The Salisbury Manuscript (24 page)

If Amelia Slater hadn’t herself been the murderer, however, that did not mean she might not be covering up for her son’s action. For the first time in her life she might have acted in truly maternal, protective fashion. Another picture: Amelia entering Felix’s study and seeing Walter standing over her husband’s body and – understanding and forgiving everything in an instant – giving him the time to make his escape before she ran out with her maid into the fog and darkness of the West Walk to raise the alarm.

There was a third member of the Slater family to consider. Percy Slater had travelled from Downton to Salisbury on the day of his brother’s murder – and shortly after Tom had called on him – to find Walter and to put the record straight, as Eric Selby had expressed it. If Walter had indeed gone on to kill his father, then Percy bore part of the blame for the manner in which he had revealed to the truth to his nephew. He, too, must have lived for years with the weight of deception, with the pretence that the boy who’d known him as a father was no son to him. All that time, his resentment at his pious and holy brother must have been simmering. According to Canon Selby, Percy had on several occasions come close to revealing the truth. That he had finally done so without warning, on a fog-bound afternoon, was perhaps the least surprising thing of all.

To go to the son instead of having it out with his brother perhaps showed a kind of vindictiveness – or cowardice – on Percy’s part. He intended to wound the young man who had betrayed him by going to live in his father’s house and following his father’s priestly vocation.
He has
turned Walter’s head
, Percy had said of Felix. It must have looked like gross ingratitude for Percy’s having taken on Felix and Amelia’s young child all those years before.

Had Percy taken a further step though? Perhaps he hadn’t been content to wound with mere words but had resorted to force. Was it Percy who’d been the unknown visitor to Felix’s study and who, while his brother was occupied about some business at his desk, had taken the flint from the display case and plunged it into the exposed neck of the man he despised?

One thing seemed certain. That Felix Slater had been killed by someone he knew. The evidence showed Felix was taken off guard when he was sitting at his desk. That argued for someone close to him, a member of his family. Yet, by the same token, it suggested there’d been no violent argument or furious confrontation beforehand. Which, in turn, indicated that if it had been Walter or Amelia or Percy – or some combination of the three – who had killed him, then the murder had occurred at a composed moment, when the sound and fury had died down. Which, by another turn, tended to exonerate Walter and Amelia and Percy, since Tom couldn’t believe in a ‘composed moment’ with all these family secrets being dug up, such old and rotting secrets smelling to high heaven.

They’d discussed how much of this should be conveyed to Inspector Foster, since it might alter the way he treated the murder investigation. Eric Selby’s view was that the secret was primarily Walter’s and that it was his to tell to Foster if he chose. At the least he should have another day or so to come to that decision.

Tom’s mind had chased in circles and he settled to sleep with nothing resolved. Nor did he sleep soundly. It was perhaps the thought of rotting secrets which caused Tom to dream of the other part of this long day, the part before he and Helen had heard Selby’s revelation.

He was once again on the slope of Todd’s Mound, gazing into a dark hole bored straight into the hillside. He recognized it as the burial chamber. Standing above him was Canon Selby, sermonizing, jabbing with his forefinger, holding forth like an old-time preacher. Behind him and over the ridge of the hill there gathered black clouds while the wind scattered a few brown leaves. The owlish, benevolent look had vanished from Selby’s face. In its place was a rigid contempt. He was denouncing Felix Slater for hypocrisy and immorality. Denouncing him by name. Around him were the members of the Slater family, Amelia his wife and Percy his brother and Walter his son. They were nodding in agreement with every fervent word.

But there were others present as well. It was a jumbled reprise of the scene outside Venn House when Tom had been escorted away by Inspector Foster and the constables. In Tom’s dream there was Fawkes the coachman-cum-valet to Percy, there was Henry Cathcart, there was a gaggle of servants, including Bessie the housemaid and Eaves the gardener. They too were nodding their heads vigorously. Someone said, ‘I did it.’ Tom struggled to identify the speaker but he could not. Could not even say whether it was a man’s or a woman’s voice. The words were blown about on the wind like dead leaves.

Eric Selby stretched out his arm and pointed down the hill. Tom turned to look. He expected to see Felix Slater, the object of Selby’s vitriol. But there was a different dead man making his way up the hill. It was Andrew North. Although he had never seen him alive Tom recognized the sexton, on account of his worm-eaten countenance and the rents in his raggedy clothes through which his flesh glowed grey and green. Lower down the steep slope stood North’s sister, Mrs Banks. She was wringing her hands. Dead as he was, North was moving up the slope with vigour. To his alarm, Tom observed that he seemed to be making in his direction. But North veered away from Tom, merely turning his gaunt and eroded head as he passed. Then the dead sexton fell on to his hands and knees in front of the entrance to the hole and, like some animal, scuttled inside without a backwards glance.

Tom shivered, not because of the chill from the rising wind, but because he knew that North was never going to come out alive from that hole again. Except that he was already dead. So, if he was dead, would he emerge alive after all? In search of some solution to this conundrum, Tom looked uphill towards where Selby was orating. But there was no one there at all. The slope of Todd’s Mound was quite bare.

Mrs Banks’s House, Again

The next morning Tom was surprised by the early arrival of Helen at the hotel with Inspector Foster. He was in the middle of breakfast when he saw Helen beckoning to him from the door of the dining room, the policeman at her shoulder.

‘Tom, you’ve finished?’ she said and then, while he was still swallowing a mouthful of egg and bacon, ‘You must come with us.’

‘Why? Where?’

‘Better if we explain outside, Mr Ansell,’ said Foster. ‘We’re raising folks’curiosity by standing here.’

This was true. The handful of other diners were staring at the trio in the doorway. Tom got his coat and accompanied Helen and the Inspector into the street outside the porch of The Side of Beef. It was a more promising day with the sun breaking through.

Inspector Foster explained that they had identified the body extracted from Todd’s Mound as being almost certainly that of Andrew North. Not from the body itself since that was decayed beyond recognition but because of an item discovered in a pocket of the trousers which the corpse was wearing. From within a pocket in his own coat the policeman withdrew a crumpled, discoloured sheet of paper and passed it to Tom.

Tom unfolded it. There were a couple of lines of writing in a neat hand:
And if the tree fall toward the south, or toward
the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be
.

‘See,’ said Helen, who had obviously studied the paper already and grasped some point which was eluding Tom.

‘The writing looks like Andrew North’s from what I remember of an inscription in a book of his,’ said Tom. ‘And I do see these words have something to do with where his body was found, in a place near a fallen tree, but even so –’

‘It’s from the Bible,’ said the Inspector. ‘From Ecclesiastes, Chapter 11, verse 3, to be precise.’

Tom looked at Foster who was tugging at his great side-whiskers in pleasure. ‘Not that I’m a great Bible reader, Mr Ansell, but Constable Chesney knows the Good Book backwards and he identified it straightaway. I always say we are able to find out everything we need to know from within the force.’

‘Look at the words the writer has underlined, Tom,’ said Helen impatiently. ‘He has underlined the ‘And’ at the beginning and ‘north’ in the middle. He must have taken the words to apply to himself, as a kind of message to
Andrew North
that he should search that spot under Todd’s Mound.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Tom, peering more closely at the grubby, creased piece of paper and asking himself whether Helen wasn’t letting her imagination run away with her. The fact that Inspector Foster appeared to believe it, however, made the idea more plausible.

‘I have asked Miss Scott to come with me, Mr Ansell, when I visit Mrs Banks to break the news to her of her brother’s death. Now that he is officially dead, as it were, I must ask to examine his effects to see whether they contain any clue. I have already prepared the way and it cannot come as a great surprise to her, but such news is always shocking, you know, however braced you are against it. To be the bearer of bad tidings is perhaps the worst part of a policeman’s lot – a lot which is generally a happy one, in my experience. Mrs Banks was very complimentary about Miss Scott on account of your visit yesterday and I thought it would be helpful to have a feminine touch in this business.’

‘And I thought you should come as well, Tom,’ said Helen, ‘considering that you were the one who actually found the body of this unfortunate man.’

Tom wondered whether all this wasn’t a bit irregular but he was willing to do what he could, which shouldn’t amount to much since it was the Inspector who would have to deliver the message while Helen supplied the ‘feminine touch’. On their way to the artisans’ dwellings which lay beyond the great cathedral, Foster explained how the day would surely come when women would be recruited into the police alongside men, a notion to which Helen responded with enthusiasm, provided, she said, ‘we are not expected merely to dry tears and mop brows.’

‘Have you seen Walter Slater?’ said the Inspector.

Tom was taken aback by the direct question. He hesitated before replying. ‘No, I haven’t seen him, but I’ve heard he is back at home.’

‘Home?’

‘In Venn House, I mean.’

‘Is he now?’ said Foster while Tom wondered whether he’d betrayed a confidence and whether the curate had actually returned to Venn House after his meeting with Eric Selby the previous night.

They reached the terrace of workers’ cottages. Mrs Banks had noticed them passing the window of her parlour for the front door was opened before Foster could knock. She must have been cleaning out the grate for there were traces of ash on her hands, which she was wiping on her apron. One look at Foster’s face was enough to tell her the news. Water welled into her eyes. The Inspector did not have to say a word. Helen stepped forward and embraced the older woman. She had to bend down to do so. Foster and Tom stood by, feeling both uncomfortable and relieved.

‘I am forgetting my manners,’ said Mrs Banks after a few moments. Her voice was, surprisingly, under control. ‘We should not be standing out here like this for neighbours to see. Come inside and I will make you a pot of tea.’

They crowded into the small parlour. There was a neat mound of ash beneath the grate. Tom observed a pile of folded clothes together with needles and thread on the chaise, all of which Mrs Banks carefully removed to a corner. When the tea had been made and they were all sitting down, the three visitors crowded side by side, the Inspector showed Mrs Banks the tattered bit of paper containing the Ecclesiastes verse.

‘Yes, that is Andrew’s hand,’ she said. ‘He always wrote a neat hand. But what do the words mean?’

‘It is part of a verse from the Bible,’ said Foster. ‘I am not sure the words mean a great deal in themselves but they seem to have confirmed to your brother that he was on the right track when he went searching out at Todd’s Mound.’

‘The right track!’ said Mrs Banks. ‘He was never on the right track since he caught the illness and went about sniffing and digging in the earth to take things out.’

Rather than putting things in, thought Tom, which would have been his proper job as a sexton. At that moment a shadow fell across the window followed by a clattering outside the front door and then the same noise in the hallway. Constable Chesney almost fell into the small room. He looked about in confusion.

‘What is it?’ said Foster sharply.

‘Guv, I need to speak to you urgent,’ said the policeman before looking at the other three and, obviously considering that his abrupt appearance might be disrespectful, adding, ‘sir and ladies.’

Foster ushered Chesney out of the room and the two held a whispered conversation in the hall. Tom and Helen, and probably Mrs Banks as well, didn’t even attempt not to overhear. Not much more emerged than the words ‘dead’, ‘murder’, ‘suicide’ and ‘shot’, which was enough. Hearing the whispers, Tom turned cold. He at once thought of Walter Slater.

Inspector Foster entered the parlour once more.

‘You will have to excuse me, Mrs Banks. A – a circumstance has arisen which requires my immediate attention. Please accept my condolences on the loss of your brother Mr Andrew North and be assured that, if he has been the victim of a crime, then we will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of the perpetrator.’

Tom and Helen turned to watch as Foster and Chesney passed the window outside. Besides curiosity, Tom felt a faint sense of frustration. What was the urgent circumstance? Who was dead? Were they murdered or had they committed suicide? Was it to do with the death of Felix Slater? Why weren’t he and Helen being invited along to assist the authorities? After all, they had some expertise by now in the matter of dead bodies found in suspicious surroundings.

‘What is happening?’ said Mrs Banks. ‘Did I hear that policeman use the word murder?’

‘I heard it too,’ said Tom.

‘Not to do with my brother?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘What is happening?’ repeated the woman, in confusion, almost anguish. ‘All these murders in a small place. Has there ever been such a thing before?’

‘Mrs Banks,’ said Helen, ‘I know that Inspector Foster was going to ask whether he might examine your brother’s room for any evidence about his . . . his unexplained death. Now that he has been called away so suddenly, could we have a look instead? Like the police, we have an interest in finding out who is doing these deeds.’

‘You may do as you please, Miss Scott. If my Andrew was still here, I would not have allowed anyone to disturb his things . . . but now that he isn’t here . . . well, I . . . ’

Her already creased face grew more wrinkled and she struggled to hold back her tears.

‘We found this,’ said Helen. ‘It is your brother’s, I think.’

From her bag she produced the pewter flask which they’d picked up on the flank of Todd’s Mound.

Mrs Banks took the flask and angled it so that the initials incised into the surface caught the light.

‘Yes, this is his. “A.H.N.”’ She recognized the shape of the initials rather than spelling them out. ‘Where did you . . .?’

‘Close to where he was found,’ said Tom, concealing his surprise that Helen had kept the flask. ‘It must have fallen from your brother’s pocket.’

‘Thank you for this,’ said Mrs Banks. ‘You want to look at Andrew’s room, you say? There is nothing to see there but you may go upstairs. His is the door on the right.’

Tom followed Helen up the narrow stairs which led off the hall. There was a cramped landing at the top with two doors giving on to rooms that made up the entire first floor of the cottage. Helen opened the right-hand door, paused on the threshold for a moment and then in a couple of paces crossed to the window and drew back the curtain. The sexton’s room was plain, with furniture made out of deal and faded wallpaper depicting some unidentifiable yellow flowers against a brown background. In addition to the single bed there was a chest of drawers, a kind of cabinet and a wash-stand. The place was very clean but the subdued light of a November morning only served to strengthen the melancholy feel of somewhere which was unlived-in or abandoned.

‘What do you hope to find, Helen?’

Tom stood uneasily just inside the doorway. He quite admired her manner of treating the place as if it were her own – really, a confident young woman could get away with a great deal these days which would cause a man to be slapped down! – but he didn’t see what they could expect to discover in Andrew North’s room.

‘I don’t know, Tom. We’re investigating.’

‘Like the police.’

‘Inspector Ansell has a certain ring to it, don’t you think, Tom?’

‘Or Inspector Scott. After all, Foster was looking forward to the day when women might join the force. Perhaps he was joking.’

‘No, he wasn’t. Seriously, Tom, we’ve heard that the cathedral sexton was a man who spent his time poring over books and maps after he caught this infection for digging things up. He made notes, he wrote things down. His sister called him a methodical man, just as she is an orderly woman. As well, Andrew North seemed to be looking for guidance, for signs that he was on the right track. He copied down that Bible verse about the fallen tree and underlined the words that he imagined applied to himself. Perhaps he wrote down something which might help to identify his murderer. Perhaps he has concealed something valuable in this room.’

It didn’t seem very likely. While Helen slid open the drawers in the chest to see nothing more than a few items of clothing, clean and neatly folded, Tom got down on hands and knees and peered under the bed. Peered at a chamber-pot which was decorated with a frieze of pink roses. It was the same pattern as the china ware on the wash-stand. Tom detected the neat and womanly taste of Mrs Banks.

The only item of furniture still to be examined was the cabinet. It had a triple function, as a writing desk, book-case and medicine chest. There was shallow ledge for writing on, a shelf immediately above it which contained a few books and on top of the shelf a closed case in which to store potions and pills for when the occupant of the bedroom was sick.

Tom looked at the books. He was already aware that there were hidden depths to Andrew North but he was surprised to see volumes of poetry, including
Palgrave’s
Treasury
, as well as
A Children’s Guide to Classical Myths
and histories of Salisbury and Wiltshire. He tugged at the handle on the miniature double doors of the medicine chest but they wouldn’t budge.

‘It’s locked.’

‘Then try this,’ said Helen, holding up another object which she’d retrieved from her bag. It was a small, dull-looking key.

She couldn’t help smiling while she waited for Tom to ask the inevitable question. Which he did.

‘You remember when they brought the body out of that chamber in the hillside,’ said Helen, ‘and the policemen were wrapping it up in canvas and I was standing close by –’

‘Too close, I thought,’ said Tom, ‘but I told myself it was just your way. After all, you have a duty to be curious about everything, Helen, since you intend to write a sensation novel.’

Helen drew herself up and said, ‘Curiosity brings its own rewards, sometimes. I looked down and saw this key on the ground. It must have fallen out of Mr North’s pocket as the constables were manhandling his body.’

‘You should have given it to the Inspector.’

‘But the key might not have been the dead man’s. It could have belonged to anyone who chanced to have been wandering over the hillside with a hole in his trouser pocket. Anyway, what does it matter, Thomas?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d found a key?’

‘How was I to know exactly when we might need a key? Maybe we weren’t going to need one at all. I was waiting for the right moment, the appropriate moment, to produce it, just as I waited for the right moment to return her brother’s flask to Mrs Banks. Now are you going to see whether
this
key will open
that
chest, or shall I?’

Tom took the key and inserted it in the lock in the chest. It worked, of course, as he had somehow known it would. He felt the thrill of discovery when the key turned. There were no medicine bottles or pill-boxes inside. Instead four cardboard boxes were neatly arranged. Helen took out the topmost one, which was about the size of a shoe-box. On it was a label, half torn off. In ornamental capitals was printed,
Adler’s Ointment: Suitable for all Types
of
. While Tom was wondering about the application of Adler’s Ointment, Helen unfastened the lid. Inside was a mass of items individually wrapped in brown paper. She placed the box on the ledge of the cabinet. They unfolded a couple of the items. Then all of them, arraying them on the ledge. The result was a jumble of objects, made of stone and metal and baked earth.