Death in Holy Orders Read Online Free PDF Page A

he wanted.”
    Dalgliesh said quietly, “But if it wasn’t what you wanted?”
    “Of course it wasn’t what I wanted! A job with no future. The C of E will be defunct in twenty years if the present decline continues. Or it’ll be an eccentric sect concerned with maintaining old superstitions and ancient churches—that is if the State hasn’t taken them over as national monuments. People might want the illusion of spirituality. No doubt by and large they believe in God, and the thought that death might be extinction isn’t agreeable. But they’ve stopped believing in heaven and they’re not afraid of hell, and they won’t start going to church. Ronald had education, intelligence, opportunities. He wasn’t stupid. He could have made something of his life. He knew what I felt and the matter was closed between us. He certainly wasn’t going to stick his head under a ton of sand to disoblige me.”
    He got to his feet and nodded briefly to Harkness and Dalgliesh. The interview was over. Dalgliesh went down in the lift with him and then walked with him to where the chauffeur-driven Mercedes had glided to a stop. The timing, as he had expected, was perfect.
    He had turned away when he was peremptorily called back.
    Thrusting his head out of the window, Sir Alred said, “It’s occurred to you, I imagine, that Ronald could have been killed elsewhere and his body moved to the beach?”
    “I think you can assume, Sir Alred, that it will have occurred to the Suffolk Police.”
    “I’m not sure I share your confidence. It’s a thought anyway. Worth bearing in mind.”
    He made no move to order his chauffeur, sitting immobile and expressionless as a statue at the wheel, to drive off. Instead he said, as if on impulse, “Now here’s a matter that intrigues me. It occurred to me in church, actually. I show my face fromtime to time, the annual City service, you know. I thought that when I had a spare moment I’d follow it up. It’s about the Creed.”
    Dalgliesh was adept at concealing surprise. He asked gravely, “Which one, Sir Alred?”
    “Is there more than one?”
    “Three, actually.”
    “Good God! Well, take any one. They’re much the same, I suppose. How did they start? I mean, who wrote them?”
    Dalgliesh, intrigued, was tempted to ask whether Sir Alred had discussed his question with his son, but prudence prevailed. He said, “I think a theologian would be more useful to you than I am, Sir Alred.”
    “You’re a parson’s son, aren’t you? I thought you’d know. I haven’t the time to go asking around.”
    Dalgliesh’s mind spun back to his father’s study at the Norfolk rectory, to facts either learned or picked up from browsing in his father’s library, to words he seldom spoke now but which seemed to have lodged in his mind since childhood. He said, “The Nicene Creed was formulated by the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century.” The date inexplicably came to mind. “I think it was 325. The Emperor Constantine called the Council to settle the belief of the Church and deal with the Arian Heresy.”
    “Why doesn’t the Church bring it up to date? We don’t look to the fourth century for our understanding of medicine or science or the nature of the universe. I don’t look to the fourth century when I run my companies. Why look to 325 for our understanding of God?”
    Dalgliesh said, “You’d prefer a Creed for the twenty-first century?” He was tempted to ask whether Sir Alred had it in mind to write one. Instead he said, “I doubt whether any new council in a divided Christendom would arrive at a consensus. The Church no doubt takes the view that the bishops at Nicaea were divinely inspired.”
    “It was a council of men, wasn’t it? Powerful men. They brought to it their private agendas, their prejudices, their rivalries. Essentially it was about power, who gets it, who yields it. You’ve sat on enough committees, you know how they work. Ever known one that was divinely