Death in Holy Orders

[sawyl]

Another murder mystery and another P.D. James novel. This time it's the extremely enjoyable Death in Holy Orders.

When a seminary student dies in murky circumstances, his powerful father is dissatisfied with the inquest verdict of suicide and demands that Scotland Yard look into it further. Under cover of a holiday, Adam Dalgliesh returns St Anselm's College, a fondly remembered childhood haunt set in a desolate part of Norfolk, to investigate further. But Dalgliesh is not to be the only guest at St Anselm's. Also visting are Roger Yarwood, an inspector with Norfolk Police on the verge of a nervous breakdown; Clive Stannard, a sociologist with an interest in church history; Emma Lavenham, a Cambridge academic giving a set of guest lectures on English Literature; and Archdeacon Crampton, a trustee of the college.

When, after an appalling evening meal in which all the tensions of the college are brought to the surface, Matthew Crampton is found battered to death in the chapel, Dalgliesh finds himself dealing with a fully fledged murder investigation. Quickly taking charge, he summons his team from London and sets about trying to sort out who among the college staff and guests had reason to kill Crampton — the list, unsurprisingly, is long — and who actually did.

One of the great pleasures of Death in Holy Orders is the way that it allows James to play to one of her strengths: her ability to create convincingly priestly characters. The Warden of St Anselm's, the aristocratic and intellectual Sebastian Morell, has a wonderful sense of confidence that endures despite the murderers and seems to come just as much from his ancestry as his faith. Father Martin, the former Warden and an old friend of Dalgliesh's from his childhood visits, despite his age and increasing frailty, combines keen intelligence with deep faith in way that allows him to deal with the nightmares of his past and the horrors of his present.

Crampton too, is well drawn. For, if his initial and abrasive encounters with the staff of the college seem to suggest a man determined to offend everyone he meets, James allows his true character to come out through the course of the investigation. This reveals a man at doctrinal odds with the High Church beliefs of St Anselm's, at personal odds with at other members of the community, a man whose zeal for hunting out sin comes in part from his own tortured sense of guilt — there is a particularly good scene when he is profoundly upset by a reading from the first chapter of Barchester Towers — and a man who is both loved and respected by his own parishioners.

Of the other characters, the two that stand out are Raphael Arbuthnot and Emma Lavenham. Raphael, the last living descendant of the founder, and dumped on the college as a baby has a fierce filial loyalty to the priests and a determination to oppose anything that is counter to their interests. His name is appropriate, both because of his intense physical beauty and because he is, ultimately, healed of the worst of his problems by his faith in God. Emma is interesting both for herself and because it's very clear that Dalgliesh finds her attractive — he goes on to marry her in The Private Patient. Fleeing a failing relationship in Cambridge, largely estranged from her father, she seems to be using her time at St Anselm's to reconsider the direction of her life — something not greatly helped by the murder and by Raphael's interest in her.