Anselm caught the last train to Cambridge, where Father Andrew met him on the station concourse. Since the Prior had never quite come to appreciate the relationship of co-operation that prevails between the clutch and the synchromesh gearbox, Anselm offered to drive back to Larkwood. Thus the Prior was free to study, by the light of a pocket torch, Elizabeth’s brief account of moral upheaval and her attempt to make amends. When he slowly folded up the letter, Anselm explained what had come to pass with Mrs Bradshaw, how she’d used a terrible phrase: nothing comes of nothing He concluded by saying, ‘And when I got to Trespass Place, her husband had gone. Elizabeth’s scheme is already in ruins, within two weeks of her death.’
The car trundled out of the city and it was only after several miles that Anselm, from the smell, realised he’d left the handbrake on. Discreetly he released it, and dropped his window by an inch. Apparently’ he said, ‘Elizabeth had a heart condition that meant she could die at any moment. It must clear the mind wonderfully to know that each breath could be your last…’
‘It did,’ said the Prior. ‘She called me on the day of the consultation.’
‘When was that?’
‘Shortly after she’d come to Larkwood… when she’d spoken of a homicide.’
Anselm slowed down to concentrate. Whatever the Prior had gone on to say had almost certainly pushed Elizabeth into action.
‘I didn’t mention this before,’ said the Prior, ‘because I felt… self-conscious about what I said to her. She began to cry because there was so much that she would change, but it was out of reach.’ Father Andrew tugged at am eyebrow ‘I tried to comfort her, saying it’s not the beginning that matters, but rather the undiscovered end, because it completely transforms our understanding of where we came from, what we’ve done, who we ultimately are… I said it was never too late, that even last words or a final act could bring about this fantastic change… that it was like magic. The line seemed to go dead but then I heard her say “Thank you.” I next saw her on the day she gave you the key.’
‘The day’ said Anselm, ‘that she prepared for what is now unfolding.’
Gradually the wide roads narrowed and street lamps vanished. The stars were hidden and the moon faintly lit the edge of a cloud. Beneath it Larkwood appeared like a crowd of fireflies. After parking beneath the plum trees they trudged along a winding path towards the monastery. Anselm could barely see the Prior but he heard his voice clearly ‘You must go back to London, I’m afraid. You owe it to Elizabeth and to George, to his wife and to his son. Perhaps it’s owed to Mr Riley; perhaps, also, to yourself.’
Anselm didn’t like that final coupling, but he took it as an accident of sentence construction. ‘When should I go?’
‘Tomorrow night. There’s no time left for thinking. As you say her plan is already falling apart.’
Anselm thought of George in welding goggles, stumbling down an alley ‘How do I find a man who’s lost to himself?’
‘I’ll speak to Cyril’s niece.
‘Pardon?’
‘Cyril’s niece, Debbie. She works with the homeless near Euston.’
Anselm pictured a large, annoyed oblong with clipped hair and a mouth like a post-box. ‘An inspired idea,’ he said magnanimously.
At the entrance to Larkwood the Prior fiddled with a huge key wrought from iron hundreds of years ago. As the door swung open, the Prior took Anselm’s arm, and they paused on the threshold. ‘Find out who Elizabeth was,’ he said, ‘find the child who grew up to wear a gown that was too heavy for her shoulders.’
He seemed to have vanished, so deep was the darkness.
‘Where shall I start?’ asked Anselm, sharply awake to the presence in front of him.
‘The fly-leaf of an incomparable book.’
Anselm recalled the inscription in The Following of Christ, written by a nun, and he smiled at the figure before him as it clanked and fumbled once more with the lock.
By late afternoon the next day all the necessary arrangements for Anselm’s trip to London had been made: a room had been secured with the Augustinians in Hoxton; consecutive meetings had been organised with Debbie Lynwood and Inspector Cartwright (who, of course, knew nothing of Elizabeth’s floundering project and the evidence held by George Bradshaw); after a long and entertaining conversation between Anselm and the Provincial of the Daughters of Charity, an appointment had been made with Sister Dorothy – a maverick soul, it transpired, who now endured forced retirement in Camberwell; and, finally the Prior had produced an envelope containing sufficient funds for a week, a generous act that had spared Anselm a reunion with the cellarer.
After vespers Father Andrew called Anselm out of his stall to the centre of the choir. Following ancient custom, no one left Larkwood on a journey without the Prior’s blessing. He had a little book full of well-phrased send-offs. You’d kneel wondering which one you were going to get.
Anselm bowed his head but, like a blasphemy he thought of Riley: the bobbing knee, jangling gold on a bony wrist and thin, fixed lips. The image turned Anselm cold, and he woke, as if stunned, for the Prior’s concluding words:
‘May the light guide your steps, your thoughts, your words and your deeds; and may it bring you safely home, if needs be by a different path.’