Murder at the National Cathedral Read Free

laughed.
    “Not for us, thank you,” Annabel put in.
    “Better not be,” said Singletary. “If you do, find another priest.”
    “No divorce,” Smith said. “No separations. Just ordinary, routine bliss.” He hugged his wife.
    “All best,” Singletary said. “I’m off to do the funeral. Then London tonight. I have to go there often.”
    As the man who had married them walked away, Smith’s thoughts returned to where they’d been at the beginning of the ceremony. Odd. He looked up at the graceful portal above the flight of broad steps leading to the cathedral’s south entrance. The carved, dominant figure of Christ stoodwith His disciples at the Last Supper. Death? Resurrection? Fact or fiction? No matter, not if one believed—or didn’t.
    A black cloud crossed the sun.
    Mac was glad they’d eschewed any suggestions of a party following the ceremony. He wanted them to be, as the song says, alone together.
    “Come on, Mrs. Smith,” he said, “let’s go home.”

2
    Lambeth Palace, London— Two Months Later. A Windy, Cold, and Wet October Tuesday. “Decent Day,” the Locals Said.
    The Reverend Canon Paul Singletary looked up at the library’s hammerbeam ceiling, then to a faded, coarse beige-and-red tapestry that covered much of one wall. On the tapestry was the inwoven cross of the archbishop of Canterbury—
primus inter pares
, first among equals—whose seat of power as head of the worldwide Anglican Communion was the medieval Lambeth Palace, to which Singletary had come this late October afternoon.
    A window on the west wall afforded a view across the Thames to Westminster and its Abbey, and to the Houses of Parliament. A twelfth-century primate had bought the land on which Lambeth Palace sat in order to be close—but not too close, God forbid—to the Crown.
    Towering fuscous cumulonimbus clouds over Westminsterunleashed a brief, brilliant shaft of white lightning as the door to the library opened and the Reverend Canon Malcolm Apt entered. Nice timing, Singletary thought. He sat in the chair and scrutinized Apt as he approached, not because he didn’t know him, but because he always found Apt’s face to be interesting. It was as though Apt’s features had been pasted on the flat plane of his face slightly off-center, which created the effect of eyes, nose, and mouth out of alignment, pointing in a slightly different direction than the face itself. He wore a white surplice over a purple cassock; the cassock reached the floor. Apt was a short block of a man whose salt-and-pepper hair was the consistency of wire; he’d lost few wires in his fifty years.
    Singletary stood without energy. “I didn’t expect to be kept waiting this long,” he said.
    Apt ignored the comment and the tone in which it was delivered. “Come,” he said, “we’ll talk in the archbishop’s study.” He led Singletary along the Great Corridor, where portraits of all the archbishops from Victorian times hung, then into a large, comfortably furnished room. Apt went to the windows, looked out over the river as though to assure himself it was still there, and drew on a cord that caused heavy drapes to slide closed with a soft whoosh.
    “Well?” Singletary said.
    “He won’t be able to see you, I’m afraid.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Some people think I’m too serious.”
    Singletary looked at his watch; it was seven o’clock. Seven peals of a church bell confirmed it. “I’ve wasted my time then.”
    “If you choose to view it that way, Paul,” Apt said. “Sit down. The archbishop asked me to discuss certain aspects of this with you.”
    Singletary was not interested in discussing anything with Malcolm Apt. He’d wanted to see the archbishop of Canterburyhimself. Apt was the archbishop’s suffragan bishop, or VP in charge of … well, public relations. At least that’s what his title would be in the secular, business world. His official title was director of church information.
    Apt sat behind a