Ritual Murder Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/sthaymon

  Contents

  S T Haymon

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  S. T. Haymon

  Ritual Murder

  S T Haymon

  Sylvia Theresa Haymon was born in Norwich, and is best known for her eight crime-fiction novels featuring the character Inspector Ben Jurnet. Haymon also wrote two non-fiction books for children, as well as two memoirs of her childhood in East Anglia.

  The Ben Jurnet series enjoyed success in both the UK and the US during Haymon’s lifetime: Ritual Murder (1982) won the prestigious CWA Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. Stately Homicide (1984), a skilful variation on the country house mystery, was praised by the New York Times as a ‘brilliantly crafted novel of detection … stylish serious fiction’, and favourably compared to the work of Dorothy L. Sayers.

  Anyone who has read Death and the Pregnant Virgin, or who knows Norfolk, will recognize that Norwich is the starting point for my city of Angleby. But only the starting point. The city and its inhabitants are the figments of my imagination; and no reference is made to any living person.

  S. T.H.

  Chapter One

  Pretending it was more convenient, Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet parked his car in a side street and came into the Close by an alley few even of the locals knew, unless they were the churchy kind, at home in the purlieus of the cathedral. He did not care to admit, even to himself, that the FitzAlain Gate, the main gateway with its high pointed arch and its niches full of maimed statuary, casualties of time, daunted him.

  For that matter he did not care to admit that he found the entire cathedral precinct not much less daunting than its ceremonial entrance. Why it should be so was hard to say. The lovely old houses sunned themselves like cats in the spring warmth: you could almost hear them purr. Mists of blossom veiled the shining flints, the mellow brick.

  Beautiful. But definitely not Ben Jurnet.

  Never mind: the Superintendent had to have his little joke. It was one of the perks of power. Jurnet had seen it coming before ever a word was uttered: the barely perceptible tremor at the side of the mouth, the eyes widening in a predatory joy. If they hadn’t disliked each other, the two of them, just that little bit, they could never have worked so well together.

  The Superintendent explained, “Getting in touch was the Bishop’s idea, but the Dean’s the one you’ll be dealing with. Dr. Carver.”

  “Oh ah.”

  “Not that, so far as I can see, there’s a blind thing we can do, except make the right noises—”

  “And what might they be, sir?”

  “Now, Ben—” the Superintendent was smiling unashamedly— “don’t be bolshie. One touch of that Latin charm and they’ll be feeding out of your hand—”

  The road ahead, leading to the Upper Close, was empty save for two pigeons, decorous in grey-blue, processing with ecclesiastical gravity. A woman in a cardigan and a flowered apron was polishing the brass plate at the side of a nobly pilastered door. In the Upper Close, two of England’s least memorable military commanders, Old Boys of the Cathedral School which filled the north side of the wide quadrangle, turned their bird-spattered backs on each other at either side of a central lawn. Between them, and shocking as a Coke tin on the manicured grass, a redheaded young man in jeans and T-shirt lay fast asleep.

  Jurnet grinned with pleasure at the sight, and went into the cathedral.

  Dr Carver, the Dean, awaited him at their rendezvous, the bookstall, where a poorly favoured woman of indeterminate years, unnerved by the proximity of the great, was rearranging the postcards and the illustrated guides with a good deal of unnecessary fuss.

  “Detective-Inspector Jurnet, sir.”

  “Ah, yes!”

  If there was any element of surprise in the encounter, it was all on the cleric’s side. Jurnet found exactly what he had expected. Even discounting the long black coat with its ample skirts, there was no mistaking the stigmata of high ecclesiastical office: the air of cheerful authority, the courtesy that masked, over so courteously, the merest suggestion of threat. The Dean, on the other hand, might well have been unprepared for the tall, lean man with the dark, Mediterranean looks that, back at Headquarters and strictly out of earshot, had earned him the nickname of Valentino.

  The two shook hands and the Dean said straightaway, in tones which told the detective all he needed to know of the delicacy of diocesan relationships, “The Bishop takes the view that we have a duty to let the police know what has occurred. Others—among whom, to be frank, I number myself—would prefer to treat what happened on Saturday as a purely domestic matter: one for which, particularly considering that any hope of apprehending the culprit, or culprits, seems doubtful in the extreme, we have no right to trespass on valuable police time. However—”

  He sucked in his lips with a slight smacking sound which said more than words; turned without further ado and walked away, not looking back, rightly confident the detective would follow. Broad and purposeful, the Dean nevertheless looked strangely diminished beneath the vaulted roof, a matchstick of a man against the thick-girthed pillars of the nave.

  All that bloody stone! thought Jurnet, following as expected. Even the roof was stone, high enough for angels but heavy on the spirits as last week’s suet pud. Any angels up there, Jurnet reckoned—and in a brief suspicious glance upwards almost fancied he glimpsed some, tucked away among the exuberant nonsense of the vaulting—would be hanging upside down by their feet in bunches, like bats, too torpid with cold to spread their wings and fly.

  The Dean led the way down the nave to the north transept and a wrought-iron screen where a man in the long grey gown of a verger stiffened respectfully at their coming, and opened a door for the two to pass through.

  “Ah, Harbridge!” the Dean greeted him. “There you are!” And to Jurnet, “Mr Harbridge had to have four stitches. Turn round, Harbridge, so the Inspector can take a look.”

  “’Tweren’t nothing,” said Harbridge, turning obediently. He was a man in his fifties, on the short side, but
with a look of wiry strength that had Jurnet guessing he had not exactly turned the other cheek to his assailant.

  The detective commented, “You should’ve called us in, soon as they started making trouble. We’d have handled it discreetly.”

  “I’m sure you would.” The Dean inclined his head in acknowledgment of constabulary tact. “Though I imagine that on Saturday the police were sufficiently occupied in the immediate vicinity of Yarrow Road, without having any further call on their resources. Besides—” looking at Jurnet with eyes of a candour that contradicted the clerical opportunist the detective had put him down for—“we were so tickled to see them, don’t you know? Visiting football fans don’t usually include a tour of the cathedral in their programme. It was certainly something to encourage rather than turn thumbs down on.”

  “Taking a risk, all the same.”

  “My dear fellow, what else are we in business for? Whilst I appreciate your concern, Inspector, you really mustn’t confuse Angleby Cathedral with a branch of Marks and Spencer. This is not a supermarket where everyone who comes through the door is a potential shoplifter. On the contrary, all who enter here are offered, to take away with them freely and without obligation, that most precious of all treasures, life everlasting.” The Dean smiled. “But I embarrass you. Now that sex has become as platitudinous as old boots, religion—have you noticed?—is the one subject left that can still bring a blush to the cheek, even that of a policeman. The Bishop would be sorry to know I made you feel uncomfortable. Let me show you what His Grace particularly wanted you to see.”

  St Lieven’s chapel, on the further side of the wrought-iron screen, was an unassuming space occupied by a number of rush-bottomed chairs, an equal number of embroidered kneelers, and a simple oak table by way of altar. Cromwell’s men who, 300 years earlier, had knocked most of the stained-glass out of the cathedral windows, had thereby rendered unnervingly explicit the details of a painting on the altar which had inexplicably escaped their attentions, a medieval representation of St Lieven in his bishop’s robes, holding in a pair of pincers what at first sight appeared to be a raw frankfurter and, at second, his tongue.

  “Very fine, isn’t it?” The Dean followed the direction of Jurnet’s revolted gaze. “Now take a look at our more recent masterpiece.”

  Between the two round-arched windows of the chapel, a sheet of brown paper had been cellotaped to the wall. Harbridge reached up to remove it, taking, so it seemed to the detective, a long time over the job.

  The Dean asked, “Well? What do you think of it?”

  Jurnet’s first impulse was to laugh, a purely nervous reaction. He did not feel in the least like laughing.

  On the other hand, he did not feel shocked either, which was what was clearly expected of him. He looked away from what was revealed beneath the paper to the faces of the two men, both servants of the cathedral, bound to it by bonds of love and usage. He saw that they were sorely aggrieved by what they saw, and because he was, on the whole, a compassionate man, and one given a bit too easily to anger, caught something of their pain and their outrage.

  The two commingled and flared up inside him, quite agreeably. It was the first warmth he had felt since stepping out of the spring sunshine.

  “Shameful!” he exclaimed, in all sincerity.

  On the chapel wall, in tall red capitals that seemed to have burnt themselves into the stone, were two words, brief and to the point: SOD GOD.

  Chapter Two

  In the FitzAlain chapel opening off the ambulatory, the walls were plastered: and here the blasphemy, inscribed as before between the windows, seemed to have abated some of its outrageous irreverence. The plaster had absorbed some of the paint, feathering the edges of the letters, and, by softening the medium, tempering in some degree the import of the message.

  “Any more?”

  Dr Carver shook his head, then qualified the negative. “None we’ve come upon, at any rate. Harbridge is going to take another look round.”

  “I’d’ a seen it, if it was there to be seen,” Harbridge asserted. He looked with hostility at the detective, the stranger to whom the cathedral’s shame had been published. “Now you’ve had an eyeful, can I get a bucket of whitewash an’ cover it over?”

  “Just put the paper back for the moment.” Whilst Jurnet had not the slightest idea what, in practical terms, he could do, he had an inbuilt resistance to making away with evidence. To the pair of them he offered the only comfort he could think of, “At least, whoever did it was a Christian. I mean, you wouldn’t bother, would you, with sodding a God you didn’t believe in?”

  Harbridge looked unappeased, but the Dean’s face lightened.

  “That is a very perceptive remark, Inspector. I must remember to tell the Bishop.”

  “Not much help in finding out who did it.”

  Turning away from the wall, Jurnet took a look at the painted tomb which was the most prominent object in the small chapel, and where Bishop FitzAlain, resplendent in mitre and cope, slept benignly, palm to palm in prayer, as he had already slept for 400 years, confident of a sweet awakening.

  What a place! the detective thought. Even the ruddy beds were stone.

  Still nursing his resentment, Harbridge announced darkly, “They always bring along their own booze, tha’s the trouble.”

  Letting the implied compliment to Angleby ale pass without comment, Jurnet pointed out, “Whoever wrote that on the wall was sober as a judge. Someone who’d practised, got the hang of it. Anyone can make a scrawl with an aerosol—but properly formed letters in a straight line and all of a size, with no dribbles—”

  The Dean observed pleasantly, “Next you’ll be telling us they offer a course in it at the Polytechnic.” He finished, “If it’s any use to you, the aerosol’s in a bag behind the bookstall.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Propped against the Bishop’s chest. Someone having his little joke, I dare say.”

  “I’ll pick it up on the way out—though, if someone left it behind, ten to one he gave it a good wipe first.” Jurnet hesitated, then took the plunge. “Doesn’t the Cathedral School hold its morning assemblies in the cathedral?”

  “The seniors. In the nave. But you can’t imagine—”

  “And the choir, now.” Jurnet pressed on, leaving no doubt that his imagination was capable of more than the Dean gave it credit for. “The choirboys, surely, must be in and out of the place all the time. How many of them are there? The kids, I mean.”

  “Twenty-four,” said the Dean, looking shaken. “But I really must protest! So far as those children are concerned, Inspector, an abiding love for this House of God is part of the very fabric of their lives. To suggest that one of them could actually be responsible for this abomination—!”

  “‘Could be’ is exactly what I meant, sir. Not ‘is’. All I’m doing is point out the existence of another whole class of persons beside the football fans who could be responsible. Could equally well be some nutter or some menopausal lady with a sexual problem—you’d be surprised what some of them get up to these days—”

  “You mean,” the Dean did not attempt to hide his relief, “the field’s so wide there’s really nothing the police can do except make soothing noises—”

  Which was so exactly what the Superintendent had maintained earlier that Jurnet could not repress a smile as he returned, “If you’ll let me have that aerosol, sir, I’ll be on my way.”

  As Jurnet and the Dean retraced their steps towards the nave, they paused to let a little procession pass. Jurnet counted twelve pairs of boys, graded as to height and looking like angelic imps in their scarlet cassocks. At sight of Dr Carver their expressions became, if possible, even more otherworldly—a detachment which did not rid Jurnet of the sensation that twelve pairs of bright young eyes had nevertheless contrived to give the Dean’s companion an instant, comprehensive once-over. For himself, the red cassocks, so vivid against the grey stone, made a greater impression than the faces top
ping them. Only two stayed with him: a pair about twelve years old, by the look of them. One of these was pale, with a prominent forehead and pale, bulging eyes. His partner by contrast looked all the more robust, a rosy-cheeked boy with dark curly hair and an air of cheerful impudence.

  In charge of the choristers was a roly-poly little man who shepherded them towards the choir with an impatient tenderness that Jurnet, for one, found oddly endearing. A vexed click of teeth at his side conveyed the information that Dr Carver did not share this feeling.

  “Good morning, Mr Amos!” the Dean said sharply.

  The little man swung round and beamed, unaware he was not loved.

  “Dean! I didn’t see you. Good morning! Lovely day!” with a jolly waggle of buttock he passed out of sight, following his charges into the wooden lacework of the choir.

  From the aisle, through an arch giving on to the choir, Jurnet had a glimpse of the little crocodile dividing to right and left as the boys filed into the front stalls on either side of the central gang-way. They seemed to know the drill and to be quite unawed by their surroundings. The detective watched as the rosy-cheeked boy took a wad of gum out of his mouth and nonchalantly parked it somewhere out of sight beneath his misericord.

  Jurnet glanced sideways at the Dean, hoping, for Mr Amos’s sake, that the action had not been noticed.

  The Dean’s attention, as it happened, was fixed on a screened-off area ahead of them. A kind of roofless room made of boards some seven feet high, painted grey to blend in with the prevailing colour, occupied a fair amount of space on the north side of the organ loft, and protruded well into the north aisle. From within this enclosure came small noises not easy to identify but enough to convey that the space was not unoccupied.

  Jurnet had not noticed that one of the boards was, in fact, a door, until it opened and a girl came out.

  She wore dusty jeans, a stained T-shirt and a kerchief that completely covered her hair; and she seemed not absolutely ecstatic at finding herself face to face with the Dean.