Caroline Minuscule by Andrew Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

band. He looked across at Amanda who laughed and said, ‘Read the letter out.’
    Dougal unfolded it. It was long: six or seven sheets of hotel writing paper covered with that flamboyant script.
    My Dear William,
    I hope you will never read this letter. I shall send it to my bank with instructions to forward it, if I haven’t told them not to within a week. It’s a sort of insurance policy, I suppose.
    You will be wondering what all this is about. When we had a drink together earlier this evening I knew that certain people were wanting to kill me; now I think it likely they will try much sooner than I had anticipated. I’m afraid this must sound a trifle melodramatic. I am writing to you because I like you – perhaps I see something of my younger self in you; also there’s no one else to write to. In any case, I owe you some money.
    I misled you intentionally tonight on a number of points. Gumper was working for me. I used to know him, very slightly, at Oxford. He accepted the commission and then tried to blackmail me. He knew money was involved somewhere, and wanted a share. He believed his leverage was increased by the fact he knew something of a youthful peccadillo of mine.
    Enough of him. For you to understand the events which led up to this, you must allow me to outline a short story. You may have seen the obituary of Canon Oswyth Vernon-Jones in the press last month. His work among the criminal classes attracted a good deal of attention in the fifties – you’re probably too young to remember the shock which his controversial reassessment of the Crucifixion,
My God Among Thieves
, caused at the time. He was once a chaplain at Dartmoor, and was then intimately concerned with several rehabilitation centres before he became a Canon of Rosington.
    So far as I know, only one other person besides myself knew of the Canon’s other profession. While at Dartmoor – with my help, I might add – he developed a sideline to supplement his income: he became a fixer in a very discreet, superior way. He always operated through intermediaries.
    At first his concern was to supply a few home comforts to selected prisoners; he probably saw it as an extension of the command to love thy neighbour. But he soon grew involved in the activity – not only financially, but intellectually as well. He was ideally placed for it, of course – it’s incredible how easily a clergyman may move in all ranks of society (particularly if he has a legitimate pastoral interest in criminals). His organization soon extended beyond the confines of Dartmoor; when he left his chaplaincy there, he travelled widely and extended it still further (with my help, of course). He was, in the Johnsonian phrase, a clubbable man, at least externally; he could make himself equally agreeable to an archbishop or a child murderer. And frequently did.
    A mission to take Christianity behind bars, a wide range of social contacts and a phenomenal memory: these three qualities were the secret of his success. At his prime – between about 1965 and 1975 – he could arrange almost anything: from a murder to a kilo of heroin; from preferential treatment by the local council to (on one occasion at least) a bishopric.
    He was successful because he was moderate, I think. He never went for large, uncertain profits, always for small safe ones. He was merely a voice on the telephone, at most, to those few of his clients who had any direct contact with him. The majority went through me or another person. On several occasions, his clients knew him in his spiritual capacity, without realizing that in his time he had supplied them with far more material comforts. You see, all he did was to put buyers, as it were, in contact with sellers (or vice versa) and charge a commission. Breathtakingly simple.
    I handled one end of the business for him, and a person called Michael Aloysius Lee saw to the other. In the main I dealt with wealthy