On the Third Day Read online

  He decided to wait, and sat down to read at his desk. The light was weak. He reached forward to switch on his lamp, glancing as he did so up and out of the window towards the window of Father Lambert’s room on the other wing of the monastery, thinking that if the older priest was there, perhaps he too would have switched on his lamp. No light shone from the window.

  He looked back at his book and was dazzled for a moment by the bright light from his lamp reflected off the white paper; then, as his eyes focused on the print, his thoughts caught up with something he had seen when glancing towards Father Lambert’s window.

  He looked again. His eyes, used to the brighter light, took a moment to adjust to the gloom of the cloudy summer evening. When they did they confirmed what Andrew thought he had seen – a long shape like a large lobster net or an elongated kitbag apparently attached to the wall beneath Father I ambert’s room. He stood and leaned out to get a better look, and then with a spasm of shock recognized the shape as a man’s body hanging from the window by a rope.

  He jumped up and ran wildly up the stairs, slithering in his haste on the polished wood. On the upper corridor he passed Father Thomas – a plump mathematician – and said to him breathlessly: ‘Quick, get help.’

  He reached the door of Father Lambert’s room, raised his hand from habit to knock before he entered, but then lowered it to the handle, threw open the door and ran across the room towards the open window.

  The bed blocked his path: it had been moved in front of the window, and a line of blue plastic-coated cable – the kind sold as washing-line in supermarkets – had been tied to a post at the foot and was stretched, tautly, over the sill. It was only by kneeling on the mattress that Andrew could look out of the window. He saw at once that the other end of the cable was tied around the neck of the suspended body and he knew, too, from the texture of the close-cropped hair on the head, that the body was that of Father Lambert.

  In a frenzy he grabbed the line and tried to haul the body back into the room, but such was its weight that he could not lift it. Although his reason told him that the man was dead, and that there was nothing he could do to revive him, he became unreasonably convinced that there was still breath in the body and that he could save his Professor if only he could lift him back onto the bed. His weakness frustrated him and he began to sob, and shout at the same time: ‘Wait, Father Lambert, wait … we’re coming, we’re here.’

  At that moment three others came into the room behind him – Father Godfrey, the Prior, Father Thomas, the mathematician, and Gerry, the Irish porter. Father Godfrey climbed onto the bed beside Andrew, peered over the sill, turned pale, and whispered ‘Dear Lord’ between his teeth. He too took hold of the plastic-coated cable and with Andrew tried to lift the body, but given their awkward position on the bed, even their combined strength was not enough.

  ‘Leave it to Gerry,’ Father Godfrey said, as he always did when a fuse burned out or a door jammed. He moved back; so too did Andrew, and it was the turn of the porter to crouch on the bed with Father Thomas. They pulled for a moment at the cable, but then Gerry came away from the window saying: ‘It’ll be best to bring him in from below.’

  The four men filed out of the cell and, while the porter went for some wire-cutters, the three monks descended to the unused room immediately below Father Lambert’s. It was locked. Father Thomas ran to get the key while Andrew and his superior waited by the door. The younger monk, who had now mastered his sobbing, looked at the older one not so much to ask any specific question as to search for some explanation in the expression on the other’s face. The plump face of the Simonite Prior, however, remained blank and severe. He avoided looking into Andrew’s eyes as if knowing that his own had nothing to say.

  Father Thomas returned with the key. He gave it to Father Godfrey, who opened the door. The furniture in the cell was the same as in all the others but there was a musty, airless smell like that in a loft or a cupboard. It was also dark, because the legs and torso of the hanging body shut out much of the fading evening light.

  Father Godfrey went to the wide sash window, undid the catch and raised the lower half. Father Thomas, deferring to the greater strength of the younger man, let Andrew move up beside the Prior. ‘Gerry wasn’t sure if his cutters would cut the cable,’ he said. ‘He said he might have to use a hacksaw.’

  Father Godfrey nodded.

  ‘He’ll give a shout when he’s ready,’ said Father Thomas.

  Again Father Godfrey nodded. He reached out of the window to see where he could hold the body. Standing on the floor he could only reach the hip. ‘I hope he can lower him slowly,’ he said. He turned back to Father Thomas. ‘Go and tell Gerry to cut the cable near to the bed and then lower it slowly. Tell him not to let it drop all at once.’

  Father Thomas left the room. Andrew took a chair to the window to see if, by standing on it, he could get hold of the body higher than the hip, but he found that when he stood on the chair he was above the open lower half of the sash window.

  ‘Should we open the top half?’ he asked his superior.

  ‘No, they always jam. This will do, if they lower it slowly.’

  Andrew got off the chair, pushed it out of the way, and stood beside his superior by the window. For a moment they were silent, then Andrew asked: ‘What can have happened?’

  Father Godfrey opened his mouth to answer but at that moment a cry of ‘Right’ came from the porter on the floor above. The two monks – the young and the old – leaned out of the window and took hold of the body. As it was lowered, they guided it through the window until, at the last moment, the two men above let go, and the body fell onto the floor.

  Andrew had fallen with the weight of the corpse and now found that its head lay half on his lap and half against the wall beneath the window. He shrank back, horrified to see a face he had revered already blackened and distorted, with the tongue protruding from between the teeth and the unfocused eyes bulging from their sockets.

  ‘God forgive him,’ murmured Father Godfrey, whose face had gone a shade paler than before. Then he turned to Father Thomas who, puffing for breath, had come to the door. ‘Quick, a stole and the chrism.’

  Father Thomas disappeared. The porter came in and looked, astonished, at the body on the floor. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he muttered.

  As if inspired by this pious ejaculation, Father Godfrey now began to pray, but in a muttered whisper so that Andrew could not follow or join in. He floundered for a moment, searching in his mind for an appropriate prayer himself, then for something spontaneous to say to God; but the grotesque head on his lap seemed to drive out any other thoughts. No cry came from his heart and he could envisage no God to hear it.

  Ritual enabled him to escape from that moment of desolation because Father Thomas returned with the paraphernalia of the last sacrament. It was clear, of course, that Father Lambert was stone dead – no attempts had been made to revive him – and so when the four men lifted his body onto the mattress, it was as if onto a bier, not a bed. ‘He’s been dead for a while, poor man,’ said Father Godfrey as if voicing his own doubts, ‘but there’s no knowing when the soul leaves the body so we should anoint him all the same.’

  He leaned forward and pulled the eyelids down over the bulging eyes, then took the stole from Father Thomas and placed it around his neck. Father Thomas opened the small silver box of chrism. Father Godfrey took some on his thumb and smeared it in the form of a cross on the eyelids he had just closed, saying: ‘By this holy unction, and by his most tender mercy, may the Lord forgive thee whatsoever sin has been committed by sight.’ He then did the same to his ears, nostrils, mouth, hands and feet, repeating the prayer each time with the words appropriate to each organ, and with a special emphasis when it came to the hands. ‘May the Lord forgive thee whatsoever sin thou hast committed by deed …’

  When the ceremony was over, the four men stood quite still, either praying silently or simply wondering what to do next. As they did so the b
ell rang for the monks’ supper. The sound seemed to make the Prior suddenly less constrained, as if the situation could be saved by a return to routine.

  ‘Will you take these back,’ he said to Father Thomas, handing him the stole and the chrism, ‘and tell the fathers to start supper without us.’

  ‘Should I say …’ Father Thomas began.

  ‘No, nothing at all.’

  Father Thomas left the now darkened cell and Father Godfrey, with a last look at the corpse of his fellow monk, went out beside him and walked towards the stairs, followed by Andrew and the porter.

  ‘Should I ring the sisters?’ asked Gerry, referring to the nursing nuns who customarily laid out the corpses of the dead monks.

  ‘Yes,’ said Father Godfrey, ‘but first, perhaps …’

  ‘The police?’ asked Gerry, his voice taking on a respectful tone as it mentioned an institution he revered almost as much as the Catholic Church.

  The Prior frowned. ‘I was thinking, rather, of Doctor O’Malley. I think we can leave it to him to bring in the police if he thinks it necessary.’

  ‘I think that in cases of this kind …’ began the porter.

  ‘I dare say,’ said Father Godfrey sharply, ‘but we’ll let the doctor decide.’ He turned to Andrew. ‘Would you come with me, now, for a word?’

  Andrew nodded in a dazed way and followed his superior down the stairs to the ground floor and past the refectory – with its sound of clattering cutlery and the voice of Father Wilfrid reading from de Joinville’s Life of St Louis – to the Prior’s study.

  This too smelt of polish, but tinged with tobacco, for Father Godfrey occasionally smoked a pipe. In most other respects it was similar to the study of the headmaster of a public school – a large, half-private, half-public room with two old leather armchairs, a club fender, and in one corner a desk with two telephones, a dictating machine and a framed photograph of Father Godfrey’s parents. On the wall behind the desk there was a reproduction of a painting by Titian of St Simon Doria, the order’s founder, while over the mantel there was a large crucifix which made it clear that the room’s incumbent was a man of God.

  Andrew, who had come in and out of this room on many occasions without remarking on the figure on the cross, noticed it now for the first time as a graphic depiction of agony and death.

  ‘Sit down,’ Father Godfrey said to him, pointing to an armchair on one side of the fireplace and sitting himself in the other.

  Andrew did as he was asked, his eyes still fixed on the twisted figure of Christ on the cross.

  Father Godfrey followed the direction of his glance and for a moment said nothing, as if unwilling to interrupt a silent prayer. But Andrew was not praying: he was not even grieving for his dead friend. He returned his eyes to the face of his superior and wondered almost idly what he was going to say. He watched as Father Godfrey raised the fingers of both his hands to rub the shining skin of his bald temples as if a massage might help to clarify his thoughts. When Father Godfrey looked up, it was with the kind of official expression which always accompanied the announcement of some administrative decision. He opened his mouth to speak, but before doing so he suddenly seemed to appreciate who it was who was with him, and a kinder look came into his eyes. ‘This is particularly terrible for you,’ he said.

  Andrew shook his head as if to disown any selfish sorrow. ‘I don’t understand what can have happened,’ he said.

  Father Godfrey now blushed as if caught out in an impious assumption. ‘It does seem,’ he said, ‘as if Father Lambert killed himself.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ said Andrew.

  ‘What other … interpretation can there be?’

  ‘It could have been an accident …’ Andrew began, but then his voice faltered as if he realized that the suggestion was absurd. ‘Or murder,’ he blurted out, with a defiant look at his superior.

  Father Godfrey hesitated, pretending to consider this last suggestion; but then, with an ironic smile on the edge of his lips, he asked: ‘Can you think of anyone … or rather, any reason why anyone should want to murder Father Lambert?’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘No.’ He looked down at his clasped hands to hide the tears which he now felt seeping into his eyes and blurring his vision. ‘But I can’t think why he would want to kill himself either.’

  Father Godfrey sighed. ‘It is a dreadful truth,’ he said, ‘but there are … occasional suicides among priests.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the Devil tempts us with moments of despair – us, above all, whom he loathes and envies because God has chosen us to be higher than the angels.’

  ‘But surely, after so many years …’

  ‘If a priest’s faith falters, it is precisely his age which deepens his despair, because he has given up so much – a wife, a family – all for a reward which he no longer believes will be his.’

  ‘I can’t believe that Father Lambert ever wanted that kind of life,’ said Andrew fiercely.

  Father Godfrey hesitated, and when he spoke chose his words with some care. ‘He was an exceptional man, as you know – learned and holy – and he was already that way when you met him, but just as he only became learned after many years of study and concentration, so he only became holy after many trials and temptations.’

  Andrew lowered his head and mumbled: ‘Of course. I should have realized.’

  ‘I cannot believe,’ said the Prior, ‘that almighty God will condemn him because he faltered in one moment of despair. Remember the words of St Paul. “In Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has felt our weaknesses with us – who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin. Let us be confident, then, in approaching the throne of grace, that we shall have mercy from him” – and mercy too for Father Lambert.’

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew kept his head lowered, and for a moment the words of the older priest did calm his chaotic thoughts.

  ‘Now,’ said the superior, reverting to the practical tone of voice with which he clearly felt more at ease, ‘we must think of what is to be done.’

  ‘Doctor O’Malley will be on his way.’

  ‘Yes, and he may feel it necessary to call in the police. What is important, however, is to make sure that no newspaper finds out what has happened. There are all too many enemies of the Church who take delight in reporting cases of this kind.’

  ‘But won’t there be an inquest?’

  ‘There will, yes, unless Doctor O’Malley decides that no good purpose could be served by calling in the police or putting suicide as the cause of death.’

  ‘But we could hardly expect him to make out a false death certificate.’

  A small frown wrinkled Father Godfrey’s bald brow and a trace of irritability sharpened his tone of voice. ‘It is not what we would expect of him, but what he would expect of himself. He is a good Catholic, after all. He would not want to harm the Church.’

  Andrew said nothing, but his superior seemed to take his silence as a form of rebuke because he went on, again in a tetchy tone of voice: ‘As you will discover as you grow older, Andrew, we are often tested by choices not of good and evil but of the greater or the lesser evil. No doubt it would be wrong for Doctor O’Malley to say that Father Lambert had died from natural causes if he had not, but first of all we cannot be absolutely certain that some kind of embolism or brainstorm – perhaps sunstroke from his visit to Israel – did not lead him to behave in this irrational way, and secondly we must weigh against the lesser evil of a small deception the certain and substantial evil that will result if it becomes known that Father Lambert – Father Lambert, of all people – has taken his own life.’

  Again Andrew said nothing, but his silence was more hesitant and less sullen.

  ‘It isn’t just his fame as an archaeologist that matters – though that would make sure the story went on the front page: it is his standing as a priest and a man of faith. Imagine the gloating of our detractors, and think of the de
moralization of all those men and women who have looked to him as a heroic exponent of the Catholic religion. Think of our fellow priests, and the danger that this advertisement of his one brief moment of despair might induce the same in one of them and inspire him to do likewise.’

  He argued with increasing agitation, as if to persuade himself as much as Andrew, and Andrew, who, ever since he had seen the body dangling from the upper window, had been gasping and struggling in his own mind not to be sucked under by the current of his despair, could not but see the force of this argument. He looked up at his superior, and in his eyes there must have been a sign that he was persuaded, because the Prior now sat back with a sigh as if Andrew’s concurrence was that of a whole committee.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door. Father Thomas entered and said: ‘The doctor is on his way.’

  ‘Good,’ said Father Godfrey. ‘Come in, please, and close the door.’

  Father Thomas did as he was instructed and came to sit on the club fender. Father Godfrey stood up, went to his desk, picked up one of the telephones and dialled a single number. ‘Gerry,’ he said when the call was answered. ‘Would you come to my study at once, please.’

  He put the telephone down.

  ‘Father Gervase asked if you were coming to supper,’ said Father Thomas in the voice of one terrified that he has done the wrong thing. ‘I said I thought not.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  Again there was a knock on the door and the porter entered. ‘Doctor O’Malley will be here in a jiffy,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said the Prior. ‘Thank you.’

  Gerry hovered near the door.

  ‘Please sit down for a moment.’

  The old man crossed to the leather armchair that the Prior had vacated.