Late of This Parish

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘I know Laura. I went to school with her. We used to be friends.’

  It wasn’t easy to imagine Laura Willard with her warm brown eyes and emotional nature and this reserved, unresponsive woman having anything to say to each other, much less being friends. He noted the past tense and remembered Laura Willard had also used it.

  ‘Do you have a photograph of your brother?’ Kite asked.

  With a mixture of pride and defiance she produced a snapshot from a drawer, taken, she replied when asked, only the week before. Danny wore his hair long, but slicked straight back from his face into a pony-tail. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, a muscular figure hard-packed into tight jeans and T-shirt. On one forearm a snake entwined itself around a naked, busty female form, on the other a wreathed death’s head was tattooed. He had light, downward-slanting eyes under heavy brows and a heavy square chin. He looked as if he wanted trouble.

  When they had gone, Ruth took a pile of papers from the cupboard where they were hidden and put them on to the fire with an extra shovelful of coal, pulling open the damper so that the flames roared up the chimney. Impassively, she stood watching and only when she was sure there was nothing left did she move away.

  Selecting a few ingredients for an unimaginative salad from the fridge, she proceeded to prepare an early lunch. She never ate breakfast and had been up early, marking the Sunday papers for delivery and then dealing with the usual regular stream of customers, with barely time for a cup of tea. When the salad was assembled she went into the shop and chose two pots of chocolate mousse from the keep-cold cabinet to follow. She had a very sweet tooth.

  Having first spread a spotless cloth on the corner of the table in the living-room and poured herself a glass of water, she switched the radio on for Desert Island Discs while she ate her meal. But the castaway this week was a comedian with a manic sense of humour who couldn’t resist making jokes and trying to put Sue Lawley off her stroke, and his choice of music was incomprehensible to Ruth, so she switched it off and ate in silence.

  Shrewd as he normally was in his assessment of character, in his judgement of Ruth Lampeter Mayo had been very much mistaken. Far from being the despair of her teachers, she had once been one of the bright hopes at the High School, but experience had taught her to keep her ideas and dreams and most of what she thought to herself. He would have been amazed at the richness of her inner life. She could lose herself in music and books, especially poetry. And while she served the customers in the shop and let their trivial conversation wash over and around her, she was sustained by the thought of the evenings and weekends to come, when she could draw the curtains and be alone to work, or leaf through holiday brochures while she decided where to take her next fortnight off. Not for Ruth the sun-soaked beaches of Greece and the Costa del Sol. She had once been to Greece, it was true, on a tour which had included Athens, Delphi, Epidaurus and Corinth. She had soaked up culture like a sponge, but it had been too crowded and too hot for her to really enjoy it. She preferred to go off-season to the museums, churches and art galleries of Florence, Venice and Rome, to wander at leisure round places like the Prado and the Louvre. Planning her next fortnight off was one of the greatest pleasures of her life, second only to the beliefs that sustained her.

  Until recently.

  Ruth passionately loved her brother Danny, while being fully aware of his faults. But loving him and having him to live with her all the time was not the same thing. In fact, since she had bought him out of the army after succumbing to the pressures of his endless moaning about his life there, fear had entered her life. For Danny and, to a lesser extent, for herself.

  She stood up quickly and began to clear the table. She wouldn’t think of it. It was better that way.

  She had barely washed up her lunch things when there was a knock on the door.

  The two women stood looking at each other for several seconds. ‘You’d better come in,’ Ruth said.

  Laura went in to the once-familiar living-room, which she hadn’t entered for years. Nothing had changed. The same beige and green patterned wallpaper, even the crotcheted chairbacks from Ruth’s mother’s time still adorned the three-piece suite. The photograph of Mrs Lampeter, which might easily have been Ruth, still sat on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Ruth said, after her first awkward condolences to Laura had been offered and accepted.

  ‘It’s Danny I really want to talk to, Ruth.’

  ‘He’s not here – he’s gone away for a few days.’

  ‘Where was he yesterday? He never turned up to do the garden.’

  ‘Didn’t he?’

  Ruth didn’t look at Laura as she spoke and Laura said, ‘No, he didn’t. Or if he did, he didn’t do any work.’

  Filling the kettle, spooning instant coffee granules into mugs, Ruth gave no answer.

  ‘Has he packed the job in?’ Laura asked. ‘Naturally, I’d like to know, one way or the other.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m not his keeper,’ Ruth answered sharply, which seemed to be a phrase that sprang easily to her lips these days. Translated, Laura guessed that meant: I wouldn’t tell you if I did know, either.

  They’d quarrelled about Danny before, or had words about him. At any rate, disagreement about him had always hovered on the edge of their friendship. It was in all probability the reason why they were no longer as intimate as they’d once been.

  Of the same age, they had gone together to the Princess Mary school in Lavenstock, the only girls from Wyvering at that time. Laura went as a paying pupil while Ruth, a clever, self-contained girl, went on scholarship. They became firm friends. Then, instead of staying on and pursuing the brilliant future her school career so far had indicated as likely, Ruth left school at seventeen and thereafter they had gone their separate ways. What else could she have done? Her divorced mother had just been diagnosed as having contracted the progressive disease which was ultimately to kill her, and Danny, a postscript to their parents’ unhappy marriage, was then only six years old. The income from the post office was a necessity, and so she’d left school to take her mother’s place, much to Laura’s disgust. Women, Laura argued, should not be expected to sacrifice their lives, etcetera, etcetera, accepting and quoting the received wisdom of the sixth form without much considering whether it was right or wrong. Not being an original thinker, however, she found the argument difficult to sustain in view of the circumstances.

  And presumably, reflected Ruth, had found it no easier later: when faced with a not dissimilar situation herself, Laura had reacted in precisely the same way as she herself had done. Where were her advanced opinions now?

  For nine years, until her mother died, Ruth kept things going and afterwards took over the post office and the responsibility for Danny. He had been a difficult child, a worse teenager. It was a relief when he finally decided to make a career of the army. His enthusiasm for the life hadn’t lasted long, and when he found himself posted to Northern Ireland he was soon begging Ruth to buy him out which, after considerable misgivings, she finally did.

  ‘I saw him yesterday, Ruth,’ Laura said. ‘I had an accident with my car on the Hurstfield road and came home in a taxi. He passed us going down the hill on his motorbike. Have the police asked about him?’

  Ruth watched her in cold silence. ‘What are you implying?’ she asked finally.

  Laura took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t told the police this, but I think you ought to know. It’s not easy to say – but for quite a while now, we’ve been missing things from the house. I have to say my father was sure it was Danny who took them. It wasn’t anything much until yesterday, when I found a gold brooch missing, and some other bits of jewellery as well. My father told me he was going to confront Danny with it.’

  Ruth listened to what Laura had to say without speaking. ‘Somebody has killed my father, Ruth,’ Laura went on. ‘I’m not saying it was Danny, good heavens, but you must see I’m going to have to tell the police I saw him. He won’t hav
e anything to fear if he hasn’t.’

  ‘You have a better view of the police than I have,’ Ruth replied.

  There was a defiant look in her eyes. It wasn’t new, when talking of Danny. She wasn’t shocked, she didn’t deny the possibility of him being a thief, but suddenly, she said, ‘I don’t know why he didn’t do your garden, but he was here all afternoon. The reason he left was nothing to do with anybody else ... In fact ... Well, you might as well know, we – we had a quarrel. He just stormed out and I don’t know where he’s gone.’

  And suddenly her unresponsive face crumpled like a piece of used tissue paper. To Laura’s horror, slow, heavy tears began to course down her cheeks, painful and somehow shocking. ‘I’ll never forgive him. He’s betrayed me.’

  ‘Betrayed you?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like from where I stand.’

  ‘How? What can you mean?’ Keeping her face averted, Ruth only shook her head. ‘You’ll make it up,’ Laura said after a long, awkward silence, wanting to comfort her, knowing better than to try.

  Ruth raised a ravaged face, changed almost beyond recognition. ‘You don’t know what he’s done.’

  ‘Ruth. What are you trying to say? What has he done?’ Laura asked fearfully.

  ‘Don’t ask me! How could I possibly tell anyone? Just don’t ask me.’

  ‘Don’t get into such a panic,’ Philly said. ‘She’s not due home for at least another ten minutes. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’ Galvanized, Sebastian swung his legs off the bed and began to scramble into his clothes. ‘Jesus, Philly!’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re never like this in London.’

  But this wasn’t London, and Philly’s mother coming home from church and catching him in the sack with her daughter wasn’t part of the scenario Philly had outlined. It occurred to Sebastian that she’d probably left that part out on purpose. She relished a spice of danger in whatever she did, even more, if possible, than he. Putting her head into the dragon’s mouth positively turned her on.

  ‘Anyway, she never comes into my room.’

  She lay naked on the bed, in ‘Grande Odalisque’ pose, her skin tones as golden and tender as ever any Ingres painted, though her body lacked such voluptuous curves. She was slender and so light that when he held her in his arms he sometimes felt as though he might crush her with his passion, snap the delicate wrists and ankles if he held her too tight. She was in fact as tough as old boots. Violence roused her from a kitten to a tigress. The rougher he was, the more she wanted. Which was just as well, because he loved her to the point where all sense had left him.

  ‘You’d better get dressed,’ he said.

  Propped on her elbow, chin on her hand, she stayed where she was, watching through half-closed lids as he finished pulling on his jeans, a secret smile on her face, like a cat replete with cream. He could only guess her thoughts. She wouldn’t tell him what they were, even if he asked her. It was all part of the secrecy that surrounded her movements, not always through necessity but because she liked it that way. She became prickly, surrounding herself with barbed wire defences if he wanted to know too much. She had never let him know, for instance, how deeply she was involved until she’d spoken up last night. Another of the no-go areas in her life which had been closed to him.

  But then, he didn’t tell her everything, either.

  Yet suddenly, in the relaxation that came after making love, and sensing that she, too, was more soft and receptive than she normally was, he knew he must tell her. He had to share it with someone, get it all off his chest, confess to her about old Willers. It was dangerous, might turn her against him. But past experience told him that was unlikely.

  He blinked and came from a long way back as the roar of an engine was heard from outside. Looking out of the window, he was in time to see a car emerge from St Kenelm’s Walk and slow for the turn into Dobbs Lane. ‘Whose car’s that?’

  ‘Which car?’

  ‘A red 1965 Super Minx, with Laura Willard in the passenger seat.’

  ‘It’ll be David Illingworth, Laura’s boyfriend.’

  ‘I saw it in Lavenstock on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘You couldn’t have. He’s been down in Brighton since – oh, sod it! I’ve just remembered –’

  ‘I don’t make mistakes about cars. Especially ones like that. It must be a collector’s piece by now.’

  ‘Never mind about that. Mum’s going to be furious with me. I was supposed to go and ask them to have lunch with us.’

  Seb stayed by the window, watching until the car had gone, then turned back to Philly. ‘If your mother’s going to be mad at you, you’d better get out of her way. Get dressed and we’ll go out in the car,’ he ordered. ‘Somewhere we won’t be disturbed. I’ve something to tell you.’

  She heard the dominating note in his voice and suddenly she looked guarded. ‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

  He stared down at her. ‘Do you love me, Philly?’

  It was a question he’d asked, phrased in various ways, dozens of times and it might have been better not asked now, but she only replied scornfully, as she always had before, ‘Oh, love!’

  But this time, he thought he detected something subtly different about the way she spoke the words. Perhaps because she knew there was a finality in the question, perhaps she was tired of prevarication and procrastination, perhaps because she really had made her mind up at last. As the thought came to him, he found his breathing was becoming difficult. So far, she had insisted on keeping their relationship secret – which was fine with him, if it wasn’t going to be permanent. He’d no wish to be the object of sympathy when it ended, either with his parents, or with hers for that matter. But if there was a chance it might be more than that ...

  ‘How far would you go for me, Philly?’

  She uncurled herself from the bed and came towards him. ‘Now that, if ever I heard one, is a leading question.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Driving down the hill towards Uplands House School, Mayo sat hunched in a deep silence which Kite knew better than to interrupt.

  The interviews with Ruth Lampeter on the one hand and Laura Willard and Illingworth on the other hand had both, in their different ways, set up unsettling questions in Mayo’s mind. He knew that Danny Lampeter’s sister was hiding more than just knowing where her brother was, but then, a murder investigation which didn’t turn up at least a few stones revealing nasty things beneath which had nothing to do with the inquiry was something he’d yet to encounter. He knew also that he must beware of allowing his dislike of the type of woman she was to colour his judgement. Likewise with Illingworth. As investigating officers, they weren’t supposed to have private likes and dislikes, but contrary to opinion in some quarters, police officers were human beings and it was hard not to have them sometimes, especially in the case of someone like Illingworth.

  Maybe the man hadn’t meant to be boorish, but he didn’t seem to have gone out of his way to contradict the impression that he was. On the other hand, it could be he was trying on a double bluff, on the premise that no one who was guilty would deliberately present himself in so objectionable a light to the police. He was a tricky enough customer, either way – and the only one so far to emerge with any sort of motive. Or alibi. His story would be checked, of course, but with a hundred and twenty miles between here and Brighton and any number of conference delegates to say he was there, it was unlikely to have been fudged.

  And Laura Willard, jumpy as a cat, what was he to make of her?

  Gina Holden looked longingly at the garden after she’d put the telephone down, glanced at her disgraceful jeans and grubby hands and decided they wouldn’t pass muster, it wasn’t what was expected of a headmaster’s wife. Abandoning her precious Sunday morning with barely a sigh, she moved quickly and had changed and was just finishing making coffee when the doorbell rang. She crossed the hall with her usual swift stride, now tidily dressed in navy trousers a
nd a cream silk shirt, showing no signs of her former dishevelment.

  ‘Hope we’re not disturbing you, Mrs Holden,’ Mayo said, ‘I thought we’d better ring before we came ... school timetable and so on.’

  ‘No problem.’ Smiling, she took them through to the drawing-room, offered them coffee and then left them while she went to bring it in.

  ‘Nice room.’ Kite looked around appreciatively. ‘Bit untidy, like,’ he added, in case he should seem to be denying his Leftist tendencies by being too appreciative of a room containing a grand piano and a Chinese carpet.

  Mayo, who was in no position to make judgements on anyone’s tidiness, grunted an ambiguous reply. The sunlight showed a light film of dust and the less than well polished windows and emphasized the rumpled cushions and covers, but he, like Kite, found it attractive, a room for living in and not for show. Decorated in soft shades of apricot and buff, sparely furnished, an arrangement of copper-coloured leaves and cream flowers in the empty grate, plenty of books, the small grand piano. When Gina Holden came back she found Kite admiring the garden and Mayo bending a covetous eye on the brass timepiece standing on the mantel. She asked him whether he was specially interested in clocks.

  ‘Old ones, yes,’ he told her. ‘It’s a long time since I saw a lantern clock in as good nick as this. My dad used to have one, years ago. He sold it to buy an old second-hand car and regretted it ever after.’

  She laughed, showing beautiful teeth and rather a lot of gum. ‘This one wouldn’t buy a second-hand bike. It hasn’t gone properly for months.’

  Mayo could find nothing at all to say to this heresy. If the clock had been his, he’d have had it spread out on the table in bits and fiddled about with it until it did go. It hurt him physically to see a clock neglected or not correctly adjusted; a stopped clock was like a bereavement in the house. He almost toyed with the idea of offering to repair it for free but thought better of it.

  Mrs Holden suggested that since the sun had at last emerged from the clouds they might like to go and sit in the garden while they talked. Nothing loath, Kite took the tray from her as she led the way through the open french window, across a flagged terrace to a sitting-out area outside an old thatched summerhouse. Chairs faced the lawn and a small pond, with a table between them.