The Vicarage Murder

by Faith Martin

  Jason nodded. ‘And this he does with the help of Jim Lancer, right?’

  ‘Right. Remember, Jim Lancer is desperate to please the owner of the gym, the successful bodybuilder and the man who’s going to help him become the next Mr Universe, or whatever,’ Monica confirmed grimly.

  ‘OK. Then his next move is to bring in the Franklyns?’ Jason was willing enough to play along with the scenario, just to see where it led.

  ‘Yes, but he has to do it through Sean Franklyn alone,’ Monica pointed out. ‘Do you remember I told you how angry and dissatisfied Margaret was about living here? How I overheard them arguing about it one day? Well, that all now makes perfect sense.’

  ‘Of course. She moved in, only to find two of her blackmail victims right on her doorstep,’ Jason said, beginning to feel himself swept along by the argument, and warning himself to keep an open mind. Though he couldn’t help adding, ‘I’ll bet that gave her a nasty turn.’

  ‘No wonder she was threatening to divorce Sean,’ Graham agreed. ‘The poor woman must have been enraged. Or frightened.’

  ‘No, darling, I don’t think she was ever frightened,’ Monica corrected gently. ‘Annoyed maybe. Or discomfited. But Margaret didn’t strike me as the type to scare easily. She might still be alive if only she had been,’ she added sadly.

  ‘All right, so he’s got them all where he wants them,’ Jason cut across all these suppositions. ‘Now what? How did he kill Margaret when he was standing right in front of you, and in full view of all the other partygoers that afternoon?’

  ‘Well, of course he didn’t,’ Monica said. Then added hastily, ‘Kill her then, I mean. When we all heard the shot.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ Jason said flatly.

  Monica nodded. ‘I know — I was too for a long time. But this is how I think it went. He told Margaret that he’d just sold one of his gyms and that he wanted to buy back whatever she had on him in one final, last-shot deal. That way she could afford to divorce her husband and move away from the vicarage. Obviously, she agreed. He asked her to meet him on the afternoon of the party, not in flat 2, but up at Chandler’s Spinney, where there was no possibility of them being disturbed.’

  Jason was staring at Monica in fascination now. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He knew the village would be deserted because of the fair, which was a real bonus as far as he was concerned. So, sometime, and I’m guessing it was very early in the morning on the day of the party, he went into the empty flat and removed the tarpaulins. He then took them to Chandler’s Spinney and hung them from the branches of the trees, in the shape of a square, to make an enclosure. He then returned to the vicarage and parked his car right out in the sun. That bit’s important, and I’ll tell you why later,’ she said quickly, as once again Jason opened his mouth to ask a question. ‘Anyway, I know for a fact that’s what he did, because that morning I saw his Jaguar standing out in the direct sunlight. I remember thinking at the time how sweltering it would have been inside, but didn’t think anything of it. Then.’

  Graham felt himself listening in appalled fascination as his wife described the mind and workings of a killer.

  ‘All he had to do then was set up a few things,’ Monica continued determinedly. ‘You know there are always shotguns being heard going off in Chandler’s Spinney, right?’ Monica asked, apparently off the cuff.

  Jason nodded. ‘Pigeon shooters. Kids mucking about. Right.’

  ‘Right. So how easy would it have been for Paul to take Clem Jarvis’s stolen shotgun up to the Spinney with a tape recorder, and record the sound of a shotgun blast, without attracting attention?’

  Jason blinked. ‘Not hard at all,’ he said slowly, thinking of the burnt cassette tape found at the bonfire site.

  ‘Incidentally,’ Graham put in, ‘I think, if you question the people at the pub on the day that Clem’s gun went missing, you’ll find that Paul must have been wearing a long coat. It’s the only way I can think of that he could have hidden the gun. He could hardly walk out of the pub carrying it in full sight under his arm, after all,’ he added.

  ‘I never thought of that,’ Monica said admiringly.

  Graham smiled modestly back at her.

  ‘Back to Chandler’s Spinney,’ Jason said abruptly. ‘He tapes the sound of a shotgun blast?’

  ‘Yes. All he has to do is wind on the blank tape for about five minutes, then fire the gun and record it. And there he is, with the perfect alibi all set up. On the day of the murder, Margaret leaves for Chandler’s Spinney where she thinks she’s going to be handed a briefcase full of money. Meanwhile, back at the party, Paul makes a great show of forgetting to get in the booze. He leaves to go to the shop, not on foot, as we all thought, but in the car, which is swelteringly hot. He drives up to the Spinney, with the gun in the back.’

  ‘And he was seen,’ Graham put in quietly. ‘If you’d like to have a word with young Linsey Drew, she saw the car drive past her house in the square, and go up the road that only leads to Chandler’s Spinney. It was a blue Jag.’

  ‘Did she see who was driving?’ Jason asked sharply, and Graham shrugged and spread his hands. He hadn’t thought to ask. Not at the time.

  Monica sighed. ‘So. He meets Margaret, but he’s got a gun, not the money. He forces her to walk into the middle of the tarpaulins that are hung up to imitate the four sides of the room in the empty flat, and then kills her.’

  ‘Which is why the blood spatter on the tarpaulins is consistent,’ Jason muttered.

  ‘Yes. That’s important, you see. To fool everyone into thinking that she was killed inside the house. In that very room where she was found, in fact. Then he folds the tarpaulins up,’ Monica said.

  Which is where the mirror images of the bloodstains come in, Jason thought. And why he had to use one of them to cover her body. Not to hide her, as we all thought, but to explain any smudges of the bloodstains.

  ‘He carries the body and puts it into the boot,’ Monica swept on. ‘Remember, he’s very fit and very fast. Then he drives to the shop, buys the booze and returns to the vicarage.’

  Jason nodded. ‘There he takes the body out of the boot, the only truly risky part of the whole procedure as he might be seen, and lays her out in the flat. Then he hangs the tarpaulins back up on the walls, runs upstairs, changes his clothes on the stairs, where he unwittingly leaves a slight bloodstain, goes into his flat and puts the tape in the tape deck and switches it on.’

  ‘Then he walks back to the party with the booze, knowing that the body won’t have lost any body heat at all, having been transported in a hot car,’ Monica said. ‘Which is important. The body must still be very warm when it’s found.’

  ‘And five minutes later, while he’s in plain view of everyone, you hear the sound of a shot,’ Jason finished.

  ‘But not the real shot. The shot that actually killed Margaret has already been heard by several villagers,’ Monica said. ‘Except that it was up in Chandler’s Spinney, so no one thought anything of it. But you might like to speak to a certain old gentleman with good ears, despite a touch of Parkinson’s disease,’ Monica recommended softly.

  ‘So, you make a search of the house, find Margaret and there you go.’ Jason sighed. It all fit. ‘Very clever,’ he said softly. Dead clever, in fact.

  ‘But there were mistakes made,’ Monica pointed out. ‘Because of all that he had to do whilst he was gone, supposedly getting the drinks, Paul had to account for his time, in case someone remembered exactly how long he’d been gone. So he told me that he spent a long time helping a lost motorist find the way to Warwick.’

  Both Graham, who hadn’t heard that bit, and Jason looked at her in puzzlement.

  ‘For a while now, something’s been niggling at me, but I couldn’t think what it was,’ Monica said. ‘Then I finally realized. Why would a motorist, on his way to Warwick, get lost here? I mean, why turn off the main road at all? And especially down a road that’s signposted as being a village only and a no through road?
’

  ‘That’s a bit tenuous,’ Jason said cautiously.

  ‘But it all makes sense,’ Monica added. Then she looked up at him out of wide, miserable blue eyes. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  And Jason was forced to agree. Because it did add up, and fit all the known facts. In spite of his doubt, the Nobles had come up trumps. ‘I’m afraid it does. Yes. And,’ he took a deep breath, ‘he made another mistake as well. One that got Pauline Weeks killed.’

  Monica gave a gasp of dismay. ‘Pauline’s dead?’ she whispered, appalled.

  Graham leaned forward, his face pale. ‘How?’ he croaked.

  ‘Strangled,’ Jason said flatly. ‘We found her body in her flat this morning.’

  ‘But why?’ Monica cried.

  Jason shrugged. ‘I think because she’d been going around telling everyone that she’d seen the bloodstain on the stairs when she went back to her flat that afternoon.’

  Monica shot Graham a quick look.

  ‘Yes, we’d heard that too,’ Graham admitted. ‘But I’m afraid we didn’t really believe her,’ he added quietly. ‘Or pay it that much attention.’ Quickly, Monica reached out and grabbed his hand.

  ‘Don’t feel so bad about it, Mr Noble,’ Jason said gruffly, sensing his distress. ‘Nobody else did either.’

  ‘Except Paul,’ Monica put in darkly.

  ‘Yes,’ Jason agreed heavily. ‘Paul believed her, because he knew that she really could have seen the stains; he was the only one who knew that Margaret was already dead and that he’d changed on the stairs, before the sound of the shot was heard. And there was something else she knew. Something we haven’t been quite able to track down yet, but something to do with clothes.’

  At his words, Monica abruptly frowned. Something nipped, then leapt into her mind. ‘The panther!’ she cried suddenly, and both men looked at her as if she’d suddenly grown another head. ‘I know what it was,’ Monica stared at Jason triumphantly. ‘It was the panther on his T-shirt.’

  ‘Come again?’ Jason said softly.

  ‘When Paul went to get the booze, he was wearing a pair of shorts and a plain white T-shirt. When he came back, he was still wearing the same coloured shorts and a plain white T-shirt except for a little navy-blue panther logo on one shoulder. I must have registered it without ever really knowing that I had. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘But Pauline would notice everything about Paul.’ It was Graham who spoke up now, his voice sad. ‘The way she felt about him, she’d have noticed every little thing about him. Including the fact that his shirt wasn’t quite the same.’

  ‘And those two things got her killed,’ Jason said flatly.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long, once they knew where to look, to find all the evidence that they needed to arrest and charge Paul Waring with double murder. The forensics team found traces which proved that Margaret Franklyn and the tarpaulins had been in the boot of Waring’s car, despite the vacuuming and cleaning he’d since done on it. And once the spot was found in Chandler’s Spinney where Margaret had actually been killed, they came up with a footprint in the dust fitting the markings on one of Paul Waring’s trainers. The ‘moss, lichens and other green matter’ found on the tarpaulins were matched to those of the lichens and other growths found on the trees in the wood. And traces of Margaret’s blood were found in the turf in sufficient quantities to convince Jason’s superior that his detective had got it right. A raid on Paul’s gyms also produced evidence of widespread steroid abuse, and under questioning, several dedicated clients confessed that they were taking steroids, supplied by Paul Waring.

  The estate agency’s records were confiscated, and it was discovered that Monica was right about the deal on the flats. Both Sean Franklyn, when questioned, and Maurice, reluctantly admitted how much they’d paid for their flats. Both prices were well below that which showed up on the estate agents’ books.

  Paul Waring, when arrested, refused to speak, and demanded a solicitor.

  * * *

  Neither Monica nor Graham wanted to witness Paul’s arrest, and kept to the flat that day. They didn’t want to venture far for the next few days in fact, since the press was back and practically camped on their doorstep, but they had no choice — Graham had to give his Sunday service as usual, and it was also the weekend of baby Halcyone’s christening. He also paid a visit to Trisha Lancer and her husband, and returned with a certain sense of optimism.

  As expected, Jim Lancer had been appalled at what his mentor had done. Sure, Jim had desperately wanted the house sales, but his admiration for Paul had led to severely misplaced trust, and now being sacked by his firm was the least of his worries — he was facing prosecution for fraud, as well as the illegal use of steroids. His wife was vowing to stand by him, but his dreams of being the next Sylvester Stallone were well and truly down the pan.

  Pauline Weeks’s body was eventually released for burial. Joan Dix moved out of the vicarage, taking a contrite Julie with her.

  Jason, feeling he owed it to them, explained to Monica and Graham how, on the day of the murder, Maurice Keating had met a man in his flat, a known criminal, and had paid him a lot of money for a false set of documents.

  For once, Paul Waring had been telling the truth about seeing a stranger — and an old acquaintance of Maurice’s — in the vicinity. Of course, he’d only told the police about him in order to hammer another nail into the Oxford don’s coffin.

  But with the arrest of the true killer, Maurice had decided it was safe to come clean, and had confessed to Jason how, just like Paul, he’d had enough of Margaret’s blackmailing. He had decided to try and start a new life elsewhere under a false name, in the hopes that she’d never find him again.

  As it turned out, he need not have gone to all the trouble.

  Maurice also revealed that he’d seen a car identical to Paul’s when he’d been leaving Margaret’s place around a year ago, fuming after yet another outrageous extortion. Concerned as to who may have seen him, the vehicle had stuck in his mind, but it wasn’t until Maurice was being ushered into the police car for questioning that his eyes had alighted on Paul’s Jag and got him wondering whether the young man had been keeping dark secrets of his own.

  ‘I was really angry that day and no doubt had a face like thunder,’ he recounted to Jason. ‘Paul must have seen me and got curious, wondering if he was the only blackmail victim.’

  And sure enough, that’s exactly when Paul Waring’s master plan must have come together, Jason thought grimly. After seizing the gym buff’s phone and laptop they had found evidence of him hiring a private investigator, who had no doubt been given a car registration number for the unsuspecting Maurice.

  And it was this lack of suspicion that Paul had counted on. He knew the old man wouldn’t have the backbone or the knowhow to cover up his blackmail under close scrutiny; he was the perfect scapegoat. But Paul Waring had thought himself just a touch too clever.

  * * *

  It was Saturday morning again, two weeks to the day after the murder of Margaret Franklyn, when Jason and the last of his team finally cleared out of the incident room for good, and left Heyford Bassett to return to its normal, sleepy existence.

  John Lerwick and Vera Ainsley were back in the gardens and weeding steadily when Jason took a final look around and headed for the gravel path to the main gates.

  Jason had politely and somewhat awkwardly thanked the Nobles for all their help, taking Monica’s hand reluctantly and quickly letting it go again. Even so, it felt as if he could still feel her fingers resting sweetly in his palm.

  Jim was already in the car, waiting to leave. The weather had finally broken, and although it wasn’t raining, the sun was banked behind thick clouds, and there was a pleasant coolness in the air.

  Monica was in the kitchen, looking out of the window, when she saw Jason cross the lawn in front of her. She reached out to fling wide the catch, and was about to call out to him, when something stopped her.

>   Jason, sensing the movement, swung his head, and found himself looking into a pair of wide, smoky blue eyes. He smiled. He took a single step towards her, then something stopped him. Perhaps not. Better not. He smiled sadly at the vicar’s wife, just the once, then turned and walked away.

  Monica watched him leave, then went back to the plum and raspberry tart that she was making. She reached for the sugar canister and lightly sprinkled some on top the way that Graham liked it.

  From her daughter’s bedroom came the sudden blare of the latest pop sensation.

  Life, as it always did, had to return to normal.

  Stiff-backed, Jason Dury got into the car, and nodded at Jim. ‘Right. Let’s get out of here,’ he said firmly.

  THE END

  ALSO BY FAITH MARTIN

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  JENNY STARLING SERIES

  Book 1: THE BIRTHDAY MYSTERY

  Book 2: THE WINTER MYSTERY

  Book 3: THE RIVERBOAT MYSTERY

  Book 4: THE CASTLE MYSTERY

  Book 5: THE OXFORD MYSTERY

  Book 6: THE TEATIME MYSTERY

  Book 7: THE COUNTRY INN MYSTERY

  DI HILLARY GREENE SERIES

  Book 1: MURDER ON THE OXFORD CANAL

  Book 2: MURDER AT THE UNIVERSITY

  Book 3: MURDER OF THE BRIDE

  Book 4: MURDER IN THE VILLAGE

  Book 5: MURDER IN THE FAMILY

  Book 6: MURDER AT HOME

  Book 7: MURDER IN THE MEADOW

  Book 8: MURDER IN THE MANSION

  Book 9: MURDER IN THE GARDEN