The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (3 page)

‘No.’

Anselm lifted the shoebox into view. ‘The requests for help?’

‘No, though Tibet will have to wait.’

The Prior pushed back his chair and walked to a window overlooking the cloister Garth. His voice was uncharacteristically ponderous, as if he were speaking to the generations of monks who’d come and gone, shuffling beneath the arches down below. Anselm listened, like Sylvester at a door.

‘I’ve been brooding on something I’d never thought possible,’ said the Prior. ‘It’s about the very identity of this monastery. Larkwood doesn’t exist for itself or any number of pilgrims. We provide a place where anyone at all can look clearly – at themselves and the circumstances they’ve left behind. They discover a kind of flickering light.’ He paused significantly. ‘There are many who might never come here. I’d like you to take that flame beyond the enclosure wall.’

Anselm sensed the Prior had much more to say; that he’d been turning over the mulch in his mind and come to a decision with implications beyond the request in the letter on his desk. Anselm listened with subdued anticipation.

‘There comes a time in a monk’s life, Anselm, when he can go back to the world he left while somehow remaining apart and different. He’s travelled that most difficult of journeys. He’s become something of a recollected man, a sort of birdwatcher attuned to the mysterious forest of the human heart. He returns to the familiar as a kind of stranger; an outsider within the ordinary. He can enter deeply into what he once knew, only deeper than before. He can see things to which he was once blind. He can hear things to which he was once deaf. And, most importantly of all, he hasn’t the faintest idea that he hears or sees anything in a way different to before. He just finds himself bemused in a place he once recognised without complication. But it’s that …
being puzzled
which permits him to probe the hearts of men and women, seeing what they would hide, even from themselves. He has an eye for the bright and the dark, for he has seen the light and shadows in himself, and not turned away.’

This was considerably worse than the
Sunday Times
. Anselm shifted uncomfortably. Something didn’t feel quite right.

‘Of course,’ continued the Prior, ‘this is a journey you have yet to travel.’

Anselm made a thin smile.

‘You’ve only just taken to the road. But I’ve been persuaded that in certain circumstances, it is right to learn en route.’ The Prior turned from the window, smiling indulgence and the natural worry of a father. ‘You’ve always been a lawyer in a habit; a man of two worlds. It’s only right that you should serve them both, and sooner rather than later. So I’ve decided to formalise things, for the benefit of people who’d never come to Larkwood but would turn to you when all other doors are closed. Henceforth you are at liberty to accept cases from anyone who contacts you, subject, of course, to the exercise of sound judgement. I’ll try and help in that regard. You must always give priority to those on the margins of hope.’

Anselm didn’t know what to say. For a man bound to monastic life the decision was momentous with significant repercussions. The exception had just become the rule.

The Prior returned to his desk and took the letter out of its envelope. ‘Do you need time to reflect upon what I’m asking or a shove to get on with it?’

‘Is there a middle road? Something vague and indecisive?’

‘No.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll take the shove.’

Without further ceremony, the Prior handed the letter to Anselm. There was no address, no name and no date. The author had used a typewriter. Anselm angled the page to the light, reading under his breath.

Father Prior,

I read with interest the article about Father Anselm. As it happens, I’ve followed his career wondering, on occasion, why his services were not more widely available and why his clients were only friends or those with a special connection to his past. What of those who are strangers to your world? People on the margins of hope? People with nowhere to turn because no one would believe them? Are they to be forgotten?

‘That’s an interesting point,’ observed Anselm. He’d also noted that phrase about hope; it had burned Larkwood’s protector.

‘I know,’ replied the Prior, still feeling the heat.

Anselm continued to read:

I write on behalf of Jennifer Henderson. When she was alive she made no cry for help because she didn’t see the danger. Neither did I. Nor did anyone else. We didn’t read the signs properly. Now it’s too late. She’s dead. There’s no point in going to the police because there’s no evidence, and without evidence there’s no suspect and no crime. So I come to you speaking for her. Find out what really happened on the day she died. Her husband knows only too well. That’s why he snapped in Manchester and ended up in prison. You’ve got two weeks before he’s released. What does the future hold? It’s obvious: he’ll snap again. Only this time he might just take his own life. Why not help him, for the sake of the living and the dead? Why not extend Larkwood’s reach?

That was the end of the letter. Anselm turned the page, looking in vain for some stray clue to the writer’s identity.

‘You know who the husband is, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘It’s Peter Henderson, the philosopher from Cambridge, the celebrity commentator. Always on television and the radio.
Question Time
and the
Moral Maze
. Did you follow the case?’

‘No more than anyone else.’

Anselm thought for a while.

‘I met her once … years back. She was in hospital having some routine tests. I was filling in for the chaplain. I told you when I got back … don’t you remember?’

The Prior didn’t. But that was no great surprise. His memory was strangely selective, favouring the details that everyone else tended to forget. Anselm made a forgiving sigh and then read the letter once more. Looking up, he said:

‘Is this why you’ve extended my mandate? This plea on behalf of the forgotten?’

‘Yes.’ The Prior gave a self-reproving laugh. ‘It was Mr Robson who first set me thinking, when he spoke out for the hopeless. And then I received the letter … from someone I’ve never met and who, like Mr Robson, doesn’t know our ways. But from that place of unknowing they raised the most important question of all: the scope and nature of Larkwood’s reach. Isn’t it strange: if you’d asked me yourself to be released without restriction, I’d have said, “No”. It took a vindicated man and a stranger to show me that the time for change was upon us both.’

There was nothing more to be said. The decision had been made. Anselm had already embarked upon a changed life. As if nudged to start work, he examined the author’s phrasing.

‘This is an allegation of murder.’

‘It is.’

‘Only the word itself isn’t used.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Which means they’re not sure.’

‘Yet sure enough to write in the first place.’

‘They suspect Peter Henderson but they don’t accuse him. Which means they’re not sure of that either. They’re a disturbed bystander who can’t make sense of a woman’s dying. They can’t accept that no one’s to blame.’

They were quiet, watching each other, and then the Prior leaned on his desk, fingers knitted.

‘Normally, when it comes to legal exegesis, I’d defer to your better judgement.’

‘I make no lofty claims—’

‘But on this occasion I sense you’ve latched onto what is important, while missing the
importance
of it, do you get my meaning?’

The Prior made it sound like a surprising achievement.

‘Not really.’

‘Look at the wording again,’ said the Prior. ‘They may well be a confused bystander, they’re also a sure voice, inhibited by an understanding and respect for the law. They don’t accuse anyone, because they don’t have the evidence. They don’t allege murder, because they know it can’t be proved. The importance of the matter is this: they still
know
that Peter Henderson killed his wife. They want that rare justice which lies “beyond the reach of the law”. This is why they’ve come to you. No one else would even try to help them. Perhaps no one else could.’

Anselm wasn’t so sure the Prior’s reading of the text was entirely different from his own. The Prior had identified a note of certainty, Anselm an agonised hesitation. They were separated by a hair. On either understanding the author wanted Anselm to prove that Jennifer Henderson had been murdered: whether that end was achieved by confirming a belief or dispelling a doubt hardly mattered. Anselm’s mind began to wander:

‘They’re holding something back.’

‘What?’

Anselm had seen the lie. ‘They knew Jennifer Henderson was in danger but they didn’t take it seriously. They failed to act. And now they live with a secret guilt. They want it purged.’

Anselm thought of his shoebox and the little heap of despair, mischief and last-ditch pleading. Only someone with nothing to lose would write to a Monk who’d Left it All for a Life of Crime. In there, folded neatly, were serious attempts to hit back at the sadness and tragedy of life; attempts to bring someone on side who might make a difference. Anselm felt curiously light-headed. Through an anonymous letter, Larkwood’s Prior had heard those joined voices.

‘There’s more than guilt here,’ corrected the Prior. ‘There’s pity, too. They might speak for Jennifer but they also care for Peter. They’ve seen the signs, and understood them. Now he’s a danger to himself.’

‘And this time they’ve decided to act,’ agreed Anselm.

‘Exactly. So get started immediately. On their behalf. You might want to thank Mr Robson first. He helped me to understand how I might best direct your talents.’

Anselm said he would, colouring slightly – for praise and indebtedness made him restive – and then, with a tentative exploratory voice he ventured a novel idea:

‘Normally I operate alone, but on this one occasion do you mind if I bring Mr Robson on board as an assistant … if he’s willing? In the circumstances, I think it would be more than fitting.’

The Prior approved, but when Anselm had reached the door on his way out, he called him back.

‘Bring Larkwood’s flame into this family’s hidden tragedy … only be careful.’ He’d been arrested by an afterthought of great importance, something he should have seen earlier and mentioned at the outset, only, being a Gilbertine, he’d come to it by accident and at the last moment. ‘Bring the flame but take care not to burn yourself or anyone else. We view this troubled world by a wavering light. Don’t impose the truths you think you see.’

Bemused by this obscure warning, Anselm straddled his scooter thinking of Peter Fonda in
Easy Rider
, the outlaw who joined up with another fugitive to discover the taste of freedom. On reaching the public library in Sudbury he consulted the newspaper archives and did some adroit Googling, research that generated a handful of photocopies and print-outs that he placed in his leather satchel, a childhood relic more proper, now, to the discerning bohemian than a monk who wrestled with crime. Wanting an appreciation of the wider issues, he glanced at an entry in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, only to confirm his initial expectations: the ancient Greeks had thought of everything (though – and this was new to Anselm – the first suggestion of a code of conduct for health professionals was to be found in Egyptian papyri of the second millennium
BC
).

Back at Larkwood, brooding on the healing craft, Anselm mumbled his way through Vespers, afterwards pushing food around his plate in the refectory while Father Jerome read out some twelfth-century text entitled ‘Awareness in the Heart’. Unfortunately, Anselm was so taken by the title that he couldn’t follow the reading itself. The very notion intrigued him, suggesting as it did a kind of insight parallel to scientific enquiry. The heart as the seat of conscience. He was still turning over the phrase throughout Compline, during Lauds the next morning, and while he walked along the west bank of the Lark, his feet wet with dew. Two miles upstream he saw the pleasure wherry and slowed, wondering how best to express himself. If Anselm was going to start a new life, he wanted a clean slate.

The
Jelly Roll
was moored to a wooden landing stage. A black canvas sail hung lowered, leaving the stout single mast among taut cables, their clean lines sharp against the morning sky. The hull was black with a white nose, the long cabin section a rich cedar brown. Anselm came on board by a companionway that divided the living quarters in two, descending the few steps to a door that had been left ajar. He pushed it gingerly and entered.

The interior was beamed and low. Drawers and lockers separated cushioned benches, all built into the surrounding wood panelling. Brass instruments of navigation, almost certainly of no use on the Lark, adorned one wall. At the far end a row of copper pans hung above a devastated kitchen. Sunlight broke through small round windows, igniting months of dust.

‘Good morning, Mitch,’ said Anselm, when he’d reached the middle of the cabin. ‘It’s been a long time since we talked about right and wrong. In those days it was about notes. And bending old rules. Bop and be-bop. You favoured them. I didn’t. Shall we delve a little deeper, now?’

He was talking to the figure slumped in an armchair. A silver trumpet lay on a nearby table, along with a bottle of water and a torn packet of aspirin. Mitch had come back late from his club, it seemed. Too tired to get undressed, he’d blown himself to sleep. Anselm looked around. There were no signs of wealth. No hint of ill-gotten gains. The room glowed with old wood, crafted when people still went to work by foot; when shire horses nodded along the churned-up Suffolk lanes; that simpler, ruder time.

‘C’mon Mitch,’ said Anselm, loudly. He gave the sleeping man a nudge with his foot. ‘It’s time to wake up and face the day.’

The two men eyed one another across the years.

‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Mitch, with his soft Northumberland lilt.

He’d showered while Anselm made strong coffee. Seated now at a table, they found themselves evoking other, less fraught meetings, held long ago in Anselm’s chambers. They’d talked about Earl Hines over damning evidence: heaps of paper demonstrating slow but sure enrichment. The first time around, forensic accountants had calculated that £113,268.32 had disappeared in settlement of small, bogus claims. No one had signed them off. Though one of a team, only Mitch Robson had worked on each of the cases in question.