Killer at the Cult

by Alison Golden

  “Maybe I’m finally getting somewhere with you, pussycat,” Annabelle said.

  With Biscuit’s face not far from her own, Annabelle thought about Theo, his charm, his attractiveness, his allure. From what she’d seen at the house the evening before, while strange and a little disconcerting, the members of the Brotherhood didn’t appear to be terribly harmful. A bunch of people acting a little strangely, that was all. But none of them had alibis. Any one of them in the woods would have been free to murder Theo, hiding behind trees or hidden by masks as they were.

  Margaret, meanwhile, had been cool about her son’s death. Annabelle knew from extensive experience that people grieved in various ways, and she wasn’t inclined to put too much store by Margaret’s reaction. However, her indifference when Annabelle had first arrived marked her out as a complicated woman. Still, it was hard to believe that she would kill her own son.

  And who could blame Richard Venables for holding a grudge against Theo? His daughter was a grown woman and entitled to make her own decisions, but Annabelle could conceive of how her moving away, living an unconventional life, distancing herself from her family, and possibly giving away her money might make a father feel. Annabelle had to admit that Venables’ outburst and the threat he’d leveled at Theo the previous evening made him the prime suspect, but there was something about the Chief Inspector’s insistence that he must be the murderer that unsettled her.

  It was easy to make a rush to judgment. Annabelle had extensive experience with it, and the havoc it could play with people’s lives. She understood the appeal. It made things clear, decisive. It was much easier to live with certainty. Until that is, one is proven wrong.

  Annabelle sighed and gave Biscuit one last apologetic scrub between her ears.

  “Sorry, kitty, time for me to get up.”

  Annabelle had a rehearsal for the show later that day. Corralling the children into some form of coherent musical arrangement would require all her energy. She would need to put Theo’s murder out of her mind. Her phone pinged. It was a text from Mike.

  Let the police do their jobs, Annabelle. Stay out of it.

  She smiled. She knew that he knew her well. Now, though, he was reading her mind.

  Annabelle hurried down her garden path and opened the gate. She didn’t want to be late for rehearsal. The last time that had happened, she’d arrived at the village hall to find Johnny Curnoweth shinning up the drainpipe to join three of his friends on the roof. Inside the hall, things had been no better, and it had taken her half an hour to bring the rowdy youngsters under control.

  As she banged the gate shut and turned to hurry the short distance to the hall, she pulled herself up abruptly to avoid bumping into the man coming along the pavement.

  “Chief Inspector Ainslie! What are you doing here?”

  “I was just coming to tell you, Vicar. We apprehended Richard Venables last night. We’ve got our man.”

  “Is that so? Please walk with me. I’m on my way to rehearsal, and the children will literally be climbing the walls if I’m late. Tell me what happened.”

  The Chief Inspector fell into step beside her.

  “We found him hiding in the woods. Not far from the house. He’d parked his car on a path that runs through the trees. He was fast asleep! Put up no resistance at all when we arrested him. As I said last night, open-and-shut case. Threatening the victim, proximity to where the victim was found. We have him banged to rights.”

  “Well, you certainly seem to have motive and opportunity, Chief Inspector. But what about the murder weapon? Any sign of that?”

  “Bones, Dr. Jones that is, said he was killed with some kind of bolt through the heart. We haven’t found it yet, but we’re on it. Anyhow, Reverend, the killer has been taken into custody, and your villagers can sleep safely in their beds. Tell them, Vicar. Tell them the good news!” The Chief Inspector raised his hand and waved as he peeled away to his car leaving her to shake her head as she continued to walk down the street.

  The rehearsal was bedlam. Even the oldest children, Trevor Bligh and Caroline Lowen, were disruptive when they got into an argument on whether the part of Joseph could be played by a female.

  “Cross-gender acting is perfectly acceptable, Trevor! The Greeks did it, Shakespeare did it. Pantomime dames are played by men all the time!”

  Trevor rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and they’re ridiculous! We’re meant to laugh at them. This is the Bible. You can’t have a man played by a girl.”

  At the other end of the hall, Billy Breville charged around, his arms, having escaped from their slings, outspread. He was making loud airplane noises and inciting several other boys to do the same. One of them was Nicholas Pettit. His four-year-old sister, Maisie, was playing the part of “Sheep.” A lively girl, she was not to be outdone by her brother. Her attempts at keeping up were having disastrous consequences as three boys in battle formation turned to go back the way they had come, oblivious to the little girl coming up behind them. Faced with three ten-year-old boys coming at her fast, Maisie put her fists up to fight. A sheep, little Maisie was not.

  Annabelle clapped her hands. “Children! Children!” The kids ignored her, continuing to careen around the room and make a lot of noise. She started a rhythmic clap she’d been taught by Mrs. Bellon, the primary school teacher. It had been a lifesaver. In a few seconds, all the children were standing still, or at least, as in Maisie’s case, had slowed down. They mirrored the clap back, slapping their hands together in unison until they had all calmed down.

  “Now then, children! Gather together. You know what to do.”

  The children all moved to the center of the room and shuffled around until they were lined up in rows. The sopranos were on the right, the altos on the left. Smaller ones at the front, taller ones at the back. The very little ones, of which there were eight, roamed around in no particular order at the front. Annabelle’s only expectations of them were that they look adorable and not disrupt the proceedings too much.

  Annabelle tapped her music stand with her baton. When she’d come up with the idea for the show, she had hoped Mr. Fenwick, her choirmaster, would take on the task of directing the children’s singing, but he’d gone so pale when she mentioned it, she thought he might have a stroke. She was beginning to understand why.

  Annabelle surveyed the children. “Goodness me! We have been in the wars.”

  Sitting on a chair against the wall was eleven-year-old Tabitha Brunswick. She had a bandage wrapped around her head, and there were crutches propped against the wall next to her. Her mother was hovering, anxious to leave, but worried that another calamity might befall her child if she did so.

  In the middle row, Billy Breville’s black eye was now golden and black, but he still had casts around both wrists, now adorned with what looked like graffiti but which were, in fact, the early efforts of multiple ten year olds at producing a signature.

  Chloe Simmons had a nasty bruise on her elbow and two bandaged fingers, George Cracker had his arm in a sling, Nancy Rinker was wearing orthopedic boots on both feet, and Timmy Trebuthwick had nasty grazes on his right shin and forearm as though he’d been dragged.

  “Let’s go over the colors again.”

  Annabelle walked to a large metal cupboard that had once housed stock items for the local shop, but which now lay home to the Sunday school paraphernalia. On the front of it, on a large piece of butcher’s paper, she had written in big, red letters, the words to one of the songs they had been struggling with. It was a long list of colors. She’d hoped to get away without using such prompts in the final performance, but when she’d tried to get the children to sing the list by heart, the results had been farcical and no amount of practice had improved the situation. Many of the children could only remember up to the fourth color and simply mumbled to the halfway point before giving up entirely after that, leaving only one child, Hermione Plaistell, a pious, overconfident, thirteen-year-old, to sing through to the end. Unfortunately, Hermione more
often than not finished on an off-key high note that simply wasn’t possible to ignore.

  “Remember, breathe at the end of the rows, kiddos. Here, here, and here.” She tapped her baton on the paper.

  “Deep breath, now.” Annabelle breathed in through her nose and the children did likewise. She’d been teaching them to breathe deeply and let the air out slowly as they recited the list. Even that hadn’t gone smoothly. Jud Whitworth had held his breath for so long he’d gone bright red and then blue before fainting dead away onto the wooden parquet flooring.

  “And! Red and yellow and pink…”

  The assembled children, grim determination fixed on many of their faces, began to sing the colors of Joseph’s multicolored dream coat, taking deep, noisy breaths at the end of every other row, their energy tightly wound as they focused upon getting through the song without collapsing.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Eventually the rehearsal was over. The children went home, leaving Annabelle to potter about the hall, stacking chairs and picking up litter in restorative silence. As she peeled off a green boiled sweet stuck to the wall, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Constable Raven. He was chewing his lip.

  “Constable? Jim? Are you alright?”

  Raven had taken off his police cap and was turning it in his hands. He frowned and pursed his lips.

  “Yes, I’m alright, Vicar. We got that guy, you know. Venables.”

  “Yes, the Chief Inspector told me this morning. He seemed quite certain that Mr. Venables is the murderer.”

  “He is that, for sure.” Raven twisted the cap in his hand with some violence now, turning each hand in opposite directions. “Certain, I mean.”

  “But…? You’re not?” She nodded at the cap in Jim’s hands. “You’re going to ruin the structure of that hat, if you’re not careful. It will never be the same.” Jim immediately stopped his fidgeting.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Vicar. Everyone’s cock-a-hoop down at the station. And he does have motive.”

  “And opportunity.”

  “Yeah, that too. But, oh, I don’t know…” Annabelle waited as Raven paused. He looked at the ceiling and then down at his feet. “There’s something funny. At the house. Nobody’s paying it any attention, but I think it’s important. They’re overlooking something.”

  “Oh?”

  “Look, if I show you, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “You know I can’t do that, not if it’s something relevant to the investigation. And if it is relevant, shouldn’t you be telling the Chief Inspector? Or at least, his sergeant?”

  “I have told them. They know about it. But they’re not interested in following up. It may not be anything, but I’m concerned we have the wrong man. We don’t have the murder weapon yet and so far no concrete evidence to connect Venables to the killing.”

  Annabelle took a half-eaten sandwich left on the keys of the piano between two fingers. She dropped it in the bin.

  “It may well have been him, but there’s another line of inquiry I think we should pursue,” Raven persisted.

  Annabelle straightened up and looked directly at him. He looked tired and strained, not the jovial, community-oriented copper who loved kicking a ball around with the local lads and delighting the six-year-olds at the village school by bringing Cleopatra, the police dog, into class.

  She picked up the final chair. It had been tipped over on its back.

  “Here, let me do that for you, Vicar.” Raven took the chair from her and stacked it on top of the pile next to the piano.

  “Alright, Jim, let’s do it,” Annabelle said, coming to a decision. “Let’s go up to the house, and you can show me whatever it is. But I’m not promising to keep it a secret. Not if I think it important.”

  “Thanks, Vicar. I appreciate it. I’ve brought the car with me. We can go up there now, if you like.

  Raven drove the sole police car assigned to the village force slowly through the streets and out into the countryside beyond. The sun shone brightly, and the sky was a clear, crystal blue. The rolling fields on either side were a mixture of crops and pasture, broken up by the hedgerows and trees that stretched outward to the horizon. Annabelle thought that from where God sat, the countryside must look like a huge, irregularly patched, green blanket, all sewn together with brown thread.

  “Did you hear anything about the type of weapon used?”

  “Dr. Jones called in her report this morning. His heart stopped obviously, but the thing that stopped it was some kind of bolt.”

  “Yes, Chief Inspector Ainslie told me.”

  “The thing is, the victim could have been stabbed or shot, it isn’t clear. I know they use bolt guns with animals to stun or kill them so the farming community might have some ideas. Ainslie put some guys onto it this morning.”

  “It would have taken a lot of force to stab him with a bolt.”

  “I would think so. We haven’t found it yet, so we can’t narrow things down.”

  They turned off the country road and into the overgrown driveway that led up to the big house. There was a policeman standing at the front door, but apart from that there was nothing to suggest anything untoward had happened.

  Annabelle didn’t get out of the car immediately.

  “Jim, what do you know about Sergeant Lawrence?

  “Don’t know much about her at all, to be honest. Decent officer. I mostly only hear the gossip from the Truro station. I get the impression she likes Inspector Nicholls. Not sure about his thoughts exactly, though she’s more his type than Shenae in the canteen who definitely likes him. Why do you ask?” Jim wasn’t always the height of tact, or maybe the gossip about Annabelle and the Inspector hadn’t reached him.

  “Oh nothing, nothing at all.” Annabelle waved away further discussion. “Let’s get this done, shall we?”

  Raven got out of the car and nodded to the policeman standing at the entrance to the house. “The Reverend’s just coming to pick something up that she left here last night,” he rumbled in a low voice. Annabelle looked around her, surveying the horizon, unwilling to catch the policeman’s eye in the midst of being party to an untruth. The police officer scrutinized Annabelle’s dog collar and waved them through. There was no sign of anyone inside.

  “Follow me, Vicar.”

  Raven walked up the enormous stone stairway that led away from the entry hall. They turned left when they reached the landing, and in silence, the pair walked down corridor after corridor until they reached a room that stood at the furthest point from the front door. Yellow police tape crisscrossed the entrance to the room. Raven held his finger to his lips as he reached for the doorknob. “This is the victim’s bedroom,” he whispered. He lifted the tape for Annabelle to duck under. “Be prepared.”

  The room was dark. The old, dusty, navy-blue curtains that covered the tall floor-to-ceiling windows and were thread through with silver were closed. Only a sliver of light escaped between the two drapes and illuminated the room, providing a spotlight glare for the dust floating through the thick air. There was just enough light to see what was in the room, and it sent a chill through Annabelle as she looked around.

  “Whoa,” Annabelle exclaimed in a whisper the moment she stepped inside. Raven tried the light switch. It didn’t work.

  Like Sally’s room, this one was large, with high ceilings and a picture rail that ran all around the walls. But where the ceiling of Sally’s room was covered with ornamental plaster, here the ceiling was adorned with a fresco of chubby angel babies and their voluptuous mothers. Earthy colors combined with pale pink and blue to depict a soft, pleasing, visual feast. Mothers and cherubs relaxed and played alongside one another atop clouds set against a sky as blue as Annabelle’s eyes. While the fresco was faded, there was no doubting the skill of the artist, the faces of the figures being exquisitely drawn.

  But it was the rest of the room that caused Annabelle alarm. The heavenly scene began and ended above her, the delightful overhead ba
ckdrop only serving to throw into stark relief the decoration all around the space. Annabelle stood still, her eyes roaming about as she sought to determine what it could possibly mean.

  Against the center of one wall, there lay a rumpled bed covered by a bright red flag. A black swastika inside a white circle lay at its center. The flag was dirty and streaked with mud. A pair of battered lace-up boots lay on the floor.

  Above the bed, two crossed scythes, dusty and tarnished but threatening nonetheless, were held up by nails driven directly into the ancient plaster. On either side, Nazi memorabilia lay in shadow boxes hung from the picture rail. Annabelle looked closely and saw medals, pins, and uniform insignia pinned to the backing like grotesque insects that no one except the collector is interested in viewing. Above the scythes, three dusty pistols were displayed, one above the other. Another antique gun lay on an old, upturned leather chest.

  Around the room were posters featuring Hitler Youth, while another Nazi flag was draped over a leather armchair. Raven picked up a large book and flicked through it.

  “What is it?” Annabelle asked.

  “Looks like a book of German Third Reich stamps.”

  “Not your regular collector, then?”

  The room appeared to have been ransacked. Drawers had been emptied, clothing strewn across the floor. A chest had been upturned and a photograph lay on the ground, the glass frame smashed. The picture was an old black and white, a photo of a man Annabelle didn’t recognize. He had a sharp, oiled, short back and sides haircut and a stern, thin-lipped expression.

  “We should get out of here,” Raven said. Annabelle continued to stare.

  “This is all very strange,” she said eventually. “I can’t quite reconcile this scene with the person I met.”

  “Seems like he had a secret life, doesn’t it?”

  “It does look that way, Jim.” She fingered the Nazi flag laying on the chair. It was flimsy, thin, and threadbare in places. “Indeed it does.”