The Black Seraphim Read Free Page B

arm to Amanda. The crowd fell back. Two of the choristers competed for the honour of holding the door open. When he had gone, the room seemed half empty.
    “I’m on duty at the school until six,” said Peter. “After that, I think we might drift down to the town and find a drink.”
    “An excellent idea,” said James. “Let’s do just that.”
    At half past ten that night he was sitting in front of the open window of the school cottage. “What I’d forgotten about,” he said, “was the silence.”
    “When I go back to London for the holidays,” said Peter, “it takes me a couple of days to get used to the noise there. Our family house is in St. John’s Wood, which is reckoned to be pretty quiet, but this—this is out of the world.”
    They could just hear, as if it were the humming of distant bees, the cars passing the Bishop’s Gate on their way through Melchester to the south. The Cathedral bell beat out the quadruple strokes of the half-hour.
    Oh—child—of—God. Be—brave—go—on.
    “What did the Dean call it? A backwater?”
    “But not, at the moment, a backwater of peace and calm.”
    “So I gathered. What’s the trouble?”
    “In the days when I was reluctantly receiving instruction in science, I was taught that there are certain elements which are harmless by themselves – inert is, I believe, the technical description – but if you combine them, you get a mixture which is volatile and explosive.”
    “The Dean and the Archdeacon.”
    “Ten out of ten.”
    “I must say the Archdeacon did look a little bit bloated. A Bishop Bonner, do you think?”
    “Bonner?”
    “The man who burned a lot of other bishops in Bloody Mary’s reign. His cheeks were said to be glutted with the flesh of martyrs.”
    “Lovely,” said Peter. “I’ll try that on the boys. Glutted with the flesh of martyrs. They’ll enjoy that. They don’t care much for the Archdeacon.”
    “He doesn’t seem popular in some quarters. Why is that?”
    “His only known vice is gluttony. He lunches frugally, but in the evening he eats and drinks enough for three. Personally, I rather like him.”
    “Not a very good life, medically speaking, I thought. But that’s no reason for unpopularity.”
    “I agree. Everyone loved Falstaff.”
    “When I asked Amanda, she said that the Archdeacon was really an accountant.”
    “I suppose it is a fault for a clergyman to think more about money than he does about his soul. But someone’s got to do the thinking. A cathedral is a business. It owns a lot of property and employs a lot of people. Someone’s got to find the money. It won’t drop down like quails and manna from heaven. The old Archdeacon, Henn-Christie, was a sweetie. But I doubt if he could add two and two.”
    “And is the Dean also a mathematical simpleton?”
    “I don’t think he’s simple in any way at all. He’s a tough character. Before he came here, he’d spent most of his life on missionary work in the remoter parts of Africa and India. The boys seem to have got hold of some pretty odd stories about it all. Exaggerated, I don’t doubt. But he’s certainly a man who’d put sanctity above silver.”
    “And if it came to a straight fight, how would the Chapter line up?”
    “At the moment, the Dean’s got the edge. Francis Humphrey, the Subdean, is on his side. And so is Tom Lister. He’s the old boy we saw performing this afternoon.”
    “The chess champion.”
    “Right. And he’s not only good at chess. He’s the only real scholar Melchester’s got. He reads Greek and Aramaic and Syriac and any other old language you can put your tongue to. You ought to look at his entry in Who’s Who sometime. Dozens of books on comparative philology and things like that.”
    “All of which, no doubt, you’ve read.”
    “As a matter of fact, I did get hold of one, out of the sixpenny box in the marketplace. Perfect bedside reading. After one page I invariably fell into deep slumber.”
    James laughed