Murder at St. Anselm's

In P. D. James' latest offering, Ronald Treeves' death - he suffocates under a pile of sand - is termed an accident .... Enter poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, and a plot that is vintage James, says MAITREYEE SAHA.

ST. ANSELM'S Theological College, a High Church establishment for the training of Anglican priests, located on the desolate, windswept coast of East Anglia is the setting for P.D. James' latest detective fiction Death in Holy Orders.

Housed in the brick and stone Victorian mansion with its crumbling Tudor towers, high chimneys and delicate cloisters, the college is on the brink of closure. The recent death of one of its students is only likely to hasten the process. Ronald Treeves had suffocated under a pile of sand. Although the inquest termed it as an accident, Ronald's adoptive father, the wealthy and influential Sir Alred, is not satisfied with the investigations by the Suffolk police; and who but the poet-detective Commander Adam Dalgliesh for the task. Dalgliesh decides to club his vacation in Suffolk with the task at St. Anselm's. Besides, the college with its medieval church - incense-laden and with far too many candles at the altar - brings back sweet memories of three summer holidays spent here as a young boy ...

Although most students are away for the weekend, the college is far from empty when Dalgliesh reaches. In fact, all the guest rooms are full. Among the guests is Mathew Crampton, the Archdeacon who was instrumental in sending one of the priests to prison and is now waging a campaign for closure of the college, which according to him symbolised in its elitist ways all that was wrong with the Church of England.

As the day progresses, and the various players in the drama interact, unease and tension builds up. The atmosphere at the dinner table is so charged that now relief could come only after the horrible deed is done.

For a generation that is so constantly bombarded with images of violence and violent deaths, the author still manages to bring to its full the horror of a mindless, brutal killing. Quite apart from the fact that tea remains a staple means to recover from bad shocks, James roots her detective fiction in British literary traditions. "... British detective story is gentler, more pastoral. It is based on assumptions ... that law and order, peace and tranquility are the norm; that crime and violence are the aberration ..." she once said in an interview to a newspaper.

Then there is pity. Death is terrifying the way it can rob a person of his dignity. It sometimes occurs to Crampton that, "he lived his whole life in the daily expectation of its ending. The small diurnal rituals which this involved ... were, a legacy of his mother's insistence every morning on clean underclothes, since this might be the day on which he would be run over and exposed to the gaze of nurses, doctors and the undertaker ..."

In another book, it is Inspector Kate Masking who remembers a recently bereaved wife of a truck driver lamenting that he did not even have time to wear a clean shirt. Dalgliesh too has been pitifully aware of the detritus left behind by the dead in their cupboards and drawers. The concern, one suspects, is of the writer's own.

For its sense of place, plot, delineation of characters to their dark guilty secrets, hopes and longings, frustrations and rage and delectable prose, Death in Holy Orders is vintage James. A great admirer of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, James always sets her scene with great care. Be it a room, a mansion, a windswept coast, the effect produced by the simple mention of the pervading smells or the objects that the characters surround themselves with and the mind paints its own vivid picture.

The architecture and the interiors are so crucial to the mystery at St. Anselm's that you almost wish there was a map to keep track of the intricate details that the author provides.

The building and the legacy St. Anselm has inherited from Clara Aburthnot, harks back to a different era and indeed it takes an effort of will to place the present happenings in the year 2000. But then, ... Holy Order, more than any other book by her, acknowledges the presence of the significant modern deities - the computer, internet and the mobile phone. Mathew Crampton is called on his mobile phone to the church for the fatal rendezvous. Dalgliesh who had switched off his mobile to enjoy his solitude at St. Anselm has to switch it on again once the action begins.

The plot, cunningly devised, sustains the tension until the very end. The list of suspects in Archdeacon's murder is long but there have been other deaths too at St. Anselm's. Are they related? Revenge, greed - what is the motive? The process of unravelling the mysteries and finding motives is laborious. But as Dalgliesh's team (Kate Miskin and Sergeant Robbins) goes about its search, the pieces of the jigsaw slowly fall in place.

There is a hint of nostalgia for the church, represented by St. Anselm's - that in its grace and beauty, in its stress on rituals and ceremony held out comfort, and an illusion of spirituality. But the book concludes with an epilogue wherein James seeks to reaffirm faith in all that is good in Man.

Death in Holy Orders, P.D. James, Faber and Faber, £ 10.99, special Indian price £ 6.99.

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