Murder at the Altar

by Veronica Heley

  MURDER AT THE ALTAR

  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 at the Altar

  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 2001

  Copyright © 2000 Veronica Heley

  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 9781906288136 Ostara Publishing

  13 King Coel Road

  Lexden

  Colchester CO3 9AG

  www.ostarapublishing.co.uk

  Murder at the Altar 1

  Too late, she understood.

  She understood why Ferdy had been killed in that place, and at that

  time of day.

  The police had been wrong. She had got it wrong herself. But she had been right in thinking her every move had been watched.

  She had been afraid, and she had been right to be afraid. She wanted to scream! She was only just coming to terms with Frank’s

  death. Now she, too, had run out of time.

  She backed up against the door of the church. It did not yield and let

  her in as it had yielded for Ferdy.

  The murderer took a step forward …

  It was two days since the funeral. Ellie had told everyone she would be perfectly all right on her own, but of course she wasn’t. The pills the doctor had given her weren’t helping, either. She couldn’t sleep at night, and felt half asleep all day. She knew she would feel more alive if she stopped taking the pills, but she wasn’t sure she could cope if she did.

  She stood at the French windows and stared down the slope of her back garden, across the alley and up to the church. The trees around the church had just started to turn yellow when Frank had been taken to hospital. There had been a sharp frost the night he died and now there were more leaves on the lawn than on the trees.

  They ought to be cleared up, or the grass would suffer. Frank had never been interested in growing things, but it had been the joy of Ellie’s life to transform a privet-bound patch of straggly grass into a pretty garden, massed with flowering shrubs and herbaceous plants. A sundial sat in the middle of a circle of lawn, reminding passers-by that ‘Time Passes, and Man is Left to Account for it’.

  Frank had passed on with Time. Ellie was still trying to account for it.

  The soft green walls and comfortable furniture of the living-room behind her had once seemed a serene refuge from the world outside. Now there was dust on the scattered mounds of sympathy cards lying on the table in the bay window overlooking the road. A couple of halfempty coffee mugs sat abandoned on the sideboard, flowers drooped and died in their vases, and there was a litter of newspapers on the cream-coloured carpet by the settee. You must get moving, Ellie told herself. Start clearing out Frank’s clothes, get out of the house to buy some food, return the overdue library books.

  She tried to think positively. There was still plenty of colour in the garden even in November. The door of the garden shed had drifted ajar. She must go and secure it. Her shed was haunted by stray cats and a neighbour’s small boy … which reminded her that she hadn’t seen the boy since Frank died.

  The sun was trying to come out, turning the stone of the garden seat and urns on the patio to a golden glow. Just before Frank had been taken ill, she had filled the urns with winter-flowering pansies and variegated ivies. They were doing well.

  The sun was getting brighter, making the church spire stand out black against the sky. It didn’t often stand out as clearly as that. It meant it was going to rain.

  The grandmother clock in the magnolia-painted hall behind her chimed sweet and low. Time to get Frank his mid-morning cuppa. She started. No more mid-morning cuppa for Frank. Why couldn’t she remember that?

  A heavy-set woman burst out of the side door of the church, arms flailing. Ellie registered that this was unusual, but did not move.

  Mrs Dawes ran down the path from the church. Ellie felt a faint stir of interest. She’d never seen the stately Mrs Dawes run before.

  Mrs Dawes fought her way through the gate which led from the church grounds into the alley. Crossing the alley she wrenched open the gate into Ellie’s garden. Mrs Dawes’ face was red and her padded olivegreen coat flapped around her as she pounded her way up the garden and banged on Ellie’s kitchen door.

  Ellie went to let her in, moving like a sleepwalker.

  At first Mrs Dawes couldn’t speak properly. She tore the flowered scarf from her throat and gesticulated.

  She needs help, thought Ellie. She felt something stir inside herself in response to Mrs Dawes’ need. She said, ‘Sit down,’ and ran some water into a glass. ‘Drink this. Don’t try to talk for a minute …’

  ‘Phone!’ Mrs Dawes knocked the glass away, spraying water around. ‘Police! Dead man in church!’

  Ellie blinked.

  ‘Stupid girl! Do it!’

  Ellie blinked again. At the age of fifty, she no longer considered herself a girl.

  ‘Ring the police! You’re the nearest. I think it’s one of the workmen, the heating engineers, you know? They’ve been in and out all week. Thought he was drunk! Tried to pull him up …!’

  She rocked, podgy fingers over her face.

  Mrs Dawes, respectable widow and head of the church flowerarranging team, was not a woman to fall apart unless she had seen something particularly nasty.

  Grief and shock over Frank’s death tried to keep their hold on Ellie, but she forced herself to be practical. Mrs Dawes had come to her for help, and help she must have.

  Ellie rang the police and administered tea and sympathy to Mrs Dawes. Wait till Frank gets home and I tell him, she thought.

  Oh. Why do I still keep thinking of things to tell him?

  She persuaded Mrs Dawes into the sitting-room. Mrs Dawes took Frank’s chair, the best chair. Of course. She was a woman of ample proportions. Even so, Ellie winced at seeing someone else in Frank’s big armchair.

  ‘I’ve put two sugars in. Have a biscuit. Good for shock.’

  Mrs Dawes’ colour was a little better but her breathing was still uneven and her dark-dyed hair was coming down. She put up shaking hands to deal with it.

  ‘I didn’t notice him at first. I’d just finished the flower-arranging class in the church hall, so I thought I’d pop into the church to see what needed doing to the flowers since the funeral …’

  Frank’s funeral.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellie in a steady voice. ‘You do the flowers at the church so beautifully. Everyone remarked on it the other day.’

  Mrs Dawes found the compliment soothing. She inclined her head and finished her tea. Her hands still shook but she held out her cup for a refill.

  ‘I took in some chrysanths to replace any which might have gone over. As I went up to the altar I nearly fell over him. You don’t expect to see anyone lying on the floor in front of the altar, do you? Touching it. With both hands. Lying on his face.’

  ‘Who …?’

  ‘I didn’t see
his face. I thought he was drunk.’ She began to cry.

  Ellie fetched some of Frank’s beautiful linen hankies. Frank wouldn’t need the hankies so they might as well be used. Ellie still had to tackle the disposal of his clothes, his shoes, his books, his papers. She wouldn’t think about that for the moment.

  Mrs Dawes blew her nose and mopped up as the police rang Ellie’s doorbell.

  Mrs Dawes repeated her story to the police, finding it not unpleasant to be the focus of attention for two nice-looking young policemen. She refused to accompany them back to the church. The side door to the church was open, she said. They could go in and see for themselves. She herself was not going back till the body had been removed. Ellie could show them the way, couldn’t you, dear?

  Ellie showed the policemen the way down through her garden, across the alley and up to the church. A stir of curiosity surprised her. She had to acknowledge that it would have been interesting to have gone into the church with the police, just to see if what Mrs Dawes had said was true.

  The police said she should return to sit with Mrs Dawes. They also refused to admit the central heating engineers who arrived at that moment.

  Ellie checked them off: the foreman and both of his helpers. So it wasn’t one of them who lay dead in front of the altar.

  She got back to find Mrs Dawes combing her hair in front of the mirror.

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘No, but I’ll use your loo, if I may.’ Mrs Dawes’ fingers twitched at the bunch of lilies which Ellie had shoved all anyhow into a vase. It had been kind of people to give her flowers at the funeral, but she’d been too distracted to arrange them properly.

  ‘You shouldn’t cram lilies into a small vase like this,’ said Mrs Dawes, once more on familiar ground. ‘You should have cut an inch and a half off the stems and—’

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘Come to my flower-arranging classes,’ said Mrs Dawes. ‘Thursday mornings, 10.30 prompt in the church hall. Those nice young policemen want me to make a statement. Not that I can tell them much. I pulled on his arm, you know, to try to make him get up.’ She shuddered.

  Ellie listened and nodded and made more tea for Mrs Dawes and for the policemen when they eventually returned. A different lot of policemen this time, but still requiring tea and biscuits. Familiar actions, listening, nodding agreement, providing food.

  She still felt only half awake, but they didn’t seem to notice.

  The large house opposite the church had been empty for months. The fat man had parked his dark-green Saab under the For Sale notice in the drive. Perhaps someone was interested in the house at last, even though gossip said the owner was asking too much. Perhaps one of the playgroup helpers from the church hall had parked the car there, out of the way.

  The Saab had been parked in that particular place so that the driver had a good view of the comings and goings at the church.

  Mrs Dawes’ arrival … the watcher wound down the window, heard her scream. So the body had been discovered. Good.

  The fat man noted which house she went to for help. Ah, now wasn’t that the house where the woman was supposed to have been standing, watching everything that had happened the other night?

  The fat man pinched in his lips. In his opinion, the killer ought to have dealt with the witness then and there, instead of losing his head and rushing away from the scene of the crime. If the old biddy told what she’d seen, the killer would have to be sacrificed, even if he were the boss’s right hand man.

  And if he went … the fat man smiled … someone else could step in, couldn’t they?

  The police car arrived. The fat man watched as the woman showed the police the way up to the church. She didn’t go in with them, but returned to her own house. The driver counted the backs of houses. Hers was the fourth out of eight semi-detached houses, all backing on to the alley and looking out over the church. Passers-by began to collect.

  He waited while senior officers arrived, then forensics. The fat man cowered in his seat until he remembered that his windows were tinted. He could see everyone, but they couldn’t see him.

  He waited till the senior policeman and sidekick came out of the church and went down the path to take statements from the witnesses. The boss would soon find out whether the woman had seen enough to identify the killer or not.

  The fat man started the engine and after carefully looking both ways, slid out into the traffic on the main road.

  Ellie walked Mrs Dawes back to her own house two streets away. Mrs Dawes needed someone to lean on and Ellie was selected. A familiar role.

  Mrs Dawes said she couldn’t wait to ring her daughter to tell her what she’d seen.

  Ellie decided not to ring her own daughter Diana till after six o’clock. Diana wouldn’t be back from her part-time job yet, anyway. There was a sore place inside Ellie when she thought of Diana. Diana sometimes made it difficult to give her unqualified love. For instance, after the funeral Ellie had been reminiscing with a distant cousin about Frank’s earlier days, when Diana had interrupted saying, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t go on about Father. You know how much it upsets me!’

  This was the first time Ellie had left the house since the funeral. Now she was out in the fresh air she decided to make the most of the day’s thin sunshine and walk right round the local park. Returning by way of the alley she paused to see if there were any sign of the policemen. What a shocking thing to have happened! She could hardly take it in. Poor Mrs Dawes, stumbling on a body …

  It was a pretty, Victorian Gothic church, much favoured by brides who liked traditional wedding photographs. There was no churchyard as such, but the building was surrounded by a grassy area planted with mature trees. The Green, as it was called, was criss-crossed by tarmac paths in every direction.

  Ellie knew how much it cost to keep the church going, since Frank had been on the parish council. His chief concern had been the thirties-built church hall next door to the church, well past its sell-by date and in urgent need of replacement. Well, Ellie thought, at least Frank doesn’t have to worry about that any more …

  Frank had always said how fortunate they were to have a likeable middle-of-the-road vicar who attracted a reasonable congregation. Ellie wondered how the vicar had received the news of a death in his church.

  She wondered when the man had been killed, poor thing. Last night some time? He couldn’t have been there for long, or someone would have found him.

  Having been quiet for so long indoors, Ellie felt oppressed by the noise of the traffic on the main road beyond the church.

  A bus screamed to a halt outside the church hall. A car tooted at an elderly man using the pedestrian crossing. Soon the children would be trooping out of the primary school opposite.

  It wouldn’t take me long to pop along to the shops in the Avenue to get some food, thought Ellie.

  Until Frank went into hospital, Ellie had worked part-time in the charity shop in the Avenue. She hadn’t been back since. Did she feel up to answering kind enquiries from her co-workers? No, not yet.

  She turned her back on the main road, grateful for the seclusion of their own house. Frank had been born and brought up in one of the grand houses at the other end of the parish, but they had enjoyed living in this unpretentious area beside the church. Ellie had been concerned that he would find a small house claustrophobic but for some years they couldn’t have afforded anything larger, and later on Frank had found other uses for his money.

  Ellie had no idea whether she could afford to continue to live there. She wasn’t sure she cared.

  The side door into the church was closed and cordoned off with tape. A policeman stood on guard, fending off the excited enquiries of some passers-by. Seeing Ellie, they called out to know if she’d seen anything. Ellie made herself smile and shake her head.

  One of them persisted, running over to speak to her. ‘They’ve set up an incident room in the church hall! I don’t know what the playgroup is going to do! They’re aski
ng everyone if they’d seen anything suspicious!’

  Ellie found it difficult to be sociable, but did her best. She said, ‘Yes, they asked me if I’d seen anything, but I’m afraid I haven’t been noticing anything much.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course. After Frank … so sorry to hear …’ An understanding nod.

  Ellie nodded back. She went through her gate, climbed the slope up her garden and let herself into the kitchen.

  She made a sandwich but the bread was stale and she only ate half of it.

  She found herself weeping. It was all right to give way, now and again … widows were permitted … though she knew she mustn’t do it in public, because it made other people uncomfortable.

  Diana, for instance. If she’d been there, she would have said, ‘Pull yourself together, mother!’

  Ellie still had to tackle the leaves on the lawn, the clothes in the cupboard, the library books which must be returned, the paperwork, the toiletries in the bathroom. The stack of letters of sympathy, the cards. The lack of fresh bread or indeed any other fresh food in the fridge.

  She went to stand in her favourite place by the French windows, looking out over the garden and up to the church beyond.

  ‘Diana, it’s mother. How are you?’

  Normally when Ellie rang, she had to listen to Diana complaining about her boss, the woman who ran the nursery where her toddler went, the damage done to a new blouse by the dry cleaner …

  Ellie didn’t like to think badly of anybody, but it had occasionally crossed her mind that Diana enjoyed finding fault with other people. Like … Ellie stopped that thought before it could get any further. And then substituted a more acceptable one. Like Frank’s Aunt Drusilla.

  But after that cutting remark of hers at the funeral, Diana had changed and been very loving to her mother. She worried whether Ellie was eating properly, and urged her to pay them a long visit up north. Today Diana wanted to know whether Ellie was still taking her pills …

  ‘Diana dear, sorry to interrupt, but a most exciting thing happened here today …’