The Case of the Missing Bronte (13 page)

‘Good heavens, no. Nor the one with menstrual problems either. It's just a peanuts-plus sort of show. But the current British champion will be there, and dozens of British has-beens, so there'll be plenty of people going.'

‘Probably that's the idea. But at least I will be there too. And I don't suppose I'd have been able to see Borg anyway. I'll keep in touch, Jan. I mean it — I really will.'

‘You'd better, boyo.'

I rang off, feeling quite irrationally delighted. Something to do, a lead to follow, a possibility of gold at the end of the rainbow. I'd never actually thought of Leeds as the end of the rainbow, but I was quite willing to start doing so. I certainly was hitting the hot-spots of the North on this case. When I saw Bradley pottering up the garden path to come on duty for the morning I decided to go to Leeds at once. It would be worth wasting a few hours, to get my bearings in the city. That had its dangers, of course: if the two Scands saw me, they would probably call the whole thing off, whatever the whole thing was. Still, I decided to risk it.

So I drove there feeling unusually light-hearted, and booked into a modest hotel, which was nearly empty for the weekend, all the usual commercial gentlemen having taken themselves and a new store of excruciating jokes
home to their ever-lovings for the weekend. I went along to the brick fortress of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police, and set them on to making further enquiries for the two Norwegians, now presumably centred on Leeds rather than Bradford. It seemed a genial enough force, and I was made welcome. They promised to do what they could, discreetly. I had a bite to eat in the hotel dining-room, and regretted it. Then I took to the streets of Leeds.

What I would really like to have done was to disguise myself. It sounds terribly corny and Sherlock Holmes, and I don't suppose I would ever have convinced anybody as a cab-driver or a match-seller, but I would have felt a lot better observing the place from behind some impenetrable get-up. The Authorities do not rule out absolutely extravagant behaviour of that kind, but they are very inclined to ridicule it. But the decisive count against it was the fact that at six feet five and seventeen stone I'm a hell of a difficult object to disguise.

So I went as I was, but I didn't feel easy, and I kept being sure that I was being observed by my quarry, but was failing to spot them. I went to a few obvious pubs, a few obvious chain stores, but mostly I just walked. I changed my mind about Leeds. Briggate and the streets around are a bit depressing, apart from the arcades, but once off them Leeds was rather a handsome city, or the ruins of one. These days you need X-ray eyes to see what it's been like, or a very good historical imagination, but that's true of most big cities. I liked the way they built confidently, massively, in those days. The Town Hall tells you they knew Leeds was the centre of the universe. These days we build massively but not confidently — hence places like Milltown.

But you could see the days of confidence and unlimited brass were gone. Puddly car-parks, cut-price shops and decayed warehouses abounded. It depressed me rather.
Medieval cities in decay are wonderful and moving, but industrial cities in decay . . .? I think I must be a romantic at heart. I got off the main streets and began wandering around the less prosperous residential areas, the side-streets and bye-alleys, with their smells of chips and uncollected garbage, their air of in-grown dirt and depression. The evening sun was watery, but warm and pleasant, and a slight haze gave soft outlines to the shabby buildings. There were few people about, and as I wandered I almost forgot what I was there for. Until, that is, my attention was suddenly arrested by a sign:

TABERNACLE OF THE RISEN MOSES

and underneath:

C
ONGREGATION OF THE
N
EW
I
SRAELITES

It was a squat, square building, a brick box, devoid of any ornament. Very likely it had once belonged to one of the minor subdivisions of English evangelical Protestantism, and had been built in early or mid-Victorian times, when theological passions ran high, and schisms could occur over the interpretation of
Isaiah
ch.VI, v. 14. Over the years, no doubt, the congregations had dwindled, seduced into agnosticism or bingo, or become worshippers at one of the more socially acceptable venues. Until now, when it had fallen into the hands of — yes —

P
ASTOR:
The Revd Amos Macklehose, MA, D.Div.

Soapy Amos himself, with his dubious creed, his dubious morals, and his doctorate to match. I peered closer:

M
AIN
S
ERVICE:
Sabbath Gathering, Fridays, 8 p.m.

So, they celebrated the Jewish Sabbath. How very convenient for me. It was now half past seven, and there was a little pub opposite. I slipped into it, ordered myself a double vodka (that fond belief that no one can smell if you've been drinking vodka!) and stationed myself by the window. The pub was nearly empty, and the landlord behind the bar seemed a taciturn bloke, but I tried him out.

‘Many people go to that church place over the road?'

‘Oh, aye,' he said, with that air of forcing words out, a few at a time. ‘Fair few . . . Pretty rum place, from what I've heard . . . Ah, there's nowt queer as folks.'

Well, I'd never expected to hear that last bit outside the pages of one of the novelists Dr Tetterfield collected relics of. By the time I was finished savouring the experience the landlord had pottered off, no doubt glad to rid himself of the nuisance of a talkative customer. I turned back to the scene outside.

By dribs and drabs the congregation started turning up. One or two married couples, but most of them on their own. Women predominated slightly, but no more than in a more orthodox religious assembly. There were hardly any children — children assert their rights these days — but there were a few young people, mostly on their own. There was something about most of the congregation: something drab. Perhaps a lot of unemployed went there, to keep warm, to relieve the monotony of existence. I could imagine Amos Macklehose relieving the monotony of one's existence. There was something . . . what was it? . . . slightly furtive about many of them, too. As if they were satisfying a craving for something hardly reputable, were tapping an illicit brew, and were nervous of the excise men. They clutched their dreary fawn or grey coats around them and scuttled inside, looking neither to left nor right.

I didn't think most of them would be my kind of people.

All in all, though, I calculated the Reverend Amos had attracted between fifty and sixty hearers that early summer's night. Not bad. It was a tribute to the skills learned on the wilder fringes of Californian religious life. At two minutes to eight I downed the last of my vodka and slipped over the road. I had to resist the impulse to clutch my raincoat around me and scurry in, head bent. But when I got in, I slipped into a seat in the back row, shady and anonymous.

I say shady, but none of the church was well lit, which added to the feeling of furtive pleasures, illicitly indulged in. Only the — what shall I call it? — the stage, the altar, was bathed in a flood of light. A long table was draped in a startling scarlet cloth, which had a flash of yellow lightning running across it. On the top was an enormous gold or gilt cup, such as one might imagine figuring in an amateur pageant about the quest for the holy grail. There was, of course, no stained glass, but on the wall at the back was painted an enormous sun, gilded and flickering, against an inky background.

All very theatrical. But for the rest it was must, and damp, and shadow, and we all sat in our little privacies, waiting for the show to begin.

I slumped forward, chin down, trying to get a glimpse of the worshippers around me. Sitting by the door, doom-laden and unapproachable, sat Amos Macklehose's pearl of great price. She was staring ahead of her, in the manner of the self-righteous, and I could not tell if she had seen me. Immediately in front of me was a little bald man with National Health spectacles and a dirty fawn mac, looking like a plumber in a small way. Near him there was a dim woman under a large felt hat with an aggressive feather on it, wearing an old, dun-coloured coat and clutching a large brown hold-all that looked as if
she was intending to spend the weekend here. There was a thin adolescent boy with lank fair hair and spectacular pimples, ripening nicely. There was a prim piece of respectability in a beige cardigan, her mouth formed into a moue of distaste, her hair wound round the back of her head in a plait. Beyond stretched more of the same kind — the same drear colours, the same inhibited solitariness, the same prissy expressions. It looked less like a religious gathering in the nineteen-eighties than a Fabian Society discussion group in the eighteen-nineties. Except that, about this group there was a tiny spark of tension, of expectation. As if they knew something worth having was going to be vouchsafed them, that they would indeed sip the mountain dew drawn from the illicit still. I expect you got the same sort of feeling in the audiences that went to Elvis Presley concerts in his last years.

‘Have you scrutinized yourselves today?' came suddenly a voice from nowhere.

At that moment the few lights in the body of the hall were switched off, doubtless by Mother at the back. Here and there a timid voice answered: ‘Yes. Yes.'

‘Have you? Have you searched into your souls? Ransacked every nook and cranny? Have you got down on your hands and knees and done a real spring clean of the spirit?'

Every moment the voice seemed to be coming dramatically nearer. Then suddenly there flashed a new, more brilliant spotlight on the altar, and a fantastic figure darted to the centre of the stage.

‘Have you? Because unless you have scrubbed for the Lord, unless you have swept for the Lord, dusted and scoured for the Lord, your place is not here.'

He gazed round them, seeming to look into their eyes.

‘No, my friends, your place is not in the House of Moses. “Go, for thou art unclean in my sight,” as the Lord said to Ezra. “Hide thy shame, for the House of the
Lord knowest thou not,” as He spake to Potiphar. Our Lord's not one for an off-white soul, oh no. He'll know whether you have sluiced yourselves out. Have you? Have you shone the spotlight into the darkness of your souls?'

‘Yes!' said the voices, more confidently now. ‘Yes! Yes!'

The Reverend Amos Macklehose looked around his congregation, with earnest, searching interest. His former shiny, grubby black had been transmuted into a splendid purple robe, flowing from his neck, and hiding his paunchy, buttocky figure. On the chest of the robe there was a brilliant gold sun, with angular beams spreading from it, echoing the sun on the wall behind him. He looked large, theatrical, yet not quite the impressive figure he was obviously aiming at. Above the sparkling sun on his chest one saw the sparkling eyes in his greedy, cunning face, as it eagerly surveyed the forms of his congregation, his milch cows.

‘And what did you find there? Did you find a clean, well-lighted place?'

‘No — no!'

‘Or did you find a grubby, dusty, dark cellar of the spirit? Did you find a black hole? Did you find a gaping, yawning gulf of sin?'

‘Yes! Yes!'

‘That's what we find when we spring clean, isn't it? And that's what we find when we get round the U-bends of our souls. Dirt. Grubbiness. Darkness. We find the secret sins we've hidden from everyone else, don't we? We find the sins we've even hidden from ourselves. Lying there. And
festering.
Festering like a piece of meat in the summer's sun. Festering like an old wound, untreated. Spreading infection throughout the land. WHAT DID YOU FIND?'

There was a tense moment for thought. Then suddenly:

‘I found lust!' shouted the boy in front with the spectacular pimples (and I wasn't at all surprised). He
stood up: ‘I found unclean thoughts about women.'

‘Have you cleansed yourself?'

‘Yes. No!'

‘Cleanse yourself now! Sing Hallelujah! Praise Moses the prophet! Shout: Moses saves!'

‘Hallelujah! Moses saves!'

‘I found greed!' suddenly sang out the mousey woman in front with the spiky feather and the capacious bag. ‘I looked into my heart and I found lust for gold!'

‘Cleanse yourself!' roared Amos, with more than usual enthusiasm. ‘Sing Hallelujah!'

‘Hallelujah!'

‘Give to the work of the Tabernacle! Give to the spreading of the word! Give to proclaim the Risen Moses! Spread the Commandments! You will get a chance soon — '

Imperceptibly he gestured with his head to the back of the hall, and turning I saw two large, fleshy young men, heavy but out of condition, who had taken the place of the pearl beyond price, and who were standing, dark-suited and lowering, by the door. They held plates, and it looked as if it was going to be more than my life was worth to try to get out without coughing up.

‘Come to me,' crooned Moses, gazing at the mousey woman. ‘Come to me privately, Sister Boothroyd, if your soul is troubled.'

‘I found covetousness,' shouted an elderly man from the front of the hall, a busybody type who obviously felt that no meeting could be considered complete without his dreary testimony. There were plenty who felt the same. We went through the usual round of sins, which I need hardly spell out for you, as well as one or two I hadn't thought of. Would you ever have imagined that complaining about the government was a sin? Yet here was this silly old biddy getting to her feet and shouting:

‘I have grumbled in my heart against the Lord's
appointed rulers of this land!'

I found it hard to think of God controlling British elections with some divine swingometer in the sky, even with Bob Mackenzie up there to help him. Even Amos Macklehose gave her rather short shrift. But for the most part he kept things going with unfailing zest, and every now and then when Testimony flagged he would come back fighting with: