Читать книгу Absolute Truths - Susan Howatch - Страница 30

‘What happened with the police?’

‘It’s all right, everything’s under control. Heavens, Charles, you look shattered! What’s going on here?’

‘Oh, nothing special, just all hell breaking loose. Quick, come into the kitchen before you get buttonholed by Dido Aysgarth – she’s just told me that Desmond’s been seen near the Piccadilly Circus public lavatories on a Saturday night in the company of a young man dressed in black leather.’

‘That woman’s round the bend!’

‘I only wish I could be as certain of that as you are. Drink?’

‘Make it a double.’

We withdrew rapidly to the kitchen where I took a new bottle of scotch from the crate on the larder floor and extracted two glasses from a cupboard.

‘Charles, you don’t believe this ridiculous story of Dido’s, do you?’

‘I’m trying my hardest not to, but you know what a nose she has for scandal. She even told me everyone knew about the disaster which ended Desmond’s career in the London diocese.’

‘Who’s “everyone”?’

‘I dread to think. The Dean and Chapter?’

‘At most, I’d say. No one knows in that parish, Charles – if they did, I’d have had people coming to me to express their anxiety. And how on earth could the story have reached the Dean and Chapter? Do you think some gossipy monk at the Fordite HQ spilled the beans to Tommy Fitzgerald during one of his retreats?’

‘I’m sure no Forditc would ever have been so indiscreet. Much more likely that someone in the Bishop of London’s office talked and the word got back to Aysgarth through his former colleagues at Westminster Abbey and Church House. After all, apart from the Fordite monks only the Bishop’s office knew – the Bishop nipped the scandal in the bud.’

‘It was a brilliant piece of nipping. If he hadn’t been sitting next to the Police Commissioner at that Mansion House dinner –’

‘Talking of the police, how did you tame Parker and Locke?’

‘Oh, that was no problem at all! I became very earnest and confidential, swore Desmond was a most devout Anglo-Catholic and assured them that I’d be among the first to know if he hadn’t always lived a blameless life. (Well, I was, wasn’t I?) Of course Parker and Locke believed me – the great advantage of telling the truth is that one’s so much more likely to sound convincing.’

‘But did the police then decide it was a motiveless crime?’

‘Yes, they started speculating that the attacker was a Langley Bottom lout stoned on LSD.’

‘Surely LSD hasn’t reached Starbridge!’

‘Oh, nothing’s sacred nowadays! Anyway I fed that theory to the hack from the Starbridge Evening News who turned up at the hospital just as I was leaving and he was thrilled, said he’d do an exposé on the Starbridge drug scene –’

‘But there is no Starbridge drug scene!’

‘There will be tomorrow. Anyway, I’d just finished making the hack’s day when the chaplain turned up – apparently he’d been collared on one of the wards by some bereaved relatives and by the time he’d sorted them out –’

‘I wondered where he’d got to. Did you tell him to watch Desmond?’

‘Like a hawk, yes, and he said he’d arrange for the nurse on duty to contact him as soon as Desmond recovers consciousness, but luckily they’ve left a woman police constable at the bedside, not that thug Sergeant Locke, so at least Desmond won’t be browbeaten as soon as he opens his eyes. At that point I finally managed to tear myself away from the hospital and rush to Langley Bottom, but the housekeeper had gone home so I was unable to get into the vicarage. Did you manage to get in earlier, and if so – good heavens, Charles, what is it, what have I said?’

‘Ye gods and little fishes!’ I shouted, leaping to my feet. ‘I’ve left that unlocked box in the drawing-room with Michael and Dinkie!’

As if on cue Lyle entered the kitchen with the box itself in her hands.