Past Praying For

by Aline Templeton

  ***

  It was six o’clock in the morning when, with the fire almost out, one of the firemen – also a local man – was having a break and a cigarette with his friend Tom Compton. It had been a heavy night; both men were weary. The fog was starting to lift a bit now, though it was still dark, and the full scale of the damage would not emerge until the ashes were cooler and daylight came.

  ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ the fireman said. ‘It was a beautiful house; McEvoy’ll do his nut, won’t he?’

  The story of the man’s imminent embarrassment was too good for Compton to keep to himself, and he told it with relish.

  His friend was curious. ‘Out, is he?’ he said. ‘Well, it has to be somewhere local. That car of his – BMW, nice machine – is sitting in the garage; we were dousing it with foam a while back, to make sure it didn’t go up as well.’

  Compton tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘That Mrs Cutler, by what I’ve heard. She’s a bit of all right, as they say, and only just down the road there.’

  The other man looked startled. ‘The American lady? Blonde hair, bit of an armful? I saw her hours ago, standing there in the crowd. If he was round there, it’s funny he hasn’t come sneaking back before now.’

  ‘Probably waiting until the fuss dies down,’ said Compton, but it was an automatic response; they were both uneasy. ‘You don’t think – ’

  ‘Surely not,’ the fireman said, then, ‘But I think I might have a word with my chief, just in case. It’s probably OK, but still…’

  His anxiety prompted him to break into a run, his heavy boots squelching in the puddles of water and foam as he hurried across to where the fire chief stood beside his little red car supervizing the scaling-down of the operation.

  Tom Compton looked after him, easing the cap on his head which suddenly seemed to have become too tight. He stared into the smoking cavities which had once been windows and now showed a chaos of fallen beams and debris.

  If anyone was inside there, a minute saved now was hardly going to matter, one way or the other.

  14

  Margaret Moon had been able to sleep only fitfully that night. She had sat downstairs with the Brancombes till almost midnight, speculating, with Jean mainly, about poor Missy, her sad past and her possible present state. Ted had fallen asleep in his chair by then, and eventually Margaret insisted they all went to bed. A working farmer had to be on the go early, and there was no saying how late Robert might be.

  Jean had protested that she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink, but during her own wakeful spells Margaret could hear through the wall her delicate and ladylike snores providing a soprano counterpoint to Ted’s basso profundo.

  Perhaps it was the painkiller she was still taking, but when she did drop into sleep it was to suffer vivid, confused and anxious dreams from which she woke with relief. She was deeply troubled by her failure to reach this woman who had so needed her help; it was difficult not to blame herself for persisting so long in the dismissive attitude that creature comforts made for an untroubled soul.

  She heard the farm noises: the sheep restless in the fields, a cow lowing in the byre. She heard owls, and the reassuring tread of the young policeman as he passed on his round underneath their windows. But the farm lay at the farther end of the village; she did not hear the sirens of police cars or fire engines, and was still ignorant of the night’s disturbances when the crunch on the gravel of the police car drawing up, and her brother’s carefully-lowered voice thanking the driver jerked her once again into wakefulness. She looked at her watch; it was six o’clock.

  Pyewacket eyed her askance from his comfortable nest in the duvet but did not stir as she got up and, opening her bedroom door as quietly as she could, slipped downstairs. There was no way she was going to let Robert sneak off to bed and sleep for hours without telling her what had kept him at police headquarters for such an unconscionable length of time.

  When he came in through the back door to the kitchen, she thought suddenly, with a pang, that he looked not only worn out, but old. He was four years older than she, but she was accustomed to thinking of them both as being, like Miss Jean Brodie, in their prime. Tonight his appearance (and no doubt hers too, if she were unwise enough to search out a mirror) endorsed that lady’s later discovery, that this prime too swiftly passes.

  When he saw her he raised his eyebrows and surveyed her with his characteristic quizzical gaze over the top of his spectacles.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Look, you’re obviously desperate to get to bed, but just tell me if you’ve found out who Missy is, and what’s been happening. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to wait until you woke up again.’

  ‘What’s been happening?’ he said, rubbing his hand tiredly across his face so that it rasped on the greying stubble on his chin. ‘What hasn’t been happening!’

  He collapsed on to a chair by the big pine table in the centre of the kitchen.

  ‘Actually, I’m not ready to sleep yet. It’s all still going round and round in my head. Make me a cup of tea and I’ll talk to you until I feel I’ll be able to fall into bed and crash out.’

  She had already lifted one of the covers on the Raeburn and shunted the heavy kettle which always stood on the surface on to the plate to heat, where it began singing almost at once. She set out the big brown teapot, mugs, milk and sugar.

  ‘OK. Start.’

  ‘Start? I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘Missy,’ Margaret said without hesitation. ‘Have you found poor Missy?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve found her. We’ve found her because she tried to burn down her own house, with her kids inside it. She very nearly succeeded, and now she’s flipped completely. Elizabeth McEvoy.’

  ‘What!’ In her shock, Margaret tipped the boiling water she was attempting to pour into the teapot all over the surface, and was forced to leap back before it spilled over the edge and scalded her slippered feet. ‘Lizzie McEvoy tried to kill her children? I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Oh, not as deliberately as that. As far as I can make out, she just wanted to set the house on fire, and the children being asleep inside was purely incidental. Most likely she’d forgotten all about them.

  ‘She’s not Lizzie, you see, she’s Missy, and she has no feelings of affection or responsibility or even relationship to Lizzie’s children. If it comes to that, I doubt if she has feelings of any kind.

  ‘But if you could see your way to concentrating on the job in hand and coordinating the kettle and the pot, I would certainly appreciate my tea.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Margaret said mechanically, resuming the task which shock had interrupted. ‘I feel – gobsmacked, I think is the mot juste. But I take it there’s no doubt?’

  ‘No possible doubt whatever. She’s been at headquarters now for a couple of hours, refusing flatly to see doctors or lawyers, and answering any questions we care to put to her. She seems to be revelling in the attention.’

  ‘Does she know what she’s saying?’

  Robert blew vulgarly on his tea to cool it. ‘Who knows? At one level, yes certainly. It’s both internally and externally consistent. But she clearly has no sense at all of the enormity of her confession. She is a stranger to remorse, and even the attack on you is justified by the calm explanation that she felt threatened, as if once we grasped that point we would understand.

  ‘She produced the matches from her pocket to show us; she told us that tonight she had to use McEvoy’s best brandy because there were no firelighters. She seemed faintly aggrieved that they hadn’t been provided.’

  ‘But if she was so afraid that I would realize who she was that she tried to kill me, why is she telling you all this now?’

  ‘As far as you can adduce a rationale, it would be that tonight was her grand finale, the thing she had been rehearsing for all along. That’s what she’s saying now, though I don’t myself think it’s as straightforward as that. Whether she admits it or not, she was actually resp
onding to other factors too. She professes to despise Dumbo, but burning down the Boltons’ garage suggested itself because Suzanne had upset Lizzie. And as far as I can make out, Hayley Cutler might have been in trouble as well, only Milla had a cold the night before last and Lizzie stayed up and kept Missy in her cage.

  ‘But there’s no doubt that Piers was the most important target. It would have ruined everything if we’d caught her before she had a chance to destroy his house. It’s not how she put it, of course, but clearly what she feels is that it has been an instrument of oppression for Lizzie as well as a sort of temple he has set up to his personality.’

  ‘Does she realize she’s going to end up in prison – or confined, anyway?’

  ‘Ah, I’m not sure that she has really worked that out. Looking ahead is not in general her strong point, and she’s just been taking enormous pleasure in explaining to us how clever she has been to outwit us all. I daresay she might think vaguely that if things get difficult she’ll be able to retreat again and leave Lizzie to carry the can.’

  ‘And will she?’

  Robert shrugged. ‘You tell me. Psychology – ’

  ‘Is not an exact science,’ Margaret finished for him. ‘I know. But what a dreadful, tragic business.

  ‘Did you find out anything about the rest of her childhood – what happened after the deaths?’

  Robert shrugged. ‘Not a lot, I think is the answer. She was well-fed, clothed, expensively educated – had everything she could possibly want, except the one thing she needed so desperately: parental love and attention. Then that was followed by a loveless marriage, and her father’s death not long after.

  ‘Missy’s our only source, of course, so it’s not totally reliable, but it seems the only affection she had was from McEvoy’s mother. She was formidable but kind, I think, and there’s no doubt that it was after her death that everything started spinning out of control.’

  ‘So there are no grandparents. Those poor children; whatever is to become of them? McEvoy isn’t much of a father, by all accounts.’

  ‘He’s an absentee father at the moment. He’s off somewhere out on the tiles, apparently: no one knows quite where. I gather it isn’t the first time he’s been “at the Club” or “at a business meeting” until the small hours.’

  They sat on sipping their tea while Robert told Margaret the rest of the story, including Minnie Groak’s share in the responsibility for tonight’s disaster.

  ‘It’s the problem of disproportion, isn’t it?’ Margaret said thoughtfully. ‘Strange how often some quite minor thing brings the most hideous consequences in its wake.’

  ‘ “The little things are infinitely the most important,” if you remember your Holmes,’ Robert quoted, yawned suddenly, and rose.

  ‘I’m off to bed. Wake me when Vezey phones. I’m no good to him when it comes to pronouncing on Missy’s state of mind; I’ve been too closely involved in the investigation, so he’ll be getting in a couple of others to regularize the position, now he’s got the information he wants. It should take them most of the morning to get it all tied up and declare that she’s unfit to plead. There’s certainly no doubt in my mind; spectacular, text-book stuff.

  ‘So I shall expect to be able to sleep through to the afternoon. It’s your job to convince Jean that I won’t expire from starvation if I miss breakfast and lunch.’

  ‘I’ll protect you,’ Margaret promised. ‘Have a good sleep.’

  She washed up his mug then refilled her own and sat down in the old Windsor chair next to the stove, tucking in one of Jean’s patchwork cushions at her back.

  She realized, with a start, that she had forgotten that today was Sunday, and New Year’s Eve. She had reluctantly agreed to cancel the early Eucharist and allowed the diocese to find someone who could take the morning service. But the Watchnight Service was different. She was determined to celebrate that, in the religious sense of the word, if she had to be silent for a week afterwards.

  But for the moment, all she could usefully do was pray. She must pray for the children, pray for their father who would now, surely, find a new way of life. And she must try to pray for that strange hybrid, Missy-Lizzie. It seemed foolishly fanciful, but whenever she tried to hold her – them – in prayer, all she could sense was a spiritual black hole, sucking into itself all hope, all light, all love.

  Margaret was still wrestling with the problem when the telephone rang. It was twenty-five past seven.

  ***

  Missy had been quite happy to go to the police station. She had never been inside one before, and her eyes were bright with interest as they escorted her into the purpose-built multi-storey divisional headquarters.

  Inside, it was well lit with concealed neon lighting and pale grey walls, a lot of smartly-varnished wood and heavy glass. She had stood with the others as they waited by the counter in the foyer, reading with close attention the warning posters about drugs and security and road safety, but viewing with considerable disapproval the unkempt-looking man sitting on one of the benches opposite. He did not seem to be entirely sober, and he had a black eye.

  ‘He smells!’ Missy said indignantly in her high, clear, carrying voice to the shirt-sleeved policewoman behind the desk, who winced at this childish candour and spoke hastily to Vezey who, with Moon and Smethurst faithfully at his heels, had escorted her here.

  ‘Interview room five, sir; that’s vacant now. It might be best if you were to take her through right away.’

  The interview room was small, bare and grey, an environment which should have been neutral but which by the absence of moveable objects suggested at the very least the expectation of violence. The disinfectant they used was pungent, but did not altogether mask another, grosser smell.

  The intrusive eye of a camera poked into the room from one corner of the ceiling, and in the middle was a table joined to the wall and two chairs on each side which were bolted to the floor.

  Missy sat down on the farther side, gesturing graciously to the men that they might be seated. Vezey and Moon took their places opposite her; the other man leaned against the wall by the door.

  They explained to her about the recorder and she eyed it curiously but did not object, sitting tranquilly enough while they set it up with the appropriate identification, and asked her the first question.

  She had decided privately that it would be more fun if they played it like a game. She remembered, dimly, a game she had played a long time ago which was about asking questions, though the details were fuzzy now in her head.

  So she had to make up her own rules. If they asked her something, she would tell the truth, but they had to think of the questions to ask. That would be fair, wouldn’t it? They couldn’t expect her to do it all for them. And her challenge would be to see if she could manage, without cheating, to save up her big surprise for the end.

  They were all very nice and polite, though one of them was impatient. She was a little bit wary of him; she thought he might get angry, and she didn’t like people who got angry and shouted. She really hated people who got angry and shouted. Like horrible Piers.

  But for the moment, it was fine. They listened to her, and even seemed to understand when she explained how difficult it had been, and how clever and careful she had needed to be.

  They didn’t laugh much, though, even when she did – she had laughed a lot when they asked her about the scratches on her face – and she decided they were just a bit stuffy.

  They liked the matches when she brought them out of her pocket, though, and made her put them in a plastic bag. They hadn’t asked about the matches, but that was a little extra she gave them, because they had played so nicely.

  At last, one of the men got up to go. He was the older man with spectacles; she liked him. He had asked her lots of interesting questions about herself and about Dumbo and seemed to listen properly to the answers. She had never had the chance to talk to anyone about the things she thought and the feelings she had, and she was sorry t
o see him go.

  Then a little later, someone came in and whispered something to the other man, the impatient one, who said a very rude word and rushed out. And someone else brought her and the young man who was left a cup of tea.

  But they still hadn’t asked about her surprise. She giggled out loud. Perhaps she would have to tell them about it herself, after all.

  ***

  Piers McEvoy’s body was lying on the rug in front of what had been the hearth. The ceiling of the bedroom above had collapsed as the fire burned through the ends of the joists and the bedstead of antique brass – Paula’s bed – had fallen through, landing oddly in protection of the body like a parody of an ancient flat tombstone.

  It was still dark. The interior, once they got the beam of the arc lights trained through the gaping window cavity, was a hell of fallen beams, plaster and rubble. But they were lucky in that Piers’s leather chair had burned through to its framework, and a probing torch almost immediately picked out beneath it the sole of a foot clad in a heavy brogue. They were lucky, too, that the body beneath its curious canopy was not going to prove charred beyond immediate recognition.

  The sergeant was less sure how lucky he was going to feel once Vezey got there. He had, after all, informed the man authoritatively that McEvoy was out on an amorous adventure when all his daughter had said was that he was at a club which everyone knew closed hours before. If anyone could prove the man was alive – drunk, perhaps, and then overcome by smoke – while they stood outside and made no attempt to get him out, he could kiss his police pension goodbye.

  Vezey was certainly in a towering rage when he arrived, a rage which was the more alarming for being tautly controlled. His face was white, his jaw rigid, and a muscle was twitching in his cheek, but he said absolutely nothing in response to the sergeant’s anxious explanations, shouldering him aside to swing over the window sill on to the sodden embers that formed a thick spongy layer on the floor of the ravaged room.