Day of Vengeance by Jeanne M. Dams

Author:Jeanne M. Dams [Jeanne M. Dams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2014-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Alan was very still. Then he shook himself, rather like Watson when he’s been out in the rain. ‘That is absolutely all I needed to put a cap on this day. Dorothy, my dear, Jonathan, what would you like to drink?’

We all settled for beer. I would have liked a Jack Daniel’s, but this didn’t seem the sort of pub to stock it, and I know Alan was panting for a good tot of whisky, but, there again, what was available at The Lion was probably not the best single malt.

The beer was quite acceptable, though, darkly amber, clear, and quite refreshing. We each took a long quaff, and then Alan said, ‘All right. Who’ll go first?’

‘I know Jonathan’s story, and I haven’t a lot to report. You start.’

‘Well.’ He took another pull at his beer. ‘The commission members are a bit rattled, as one can imagine. Never before in the history of episcopal appointments has a candidate been murdered. Not in recent history, at any rate. God knows what Henry the Eighth and his crowd got up to.’

‘I don’t think they bothered with commissions and all that. They just named people bishops and then expected them to do their bidding. The king’s bidding, I mean. Look at Becket. He wasn’t even in holy orders when Henry made him Archbishop of Canterbury.’

‘Different Henry, quite a few centuries earlier. All right, all right, don’t chuck your crisps about. I bought all they had. At any rate, the meeting was pretty well divided. I can speak only in generalities, you understand, but some of the members said that since there was no chance Brading would have been chosen anyway, there was no point in not continuing with the process. They didn’t put it quite that way, and they hedged it round with expressions of horror and regret, but it was apparent that was what they meant.

‘The other faction – the Brading supporters – claimed to be appalled by the argument. By the time they finished arguing their case, Brading was equipped with a halo and wings and was well on his way to canonization.’

‘I didn’t think Anglicans canonized people.’

‘They’re prepared to make an exception. There was a good deal of not-so-subtle finger-pointing, as well.’ He finished his beer.

‘Finger-pointing? At whom?’

‘At me, of course. “Where are the police? Why has no one been arrested for this heinous murder?” Never mind that I have been retired for a good many years and have nothing, officially, to do with the investigation.’

‘Oh, honestly! That’s just plain mean! They know perfectly well that you’re in no position to investigate.’

‘It was all politics, love. Grandstanding. But unpleasant enough. Who wants another?’

‘Mine this time.’ Jonathan got to his feet with only a bit of stiffness. Time was when he couldn’t walk without a cane. I was proud of his hard, painful work toward recovery.

‘So, are they going to postpone the process?’

‘I don’t know. They were getting ready to vote on it when you called me away. I gave Kenneth my proxy and escaped.

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