Sweetpea whimpered, “I ran in with my eyes closed. When we came up for air, we were facing down the length of the pool and Archie swam in behind us, you know. Well, obviously he didn’t swim, he floated, you know. But… argh, it was so horrible! Please, can I get dressed now?”
“I will let you know when you can go back to your room. PC Taylor is checking them out now.”
The minutes ticked by. Inspector Lovington had no further questions. The forensics team and coroner were making their way across from the mainland, and for now, it was just a waiting game.
“Inspector, might I have a word?” I pulled Dave over to the bay window. “I need to catch a ferry and Hugh does too. I don’t suppose you could let us go?”
“Jess, you are all either potential witnesses or suspects at this point. I’m sorry, but you will have to rearrange your appointments.”
“I am meeting the first victim’s mother in Stourchester, she’s an old friend.”
Dave rubbed his furrowed brow. “Of course she is. Now, why doesn’t that surprise me? When and where?”
“Eleven o’clock. Outside the coroner’s office. And I need to pick up Sam on the way.”
“So Dr Hawthorne knows her too? This gets better and better!”
“You know I had nothing to do with this. Neither did Mr Burton. He has a big audition with a Hollywood director in London. If you let him go now, it might just change his life.” I tilted my head and did my very best puppy-dog impression.
“That doesn’t work.” He snapped his notebook shut.
“Sir! I’ve swept both bedrooms, there’s no sign of any blood or a murder weapon.”
“Thank you, constable. Will you escort the two ladies upstairs, please, and stand guard outside their rooms? I want their costumes bagged for the forensic team.” Jenny helped her colleague to her feet. “Oh, and ladies, I want you both straight back down here. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Inspector. C’mon Sweetpea, let’s get you tidied up.”
“Mr Burton, I will expect you to report to the station in Stourchester first thing tomorrow morning to give your statement. If you fail to attend, I’m sure the press will be very interested. Need I say more?”
Hugh rushed across the room, clapping and bowing with gratitude. “Oh, thank you, thank you. I promise to give you tickets to the premiere.”
Celeste tutted, “And the rest of us, Inspector. May we go too?”
“No, I’m afraid I will need to take all your statements first. Ralph, will you ask your wife to make everyone lunch?” Ralph clicked his heels and headed to the kitchen. “Now, Reverend, I will take your statement first, then you will be free to go.”
“But I will be late!” I protested.
“Then I suggest you call Dr Hawthorne and get her to go ahead without you.”
When Ralph returned, Dave instructed him to ensure no one else left the room. I suspected Ralph enjoyed his new role and the trust the Inspector placed in him. What I had learnt was that Ralph was a creature of duty and loyalty. No one would get past him.
Out in the hallway, as instructed, I called Sam and explained what had happened. “Right then, you want my statement. Shall we go to the sitting room?”
Dave pressed a finger into the bow of his pencil moustache. “No, I want you to come with me to the pool.”
“Oh no, please, don’t make me try to talk to Archie’s sad departed spirit. I don’t want to see him like that.”
“Jess, please, I have nothing else to go on. Aren’t you curious?”
“I’m not that curious!”
“Really?” His upper lip and eyelid twitched.
I sighed. “Lead on.”
The sight of the young man’s body floating face down in the water was thankfully less gruesome than I feared. There was a lot of blood, but then the water would make it spread and appear worse than it was. The source was a fearsome gash at the back of his head.
“Well, I think the cause of death is fairly obvious. What I need you to do is get some insights into who and how?”
“Really? I thought I was here to ask him about the weather!” I crouched down at the edge of the pool closest to Archie’s right hand. “Do I need to worry about my fingerprints?”
“We’ll take them later for elimination. Just get on with it, forensics will be here soon.”
“I knew this wasn’t kosher!” I stretched out my hand and grabbed at the fingers floating by. A heaviness formed in my chest. “He knew his attacker. I sense betrayal and confusion. He laughed and walked away. But they didn’t hit him. I don’t understand… he turned back. He wasn’t afraid. I think it was an accident… did he fall?” I couldn’t see anything other than a turquoise mist. “Blue. Everything is blue.” I opened my eyes. “He was alive when he entered the pool.”
“And a name? Did you see a face?”
“Sorry.” I held my hand aloft. Dave took the cue and pulled me up.
“You wouldn’t be holding out on me?” he asked.
“I thought you trusted me.” I dried my hand on my top. “Now, can I leave?”
“I still need to get your statement.”
“I didn’t see or hear anything. There you go.”
Where did the day go?
I ran back to the vicarage. Well, when I say I ran, I walked as fast as I could. I needed a change of clothes. Hugo was waiting on the front step. I scooped him up and squeezed him tight. I nuzzled his soft, black head. My eyes would stream and my nose would be on fire for the next few hours, but it was worth it. I kept a firm grip on my furry friend as I searched for my keys and refused to let go all the way to the sofa in the morning room. He wriggled at first until he realised there was no escape. I don’t recall the actual moment when it happened, but at some point, we lay down together and fell asleep.
My phone had fallen down the back of the sofa. The bugle ringtone woke me up, but I couldn’t reach it before it went to voicemail. I had several missed calls from Sam, so I called her back straight away.
“Jess, why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“Sorry, I, er, fell asleep. Is Karen okay?”
“No, Jess, she’s not. She’s in absolute pieces and we have been hanging around here waiting for you to deign us with your presence.”
“I said I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Oh, and you think Karen did?” For a doctor, Sam was not good at dealing with people in distress.
“Where are you now?”
“At Oysterhaven, the ferry’s due shortly.”
“Okay, I will meet you on the other side. We can go to the Cat and Fiddle for a drink and a spot of lunch.”
“Lunch? Supper more like. Jess, do you know what time it is?”
✽✽✽
The daylight streaming through the curtains gave me no sign of the time, but my phone told me it was ten past three. I pushed Hugo off my lap and dashed upstairs to get dressed. Mum was still out, probably helping Rosie at the shop, so I put down some food for my new bestie. I opened the cabinet to pull out the medicine box to get my daily antihistamine fix and paused. I must have been asleep for four or five hours. But I’m not sneezing. My eyes aren’t red and itchy.
“Hey, Hugo! I think I’m cured!” The hungry fluff ball was unimpressed and continued to lick the moist brown chunks in his bowl. “Right, well, I thought you would like to know. Guess we can stay housemates then. Catch you later, my furry friend.”
I took the railway down to the harbour and waited for the ferry to dock. The quayside was bustling with tourists visiting the Regatta. I stood on a low wall close to the port to have a better vantage point. It would be easy to miss people in the crowd. Not that it was easy to miss Sam. She towered about the throng with her enormous straw hat. I waved furiously in her direction.
“Sam! Karen! Over here!” Once I was certain they had seen me, I carefully jumped down. The wall was only around three-foot-high, but I had always struggled with heights and now that I was older all
sense of adventure has disappeared from such an activity. There was no challenge to it, only the genuine possibility of twisting my ankle.
I wouldn’t have recognised Karen in a police lineup. The years had not treated her kindly. I remembered her as a sporty blonde with a tom-boyish streak, who loved skateboarding - when the boys allowed her. The American craze of the late Seventies had been a very gendered affair on Wesberrey, as it was in the whole of Britain. The girls had French skipping and the Double Dutch. Karen had excelled in both. The lady who stood before me now had her peroxide blonde hair scrapped above her head in a severe ponytail. Her sagging skin bore a fake tan, her crayoned eyebrows mirrored the dark circles beneath. The crepey lids in between hooded, weary, tear-stained eyes. Our greeting was a sober affair.
“Karen, I am so sorry about Ellen and missing you this morning. I hope Sam explained what happened.”
“She did.”
I stepped forward to offer a hug but thought better of it. “Have you eaten? The pub’s packed, but we know the owner. I am sure he will squeeze us in if we ask nicely.”
“This place hasn’t changed a bit.” Karen sniffed “Still a dump.”
“It’s really not that bad.”
Sam rolled her eyes at my misplaced attempts to be jolly. “Come on, you’ve been travelling all night and need to relax. Then we’ll get a taxi up to the vicarage. Jess, I thought I would stay the night to help Karen settle in if that's okay with you?”
“The more the merr…” The more the merrier? Jess Ward, have you lost your mind? “Of course. Mum will love to see you both. Just like old times.”
“Except, it ain’t.”
“No, Karen. Except it ain’t.” I opened my arms and waited for her to accept me. For an awkward moment, the world went into slow motion. Her pain sent ripples through the air, turning everything it touched grey. There was no more sun. No more time. Just grief.
Sam stepped in to fill the void. Stretching her long arms around us both, she pulled us together. “The Wesberrey Angels are back together.” Snotty, red-eyed, tear waterfalls streamed down the wrinkles of the past forty years.
Karen took a small step back, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and slapped me and Sam on our backs. “To the pub!”
“To the pub!”
✽✽✽
“You haven’t changed a bit, you know.” Karen had ordered gammon and chips with a large pint of lager.
“Neither have you.” I lied.
“Rubbish! I look like my mum. The only thing missing is the cigarette hanging from my lip and the floral pinny.”
“I liked your Mum,” Sam played with her beer mat, flipping it up from the table’s edge and catching it. “She was a good, hard-working woman.”
“She had no choice. Dad was a waste of space. Trust me to marry a sod just like him.”
I remembered her husband had died only a few years ago. “I understand from Sam, that he passed away.”
“Yes, well, that’s life, isn’t it?” Karen diverted her attention to the crowds in the street outside. “So, you both came back here. Done well for yourselves, haven’t you? Fancy doctor, a priest. Strange world, eh?”
The conversation stalled. What could we talk about? It was hardly the time to reminisce about old times, or even to catch up with funny anecdotes about our adventures in the years we’d been apart. The only reason we were back together was because Karen’s only child had died in the waters that encircled us. I wanted to find out what the coroner had said. But I had to be patient. I had never been more grateful to see Phil’s arms full of pub grub.
Karen took the ketchup bottle from the condiment holder and smothered her plate with tomato sauce. The pineapple rings on her bacon steaks disappeared in a sea of red. Images of Ellen’s mangled corpse floated in and out of my mind. That was no way to remember my friend’s daughter. “Do you have a picture of Ellen?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.” Karen pulled out a photograph from her purse of a pretty blonde teenager lounging on a deck chair. It could have been a picture of Karen when she was younger, but it was Ellen.
“May I?” I took the corner and brought it closer. “She looks like you. She was very beautiful.”
“Aye, and clever too.” Karen’s loving words drifted away. Ellen’s voice took their place.
“Tell her I love her. And I’m sorry for causing her pain.”
“She says she loves you.”
“She what?”
“And she’s sorry for causing you so much pain.”
“Jess, this isn’t funny!”
Sam’s arm folded around our friend “She’s a Bailey, remember. Jess has the gift.”
“Tell her, I got her present, at Christmas. That I meant to call and thank her.”
“She is asking me to tell you she meant to call. That she got your Christmas present.”
“What? Is that really Ellen? Jess? If it’s her, what did I send her?”
“Britney. It was a Britney Spears doll; I had always wanted one.”
“A Britney Spears doll?”
“Oh, my God! I found it on eBay!” Karen squealed. “Can she see me? Is she here?” She squeezed Sam so hard with excitement, “Jess, tell Ellen I love her.”
I didn’t need to. I knew she could hear, and I knew what she wanted me to say next.
“She knows. And don’t worry. She is at peace now.”
You have one shot
After two nights straight of excessive alcohol consumption, I had ordered orange juice to go with my meal. Now I needed a stiff drink. “Karen. Sam. I’m sorry, will you excuse me?”
This whole sixth sense thing was freaking me out. I staggered to the bar and ordered a rum and coke before slipping away to the relative peace of the Ladies' room. Ellen’s spirit had left as quickly as it arrived. I punched the flimsy wall of the toilet stall. You stupid, stupid fool! You should have asked her. You blew it!
There was only one woman who could help me get a handle on all of this. I opened my phone’s address book and dialled. “Aunt Cindy? Are you free to talk?”
✽✽✽
When we arrived at the vicarage, we found the ‘Charmed’, aka Mum, Cindy, and Aunt Pamela, huddled around the kitchen table.
“Mum, you remember Karen?”
“Of course, dear. I am so sorry for your loss. Why don’t the three of you join Hugo in the front? We’ll be along later. I brought back some vegan carrot cake from the bookshop. Would you like a slice, with a cup of tea?”
“Were they casting spells?” Karen asked as she settled down on the sofa. “Mum used to say your family were witches. I never believed her, of course.”
“You knew more about my family than I did then.” I lifted Hugo up from his spot on the two-seater. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“You might have turned me into a toad!” Karen shuffled down the sofa to make room for Sam. “I remember one time your Mum made us tapioca pudding and joked it contained real frog spawn. I passed, just in case. Think I said I was still full from lunch or something.”
“Yuk. I hated desserts back then. Do you remember school custard?” Sam plumped up a cushion against the arm of the couch and swung up her long legs along its length, pushing Karen even further down the other end. “The chocolate one was the worst, with the skin on the top? Put me off chocolate flavoured things for life!”
“You don’t like chocolate? You aren’t even human.” Karen shunted back along, reclaiming her spot. Their behaviour was playful. It brought back so many happy memories.
“Oh, I love chocolate, just not chocolate-flavoured things. Except for liqueurs. I am rather partial to chocolate liquor.”
“You’re rather partial to anything with alcohol.” Hugo circled and clawed at my lap. Still no sneezing! “Karen, Sam here has a filing cabinet full of booze in her office.”
“For medicinal purposes only, I guess,” Karen joked.
“All donations from grateful patients,” Sam replied.
At that moment, Mum
pushed open the door with a tray of tempting goodies. Her sisters filed in behind with teapots, cups, and saucers.
“Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” I mumbled. Mum didn’t hear me, but my friends did, and we descended into a childish fit of giggles.
It was good to see Karen smile. It’s a strange thing about grief. We think it’s a constant, a continuous emotion, but most of us seek opportunities to ease the tension. It’s the only way to survive. Humour and death may appear strange bedfellows, but they are frequent ones. In my job, I have comforted many a grieving soul and regularly seen people switch from laughter to tears and back again. They can also move from sadness to anger, or from hyper-busy to catatonic. There is no right way, only your way. Karen’s way was to soldier on.
Mum sat beside me. Pamela took the winged back chair by the fire. Cindy crossed her legs and eased herself onto the rug at her feet. Sam offered to swap places, but Cindy was happy on the floor. If I’m going to inherit her superpowers, could that include her suppleness too?
“Right, my darlings.” Cindy raised her arms in a circular motion, joining them above her head. She brought them down, and they rested, ready for prayer, in front of her chest. “Jess, do you want to do the honours?”
“To do the what now? Oh, you want me to, er… okay.” I watched my friends and family hold hands. “I’m sure the Boss is in.” I cleared my throat. “Our Saviour said that whenever two or three are gathered in his name, he is here in our midst. We thank him for gathering us here this evening. Let us ask for his guidance so that we can support our sister, Karen. In God’s name, we pray that her daughter, Ellen, is resting safely in his mercy. We trust that a mother’s grieving heart can find comfort in the love we all share. Amen.”
Everyone muttered, “Amen”.
“Right,” Mum’s voice broke through the silence, “Who wants cake?”
✽✽✽
Cake was only an appetiser. Mum had planned out a three-course dinner and insisted that we ate in the dining room and use the best china. I volunteered myself and Cindy for the task, and took the opportunity to grab a few minutes alone with my ethereal aunt.
Consecrated Crime: A Rev Jessamy Ward Mystery (Isle Of Wesberrey Book 5) Page 8
