Death in Holy Orders Read Online Free PDF

inspired?”
    Dalgliesh said, “Not Home Office working parties, admittedly.” He added, “Are you thinking of writing to the Archbishop, or perhaps the Pope?”
    Sir Alred gave him a sharp, suspicious look but apparently decided that if he were being teased, he would ignore or collude in it. He said, “Too busy. Anyway, it’s a bit outside my province. Still, it’s interesting. You’d think that it would have occurred to them. You’ll let me know if anything turns up at St. Anselm’s. I’ll be out of the country for the next ten days, but there’s no hurry. If the boy was murdered I shall know what to do. If he killed himself, well that’s his business, but I’d like to know that too.”
    He nodded and abruptly withdrew his head. He said to the driver, “All right, Norris, back to the office.”
    The car glided away. Dalgliesh stared after it for a moment. With Alred what you saw was what you got. Hadn’t that been an over-confident, even presumptuous assessment? The man was more complex than that, in his mixture of naïvety and subtlety, of arrogance and that far-ranging curiosity which, alighting incongruously on a subject, invested it immediately with the dignity of his personal interest. But Dalgliesh was still puzzled. The verdict on Ronald Treeves, even if surprising, had at least been merciful. Was there some other, more intriguing reason than parental concern for his insistence on a further inquiry?
    He returned to the seventh floor. Harkness was staring out of the window. Without turning, he said, “An extraordinary man. Had he anything else to say?”
    “He’d like to rewrite the Nicene Creed.”
    “The idea’s absurd.”
    “But probably less harmful to the human race than most of his other activities.”
    “I meant this proposal to waste the time of a senior officer reopening the inquiry into his son’s death. Still, he’s not going to let it rest. Will you set it up with Suffolk or shall I?”
    “Better keep it as low-key as possible. Peter Jackson transferred there last year as AC. I’ll have a word with him. And I know something of St. Anselm’s. I stayed there as a boy forthree summers. I don’t suppose any of the same staff are there, but they’ll probably see my arrival as more or less natural in the circumstances.”
    “Do you think so? They may live remote from the world but I doubt they’ll be that naïve. A Commander of the Met taking an interest in the accidental death of a student? Well, we haven’t much choice. Treeves isn’t going to let this go, and we can hardly send a couple of sergeants to start nosing about on someone else’s patch. But if it is a suspicious death, Suffolk will have to take over whether Treeves likes it or not, and he can give over thinking that they can mount a murder investigation in secret. There’s this to be said for murder, once it’s out in the open we all stand on equal ground. That’s one thing even Treeves can’t manipulate to suit his convenience. It’s odd, though, isn’t it? I mean, it’s odd his bothering, making a personal matter of it. If he wants to keep it out of the press, why resurrect it? And why take the letter seriously? He must get his share of letters from lunatics. You’d expect him to chuck this away with the rest of the rubbish.”
    Dalgliesh was silent. Whatever the motive of the sender, the message hadn’t struck him as the work of someone deranged. Harkness moved closer to the window and stood, shoulders hunched, peering out as if the familiar panorama of towers and spires had suddenly become interestingly strange to him.
    Without turning, he said, “He didn’t show any pity for the boy, did he? And it can’t have been easy for him—the kid, I mean. He gets adopted, presumably because Treeves and his wife thought they couldn’t have children, and then she gets pregnant and a proper son arrives. The genuine article, your own flesh and blood, not a kid chosen for you by the Social Services Department.