Late of This Parish

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘I’m only saying what I believe to be the truth, Lionel. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and I know one must make allowances for his age and the state of his health – and I’m very sorry he had to die the way he did. But I didn’t like him or his attitudes, nor did I like the way he treated Laura – though that, of course, was none of my business.’ She broke off abruptly, then added, ‘If you want a champion, don’t speak to me, speak to my son Sebastian. He won’t hear a word against Mr Willard.’

  Sebastian Oliver. The S.O. of Willard’s diary? ‘Yes, I’d very much like to. Is he in now?’ Mayo asked.

  ‘He is, but I don’t think now would be a good time to talk to him. He’s only just come in and heard the news and he’s very upset.’

  ‘Rubbish, Catherine! He’s recovered enough to have been running up our telephone bill for the last ten minutes. I’ll go and fetch him – if he’s not ringing Tokyo or Timbuctoo,’ said the Rector, leaving the room with a glance of deep displeasure at his wife and a small silence behind him.

  Mayo said, ‘Well, Mrs Oliver, while we’re waiting, would you please tell me what you meant about Mr Willard and his daughter?’

  She replied with some sharpness, ‘I said that was none of my business.’

  Then she could only have mentioned it because she wanted him to know, but wasn’t prepared to have the accusation of gossip levelled at her, a phenomenon familiar enough but surprising in Mrs Oliver, who so far had given an impression of total honesty. ‘Perhaps then we’d better talk about this disagreement you had with Mr Willard over the badgers that were killed.’

  ‘Oh dear. Oh yes, the badgers. I knew someone would’ve told you about them by now.’ While it was evidently upsetting to her, she seemed relieved at the change of subject and took the opportunity to replenish her coffee cup, offering the pot to the others, an offer not taken up. She hadn’t, Mayo noticed, eaten one of her own sandwiches. Charitably, he decided she was almost certainly a vegetarian. ‘I’m sorry now in view of what’s happened that I accused him of instigating the killing,’ she went on. ‘One doesn’t like to feel that any person one knows has died with a mutual bitterness unresolved. But you know, he really was quite obsessed about that lawn of his.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. It’s a mess.’

  ‘But it’s only grass! It’ll soon grow again. There was no justification for having the poor beasts shot! I don’t believe he would have stopped until he’d had them all wiped out, either.’

  A small tic twitched at the corner of her mouth. She put her hand to cover it and he saw the hand was trembling. This small, mild-seeming woman had her Achilles heel and the action she believed Willard responsible for had exposed it. Who could say what might have followed?

  Fanatics and oddballs were familiar territory, at least you got to meet your share in police work, and soon ceased to be surprised at what small things could trigger them off. But could Mrs Oliver conceivably have become so incensed by the shooting of the badgers that she had deliberately gone into the church after him, taken that velvet cushion from the altar and put it over his face until he could no longer trouble her or take revenge against the animals she doted on? She’d had the opportunity, she had seen him go into the church and it would have been the work of a minute to slip out of the Rectory and in behind him. Another minute or two to do what she had to do and then slip out, perhaps waiting until her husband had emerged from the house and gone round the back of the church to enter through the vestry door. It would have been risky, the timing being so restricted, but so it had been for whoever the killer was.

  He realized she was speaking again, but her agitation was now under control. ‘One has to keep things in proportion, not be sentimental, Lionel says. But it really was quite horrible. I’ve been watching the badgers come into the clearing for months. One gets to recognize them, to know their individual characteristics. But however much I deplored what Cecil Willard did, Mr Mayo, I wouldn’t have wished any harm to come to him.’

  At that point, Lionel Oliver came back into the room, followed by his son.

  In his slender build and the slightly quizzical cast of his features Sebastian Oliver resembled his mother, but he had a physical beauty she lacked. That and self-possession, plus a rather conscious charm, immediately suggested itself to Mayo. His thick dark curls were cut close to his shapely head. His eyes were very dark, and they danced when he smiled, but when he didn’t they were opaque and shiny, like obsidian. How old was he? Twenty-five?

  He perched on the arm of his mother’s chair. Kite, who was ready to be prejudiced against anyone who wore pink shirts, thought he looked just the sort of yuppie who would be telephoning Tokyo. Besides the pink shirt, he had on a pale grey cashmere sweater and beautifully cut, dark grey slacks and on his feet were soft ox-blood leather moccasins. DC Farrar had nothing on him.

  ‘I find all this fairly incredible, I must say. I’ve been dining with a friend at the River House in King’s Grafton,’ he said, naming a currently fashionable, and expensive, establishment in the area. ‘We’ve only just got back and heard the news. I’ve just rung Philly, Ma, and she’s as shattered as I am. Absolutely shattered.’

  If he was, or even as upset as his mother had suggested, he was hiding it well enough. Which was more than possible, Mayo owned. Even on such short acquaintance and despite his apparent openness, something about Sebastian Oliver suggested inherent secretiveness, a reluctance ever to give anything away willingly. ‘What time did you leave here this evening?’ he asked him.

  ‘Oh, just after six.’

  ‘According to your mother, Mr Willard was going into the church about that time. Did you happen to see him?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I did.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  He replied that it had been the previous day, confirming Mayo’s surmise that the initials in Willard’s diary had been this. ‘About half past six it would’ve been, I suppose, I’d only been here about half an hour. I wanted to see him but he wasn’t expecting me and I didn’t want to interrupt their supper, so I decided on the spur of the moment to go along and see him before Laura arrived home.’

  ‘He wasn’t expecting you? But he had six-thirty, and your name, written in his diary.’

  ‘Had he? Well,’ Sebastian said coolly, ‘I gave him a ring before I went in, just to see that it was OK, so he must have written it down then. There was no other prearrangement to see him, but I usually do make it in my way to pop in when I’m here. I’m afraid I don’t have the pleasure of living in Wyvering.’ He smiled but nevertheless managed to make it sound as though it was a pleasure he could quite easily forgo and gave an address for Kite to note down in his book which Mayo knew was considered to be one of the more desirable places to live in London. ‘I came down with Philly in her car. I thought I’d save myself a lot of hassle – only as you can see from the grey in my hair if you care to take a closer look, it’s an experience not to be recommended in any circumstances.’ Anticipating the next question, he explained, ‘I’m talking about Phyllida Thorne, her parents live next door and that’s her MG outside, and I can tell you that driving with her is something else. Have you ever noticed, women reveal more aspects of their character than you’d really like to know about when they get behind the wheel of a car? Yes, well, I’m only here for the weekend. It was a surprise visit and I’ll probably leave on Tuesday morning, if, of course I’m allowed to.’

  ‘We have your address, sir,’ Mayo said stolidly.

  ‘Seb!’ his mother exclaimed. ‘Oh dear, I thought you were here for longer, this time – especially since Philly’s staying the week. How disappointing!’ The Rector said nothing but looked, if anything, rather relieved at the news.

  ‘I thought so too, Ma, but something’s come up. I may have to get back. By British Rail, desperate as that is – but better than a ride in Philly’s MG, even so. Sorry.’ His wide smile had all the confidence of one who fully expects that whatever he does, he will be forgive
n for it and Mayo saw from his mother’s resigned expression that it would be.

  ‘You appear to have been very friendly with Mr Willard?’ Mayo said. ‘Unusual, if I may say so, with a such a big difference in your ages.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve known him for yonks. He used to coach me in history at one time, during the hols. I dare say it says a lot for him that we stayed good friends.’

  ‘What did you talk about when you called to see him yesterday?’

  ‘I really don’t remember,’ Sebastian replied, rising elegantly from the chair arm and standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pockets. ‘This and that, you know how it is.’

  ‘Did he by any chance mention being bothered by anything – or anyone, come to that?’

  ‘Lord no, but then he wouldn’t. We didn’t meet on those sort of terms. We rarely talked about personal things. In any case, I wasn’t there long, fifteen minutes perhaps, no more.’

  ‘Did he strike you as being any different from usual?’

  ‘No.’ The young man paused. ‘Well, if you call being pretty sharp different then yes, maybe he was. But then, he wasn’t exactly renowned for his gentleness, old Willers. Yes-es, I did yet the impression something might have upset him, now you mention it. Perhaps,’ he added flippantly, ‘his lunch or something hadn’t agreed with him.’

  Mayo said nothing. Sebastian’s grin gradually faded and he began examining his immaculate nails. After a moment he looked up and said, ‘People got the wrong impression of him, you know, he wasn’t such a bad old stick at all. In fact, I genuinely quite liked him. He was a bit moralistic, but there was no fudging things with him. He told you straight out what he thought so that you always knew where you were with him.’

  Mayo had the impression that for the first time, Sebastian Oliver was speaking with genuine feeling and not for effect or evasion. But he was curious about this friendship which had apparently existed between the two, with fifty years between them. Not that he discounted the possibility, he was just interested to know what it was they’d had in common. He continued to watch the young man steadily, without saying anything, and under his silence Sebastian’s self-assurance, like many another’s, wilted. ‘Damn it, you’re not suspecting me, are you? I liked him, I’m hardly likely to have bashed him over the head with a blunt instrument, am I? I wouldn’t know how, for one thing ... I’m so totally cack-handed I’d probably have missed if I’d tried. You ask my pa.’

  The Rector made a noise like ‘Pshaw!’ and Mayo’s flash of empathy with young Oliver did a reverse turn.

  ‘It doesn’t follow,’ he said sharply. ‘There’s only your word for it that you got on with the old man – and that nothing happened between you yesterday that caused you to kill him today. I’m not saying you did, but where were you at six-fifteen, the time Mr Willard is estimated to have died? King’s Grafton isn’t more than twelve miles from here. Six o’clock was rather early to be setting off to take dinner there, wasn’t it?’

  Sebastian looked suddenly pinched round the nostrils, but he said shortly, ‘We went for a drive around first. It was a lovely evening and you appreciate the countryside after living in London. I was with Philly and she’ll confirm that.’

  ‘In her car? So you pocketed your principles?’

  The other acknowledged the irony with a small smile. ‘This time I drove.’

  Mayo thought about the note in Willard’s diary. ‘Do you know anyone called Sara – or Sarah, maybe,’ he asked, altering the pronunciation to rhyme with ‘fairer’.

  ‘No. Should I?’ The denial was too quick, too unthinking. Mrs Oliver put in quickly, ‘There’s your cousin Sarah.’

  ‘Who lives in deepest Cumbria. And who with any luck might one day fall into Lake Windermere and never be seen again.’

  ‘Seb! That’s an appalling thing to say.’

  ‘She’s an appalling girl, Ma. The last time I saw her she was fat and spotty and pulled wings off flies.’ His eyes were wickedly alive again.

  ‘What nonsense, Sebastian!’ said the Rector severely. ‘I find exaggerations like that not only uncalled for and unamusing, but in the worst possible taste.’

  ‘Who says I’m exaggerating?’

  It was time to leave. Sebastian Oliver had talked a lot of foolishness, making it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Most of it was showing off, of course, but it also suggested to Mayo that there was much more tension in him than was apparent on the surface. He thought he might even, in certain circumstances, be a very dangerous and rather cunning young man. That allusion to the method of Willard’s death might have been indicative of innocence or might be a bit of would-be clever wool-pulling. Although Mayo was far from convinced that they had got from him all that he knew or thought – it seemed to him that there had been an uncalled for urgency in Sebastian so precipitately rushing off to see Willard as soon as he arrived home, for instance – Mayo was realistic enough to know when he had for the time being lost a witness. At the moment it didn’t matter. He could come back to Sebastian.

  Contrary to what Miriam Thorne had told Mayo, Laura hadn’t taken the pills given her by the doctor, even though she knew she wouldn’t sleep without them. She had wanted to keep awake. She had to think what to do, what to say, not to make any mistakes, and sleeping pills made you feel like a zombie. So she was horrified to find she’d slept after all, feeling as though there were something callous and uncaring about being able to, even though it had only been for an hour or two and she knew it was the sleep of emotional as well as physical exhaustion.

  She lay in the unfamiliar bed in Miriam’s guest room, wearing one of her hostess’s nightdresses, a voluminous affair in pink stretch satin, Philly having declared that she hadn’t one to lend, nor pyjamas, never having worn either since she was fifteen. Laura couldn’t have faced going back to that empty house to fetch her own things.

  The sudden glimpse in the wardrobe mirror of the suit she’d taken such care in choosing nearly reduced her to tears again. Now flung anyhow over the back of a chair, the gleam of its rich silk brought back the horror of what had happened. A deep depression washed over her, she lay in such a misery of guilt and fear and horror that she almost cried out. If only one could put the clock back – if David could have been here – if she could beg her father’s forgiveness! If only. All memory of the intolerable strain of the last years had gone, leaving only what had been good between herself and her father.

  ‘You didn’t know him before his illness,’ she’d once tried to explain to David, who thought the stroke no excuse for her father’s impossible and sometimes downright unchristian behaviour.

  ‘No.’

  The ironic monosyllable had been uncompromising and she’d found she couldn’t continue in the face of his apparent unwillingness to try and understand: how much her father had hated the trappings of ill health, his impatience over the necessary preoccupations with the functions of his hitherto taken for granted body, the unacknowledged fear that he might have another, even more incapacitating stroke which would disable him mentally as well as physically.

  Laura had feared this as much as her father did. The last one, leaving him as if not only partially paralysed but chronically short-tempered and resentful, had damaged their relationship little by little, much as she had striven for patience. Not that it had ever been a demonstrative relationship, he had always been too dry and detached for that, but there had been respect and affection. His wit, though caustic at times, had made him a sharp and amusing companion and though disappointed in her lack of scholarship, his encouragement to her to read widely had lit a candle in her mind, illuminating corners that might have remained dark and unexplored. She would never cease to be grateful for it.

  These were the things she must remember about him, that she must cling to.

  From downstairs came the unmistakable jerky ring of the old-fashioned doorbell that Miriam had installed because it was old and ‘in keeping’, never mind that you could sprain a wrist in the process of
twisting it to make it work. Taff’s barking and a man’s deep voice, not Denzil’s, sounded from below. Just for a moment she thought it was David and her heart somersaulted and then she remembered that he was in Brighton and wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow. It must be the police again.

  She knew she ought to go downstairs and get it over with. No! Instinctively, like a child, she drew the duvet up and buried her head.

  It was Mayo’s voice that Laura had heard.

  As the Rectory door shut behind them, he had noticed that the mobile unit had now arrived and been parked across the square in front of a timbered house that was used as the parish rooms. But there was a crack of light between the curtains in the Thornes’ house and he decided it wasn’t too late to return Laura Willard’s key. Leaving Kite to go across the square, he rang the Thornes’ bell.

  A salvo of sharp, terrier-like barks came from the back of the house. The door was opened by a scantily-clad young woman who would have been extremely pretty if she hadn’t been hiding behind a witch-like make-up, with her dark hair cut very short and spiked like a sea-urchin. She accepted the key with a minimum of thanks and was just about to shut the door when her mother leaned over the half-wall which was all that separated the sitting-room from the tiny hallway, popping up like some outsize ginger-haired Judy, glass in hand.

  ‘Who is it, Philly? Oh, it’s you, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I came to drop Miss Willard’s key in, but since you haven’t yet gone to bed, would it be inconvenient to give me a few minutes of your time?’

  ‘I was just on my way but – oh, all right. Come in.’ And to her daughter, ‘Bring us some coffee, darling, will you?’

  ‘Not for me, Mrs Thorne, thanks.’

  ‘No? Then not for me, either, Philly. Not such a good idea, perhaps, this time of night. How about a drink instead? No? Oh well, I’ll finish mine if it’s all the same to you.’