Blood on the Bones

by Evans, Geraldine

  So it was possible that, to this day, the youngest sister, with her unfortunate tendency to let her tongue run away with her, had been kept completely in the dark. The neighbours, too, would likely have been told some falsehood to account for the months of Annemarie's absence.

  But what of the older sister, the late Mrs Ansell? Again, Rafferty found himself regretting this sister's recent death. Rosalind Wilson had told them that both her late sisters had been close. Had Sophia Ansell known about, or at least suspected, Annemarie's plight? Surely Annemarie would have confided in someone? Who better than the older, wiser sister to whom she was so close?

  It seemed possible, maybe even probable, was Rafferty's conclusion, even though Sophia Ansell's letter to Peter Bodham had denied that Annemarie might be his natural mother. In Rafferty's experience, moral attitudes learned early tended to remain with a person throughout their life. That was why all religions liked to imbue children with their ideology and the younger the better. Hadn't he spent most of his life weighed down with Catholic guilt and with a hard taskmaster for a conscience?

  ‘Your sister decided she had a religious vocation while still in her teens, I understand?’ Rafferty remarked to Mrs Wilson.

  Mrs Wilson gave a quick nod and looked set to comment at length, but Rafferty held up his hand to stay her tongue.

  ‘So, she would, I presume, have gone on Catholic retreats of some months’ duration during this time?’

  ‘As you rightly point out, inspector, my late sister, Annemarie, had a religious vocation, though she didn't actually enter the religious life as a postulant until she was almost twenty-one.’ She paused and gazed indignantly at him as if what he had implied had just sunk in.

  ‘Just a minute, inspector. You can't seriously be implying that Annemarie would have used her faith as a cloak to bring a pregnancy to term and to give birth secretly at the address you say is on this Peter Bodham's birth certificate?’

  Put baldly like that it did seem unlikely, Rafferty admitted to himself. And given that, if Sister Clare had given birth prior to entering a convent as a postulant proper, the birth and her death were all so long ago and any birth so wrapped in secrecy and denial that getting to the truth so far down the line seemed unlikely. Particularly as the sole remaining member of her immediate family clearly knew nothing at all of any value to them and would probably have continued in her denials even if she had known.

  For a moment, he considered asking her to agree to provide a DNA sample so they could compare it with that of the dead man. But she looked so closed up and determined to rebut any suggestion of immorality in her family that he knew she would be certain to refuse. Maybe later, she would agree, if curiosity overcame her outrage.

  Their visit had been a disappointing one and Rafferty felt a bit deflated. But then it occurred to him that there might be a way to get at the truth.

  When they got back to the station, Rafferty asked Llewellyn to find out if the late Mrs Ansell had left a will.

  ‘A will?’ Llewellyn questioned.

  'Yes, Little Sir Echo, a will. If I'm right and that the missing letter that Peter Bodham received was from Mrs Ansell – a Mrs Ansell, moreover, who knew she was dying – she might have had a crisis of conscience in that in denying that Annemarie was his natural mother she was also denying him knowledge of his own parentage.

  ‘We already know that Sophia Ansell died at home, with her family gathered round her for comfort. I wonder whether it didn't strike her as cruel that she had denied the solitary Bodham any hope of the same source of comfort from which she drew strength. Maybe she finally accepted that everyone was entitled to know where they came from.’

  ‘You think she might have also left him something in her will?’

  ‘That's the general idea. If she did, it would prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our Annemarie was also the late Peter Bodham's Annemarie. Why would Mrs Ansell leave him anything if he was the total stranger she had previously told him he was?’

  Llewellyn nodded. Rafferty could see that his sergeant's logical mind approved of his theory. ‘I'll get on to it right away.’

  The door had barely closed on Llewellyn, than Mary Carmody knocked and entered.

  ‘So did you manage to find anything on Bodham's landlord or the precise nature of their relationship?’ Rafferty asked.

  ‘Nothing doing on the lover angle,’ his DS reported. ‘I asked discreetly all round the neighbourhood. Not a whisper of any relationship beyond friendship. From what I discovered, I think it was just a case that Mr Mitchelson lost his own wife and adult son eighteen months ago. He's a long way from being over their loss and I gather that Peter Bodham resembled his dead son a fair bit.’

  Rafferty rubbed tired eyes. ‘OK, Mary. Thanks. It was never a likely angle, especially given where Bodham's body ended up, but it had to be checked out. At least your efforts mean another possibility has been squared away. Take a canteen break, have something to eat. Then come back here. I want to have another little chat with Father Kelly.’

  Mary looked quizzically at him and asked, ‘You wouldn't prefer to wait till Sergeant Llewellyn's available?’

  Rafferty smiled. ‘Mary, believe me when I say that this interview isn't one suited to DS Llewellyn. He had a sheltered upbringing and I think he might be shocked by some of the questions I'm going to have t0 ask our man of the cloth.’

  ‘Ah. Like that, is it?’

  ‘Exactly like that,’ Rafferty confirmed. ‘I suspect it's just a woman scorned who has started to spread this rumour about our good Father, because I hadn't heard a whisper to suggest the possibility before today, when some public-spirited female rang the Incident Room with the news. Anonymous, of course. Aren't they always? Anyway, off you go and I'll see you in an hour.’

  ‘A sodomite? Me? How dare you, young Rafferty!’ Father Kelly glanced at Mary Carmody as if inviting her to share his outrage. ‘And to make such a suggestion in front of a young woman, too. I have never lusted after young men in my life.’

  ‘That's what I thought. But when the possibility was mentioned–’

  ‘Who mentioned such a possibility?’

  Father Kelly was righteously indignant. Of course, he had a well-deserved reputation as a Lothario to be upheld. At least in his own eyes.

  ‘You know I can't tell you that, Father. Not that I know who the person was, anyway, as it was an anonymous caller. But it had to be checked, especially in view of the fact that Peter Bodham, the man in the grave, was never seen with a girlfriend.’

  Father Kelly was so outraged that, perhaps for the first time in his life, his normally ready tongue was stilled.

  Rafferty took advantage of this golden silence gift from the gods to question the good Father about another anonymous suggestion that had been doing the rounds. He could only assume these rumours had been put about out of spite by one or other of the priest's discarded harem determined on spreading gossip of the most wounding kind. ‘Maybe you could help us with another possibility? I've seen you watching that pretty novice, Cecile. It was just spiritual guidance you wanted to give her?’

  Father Kelly drew himself up, not without a certain dignity. ‘Yes,’ he said. 'It was and is just spiritual guidance. Shame on you, Rafferty, for thinking anything else. The dear ladies at the convent have put themselves out of bounds of every man's lust. Naturally, I respect that.' He spared Mary Carmody another quick glance. ‘Have I, too, not embraced virtue, in all its forms?’

  Rafferty managed to keep a straight face, although his expression warned the priest – don't push it. But while the priest's reputation as a smooth talking ladies' man who had got past more knickers than Durex meant it was easy for Rafferty to dismiss the possibility that the priest had embraced homosexuality in his twilight years, the same easy dismissal couldn't apply to any sexual relationship he might have tried to kindle with the young novice. Not that the priest's morals were any concern of his, of course. His own and that of the rest of his family were enough of a burd
en.

  He would have wondered how the priest had got away with such un-priest-like behaviour for so long, if it wasn't for all that he had read in the media in recent years, about the other scandals concerning Catholic priests and their un-priest-like doings. He could only suppose that the Catholic hierarchy were just relieved that their man in Elmhurst wasn't yet another paedophile and confined his attentions to over-the-age-of-consent women.

  After Rafferty had made a few more failed attempts to soothe the priest's ruffled pride, he and Mary Carmody made their escape before Father Kelly should so forget himself and launch a physical assault to add to his other, plentiful sins. If the priest forced him to arrest him, Rafferty guessed that the golden silence wouldn't long endure and that he would be the one to pay the price of Father Kelly's newly-regained loquaciousness.

  Back at the police station, Rafferty gazed unenthusiastically at the day's remaining post still piled in his in tray. Desultorily, he reached for it.

  He hoped that if Llewellyn managed to confirm that Sophia Ansell had remembered Peter Bodham in her will, it would be a firm indication that Sister Clare must indeed be Bodham's natural mother. He hoped that such a confirmation would move them forward.

  But now he wondered whether this was true. What difference would it make to their inquiry when such a central figure had been in her grave for three decades?

  Now that he had time to think it through, Rafferty was inclined to feel his latest suspicion would make no difference at all. How could it?

  ‘'Jesus,’ Rafferty muttered as he fought his way through the sellotape confining the topmost item of post and stared at the thickness of the file. ‘Three quarters of an inch of waffle on why criminals commit crime,’ he muttered disbelievingly. 'I could tell 'em in six words, with one of them saved to describe the idiot who wrote this report. Criminals commit crime because they're too stupid, work-shy, immoral, lazy and unpunctual to get a legal income. And the idiot who wrote this trash is too blinkered to look beyond poverty as a reason for crime.

  ‘Bumf.’ Impatiently, he threw the fat file in his pending tray.

  ‘More bumf.’ A second weighty missive joined the first in a ‘pend’ likely to last for all eternity if Rafferty had anything to do with it. Unless, that was, Llewellyn chose to ruin his eyesight on it and give him the gist.

  After so precipitously disposing of the first two items in his in-tray, Rafferty stared at the third letter. It had been concealed by the fat bumfery. He immediately recognised the envelope addressed to ‘Inspector ‘N’ Rafferty'. It was another letter from the blackmailer, his second that day. He'd hoped that morning – since there hadn't been one for some time – that the blackmailer had tired of his taunts. But now, here he was receiving double bubble.

  Slowly, with a growing feeling of foreboding, he slit open the envelope and quickly perused the contents. The letter was short, as the others had been. And still there was no demand for money. This was getting beyond a joke. Why didn't the bastard stop torturing him and just say what it was he wanted?

  He supposed he should at least be thankful he could now talk to Abra about it. He could even discuss this latest letter with Llewellyn if he wanted to, as Abra had persuaded him that it might be a good idea to make use of the logical brain of her cousin in order to figure out a likely identity for the blackmailer. Not, though, that Llewellyn had been either help or comfort. If ever a person had been designed for the description 'Job's Comforter', that person was Dafyd Llewellyn.

  ‘Be sure our sins will find us out,’ Llewellyn had mournfully intoned immediately after Rafferty had told him about the blackmailer.

  Abra wasn't much better. And although she had taken his confession in good part, she was less understanding about the extent of the angst he was suffering from his current investigation. Because, although she felt sorry for the dead Peter Bodham, she was unable to hide her quiet amusement that his current murder investigation meant that a Catholic backslider like him should find himself tangled up with a bunch of nuns.

  The only member of Rafferty's family who didn't find his current case a cause for mournful, wise after the fact proclamations, or quiet amusement, was Rafferty's ma.

  But Rafferty felt he would rather bear either of the first two options than be forced to listen to any more of his ma's continuing admonishments or her attempts to persuade him to take himself off to St Boniface Church and Father Kelly and confess the evil suspicions that were blackening his soul. After his latest questioning of the priest, he guessed he would receive such a sizable penance that he wouldn't get out of the church for a decade or more. If he got out at all.

  God, he thought, if only I can prove one of those ruddy nuns is guilty. It was the only way he would be able to get his mother to shut up about the subject. Or maybe not. Maybe, it would be a guarantee that she would continue to harp on and on about his wicked pursuit of holy women.

  If, on the other hand, he managed to prove them all as innocent as his mother thought they were, in his mother's estimation he would practically be elevated to sainthood himself. Sinner or saint. Saint or sinner. He didn't much fancy either title, much preferring to rub along in the middle ground, like most people.

  Perhaps, if he wasn't being persecuted by the attentions of this blackmailer, he might have half a chance at solving this case. He stared down at the letter clutched tightly in his hands, his eyes narrowed to slits of frustrated impotence. And as he stared at this missive, barely seeing it, one sentence seemed to hit him squarely between the eyes.

  ‘What?’ he gasped. ‘But– But– How the hell does this bastard know that?’

  No one other than his family – not even Llewellyn – knew that he had nearly killed his sister when they were both still kids. As this particular sentence in the letter claimed:

  ‘Everyone believed,’ he read, ‘once the suspect was arrested, that your Nigel Blythe alter ego was innocent of the murders of those two girls in the Lonely Hearts’ case. And maybe you were. But then, inspector, they didn't know about your earlier predilection for violence against females, did they? Perhaps, if they had known about your attempt to kill your sister Maggie, they mightn't have been so ready to accept your protestations of innocence.'.

  Slowly, unbelievingly, a possibility dawned on him. Could these blackmail letters be one of his family's idea of a joke?

  Stunned, Rafferty folded the letter – carefully, as if it might yet blow up in his hands – and put it in his pocket with the others, as he wondered who, amongst his family, possessed a sense of humour so warped that they could do this to him?

  But Rafferty really didn't need to think about it for long. For while his family might have more than its share of those who bent the law for their own advantage, none of them was inclined to this level of spite. No, he decided, this wasn't one of his family's idea of a joke. This was revenge, not so pure but very simple.

  And what member of his family believed they had reason to extract that revenge? None other than his cousin, Nigel Blythe. The Nigel who had pretended to commiserate with him in his dilemma. His cousin must have nearly bust a gut to prevent himself laughing out loud when he had sought Nigel's advice on the letters.

  Rafferty couldn't understand why it hadn't occurred to him before that his cousin, Jerry Kelly – or Nigel Blythe as he currently preferred to call himself – would want to get back at him and cause him as much pain and anxiety as he was capable of drumming up. It was, of course, in retaliation for him being the cause of Nigel's name being bandied about back in April as a possible double murderer.

  Now he wondered how he'd let the wool be pulled over his eyes to the extent that he'd never considered his cousin might be the person writing these letters. But then he excused his blindness. Why would he have reason to suspect him? While Nigel might be many things that most decent people despised – the fact that he was an estate agent featuring at the top of most lists – he was family. Rafferty had believed that his cousin – even if Nigel's list of things most despised
would certainly feature that institution somewhere near the top of his list – wouldn't stoop as low as blackmail.

  Besides, the events that had given rise to the blackmail letters had occurred months ago. Why would his permanently cash-strapped cousin wait so long to extract the readies? Especially when Rafferty himself had provided him with the means, motive and opportunity to put himself in line for a nice little earner in the blackmail line.

  Even more curious – why would he, after making the initial approach, fail to even mention money at all?

  No wonder the possibility of Nigel as the blackmailer hadn't occurred to him. It wasn't that Nigel was such a saintly sort; Rafferty was aware that Nigel could raise spite to previously never achieved heights if he had a mind to. It had been the blackmailer's failure to demand money that had meant he had overlooked Nigel for the role. Why would the permanently cash-strapped Nigel, with his ruinously expensive tastes, neglect to claim the prize? Especially when, for all his high hopes and ambitions, Nigel had yet to make his income match his expenditure.

  But the more Rafferty considered the matter, the more his mind went round in circles. He would have to wait and hope his cousin enlightened him. Still, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that the role of blackmailer suited Nigel's personality to a 'T': it provided him with an avenue both for his vindictiveness and for his avaricious desire for money. The latter aspect of his cousin's character made his failure to gain financially from his correspondence even more inexplicable. No wonder, Rafferty thought, that he had failed to consider Nigel in his list of potential blackmailers. But, in spite of the oddness of the money angle of the business, he was certainly considering him now. More than considering. He was certain that Nigel Blythe was guilty as charged.

  And to think he had believed that Nigel – apart from the continuing odd, sly dig – had long since put any propensity for revenge, behind him.

  But now the scales had dropped from his eyes. The letters made clear that his dear cousin had been plotting his revenge for months.