The Killer in the Choir

by Simon Brett

  ‘And now,’ he concluded sadly, ‘that “old times’ sake” meeting with Heather will never happen.’

  ‘No.’ There was a moment of reflective silence, before Jude asked, ‘Was there anything else Heather talked to you about, you know, in the past few months, after her husband’s death …?’

  Carole had by now got the bit between her teeth and was determined to increase her contribution to the investigation – or, ideally, to solve the murder on her own. Her direct approach to Elizabeth Browning had not been an unqualified success, but the direct approach to Bet Harrison had proved more fruitful. At least it showed her the direction in which her next enquiries should go.

  She had a copy of that week’s Fethering Observer, with a photograph of Heather Mallett on the front, and among the small ads, the regular entry was still there. She rang the mobile number that was printed in the box.

  Her call was greeted by a laid-back ‘Hi.’

  ‘Am I talking to KK Rosser?’

  ‘You are. Guitarist extraordinaire. Leader of Rubber Truncheon, the best undiscovered and unsigned band this side of Memphis. Available for any kind of gig – weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, hen parties, divorce parties – you name it, we’ll provide the best evening of music you’ve heard since Woodstock. So, what is the occasion for which you require our services?’

  ‘Actually, I saw your advertisement in the Fethering Observer for singing lessons.’ Carole planned to start with a conventional enquiry before moving on to the meat of her investigation.

  ‘Oh, right. Well, that’s a turn-up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because I get so few enquiries about the singing lessons. Lots for Rubber Truncheon, of course.’ He was probably lying. ‘But very few for the old singing lessons. Haven’t had an enquiry about that for … ooh, six months at least.’

  ‘Well, actually, that wasn’t what I really wanted to ask you about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Carole now decided that she should use a little subterfuge by pretending that she wasn’t totally retired from the Home Office. ‘The fact is, I’m making enquiries into the death of Heather Mallett.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Oh, general chat, you know,’ Blake Woodruff replied. ‘Heather told me what Alice was up to, all about the forthcoming wedding, that kind of stuff.’

  ‘Did she say anything about her late husband?’

  ‘His name wasn’t mentioned. Which, when I think about it, was perhaps rather odd. But I didn’t think that at the time. We only had a few telephone conversations, didn’t talk that much.’

  ‘And did Heather seem to have changed from when you’d last been in touch?’

  ‘She did a bit, yes.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, as I say, she always had a reclusive tendency, and that seemed to be more pronounced in our recent conversations. There was a kind of hesitancy about her, as if she was afraid something she said might upset me.’

  The product of years spent with the permanently critical Leonard, thought Jude. ‘Nothing else, nothing odd?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so … Oh, there was one thing …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing odd, really. Just a coincidence.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’d met someone in Fethering who I’d known years ago.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know if you know, but I started out life … well, no, I’d done a little bit of living before that … but, at a very young age, I became a choral scholar at a cathedral school. Yes, I’m afraid the music bug has been with me for a long, long time. And it turns out that the master in charge of the choir back then … was choirmaster for the church choir in Fethering, who Heather sang with.’

  ‘Jonny Virgo?’

  ‘Yes, “Mr Virgo” to us back then. Mind you, that didn’t stop a lot of smutty-minded little boys making jokes about his surname. Anyway, I told Heather I remembered him, and I asked if he remembered me, you know, if he’d mentioned my name. And she said no. Which I thought slightly odd, because when someone has the good fortune to become famous, as I have had, then all sorts of people come out of the woodwork, claiming that they gave him his first job, they recognized his exceptional potential at a very early age, that they taught him everything he knew. But old Mr Virgo apparently didn’t do that. He didn’t claim to have taught me everything I knew.’

  ‘More than that,’ said Jude, remembering a rehearsal in All Saints. ‘He positively denied that he knew you and moved the conversation on very quickly when your name came up.’

  ‘Yes, Heather told me that. And at first, I couldn’t think of any reason for it. And then a memory came back to me.’

  ‘A memory of what?’

  ‘A memory of Mr Virgo telling me he loved me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was the end of a choir rehearsal. The other choristers had gone from the chapel, off to supper, I think. It was just Mr Virgo and me, collecting up the hymn books. And he suddenly looked at me, and he said, “I love you, Woodruff.” Just that.’

  ‘Did he touch you?’

  ‘No. And it was never mentioned again. And I forgot about it.’

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone? Your headmaster or …?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, no! You didn’t in those days. I was … what … nine? I didn’t know what love meant. I knew I loved the family cat – that was about the extent of it. And it didn’t damage me in later life. I may have had a few romantic disasters on the way, partly to do with the amount I have to travel, but all of my disasters have been firmly heterosexual. So, Mr Virgo telling me he loved me had absolutely no effect at all on my life.’

  ‘It might have had a bigger effect on his life.’

  ‘Yes, OK, probably did. Maybe that was the first time he had faced the fact that he was gay, the first time he recognized that he could feel love for a small boy. I don’t know.’

  ‘But did Heather know about your encounter in the chapel?’

  ‘Yes. I told her while we were at university. You know, when you first have sex with someone, you tell each other about any previous sexual encounters … well, to be accurate, you give the other person an edited version of your previous sexual encounters, and I did tell Heather about Mr Virgo being in love with me, told her about it as a joke, really.’

  ‘Did she mention it in one of your more recent conversations?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Did she say if she told anyone else about it?’

  ‘She said she’d told Alice.’

  ‘Had she?’

  Jude went straight round to High Tor. It took a while before she could tell her story, because Carole was so keen to bring her up to date with the progress of her own investigations. But eventually Jude was able to report the conversation she had just had with Blake Woodruff.

  ‘What do you think that means?’ asked Carole.

  ‘I think it means that Alice may potentially be in as much danger as her stepmother was. We must see she’s looked after.’

  ‘And we must tell the police to have a word with Jonny Virgo,’ said Carole, in her best Home Office voice.

  ‘Yes.’ Jude glanced at her watch. ‘At least we know Alice is all right at the moment.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She told me she’d booked a three o’clock singing lesson with KK Rosser.’

  ‘But,’ said Carole slowly, ‘I spoke to KK Rosser this morning. He hasn’t had any enquiries about singing lessons for more than six months.’ Jude looked at her, aghast. ‘Which must mean that Alice is having her singing lesson with someone else.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Carole had never before broken the speed limit on Fethering seafront, but all caution was abandoned in the Renault’s dash to the Shorelands Estate. And, once inside the enclave, she certainly must have broken many of the local regulations as she screeched to a halt outside Sorrento.

  The front door was locked.

  ‘
Shall I ring the bell?’ asked Carole.

  ‘No, round the back!’ Jude led the way, at a speed surprising for a woman of her bulk.

  It was as she had hoped. In her bid to let fresh air into the house, Alice had opened the sitting room’s French windows.

  They heard the singing first. ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’, in Alice’s pure soprano.

  Then they saw her through the windows, sitting at her stepmother’s baby grand, accompanying herself from memory. She seemed unaware of the man behind her, carefully loosening the cravat around his neck, preparatory to tightening it around hers.

  ‘Stop it!’ Carole bellowed.

  He looked up mildly at the two approaching woman. ‘Ah,’ said Jonny Virgo. ‘Rather too much to hope that I would get away with it twice.’

  Shortly afterwards they were seated on the chintzy three-piece suite. Alice had made tea and served it in her stepmother’s best bone china. What a very genteel, Fethering way to hold a conversation with a murderer.

  ‘I knew I had to,’ said Jonny, his cravat once again neatly around his neck. ‘I became obsessed by it. Heather knew, and I felt certain that it was only a matter of time before she would tell someone. I had to stop her.’

  ‘So, what did you do?’ asked Carole.

  ‘I gave Mother a sleeping pill. She doesn’t always sleep well, wakes up not knowing what time of day or night it is, but the sleeping pills do work. So, I knew she’d be dead to the world for a while. And what I was going to do wouldn’t take long. Then, knowing that the music for the dancing in the church hall would have to stop at ten thirty, I went down there and waited until Heather came out. I had to wait quite a while.’ He sounded aggrieved at the delay. ‘People are very long-winded about saying their goodbyes, particularly after a few drinks.

  ‘But finally, Heather came out on her own. I knew she was the last one, because she locked up the hall. Presumably, she would return the key the next day.’ A troublesome thought struck him. ‘Oh dear. I wonder what happened to the key. It’ll be very inconvenient if they can’t find it, you know, next time the place is booked.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ve got a spare,’ said Jude.

  ‘Yes, I hope so.’ He sounded more worried about the missing key than the crime he’d committed.

  ‘Then what happened?’ asked Carole, quite sharply.

  ‘Well, I said “Good evening” to Heather, and said I was just taking a late-night stroll, and I’d see her a bit of the way home. She was in a very happy state, very pleased with the way the day had gone, extravagantly flattering to me about the music.’ A strange little smile hovered on his lips. ‘I was glad that her last thoughts were happy ones.’

  He saw that no one else was smiling and went on hastily. ‘As you know, if you were going from All Saints to the Shorelands Estate, you’d follow the river down to the Fethering Yacht Club. And that’s the way we went. Down there, as you also know, there’s the sea wall at the mouth of the Fether.’

  I was right about the Scene of the Crime, Carole told herself. But the thought didn’t bring her much satisfaction.

  ‘I knew that’s where I had to do it. I’d slipped off my cravat in readiness. I think she was too surprised to resist when I put it round her neck. She died very quickly. It wasn’t easy lifting her body over the sea wall, but I managed it,’ he concluded with an air of satisfaction.

  There was a silence.

  ‘It was what Heather said after the wedding ceremony, wasn’t it?’ asked Jude. ‘The reason you killed her. When she was talking about Alice knowing Blake Woodruff’s secrets, knowing about “everyone who’s ever been in love with him” …?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jonny admitted. ‘I knew she wasn’t really talking about Alice. I’d followed Blake’s career all the way from when he was a chorister. I knew that he and Heather had had a … thing while they were at university. And, from when I first met her, I was worried she might mention something about Blake. What she said in the church hall made me certain that she knew what I’d … what I’d said to him. I thought she was challenging me with the information. I thought she was threatening to tell everyone about it.’

  Jude sighed. To think that such a trivial misunderstanding could have led to a woman’s death.

  Other details fell into place, though. Carole remembered Bet Harrison saying how vehemently Jonny had been against the idea of giving singing lessons to Rory Harrison. Throughout his career, he must have avoided any situation that might leave him alone with a young boy.

  ‘I couldn’t let Mother find out,’ Jonny went on. ‘She’d always had this image of me as … It would have killed her.’

  ‘But why,’ asked Carole, ‘once you’d silenced Heather, did you feel the need to silence Alice too?’

  ‘It just got to me,’ Jonny replied. ‘Once Heather had died, I felt a kind of peace. I thought the danger had gone. But then, as the days went by, I felt less and less secure. I knew Heather and Alice were close. Increasingly, I started to think that Heather must have confided in her, passed on what Blake had told her. I couldn’t relax, I didn’t know what to do … and then I had the call from Alice, asking me to come here to give her a singing lesson, and it was like a sign to me.’ He spoke as if his actions had been dictated by an ineluctable logic.

  There were a lot of things that Jude wanted to say. That, in this day and age, nobody cared about anyone else’s sexuality. That what he’d said to the young Blake Woodruff did not constitute an offence.

  But she was dealing with someone from a different generation, someone who’d grown up at the time when homosexual acts were still criminal. Jonny Virgo’s overriding sense of guilt had prevented him, right through his life, from any kind of sexual expression.

  And, most ironic of all, he was someone whose mother was way beyond understanding any charge levelled against him. He was trying to protect her from information she no longer had any means of processing. Jonny Virgo’s murder of Heather Mallett – and his attempted murder of Alice Mallett – had been completely unnecessary acts. But he would never understand that.

  Carole looked at her watch. ‘The police said they’d be here within the half-hour.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jonny Virgo nodded, with something approaching satisfaction. ‘At least I’ve finished my recordings,’ he said.

  ‘Recordings?’ echoed Jude.

  ‘I’ve been recording all the Beethoven piano sonatas … for Mother to listen to … if I have to go somewhere else.’

  Jude realized that he was quite as out of touch with the real world as Mrs Virgo was. They had lived all their lives, just the two of them, in a capsule of togetherness.

  She looked across at Alice Mallett, transfixed by the man who had killed her much-adored stepmother. On the girl’s face there was no anger, only pity.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Roddy. Someone to see you.’

  Jude spoke from the doorway to the sitting room. Brian Skelton had ‘thought it might be a good idea’ if he went and did some shopping. So, Jude was the only witness to Roddy and Alice’s reunion.

  The bride brought up a chair to sit beside her groom. He touched her hand briefly, and she didn’t recoil. But both knew they had a long journey to travel.

  ‘I know people who can help you,’ said Jude. ‘I really do.’

  It was surprising how quickly Fethering gossip accommodated the arrest of Jonny Virgo. A lot of people, it turned out, had deduced some time before that he was the murderer. Barney Poulton, in his favourite role as a buttonholing Ancient Mariner, assured an increasingly glassy-eyed Ted Crisp – and indeed anyone else at the bar of the Crown & Anchor – that he had ‘known all along.’

  At his trial, Jonny Virgo admitted killing Heather Mallett. He was sentenced to life and, once inside, made himself popular by playing piano for all of the prison entertainments. He also formed a reciprocated attachment for a fellow prisoner. Though there was no physical contact, he had finally found a way of expressing his true emotions. They remained a very devoted couple to t
he end of their incarcerated lives. Their only worry, that one would inevitably be released before the other, was not realized because they both died, within days of each other, before the end of their sentences.

  Jonny’s mother made little demur when she was moved to a care home which had a view of the sea on the front at Fethering. So long as she had her CD player, on which to listen to her beloved son playing the Beethoven piano concertos, she asked no more of life.

  The Rev. Bob Hinkley’s efforts at controlling events in his parish led him to a nervous breakdown. When he recovered, he left the church and went back into industry. And nobody in Fethering ever knew what that ‘industry’ was. His replacement as vicar decided that, given All Saints’ dwindling congregation, it could no longer support a church choir. Recorded music was introduced to services.

  Ruskin Dewitt continued to be the life and soul of parties that nobody really wanted him to attend. And he sang, as flatly as ever, in the choir of All Souls Fedborough.

  Bet Harrison found a new man, and her son Rory discovered girls.

  Elizabeth Browning continued to go on about Glyndebourne and her nodules, and to maintain her lonely seaside vigils, which still proved a very good way of picking up men.

  KK Rosser got fewer and fewer gigs for Rubber Truncheon. And no one asked him to give them singing lessons. Nor did he or anyone else revive the Crown & Anchor Choir.

  Roddy and Alice Skelton did consult the therapist whom Jude had recommended and worked very hard with him to come to terms with their different problems. The success of the treatment could be measured by the fact that they became the parents of three healthy children. Brian Skelton lived long enough to meet the first of these, but then, with characteristic stoicism – and ‘no fuss’ – succumbed to bowel cancer.