Murder by Suicide

by Veronica Heley

  MURDER BY SUICIDE

  Veronica Heley is married to a retired probation officer and they have one musician daughter. She is actively involved in her church in Ealing, West London - the London suburb in which the Ellie Quicke mysteries are set. She has had over 60 books published.

  The Ellie Quicke Mysteries MURDER AT THE ALTAR MURDER BY SUICIDE MURDER OF INNOCENCE MURDER BY ACCIDENT MURDER IN THE GARDEN MURDER BY COMMITTEE MURDER BY BICYCLE MURDER OF IDENTITY MURDER IN THE PARK

  MURDER BY SUICIDE

  THE ELLIE QUICKE MYSTERIES

  Veronica Heley

  Ostara Publishing

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First Published by Harper Collins 2002

  Copyright © Veronica Heley 2002 Veronica Heley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A CIP reference is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781906288143 Ostara Publishing

  13 King Coel Road

  Lexden

  Colchester CO3 9AG

  www.ostarapublishing.co.uk

  Murder by Suicide 1

  From things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us … Turn the lights off and the name of the game changes to Danger. The click of the light switch sounded unnaturally loud. Darkness

  enclosed them. Ellie could hear her own breathing.

  A whoosh of heavy coat over trousers. She must move, or she would

  be trapped. She took a cautious step back and banged into the wall

  behind her.

  She blinked, trying to accustom her eyes to the dark. A dim light seeped

  around the edges of the blind at the window. Something – someone –

  was standing between Ellie and the window.

  Ellie slid to her knees, trying not to make any noise. She told herself not

  to panic. But which way was the door to the outside world? A key snicked. She was locked in.

  Someone was moving around the desk. Feeling the way. Arm raised. Light caught the edge of a weapon. Ellie would have screamed, if

  there had been anyone to hear.

  The heavy arm fell …

  ** *

  ‘But Ellie, didn’t you know he’d been sacked?’ Ellie nearly spilt coffee down her best blue skirt. ‘What? I don’t believe it!’

  She had been staying with her daughter and son-in-law over Christmas and had returned home late the previous night after a cold, slow journey south. Oversleeping, she had been late for church. She had only joined the choir recently, so she had dressed in a hurry and braved disapproving stares to stumble into the choir pew as the first hymn was announced.

  Over coffee in the church hall after the service, Ellie had remarked in all innocence, ‘I was surprised to see the curate taking the service. Has Gilbert gone on holiday?’ Only to hear that Gilbert had been sacked!

  Up came Archie Benjamin, church warden, swarthy, five-o’clock-shadowed at noon, beaming his pleasure at her return. ‘Good to see you again, Ellie. You were asking about Gilbert? He wasn’t sacked. Just transferred.’

  Archie fancied Ellie and as usual tried to stand too close to her. She endured this only because his information was likely to be accurate.

  Ellie’s informant – another soprano – sniffed richly. ‘Transferred, sacked. The same difference.’

  Ellie rubbed her forehead. ‘Nothing was said before I went away for Christmas, and I’ve only been gone two minutes …’

  ‘Dear lady, you’ve been away nearly three weeks. Believe me, I have been counting the days!’

  Put in the wrong, Ellie felt she had to explain. ‘My grandson had flu and then my daughter Diana caught it, so I stayed on for a while. I know Gilbert’s been here for some years and must be due for a change, but why transfer him so quickly?’

  The soprano’s protuberant eyes glittered. Ellie decided that she really did not like the woman. ‘Scandal, dear! It all came out in a letter to the bishop …’

  Archie was pretending to be horrified, but he was enjoying the drama, too. ‘And others. I got a letter as well. It said, “Ask that slut Nora about vice at the vicarage.”’

  They both tittered. Ellie was repelled.

  She knew Gilbert well. Apart from the fact that he loved his wife dearly, in no way could he have been involved in anything as tacky as a liaison with Nora, their limp little organist.

  The soprano said, ‘I was going to tear my letter up and throw it away, but I’d never received a poison-pen letter before, so I showed it to my mother and she said …’

  Ellie felt as if she could do with a sit down. Quickly. She looked around for a chair, but the church hall was crowded and there were no seats available. A man’s hand inserted itself under her elbow and steered her to the foyer where there was room to breathe. With equal efficiency, the hand disposed of her empty coffee cup.

  ‘Roy Bartrick,’ said the hand’s owner, introducing himself. ‘Widower, newly of this parish.’

  Ellie blinked. She wondered if she, too, were going down with flu, because for a moment she thought she was seeing double. She blinked again and the double image disappeared. What nonsense, she thought. This man was not at all like her own dear husband Frank, who had died precisely three months ago tomorrow …

  ‘Ellie Quicke,’ she said, with a social smile. ‘Widow, of this parish.’ And nobody very special, she would have added, if asked. She was neither tall nor particularly slender, and at fifty-plus no model agency would have looked at her, despite the fact that her short curly hair had turned a most attractive silver and she had good skin.

  This man was taller than Frank had been. Slimmer, almost gaunt in a handsome, silver-haired way, with black eyebrows over deep blue eyes. Frank’s eyes had been blue too, but …

  She tried to smile again at the stranger, because it was rude to drift off into her memories when in company. Really, this man was nothing like Frank.

  ‘I must apologize,’ she said. ‘The Reverend Gilbert Adams and his wife are among my oldest friends and it was a shock to hear he’d been transferred.’

  ‘Scandalous goings-on, I gather,’ said Roy. ‘Something about “vice in the vicarage”? Who would have thought it, in this quiet suburb?’

  He was inviting her to laugh with him, but Ellie couldn’t bring herself to do so.

  Their curate – known to the parish as ‘Timid Timothy’ – was doing the rounds, still in his cassock. Shaking hands, smiling, nodding. No, not smiling. Beaming. One very happy little bunny at being in charge in Gilbert’s absence.

  ‘You look a little tired,’ said the stranger. ‘May I give you a lift home? My Jag’s outside.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, but I live just the other side of the church.’

  ‘Let me see you home, then.’

  Archie was ploughing his way through the throng. In a moment he would ask to take her home, too.

  Annoyed rather than flattered by his attentions, Ellie was pleased to see Mrs Dawes, formidable head of the flower-arranging team and another member of the choir, also surging towards her.

  ‘Ellie, are you coming? Nice to meet you again, Mr Baltic …’

  ‘Bartrick.’

  ‘Of course, Bartrick. Ellie, are you coming? You’ve heard the news, I suppose. I was never so shocked in all my life. Do up your coat, dear, these January winds can be really cutting, and there’s so much flu about. Did I hear that your daughter had it, too? I was ill all over Christmas, couldn’t even get out to take down the tree at church, and then when I did, that silly little … I mean, our curate … came in and t
old me that he’d be taking the services in future and he didn’t want any of our big flower stands at the side of the altar, which we’ve been doing, as you know, dear, ever since I can remember … mind your step, this path is icy …

  ‘So I said to him – to Timothy, I mean – that I expected the bishop would be appointing someone new pretty quickly, and he said no, he was going to apply for the vacancy himself, which, as I pointed out to him, he’s not going to get, seeing as this is his first curacy …’

  Down the path under the towering trees around the pretty Victorian church they went, and through the gate into the alley that ran alongside the church grounds. Once in the alley, they were opposite another gate which led into Ellie’s garden and so up to her house. A dog walker was having trouble with his terrier, which had spotted a neighbour’s small boy up a tree.

  Ellie waved at Tod, who was a special friend of hers. He waved back. He was probably pretending to be a detective. Tod was a solitary soul with a taste for the dramatic.

  Mrs Dawes paused as they reached Ellie’s gate. Ellie knew what was expected of her. ‘Will you come in for a while?’

  ‘I shouldn’t, really, but perhaps …’

  In a green and yellow kitchen, a woman drew the blind down over the window so that nobody could see in. She pulled on some Marigold yellow gloves and took a pad of multicoloured paper out of a drawer. She assembled a ruler and biro beside her mug of coffee. The slut must be punished, driven out of the parish. Only then would justice be done.

  The woman in the yellow gloves enjoyed the sense of power this letter-writing gave her.

  As she reached for the biro, she jarred her mug of coffee and spilt some on the table. She mopped it up quickly. Only a few drops stained the edge of the pad.

  Nothing to worry about. No one was going to trace the letters back to her.

  As Ellie closed the gate behind her, she looked back up at the church and saw that Roy had followed part of the way to see that she got safely home. She waved to him before ushering Mrs Dawes up the garden path and through the back door into her cheerful kitchen.

  ‘Another cup of coffee, or perhaps something stronger?’ ‘No, I won’t stay, dear,’ said Mrs Dawes, shedding her padded olivegreen jacket and tartan scarf while patting her improbably jet-black hair into place. ‘Well, perhaps just a small sherry, then.’

  Ellie led the way into the cool green living room which stretched from front to back of the house, overlooking the garden and church on one side and a quiet side road on the other. ‘Apologies for the mess. I only just got back last night from Diana’s, and I haven’t had a chance to dust yet.’

  Mrs Dawes felt the earth in a flowerpot nearby. ‘You should have asked me to come in and look after your plants while you were away.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be away for more than a week, but then … the flu …’

  ‘You missed all the fun.’ Mrs Dawes gulped sherry and set the glass down with a click. ‘Well, no; it wasn’t funny. First Gwyneth got a letter – you know her, don’t you? You were talking to her just now – big bosomy soprano, thinks herself another Brünnhilde, God’s gift to the parish, part-time receptionist at the doctor’s, very keen on the vicar, and you know how kind he always is – was – when people were in trouble …’

  Ellie nodded. She didn’t know how she would have coped after Frank’s death if it hadn’t been for the kindness and understanding of Gilbert and his wife Liz.

  ‘Gwyneth showed us her letter. Nasty. She took it as a joke, but I didn’t like it. Left a nasty taste. It said, “Stop the vice at the vicarage! Sack the slut, now!’”

  Their meek little organist had acted like a hen whose head had been cut off after her elderly father had died; even before she’d discovered that he’d left her penniless and in danger of being evicted from their flat. Gilbert had been endlessly kind to her, making time in his busy schedule to try to help. Nora in turn had become dependent on him.

  Ellie had known Gilbert for years. ‘He would never have done anything …’

  ‘No, dear. Of course not. But perhaps Nora would have liked him to, eh?’

  Mrs Dawes caught Ellie’s eye and they both smiled indulgently. Gilbert had a habit of hugging those in trouble, which was very comforting to the bereaved, but which might perhaps – to a censorious eye – be misinterpreted.

  Poor middle-aged, unprepossessing Nora, thought Ellie. A delicate touch on the organ and no dress sense. Never had a job. Never worth one. No wonder she’d missed the service today.

  Nora’s absence was the first thing Ellie had noticed when she got into church. The sub-organist was the local scoutmaster, and he had a heavy foot on the pedals. You could never mistake his thumping chords for Nora’s delicate trills.

  Mrs Dawes stared at the carpet while the grandmother clock in the hall ticked softly away, and a couple of dead leaves fell from the dehydrated azalea plant. With a shock Ellie realized that for once the formidable old woman looked vulnerable.

  ‘It’s horrible, wondering who’s going to get a letter next,’ said Mrs Dawes suddenly. ‘They’re all on coloured paper, different colours, red, purple, blue, green. Written in capitals, in biro. No spelling or grammar mistakes, so it must be someone who’s had a reasonable education.

  ‘I haven’t had one, but several other people got them after Gwyneth. I said they should take them to the police, but nobody wanted to do that, because they thought the papers would get hold of it and the last thing anybody wanted was to get Gilbert into trouble. Nora, perhaps. But not Gilbert.

  ‘Our beloved curate got a particularly virulent one. He showed it around, asking everyone if it was his duty to tell the bishop. Trying to look as if he weren’t pleased about it. Nora got several and took them to Gilbert, who also got one. It was Gilbert and Liz who took them to the bishop in the end. Liz was marvellous; but then she always is, isn’t she?

  ‘The next thing we knew, Gilbert and Liz were packing up. The bishop had a vacancy the other side of London which he needed to fill in a hurry. I don’t think he believed what the letters said. I’m sure he has more sense. But there it is. You’ll always get some people to say there’s no smoke without a fire.

  ‘Gilbert came round to see me. He looked … old. But you know how he is. Always springing back. He said the new parish was a welcome challenge, that he’d been here too long. He said he was sorry he wouldn’t have time to say goodbye to everyone. He mentioned you, particularly. He said he’d drop you a note as soon as he knew what his telephone number was.’

  Ellie looked at the pile of unopened letters she had found on her doormat when she got back the night before. Mindful of good manners, she said to Mrs Dawes, ‘Shall I just have a look?’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  There were the usual late Christmas cards and letters from friends, circulars and bills. Then a note from Gilbert in his distinctive scrawl. Ellie tore it open, noted the address and said, ‘Yes, it’s here.’

  There was nothing from her solicitor, Bill Weatherspoon, and there should have been because Ellie had asked him to look after Nora in her absence.

  Ellie had got involved in trying to help when Gilbert had discovered that Nora’s flat – together with others in that block – were owned by Ellie’s aunt-by-marriage, Miss Drusilla Quicke. This redoubtable lady had always pretended she hadn’t a penny in the world apart from her old age pension, and it had been a shock to discover that she was in fact very well off.

  The mere thought of crossing swords with the older woman had made Ellie’s pulse rate leap into triple time, but at Gilbert’s urging she had tackled Aunt Drusilla on Nora’s behalf. Ellie did have one great advantage when negotiating with her aunt. Her late husband Frank had left Ellie the Quicke family’s large Victorian house in which Aunt Drusilla had lived for ever. Although in general averse to blackmail, by threatening to sell the house over Miss Quicke’s head, Ellie had made some progress towards renewing Nora’s lease. Before going north for Christmas, Ellie had asked her solicitor to
finalize the lease for Nora.

  Yet there was no letter from him in the pile, and there hadn’t been any message on the answerphone, either. Ellie sighed. ‘How is Nora coping?’

  Mrs Dawes raised podgy hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Weepy. Everyone’s furious with her. If she hadn’t behaved so stupidly, we’d have kept Gilbert. He was a good vicar, and we’re going to miss him. Timid Timothy’s not got what it takes to keep this parish together. Officially, Nora’s off sick with a virus. I did think about going round to see her, but the weather’s been bad and my leg’s been playing up something diabolical. Still, now you’re back you can pop in to see her, can’t you?’

  As she waved Mrs Dawes goodbye, Ellie thought that visiting Nora was the last thing she wanted to do. Her stay up north with Diana and Stewart had been unrestful, to put it mildly. Her daughter and son-in-law wanted Ellie to sell up and move to a small flat near them. They were hoping, Ellie knew, that she would then be able to act as an unpaid baby-sitter.

  Diana and Stewart were in a mess financially. As her late father had remarked, Diana’s eyes were bigger than her stomach. Frank had given Diana and Stewart a large sum of money to help them buy a small starter home, but the young couple had landed themselves instead with a crippling mortgage on a large, executive-style house. Stewart was only middle management and likely to remain so, while Diana had been unable to return to full-time work because of the baby. Each month they fell further behind with the mortgage payments.

  Diana’s solution to the problem had been to ask her father for a further large sum of money. Frank had refused, believing that young marrieds should cut their coat according to their cloth. Ellie tended to agree with him, but since Frank died, she had been making Diana an allowance for child care so that she could go back to full-time work. Only so far Diana had not been able to find a full-time job that she liked.

  Frank and Ellie had been joint owners of their house in London. Under the terms of Frank’s will, his half of the house went to Ellie for life, and only after her death would it pass to Diana. Hence Diana was putting pressure on Ellie to move north, hoping to latch on to some of the capital which would be released by the sale of the house.