Ritual Murder (16 page)

Jurnet said, “I'm not angry at all.”

“Just the same, if I'd known he was going to be killed, I'd have tried to like him. I don't know if I could, really, but I'd have tried.”

“No one can say fairer than that,” said Jurnet, returning, with an effort, to the matter in hand. “The choir, now—let's chat about that a little. It must mean a lot of extra work.”

“I don't mind. I like the singing, and learning about music. And I quite like going into the cathedral in a procession and dressing up in a cassock and ruff and a white surplice on Sundays.” With a rueful little laugh, “One thing—I won't have to tell Arthur about his ruff now.” He explained, “We have to bring our fresh things to Saturday morning practice so everything's ready for Sunday. Only my mother—she's a lecturer at the University and too brainy for house-work—doesn't understand about starch. Some weeks my ruff's so stiff it's like a board; and other times—though she's used exactly the same amount, that's the amazing thing—it flops all over the place, and you'd swear, if you didn't know, it hadn't been starched at all. Well, last Saturday was one of the floppy days, and Mr Amos gets into such a stew about floppy ruffs you can't imagine. So when I came into the cloakroom on Sunday and saw Arthur's still hanging on his peg I thought he must be staying home with one of his colds—he was always getting sniffles—and so I borrowed it.”

“Taking a chance, weren't you? It could have been he was just later than you arriving.”

“And then he'd have been stuck with my floppy old thing and have to lump it!” Christopher giggled. “He wouldn't have minded—because he had such a crush on me, you see. Anyway, Arthur was never late. I'm the late one, 'specially on the Sundays Mummy and Dad drop me off on their way to golf.” After a little, “I hope Mrs Cossey won't mind. I put the ruff back after the service, but of course she'll have to launder it, now it's been worn. She does them so beautifully I wanted my mother to pay her to do mine at the same time as she did Arthur's, but Mummy thought it might hurt her feelings, I don't know why. She does cleaning for some people we know in the Close so I shouldn't think she'd mind.”

“Do you know Arthur's mother?”

“Not really. I went to tea with him once. He kept asking till I had to.” At the sight of the boy's face, screwed up in an expression of humorous disgust, Jurnet suppressed a smile. “It was awful!”

“Grub below par?”

“Oh no—quite the opposite! There was ham, and trifle, and at least four kinds of cake and pastries—”

“Doesn't sound too bad to me.”

“It was so
fussy
! Mrs Cossey had put a lace cloth on the table, and there were fancy serviettes and she was all dressed up—and I mean, it wasn't as if it was a party. It was only me!”

“Perhaps
you
were a party to Arthur and his mother, if nobody ever wanted to go home with him.”

The boy reddened. There was a quiver in his voice as he said, “I'm sorry now, truly I am. But then—”

“Then he was just a drip with a crush on you. Don't blame yourself. We all do things we're sorry about afterwards. After all, you did go in the end.”

“It was awful!” Christopher said again. “After tea we went upstairs to his room so he could show me his pictures. Can you think of anything more boring? Every time I said I ought to be getting home he'd bring out another lot. I said I'd be honest. Well—” the curly head came up, the thick-lashed hazel eyes looked solemnly at the detective—“even if I'd known he was going to be murdered, I don't think I could ever have gone there again. It was so boring I thought I'd die.”

“Never mind,” said Jurnet. “At least you can console yourself with the thought that you did Arthur a good turn while he was still alive to enjoy it.”

“I
think
he enjoyed it. At any rate, he kept on smiling.”

Mr Harbridge, peering through the glass panels let into the upper half of the Prior's Door, saw Jurnet making his way up the worn steps from the cloister. He opened the door and let the detective into the cathedral. In his wide-skirted gown with its broad black belt and white tabs at the throat, the verger looked damaged but dependable, his face only a little less bruised than Jurnet's. A plaster was still in position on the back of his head.

He looked out over Jurnet's shoulder and across the cloister to the south-east corner where the sturdy form of Christopher Drue could be seen disappearing through the entrance into the Song School.

“Young Chris been chatting you up, I see.”

“Or vice versa. He's a live wire all right.”

“That he is. Any mischief afoot in these parts, ten to one he's at the bottom of it.”

The tone was affectionate, and Jurnet, who had also felt the powerful charm of the boy's personality, looked at the man with a kindly regard.

He demurred nevertheless. “There've been a few things happening here lately that are hardly child's play.”

“‘Kids' jokes, I mean. Like the time someone stuck price tags on a couple of hundred kneelers we'd piled up in the north aisle during cleaning. ‘Reduced to £1.75'—that's what some joker put on them. Poor Miss Hanks, nearly driven mad she was with people wanting to buy'em.”

“And that was Christopher's doing?”

“Can't say it was, can't say it wasn't. But it don't stop me having my own opinion.” The verger chuckled. “Caught him out red-handed, though, couple of weeks ago. Not to say green and yellow an' sky-blue-pink!”

“How's that again?”

“Coloured chalks. Caught him colouring one of the tombs in the ambulatory. It's got a design of leaves and such, and to tell you the truth I thought it quite an improvement. Brightened it up something wonderful. Still, we can't encourage that sort of thing or there'd be no stopping the little perishers. So I made him fetch a dwile and a bucket of water and wash it all off. Stood over him till he done it, even if he did miss his games period.”

“He couldn't have thought much of that.”

“Oh, he took it all as a great joke. That's the kind of lad he is. ‘No hard feelings, Harby,' he said to me when I finally let him go, and he stuck out his hand to shake, cheeky as you please. You can't help liking him, even when he's driving you up the wall with his merry tricks.”

“Not like young Cossey. Not the most popular boy in the school, so far as I can make out.”

The verger said, with a certain truculence, “Arthur was a very quiet boy.”

“So everybody says. That's what makes it so puzzling.”

“I shouldn't 'a thought myself,” said the verger, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “that the maniac as did for Arthur examined him first to find out how he was for conversation.”

Jurnet objected, “I don't know why not. Once you dream up your madman there isn't anything he mightn't do, since you've already made up your mind he's off his rocker to begin with. If it's a madman you want,” he concluded amiably, “make sure he behaves like one. Unreasonably.”

Harbridge stared.

“You think what was done to Arthur reasonable?”

“Definitely. Sick but sane. The product of a reasoning mind. Little St Ulf's grave, the star of David, the mutilation—in my book it all adds up to a deliberate composition, a work of art designed to evoke a carefully programmed response. So let's forget the maniac, shall we? Which brings us back to my original question. If Arthur was such a quiet little boy, minding his own business, what possible reason could anyone have for killing him?”

After a pause, during which a large lady, all agog, asked the verger to point out exactly where the little boy was murdered, Harbridge said, “I could think of a few.”

In the FitzAlain chapel they were safe enough from interruption. Visitors to the cathedral tended to keep to the main routes, treating the byways with the distrust of motorists coming upon a road not marked on the map. Smiling in his sleep, Bishop FitzAlain slept on his tomb undisturbed.

Jurnet, looking about him, nodded in the direction of the brown paper still cellotaped to the wall. “Might as well get rid of that now. I've been meaning to tell the Dean, but what with one thing and another—” The verger made no comment. “Ever since I found out what an artist Arthur was,” the detective went on, “I can't help wondering if that wasn't some more of his handiwork. What do you think?”

Harbridge said with bitterness, “Nothing about that little stinker'd surprise me. There! I'm glad it's out.” The verger looked at the detective, a line of anxiety deepening between the eyes. “Thing is, I don't want to say nothing that'll hurt Sandra.”

“Oh, Mrs Cossey! I didn't know you were on first-name terms.”

“What name terms d'you reckon a man ought to be on with his own sister-in-law?”

Jurnet said, “Don't be so prickly. No one's getting at you. Just don't expect me to be psychic. Nobody told me Arthur was your nephew.”

“Not by blood he weren't! Twenty-eight years ago come September I married Beryl Cossey. Wasn't to know, was I, Arthur'd come into the bargain.”

“So your wife's Vincent Cossey's sister?”

“Was. Died five years ago next July the 15th.” The sparse intelligence encompassed a world of loss. “Different from Vince as chalk from cheese. Leave it to me, I wouldn't have had Vince on the doorstep, let alone ask him in. But you know women. Vince was her little brother, all the family she'd got, and families have to stick together even if they hate each other's guts. Never could see the point myself.”

“Know what you mean. How did your wife feel about Mrs Cossey—Sandra?”

“They got along all right. Not that Sandra didn't drive her round the bend with her finicky ways. But she made Vince a good wife, far as he gave her the chance. He was all bets, booze, an' birds before he got married, an' he didn't see no cause to change after.”

“Wonder a chap like that ever married at all.”

Harbridge smiled for the first time.

“Oh, that was Sandra's doing. Got herself in the family way.”

“You don't say! Wouldn't have thought her the type myself. Anyway, I didn't think that one worked any longer.”

“Maybe not, outside of the Close. Here, we still keep to the old ways. Sandra said, if Vince didn't make an honest woman of her, she'd go to the Dean and Chapter and tell them what he'd been up to, out of working hours. Vince was a first-class mason. I'll say that for him, making good money at the time—that was when all that work got done on the presbytery, it must be fifteen, sixteen years ago—and he didn't want to risk losing his job. He felt the way we all do. Once you've worked in the cathedral you don't want to work anywhere else.”

“Fifteen years! Then it couldn't have been Arthur—”

“'Tweren't nobody. Sandra had a miscarriage when they come an' told her about Vince's accident. At least, that's what she said.”

“Which accident was that? I thought—”

“Not the one that did for him good an' all. Bit o' stone flew into his eye and made a right muck of it. They give him a glass one, an'—you know what?—though his own natural ones were dark brown, he had 'em make it blue. Said he's always fancied beautiful blue eyes, and one was better than none, even if it weren't real! That's the sort of chap he was. When he was killed, Sandra would've had it buried with him, only young Arthur begged to be let keep it, as a remembrance of his Pa. Morbid, I call it, but there! Arthur could always twist his Ma around his little finger. He kep' the eye in his pocket—said it had magic powers, like in the fairy stories. Did you ever hear such nonsense! Rub it an' make a wish, an' your wish was granted. Pathetic, really. As my Beryl always said, if you c'd make a wish, who'd wish to stay Arthur?”

“Quiet little Arthur.”

“Tha's right.” The verger's mouth set in a thin line. “Never a peep out of him when he was a baby, even. You never heard him cry. But there was something about the way he used to look at you. It's hard to explain. My Beryl always said he was a creep before he could walk.”

“Very witty,” commented Jurnet, and was rewarded with a gratitude that lit up the man's face. “Still, his Ma and Pa must have loved him.”

“Sandra was never one to go cooing and kissing. But I'll say this for her—she kept that kid looking like he'd just stepped out of a bandbox. Vince give him a couple of thick ears when he'd had too much to drink, but nothing out of the ordinary. Said it got on his nerves, the way the kid followed him round the house like a puppy, only never making a sound. ‘If on'y it'd give a little bark once in a while,' he said to me one time, ‘at least I'd know it was human.'”

The verger looked at Jurnet with a perplexity that was directed more at himself than at the detective.

“You'll be thinking we were a flint-hearted lot, and we weren't so at all. My Beryl, never mind me, had a heart as big as a house. But there was something about Arthur—” He frowned, concentrating. Then he went on, as if in explanation, “Sometimes, when the four of us were sitting downstairs talking, and he was up in his room, all of a sudden you'd hear 'im singing, and it was like an angel. I don't know why, it made your blood run cold.”

“Oh ah.” Feeling, for the moment, that he had had as much of young Master Cossey as he could take, Jurnet transferred his attention to Bishop FitzAlain; sauntered round the tomb, aware for the first time that its sides were not walled in but balustered, the spaces between the barley-sugar-twist pillars filled in with mesh grilles, through which it was just possible to discern that under his bed, as it might be a chamber-pot or dust overlooked by a slatternly housemaid, the Bishop harboured a skeleton.