Caroline Minuscule (6 page)

My Dear William,

I hope you will never read this letter. I shall send it to my bank with instructions to forward it, if I haven't told them not to within a week. It's a sort of insurance policy, I suppose.

You will be wondering what all this is about. When we had a drink together earlier this evening I knew that certain people were wanting to kill me; now I think it likely they will try much sooner than I had anticipated. I'm afraid this must sound a trifle melodramatic. I am writing to you because I like you – perhaps I see something of my younger self in you; also there's no one else to write to. In any case, I owe you some money.

I misled you intentionally tonight on a number of points. Gumper was working for me. I used to know him, very slightly, at Oxford. He accepted the commission and then tried to blackmail me. He knew money was involved somewhere, and wanted a share. He believed his leverage was increased by the fact he knew something of a youthful peccadillo of mine.

Enough of him. For you to understand the events which led up to this, you must allow me to outline a short story. You may have seen the obituary of Canon Oswyth Vernon-Jones in the press last month. His work among the criminal classes attracted a good deal of attention in the fifties – you're probably too young to remember the shock which his controversial reassessment of the Crucifixion,
My God Among Thieves
, caused at the time. He was once a chaplain at Dartmoor, and was then intimately concerned with several rehabilitation centres before he became a Canon of Rosington.

So far as I know, only one other person besides myself knew of the Canon's other profession. While at Dartmoor – with my help, I might add – he developed a sideline to supplement his income: he became a fixer in a very discreet, superior way. He always operated through intermediaries.

At first his concern was to supply a few home comforts to selected prisoners; he probably saw it as an extension of the command to love thy neighbour. But he soon grew involved in the activity – not only financially, but intellectually as well. He was ideally placed for it, of course – it's incredible how easily a clergyman may move in all ranks of society (particularly if he has a legitimate pastoral interest in criminals). His organization soon extended beyond the confines of Dartmoor; when he left his chaplaincy there, he travelled widely and extended it still further (with my help, of course). He was, in the Johnsonian phrase, a clubbable man, at least externally; he could make himself equally agreeable to an archbishop or a child murderer. And frequently did.

A mission to take Christianity behind bars, a wide range of social contacts and a phenomenal memory: these three qualities were the secret of his success. At his prime – between about 1965 and 1975 – he could arrange almost anything: from a murder to a kilo of heroin; from preferential treatment by the local council to (on one occasion at least) a bishopric.

He was successful because he was moderate, I think. He never went for large, uncertain profits, always for small safe ones. He was merely a voice on the telephone, at most, to those few of his clients who had any direct contact with him. The majority went through me or another person. On several occasions, his clients knew him in his spiritual capacity, without realizing that in his time he had supplied them with far more material comforts. You see, all he did was to put buyers, as it were, in contact with sellers (or vice versa) and charge a commission. Breathtakingly simple.

I handled one end of the business for him, and a person called Michael Aloysius Lee saw to the other. In the main I dealt with wealthy amateurs – respectable people who suddenly found themselves needing temporary assistance in bending the law. Lee, on the other hand, mixed with the habitual criminals – those who found themselves in difficulties owing to a pushy rival or a consignment which they could not deliver. Lee and I had little contact except through the Canon, when he would supply us with names, telephone numbers, addresses, etc.

He trusted us for the simple reason that he held particularly damaging information about both of us. But to give him his due, he was a generous employer.

This secret career of his brought a comfortable income which he used so cautiously that even his wife never suspected he had more than his stipend (or whatever they call it) and a small private income. I believe he had several pet charities (for animals rather than human beings), some rather nice eighteenth-century prints and an excellent cellar. The considerable residue which remained he invested in jewellery – chiefly cut diamonds, I believe. He kept it, of all places, in a strongbox at Barclays Bank in Rosington.

Very occasionally, I stayed with him at Rosington (Lee never) and was introduced as a distant cousin in stockbroking (a suitably vague profession). Vernon-Jones took pleasure in introducing me to local worthies, I used to suspect. He was like that. Which brings me to another characteristic of his which is directly relevant: he was malicious. Not in a crude way, but delicately, obliquely. I imagine that as a boy he was the sort who didn't stamp on any unfortunate insect which crossed his path, but slowly removed its limbs, one by one, or drowned it in a spoonful of honey. And he was the same way with human beings – when there was no need for him to be affable. I firmly believe his wife died, gradually, in a little domestic hell which he had painstakingly constructed. Lee and I were not so expendable. I sometimes wonder if he would have been a nicer person if he hadn't been a clergyman. He knew that Lee and I disliked one another intensely – this suited him – divide and rule. He enjoyed the tension but was too intelligent to let it reach an unbearable degree of strain.

During his life, that is. But evidently he felt that no such scruples need restrain him after death. When he died, I went down to Rosington for the funeral. I spoke with his solicitor and his bank manager, both there, paying their last respects in a cemetery like a municipal park, and then later in a local hotel. They were, perhaps, more open about their late client's affairs than they should have been, believing there to be a degree of consanguinity. Also they were sorry for me – the man's will left everything to the RSPCA, which failed to surprise me. The bank manager, after three whiskies, believed that Vernon-Jones knew his death was near, for he had removed the contents of his strongbox just after Christmas. The solicitor chimed in and said that the Canon was a man of strange quirks, which to my mind was the understated epitaph of a lifetime. He also said he had promised to forward two letters on the day of the funeral. It wasn't difficult to discover that one was addressed to me, the other to Lee.

It arrived the next morning. The envelope contained nothing but the photograph which you have and one of Vernon-Jones's cards which I enclose. It's the back of it which is important – he scribbled Matthew vii 7 on it, which is,
Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

I know all this must seem increasingly nonsensical to you. Bear with me a little longer. You see, I am convinced that the two things he sent me are, correctly interpreted, pointers to the whereabouts of his jewellery. I also believe that he sent similar – but not the same – clues to Lee. He didn't particularly care to whom he left the diamonds – what he wanted to leave was dissension. This is hard to explain to an outsider – what you have to understand is two things: Vernon-Jones's malice and his penchant for the cryptic. For the first, he knew Lee and I didn't get on, and it must have tickled him to think that he could intensify our enmity beyond his death – manipulate us from the grave. He told me, and I have no doubt that he told Lee as well, that the value of the stones was well into six figures. A good, substantial motive for competition! Secondly, he was a compulsive puzzle solver, a searcher for devious solutions. He was the sort of person who finished the crossword in the paper before looking at the headlines. He was also an ardent cryptographer and cryptoanalyst; in the last decade of his life, his greatest ambition was to decode the Voynich manuscript attributed to Roger Bacon. Add to this his interest in medieval manuscripts and the fact that he knew that neither Lee nor I had a natural aptitude for puzzles, and you will see where this was tending. He had set us a problem, with a fortune as the prize, and split the clues between us, secure in the knowledge that we would never join forces because one would inevitably try to double-cross the other.

We can be certain that there is a prize to be won. The Canon was cruel, malignant and cunning, but, to do him justice, he did have a code of conduct of a sort – the code of a crossword compiler: if you pose a question, there must be an answer, or it isn't fair.

Now to the present. I was followed back to my hotel tonight – I suppose it was foolish of me to take no more radical action than move from Brown's to the Bristol when I realized what Vernon-Jones was doing. Habit leads to carelessness. Lee has a man watching my window. No doubt there are more. Lee is always strong on manpower. Unfortunately, I have to go out tonight – a small but urgent piece of business, the omission of which would be personally and financially awkward in the extreme. Lee, either now or later, will try to detain or kill me: the latter, probably – he will feel, as I do, that it would be more productive in the final analysis. He will weigh the certain advantage of a dead competitor (who is, moreover, dangerously well informed about delicate episodes in his past life) against the potential, if rather risky value of my assistance under compulsion. Besides, he's the sort of person who finds the finality of having someone killed, or doing it himself, reassuring. He may well fail. I'm not on my last legs yet. Sometimes I feel I'm growing too old for this kind of career.

Well, that's the position. If you are reading this, I will be dead. And you – if you want, just as you please – can try to get rich quickly in my place. You would have a number of advantages over Lee: you are an outsider and Lee will have no idea of your existence; you are probably better equipped, mentally, than he – your background, etc., is closer to Vernon-Jones's. It's up to you, of course. But for God's sake, take no risks. Lee is not a fool and he's not too squeamish, either. My advice would be to withdraw at once if you meet him. Don't even give him time to start wondering about you.

I must seal all this up and give it to the hotel people. I had no idea I would write so long a letter. I suppose it's rather like making a will – you don't want to leave anything out, for obvious reasons.

One final point. I would burn this letter, if I were you. I know it sounds silly, but its contents shouldn't be read by the wrong people.

Yours, if you read this, regretfully,

James Hanbury.