Free Chapter and Hearse by Catherine Aird Page A

a picture in his history book of a barefoot Henry, in sackcloth and ashes, making his way to Canterbury in the snow to be flogged that had stayed in Sloan’s mind since he was a small boy.
    â€˜The Dean did penance too,’ said the ACC.
    â€˜For helping get rid of another turbulent priest?’ asked Sloan, his memory stirred now.
    â€˜For getting rid of a priest,’ amended the ACC.
    â€˜Really, sir?’ Sloan’s mother, who was a great churchwoman, was forever insisting that she didn’t know what the Church was coming to. It was beginning to sound as if she might be right.
    â€˜From all accounts,’ said the ACC drily, ‘it was the Dean who was turbulent.’
    For reasons that Sloan had never enquired into, his mother always blamed any present-day trouble in a cathedral on Thomas Cranmer and his statutes – perhaps he should have listened to her more. Detection was a more arcane business than it seemed at first sight.
    The ACC was still talking. ‘History, Sloan, says that Walter Lechlade was a peaceable enough fellow. Not that that saved him, of course.’
    Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. Being peaceable was no insurance against being murdered. ‘How was he killed?’ he asked, the policeman in him taking over from the erstwhile schoolboy and the inattentive son. There had, he remembered, been another Archbishop of Canterbury as well as Thomas à Becket who had been done to death in office. His name had stayed in Sloan’s memory from his history lessons purely because of the manner of his murder.
    The ACC consulted his papers again. ‘Two blows on the skull and the arm from knives, swords and Danish axes.’
    â€˜Not a lot of those about, sir.’ With that other archbishop, St Alphege, it had been ox bones.
    â€˜There were then, Sloan.’
    â€˜Then?’ Sloan’s pen stayed suspended above his notebook, a suspicion confirmed. ‘Do I take it, sir, that we’re not talking about the here and now?’
    â€˜Yes and no,’ said the ACC, quite unabashed. ‘More of the there and then, perhaps, than the here and now, but some of both.’
    â€˜Might I ask where?’
    â€˜Exeter, Sloan.’
    â€˜And when?’
    â€˜November 1283.’
    â€˜When the Mayor and the Dean murdered this Walter Lechlade…’
    â€˜The Precentor…’
    â€˜With a Danish axe?’ Their pastry must have come later.
    â€˜No, no, Sloan. The actual murder was done by others, orchestrated by three vicars and a canon…’
    With Thomas à Becket, thought Sloan, it had been four knights, but the end result had still been the same spilling of brains.
    â€˜In fact,’ murmured the ACC, ‘one commentator called ’em satellites of Satan.’
    Sloan said he wasn’t at all surprised.
    â€˜Henry de Stanway, clerk in holy orders, John de Wolrington, Vicar of Ottery St Mary, John de Christenstowe, Vicar of Heavitree, and Canon Reginald de Ercevesk,’ recited the ACC. ‘Almost the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you might say.’
    â€˜Caused a bit of a flutter in the dovecotes, that, I dare say, sir.’ There had been other clergymen who had hit the headlines, but Sloan didn’t think this was the moment to mention them.
    â€˜The Bishop appealed to the King for justice.’
    â€˜And which King would that have been, sir?’
    â€˜Edward I of blessed memory.’
    â€˜The Hammer of the Scots?’ More of those history lessons had stuck than Sloan had appreciated.
    â€˜He was known as the English Justinian,’ said the ACC, who had had a classical education.
    â€˜I didn’t know that, sir.’
    â€˜And he came down to Exeter at Christmas 1285.’
    â€˜Two years later?’ In Sloan’s book, justice delayed was justice denied.
    â€˜This is where it gets interesting, Sloan.’
    â€˜Really, sir?’ Interesting, he decided, it might be;