The Black Seraphim Read Free

come and have tea with me and tell me all about her.”
    “I didn’t know her well,” said James. “She died when I was four. I remember her as a little black bundle that jingled when it moved.”
    Lady Fallingford gave a cackle of laughter. She said, “Monday, then. At half past four. You know where I live. River Gate Cottages. Just inside the wall. Mine is the one at the far end. You mustn’t be late, because we shall all be going on to a recorder session at the Humphreys’ afterwards. Now, come along and let me introduce you to Claribel Henn-Christie. Her husband was the last Archdeacon. Happy days they were!”
    Since their move had brought them to within easy earshot of the present Archdeacon, James felt that this might have been more tactfully expressed. Lady Fallingford swept him past and introduced him to the spindly lady in a violet frock who was still wearing the white queen’s paper crown set at a rakish angle.
    “Did you see that?” said Andrew Gould to David Lyon. “Penny thought she’d got her hooks into Dr Scotland and then Lady F. pinched him.”
    “Penny’s a cow,” said David. “Let’s go and talk to Masters.”
    Len Masters, the junior verger, was behind one of the long tables serving tea. The boys admired him because he opened the batting for the Melset Cricket Club and liked him because he did not report them for minor infractions of discipline.
    James could see that Penny was waiting to recapture him as soon as Lady Fallingford let him go. He was dangerously en prise. He needed a blocking piece. One of the black bishops was chatting up the Dean’s daughter. James knew his face well, but the name had escaped him. Think. Brookes, of course. Henry Brookes, the Chapter Clerk. The solid woman beside him was his wife, Dora. A woman of many talents. An arranger of flowers and an excellent cook. The plates of cakes on the table were probably her handiwork. He remembered, too, that she had been at some time a nurse. When the matron had succumbed to an epidemic which was decimating the school, Dora Brookes had stepped in and substituted competently for her.
    As soon as Lady Fallingford released him, James sidled across and introduced himself.
    “Nice to see you back,” said Brookes. “I gather that Lawrence Consett’s giving you a bed for the time being. When he has to throw you out, we’ll be happy to put you up – did he tell you? We’ve a spare room now that Alice is gone.”
    “He did tell me and it’s very kind of you.”
    “Do you know Amanda? Her father is the Dean. It was old Dean Lupton in your time, of course. He retired two years ago and died very soon after.”
    “I can’t think why it was,” said James, “that everyone always referred to him as ‘poor Dean Lupton’. But they always said it as though it was rather a joke.”
    “That’s because he spent all his time being sorry for himself,” said Dora Brookes, in the robust tones of someone who classed illness as a sign of weakness.
    “He’d no particular reason to be sad,” agreed Brookes. “The Deanery is an excellent house and the stipend is good. Better than Salisbury or Winchester. And he had private means as well.”
    “ And he got on with the rest of the Chapter,” said Amanda.
    James had been examining her covertly. His first reactions were medical. He thought she could have done with more flesh on her bones.
    “I imagine that’s important,” he said.
    “Most important.”
    “And not difficult with a bit of give and take,” said Brookes.
    “That depends on who does the giving and who does the taking. In the old Dean’s day it was a lot easier, I believe.”
    “Oh. Why was that?”
    Amanda glanced across the room at the little group by the window. It was composed of theological students and its focal point was Archdeacon Pawle. He seemed to be telling a story. As he spoke, the contours of his plump face shifted, hills changing to valleys, valleys to hills. The only fixed points were two shrewd