Murder in a Cathedral by Ruth Dudley Edwards

acu tetigisti ”, as Jeeves would say. You get on so well with her because you are two of a kind.’
    ‘Anyway, I’ve already squared it with David. He likes her. Said she’d be company.’
    ‘But…’
    ‘Stop arguing. Tell you what. I’ll deliver her personally on Sunday when I come down to hear Norm the Noodlehead preach. I’m in need of a good laugh. I look forward to enjoying the occasion with you.’
    ‘I won’t be here.’
    ‘What do you mean you won’t be here? You said you were coming back tomorrow.’
    ‘Yes, but I’ll be going back to London on Saturday evening, so as to be ready the next morning to attend festivities in Battersea chez Bev.’
    The baroness looked blank.
    ‘Norm’s successor. He sounds potentially very entertaining. Davage met him this morning and squeaked apoplectically about his awfulness. Apparently he likes to be known as the Rev. Bev.’
    The baroness began to protest volubly, but Amiss cut her short. ‘Just shut up, Jack. I’ve a long-standing date to spend Sunday next with Ellis Pooley. He and Jim were so tied up with the Wimbledon serial murderer that we haven’t had a chance to meet for ages. I have absolutely no intention of welshing on the arrangement. You should be patting me on the back for combining business with pleasure by persuading him to suss out Norm’s past.’
    The baroness chuckled. ‘So be it. I would give a lot to see young Master Pooley leaping around being saved.’ She sighed. ‘In fact you now make me envious: I expect you’ll have much more fun than is likely to be on offer from Norm’s Old Testament ravings.’
    ‘I expect so too. From what Tilly told me, the Rev. Bev is not to be missed: charismatic, joyful and ready to heal at the drop of a cassock, apparently.’
    The baroness yawned. ‘Good, good. Norm looks a bit dour by comparison. Still, I will extract from the occasion what entertainment I can and trust you to do the same.’
    They turned into the hotel grounds. ‘Now how do you suggest I square Rachel?’ enquired Amiss. ‘She’s becoming increasingly tired of what she calls my Flying Dutchman approach to life.’
    The baroness stopped and looked grimly at him. ‘Tell her to accept you for what you are. If she doesn’t enjoy your adventurousness, ingenuity and dash, then she doesn’t deserve you.’
    He went to bed comforted.
     
    ‘So now to the matter of the dean’s memorial,’ he wrote to Rachel.
    ‘I am told that the major inspiration for this was an immense monument in Winchester Cathedral to one of its Victorian bishops, who was clearly a chap with ideas above his station and whose memorial includes four sizeable angels carrying the bier and a vast eagle poised at the great man’s feet – presumably to carry his soul to heaven.
    ‘Plans for Dean Roper’s memorial were drawn up three years ago by his protégé, the perpetrator of the lady-chapel picture. The sketches show a marble effigy of Dean Roper clad in full ecclesiastical regalia, coloured in where appropriate with purple and gold, his body being borne by six winged youths in extremely brief togas. At the dean’s feet is a representation of the martyrdom of a hunky St Sebastian, who seems these days to be the patron saint of gays. The underside of the canopy is painted with murals of what were presumably the dean’s favourite biblical events, many of which seem to involve an excessive amount of romping of the David and Jonathan kind, a few more martyrdoms (was the dean into S&M I wonder?), and what the bishop said were the apostles skinny-dipping in the River Jordan, while John the Baptist and Jesus – turned out for decency’s sake in posing pouches – get on with the baptism in the corner.
    ‘Not surprisingly, English Heritage emitted a scream of anguish and refused to countenance having such a monstrosity in the cathedral, whereupon the dean and his chums took legal advice and discovered that there was nothing stopping them from erecting it in the