Murder in a Cathedral Read Online Free PDF Page B

was accelerated evolution with a simultaneous return to old-fashioned scholarly values. Besides…’ She looked unhappy. ‘There’s a problem with women. I’ve a nasty feeling that they’re not sufficiently appreciative of flummery. They have a ghastly tendency to be high-minded, austere and proponents of egalitarian claptrap. I would worry that women would be resistant to mitre-wearing and processing around the place in fancy frocks.’
    ‘Female royals go in for that enthusiastically enough.’
    ‘Not the real royals. They do it for duty. The queen’s never happier than when riding around in the rain wearing a headscarf and the Queen Mum was to be found wading through Scottish trout streams up to her arse in icy water until she was in her early nineties.’ She scratched her midriff moodily. ‘Remember the grim austerity in which St Martha’s was gripped before I took it by the scruff of the neck?’ She shook her head. ‘So as I said, I’m ambivalent.’
    ‘Where do you stand on gays and lesbians being ordained?’
    ‘Can’t be having that. Not officially, anyway.’
    ‘You rotten old hypocrite.’
    ‘I’m not a hypocrite. I don’t mind clerics doing – within reason – what they like in private, but they should shut up about it. Sexuality should not define us. The church shouldn’t ask and the aspirants shouldn’t tell. I don’t want the C of E riven by sexual politics. Sometimes it’s right to brush issues under the carpet.’
    As Amiss’s voice rose in indignant liberal refutation, two polite-looking couples came round the corner. At the sight of a young man haranguing an elderly woman whose vast hat was shrouded in smoke from her pipe and whose knickers were clearly visible under her rucked-up skirt, they were gripped in a community of embarrassment.
    The baroness waved at them airily. ‘The trouble with you, Robert, is that liberal wetness at times fatally undermines your common sense. Make an issue of sexual orientation, force confrontation over ordination, and one of two things will happen. The conservatives will win and thousands of decent and effective homosexual priests will be driven out of the Church of England or the radicals will win and there’ll be wholesale defections of straight clergy and flock. Which do you prefer?’
    ‘I’ll reserve judgement. You really have a remarkable gift for portraying liberals as nihilists.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Fortunately, I can’t hang around any longer arguing my shaky and ill-informed position, for I must run. One of my lunch companions wants to prance me round the cathedral. And he’s dying for you to come too.’
    ‘Nothing doing. Far too much to get on with. I’m off to the hotel to make phone calls and order people around.’
    ‘He’ll be very disappointed.’
    ‘Tell him I’m playing hard to get. Enjoy yourself. And pick me up around seven.’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Amiss coldly. ‘I forgot to pack a crane.’
    ‘Come in.’ She was lying on her bed in a silk paisley dressing gown watching the news and sipping what looked like a whisky and soda. ‘Grab a drink.’ She waved towards the fridge.
    Amiss helped himself to a gin and tonic and fell into the armchair. She pressed the remote control. ‘Nothing to worry about. The world appears to be in no more of a mess than it was this morning, despite my absence from the centre of things.’
    Amiss closed his eyes.
    ‘You’re looking a bit dazed.’
    ‘You’d be dazed if you’d had the Father Davage tour.’
    ‘Smart of me to avoid it. What’s the matter? Aggressively queer, is he?’
    ‘Coots run from him.’
    ‘He wasn’t making passes at you in the cathedral, was he? Even I would think that in rather poor taste.’
    ‘No, no. He’s not like that. It’s not what he does that bothers me. It’s what he says. And worse, what he showed me.’
    ‘I beg your pardon.’
    Amiss screwed up his antimacassar and threw it at her. ‘This is serious. That cathedral is