The Salisbury Manuscript (16 page)

Out of the various men who’d been on the scene, he had little knowledge of their relations with Canon Slater. True, Percy hadn’t cared for his clerical brother, had told Tom not to be taken in by his ‘holy act’. And he’d demanded that Tom get back the papers which had been passed over to Felix. And now the papers, their father’s memoirs, were gone. Did Percy travel to Salisbury to recover them in person? Had he confronted his brother and killed him following an argument?

Too many questions and absolutely no answers.

There was Walter, Felix’s nephew. The curate seemed on friendly enough terms with his uncle, the two had talked easily at the lunch table a couple of days before. There could be no motive there, surely?

Tom was aware that Eric Selby did not like his fellow Canon. He recalled the look of distaste which crossed Selby’s face when he was asking directions to Venn House. Walter Slater had said that there was a coolness between the two men, although without enlarging on the reason. He found it hard to believe that old Selby could have plunged a flint into the bare neck of a fellow churchman. Yet, though it was hard to believe Selby was capable of such a deed, it was strangely easy to visualize him doing it.

As to the next man on the scene, Henry Cathcart, Tom didn’t know what to think. His impression was of a kindly man who, at their only meeting, had been deeply affected by memories of Tom’s father. Yet this prosperous store-keeper and citizen of the town had once been a soldier. He must be familiar with killing at first hand. But what was his link, if any, to Felix Slater?

And then Tom recalled that there had been another individual standing near the porch at Venn House as he was being so ignominiously escorted away by the police. A fifth man. It was Fawkes, the servant to Percy Slater. There was something unsettling about Fawkes. ‘You have a care, sir,’ he’d said to Tom at Downton station the previous day, as if issuing a warning. But he knew nothing further about the fellow. Fawkes was on the spot because he was with Percy Slater, his master from Northwood House.

Tom spent an hour or more on speculations about who might have murdered Felix Slater, and why. He got nowhere. His mind wandered in other directions. He suddenly remembered the old woman who’d been travelling in his compartment on the Basingstoke train. She’d said something, wished him ‘Good luck’ perhaps. He searched for other portents to this ill-fated trip. He wondered when the moment of his release would arrive. If Foster required him to stay in Salisbury, would the policeman take the easiest course and keep him clapped up in Fisherton Gaol as a potential suspect? The next time Griffiths or the gaoler’s wife appeared, Tom would ask for pen and paper and write to David Mackenzie with a full account of what had happened. An intervention by Mackenzie might have some effect on the provincial police. Yet Foster hadn’t seemed the kind of person to be swayed like that.

Tom’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Mrs Griffiths stood there.

‘A visitor, Mr Ansell,’ she said.

Tom resigned himself to another interview with Foster.

‘A lady, it is,’ added the gaoler’s wife, glancing to one side before moving away from the cell door.

And he thought, for no good reason, that the visitor was that new widow, Mrs Felix Slater.

But when the person who’d been standing next to Mrs Griffiths appeared in the doorway, he gasped. A younger woman stood there.

It was Helen.

Canon Selby’s House

It was easily enough explained, once Tom had got over his first surprise at seeing Helen – his surprise and delight. For it was Canon Eric Selby who had, indirectly, caused Helen to come down from London on a morning train. He was aware that Tom worked for a London firm but hadn’t known that the firm was called Scott, Lye &Mackenzie. Many years ago, as Selby hinted to Tom on their cab ride from Salisbury station, he had considered the law as a career before deciding to go into the Church. He was a friend of Alfred Scott, Helen’s father, a good enough friend to have become godfather to Helen. Indeed, she had spent some of her childhood time in Salisbury.

When Canon Selby discovered that Tom was an employee of his late friend’s firm, and apparently distressed at the young man’s predicament, he had telegraphed to his only contact, the formidable Mrs Scott, although without being aware of Helen Scott’s friendship with Tom.

Tom didn’t know – nor did he spend time trying to find out in the first confusion of his meeting with Helen – exactly how events had unfolded when the telegram had arrived at the house in Athelstan Road, Highbury. Whether Helen had informed her mother that she intended to travel down to Salisbury by the first available train, whether she had left with Mrs Scott’s blessing, whether she had slipped out of the house undetected by her mother (a more romantic idea, surely), none of this mattered much. What was important was that Helen was here with him, in Fisherton Gaol.

She sat, upright, slim, bright-eyed and fresh-faced, on the chair which had so recently been occupied by the solid form of Inspector Foster. Mrs Griffiths produced further supplies of coffee as well as some home-made cakes and generally fussed over their lady visitor. A red-letter day for her, it must be, with a lady and a gentleman from London brought together in the prime apartment of Fisherton Gaol.

Once they’d got the preliminaries out of the way, the circumstances under which Helen had discovered what was happening to Tom and her speedy journey from Waterloo to Salisbury, Helen gazed appreciatively round the sparsely furnished room with its whitewashed walls. Her gaze suggested she was visiting a grand house, even a palace. As Tom had half foreseen, she seemed excited by his incarceration. Not, he hoped, the fact that he was languishing in prison under temporary suspicion of a murder but that he was here with her and she was here with him, and wasn’t this all a new experience, a dramatic experience for them both. She said as much.

‘Except that you can leave at any time,’ he said.

‘Oh, Tom, don’t,’ she said, reaching out to grasp his hand.

‘I don’t know why I’m here.’

‘They say that a man was murdered.’

‘There was a murder but I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Dear Tom, of course you didn’t. But you must tell me all about it. Tell me now.’

So Tom described to Helen almost everything which had happened since his arrival nearly three days ago in Salisbury. He talked about his meetings with Felix Slater and the discussion of the Salisbury manuscript. He described his trip to see Percy Slater. He recounted the events of the previous evening at Venn House. How the place had seemed to be eerily empty. How he’d suspected that something was wrong because of the open front door, how he’d discovered Slater’s body, how a policeman called Foster had materialized at the entrance to the study and taken him for a murderer and how it was all an absurd mistake and Foster knew this and promised Tom he’d soon be released from this gaol, to which he’d been taken for his own safety rather than because Foster genuinely suspected him of a crime.

He left out a few details. He didn’t mention, for example, his conversation with Henry Cathcart and the man’s connection with his father. This didn’t seem relevant to the death of Canon Slater. Nor did he say much about Amelia Slater, beyond a reference or two. This was probably relevant but Tom was oddly reluctant to talk of the Canon’s wife, now a widow.

He was gratified when Helen made appropriate responses. She sighed and looked aghast at frequent points in his story. She wiped away what looked like a tear. She rose from her hard prison chair a couple of times and came round the table to hug him as he sat on his hard prison chair. Tom began to see that there were advantages to being an innocent victim.

Things were taking a turn for the better. And they took a better turn still when Inspector Foster came back to announce that Tom was now free to leave the prison. The Inspector looked admiringly at Helen, who swiftly explained why she was there. Tom asked the policeman whether he’d made any progress.

‘You asked before, Mr Ansell, about some papers belonging to Canon Slater. I have now established that they were kept in a chest in his study. The chest is empty. What did it contain, sir? Your attitude earlier today suggested to me that you knew something about it.’

‘There was a memoir written by George Slater, Felix’s father,’ said Tom, ‘and I think there were other items in the chest, loose papers maybe. I had only a brief glimpse of the memoir-book. It is of interest to the Slaters but I don’t believe it would mean much to anyone outside the family.’

Tom didn’t add that the book was the principal reason why he’d come to Salisbury. But he couldn’t resist saying, ‘If things have been taken, doesn’t that show the murderer is the same thief who’s been working in other houses?’

‘Possibly, possibly. Though there was no sign the house had been broken into.’

‘Anyway, I haven’t got any papers. You are welcome to search my room at The Side of Beef,’ said Tom, reflecting that Foster had probably done just that already.

‘I have been taking formal testimony from some of the household, Mr Ansell,’ said Foster, not responding directly to Tom’s invitation. ‘You were seen making your way to Venn House by Mrs Slater and by Bessie the maid
after
they had found the body of Canon Slater. They passed you in West Walk going in the opposite direction.’

‘A pity they did not say so earlier.’

‘They were understandably too distressed to speak last night. You should be grateful to Mrs Slater for positively identifying you, for all that it was dark and foggy. Besides, it is always possible that a murderer may return to the scene of his crime. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, Mr Ansell. And, as you said, you had no motive to kill Canon Slater. Nevertheless I must still request you remain in Salisbury for a few days more.’

‘How is Mrs Slater?’ said Tom, feeling guilty that he’d criticized her. It was her witness that she’d seen him yesterday evening going
towards
(rather than away from) the house that had apparently exonerated him. That, and the absence of any motive.

‘Under the circumstances, she is quite composed,’ said Foster. ‘Now I suggest that you leave with this delightful young lady. Where are you lodging, Miss Scott?’

‘With my godfather, Canon Selby. I have already left my luggage there. He told me where Tom was, ah, staying. I too will remain in Salisbury for a time. I have pleasant memories of the town, Inspector, from when I was young. It must be nice to live here.’

This was the right remark to make. Foster tugged at his side-whiskers and beamed. He ushered them through the door. Tom and Helen were seen out of Fisherton Gaol by Mr and Mrs Griffiths as if they’d been regular visitors. The only thing missing was the hope that they might return again soon.

The day was clear and bright. They were not far from the town centre and The Side of Beef. Tom’s first wish was to go back to his hotel room and change his shirt. He might have spent only a short time in the best apartment of Fisherton Gaol but he still felt the prison taint clinging to him.

So, while Helen sat in the lobby, Tom quickly washed and changed upstairs. Jenkins seemed surprised to see the couple. The landlord knew what had happened – hardly surprising, everyone in the town must know of the brutal murder of one of the residentiary canons – but he avoided referring to it directly, instead wringing his hands and saying, ‘Terrible, sir, terrible, that event in the close last night,’ while casting sidelong glances at Helen. Jenkins was presumably aware of the fact that Tom had spent the night elsewhere (and in the county gaol) but, if so, was too tactful to mention it.

Before they left The Side of Beef to go to Canon Selby’s house, Tom told Jenkins that he’d be requiring the room for a few days longer. He was going to add that he was staying in Salisbury to assist the police with their enquiries – which was true, more or less – but decided against giving the landlord that pleasure.

Eric Selby did not live in the cathedral close but nearby in New Street. It was the afternoon and the town was bustling. Helen was pleased to be back in a town she remembered from childhood. She was pleased to be with Tom. She was pleased with life because she was hearing about a murder at a safe remove. She looped her arm through his, and he kissed her cheek, glad and grateful that she’d left London to see him in gaol.

‘Riding to the rescue like a knight on a white charger,’ she said. ‘Only that is the wrong way round, since it should be you, Thomas Ansell, who comes to my rescue.’

‘We’ll see,’ he said, more cheerful than he’d been for several days.

‘Tom, I have an idea.’

‘Anything.’

‘Inspector Foster did not seem very glad to be releasing you.’

‘Perhaps no policeman likes seeing a man go from gaol before he’s caught the real culprit. Or perhaps he doesn’t think I am innocent of Canon Slater’s murder and it’s more that he doesn’t have enough evidence to hold me any longer.’

‘Well, in that case,’ said Helen, ‘we should be helping him to track down the person who actually did it. That would put you absolutely in the clear and we would also be bringing an evildoer to justice.’

‘Helen, you are not reading – or writing – one of your sensation novels now. This is real life. A man has been killed. A household has been turned upside down. I’ve spent my first and, I hope, last night incarcerated in a gaol. I’m not sure I want to get any more involved.’

‘You are involved, Tom, like it or not. Canon Slater was a client of your firm –
our
firm, I should say, since my father was one of the partners. And the book you came to Salisbury to collect has been stolen, most likely by the same person who murdered the unfortunate Canon. So I say you are involved in this affair.’

‘This isn’t like spying on your neighbours,’ said Tom, thinking of Helen’s speculations about the woman who lived across the road on Athelstan Avenue, and trying to shift the argument in a different direction. ‘There are dangers here.’

‘Telling me there are dangers will have the opposite effect to the one you intend. And I don’t
spy
, Mr Ansell, I observe and draw conclusions.’

‘Or make up stories.’

Helen uncoupled her arm from Tom’s.

‘If that’s how you feel, I begin to regret that I came racing down to Salisbury.’

‘No, no, it’s a good idea in principle, Helen. But I’m not sure how we can proceed in practice with tracking down a murderer or helping the police.’

‘We can begin by talking to my uncle, Canon Eric Selby. He has lived here forever and he knows what goes on in the town.’

‘Uncle? I thought he was your godfather.’

‘He is my godfather. But he told me to call him Uncle when I was little and asked him one day how I should address him. He said he hadn’t any nieces while for my part I hadn’t any uncles, so it all seemed to fit. He is quite avuncular, don’t you think?’

The avuncular Canon Selby seemed genuinely pleased to see Tom Ansell in company with his god-daughter. He commented on the coincidence that he should have been friends with a partner in the firm of which Tom was now a member, and the greater coincidence that Tom should be ‘paying his addresses’ (as he put it) to Helen. He passed lightly over the circumstances under which he’d last seen Tom as he was being escorted away from Venn House, and said, ‘I don’t expect you slept much last night, Tom, if I may call you that now. I know that I did not. It is dreadful to think of what happened to Felix. It is frightening to think there is a madman on the loose.’

‘A madman?’

‘Why yes. Who but a madman could have done this?’

The three of them – Eric Selby, Tom and Helen – were sitting in the drawing room of the Canon’s trim house in New Street. There was a Mrs Selby, a small woman who had made a single appearance to say hello and then disappeared with a bird-like rapidity. A maid served them tea. Talk of a madman went oddly with the tea. Tom hadn’t eaten since breakfast at Fisherton Gaol and his appetite wasn’t really satisfied by sandwiches (cucumber or anchovy) and little cakes. He promised himself a good meal that evening at The Side of Beef. Now Helen, in between delicate bites at her cucumber sandwich, started to quiz her godfather about Felix Slater.

‘I am sorry for his death although it is no secret that I did not see eye to eye with Felix,’ said Selby. ‘In fact, we had an argument of sorts on the day of his death.’

Helen asked him why they’d argued. It was the sort of question which Tom could not have put, or at least not so directly.

‘Lay people often assume that men of the cloth are cut from the same cloth,’ said Selby. ‘but we are not. We’re as different as men are from one another in any other walk of life, and although we may be obliged to love our neighbours, there is no verse in the Bible that says we have to get on with them. Felix seemed to be a spare, dry man. But like a lot of men with that appearance, he had passions. One of them was for digging into the past, for disturbing the dust of centuries. There is nothing wrong with that although I fear he sometimes neglected his duties in pursuit of his passion, his obsession I might say. Felix’s example and encouragement had turned the mind of one of the cathedral sextons, so that the poor fellow spent every spare moment looking for buried treasure or relics.’

Tom recalled the newspaper article which Henry Cathcart had shown him. About a sexton who’d disappeared. Canon Selby himself had been quoted in the article.

‘Now this man North has vanished, gone goodness knows where. And I held Felix partly to blame, not for the disappearance of course but for the mania which seized him beforehand. The fellow was a good and honest worker until Canon Slater infected him with his notions of disinterring the past. I am afraid that I taxed Felix with this very subject on the day he died. Of course, I must now regret that I spoke so directly to him.’