The Vicarage Murder

by Faith Martin

  ‘A job for you, Jim. It looks as if it was all over long ago, and ended amiably, but check him out. Find out where he was on Saturday, and if he thinks the husband knew about the affair.’

  ‘Sean doesn’t seem the jealous-husband type to me, sir,’ Jim said. ‘And why kill her over her infidelity after all this time?’

  ‘Perhaps he only recently found out about it,’ Jason said, but without any real conviction. ‘I have to say, though, that I’m getting the impression that the Franklyns had a free-range sort of marriage. Now what’s this?’

  He’d been sorting through the odds and ends — some postcards from abroad, a letter or two from jewellery retailers promising to look her wares over — when he suddenly struck gold.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Read over my shoulder, Jim,’ Jason said curtly, which the sergeant promptly did.

  What he saw was a slightly yellowed piece of ruled paper, written to Margaret in rounded, distinctly feminine handwriting. The author was obviously in terrible pain and anger, and as the missive went on, the language became more and more desperate. But it was the mention of one name in particular that fairly leapt out at the two policemen.

  The name was that of Dr Maurice Keating.

  * * *

  The first thing Jason did after leaving the bank was to drive back to police headquarters, where a computer, given the name of the letter-writer, quickly coughed up several salient details, including the hard, harsh facts of her death.

  After reading through the data, the next port of call was to St Francis’s College, Oxford, where Maurice Keating had been a tutor of English literature for thirty-two years.

  The provost of the college, perhaps not surprisingly, was not pleased to see them, and was even less pleased to discuss Dr Maurice Keating and a certain female student. But he was unfailingly polite. Naturally, nothing had been proved. And Dr Keating had left his post recently solely because he’d reached retirement age, and wanted to devote all his time and effort to the great opus of his life, writing about the work and times of the poet John Donne.

  Of course, the college’s name mustn’t be dragged through the mud.

  By the time they left, Jason’s skin was crawling. As they walked across the ancient quad, he laughed grimly.

  ‘What a place to live and work. All this quiet, backstabbing, over-intellectualised angst gives me the creeps.’

  Jim shrugged. ‘Oh I don’t know, sir,’ he said, looking around at the beautiful quad and baize-like croquet lawn with a mild sense of envy. ‘I daresay it suited our professor quite well.’

  Just then an ancient woman, ninety if she was a day, and dressed in the full regalia of a don’s gown and colourful headwear, walked across the lawn towards the ivy-clad library.

  ‘Reached retirement age, my foot,’ Jason growled. ‘In these sorts of places they don’t retire. They just get retitled as emeritus fellows and put out to pasture until they die of old age.’

  ‘You think he was definitely pushed then, sir?’ Jim asked. It had been obvious from the start that the name of Dr Maurice Keating had had the same effect on the provost as that of a whiff of decaying fish.

  ‘Let’s say “gently encouraged,”’ Jason drawled. ‘I don’t know that anyone in this place would be so crass as to actively push.’

  Back in the car and heading towards the Cotswolds once more, the radio crackled into life. Jim took the call. When he’d finished, he was looking satisfied.

  ‘The search warrant for the Keating flat has been delivered to the vicarage, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  * * *

  When Jason tapped on Maurice’s door, with Jim and two constables beside him, it was quickly answered. The professor looked as matinee-idol perfect as ever, dressed in a dazzlingly white shirt, dark grey trousers and neat loafers. His white hair looked newly washed, and had been brushed back off his high forehead in true Stewart Granger style. But the sudden panic-stricken look in his eyes shattered the illusion.

  ‘Dr Keating,’ Jason greeted him cordially, holding out the paperwork in his hand. ‘I have here a warrant to search your premises. We’ll be very careful of your things, sir, I assure you,’ he added, stepping forwards and thus giving Maurice no other choice but to step back to allow him entry.

  ‘But . . . I think . . . well . . . I shall call my solicitor,’ Maurice huffed, watching with alarm as two constables split up and disappeared, one into his bedroom, the other into the spare.

  ‘I think that might be a good idea, sir,’ Jason said. ‘You can telephone him from the police station.’

  Maurice went white. ‘Police station?’ he echoed faintly.

  * * *

  Outside, Paul Waring parked his beloved sports car and carefully locked it. At the same moment, Pauline stepped out of the back door with a towel and a bottle of sunscreen.

  Monica, who was helping John tame some bushes, glanced up as a police car pulled in to the gravel-lined car park and stopped just beside the back door. And a moment later, Maurice was escorted very carefully to the car and helped into the back seat. As he slipped inside, the Oxford don’s eyes slid nervously over those watching him, his gaze lingering over Paul’s impressive sports car. Maybe, Monica thought with a pang of sympathy, Maurice was wishing he could jump into it and roar away.

  Jason walked around to the front passenger door, and as he did so, his eyes very briefly met those of the startled Monica. Without pausing, he slid into the front of the car, which then reversed and drove away.

  Pauline, slack-jawed, walked quickly across to Paul.

  ‘Well! Did you see that?’ she gushed. ‘Who’d have thought it! I mean, Maurice of all people!’

  Monica noticed John look at Pauline with a strange, almost disdainful expression on his face.

  ‘I mean, I just can’t believe it,’ Pauline gushed. ‘I wonder why he did it?’ she asked, carrying on before any of them could reply. ‘And to think you helped him get his flat here.’ She turned to Paul and laughed. ‘So much for attracting the right residents!’

  Paul flushed red. ‘For Pete’s sake, shut up! We don’t know he’s even been arrested yet, and you have him banged up for life already.’ And with that he strode away to the back door.

  Pauline quickly trotted after him.

  ‘Paul, I’m sorry,’ she wailed. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so bitchy. It’s just the relief of it all. Wait!’ Her unhappy voice trailed away as she quickly followed him back into the house.

  John, without a word, turned back to the bushes and resumed his patient pruning.

  ‘John,’ Monica said softly. ‘Do you think Maurice really did do it?’

  ‘No,’ John said shortly. And his curt tone of voice was so unlike his usual mild live-and-let-live baritone that Monica felt quite unable to ask him anything else.

  * * *

  At the police station, Maurice did indeed call his solicitor, who arrived promptly. A man in his early sixties, he conferred briefly with his client before sitting beside the professor and watching Jason intently. And it wasn’t until the tape recorders were running and all the usual preliminaries were over that Jason was able at last to question his prime suspect.

  ‘Dr Keating, did you know Margaret Franklyn before she moved into her flat at the vicarage where you are also a resident?’ he began.

  Maurice licked his lips, shot a quick look at his solicitor, who inclined his head indicating permission to answer, and said quickly, ‘No.’

  Well, that’s a lie for a start, thought Jim excitedly. Which made for an excellent start. Being able to point out a lie to the police nearly always took the wind out of most people’s sails.

  ‘Did you know a woman called Marilyn Wass?’ Jason continued smoothly.

  Maurice jerked in his seat. He began, very visibly, to sweat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘She was a student at St Francis’s College, in fact? Reading English literature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were her tutor?’

  �
��I was one of her tutors,’ Maurice corrected quickly. ‘She had several others.’

  ‘I see. And can you tell us what happened to her?’

  Maurice again shot a quick look at his solicitor. Slowly, the legal expert nodded. When they’d been conferring together they’d obviously been discussing strategy, and what should and should not be admitted. And now the two policemen were about to find out what their suspect and his solicitor had decided was dangerous for Maurice and what was not.

  ‘Yes, it was all very sad.’ Maurice cleared his voice and sat a little straighter in his seat. ‘Unfortunately, Marilyn was highly strung — that sometimes happens with students who are very bright. I’ve seen it before. The brightest pupils are often the ones with emotional problems.’

  Maurice glanced from Jason to Jim, as if seeking some sign of understanding.

  Jason nodded patiently. ‘Go on, Dr Keating.’

  ‘Well, there are a lot of pitfalls that young people can fall into, Chief Inspector, as I think you know. There’s drugs, and drink, and all kinds of—’

  ‘Are you saying that Miss Wass was a drug addict, sir?’ Jason asked coldly.

  ‘Oh no,’ Maurice said, instantly sensing the sudden hostility in the room. ‘Nothing of the sort. But she was, as I said, highly strung. And she took medication — legally prescribed by a doctor, I have no doubt.’

  ‘So what did happen to her, Dr Keating?’ Jason pressed, unwilling to let the man keep on quibbling.

  Maurice, finally cornered, said flatly, ‘She killed herself, Inspector, one wet and cold November day. The whole college was extremely shocked, as you can imagine. Very shocked. Her family and friends were heartbroken, naturally.’

  ‘Yes. Did you like her, Dr Keating?’ Jason asked abruptly.

  Maurice went red, then white. ‘Well, er . . . what an extraordinary question! She was a good student. She had a fine grasp of understanding when it came to metaphysics, certainly.’

  ‘She was very pretty, wasn’t she, Dr Keating?’ Jason quickly cut across the waffle.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘We’ve heard that she was the kind of girl who preferred older, mature men,’ Jason said, although no one had told him any such thing. ‘Would you say that was so, Dr Keating?’

  Maurice reached for a carafe of water and poured himself a glass. His hands were visibly shaking now.

  ‘I really wouldn’t know, Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘It was quite a few years ago now, and I’ve tutored so many students.’ He shrugged. ‘She didn’t make overmuch of an impression on me, I’m afraid. Sad as it is to say it, the thing I tend to remember most about her was the fact that she killed herself. It was all such a shocking waste.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jason said coldly. ‘I agree.’

  Time to take off the kid gloves, he thought. He reached for a photocopy of the letter he’d found in Margaret Franklyn’s safety deposit box.

  ‘Have you ever seen this letter before, Dr Keating?’ he asked silkily. His solicitor leaned forwards as Jason pushed the letter towards him. And he read it far more quickly than his client did. His face, however, remained impassive.

  Maurice stared down at the letter with a sick look on his face.

  ‘I want to consult my client privately for a few moments, Chief Inspector,’ the solicitor stated firmly. He was a short man, with a balding head and a somewhat straggling moustache, but he had the attitude of a terrier.

  Jason sighed heavily, but had to agree. He nodded to Jim, who did the necessary with the tape recorder, then followed his superior outside.

  ‘He looked as sick as a dog when you showed him that letter,’ Jim said gleefully. ‘All those lies about hardly remembering her! My eye.’

  The letter had been from Marilyn Wass to Margaret Franklyn, who’d obviously been an old friend. In it, she poured out her heart about being in love with her tutor. The same tutor who was refusing to marry her. The same tutor who said it would ruin his career and reputation if it should be discovered that he was having a dalliance with one of his own, so very much younger, students.

  It was obvious that, by the time of writing the letter, Marilyn Wass had become an increasingly desperate and disturbed young woman. In fact, she’d ended the letter by stating categorically that if Maurice Keating didn’t agree to marry her, she’d kill herself.

  ‘I wonder how Margaret reacted when she first got that letter, sir,’ Jim asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jason said. ‘More to the point, why did she keep the letter? It makes me wonder if she kept other letters as well.’

  And there could only be one reason for it, if she had. Namely, because she’d seen some sort of profit in it for herself. If Margaret Franklyn had been the blackmailing type, then they finally had what his superiors would call a proper motive for her murder.

  Just then a PC called to them that Dr Keating and his solicitor were ready to resume the interview. Once again, they walked into the interview room and restarted the tape recorder.

  ‘Well, Dr Keating. You’ve had a chance to study the letter. What can you tell me about it?’ Jason asked crisply.

  ‘What can I say?’ Maurice attempted a smile and spread his hands helplessly. ‘I did say Miss Wass was a highly strung young woman, but I had no idea her fantasies had gone so far.’

  Jason’s face hardened. ‘Are you trying to tell me, Dr Keating,’ he gritted, ‘that you didn’t have an affair with Marilyn Wass? That you never led her to believe that you loved her, and that marriage was a viable option?’

  ‘That’s correct, Chief Inspector,’ Maurice said earnestly, leaning forwards across the table and crossing his hands anxiously in front of him. ‘It was all in her mind. Sometimes young girls do get fixated on their tutors, you know. Doctors and psychiatrists can have the same sort of problems with their patients, so I hear.’ Maurice sighed regretfully. ‘They get fixated on someone, usually an older man, or a man they may perceive as being in a position of power, which triggers their sexual fantasies. But I was always very careful to give her no encouragement, and I honestly thought that she was over her infatuation.’

  Jason shot a quick look at the solicitor, who looked blandly back at him.

  ‘I see,’ he said, careful to keep any anger out of his voice. So he was sticking with that story, was he? ‘Naturally, we shall be getting in contact with anyone who knew Marilyn during her time at St Francis’s. Both her closest friends and other tutors.’

  Unspoken lay the threat that if their affair had been made known to anyone else, Jason would soon find out.

  Maurice’s smile faltered a little, but then beamed right back at him. ‘Of course. You must do what you think fit,’ he agreed fulsomely.

  Quickly, he tried another form of attack. ‘Did you know that Margaret had been a friend of Marilyn’s?’

  Instantly, something hard and ugly flashed across the academic’s face, but then just as quickly was gone. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know that she had kept this letter from Marilyn Wass?’

  ‘No. Like I just said, I didn’t know they were friends, and I therefore never knew this letter existed.’

  Another lie, thought Jason and Jim simultaneously, neither man missing the telltale flicker of panic and rage in the older man’s eyes. So she had been blackmailing him, Jason thought. And at that moment, he would have bet almost anything that when they started to research Keating’s finances in earnest, they’d find that he’d been living very frugally indeed, and for some time. And that large amounts of money would have been regularly withdrawn from his bank account that he couldn’t explain away.

  ‘Did Margaret ever tell you she had this letter?’ Jason pushed on.

  Maurice shifted on his seat. ‘No.’

  ‘Did she ever ask you for money in return for keeping the letter a secret?’

  ‘No!’ he all but squeaked.

  ‘So, Margaret was blackmailing you,’ Jason said softly. At this point the solicitor huffed and puffed, saying something forcefully al
ong the lines that his client had already answered that question, but Jason kept his eyes firmly on Maurice, who winced under the scrutiny.

  ‘Let’s return to the day of Mrs Franklyn’s murder, shall we?’ Jason said, casually changing the subject. ‘You have no alibi for the time of the shooting, do you, Dr Keating?’

  ‘I was in my room, I told you,’ Maurice said, for the first time beginning to get really heated. ‘I was having a wash. It was a hot day. I hate to swe— I mean, perspire.’

  They kept on at him for hours, but couldn’t break his story. In the end, lacking any concrete evidence against him, they simply had to let him go. To make matters worse, more bad news awaited them back at the vicarage. The search of Maurice Keating’s flat had produced no signs of bloodstained clothing, or any other evidence of the crime, and forensic samples had come back negative on his drains, bath and wash basin for evidence of human blood. Needless to say, they hadn’t found Clem Jarvis’s shotgun hidden in his wardrobe either.

  It wasn’t until they’d been back in the incident room for a little while that they received news of anything worthwhile at all. A message came through asking them to call a Mrs Judith Banner at the bank. When Jason did so, that discreet lady was full of apologies. She’d meant to mention it at the time but had clean forgot. She didn’t know whether or not it was important, but on the Friday afternoon, the day before her murder, Mrs Franklyn had called in to use her safety deposit box.

  She’d been quite alone.

  But, even when pressed, Mrs Banner simply couldn’t tell them whether Mrs Franklyn had made a deposit or a withdrawal, since she’d left the lady alone to complete her business, as per protocol. She could only confirm that Mrs Franklyn had had her handbag with her, and had taken it into the room. So she could have left something, or equally as easily have taken something away with her.

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘Sir, I think we’ve found something,’ Jim said early that next Tuesday morning, his voice quivering with excitement.

  ‘Jim, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ Jason grinned, rising stiffly from his chair.