Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

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.

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.’