Murder in a Cathedral (12 page)

Trustrum was a man determined to ensure that in his life there were as few surprises as possible, so it was no wonder that he was in a state of advanced neurosis about the changes in the chapter. Before the first cup of tea had been finished, Amiss’s sympathetic manner had had its effect, and a well-timed question about whether the dean was likely to be an innovator got his host going. ‘Why was he appointed? Why should they do such a thing? We were getting on fine. We did no one harm and we kept custom and practice intact. That’s what a cathedral is for, isn’t it? What is it, if it isn’t about passing tradition on unaltered to the next generation?’

Amiss muttered sympathetically and was rewarded with a second cup of tea. ‘We’re not here to get involved in silly new fads or to keep making changes that years later are recognized as having been all wrong,’ continued his increasingly impassioned host.

‘Look at those horrid tower blocks that they put the poor in. They said all those nice little artisans’ cottages were passé, but now they say they were all wrong and they’re tearing down the high-rise monstrosities and building nice little houses on the old model with a little bit of garden instead of those awful open spaces.

‘And look at all those so-called reforms in education in the 1960s when they got rid of the old grammar schools and brought in those dreadful comprehensives. And they stopped teaching tables and spelling. And what have we got now as a result? A nation of illiterates, that’s what. I could have told them what would happen. And now they’re going back to basics in teaching and trying to recapture the spirit of the old grammars.’

He paused for breath. Amiss nodded in agreement.

‘What did they do to the monarchy? Tried to make it relevant. I could have told them. Just as Walter Bagehot said more than a century ago, the monarchy has to have its mystery. But they started making television programmes about it and telling people what went on behind the scenes. And what do we have now? An institution that’s almost been destroyed by the consequent intrusion. As the Duke of Cumberland said, “All change is bad.” Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I’d make an exception for dentistry.’

‘I grant you that.’

‘And plumbing.’

‘Yes, yes. And I will even admit to enjoying the wireless. But in most areas of life we should stick with what we’ve got. For heaven’s sake, look at how so-called progress has destroyed travel. Once it was a pleasure, but now…’ He cast his eyes heavenwards. ‘We’ve replaced ocean liners by nasty aeroplanes, so almost the whole population of the world rushes around it all the time, wasting petrol, ruining the environment, and ensuring that nobody ever enjoys actually travelling and everywhere one goes is overcrowded.’

Not that Trustrum was exactly an expert on this, it turned out, for he rarely travelled. Although he stoutly maintained he was not afraid of flying, he had never done it and did not propose to start now.

The tirade reminded Amiss of the baroness in a particularly reactionary mood; he found it quite familiar and soothing. Besides, Trustrum was not as withdrawn from the world as Amiss had expected. He seemed to keep in touch with current affairs and trends like a prosecuting barrister. He spoke learnedly about large areas of life – from agriculture to politics – where change had spelt disaster. On the question of the European Union he became almost incoherent with distress.

However, if Trustrum was a keen observer of the world, he was not a student of character. Amiss gleaned little more about the other canons residentiary than he already knew. Trustrum spoke approvingly in general terms of his colleagues for their championing of old values, though there were disparaging remarks about Davage for becoming a television performer and about those who had a hand in commissioning the Marian picture. All his colleagues – even the late Dean Roper – were anathematized for having appointed a female canon.

Brooding on the radicalism and foolishness of this move led Trustrum into an assault on the whole notion of coeducation, women’s liberation, feminism, and all the evils it had brought to both men and women. He dwelt on young males, deprived of work, denied responsibility as providers and unmanned by aggressive women and again showed himself impressively up to date on the latest controversies – his information gleaned, he explained, from the papers he’d been reading since puberty, the
Telegraph
, the
Spectator
, and the
Church Times
, and of course from Radio Four, which he still called the Home Service.

‘And all that modernizing of religion has had the same effect. They’ve taken away most of the mystery and the magic. The Catholics destroyed themselves by replacing Latin with the vernacular. And what are we doing but replacing the glories of our King James Bible with nasty new rubbish?’

‘You mean like the
Good News Bible
?’

‘No, no. Much, much worse. You have no idea.’

He jumped up and fetched two books from his shelf, out of each of which stuck dozens of slips of paper. He opened one at the first slip. ‘Right. Now this from the King James version of Genesis. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” Poetry. Sheer poetry.’

He picked up the other volume. ‘Now let us see how the
Contemporary English Version
improves on this. Ah, yes. “The Lord God took a handful of soil and made a man. God breathed life into the man, and the man started breathing. The Lord made a garden in a place called Eden, which was in the east, and he put the man there.” Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!’ Opening the offending Bible randomly at another marker, he snorted, ‘Here’s a moving passage: “You lazy people can learn by watching an anthill.” Obviously a vast improvement on: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” ’

He put the books back on the shelf. ‘I can read only a few extracts at a time: I get so angry.’

‘I don’t blame you. It’s like comparing a great claret with Diet Coke.’

Trustrum looked at the grandfather clock near the door.

‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Mr Amiss, but you must forgive me if I bring our meeting to an end: from four-fifty to five-twenty-five I read my newspaper, and then I go to evensong.’

He ushered his guest to the door.

‘Thank you for the tea and the interesting conversation, Canon Trustrum. As a newcomer to your congregation, I, at least, am very pleased you’ve kept the services traditional.’

‘But for how much longer can we hold out against the barbarians, Mr Amiss? For how much longer?’

Chapter 10

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Harassed by another early call from the baroness, Amiss determined the following morning to hunt down his quarry. He sat in a window seat overlooking the close, listened to the radio and watched for Alice Wolpurtstone. Just after ten o’clock her front door opened, and she set off at a brisk pace towards the river. Amiss hared out of the palace and followed her down the towpath and then left into Canon’s Leap.

As he watched her swinging athletically along in front of him, he realized that she was much more attractive than he had thought, for at their brief meeting her shyness had been off-putting. And although there was nothing provocative about her clothes, they had none of the depressing churchiness of so much female clerical garb. Her black trouser suit and white polo-neck jumper were well cut and suited her slim figure: presumably Mummy Wolpurtstone had had a hand in kitting her out.

Amiss followed her into Parson’s Ride and towards the centre of the city. As ever, when he went into Westonbury, Amiss yearned to take to the town planners the bulldozers they had taken to the old town. Here and there were traces of happy architectural evolution; in side streets, little bits of Tudor were interspersed with some Gothic Victoriana and some charming Edwardian artisans’ cottages. But in the centre the planners’ philistinism had turned Westonbury into a 1990s shopping precinct dominated by chain stores and indistinguishable from a hundred other English towns.

He caught up with her as she turned down a lane: ‘Good morning, Canon Wolpurtstone. I wonder if I might persuade you to join me in a cup of coffee?’

The strong graceful woman instantly gave way to the peerer-under-eyelids and presser-of-arms-to-torso- to-protect-against-wanton-assault he remembered from their first encounter. ‘Oh, gosh, how very kind of you. But I really can’t. I’ve got to make a visit.’

‘Please do. You’d be doing me a favour. I get very lonely in the close and today I could really do with some company – just for a few minutes.’

She melted immediately, stood upright and let her arms and hands relax by her sides. ‘Oh, of course. I’m so sorry. How selfish of me. I’d love to. But please call me Alice. I hate titles.’

‘Oh, good. An ally. All these grand formalities get me down. I’ve never understood why people get such joy from being called by silly names.’

He looked up and down the street. ‘Now where shall we go? If you don’t mind, I’d like to avoid one of those high-street coffee shops. Do you know of anywhere down here?’

‘Not for coffee. But if you’re happy with tea…?’

‘Of course.’

She led the way into an establishment outside which dangled a sign full of obscure mystical symbols surrounding images of waxing and waning moons. On the walls were posters of goddesses, elves, witches, druids and various other pagan icons along with images of earth, sea and sky and signs of the zodiac, while on the tables covering most of the floor were jars of herbs, bottles of oils, books and tapes, heaps of crystal jewellery, flints, stones and other odds and ends all jumbled up together. In the corner was a rack of long shapeless psychedelic robes. The strong smell of incense made him feel rather nostalgic.

As they sat down at an empty scrubbed pine table in the corner, a bare-footed skinny girl with purple hair and lipstick, huge dangling crystal earrings, silver symbols attached to several orifices and a green T-shirt and leggings covered with orange dragons arrived to take their order. It emerged that all that was on offer at that time of the morning were herbal infusions, so, miserably, Amiss followed Alice’s example and ordered camomile tea, which proved to be quite as foul as he had expected.

‘This certainly makes a change from the cathedral. Except for the incense, of course.’

Encouragingly, she managed a little smile, so Amiss continued to babble unthreateningly about the claustrophobia of living in such a small community. ‘I find it very odd. Very odd indeed.’

For the first time she looked at him with some interest. ‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s so insular, so privileged, so little in contact with the real world – with ordinary people. I’ve been amazed to find clergymen who never seem to have anything whatsoever to do with the needy.’

She nodded eagerly.

He leaned forward confidingly. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not very happy. You see, I took this job because I wanted to add a spiritual dimension to my life and I’ve been very, very disappointed. I suppose it’s different for you, being a canon and having a role in the cathedral.’

‘Oh, but I haven’t. I expect I’ve less to do than you. I might as well not exist for all the use I am at Westonbury.’

‘What a waste. And I can’t understand it. What is the point of having people dedicate their lives to God if they aren’t serving the poor and the despised and the rejected? Isn’t that how wisdom is acquired?’

He gazed earnestly at her. ‘I know that what I have learned from friends of mine with Aids has added a huge and rich dimension to my life.’ As he lobbed this in, Amiss tamed his protesting conscience by reminding it that, yes, he had one friend with Aids, yes, Peter was bearing up courageously, yes, he was in his own way a bit of an inspiration and yes – cynic that he was – he would chortle at being trotted out piously in such circumstances.

It was a bull’s-eye. There was a catch in her voice as she said, ‘I’ve never found anything as rewarding as my work with Aids victims. I didn’t want to leave and come here.’

The dam broke and Amiss found himself in the middle of every man’s nightmare – escorting a crying woman in public.

‘All I’ve ever wanted,’ she sobbed – so violently that the assistant, who had been sitting behind the till vacantly stroking a black cat, livened up and showed some interest – ‘is to look after people. Sometimes I wish I were dead.’

Following immemorial male custom, Amiss looked embarrassed, passed Alice a clean tissue and muttered a few ‘there, there’s’. When she had wiped her tears, he decided on a policy of distraction rather than confrontation. Woo the filly first, as the baroness, in her helpful way, had once put it to him; some of them take fright if you try to corral them too early. So when she calmed down, rather than pressing her to talk about herself, he confided in her about his rootlessness, his striving for the worthwhile life and any other relevant problems he could manufacture: she brightened up in no time, clearly thrilled to be viewed as a sympathetic ear.

‘I so much like Bishop Elworthy,’ he confided. ‘A good and kind and Christian man – and of course I’m glad to feel I can help him a little, but somehow I feel that I would like also to be assisting more materially deprived people.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Of course, not being myself a believer, I couldn’t bring anyone religious comfort, but I might be able to offer a little practical help.’ He sighed. ‘In another time or another place perhaps.’ He decided to play a long shot, leaned back in his chair and waved vaguely at a pile of coloured rocks. ‘I suppose I’m very typical of my generation. I look around a place like this and recognize it is a Mecca for people similarly engaged on a spiritual quest… Not,’ he added, in response to her slightly worried expression, ‘that I think this New Age business is for me, but I have a curiosity about these people and about what they believe. One can always learn from others, don’t you find?’