Appointed to Die (15 page)

‘Oh, yes, I think so,' Lucy confirmed. ‘He certainly knows a great deal about the cathedral, anyway. He's told me all about its history, and all about the building.'

‘Why would a good architect be happy in a backwater like Malbury, though?' Perhaps, thought David, there was something in his past – some shady business dealings from which he'd been trying to escape when he took the cathedral post.

Lucy thought back to her first evening with Jeremy. ‘He said that after his wife died – she had cancer, and she can't have been very old – he just didn't want the hassle of the London rat race any longer.'

‘Oh.' Unfortunately, that made sense. Chewing his lip and keeping his eyes on the road, David said at last, ‘Do you think he's attractive?'

She laughed. ‘I suppose so. His beard is rather nice, I think – it makes him look distinguished.'

David flinched visibly. ‘Do you think I should grow a beard, then?' he asked self-consciously.

Lucy turned and regarded him with an appraising squint in the pinkish glow of the setting sun. ‘No, I don't think so,' was her eventual judgement. ‘I don't think a beard would suit you, David.' Squeezing his arm, she added, ‘I love you just the way you are.'

His grateful sigh escaped gently as he turned and smiled at her for just an instant.

‘And what about Rowena?' she teased, further attempting to distract him from his self-doubts. ‘You seemed to be getting on quite well with her. I think she rather fancies you.'

‘Oh, I don't think so.' The suggestion seemed to horrify rather than gratify him. ‘But I'm still not convinced that you're right about her and that policeman. She seemed very sincere to me, very . . .'

Lucy smiled at him; that, and the tenderness of her voice, took the sting out of words that might have been hurtful. ‘Oh, David my darling. You really don't know very much about women, do you?'

Again he sighed. ‘No, I suppose not.' But he was humble rather than defiant.

Inevitably, they discussed the various members of the cathedral community. ‘What was your impression of Canon Brydges-ffrench?' Lucy wanted to know.

‘I didn't have much chance to form an impression of him,' David reminded her. ‘He wasn't at the garden party at all, and I only met him briefly after this morning's service. But he seemed . . . oh, I don't know. A tragic figure. Forlorn, as though the entire foundation of his life had been knocked out from under him. I feel very sorry for him.'

‘And the Dean? What did you think of him?'

‘He's a real shit,' was David's succinct reply. ‘Complete and unmitigated. He lived up to his advance billing in every possible way.'

Lucy was silent for quite a long time, abstractedly twisting a curl around her finger. ‘No good is going to come of the appointment, you know,' she said at last, quietly. ‘I feel it in my bones. It was a bad appointment, and it will end in tears.'

David's reply was equally sombre. ‘If not something worse. The way the Dean is making enemies, he'll be lucky not to meet a sticky end, and sooner rather than later!'

‘That's not funny.' She frowned.

‘No, I didn't mean it to be.' That bald statement, bleakly offered, again stopped the conversation temporarily.

‘Even Pat Willoughby,' Lucy reflected after a moment. ‘She's the most tolerant person I know. But even Pat has been upset by him, and thinks that the whole thing is a terrible mistake.'

Unexpectedly, David smiled, consciously lightening his voice. ‘Pat is marvellous, isn't she? I really liked her. And the Bishop too, of course.'

‘Bishop George is a dear, and she's great. Everyone adores Pat. I might have told you that she was absolutely brilliant when . . . when my mother died. I don't know what would have happened without her around to organise things. She and my mother were great friends, you know.'

‘I didn't know that.' Lucy had rarely spoken to him of her dead mother; in fact she rarely spoke about herself or her personal history at all, but David now felt that he was beginning to build up a better picture of her early life. He loved her so consumingly that he wanted to know everything there was to know about her – as much as one human being could possibly know about another. He wanted to know whether she'd been a tomboy, roaming the rolling Shropshire hills with her two older brothers, or whether instead she'd stayed at home, curled in a corner with a book or playing with her dolls. He wanted to know if she'd had pets, and if so what their names had been. He wanted to know if she'd kept a diary, who her friends had been, if she'd had a nickname, whether she'd been considered pretty or plain. ‘I'm glad we're going back next weekend,' he said impulsively. ‘It will be good to spend more time with your father, and with Pat – they can tell me all about what you were like and what you got up to when you were younger.'

‘Not a very exciting story, I'm sure,' she smiled. ‘But I'm so glad that you don't mind going. I'd thought that after this weekend you wouldn't want to go back to Malbury for a while.'

David shook his head. ‘I'm not very thrilled about the separate rooms, of course,' he admitted. Lucy held her breath, hoping that he wouldn't resurrect the marriage issue again. This time, for once, he didn't; instead he added with a self-deprecating grin, ‘And I wouldn't mind, to tell you the truth, if Jeremy Bartlett were suddenly called away to some far-flung corner of the world. But there's a sort of morbid fascination about the place. I have to be honest, Lucy – I don't really like it much, but it fascinates me in spite of that.'

‘Why don't you like it?' she probed. ‘I would have thought that a Cathedral Close would be just your cup of tea.'

He thought for a moment. ‘You said that it was like a goldfish bowl,' he said slowly. ‘But it's more sinister than that – at least in a goldfish bowl you can see what's going on, and it's all pretty straightforward, even if everyone knows your business. Malbury is more like a stagnant pond, with all sorts of nasty things growing under the surface where you can't see them. It's not a nice place, Lucy, and nothing there is really what it seems. But that won't stop me from going back . . .'

CHAPTER 13

    
I will smite them, that they shall not be able to stand: but fall under my feet.

    
Thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: thou shalt throw down mine enemies under me.

Psalm 18.38–9

Although Stuart Latimer had been installed in his new position on Saturday afternoon and had taken the Communion service on Sunday morning, it was not until Monday morning, when he sat at the head of the table at his first Chapter meeting, that he felt as if he had truly arrived. He looked around the table at the other four men, savouring real power for perhaps the first time in his life. Everything else he'd done, up to and including the church in Fulham, had been preparing him for this moment, he knew. And of course this would not be the end of it, by any stretch of the imagination. This was only the beginning, the first major stepping-stone. By the time he was fifty, or possibly even forty-five, Stuart Latimer knew that he would wear a bishop's mitre. And not just the mitre of a minor suffragan, either – no, he would be a major diocesan bishop, with a seat in the House of Lords. After that – who could tell? The current Archbishop of Canterbury was older than he, would reach retirement age well before he did. On this Monday morning at the end of September, Stuart Latimer felt certain that the future was his for the taking.

Now it all begins, he said to himself with satisfaction and anticipation. His initial skirmishes with Malbury Cathedral – his involvement in the arrangements for the installation service and the garden party, for instance – had been mere preliminaries to the battle which was now to begin, shots fired over the bow to signal his intent. So for a moment he sat silently, enjoying the moment. He looked down at his hands, folded on the table in front of him: deceptively small hands, with neatly trimmed and well-cleaned nails, the dark hair creeping out from his cassock sleeves to cover them in thick growth. After a moment he raised his head and levelly regarded the four men who stared back at him, four men who exhibited varying degrees of consternation, apprehension, and even fear.

The Subdean, Canon Brydges-ffrench, was the worst, of course. How that man could have possibly thought that he had a chance to become Dean was beyond the power of Stuart Latimer's imagination. He had no vision, no new ideas, no initiative, only the desire to preserve what had been, to enshrine the past and thus to ensure a stillborn future. He was so very weak, practically trembling now at the horror of what had happened, what was about to happen; Stuart Latimer despised weakness, and he despised Arthur Brydges-ffrench.

Philip Thetford, the Canon Missioner, was an insignificant weed, the Dean judged, with his invisible eyebrows and his thin gingery hair. Endlessly carping on about the Third World, about deprivation and hardship elsewhere, without ever noticing what was going on around him right here at the cathedral. Stuart Latimer had taken his measure immediately on his first visit to Malbury, before the appointment had been made. It hadn't been difficult to win him over to his cause, to ensure that when the members of the Chapter were asked by the Prime Minister's Secretary for Appointments for their feelings about Stuart Latimer he could count on Canon Thetford's support. All that had been necessary were a few hints about future plans: new arrangements for the cathedral's catering might vacate the current refectory, he had suggested, and it was quite possible that the building might be suitable for conversion into low-cost housing. Canon Thetford had leapt at the suggestion, delivering a gratuitous sermon on the problems of homelessness in rural Shropshire. And the sweetener had clinched the bargain: ten per cent of cathedral income to be given to foreign missions. Black babies, the Dean now said to himself contemptuously, dismissing Canon Thetford as any serious challenge to his power.

Precentor Rupert Greenwood was similarly ineffectual, he told himself. He could almost pass for a choirboy himself, with that golden boyishness, and he was so wrapped up in his music that the cathedral could burn down around his ears and he would only notice when the crackling of the flames drowned out the organ. He, too, had been easy to convert, with a vague promise of a new organ and perhaps refounding of the choir school. ‘Stuart Latimer? Oh, yes, a forward-looking chap. Just what the cathedral needs,' was what Canon Greenwood must surely have told the Appointments Secretary.

It was more difficult to get the measure of John Kingsley, the newest member of the Chapter. He'd barely arrived when Stuart Latimer had made his first visit, and did not have an evident vested interest in any particular area of the cathedral's operation other than the relatively insignificant library. So he'd been able to make him no promises, apart from general ones about ensuring the cathedral's future. He'd sensed that Canon Kingsley was not impressed, but he dismissed him as powerless and unimportant in the scheme of things. A friend of the Bishop, yes, but the Bishop himself was powerless in the running of the cathedral. His business was the diocese; the Dean knew himself to be supreme within the world of the Cathedral Close. So John Kingsley was not worth considering as an opponent. Getting a bit beyond it, probably, at his age. Stuart Latimer could not be aware of the strength of mind and spirit that lay behind John Kingsley's gentleness; indeed, if he was aware of the gentleness at all he misinterpreted it as a manifestation of weakness.

Judging that the tension had built up sufficiently, the Dean smiled, a smile totally without humour. ‘Gentlemen,' he said, ‘it's gone ten o'clock. Time for us to begin.' Begin as you mean to continue, he added to himself. Now is the time.

‘In the months since I was appointed,' Stuart Latimer said, ‘I have been attempting to familiarise myself with cathedral affairs. Although many things have been made available to me, I have not had complete access to all of the files, or the books and the accounts – naturally enough.' He looked around the table; Canon Brydges-ffrench's head was averted, unwilling to meet his eyes. ‘I'm going to need a great deal of help from you all in the near future, as I try to get to grips with things.' He slapped his open palm down on the table, and Canon Brydges-ffrench jumped. ‘I will expect your co-operation!'

John Kingsley was the first to speak. ‘Of course,' he said. ‘Just let us know how we can help you, Dean. That is the job of the Chapter, to assist the Dean.'

If any of them were expecting the informal approach, the friendly ‘Please call me Stuart – we're all in this together', they were disappointed. The Dean merely inclined his head in acknowledgement, and launched into his agenda.

‘From what I have seen,' he said, ‘Malbury Cathedral has, for not a few years, shamefully failed to move with the times. As far as the operation of this cathedral is concerned, we might as well still be back in the thirties, if not the nineteenth century!' This amounted to a direct attack not only upon his late predecessor, but also upon one of the men seated at the table; the rest of them knew it, and avoided looking at Arthur Brydges-ffrench as he fumbled in his cassock sleeve for his handkerchief and mopped his high forehead.

In the pause that followed the Dean's pronouncement, the sound of the Subdean's voice was unexpected. ‘And what's so bad about that?' he asked defiantly. ‘We've managed quite well up till now . . .'

Stuart Latimer turned to him, his brows drawn together. ‘What's so bad about it?' His voice dripped scorn. ‘Canon, we're living in the nineteen-nineties, not the thirties. It might reasonably be assumed that my appointment was intended to take Malbury Cathedral into the twenty-first century – instead I find resistance to leaving the nineteenth! I must say, Canon Brydges-ffrench, I find your attitude extraordinary! I expected to find you obstructive and difficult, but I did not expect such perverse stupidity!'