Sins Out of School

by Jeanne M. Dams

  22

  NO one was there?” I said stupidly.

  “They were not only not there, but they left behind every indication of urgent flight. They forgot even to lock the door, so Derek had a bit of a look ’round. Drawers not quite pushed in, that sort of thing. The wardrobes are all half empty, the toothbrushes are gone, and so is Gillian’s car. They’ve decamped.”

  I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. Alan closed the freezer door and sat, too.

  “They’ve gone to London,” I said finally. “Gillian’s taken them both. Drat the woman! She doesn’t trust me and she doesn’t trust the police, but you’d think she’d be smart enough to see that the innocent are better off sitting tight.”

  “Or the guilty, if it comes to that. No, don’t glare at me. I’ve no desire to find either of the Doyles guilty of murder, though I’m keeping a more open mind about it than you are. But I doubt they’ve gone to Gillian’s flat.”

  “Too obvious? I suppose. Where, then? Surely not home to Daddy.”

  “It’s not impossible, though I admit it’s unlikely. One can imagine the sort of welcome they’d get. No, I would imagine it’s London or Birmingham. Perhaps Manchester, though that’s rather far afield.”

  “Not for Gillian, not the way she drives. A big city where they can get lost, then?”

  “It’s where people usually go when they’re trying to run away. Unless they skip the country altogether. But that takes a little money, especially with three people, and apparently there isn’t much money to spare in this case.”

  “Mmm. Daddy might have been willing to spring for some airfares, though, to get his troublesome family even farther out of the way. I suppose Derek will have notified the ports.”

  “Routine, my dear. Not that it does much good these days, when anyone can hop aboard a Chunnel train and be in France before you can look up the schedule.”

  “The idiots! When they could perfectly well have sat it out here. It’ll work itself out in time, I know it will. Things always do.”

  Alan said nothing with such heavy emphasis that I sighed. “All right, all right. Not always. And if they really did do it, one or all of them, I suppose they were sensible to try and get away. But I don’t believe for a moment that they’re murderers—though I could cheerfully murder Gillian myself right now—and I intend to find out who is responsible.”

  It was Alan’s turn to sigh and pick up the telephone as he rummaged through our take-out menus. “Indian or Chinese?”

  I thawed out some meat loaf instead, and after supper sat in front of the parlor fire and did some serious thinking. I would have liked to go charging off in all directions, but I was truly too tired, and it wouldn’t have done me any more good than it did Don Quixote.

  No, it was time to make some lists. I make lists for everything. “Shopping,” “Things to Remember” (that one gets longer and more vital with every passing year), “Things to Do.”

  The lists I began that evening were headed “Things I Know,” “Things I Need to Know,” and “People to Talk To.”

  The whole thing was more than a little daunting, now that I sat down to look at it logically. The first two lists could have been disposed of quickly with entries of “Almost nothing” and “Everything.” However, as the high school teacher told the sophomore who wanted the topic of his required essay to be “Life,” perhaps I could break it down a little and make it easier.

  Very well, then, what did I know?

  Start with the basics. I thought back over the past few days, as the complex pattern of personalities and circumstances had begun to unfold for me, and wrote down everything I could remember:

  John Doyle was a cold, harsh, self-righteous prig who bullied his family and delighted in causing trouble. He cost one man his job, another his life. He cut Amanda off from her only family support, her sister. He worked at a bank. He also ran the family finances.

  Amanda Doyle was forced to marry when she became pregnant, perhaps by another man. Her father, a prominent MP, didn’t (and presumably doesn’t) want the circumstances of Amanda’s marriage known, and John held that over Amanda’s head. Amanda hated John but was afraid to leave him.

  Miriam was taught that animals are dirty and that misfortunes are a result of wickedness, a punishment for sin. She was profoundly unhappy both at school and at home and was very much afraid of her father.

  So much for background on the principals. Now for facts about the case:

  John Doyle died of an overdose of a digitalis preparation. He was stabbed after death. Both doors to the house were locked when Amanda found him the next morning. The digitalis container was found today, empty, on the Doyle property.

  John Doyle was in London two days before he was found dead. On that same day, Amanda played hooky from school and went to visit Miriam’s school. The next day she enrolled Miriam at St. Stephen’s.

  John was at a church meeting, after the regular prayer meeting, the night he died.

  I looked over what I’d written. Some things were open to question, of course, things I “knew” only by hearsay. However, it seemed to me I could accept most of it. I was not bound, as the police are, by the provable.

  On to the list of questions:

  Where are the Doyles and Gillian?

  What did John Doyle do that day in London?

  Is Amanda telling the truth about her AWOL day?

  Where has the pill bottle been all this time?

  What about that church meeting?

  What does Gillian have to do with all this?

  I studied the list with some dissatisfaction. That last entry was nebulous in the extreme, and as for the others, well, the police were far better equipped than I to find the answers to most of them. However … perhaps I could nose around and talk to people and find out a little more about a few things.

  That led me to the third list, and there I stuck. I’d already talked to everyone I could think of. There were useful questions I could still put to the Doyles, and to Gillian, if I could find them. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Their neighbors, perhaps, but I couldn’t feel very hopeful about that idea. His coworkers, others besides Sam Johnson? Maybe, but what was the point? The police would already have talked them into exhaustion, and they wouldn’t be apt to greet me with open arms and a ready tongue.

  Really, there was just one group I hadn’t explored adequately. The people John Doyle went to church with. The followers of the One True God. The reason, I admitted reluctantly, was sheer cowardice. I feared and disliked everything they stood for. Extreme fundamentalism in religion, any religion, had always struck me as simplistic and therefore dangerous, and the worst fundamentalists of all were those who followed a creed of hatred. I wanted nothing further to do with those people. It was plain they felt the same way about me.

  Wait, though. Did they? All of them? I had talked to only a few, hadn’t I? I had, myself, never gone to a church where everybody believed the same thing, even though we all got up every Sunday morning and recited the same Nicene Creed. There were degrees of belief, shades of commitment, ranging all the way from the young husbands who really didn’t believe anything much except that going to church was respectable and good for business, and Sunday school was a good influence on the children, to the devout elderly women who were pillars of the Altar Guild and turned up for every Saint’s Day and Holy Day of Obligation and probably knew the Book of Common Prayer by heart.

  Why should the Chapel of the One True God be any different? True, their rigid doctrines were light years removed from the warm and gently tolerant Anglican beliefs, but was I to think that every single parishioner, or whatever they called themselves, swallowed the dogma whole? Amanda used to attend, after all, and she wasn’t a true believer. Surely there were others who were dragged along by a spouse, who didn’t subscribe entirely, or at all, to the dark tenets espoused by Elder Rookwood and his dragon of a wife.

  How was I going to find those straying sheep and talk to them?
r />   Rapidly I ran through my list of sources. Jane was out. She knew everything that went on in Cathedral circles, most things about schools and schoolchildren, and the general run of Sherebury gossip, but the stranger nonconformist sects were beyond her ken. The Endicotts, as innkeepers, knew a lot of people, but I somehow couldn’t see any of Elder Rookwood’s flock bending a cheery elbow at the Rose and Crown of an evening. My entrée to university gossip, dear old Dr. Temple, was nearly housebound now with arthritis, and again, knew little of people outside his academic world.

  The dean of the Cathedral?

  Ordinarily he was the first person I’d turn to about anything ecclesiastic. A devout priest, he was also, as any administrative clergyman must be these days, an excellent politician. He kept up ties with the Baptists and Methodists, I knew, and the Roman Catholics, of course.

  Rookwood’s bunch? It didn’t seem likely, but the dean had said I could call on him any time, if I needed help.

  Or, no. Margaret, of course! The dean’s wife was the one who kept her finger on the religious pulse of the town. If any outsider knew anything about dissension in the ranks of the One True God (really, it was impossible even to think of them without sounding blasphemous), it would be Margaret.

  I looked at my watch. Nearly ten. That was far too late to call the poor woman with anything but a genuine life-or-death emergency. Besides, I was exhausted myself. It had been a long and troubling day. But I’d go to Matins tomorrow, without fail, and enlist Margaret’s aid.

  I tidied up the parlor, checked to make sure the fire was safe to leave for the night, and went to Alan’s study where he was watching the news.

  “There’s Blake,” he said, pointing to the screen.

  He was an impressive figure, his silver hair gleaming like a halo in the glare of television lighting. Behind him that lovable symbol of the nation, the clock tower that housed Big Ben, towered straight and reliable, the lighted face of the clock indicating that Parliament was sitting.

  “… will see that Her Majesty’s loyal opposition hold the day on this vital issue. The moral fabric of our nation cannot withstand such constant attack, and I and my colleagues intend to stop the blitz of pornography entering our living rooms every night. Wholesome entertainment …”

  “I’m going to bed, love. Sufficient unto the day. Are you coming up soon?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he replied in what he fondly imagined to be a W. C. Fields voice. He snapped off the television. “Speaking of pornography … shall we indulge in a little X-rated activity ourselves, my little chickadee?”

  The day ended far more pleasantly than it had begun.

  23

  MATINS was about as well attended as it usually was on a Tuesday in early December, which was to say that the clergy and choir combined easily outnumbered the congregation. It’s a lovely little service, though. I’ve often wondered why more people don’t come. You’d think there’d be enough music lovers in town that they’d fill the place just to hear the choir. Oh, well, perhaps Anglican chant isn’t to everyone’s taste these days.

  As the last of the procession trailed out, I contemplated the probable reaction to more modem music at Matins. Rock? Rap? I shuddered and turned to Margaret Allenby, who had sat next to me. “Margaret, I need to pick your brain.”

  “It’s at your disposal, such as it is. Shall we go to Alderney’s for coffee?”

  “I think maybe not, thanks. The trouble with Alderney’s is that I never stick to coffee, and I’d gained three pounds the last time I dared step on a scale.”

  “Come to the Deanery, then. I overslept this morning and haven’t had my daily dose of caffeine yet. It’s a miracle I didn’t start snoring during the Te Deum.”

  “It was a rather long setting this morning, wasn’t it? But beautiful. I sometimes wonder if Jeremy and the boys don’t get discouraged, working so hard on such lovely music, only to have it heard by so few people.”

  “Oh, they do it for love, you know,” said Margaret, leading the way across the Close to the beautiful little sixteenth-century house she called home. The morning was clear and still, but very chilly. Our breath formed little clouds as we talked. “Love of the music, and perhaps now and then love of God.”

  “Who is always listening.”

  “I’m sure Jeremy hopes not on those lamentable occasions when the trebles don’t quite reach the high notes. But alas, I fear He probably always is.”

  Margaret makes wonderful coffee, and she casually set out some scones (“left over from yesterday’s tea; I do hope they’re not too dry and horrid”), so I ended up eating as much as if I’d gone to the tea shop. I waited until Margaret had absorbed a due quantity of caffeine before broaching my question.

  “The Chapel of the One True God,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. Rather an audacious thing to call one’s organization, I’d have thought. Still, if anyone would make the claim, it would be Mr. Rookwood.”

  “It’s his invention, then? I thought I’d never heard of it before.”

  “His brain child entirely, as I understand it, though it was established a good long time before Kenneth and I came to Sherebury.”

  “Margaret, what draws people to a church like that? There doesn’t seem to be one iota of hope or comfort or peace in the things they preach.”

  “No, but some people aren’t looking for those things, Dorothy. They’re full of anger, and they’re looking for justification, or for revenge. It pleases them, in a perverse sort of way, to be able to ascribe their own feelings and motives to God.”

  “You wouldn’t think there’d be enough people like that to fill a church, though, and keep it going for years.”

  “Well, of course, not all of them are genuine zealots. Some are in it for the thrill—there’s a nasty thrill in really virulent hatred, you know—and some go along for the ride. Some like the feeling of power they get from denouncing other people in public.”

  “That was John Doyle, wasn’t it? From what I’ve heard, he loved making people squirm, and worse. Ruining their lives, sometimes.”

  “Yes, and feeling righteous about it all the time. I can’t say so when Kenneth is around, and I probably ought not even to think such a thing, but I can’t help being grateful that man is dead. He was pure poison.”

  “Especially for his family, I suspect. I know Amanda Doyle hated everything about the chapel. She went only because John forced her to. Are there others like that, do you think?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are. Though of course when you get a man like Rookwood, who rules through fear, very few people are brave enough to say what they really think. They simply leave when they can’t bear it any longer.”

  “Yes, that’s what I really wanted to ask you about, Margaret. I need to talk to some people like that, some of the ones who don’t really subscribe to the party line. I need to know what John Doyle was up to the last few days of his life, and I can’t ask Amanda. She’s left town.”

  Margaret nodded. “I heard. She might well not have known, anyway.”

  “She said she didn’t, but I thought if I pressed her, she might remember some little thing that would help. Anyway, I can’t, because the little idiot’s flown the coop. So I thought I’d better talk to someone at the church, but it’ll have to be one of the disaffected. The others think I’m anathema.”

  “That puts you in excellent company, my dear. One gathers they don’t think too highly of Jesus Christ, either. Now, let me see. There was the Collins family—no, they moved to Leeds. And I don’t know what became of poor little Tony Prichard. He had a speech impediment, and they used to taunt him, say it was the work of the devil. Shameful, it was.”

  She ticked off a few more people mentally, and I marveled not only at her memory, but at her concern for these people who weren’t even of her faith. Sherebury’s a small town, but Margaret’s wide-spread kindness is remarkable, even so.

  “Ah! I think I have it. Miss Simmons. I don’t know her Christian name
. I doubt anyone has ever called her anything but Miss Simmons. She’s an old maid, and quite a character. Not a spinster, or an unmarried lady. Quite definitely an old maid. Her father involved her in the chapel, and she went out of deference to him, though I gather she sometimes spoke her mind even then. She may be the only person in Sherebury who isn’t afraid of the Rookwoods.”

  “Except you.”

  “My dear, they terrify me! That’s why I’ve made friends with so many of their disgruntled parishioners, I expect. Anyway, old Mr. Simmons finally died, aged something like a hundred and ten, and as soon as Miss Simmons could do as she liked, she left and joined the Baptists. She told me she would have come to us, but she liked the Baptists’ hymns better. After years of no music in church at all, she said, she wanted to lift up her voice. And my dear, she’s ninety if she’s a day, and her voice sounds like a cross between a creaky gate and a Siamese cat!”

  “More power to the Baptists, then, if they can make her happy and put up with her singing. She sounds like exactly the person I need, if she didn’t leave the chapel too long ago to know anything about current affairs there.”

  “She keeps up with some of the people, I think. She’ll know a lot, still, and she’ll know who you can safely ask about anything she can’t tell you. She’s a remarkable woman, a true original. You’ll enjoy her. Give her my love, and here—take the rest of these scones with you. They won’t last another day, and she likes her little treat.”

  Margaret gave me the address and precise instructions for how to get there (she knows me and my phobias well), and I sped off laden with scones, good wishes, and questions.

  Miss Simmons’s house, when I found it (without a hitch), was one of those anonymous semidetached Victorian things, neither beautiful enough nor ugly enough to distinguish itself from its fellows. I had hoped to get some idea of her personality from her front garden. Gardens tell a lot about people, I think.