43 pages • 1-hour read
A Great Deliverance
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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of graphic violence, animal cruelty, animal death, illness, mental illness, substance use, child abuse, and death.
Chapter 1 Summary
Father Hart, an elderly Catholic priest from Yorkshire carrying a tattered case, travels to London by train. When he arrives at King’s Cross Station, he is disoriented by the noise, crowds, and unfamiliar mix of people. A porter offers help, but Hart refuses, saying he is bound for Scotland Yard. Outside the station, he sees a newspaper headline: “Ripper Strikes at Vauxhall Station!” (5). The report describes slashed, semi-nude bodies and severed arteries. Terrified, Hart heads into the Underground, repeating to himself that he must tell the police about “a body, a girl, and a bloody axe” (6).
The narrative shifts to Superintendent Malcolm Webberly and Chief Superintendent Sir David Hillier of the London Metropolitan Police. In Webberly’s office, the men, who are in-laws, discuss a series of brutal murders near London’s train stations. The victims were found stripped to their underclothes, their identification and money removed, and their throats cut. Thirteen have been killed in five weeks and the press has labeled the murderer the “Railway Ripper” (10). Hillier despises the name’s sensationalism while Webberly insists his men are doing their best.
Their discussion turns to a conflict in Yorkshire between two policemen, Nies and Kerridge. Three years earlier, the pair were involved in a botched investigation into the murder of an old Romany woman. Now, the same men are quarreling over another Yorkshire murder. The dispute has become so severe that they agreed to send a messenger to London. It is a priest, Father Hart, the only person Nies and Kerridge trust to deliver the information. The priest is also the person who found the victim’s body.
Chapter 2 Summary
Webberly plans to assign Inspector Lynley, who is currently off-duty, to the case. He also chooses to reinstate Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, who has a reputation for being difficult and uncooperative. Hillier is skeptical of the pairing but agrees to make the arrangement.
After meeting with Webberly, Havers is unhappy with the news. On one hand, she’s glad to be back in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after eight months in uniform, but on the other, she resents being paired with Lynley, a snobbish aristocrat. She’s disappointed that she won’t be investigating the Railway Ripper killings. Instead, she’ll have a “peculiar” (16) case involving a girl in Yorkshire.
Havers must pick Lynley up from his friend’s wedding in Chelsea. Simon Allcourt-St. James is a forensic scientist who once worked at the Yard. He was permanently injured in a car accident, during which Lynley was driving. Now St. James works in a private capacity though he remains friends with Lynley.
Lady Helen Clyde, St. James’s research assistant and Lynley’s friend, takes Havers through the crowded hall and garden to Lynley. He is handsome, composed, and perfectly dressed while Havers feels uncomfortable in her officer’s uniform, with her short hair, rough features, and permanent frown. Lynley isn’t happy about the assignment, but he says goodbye to St. James and the bride, Deborah, who embraces his warmly.
Chapter 3 Summary
At Scotland Yard, Lynley, Havers, Webberly, and Father Hart examine photographs of a decapitated body at a farm in Keldale. It is William Teys, a local farmer. Teys and his teen daughter Roberta didn’t appear at church, and a neighbor, Olivia Odell, asked Father Hart to check on them. At the farm, Father Hart found Roberta Teys seated in the barn with an axe beside her. William Teys lay nearby without his head. At first unresponsive, Roberta later accepted responsibility for the killing and said that she was “not sorry” (33). Father Hart telephoned the village constable, and officers arrived to arrest Roberta.
Now, Father Hart maintains that it was “not possible” (34) for Roberta to kill her father. She loved William and would not have harmed the family dog, Whiskers, who was found dead nearby. Despite the confession, Webberly is skeptical of her involvement. He sends Lynley and Havers north to liaise with Kerridge and Nies, review the crime scene, and to ensure things go smoothly. Lynley has a history with Nies that resulted in Lynley’s arrest, but he accepts the assignment. They agree to leave the next morning.
Havers drives home to her parents’ house in Acton. It’s a poor neighborhood, and the house is hot and cluttered. There, Havers learns that her father spent the afternoon leading her mother through a imagined holiday in Greece with an old photo album, which is a familiar ritual. Havers declines to join them, explaining that she will leave for Yorkshire in the morning. Alone outside, Havers thinks about her brother Tony, who died of leukemia, and her mother’s “descent into madness” (45) that followed.
Chapter 4 Summary
Deborah and Simon St. James spend their honeymoon at Keldale Hall, an old country manor in Yorkshire. As she helps them get settled, the manager’s niece, Danny Burton-Thomas, tells the couple about a “ghost baby” (54) they may hear crying at night. During the English Civil War, the village hid at the abbey to avoid Oliver Cromwell’s army. A child cried, risking discovery, so the villagers “smothered” (55) it to preserve the hiding place. After Danny leaves, Deborah and St. James talk about their marriage. They admit fear about the change after so many years of friendship.
In Acton, Havers confronts her father, who is using tobacco snuff while on oxygen. The sitting room is cluttered with racing papers and with an arrangement that commemorates the death of her brother, Tony. She takes the tins and says she will talk to the grocer about selling him tobacco.
The next morning, Havers goes to Lynley’s house in Belgravia to review the case notes. She resolves to cooperate fully and “prove herself” (60), hoping to be restored to CID. Lady Helen Clyde arrives during breakfast and explains that she has made an error in the laboratory and wants to fix it before St. James notices. Lynley promises to call a Professor Abrams at Chelsea Institute to help her. Lady Helen asks Havers about the case and learns that the decapitation is in Yorkshire. When Lynley names the village as Keldale, she says she does not know it.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
A Great Deliverance begins with Father Hart making his way through London to the offices of New Scotland Yard. Structurally, the introduction of the Catholic priest before the main protagonists of the story introduces numerous themes that will be explored throughout the rest of the novel. One of these is the influence of religion on communities. Hart’s Catholicism, for example, seems to conflict with the Anglicanism of the capital. To the other passengers on the train, he feels as though his Roman Catholicism is something which must be “excused” (2). Meanwhile, the architecture of the city is so different from his rural home that it seems to have “gone wild” (4). This implies the diversity of London is intimidating and foreign to someone from small-town Yorkshire.
That Father Hart should be sent to such an overwhelming place speaks to the theme of The Corrosive Nature of Guilt. As Lynley discovers later in the novel, Father Hart knows more about the murder than he is willing to admit, but he feels bound by his obligations as a priest from revealing the truth to the world. For Father Hart, this trip to London is a form of purgatory, an exposure to personal discomfort that will help alleviate the guilt that he feels for failing to help the people of his community.
The introduction of London in the opening chapters also serves as an introduction to the complex relationship between Havers and Lynley. Away from Scotland Yard, the presentation of Lynley and Havers in their respective environments helps to illustrate the class differences that will define their relationship. Both Lynley and Havers live in West London, but this part of the city contains many contrasts. Lynley, a titled aristocrat who is used to spending time among the elite, is pictured in his well-appointed wedding outfit. He is shown to be at home in the stately offices and ballrooms of weddings, or in the expensive townhouses in which he lives. Havers notes that his West London townhouse is just his home when he is in the city. She cannot disabuse herself of the knowledge that the “enchantingly clean” (60) street in Belgravia is a secondary option to the ancestral manor that Lynley owns in the country.
The clean, open streets of upper class Belgravia contrast with the grimy cramped conditions of Acton, where Havers lives with her parents. The “desperate grime” (80) of Acton is seen from Havers’s eyes, showing the audience of the extent to which she is aware of the differences between herself and Lynley. They may both work for the same institution and they may be assigned to the same case, but their class backgrounds could not be more different. As London because an introduction to the corrosive guilt that haunts Father Hart, it serves as an introduction to The Dangers of Class Bias in Great Britain, which is a major theme of the novel.
The class tension is also evident in the relationship between Hillier and Webberly. If the class tension between Lynley and Havers is dramatically pronounced, the contrast between Hillier and Webberly is more subtle. They occupy a similar social standing, particularly at New Scotland Yard, but they are moving through society in very different ways. In “one of those quirks of fate” (7), Hillier and Webberly are married to sisters. Yet Hillier is enjoying a moment of upward social mobility, while Webberly seems caught in social stasis. Hillier enjoys promotions and professional recognition; he has even been knighted. In contrast, the less sociable Webberly seems unable to advance. They are both members of the middle class, yet find themselves caught in competition for social advancement. This tension, the novel suggests, is separate from their jobs. They work well together, serving the interests of the police and the community as a whole. Instead, the novel crafts the tension from the perspective of their respective wives. Hillier’s marriage is “perfection” (7), helped by his advancement in society. In contrast, Webberly’s wife envies her sister’s social advancement and tries desperately to manufacture her sisters success. Even between two sisters from the same social background, even after they have married men from the same social standing who work for the same institution, the tense nature of British class relations is demonstrated by their hyper competitiveness. Class competition in Thacher’s Britain is a zero sum game, right down to the granular intricacies of middle class advancement.
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