The Vicar Knows More

The cell at Marlow Cross police station was six feet wide and eight feet long, with a narrow window under the ceiling, a plank bed covered with a grey blanket, and the smell of Mrs Hobbs's cat, which, it seemed, would never air out. Edwin spent the night in it without closing his eyes. He lay on his back staring into the darkness and listened to Inspector Grimshaw in the next room turning over papers — page after page, until three in the morning.

He also looked at the lock on the cell door. An ordinary mortice lock that he had fitted there himself twenty-two years before. Three pins. He could have opened it with a hatpin in forty seconds. Perhaps thirty.

For some reason that thought comforted him more than any other.

At seven Doyle brought him tea and, with a glance at the door, told him everything in a stumbling whisper. The box under the cabinet. ELLEN. The bronze handle and the mould with its card, "T.L. 1938". The eight-page letter. The footsteps in the fog.

Edwin listened in silence, holding the hot mug in both hands. When Doyle came to the words "Edwin, I know someone has tried to take impressions of the keys", he set the mug down on the floor and covered his face with his hands.

"He knew," he said thickly. "He knew, Percy. That evening, when he told me to come in the morning, he already knew everything. And I went home and thought about planting tomatoes."

"You couldn't have known."

"I'm a locksmith, Percy. My job is to know what's behind a door before it's opened."

Doyle found nothing to say to that. He took the empty mug and, at the door, said:

"You've a visitor. The inspector's allowed it. Says spiritual comfort's every detainee's right."

And he stepped aside to let into the cell a tall, bony figure in a black cassock.

* * *

The Reverend Arthur Pembry had aged ten years in a week. He had always been thin, but now the cassock hung on him as if on a peg. His cheeks were sunken, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. He sat down on the edge of the plank bed beside Edwin, laid a worn leather prayer book on his knees, and for a long time said nothing, fingering the ribbons.

"I know why you didn't sleep, Edwin," he said at last. "I didn't either. I haven't slept for a week. Not since…" He faltered. "I haven't come to comfort you. I've come to confess. I suppose this is the first time in the history of the Church of England that a vicar has made his confession to a locksmith in a police cell." He smiled crookedly. "But God, they say, is fond of paradox."

"Oscar confided in you," Edwin said quietly. "On the twenty-third. He wrote it in the letter."

Pembry flinched as if he had been struck.

"So it's been found," he whispered. "Thank God. Thank God it's been found." He opened the prayer book. Between its pages lay a sheet of paper folded in four. "The copy. He brought it to me on the evening of the twenty-third, after he'd rewritten his will at Kettering's. Asked me to witness it and hide it. I hid it. In the Psalter, between the hundred and twenty-ninth and the hundred and thirtieth. 'Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord.'" The old man laughed bitterly. "Even that I did symbolically. I've always been a master of symbols. And never of deeds."

He held out the sheet to Edwin, but Edwin didn't take it.

"Tell me, Arthur. Not the letter. You."

The vicar looked for a long time at the narrow window under the ceiling, through which the grey morning light was coming in.

"He came to me on the twenty-second, late, after Lane had left him. He sat in my study until two in the morning. He told me everything — 'thirty-eight, Nell, the certificates, his share. He wept. I'd never seen him weep, Edwin, not even at his mother's funeral. And then he said he would go to the police. That he'd give everything back. That they could drag his name through the mud, but he couldn't go on." Pembry gripped the prayer book until his fingers went white. "And I… I told him: wait."

"Why?"

"Because Tobias Lane," the vicar said slowly, as though every word were a stone, "three years ago gave two thousand pounds towards the repair of the roof of St Michael's. Because without that money the roof would have fallen in on my congregation that very winter. Because Lane's name is engraved on the brass plaque by the door, among the benefactors. Because I decided — I, an old fool — that a scandal wouldn't only destroy Oscar and Lane. That it would destroy my church too. That people would say: the vicar knew. The vicar took dirty money." He shook his head. "I told Oscar: wait a week, give Lane a chance to put it right quietly. Forgive him, as Christ forgave. I talked about forgiveness, Edwin. To a man who for the first time in forty years had decided to be honest, I talked about forgiveness. Because that suited me better."

Edwin said nothing. He was looking at his hands.

"On Thursday evening," Pembry went on, and his voice sank almost to nothing, "I couldn't write my sermon. I went out for a walk. I went to the shop. I wanted to ask Oscar once more to wait. Another week. Another day. I stood on Marlow Street at a quarter to eleven looking at the dark window. And I didn't knock. Because I was afraid he'd look at me again the way he looked at me on the twenty-second — as if I weren't a priest at all, just another old man who wanted everything to stay the way it was."

"You told Doyle you stood there for a while and went home."

"I told Doyle half the truth." The vicar looked him in the eye at last. "I didn't go home. I went down the lane behind the shop, because it's quicker to the church that way. And in the lane, by the gate to Oscar's yard, I saw a man. He was coming out of the yard. In a dark coat, a hat, with a small bag in his hand — the kind doctors or jewellers carry. He didn't see me; I was standing in the shadow of the wall. He shut the gate, looked round, and walked off towards William Street."

The cell went very quiet.

"You recognised him," said Edwin. Not a question.

"I recognised the walk." Pembry closed his eyes. "A little sideways, a roll to it, the right shoulder lower than the left. For thirty years I've watched that walk every Sunday, as he goes up to communion past the brass plaque with his name on it. I recognised him, Edwin. And I told myself: no. It can't be. Plenty of people use the lanes. Perhaps he'd come to talk to Oscar. Perhaps they'd made it up. And in the morning, when Oscar was found…" His voice cracked. "In the morning I told myself I'd been mistaken. That in the dark all men in overcoats look alike. I repeated it to myself for five days. And on Wednesday evening Maureen Cobb came to me in church."

Edwin raised his head.

"She came at six," the vicar whispered. "She sat in the back pew and prayed. Then she came up to me and asked, 'Vicar, if a person knows where the truth is, but is afraid to uncover it, because the truth might destroy the memory of someone they loved — is that a sin?' I told her…" He wept without a sound, only his shoulders shaking under the cassock. "I told her what I'd told Oscar. That sometimes it's better to wait. That it isn't for us to judge. That God will set everything right in his own time. She thanked me and left. Three hours later she was dead."

He sat bent double, his face in his hands, weeping — an old man in a black cassock on the plank bed of a police cell that smelled of cat.

Edwin looked at him for a long time. Then, carefully, the way he had once laid it on Gwendolyn's shoulder, he laid his hand on the vicar's back.

"You didn't kill them, Arthur," he said quietly.

"I didn't stop the one who did. Twice. Isn't that the same thing?"

"No," said Edwin. "It isn't. The one who held the bronze horse and the one who pulled the chain tight round Maureen's neck are the same man. And it isn't you. You were frightened. Oscar was frightened too — forty years ago. Nell told him that was no lesser sin. Perhaps she was right. But fear can be put right." He took the sheet of paper from the prayer book. "Like this. Right now. Get up, go out of here, and tell Grimshaw everything. The walk, the bag, the gate, a quarter to eleven. All of it. Even the parts you're ashamed of. Especially those."

Pembry sat motionless for a long while. Then slowly he straightened, wiped his face with the sleeve of his cassock, like a boy, and stood up. At the door he turned.

"I'll take the plaque with his name down myself," he said. "Today. And the money for the roof… God will provide. Or he won't, and we'll pray in the rain. I dare say that's more honest anyway."

* * *

Inspector Grimshaw listened to the vicar for an hour. Then for another half hour he read the copy of Oscar's letter, comparing it with the original that Gwendolyn had brought to the station at eight. Then for a long time he held the bronze handle and the broken clay mould, turning them to the light.

"A clergyman's evidence about the walk of a man in a dark lane," he said at last, softly, to no one in particular. "A letter from a dead man who himself confesses to fraud. A bronze handle twenty-six years old. The word of a twelve-year-old boy." He put the handle down on the table. "A good barrister would make confetti of this, Constable. In half an hour. And Lane will have good barristers, because, judging by this list, he had good clients."

"But, sir—" Doyle began.

"I'm not saying he's innocent." Grimshaw's pale eyes rested on Edwin, whom Doyle had brought out of the cell and seated in a corner. "I'm saying I need something no barrister can blow away. An object. Metal. A trace. Something that connects Tobias Lane with that back room — not through forty years and not through a dark lane, but here and now." He paused. "And I need to speak to Mrs Frost. Because her alibi for Lane on Wednesday is the only thing standing between him and the gallows. And women who manage banks don't lie without a very serious reason."

Edwin, who had been silent all this time, suddenly raised his head.

"Oscar saw wax on the key that was kept at the bank," he said. "In the wards. He wrote it in the letter. That key never left the safe-deposit box. So someone got at it inside the bank itself. Someone who was allowed to."

Grimshaw turned slowly towards him. And for the first time that morning something like curiosity sounded in his soft voice.

"Go on, Mr Hale."