Death of a Dean

Hazel Holt

• Publisher: Coffeetown Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781603811439
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Letteratura poliziesca e gialli

While in Stratford, widow Sheila Malory always stays with her old friend, actor David Beaumont. On this visit she finds him in dire straits: his career is on the skids and his finances are in ruins. Unless he can convince his penny-pinching brother Francis to sell their jointly owned family home in the seaside village of Taviscombe, the bank will repossess his cottage. Francis, Dean of the Culminster Cathedral, does not believe that charity begins at home. He refuses to put the house on the market or provide a loan. Mrs. Malory offers David a place to stay in her own home in Taviscombe so that the two brothers might meet in person to find a solution. Even if Francis can be persuaded to sell, one impediment remains: their ancient and addled nanny has been told that she can stay in the home until she dies. Even after Nana's sudden death, Francis insists that they hold on to the property. When he dies from consuming high tea laced with poison, the police conclude that both deaths were murder. Unfortunately David is their prime suspect. Determined to clear her friend's name, Mrs. Malory applies her considerable skills as an amateur sleuth to identify the real culprit. She has seen her share of evil, but even Mrs. Malory is shocked by what her investigation turns up. Death of a Dean is the seventh of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries.

1

“I’ll put him on your sleeve,” the young man said. “The Harris hawk thinks humans are his kith and kin, so he won’t stand on your bare arm because he’s afraid of hurting you with his feet.”

He transferred the bird gently from his glove and I was amazed to find how light it was, a barely perceptible presence on my arm. The hawk stared at me and his great golden eye seemed to grow until I felt I was consumed by it and could see nothing else. It shook its head and the bells attached to its jesses gave out a tiny sound, faint and metallic as if from far away, another place, another age, perhaps.

“ ‘If I do prove her haggard’ ”—David’s splendid actor’s voice beside me—“ ‘though that her jesses were my dear heart’s strings, I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind to prey at fortune.’ ” Then, having apparently exhausted his knowledge of hawks and hawking, he looked at his watch and said, “Well, Sheila darling, if you can bear to leave your little medieval fantasy world, how about a delicious cup of tea?"

I laughed and raised my arm gently so that the hawk moved down it and back once more onto the young man’s leather glove.

“Thank you,” I said, “that was wonderful.” I turned to David. “Can we see him fly just once more?”

The young man cast off the bird, which flew high into the sky, soaring, so that it hurt one’s eyes to follow it. Then it flew down onto the ornate Tudor chimney pot and sat watching us.

“It’s all right,” the young man said. “He’ll come to the lure, he’s not had much to eat today.”

He whirled the lure around and sure enough the hawk flew at it, swooping down almost to the ground, then up and off again into the blue air. Several times the lure flew and each time the bird came nearer, until he finally took it and stood with his foot on the dead baby chick, tearing off the pale yellow down.

“This is the bit I don’t like,” I said. “We’ll go now and get that cup of tea.”

We strolled down the gravel path, past the row of hawks on their perches behind the low fence. Those that were unhooded regarded us impassively, except for one buzzard that pulled at its leash and uttered a continuous mewing cry.

Whenever I’m in Stratford I always have to go to Mary Arden’s house at Wilmcote—not just for the house, though I love it dearly, but for the hawks that are kept there. I like to watch them fly and listen to the young man—a true falconer with tremendous enthusiasm and a burning desire to communicate his passion—talking about the birds and all the tradition and ritual that surround them. Today I was lucky. Because it was early in the year we’d been the only people there so I’d had a private view, as it were.

I took David’s arm. “That was very noble of you,” I said. “I hope you weren’t too bored, but I do love them so!”

“Whatever turns you on, dear,” he replied amiably. “Although I must say that birds always seem to me particularly sinister creatures—something to do with having eyes on each side of their head, I suppose.”

“But you must admit they’re very handsome?”

“Handsome is as handsome does, as Nana used to say,” he said repressively. “And I’m perfectly sure they’d peck your eyes out as soon as look at you.”

“You may be right,” I said, “but I can’t help having this thing about them.”

“I blame T.H. White,” David said. “You were perfectly sensible until you read The Sword in the Stone. Ah, here’s the tearoom. Now we must both have immense cream teas and then we can just have an omelette and some salad for supper.”

It’s always a treat to go and stay with David. I’ve known him forever and we share so many memories. He and his brother Francis are the children of my mother’s dearest friend in Taviscombe and their father was our family solicitor, so we saw quite a lot of each other when we were growing up. Well, David and I did, being the same age. Francis was a good bit older, nearer to my brother Jeremy in age, but they weren’t close. Francis (who was never called Frank, even by his schoolfellows) was a difficult boy, remote and somehow unfriendly. We were all rather surprised when he went into the Church, since he never seemed to have those qualities of compassion and humanity that one would have thought fairly basic necessities for such a calling. However, he’s done very well, prospered even, if such a word can be used for a churchman, and is now the Dean of Culminster.

David went on the stage. I think his parents were a little disappointed since, in those days, it was not considered a “proper job,” but they were loving parents and they supported him (financially as well) for several years until he established himself in the theater. He never played the great roles, but he was a fine Enobarbus, a lyrical Orsino, a splendidly devious Claudius and a noble Banquo. But even to those who never saw him in the theater, the name of David Beaumont became what is known as a household word. He was Inspector Ivor in the television series Ivor Investigates, which ran for years and years. That was the trouble, really, because when the series finally ended, poor David, like others before him, was so thoroughly typecast that he found it difficult to know where to go from there. A couple of unsuccessful theatrical ventures and a perfectly dreadful situation comedy and he found that he was no longer—what’s the phrase they use?—“bankable.” It didn’t help, too, that his agent was getting old and no longer really interested (“And you see, dear, you can’t change your agent when you’re on a down, can you?”) so that the work simply didn’t come.

People who still thought of him as a “name” didn’t consider him for the small parts he’d have been glad enough to take and, apart from the occasional voice-over for a commercial, he hasn’t been offered anything for quite a while now.

Fortunately, in the days of his affluence he’d bought a flat in Highgate and a small cottage in Stratford. Lydia, his ex-wife, took the flat but David had managed to hang onto the cottage, which is where he lives now. It’s a very desirable property, being immediately opposite the Memorial Theater in the heart of the town and David loves it with a consuming passion. It’s become the one fixed thing in his life, a substitute, I suppose, for work, marriage and family. It is also a minute source of income, since he takes in lodgers, and there’s usually a young man, attached to the Royal Shakespeare Company in some capacity, in the only spare room. Any guests (and David is very hospitable) have David’s room, while he sleeps in some discomfort on a very old sofa bed in the sitting room.

“Right,” David said briskly as the tea arrived, “will you be mother?” He watched me critically as I struggled with a dribbling teapot and burned my fingers on the metal hot-water jug. “Now then, have a delicious scone—I think they’re homemade, though I’m not sure about the jam.” He stirred the bright red preserve with a spoon. “Not strawberry, I fear, nor raspberry, plum, perhaps, would you say? Evesham being so close, I think we may deduce the presence of plums.”

“So when,” I asked, “am I going to see your new lodger?”

“Julian? Oh, have I told you? He’s almost the perfect lodger—one simply never sees him. He’s got a couple of small parts this season, as well as walk-ons—one of the Ambassadors in Hamlet (lovely for him that they’re doing the full version) and Seton in the Scottish play—so he’s out in the evenings, and during the day they have all these workshops and voice classes and so on—absolutely splendid, never in!”

“Oh, I hope I do catch a glimpse,” I said. David’s lodgers are always delightful young men with beautiful manners and sometimes they become quite famous and I’m able to say, “Of course I knew him when ...” Often they owe part of their success to David, who, as well as being the most kindly and generous of people, has a passionate devotion to the theater and gives a great deal of his time and energy to helping the young, both by advice and by digging up contacts for them in the theater that he would never dream of using for himself. Sometimes in the days of their success they remember what they owe him. Sometimes they do not.

“Shall we go and see him?” I asked. “Not perhaps four hours of that particular Hamlet, but I wouldn’t mind adding another Macbeth to my collection. I think it’s fifteen—no, sixteen, if you count that fantastic Peter O’Toole performance that I adored and you hated.”

I did see the elusive Julian, just emerging from the kitchen as we got back. He looked a little anxious.

“I do hope it’s all right, and you did say to help myself, only I felt I wanted just a little something before the matinee today, something light, you know, so I had a couple of boiled eggs. I’m afraid I took the last two.” He was a tall boy in his early twenties, with a lot of fair hair and great gray eyes that he now fixed on David.

“No, that’s fine, no problem,” David said amiably.

“I’ll get some more in tomorrow, but there hasn’t been time today—I must dash now or I won’t be back for the half hour. I had to pop back here to get some more cotton wool, I’ve run out.” He turned to me. “It’s brilliant living just across the road from the theater like this, I’m frightfully lucky—the others are simply green with envy!”

“Forgive me,” David said, “this is Sheila, Sheila Malory, the old friend I told you about who’s staying for a few days—so please don’t hog the bathroom as you usually do!” He smiled at Julian, who smiled back, a dazzling smile that encompassed us both.

“Lovely to see you, Sheila,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you both later. Must be off to work now, do forgive me.” Another smile and he was gone.

“Oh dear, bang goes the omelette,” David said ruefully. “It’ll have to be sardines or something.”

“A very personable young man,” I said. “Is he any good?”

“I think he has distinct possibilities,” he replied. “He wants to learn and that’s always a good sign, don’t you think? Anyway, you shall judge for yourself. Seton is quite a test of anyone’s ability!”

It was, actually, a typical RSC production of Macbeth. Lots of swirling smoke and leather armor and those World War Two greatcoats that seem to be an indispensable part of their wardrobe (I swear I caught sight of them once in a production of Love’s Labor’s Lost). Oh yes, and that peculiar music they seem so fond of, rather twangy and atonal and played on obscure instruments. Birnham Wood came to Dunsinane by means of back-projection, and I’ve never seen so much gore as when a rather overparted Macduff held up a dripping Thing, alleged to be the head of Macbeth but fortunately unidentifiable.

“So what did you think?” David asked as we sat by the dying embers of the fire in his tiny sitting room.

“Well, he remembered his lines and didn’t trip over the furniture—and Glamis Castle was rather overfurnished, I thought, rather as if Lady Macbeth had been to some sort of Gothic ideal homes exhibition! And at least he was audible—not like that dreadful Banquo, who might just as well have been a ghost from the beginning for all I heard!”

We sat there until quite late, enjoyably picking the production to pieces. After a bit, Julian came in and we told him how good he’d been and he told us how Seton really was quite a significant character if you looked at the play as a whole and we all had a nice cup of tea and Julian told us the latest RSC gossip and we all had a tiny whiskey just as a nightcap and after a while I left them to it and went to bed. It’s sad, really, how I can’t stay up late as I used to. Perhaps, as a middle-aged widow living in a small West Country town, I don’t have a lot to stay up late for, so I’ve somehow got out of the habit.

The next day David and I had a little wander around the town, which is something I never tire of doing. Even this early in the season there were the ubiquitous coachloads of tourists, shrieking French schoolchildren, silent Japanese photographing everything in sight, just in case it turned out to be relevant, and the occasional American couple, like the first swallows, an earnest of the flocks to come. But Stratford has, for me, this amazing ability to absorb all these crowds and still remain (in spite of the souvenir shops and that horrid new Shakespeare Centre that disfigures the Birthplace) the small market town it always was, and the half-timbered Smiths and Pizza Hut are so delightfully absurd that I’m quite sure Shakespeare would have enjoyed them as much as I do.

We strolled down Chapel Lane, past the school and along the river, up to the church. It’s very touristy now and you have to pay to look at the monument, but that well-known but somehow mysterious bust and the enigmatic inscription never fail to give me a little thrill of excitement.

“I’m glad all that nonsense about opening the grave came to nothing,” I said as we walked down the tree-shadowed path through the churchyard. “Even if they’d found something really thrilling, it would have been wrong. They would have been cursed, I feel sure!”

“Oh well, the city fathers would never allow it, in case there was something there that proved that the plays were really written by Marlowe or the earl of Southampton,” David said.

“Of course Shakespeare wrote them,” I said indignantly. “You only have to be in Stratford to know that. There are living references to things in the plays everywhere you go!”

David laughed. “You needn’t be so fierce—I don’t need convincing! Right, now, where next? Halls Croft, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

We turned right out of the churchyard and walked a little way along the wide street until we came to Halls Croft, the house where Dr. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Bm
• Bm