William of Woodbridge who was reputed to have been undermined himself by the laudable temptation to increase the terrestrial glory of God by building a new one. Then there were the ghosts, a topic which hadn't been covered in any of the books Dougal had read. They ranged across the centuries: a line of Benedictines was said to pass along the nave, or rather along the walkway of the triforium above the nave, at twilight (‘Though what they think they're doing up there, I've no idea'); a transparent eighteenth-century lady occasionally strolled down the Deanery stairs, graciously inclining her head if she met anyone; and then of course there was the cat which only Rowley appeared to be able to see, but when he did he barked furiously and his hackles rose, which was most unlike him . . .

Dougal noticed that Amanda had succeeded in establishing guardedly friendly relations with Lina with the lure of cat's cradle, but then he became engrossed in what Katie was saying and the next thing he knew was that the sitting room door clicked shut, leaving them alone. Even Rowley had gone. Everything was out of his hands now. Either Amanda would find the diamonds or she wouldn't. There was nothing he could do; the realization stopped him worrying and in any case he was enjoying talking to Katie.

After twenty minutes, the conversation wound down of its own accord. The teapot yielded the last of its contents. The cathedral clock boomed once: half-past five: Dougal suddenly became conscious that they had been here for an hour and shouldn't overstay their welcome. Katie, in the friendliest possible way, showed that she agreed. Dougal's offer to help with the washing up was refused and they went out into the hall.