Diana's Altar Read online

  He saw him. There could be no doubt.

  “Sir! Sir! I say, are you all right?” The young man on his left took Joe by the arm. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. Sorry! Silly thing to say! Are you having a turn? Bread crumb gone down the wrong way?”

  “No. I’m perfectly well, thank you. But I have just seen a ghost.”

  “Ah! That’s all right then. Did you know we have eight here in college? The oldest is believed to be that of the second master who threw himself from the belfry in—”

  Joe cut him short, able at last to find words. “Look—the young man at the back of the hall, standing in the doorway—do you see him? I don’t suppose you have any idea who he might be?”

  The boy peered doubtfully through the candlelit gloom and said in some puzzlement, “No, I’m afraid I don’t. But if you’d care to ask the bursar, I’m sure he would. He knows everyone in college, including the ghosts.”

  “Of course. I’ll do that,” Joe murmured, and he addressed his question to Dr. Calthrop.

  “Oh, yes. I do,” the bursar replied. “He’s rather distinctive, isn’t he? Everyone knows Hereward. He works for us. Followed his mother into the business, so to speak. He started out as a buttery boy and he’s now a wine steward.”

  “Did you say ‘Hereward’?”

  Calthrop smiled. “He doesn’t much care for it either! Everyone calls him Harry. Harry Melton. Though if anyone could wear the name of a Viking warrior with a swagger, it is he! Was, indeed, Hereward the Wake, our local hero, of Viking origin? Was he Saxon perhaps?”

  “Danish, I believe,” Joe said, distracted and dismissive. He had suddenly no heart for polite conversation-making.

  Calthrop sensed this and went on smoothly, “Do you know him, Sandilands? I do hope you’re not going to say you have, er, a professional interest!” he teased. “We’re all very fond of Harry, and if you’re thinking of carting him off in irons on a trumped-up charge of berserking, you will be resisted in your endeavours!”

  “No, no. Nothing of the kind. We’ve never met before. And I’m sure he’s not on the Met’s calling list. You know, the French have a much more expressive word for “ghost.” It’s revenant. Someone returning. Coming back to haunt me.”

  “Harry? Is Harry haunting you?” Intrigued, the bursar looked again at the figure, which now detached itself from the doorway and began a smooth advance down the room, hugging the wall. Halfway towards High Table, which was raised up on a dais at the far end of the room, he stood still and began to rake the company seated on either side of the master, one at a time, with a searching eye. When he reached Joe, he stopped and stared.

  The bursar, watching this performance, said dubiously: “I do believe you’re right, Sandilands! Strange behaviour! You may not know him, but I’d say he knows you. And, what’s more, he doesn’t like you very much. I say—is he being a nuisance? I can have him removed from the hall.”

  Joe returned the gaze, barely able to withstand the concentrated force of hatred, scorn and—yes—fear directed at him by those familiar eyes.

  He responded to the challenge lancing its way across the room with a curt nod, received one in return and turned with a smile back to his concerned neighbour. “A reaction I’ve had, sadly, to get used to over the years. People will always try to knock a bobby’s helmet off. We’re not popular. Perhaps I had the bad luck to send his uncle down for roistering twenty years ago? Families bear grudges.”

  “Well, you can stand easy again. Hereward’s got bored with putting a hex on you and he’s gone off about his business.” Still concerned, he added, “He really is a fine chap, you know. I wouldn’t like to think he was in trouble. He works hard and is a credit to the college . . . Much too good for us, I’ve heard it said . . . Good sense of humour, considering he’s not had the easiest of lives. Brought up by his mother, I understand, the last child of a large family. No paternal influence—his father, a regular soldier, was shot dead early in the war. Bought it at Mons.”

  Joe looked at him in quiet surprise. “Mons? I was there myself, manning a machine gun. Perhaps, through the smoke and fury, I caught a glimpse of Hereward’s father?”

  Dr. Calthrop was shaken by a sudden thought. He looked again from Joe to the disappearing figure of the steward and, after a moment, spoke quietly, “Good Lord! I think I’ve seen your revenant, Sandilands. Though it takes a seeing eye and an accommodating nature to pull both ends together. How very disconcerting! Hereward’s father must have been a very handsome man since his mother is no oil painting. Dying, as he did, on French soil, nineteen years ago, he never set eyes on his beautiful boy.”

  Joe knew exactly why Aidan had died. He could conjure up the enduring pain, the sense of shame and guilt that had swamped his friend at the last. Yet, in the acutest torment of body and soul, he’d still been able to rouse himself to joke and flirt with the pretty girl who’d tried to save him. He’d used Adelaide to establish his own redemption and to obstruct and divert the course of justice. He’d almost fooled Joe.

  One more phone call to be made as soon as he was able to work himself free of this confounded dinner party.

  This was proving to be a long day, but the worst was yet to come. He hoped he would have the moral strength to do the right thing when he put himself in Aidan’s shoes. Excusing himself from coffee in the drawing room afterwards, he wrote out a short note and passed it to Dr. Calthrop, asking him if he could make a delivery within the college before ten o’clock.

  The bursar had taken it, looked at the name on the envelope with troubled eyes and said, “Without any difficulty. Grasping the nettle, Sandilands? Always the best way. I never leave anything to fester.”

  “Same time, same place.”

  The invitation, the summons. Four words. Instantly intelligible to the recipient of the note, if Joe’s appalling suppositions were correct. If he ran he should have plenty of time to make the phone call and pick up the evidence he’d put away in his drawer at the hotel. Then, at last, he’d be ready to face Aidan’s murderer.

  •

  At ten minutes to ten, Joe approached the church of All Hallows. The last of the unseasonal summer weather seemed to be over. The weathercock creaked as it shifted round in the wind, and a flurry of leaves, torn from the branches in the sudden blast, somersaulted along the tiled path, playing tag with his feet as he approached the heavy door.

  Once inside, Joe turned on his pocket torch. He knew where the light switches were, but he wanted to recreate the scene that had greeted Adelaide on All Hallows Eve.Without the corpse in the third row of pews on the right, however. For the moment.

  He lit the row of candles which still stood ready on the altar, put out his torch, checked that the knife was ready in the pocket of his coat and went to sit in the place Aidan had occupied in the pews. He said a prayer for his friend and waited.

  The cracked bell of a nearby college rang out ten strokes.

  One minute after that, Joe heard the latch on the door to the vestry at the back of the church click open and then click closed. Careful steps approached over the flagged corridor leading into the nave. Joe steeled himself for the confrontation Aidan had so eagerly wished for and arranged days before.

  The velvet curtain obscuring the door was pushed aside and a man stepped into the candlelit gloom. He stood, not hiding himself, with a defiant tilt of the head that Joe instantly recognised. The candles lit his shock of silver-gilt hair and turned his eyes to chips of ice.

  “Aidan!”

  Joe could not keep back the word and was dismayed that his voice sounded as cracked as the college bell.

  The illusion was shattered when the young man spoke. “Not bloody Aidan! Never bloody Aidan! Hereward Melton to you, scumbag!” The voice had none of the waltzing smoothness of Aidan’s. It was rough and full of fear and aggression in equal measure. The coarseness was delivered in a heavy local acce
nt. Suddenly he scarcely looked like Aidan and Joe was assailed by doubt. Had he made a fool of himself? No one else apart from Dr. Calthrop had seen what Joe had seen. But no one else had known the young Aidan as well as the middle-aged one. Had the boy made the connection for himself?

  The newcomer must have heard the rawness of the emotion in his own voice, exaggerated by the stillness of the church. He moved forward abruptly and said in a sharper, more challenging tone, “How did you guess? Who gave me away? In any case you have no proof of anything.”

  “How did I guess? I didn’t. I knew. And it was your mother who gave you away, you could say.”

  “Don’t be daft! You’ve never spoken to my mother.”

  “She told the world when she christened you ‘Hereward.’ You may not like the name, Harry, but it’s a dead giveaway. It meant a lot to your father. His thesis when he was an undergraduate here was on ‘Hereward the Wake,’ the East Anglian hero who fought a rearguard action against the invading Normans from his stronghold in the Fens. ‘Hereward the Dane’ according to Aidan’s research. Aidan’s family was from hereabouts, and I think he always fancied himself a descendant. Anyone who knew your father in those days would have known that. Hereward was his fascination.”

  The boy hadn’t been aware. Or else he’d exhausted his store of expletives. He eyed Joe truculently in silence.

  “And besides . . . I’m one of the few men who knew Aidan when he was young . . . twenty-one? About that when I met him. You must be . . .”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “Almost the same age. The resemblance is shattering. I can imagine what he must have thought when he looked up and saw himself when young across the hall . . .”

  “Himself!” Harry pounced on the word. “Not me! Got it in one, copper! You can imagine, huh? Can you imagine how cheesed off he must have been? What a nuisance for poor Sir Aidan to find that the illegitimate kid he’d denied and had forgotten about all these years is still alive and wants to kick his head in?”

  “Half a mo, Harry!” Joe spoke sharply. “Let’s clear one thing up. He had no idea you existed before he came back to St. Benedict’s last month.”

  “Oh, yer! How likely is that?” the boy sneered.

  “It’s exact. I was his friend. I remain his executor. He never married. I have been in touch with his solicitor in London who confirms that the man had no idea he had a son. Apart from a second cousin, he had no living relations, or so he thought until a week or so ago. Look, why don’t you confront your mother with this? She of all people knows the truth.”

  “My mother?” The boy appeared dazed. “What the hell do you know of my mother?”

  “From the dates, from your family history with the college and your present address, I can deduce that Aidan had an affair or an episode of a sexual nature at the very least with his bedder while he was at college. With Mrs. Mavis Melton. Of Ditton.” Joe finished awkwardly. “Then he went straight off to the war and was never aware that . . .”

  A raucous chortle greeted this. “Well, deduce me this copper . . . Have you seen Mavis Melton? No? Thought not! She’s the dearest woman in the world to me but even she would tell you she’s an ugly old boot—always was—and a good twenty years older than Sir Aidan. And they tell me you’re a commissioner of some sort!” he sneered. “Bigwig from the Yard? No wonder the country’s in trouble. You should stick to finding lost cats, mister.”

  He stepped closer following up his moral advantage. “Naw! Mavis is my granny, you barmpot! They have very strict rules here about who can and who can’t do the bedding. In 1914 money was tighter even than it is now. My grandad’s army pay wasn’t enough to keep a family of six kids. Gran lied. She needed the job. She lied about the number—they didn’t like you to have too many. A distraction. When she got ill or was confined with another kid, and couldn’t get in to work, her eldest daughter Alice used to sneak in the back way and do her jobs for her. No questions asked. The stewards in those days were more accommodating. They knew what was going on all right. So long as the work got done, they looked the other way.”

  “Alice was how old?” Joe asked faintly.

  The boy moved down the aisle and stopped just one row of pews away. An arm’s length.

  “Fifteen. He had his way with her, the dirty old shit! She was just sixteen when I was born. Died in agony cursing the bugger! I never saw my mother.”

  Joe did not dare speak. The blue eyes were swimming in tears, the boy’s nose was beginning to run. Grief was struggling with anger but both emotions were being held back by a need for self-justification.

  “My granny took me over and brought me up with her own brood. Told everyone I was hers. Granddad was shot in the war and couldn’t argue. She never lied to me though. I’ve always known who I was. And whose fault it was. I’ve always promised my gran that if ever I set eyes on the man who ruined and killed my mother, I’d give him a good kicking. But he were a big bloke. Not sure I’d have got near him. He deserved to pay for what he’d done. Bloody nobs!”

  Impotence and rage against the upper classes was an explosive brew, Joe recognised, and was wary.

  “I thought if I could get near enough I could put a knife in his ribs. He turns up here in college again, bold as brass, asking about his old bedder! ‘Remember me to Mavis,’ he says to Maggie Alsopp! He was remembered all right! He had the bloody nerve to put his arms out to give me a hug!” Hereward shuddered at the memory. “That gave me my chance. I got in and I passed on my mother’s regards as I stuck the knife in him. And I’d do it again!” He fished in his pocket.

  “Leave it!” Joe shouted. “You little twerp! I’ll have you on your back and in handcuffs before you can—” Horrified, he stopped himself in mid-sentence.

  Alarmingly, after a moment of shock, the lad burst out laughing. It was Aidan’s laugh Joe heard. “Before you can say knife? . . . How about: handkerchief?” he suggested and, taunting Joe, took a large, white one from his pocket and proceeded to blow his nose.

  Recovering his poise, Joe took a deep breath and went on more calmly, “This is the game knife the pathologist recovered from Aidan’s body.” He took it out and showed it to the boy, who affected not to be interested. “It’s been tested and photographed for fingerprints, of course. They got a clear set. It comes from the college kitchens where you work as a steward. You could have plucked it from the washed cutlery tray after work on your way to come here and meet Aidan. You charged him with what you considered to be his crime and stuck it into his rib cage, aiming for, but not quite striking, the heart. You will not know that your father was still alive hours later when he was discovered by a local doctor who did her best to save him. The doctor and the dying man had time to hold quite a conversation before the end came.”

  “So I did it? I thought I’d admitted that by coming here.” The lad was, strangely, unaffected by the evidence Joe had produced. He took a reluctant look at the blade. “But no one’s going to listen to you in court, copper, when I tell them my story. You know what this church is used for sometimes? ‘Nefarious purposes,’ the rags call it. ‘Clandestine rendezvous.’ Huh! If it comes to saving my skin I can spin a tale. I shall tell them that a noble guest of the college had lured me, a poor innocent lad, a college servant, to one of those clandestine encounters in a place notorious for it. I had to defend myself against an evil, old degenerate. There you are! Self defence!”

  Joe’s guts and his mind were churning, unable to digest the sickening mix of Aidan’s handsome remembered presence and the vile thoughts being spat in his face. He fought for control.

  “No one’s going to believe that disgusting rubbish, Harry.”

  “Course they’re not! Don’t matter! You missed out on the important words, didn’t you, cloth ears! ‘Noble guest . . . St. Benedict’s College . . . Hallowe’en high jincks in city church.’ Stick that lot together and you’ve got a headline and a half! A headlin
e that’s going to get up the noses of a lot of ponces! You’ve got the aristocracy, the Church and—not least—the university . . . and they run the town. The Cambridge cops will never let it get as far as the papers. They’ll lose the evidence and gag the editors like they always do. Go back to London where you came from. There’s nothing you can stick on anybody here.”

  Joe couldn’t leave the matter there. He’d make one last try to get through to Aidan’s son. For Aidan’s sake.

  “Listen. Your father would have loved you if you’d let him live. Do you want the proof? You are the living proof! You’re standing in front of me right now showing off, spouting rubbish instead of being marched off to a cell with a capital charge hanging over you. This knife . . .” He held it by the blade. “It had fingerprints on it all right. Not the killer’s. Not yours. Aidan, dying, had wiped it clean of your prints, grasped it and left a clear set of his own on the handle. He made a confession to the doctor claiming that he’d stabbed himself and botched the job. There’s no way the Crown Prosecution Service would allow the case to come to court. Insufficient evidence.”

  Harry broke the shocked silence that followed this information. “Why? Why would he do that?”

  “Because that’s what a father would do for his son. It’s what I would do for mine. What a mess! But there’s one thing that’s clear in this dirty business and let’s hang on to it. My friend, your father, was a sinner like most young men. He admitted it. But he had courage and honour and much love in him. Had he known about you, you could have received it and enjoyed it as his friends did. You robbed many people of a wonderful man and not least—you robbed yourself. The case is closed and for that you can thank your father. He showed his love for his son in the only way left to him.”

  The dam broke and Harry covered his face with his handkerchief, gulping for air and mewling like a kitten.

  Tears of regret? Relief? Joe couldn’t say. He walked around and joined the shaking figure. He flung a comforting arm around Harry’s shoulders.