by Agatha Frost
Julia shook her head. She wanted the comfortable couch to swallow her up and take her away from Percy’s flat. She had been in such a rush to question him, she hadn’t taken a second to consider the likelihood that she might be jumping the gun.
“So, where were you on the night Rita was murdered?” Julia asked. “You said you lost your keys and that’s when you went to the church and overheard Father David on the phone. Rita was killed around that time, so where did you go after the church?”
Percy opened his mouth, but whatever he might have said was cut off by a high-pitched sneeze coming from a door next to the kitchen. Julia turned to the door as another louder sneeze followed the first. Without waiting for an explanation, Julia jumped up and walked over to the door. She turned back and looked at Percy before opening it.
“Gran?” Julia cried as she stared down at Dot, who was crammed on the floor between a mop bucket and a vacuum cleaner. “What are you doing down there?”
“Hiding from you.” Dot held a hand out. “Help me up, dear.”
Julia pulled Dot up off the floor. She stepped out of the cupboard as she dusted down her navy pleated skirt. She shook out her short grey curls and adjusted her brooch.
“I thought you were here to give Percy ‘the talk’,” Dot said as just closed the door behind her. “The ‘hurt my grandmother, and I’ll chop off your fingers’ talk. We panicked, so I hid. I wanted to eavesdrop, but you were speaking far too quietly.”
“She thinks I killed Gloria and Rita,” Percy announced from his seat as he sipped his tea. “Thinks I needed the money.”
“She did?” Dot waved her hand with a chuckle. “Oh, Julia! I think you’re losing your touch. Why would Percy want to kill those silly women?”
“That’s what I said,” Percy added. “She wants to know where I was on the night Rita was murdered. Should you tell her, or should I?”
Julia and Dot walked back to the couch. They sat across from Percy, and Dot reached out and plucked a biscuit from the plate. She offered one to Julia, who took it because she felt ridiculous for thinking they’d been poisoned.
“After our date at The Comfy Corner and our tipple at the pub, he walked me home and left,” Dot mumbled through a mouthful of digestive. “He came back ten minutes later telling me he’d lost his keys. I invited him in for a nightcap, and, well, he ended up staying the night.”
“Oh.” Julia choked on her biscuit.
“Not like that, dear,” Dot said, pursing her lips. “We’re not like you young whipper-snappers doing all that nonsense before marriage! I poured us a drink, and I borrowed Alfie’s computer-tablet thingy. What it’s called again, dear?”
“U-pad?” Percy said. “Or a me-pad? Something like that.”
“iPad,” Julia corrected him.
“That’s it!” Dot slapped her leg. “Marvellous invention! I wish we’d had those back in my day. I don’t think I would have left the house. No wonder kids today are so fat!” Dot took another bite of her biscuit. “Alfie showed me how to watch films. You click a button, and there they all are! Hundreds of them! It’s like someone put the silver screen into a computer. We fell into a hole of watching movie after movie. It’s hard not to when all you have to do is click.”
“The kids call it ‘binge-eating’,” Percy said with a knowing nod.
“Binge-watching,” Julia corrected again.
“We watched All About Eve, Ben-Hur, Singin’ in the Rain, Some Like it Hot, and The Bridge on the River Kwai,” Dot continued. “All the classics.”
“They don’t make them like that anymore.” Percy stabbed his finger on the chair arm. “It’s all crash, bang, and wallop now! Nobody tells real stories.”
“We didn’t realise what time it was until the birds started chirping,” Dot said. “Percy still didn’t have his keys, and I didn’t want him wandering around the village looking for them all night, so he slept on my couch. When you caught us out after I missed Vinnie’s party, we’d only just woken. I felt like a teenager again! It’d been many decades since I’d stayed up to see a sunrise.”
“Apart from ten minutes when I was at the church,” Percy said, turning to Julia and smiling, “I was with Dorothy all night. Unless you think I could have run to Fern Moore and back in that time, I think you’ll agree that I couldn’t possibly have murdered Rita.”
“Easy mistake, dear.” Dot patted Julia on the shoulder. “You can’t get it right every time. Back to the drawing board!”
Julia was too embarrassed to say another word. She finished her biscuit and left them to enjoy the rest of their afternoon together.
Mulberry Lane was even busier, with more of marketgoers making their way to the historical shopping street. Julia looked around for Barker, whom she spotted helping her father at the antique barn. As she crossed the road to tell him what she had found out, her phone rang in her handbag. She pulled it out, surprised to see that Alfie was calling her.
“Julia? It’s me. I need to see you.”
“What’s wrong?” Julia replied as she waved to Barker who had spotted her.
“I’m at my builder’s yard,” he replied. “Can you come now? I need to speak to you face to face.”
Julia hung up and walked to the builder’s yard, which was situated at the bottom of a narrow lane behind the antique barn. The chatter of the crowd died away, replaced by the grinding of an electronic saw. When she reached A to B Builders Yard, which was run by Alfie and Billy, she saw Billy cutting through lengths of wood with a giant circular saw. Jessie sat on a barrel behind him, her face buried in her phone. Neither noticed her as she walked towards Alfie’s office, which was up a flight of rickety wooden stairs in the main building.
Alfie jumped up from behind his desk when Julia opened the door. He had changed into his filthy blue overalls, which were rolled up at the sleeves to show his completely inked skin. Alfie had been in their life since April and had integrated well into Peridale. A building job had brought him to the village, but finding Jessie, the long-lost sister who had been ripped away from him and put into the care system when she was a baby, was what had kept him here.
“That was quick,” Alfie exclaimed as he pulled out a seat for her.
“I was only on Mulberry Lane.” Julia sat in the seat and watched as Alfie closed the blinds that looked out onto the courtyard. “You sounded distressed on the phone.”
“That’s one word for it.” Alfie paced in front of the closed window, his fingers in knots. “I wanted to tell you right away, but I felt like I was put on the spot. I called the second I was alone.”
“Tell me what?”
“I lied to you.” Alfie’s pacing came to a halt. “Well, I went along with a lie, which is as good as lying. It took me by surprise, and I didn’t know how to come clean in the moment.”
Julia had an idea what he was talking about, but she wanted to hear it from his lips. She nodded for him to continue. He sat down, and his tattooed fingers drummed on the surface of his desk.
“I wasn’t at the cinema with Skye on the night Rita was killed,” he started, the drumming intensifying. “I was at Malcolm Johnson’s house until the early hours, fixing his roof in that awful rain. I didn’t see Skye at all that day.”
“I suspected as much.”
“You did?” Alfie’s fingers stopped drumming. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to reveal my hand to her.” Julia leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her forehead; the whiplash of the day was giving her a headache. “She wasn’t very convincing, and I was sure the film she said you saw had its last viewing the day before.”
“She just blurted it out, and I felt like I had to go along. I didn’t want to embarrass her.”
“Did she explain why she lied?”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“I wonder why.” Julia chuckled. “Things are hardly looking good for her, are they? This is the second time I’ve caught her lying about her alibi. She said she wasn’t in Per
idale on the morning of my wedding, but I have video proof to show she was.”
“Do you think she’s behind all of this?”
“I don’t know,” Julia admitted. “But the fingers are starting to point in her direction.”
“I really like her,” Alfie said, his voice low. “Have I been a fool?”
“Not a fool, no.” Julia offered him a smile. “You’re just seeing the best in her. It happens to all of us. I know I’ve been guilty of that on more than one occasion. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“There’s more.” He exhaled. “I lent her some money.”
“How much?”
“£500.”
“Oh, Alfie…”
“I know!” he cried. “I am a fool. She’s in debt up to her eyeballs from her student days. She took out loans all over the place to get through. She kept talking about all the letters she was getting from people saying they were going to her house to take her stuff. I felt bad for her, so I asked how much it would take to at least pay off one letter. I make a decent living here, and I don’t like to see people suffer like that. She was in tears.”
“Do you know where she is?” Julia asked as she stood up. “I really need to talk to her.”
Alfie joined Julia in standing. “She left almost immediately after you spoke to us at the market. I’ve tried calling her since, but she’s not picking up.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know.” Alfie shrugged. “We’ve only really been seeing each other in the village. I think she mentioned something about living in Riverswick, and I know she works at the cinema in Cheltenham.”
“Call me if you see or hear from her.” Julia walked towards the door before turning back to Alfie. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
Leaving Alfie to get on with his work, Julia snuck out of the builder’s yard and hurried back to Mulberry Lane. Barker was still at the antique barn, helping Julia’s father lift a mahogany dresser into the back of a white van. She hung back and waited for him to finish. The second he did, she pulled him away from the action.
“It’s Skye,” Julia said. “I think she’s behind all this.”
13
Julia and Barker immediately handed their information to DI Christie, including the video footage showing Skye in the village when she claimed to have been stuck in the floods. Julia had only done so because she hoped Christie would put his ego aside to assess their findings with an open mind; she should have known better.
Despite her theory, Christie only saw what he wanted to see, which was Father David reading a letter in the pews and then someone stealing the items and being caught by Rita.
“It could be anyone!” he had said. “This proves nothing!”
The only thing he did listen to was Julia’s insistence that the two crimes were linked. When she pointed out that Gloria stole a water bottle from Rita and almost immediately began coughing, Christie’s ears pricked up, no doubt pleased he could ‘solve’ two cases with one vicar-shaped stone.
He also didn’t care about Skye’s numerous lies about her whereabouts, saying ‘anyone’ would have lied if someone with Julia’s ‘reputation’ started ‘ramming them with questions.’
They left the station full of frustration. Later that night, Christie called to say they were charging Father David and had denied him bail until his court hearing.
People in the village seemed happy to accept Father David’s guilt, but the thought of the vicar sitting in a lonely cell while he waited for his fate to be decided by other people only lit a fire under her backside.
She spent all the next day searching for Skye. She asked each member of the choir if they knew where she lived; none did. She drove out to the cinema Skye worked at only to find she hadn’t turned up for her shift and nobody there knew her well enough to know where she lived. Julia must have called Alfie a dozen times, but he hadn’t had any luck either.
Late on Friday night, Dot called to inform Julia that a distant cousin of Gloria’s had organised a funeral service at St. Peter’s Church after the police released her body. On Saturday morning, exactly one week after Gloria’s death during the wedding, Julia made her way down to the church to pay her respects.
Much like on the morning of the wedding, the weather was brutal. The rain lashed down persistently, with icy winds making it impossible to shelter under umbrellas. Julia met Dot and Percy, and they ran to the church, soaked by the time they reached the vestibule.
“A snowstorm is coming!” Dot announced as she attempted to fluff up her drowned curls. “The man on the radio said a wall of snow was going to cover the country by the end of the month!”
“Arctic winds,” Percy added. “It’s going to last until the New Year. They said we were about to enter a mini ice age!”
“They say that every year,” Julia assured them. “It’s probably just a slow news day.”
They sat in one of the back pews, and, as Julia had expected, the church was packed out. She knew it wasn’t because of Gloria’s popularity. More likely, people were desperate to get a glimpse of whoever had been brought in to replace Father David. It turned out that Father James Cartwright, a vicar from a neighbouring village, had been drafted in for the funeral service. He seemed like a nice man, but he wasn’t Father David. Hearing a different voice bellow through the church felt like a betrayal. No one mentioned Father David.
The service was short and sweet, and ended with Gloria’s cousin, Iris, an equally large lady of a similar age, giving a short eulogy and thanking everyone for such a great turnout. From her lack of detail, including no mention of the choir Gloria had adored, it was obvious Iris knew very little about the distant cousin she was laying to rest.
Though they were all invited to gather around the grave to say their final goodbyes to Gloria’s coffin, very few of the spectators who had come for the gossip value made their way into the graveyard, given the abysmal weather. Julia hadn’t intended on sticking around for the whole service, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Iris watching her cousin go into the ground without at least a couple of faces of support. With Dot and Percy by her side, they trudged across the waterlogged graveyard with their useless umbrellas plastered to their heads.
When Father James finished the service, Iris stared blankly into the grave as the coffin was slowly lowered to its final resting place. Because of the rain, it was hard to tell if she was crying, but she did wipe her cheeks a couple of times.
The rain finally ceased towards the end of the service, leaving them to toss handfuls of dirt onto the coffin without the rain turning it to mush in their hands. The clouds even parted, allowing the sun to break through.
“Were you friends of Gloria’s?” Iris asked as they walked back towards the church.
“Sort of,” Julia lied, not wanting to reveal there weren’t many people in the village who could have taken such a title. “Were you close with your cousin?”
“Not particularly,” Iris explained as they walked into the vestibule. “Truth be told, I hadn’t seen her in years. I was shocked to hear about her murder. I was listed as her next of kin, which was a surprise. I guess she didn’t really have any other family. I was glad to see so many people in the church. I know she wasn’t the most agreeable woman at times, but she had a good heart.”
“Where?” Dot scoffed, to which Julia elbowed her. “I mean … where are you from?”
“Bourton on Water,” Iris replied as she checked her watch, not seeming to notice Dot’s indiscretion. “I should get home. My husband will be wondering where I am.”
“He doesn’t know you’re here?” Percy asked.
“There’s a reason I haven’t seen Gloria in years.” Iris sighed. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? None of it really matters in the end.”
“What happened?” Dot asked a little too eagerly.
“The last time I saw her, I invited her to lunch,” Iris started, her eyes clouding over as she appeared to slip into her memori
es. “I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years. We’d get together every so often, if only out of habit. I invited her to my cottage for lunch. Everything was as pleasant as always, but when she left, we noticed an antique clock was missing from our mantelpiece. It was a family heirloom on my husband’s side, passed down through the generations. We had it appraised, and they confirmed that it was a genuine piece from the Regency era. The thing was worth a small fortune, but it had sentimental value for my husband. We joked that we’d sell the clock if we were ever short of money, but I always knew we could be homeless and he’d still cling to that thing until his dying breath.”
“And Gloria took it?” Dot asked. “I always knew there was something fishy about her!”
“I called Gloria the moment we noticed it was gone, but she denied even seeing a clock on the mantlepiece. As you can imagine, the disappearance of a two-hundred-year-old clock was enough to cut all ties.”
“Why would Gloria steal your clock?” Percy asked.
“Well, I don’t think she did,” Iris continued. “She had brought a friend with her. She never called ahead of time to ask, she just showed up with her. She didn’t even introduce us. I had to stretch the food out to four, and the woman ate like she’d never been fed!”
“What did the friend look like?” Julia asked.
“A waiflike woman with straggly hair,” Iris explained, indicating the height of a child with her hand. “About this tall. Peculiar woman. Freaky, almost. My husband wanted to call the police, but I convinced him not to. I never liked the thing, personally. I’ve always been more into Victorian décor. Besides, I didn’t want to put Gloria in that awkward position. She seemed quite protective of the tiny woman. I was surprised not to see her here today. I thought I might be able to finally get some answers from her.” Iris rechecked her watch. “I really should get going. If I miss the next bus, he’s going to start asking questions I’m not in the mood to answer. Thanks again for coming. I know Gloria would have appreciated it, in her own special way.”
