Murder in a Cathedral by Ruth Dudley Edwards Page A

garden of the deanery. So the decision was made to put this gay grotto in a reasonably discreet spot in the northwest corner. The foundations were laid, the plinth was put in position and the sculptor got to work.
    ‘Dean Cooper found out about it, saw the plans, denounced it as satanically inspired and then discovered that his predecessor, a scion of a major brewery, had left to his successor a bequest of a million pounds to be spent on whatever improvements to the cathedral he wanted; the loot would not be released until this gay grotto was in place. That news caused Norm to cave in, so he’s not completely incorruptible.
    ‘So you can see that there is much to interest me. Try and look upon what I’m doing as a form of paid social work. I promise the post has been redirected, and my calls diverted and I won’t pass up any interviews for real jobs.’
    He reread the long letter, grimaced and typed:
    ‘Do I hear words like “pushover”, “feeble” and “Troutbeck’s office boy” rise uncharitably once more to your lips? Pshaw! That is just because I have become too accustomed over the last few years to apologizing and pretending that I am being pushed into that which secretly I really want to do. So please disregard any wimpery in this letter, any suggestion that I am a piece of flotsam tossed hither and thither on the tide that is Baroness Troutbeck’s will (what a fucking awful metaphor!) and accept instead that I am willingly grasping the opportunity to help prop up a great national institution. And at the very least it’ll be a lot better than moping at home.
    ‘I must end now. I’m off to Westonbury tomorrow, so this is the only opportunity to assuage my curiosity by visiting Norm and Tilly’s old church; Ellis, my anthropological companion-in-arms, is due to pick me up any minute.’
    Pausing only to add endearments, Amiss put his letter in an envelope, addressed it to Rachel care of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for forwarding in the diplomatic bag and stamped it just as the doorbell rang.
     
    Amiss and Pooley arrived at St John the Evangelist’s ten minutes early to find that there was no parking space within several hundred yards. By the time they entered the vast Victorian church, there was only just standing room: the nave was chock-a-block with worshippers singing lustily along with a male guitarist and three women with tambourines. The man wore sandals, jeans and a flowered shirt, and the women floaty smocks of the kind that went out of fashion when Flower Power died in the seventies. The tune was Dylanesque and the voices poor – but what really horrified Amiss were the words of the refrain:
‘When they come and listen to us sing to God aburve,
They’ll know we are Christians by our lurve, by our lurve.’
    He avoided Pooley’s eye.
    This song appeared to be the culmination of the superannuated hippies’ gig; when they finished, the lead singer raised his guitar towards the heavens and called, ‘Praise the Lord.’
    ‘Praise the Lord,’ yelled the congregation.
    The Flower Children scampered off into the well of the church and were instantly replaced by a West Indian steel band, which danced onto the platform. Although they were more to Amiss’s musical taste, their sound – augmented by even more tambourines – was so deafening as to cause him actual pain. Unable to identify any more than occasional words like ‘Lord’, ‘suffer’ and ‘save’, he let the sound wash over him, wriggled himself into a better vantage point and watched for audience reaction.
    Tilly had been right. There was no denying that this was a wildly enthusiastic congregation. And what was more, there was nothing uniform about its members. Middle-aged, middle-class trendies, washed-out teenagers, down-and-outs and clean-cut Mormonesque types were all singing along lustily, their faces full of joy: Amiss and an increasingly tight-lipped Pooley seemed the only spectres at the feast.
    The din ceased,