by Ann Granger
‘You’re not very busy at this time of the morning?’ she asked in what sounded an abnormally loud voice. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that.
‘Twelve,’ he replied and blinked at long last. ‘They’ll be in after twelve.’ From where she sat, it looked as if he had no eyelashes. ‘What’s brought you here, then?’
He’d shown so little curiosity until then that the question startled her. Meredith opened her mouth to reply that she was just passing through, but remembered in the nick of time that no one passed through Lower Stovey as its road was a dead end. And they didn’t come deader, in her book. ‘I’m looking at property,’ she said cautiously.
He moved his head in a curious sideways twist, like a parrot inspecting something new. ‘Generally a house or two for sale around here. You’ve seen the old vicarage?’
‘Yes. It’s – it’s big.’ That was a daft reply, she thought. But for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything better at the moment. She covered her confusion by sipping her coffee which was very weak but hot. Meredith nibbled at a digestive biscuit.
‘One of those little houses in School Close is up for sale.’ His mouth turned down disparagingly. ‘No room to swing a cat. They should never have been allowed to build so many on the site. It used to be the school, you know.’
‘You’re a local man, then?’ she asked.
His gaze slid away from hers. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said.
Whatever that meant, thought Meredith crossly. She was getting a bit fed up with this. If she and Alan moved to Lower Stovey – and the idea was becoming less attractive by the minute – they certainly wouldn’t be drinking in the Fitzroy Arms, not if she had any say in it. Alan, however, had a liking for weird pubs. He’d probably love this one, spooky landlord and all.
He spoke again, disconcerting her once more. ‘My mother was a Twelvetrees,’ he said ‘That won’t mean anything to you.’
‘As a matter of fact, it does!’ She had great pleasure in contradicting him and seeing the skin above his eyes pucker. He had no eyebrows to speak of to raise. ‘I met an old gentleman called Billy Twelvetrees in your church the last time I came here.’
He nodded. ‘That’ll be Uncle Billy. He’s always popping in and out of the church when it’s open. Not that he’s religious, mind. He likes to chat to the ladies who keep the place clean and tidy, Mrs Aston and her friend, Miss Millar. Nothing else for him to do, is there, at his age? Mrs Aston, she was Miss Pattinson before she married. She was the old vicar’s daughter.’
‘I’ve met Mrs Aston,’ Meredith told him.
‘Seems you’ve found out a lot about us, then,’ he retorted.
She had the feeling he was annoyed. Good. He’d annoyed her. Let the boot be on the other foot, as the saying went. But she didn’t want to linger here. Quit when you’re ahead.
‘Thank you for the coffee,’ she said. ‘How much do I owe you?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Fifty pence be all right?’
Meredith put down a pound coin on the dark oak counter. ‘It hardly seems enough when your wife had to make it specially for me and gave me biscuits as well. I don’t want any change.’
He stared down at the coin. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you.’
She left the place with unseemly haste. Outside she saw with surprise that it was still only ten minutes to twelve. What was it about this place that it seemed able to suspend time?
‘It gives me the creeps,’ she muttered She glanced across at the church. She had to waste at least five minutes before she could call at the Old Vicarage. Meredith decided on impulse to glance into the church. Perhaps Ruth Aston would be there.
She walked across the road and pushed open the lych-gate. As she passed under its wooden roof, she saw, in the far distance, a squat figure hurrying away among the graves and ramshackle tombs. The figure had a stick and hobbled but was making remarkable speed.
Meredith passed into the porch and opened an inner door made of chicken wire stretched over a home-made wooden frame which bore the words ‘Please keep this door closed to prevent birds flying into the church where they might die of thirst.’ The church was dark, except at the chancel end where sunlight coming through the Victorian stained glass window splashed coloured daubs across the choir stalls. It was cool, still and silent apart from a clatter above her head made by the jackdaws hopping about on the roof.
Meredith’s eyes accustomed slowly to the gloom as she searched for the Fitzroy tomb. There it was. She walked to it. Here lay Sir Hubert, his stone features mutilated out of any semblance of humanity. Beside him for eternity lay the wife he’d not wanted beside him in life. Her face looked serene within its coiffed head-dress. Her long thin hands were pressed together in prayer on her breast. Someone had stuck a piece of chewing gum on her right sleeve. Meredith wished her Latin were good enough to decipher the inscription around the base. But lack of scholarship and what looked like more intentional damage meant that apart from ‘Hubertus’ and ‘Agnes uxor sua’ she could make out nothing. Even the years of their deaths had been obliterated.
Meredith turned away and, able to distinguish clearly now, saw that she wasn’t alone, after all. A woman knelt in prayer in a pew on the other side of the church, beneath the tablet commemorating periwigged Sir Rufus. Her head was bent right forward, her forehead resting on the shelf for prayer-books fixed to the back of the pew in front. Meredith, embarrassed at disturbing such intense private devotion, began to tiptoe out. But at the door, she paused and glanced back. The woman was so still. There was something not quite right about her posture. Her hands weren’t clasped but dangled loosely at the end of her arms which hung down straight by her sides.
The hair prickled on the nape of Meredith’s neck. She walked rapidly towards the crouched figure. As she neared, she asked, ‘Are you all right?’
There was no movement, no reply. The woman’s slumped form lacked all bodily grace and Meredith couldn’t see her face, only her coarse curling grey hair. Meredith put a hand out and gingerly touched her shoulder. Something warm and sticky smeared her fingers. She snatched back her hand and looked down at bright red blood. Stooping, Meredith tried to see the hidden face and met the unseeing gaze of one glazed eye half-open beneath a drooping frozen eyelid. Nausea rose in Meredith’s throat and she stood up hastily. Round the woman’s neck was wound a scarf patterned with geraniums but not all the scarlet splashes were printed flowers. There was a straight tear in the silky fabric. The blood had oozed into the scarf and from it, by a process of osmosis, down the woman’s lightweight sweater. There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that she was dead.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t the first time Meredith had seen a dead body. It wasn’t even the first time she’d had the misfortune to stumble upon a victim of violent attack. This didn’t make the experience less gruesome or shocking. In a sense, it added to the horror. Someone else might have pretended that the woman wasn’t really dead. Meredith knew she was. Others might have persuaded themselves a bizarre accident had befallen the unfortunate. Meredith knew she looked at a murder victim. Yet there was disbelief mixed in with her reactions. Not an incredulity at the reality of what she saw, but that she should have been picked out by some capricious Fate to go through all this again.
At least, she thought, I know the drill. It struck her then that the murderer might still be in the church, crouched down among the pews or behind the huge Victorian organ with its forest of dusty pipes. Or behind that faded brocade curtain hanging over the arched doorway into the vestry. Her heart hopped irregularly in her chest as her ears strained for the soft intake of another’s breath, the tell-tale creak of wood, and her eyes watched for the slightest movement of the curtain. Nothing. She was alone with the dead. Sir Rufus sneered down at her as if telling her this sort of thing would never have been permitted in his day. She went outside, took out her mobile and rang Alan, trying to force her voice to remain steady, knowing it wasn’t
and that it was pitched unnaturally high.
He took it calmly. He was a professional. He had been through it all before and it didn’t surprise him that he had to face it all again. That, as he sometimes wryly said, was what he was there for. But she felt a rush of tenderness and gratitude towards him at hearing his clear, comforting but instructive tones. Wait there, by the door. Don’t let anyone else enter. If anyone insists, go with them and make sure they don’t remove or touch anything.
When Alan had rung off, Meredith remembered to call Mrs Scott, who was now waiting for her in vain at the Old Vicarage. She explained there had been an emergency and she was delayed. She might not make it that day.
‘Emergency in the village?’ asked Mrs Scott’s voice sharply. ‘Is someone hurt?’
Meredith was startled. How did the woman know where she was? But of course, she was where she was supposed to be that morning, in Lower Stovey. She had been wandering all over the place and although she had seen no one, that didn’t mean no one had seen her.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ She borrowed the landlord’s phrase.
‘Where are you?’ demanded Mrs Scott in a voice which brooked no evasion.
Meekly, Meredith told her, at the church.
‘Ruth Aston hasn’t fallen off that wretched stepladder, has she? It wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘No, no she hasn’t. It’s nothing to do with her.’
‘Huh!’ said Mrs Scott in Meredith’s ear and slammed down the phone.
Within minutes the real thing stood before Meredith, bearing down on the church porch like an avenging angel weirdly clad in handknits and droopy skirts, long grey hair tossed wildly by the breeze.
‘Now what’s going on?’ she demanded.
‘I can’t let you go in.’ Meredith barred the entry by the simple expedient of spreading out her arms. ‘The police told me to let no one in. I’m waiting for them.’
‘Police?’ Mrs Scott twitched an eyebrow. ‘Not paramedics?’
‘The police will send out a doctor.’
Mrs Scott placed her hands on her ample hips. ‘Someone’s snuffed it,’ she said, sounding not displeased. ‘Who is it?’
‘Yes, someone’s dead.’ Meredith found it was a relief to confess the truth. ‘I don’t know who it is.’
‘I’d better take a look, then.’ Mrs Scott advanced towards her as steadily as a tank. ‘And don’t bleat about the coppers not letting anyone in. Of course you don’t know who it is. But I probably shall, if it’s anyone local, that is.’
This was true and the police would be keen to have an early identification. Though Meredith was unwilling to return to the scene, she said reluctantly, ‘I’ll have to come with you.’
‘Naturally,’ said her companion. ‘Make sure I don’t leave my dabs all over the place or pocket the evidence.’
Meredith made an inspired guess. Mrs Scott was a crime fiction fan. She had been reading about it for years and now, to her manifest delight, the real thing had happened on her doorstep.
‘It’s not like in books,’ Meredith said firmly.
‘Don’t expect it to be. Come on.’
They entered the cool dark interior. The slumped figure was as Meredith had left it. They approached in silence and as quietly as they could as if their steps could disturb the crouching form.
When they reached it, Mrs Scott gave a gasp.
Meredith glanced at her. The woman’s florid complexion had paled to a grey hue. Meredith felt an unworthy desire to say, ‘I told you so’. She said instead, though it amounted to the same thing, ‘I warned you it would be nasty.’
The other made an impatient gesture. ‘I’ve seen nasty sights before. It’s just, it isn’t anyone I’d have expected it to be.’
‘You don’t know her, then?’
‘Of course I know her!’ Mrs Scott snapped, rallying. ‘It’s Hester Millar who shares a house with Ruth Aston. What a bloody awful mess. Who’d want to kill Hester? What on earth for? A thoroughly harmless woman. Where’s her bag?’
‘Her bag?’ For a second Meredith didn’t catch on.
Mrs Scott pointed at a scuffed brown leather bag lying on the floor by the dead woman’s feet. ‘There it is. It doesn’t look as if it’s been opened. She wouldn’t have had any money on her, anyway. The whole thing’s a nonsense. He must be a madman, whoever he is.’ She squinted at Meredith. ‘You didn’t see anyone about, I suppose?’
‘I – no, not in the church.’
‘He might still be here, hiding. Did you try the tower door to see if it’s locked?’
To Meredith’s dismay, she started towards a narrow door behind them.
Meredith grabbed her arm. ‘We don’t touch a thing! It’d be plain stupid to go up there, anyway. If whoever did this dreadful thing is hiding anywhere around here, he’s not going to let either of us get in his way. You said before you came in you understood about fingerprints. If we stay here, we’ll mess up the scene of the crime. We should go back outside right now. The police will be here in a minute and they won’t be happy to find us in here.’
Mrs Scott allowed herself to be led back to the porch. There she turned on Meredith with much of her former hectoring manner. ‘Someone’s got to go and tell Ruth the news. She’ll take it badly. They’d been friends all their lives, since young women.’
‘Let the police do that.’
‘Nonsense! Let a flatfoot barge into Ruth’s home and tell her poor Hester has been stuck in the neck with a knife?’
‘If that’s what’s happened.’
‘You saw the blood,’ said Mrs Scott truculently. ‘You saw the hole in that scarf. You’ll see, it’ll have been a knife.’ She put a hand to her own neck. ‘Carotid artery,’ she said. ‘Bet my boots on it. Did you see how much blood had been pumped out of it?’ She pursed her mouth. ‘Once the police turn up, this entire village will be here to watch what’s going on. Someone’s bound to tell Ruth. She’ll rush up here in a panic and find out it’s Hester. I don’t care what you or a bunch of coppers think. I’m going down Church Lane to let her know.’
With that she marched off.
Meredith watched her despondently. Mrs Scott was probably right. As soon as the official circus appeared over the horizon these apparently deserted homes would disgorge a crowd of curious beings. And speaking of curiosity …
Meredith let her gaze roam across the frontage of the cottages flanking the pub. In which one of these did Billy Twelvetrees live and where was he?
The arrival of the first police car put paid to her musings. It was followed by the police doctor and by the scene of crime officers. Then it was the regional serious crime squad in the familiar person of Dave Pearce and behind him another familiar face, Ginny Holding.
‘Hello!’ Pearce greeted Meredith. ‘The super said you’d be here.’
‘I found her,’ Meredith told him bleakly. ‘And I’ve got an identification for you.’
‘Oh, right.’ He looked surprised. ‘Someone you know?’
Meredith shook her head and explained, ‘I couldn’t prevent Mrs Scott rushing off to tell Ruth Aston about it.’
Pearce said, ‘In a place this size, this Mrs Aston would be bound to hear of it before we got to her. We’ll need a statement from you and from Mrs Scott and Mrs Aston.’
He made off into the church and Meredith turned to greet Ginny. ‘Hello, DC Holding.’
‘Hello again,’ returned Ginny amiably. ‘I’ve made sergeant since we last met.’
‘Sorry, didn’t know. Congratulations,’ Meredith apologized.
Holding shrugged. ‘No reason you should know.’ She lowered her voice to ask, ‘Do you know this village well?’
‘No!’ Meredith retorted. ‘And I don’t ruddy well want to!’
She had surprised herself with the vehemence of her reply and she’d certainly impressed Holding, whose eyebrows twitched.
‘As bad as that?’ she said.
A blue and white tape printed with Police Crime Scene had ap
peared as if by magic across the churchyard gate and not a moment too soon. The landlord and his wife had come out of the Fitzroy Arms as Meredith spoke to Ginny Holding. They stood, he impassive, she hopping with excitement, outside their front door to watch all the activity. Other villagers were appearing from all directions but among them, Meredith failed to distinguish the solid form of Old Billy Twelvetrees. Suddenly heads turned and the small crowd parted.
Ruth Aston, pursued by Mrs Scott, appeared running from the entry to Church Lane. She ran on under the lych-gate, breaking through the newly erected tape, dodging the young officer who’d moved to cut her off and arrived panting before them. Mrs Scott lumbered up in her wake.
‘Where is she? Where’s Hester?’ Ruth demanded of Meredith.
‘Inside the church, Ruth, but I don’t think you can go in …’ Meredith glanced at Holding and murmured, ‘This is Ruth Aston who shared a house with – with the deceased. And that’s Mrs Scott, the woman I told you and the inspector about.’
‘I want to see Hester!’ Ruth’s voice rose. A supporting murmur came from the crowd.
‘All right, dear, all right,’ soothed Ginny Holding.
The raised voice had attracted Pearce who re-emerged from the church porch and unwisely chimed in with, ‘All in good time, madam.’
‘Don’t patronize me!’ Ruth pointed a trembling forefinger at him. ‘I want to see my friend. Muriel Scott says she’s lying dead in there. It can’t be true.’
‘It’s true enough, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Scott behind her. ‘Saw her myself. And she’s not lying down, she’s propped up in a pew under the monument to old Rufus.’
‘Thank you, madam!’ said Pearce loudly, cutting off the flow of information which was being eagerly mopped up by the listening crowd. He looked around him, harassed, and pressed his fingers to his jaw as he weighed up the pros and cons of a hysterical scene before an avid audience as against an extra person cluttering up the scene of the crime.
‘I’ll just take you as far as the door, Mrs Aston, but no further. And you mustn’t touch anything, all right?’ he conceded.
