Read Online Ritual Murder by S. T. Haymon - Free Book Online

said, and found it wanting. “Not conclusive. He still might want to raise the biggest stink possible, to make sure we don’t latch on to his simple, uncomplicated homicide.”
    Jurnet said, “Either way, the kid’s common or garden dead, that’s for sure.”
    â€œNow, Ben,” the other chided. “You’re letting yourself get involved again. How many times do I have to remind you that detachment’s the first requisite for a good copper? Not that there aren’t days—” the hand holding the photograph had grown tense and white-knuckled—“when I find myself wondering whether the good Lord didn’t dangle those quaint appendages on the male torso simply for the fun of seeing them crushed, burnt, stamped on, electric-shocked, cut off, or otherwise put in painful jeopardy.”
    Jurnet said, “I’ll remember what you said about being detached, sir.”
    For a moment the Superintendent’s face stiffened with annoyance. Then he laughed, unaffectedly.
    â€œIt’s these bloody pictures.” He returned to the pile the one he had been looking at. “The corpse as ritual object, eh? T. S. Eliot knew what he was doing all right. Stage a murder in a cathedral, it becomes transmuted into an art form. I doubt they’d ever have thought twice about Becket if he’d been struck down in some Canterbury back alley.”
    Jurnet forced himself to look at the photograph the Superintendent had discarded.
    A common or garden kid, done to death in a sick and barbarous way. Thin arms, knock knees, pot belly showing through the unbuttoned shirt. Could never have been a Little Lord Fauntleroy at the best of times, but presentable enough, as Jurnet remembered him, in scarlet cassock and white ruff, paired with the kid with the chewing gum, filing into the stalls for choir practice.
    Aloud he said, “Don’t know about Canterbury. Reckon one Little St Ulf’s enough for Angleby.”
    â€œMore than!” the other agreed readily. “Medieval superstition was bad enough in the Middle Ages, let alone today. Unless, maybe, it’s that nowadays we simply make superstition respectable by calling it art. Both, after all, have their roots in the same need to propitiate the dark and unknowable forces in the Universe.”
    â€œToo deep for me, sir.”
    The Superintendent’s face reddened with an irritation instantly suppressed.
    â€œMe too, Ben. Words to cocoon the nastiness. Let’s stick to the knowables, eh? Arthur Cossey, aged twelve years and nine months, murdered in the cathedral between the hours of 6.45 and 8.15 a.m. It seems that the climate of the cathedral poses special problems, and Dr Colton can’t be more specific. So—what have we got so far on Arthur Cossey?”
    Mrs Sandra Cossey’s front doorstep, as white and welcoming as a new tombstone, should have prepared Jurnet and Sergeant Ellers for what to expect inside Number 7, Bishop Row. When Mrs Cossey opened the door, the sight of the apron she wore evoked for Jurnet an instant picture of a woman in cardigan and apron busy with her Brasso in the Close.
    The recollection had point. For Sandra Cossey, polishing was evidently more than a means to a living: it was a way of life. Everything in the little parlour that could be polished—and a significant proportion of the furnishings appeared to serve no other purpose—flashed and twinkled with the deadly jollity of a set of false teeth. Jurnet could not remember ever being in a house so repellently clean.
    The woman had made no undue outcry when she had first heard that her only son was dead. Jurnet had not thought less of her for it. Grieving was a creative activity for which you either had, or hadn’t, a gift. By now, he saw, she had made some attempt to devise a proper role for herself; taken the rollers out of her hair, and put on a black skirt and jumper. From time to time she dabbed at her