by Nicola Slade
‘You must have made some impression on him,’ sighed Pauline Winslow. ‘Because he’s insisting, not only that he must go to Winchester Cathedral, but that he has to go right now, and that furthermore, he wishes you, and only you, to take him there!’
‘That is a surprise.’ Sam whistled softly. ‘I suppose I’d better come back to Firstone Grange straight away. As it happens I’m luckily only just down the road. I looked in to the nice little bookshop in Chambers Forge after I dropped Harriet back with you for lunch, then I nipped over the road to Waitrose. I needed some toothpaste so I thought I’d better buy it while I remembered, and the upshot is that the coffee shop here is very nice so I’ve just had soup and a roll. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
As Sam parked his old Volvo estate at the front door of Firstone Grange, Pauline Winslow came outside with Fred Buchan who was looking shaky but resolute.
‘Here we are, Mr Buchan.’ She handed over her charge with a bright smile and a sprightly note in her voice that Mary Poppins might have envied. ‘Canon Hathaway has very kindly agreed to give you a lift in to Winchester.’ Without a word spoken, Fred slumped in the front seat while Sam fussed about with the seat belt. ‘Don’t be too late,’ Matron said, sounding anxious as she exchanged a glance with Sam. For two pins, he thought, she would have rolled her eyes at him, but such behaviour was well outside her code, so she merely gave a concerned nod of farewell as the two men drove off.
‘What is it that you wanted to do in the Cathedral, Mr Buchan?’ Sam shot a look sideways at his passenger. ‘It’s a wonderful building, of course, is that why you want to go there?’ There was no response, so he turned to the more likely reason. ‘Or are you hoping to join in a service? I’m afraid you’ll be unlucky, if that’s the case, but I can easily arrange to pick you up tomorrow, if you like.’
‘Not a service.’ Fred shook his head. Sam waited then, as no further communication seemed forthcoming, he asked: ‘What denomination are you, Fred? I’d guess either Roman Catholic or Lutheran? Would I be right? Those are pretty widespread in Europe.’
‘Once I was—’ The voice sounded harsh, in need of oiling. ‘Once I was a Catholic. But now I am nothing. Nothing.’
He said no more and Sam gave up, concentrating on making his way round the narrow back streets and through the ancient gateway into the Cathedral close which was thronged with people visiting the annual Christmas Market. Parking was always a nightmare at this time of year so Sam sighed with relief as he eased the car into a friend’s conveniently empty parking space and helped the old man out of his seat.
‘You are a priest? Yes?’ The question took Sam by surprise and he stared for a moment. ‘Well, I am,’ he admitted. ‘But not in the way I suspect you mean. I’m a priest of the Anglican church but that’s not the same as being a Roman Catholic priest. What did you.…?’
‘No matter, but that was why I—’ The old man stomped off towards the great grey building, head down against the chill wind and ignoring the crowds queuing at the open-air ice-rink, so Sam locked the car and set off in interested pursuit. They were nodded through by the guide at the door, who recognized Sam and, after a few tentative yards, Fred Buchan halted and gazed around. For a moment or two he stared up at the Perpendicular nave but there was no admiration in his eyes. He flicked a glance towards the black marble font but that too found no favour, so he headed towards the altar.
Bemused but curious, Sam followed him, close enough to assist if need be, but keeping enough distance so that the old man should not feel crowded. Did Fred know the Cathedral at all, Sam wondered. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in all this, he’s not following some predetermined plan, he’s speeding up then slowing down and just looking right and left, as if he’s searching for something.
At the notice on the door to the crypt Fred stopped altogether, standing in front of it and peering at the wording. ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to visit the crypt today,’ Sam told him, concerned as he realized that the other man now seemed a bit panicky. What could be the matter? Had he forgotten what he was looking for? Had he perhaps never known, and merely burrowed like a frightened animal into the shadowy sanctuary of the Cathedral in search of safety?
‘You know it’s prone to flooding? After all that heavy rain we’ve had lately the water is knee deep down there.’ The old man’s eyes flickered so Sam opened the door. ‘Look, even though we can’t actually go in there, we can stand here on this step and see the statue.’
Looking increasingly uncertain, and very frail, Fred Buchan allowed Sam to usher him into the entrance to the crypt. The old man took hold of the railing and leaned forward, staring in astonishment.
‘What in God’s name is that?’ The question burst out in spite of his reserve, the hoarse croak echoing in the underground chamber. He indicated the life-sized statue standing a few yards in front of them. It was the figure of a man, very simply made, with his head bent towards hands upheld in front of his chest.
Sam felt his throat constrict as the statue, as always, took him unawares. ‘It’s by the sculptor, Anthony Gormley,’ he explained. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? And look, you can see the vaulting of the roof reflected in the water.’
There was no reply, and as Fred seemed rooted to the spot, Sam leaned against the back wall and watched and waited. Five minutes, ten minutes; it was getting very cold and Sam was beginning to feel cramped. Had Fred, in this modern masterpiece in its mediaeval setting, found whatever it was he sought? Did the statue ‘speak’ to him?
Just as Sam realized he could barely feel his feet, and decided that he really had to interrupt the old man’s silent vigil, Fred sighed and straightened his shoulders. As he turned away from the light Sam was yet able to detect the trace of tears on the furrowed cheeks and his kind heart was wrung.
‘We go now,’ was all the other man said but at the door he looked back at the metal man, a kind of longing engraved on his face.
Silently, Sam escorted his passenger back through the great, echoing building and out to the car. Whatever Fred Buchan had needed, Sam thought he had found something, though what it was, Sam had no idea.
‘What?’ At the other end of the line Neil sounded flabbergasted at Harriet’s question, as well he might. She grinned wryly, picturing his expression. He’ll be calling for the men in white coats any day now. She repeated her query with some acerbity to disguise her own qualms.
‘It’s simple enough surely, Neil? All I want you to do is to find out, tactfully, from the euphonium player, whether there were any threads of black cotton attached to his instrument. I think he was the first one on the scene, I seem to remember the poor soul nearly tumbling out of the gallery after the horn, in what must have been a desperate, but forlorn, attempt to catch it.’
‘Well, I’ll try,’ agreed Neil, sounding very doubtful. ‘But I really don’t understand what you’re on about. Care to explain, Harriet?’
‘Certainly not,’ came the sharp reply. ‘But I’d be really grateful, Neil, if you’d do that for me as quickly as possible.’ She was about to switch off her mobile when a thought struck her. ‘Have you thought about Christmas, Neil? I mean, about what Alice is going to do?’
He grunted in surprise and she hastily explained. ‘It’s just that Sam is going to be staying with me, I’m going home on Monday and it occurred to me that Alice might like to come too. Please tell her she’d be very welcome and you could easily see her there.’
She thought he sounded amused as well as touched by her idea. ‘It’s a kind thought, Harriet, but don’t worry, I’ve got everything in hand. I rang the coroner’s office and the post-mortem’s been done. It’s as everyone expected, you might call it Death by Euphonium! Anyway, that being the case, and the insurance people seem disposed to be happy enough, the powers that be have OK’d the cremation to go ahead on Monday morning at nine o’clock. That’ll be the first one of the day, no publicity, no audience, no fuss, just us, which is what Alice wants, with Sam to
conduct the service. Once that’s over I’ve booked us both on a flight to Fiji.’
He interrupted her exclamation with a chuckle. ‘I thought the sooner she was out of all this the better and Fiji was the nicest place the travel shop came up with at such short notice. We’ll have a night in San Francisco, lose twenty-four hours crossing the International Date Line over the Pacific and bingo! South seas, palm trees, coral beaches, paradise.’
She began to speak, then faltered, realizing that Neil had misinterpreted her silence as he laughed aloud. ‘It’s all right, Harriet, my intentions are entirely honourable. It’s very early days, I know, but I’m hoping that when all this is behind us Alice will be ready to think about maybe getting married. But just for now I want to take her right away from here. After all, it’s been pretty grim just recently and from what I can gather, Alice hasn’t had any fun since her father died. I think she deserves a treat.’
Harriet summoned up the right amount of enthusiasm and congratulated him on his cleverness. He rang off, leaving her to tuck her mobile into her bag with a heavy heart. The knowledge that Sam, too, had been visited by doubts about Alice somehow made everything so much worse. If I prove to be right about how it could have been done, she thought drearily, that puts Alice right back there with all my other suspects.
They’re all back in the running now.
Christiane Marchant’s room at Firstone Grange had been locked after the concert; nobody was quite sure why but it seemed the right thing to do. When the news had come from the Coroner’s Office Gemma had been sent upstairs to clean the room ready for the next guest. She wasn’t sure whether she was glad or sorry. On the one hand it was a huge relief to know that she would never again be caught unawares by that hated voice with its faint trace of an accent, whispering in her ear. Balancing that knowledge, though, was the fact that death, horrible death at that, had loomed uncomfortably close.
I hated her, Gemma shuddered, and I’m glad she’s dead, but I don’t want to touch her things. Was it her imagination or was there a faint suggestion of perfume and sweat as she whipped the sheets off the bed? Gemma didn’t mind the usual smells, inevitably some of the residents had a little problem, with one or two of the men suffering agonies of embarrassment about their prostate dribbles, while the women were more stoical about their stress incontinence. That was natural enough but this, this was a personal smell that sent shivers down her spine and recalled the sly, smiling menace, in spite of the bliss of knowing that Mrs Marchant could never frighten her again.
But she could, couldn’t she?
Gemma froze for a moment, bent double as she hooked out a slipper from under the bed. Ryan. Ryan had been there. Ryan might have done … something. The small, terrified idea that was hiding inside her mind reared its ugly head and looked out, didn’t like what it saw, and squirrelled back into its hidey-hole.
I won’t think about it. I won’t.
Unbidden, the thought of her mother sprang to mind. Bossy old bag with a sharp, sometimes vicious tongue on her, much too interfering, but Mum nonetheless. And it had to be admitted that it was Mum who had seen through Ryan’s glossy surface enamel and hadn’t liked what she saw.
A whimper escaped Gemma. I want Mum.
‘Gemma?’
The girl was so shocked at the sound that she really did jump, Harriet observed; if not out of her skin, then with a quite visible shudder. ‘What is it, Gemma?’ Harriet was concerned, the girl’s face looked greasy, greenish, the features slack with shock. ‘Did you think it was Mrs Marchant come back?’ She crossed the room rapidly and put an arm round the stricken girl. Gemma shuddered again but Harriet felt her relax, the fleeting prettiness visible again in the otherwise slightly vacant face.
‘Here, sit down a minute and get your breath back.’ She pushed the girl gently down on the high-seated chair by the window, waiting while Gemma calmed down and some colour came back into her cheeks. When Harriet spoke, she chose her words carefully, anxious not to scare away her quarry.
‘Tell me, Gemma,’ she said briskly, modifying her headmistress manner. ‘Tell me why Mrs Marchant frightened you so. No—’ she raised her hand as the girl gave a frightened exclamation. ‘I know she did, I saw that, and I also saw that she frightened a number of other people too.’
Gemma relaxed again as Harriet smiled at her. Miss Quigley was nice, she thought – very schoolmarmish, of course, but you could trust her. She made you feel safe.
‘It was Ryan,’ she whispered, blushing and lowering her eyes.
‘Ryan? Your boyfriend?’
Harriet tensed, remembering the dark shadow in the minstrel’s gallery, minutes before the crash of the euphonium. Was this it? Was this to be the solution to the mystery?
Gemma nodded miserably. ‘Mum never liked him,’ she admitted and Harriet chalked up a point to the percipient Mum. ‘It was the cleaner, she talked to my aunty and then she told Mrs Marchant about me. About me getting rid of the baby, I mean.’
Harriet frowned slightly but gave Gemma a reassuring nod. ‘Well, that’s a great pity of course and the cleaner should mind her own business, but I don’t understand? What did Mrs Marchant say to upset you so much? After all, an abortion isn’t exactly uncommon, is it?’
‘It … she said, what would Matron think,’ came the stumbling reply.
Light dawned at once. Matron, with her strong, clear beliefs, her single-minded faith, her own rigid adherence to right and wrong, what would Matron have made of a girl who had chosen to have an abortion? Harriet felt a frisson of sympathy with Gemma. Matron Winslow would be a difficult woman to face if you had something on your conscience, however sadly commonplace it would seem to the rest of the world. Harriet was sure, somehow, that Pauline Winslow would have strong and definite views on the subject.
‘I see,’ was all she said, but she said it kindly and Gemma looked up eagerly.
‘It wasn’t just that,’ she urged, obviously desperate to confess now.
Harriet said nothing, just waited in attentive silence.
‘It was one night last week. Ryan and Kieran, that’s his friend, they came round late one night and I let them in the back scullery. Kieran stayed in the kitchen and Ryan and me – we went into the wash-house and we … we.…’
As her voice tailed away in an agony of embarrassment Harriet took pity on her. ‘All right, Gemma, I get the picture. And Mrs Marchant found out somehow and threatened to tell Matron?’
The girl nodded, still twisting her hands. ‘It was because … there’s a skylight in the wash-house roof and you can see down from the landing window into it. We did it with the light on, you see.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Harriet was slightly nonplussed. Although she had made up for it later her own teenage excursions into sex had been at a time when girls were still overshadowed by the threat of an unwanted, shameful pregnancy. The idea of asking the family doctor to put her on the pill would have been quite unthinkable; after all, he was a close friend of her father’s. At seventeen, Gemma’s age, Harriet’s experience had consisted of a few desperately amateur fumbles and one dark uncomfortable episode on a chilly spring evening out on the hills. What had happened to that boy, she wondered now with a wistful smile? We’d certainly never have dared to ‘do’ it with the light on.
With an effort she wrenched herself back from more than forty years ago to the present and considered the girl beside her. The ingredients were all there, she sighed; sex and fear and blackmail. But murder? ‘And why was Ryan upstairs last night, just before the accident?’ she asked, her tone severe.
‘Oh!’ The startled gasp confirmed her suspicions, the boy had been there after all, it wasn’t just a figment of her imagination.
‘Well?’ Her voice remained a little stern, enough to jolt Gemma into obeying her but not intimidating enough to put her to flight.
‘He said he … he had this idea, it was awful, I wouldn’t have let him do it,’ Gemma pleaded, with a sob in her voice. ‘He said it was a good time to snea
k upstairs and pinch some bits and pieces of jewellery from the old ladies when they were all downstairs. He said he’d do it really careful, not enough to notice, and he’d move their things around a bit so they’d think they were just getting muddled.’
Harriet had to suppress a smile at the reference to ‘old ladies’, obviously she didn’t fall into that category, but the cool nastiness of the boy’s plan shocked her. It was clever, very clever, she conceded. If I found my things shifted a little and something missing, would I be able to convince myself I hadn’t just misplaced it? Several of the residents were indeed a little forgetful and they strove manfully to conceal the fact. Pride would have forbidden a hue and cry for a ring, a brooch, while the short-stay nature of their visit would ensure a rapid turnover of victims. Nobody would stay very long so they could never be sure that their losses were the result of theft rather than absence of mind.
‘That’s a wicked thing to do.’ She spoke sharply and Gemma looked up at her, eager to placate her favourite guest.
‘I wouldn’t have let him do it, Miss Quigley, honest. It was just that last night he said he wanted to hear the band and I was going to make sure he just stayed in the kitchen, but I got called away. When I got back he’d disappeared, I thought he’d got bored and gone home.’ Her anxious face was a mirror for her emotions as she stared at Harriet. ‘And he’s not into drugs,’ she offered in mitigation. ‘He’s dead against them, ever since his brother died three years ago, an overdose it was. Ryan, he – he never did anything, not anything bad,’ she insisted.
As Harriet rose stiffly to her feet, aware of just how tired she was feeling, she patted the girl’s shoulder with unfailing kindness.
‘I hope he didn’t, Gemma,’ she said quietly. ‘I certainly hope he didn’t.’
