by Nancy Warren
I hadn’t thought of that. “So you don’t think it’s all my fault?”
“I don’t think it’s your fault at all.”
How to even begin to broach the possibility that his dead wife might’ve tried to kill me with that beam? “I saw the memorial plaque on the wall. To Constance Crosyer.”
I kept my voice gentle, but the hand holding mine stiffened suddenly and then deliberately relaxed. “Constance was my wife.”
“I’m so sorry. Her loss must seem so fresh to you.”
“Well, even the fiercest emotions fade over time, but losing Constance was the greatest tragedy of my life. Even an expected death at the end of a rich life lived to its natural conclusion still leaves grief in its wake. Especially to someone like me. Someone left behind.” He paused and looked out over the gravestones, names worn away by time, some fallen over or leaning drunkenly.
“What was she like?” Yes, I was trying to find out whether Constance might’ve attempted to toss a heavy beam on my head and kill me, but I was also curious. I suppose every woman likes to know about her predecessors.
He took his time choosing his words. “She was one of your kind.”
Even though Violet had already told me that Constance had been a witch, I didn’t want to let on that we’d been talking about Rafe’s business behind his back. I made my tone lilt in surprise. “She was a witch?”
“She was. A very good one. It was a dangerous time for witches then, but she had a gift for healing and couldn’t bear to see anyone in pain without trying to help them. It wasn’t all witchcraft. She had a genuine healer’s touch.”
Pretty much the worst thing witches had to deal with these days was mockery. But when Constance had been alive, women were burned and hanged for the crime of witchcraft, and most of the ones put to death hadn’t, in fact, been witches at all.
A woman who’d been a healer in life didn’t sound like someone who’d suddenly turn into a vengeful ghost. Still, I had to ask. “Was she a jealous woman?”
He laughed softly and shook his head. “Far from it. It wasn’t easy for her, as you can imagine. She aged as a normal woman does, while I did not age at all.” He looked at me significantly, and I imagined he was letting me know what I was in for if we continued with this relationship. “Then, as now, I was forced to move every decade or so in order to avoid suspicion. Once we had a mob chase us. Not to accuse me of being a vampire but to accuse my wife of witchcraft. They suspected that she had put a spell on me to keep me young forever.” His laugh was bitter. “If she could have changed me, I’d have chosen to be mortal with her. But no spell is powerful enough to turn a vampire back into mortal.”
He continued to gaze out over the gravestones. “Towards the end, we posed, not as man and wife, but as mother and son. Still, Constance was the love of my very long life.” He looked at me. “Until now.”
I felt as though I couldn’t quite take a breath. I knew he cared for me, but not like this. “I’d wondered if Constance might be angry with me.”
His tender look vanished. “You think my wife, who died nearly five hundred years ago, might be a ghost out for vengeance?”
I felt really foolish now. “When I saw her plaque on the wall and then heard the creaking in the rafters, I wondered.”
“No. Constance would want me to be happy. She always did. When she grew old, she said she would understand if I looked elsewhere. That she would not only pass herself off as my mother but act like it and welcome her replacement. That’s not a woman who would hurt another. If anything, she’d be pleased to know I’d found someone again.”
I didn’t know what to say. Of course I cared for him. But there was no getting around the fact that I was going to have the same problem Constance had if I stayed with him. He continued, “She’d have liked you. You’re very much like her.” He paused and then went on, “The first time I saw you, I had a shock. You even look like her.”
He wasn’t the only one getting a shock. “I look like your dead wife? Who lived in the 1500s?”
“It’s not as strange as you might think. Constance had family who moved to Salem, Massachusetts.”
“Salem? I’m guessing that didn’t end well.”
“Don’t forget, the actual witches had powers and a very good underground network. Many of them escaped. Your ancestors did.”
“My ancestors?”
“Yes. I suspect you are the descendant of Constance’s sister.”
I put my hands up. “Are you kidding me? I’m having trouble getting my head around that.”
He chuckled. “Imagine how I felt when I saw you.”
“Kind of blows my theory, then, that your wife was out to get me.”
“Constance would want nothing more than to see me happy.”
Way to go, Lucy. I’d come out to find out whether his dearly departed wife was my mortal enemy and instead had him all but declaring his undying love for me. And when a vampire expresses undying love, he means it.
Well, at least I no longer had to worry that I had an unhappy ghost out to get me. I was going to have to do something about my undead admirer, though, and I had no idea what that was going to be.
“Even if you weren’t part of her family, she’d still look out for you if she could. No, if my wife is a ghost, she’s a benign force.” He looked around the graveyard, almost sadly. “But I don’t believe she walks the earth. I believe she’s truly gone.”
“So it was really bad luck, then, and nothing more. The poor vicar looked gray, but it seems they have a church restoration committee that hired surveyors. They apparently claimed that the roof was safe enough. The committee thought they had time to raise the funds to replace the damaged parts of the roof. Looks like somebody made a terrible miscalculation.”
Rafe turned to me, and his expression was guarded. “I’m not so sure about that.”
The bodice of my dress suddenly felt uncomfortably tight, as though I’d taken a breath and forgotten to let it out. “What do you mean?” I knew that guarded look of his, and it usually meant he was trying to keep bad news from me.
“I’m not entirely sure that falling beam was an accident.”
“What?” I shrieked the word so loud a bird flew from a bush, squawking with alarm.
“The beam will need to be carefully studied, but it looked to me as though the ends were rather too neat. Almost as though they’d been cut through.”
“Cut through?” I didn’t shriek this time, so no wildlife was startled, but still, my voice was urgent. “You mean, deliberately?”
I knew it was a stupid thing to say. The beam couldn’t have been cut by accident, but I was completely rattled by Rafe’s suspicions. And Rafe wasn’t given to scare-mongering.
He didn’t call me on the inanity of my reply, merely answered calmly, “I believe so.”
“But who? Why?”
“Two excellent questions.”
My brain was reeling. “Do you think someone planned to disrupt the wedding and it was a prank gone wrong?”
He considered my question. Then shook his head. “It’s much too complicated to be a prank.”
“But are you saying that Rupert Grendell-Smythe was murdered?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Who’d want to kill that nice old man?”
Once more, he seemed to consider my question carefully. “I imagine killing someone by dropping a rotten beam on their head isn’t the most accurate method. Perhaps he wasn’t the intended victim.”
As theories went, I really didn’t like this one. “So the real victim is still in danger?”
“Yes.”
“But who—” And then I pictured the crash, the horrible thud, the screams, and Alice’s dress, the train caught under the broken beam. That’s how close she’d been to death. “Alice,” I whispered.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he warned me. “It could have been meant for anyone in the immediate vicinity, or perhaps someone had a grudge against
the church or the vicar and chose Charlie and Alice’s wedding, as the church would be filled with people at a specific time.”
“But why not make the beam crash down during a Sunday service? It’s just as scheduled, and the church would still be filled with people.”
“I can think of several reasons. One, the killer could be someone who’d be missed in church on a Sunday. Two, they could have loved ones in the congregation they wouldn’t want harmed, or, three, the church attendance isn’t high enough to get the attention and drama they were looking for.”
I hated the idea of a madman randomly choosing Alice and Charlie’s wedding as a venue to create this horrific disaster, but I hated the prospect that Alice and Charlie had been targeted even more. As bad as a rotten beam randomly falling would have been, it would be preferable to what Rafe was suggesting.
I really wanted to blame the deathwatch beetle!
“Will you tell the police what you suspect?”
“They are trained investigators. I think they’ll see for themselves.”
I stood up, shook his coat out and offered it back to him. “I suppose I should see what’s going on. See if Alice needs anything.”
He stood as well. “The police should be here by now. They’ll want to interview everyone, I imagine.”
“Poor Alice and Charlie. What a way to start your married life.”
“Could have been worse. One of them could have been hit by the beam.”
I looked at him sharply. “Alice had been standing, speaking with Rupert Grendell-Smythe moments before the beam fell. You saw her. She was so close, the train of her dress was trapped under the beam.” I shuddered. “What a lucky escape.”
“I wonder.”
I knew what he was thinking. I shook my head. “Don’t even go there. It’s an old church. We know there’s deathwatch beetle in those beams. It could have been an accident.”
Maybe if I repeated those words enough, I would believe them.
I didn’t want Rafe’s theory to be correct, but I also didn’t want to hide my head in the sand and possibly leave a woman I liked very much in danger for her life. If there was a killer around, we needed to find them. I looked at Rafe. “Okay, you’ve obviously thought this through. How did the killer cut the beam through, and how could they be certain it would fall just at that moment?”
“The killer didn’t leave too much to chance. I believe they went up into the roof. They’d cut the beam enough that a sharp push would cause it to tumble.”
I remembered the sharp gunshot sound I’d heard.
“But how did they get up to the roof?” I looked behind me and saw the tower reaching up into the still-blue sky. “The bell tower?” Then I answered my own question. “But that’s impossible. They were going to ring the bells when Alice and Charlie walked out.”
I didn’t know much about bell towers, now that I thought about it. “Or can people even go up a bell tower?”
He looked amused. “How do you think they rang the bells before modern times? Bells were rung by hand. In fact, many still are. I know people who find it a relaxing hobby. They climb up into the tower and take charge of bell ropes, then pull them in patterns.”
A murderous bell-ringer? Now I’d heard everything.
“But I don’t think the killer was in the bell tower. It’s at the opposite end of the church from the apse.”
“Then how did the killer climb up into the roof?” And, suddenly, I knew. “The scaffolding.” The church had draped the metal support in blue fabric to hide the ugliness, so the murderer could have climbed up the metal supports and into the roof. Then all they had to do was push the beam down at the right time.
He nodded.
I began to realize why I’d found Rafe sitting out here. He hadn’t only been looking for a quiet spot in the shade; he’d been doing some sleuthing.
“But how did they get out?”
“The scaffolding is located in front of the organ, remember?”
“Yes.”
“At the bottom of the organ loft is a door to the outside.” He pointed, and I saw a door set into the stone wall of the church. “In the chaos, the killer climbed back down a couple of rungs of the scaffolding, slid down the organ pipe and walked out that door.”
And as easy as that, a murderer had walked away.
Chapter 10
I went to the door and opened it.
“Don’t go in there,” Rafe said in a warning tone behind me.
“I won’t.” But I did stick my head in so I could get an idea of what we were talking about. What I saw was a narrow corridor that led into a rather dark space. I could just glimpse the organ keyboard, though the lights had been turned off, so I couldn’t see much. The organ pipes stretched way up, and I wondered if Rafe was right. Could a killer have used them like a fireman’s pole to slide down and escape?
And could the murderer really have done it without being seen by the organist? The music would have covered any sound, and I supposed the organist was too busy concentrating on her playing to notice what was going on behind her. Then, when the beam fell, as I recalled, the playing had continued for a while. The organist hadn’t been able to see the beam fall.
I came back out of the doorway. “We should tell the police.”
“Again, the police aren’t stupid. They’ll come to the same conclusions we have.”
I stood back and regarded this old church. It wasn’t only the deathwatch beetle that was slowly destroying the structure. There were patches of moss in places, and a couple of stones had fallen from the wall. They lay on the ground like reminders that time was passing, the same way the writing on so many of those gravestones had worn and washed away over time, leaving it a mystery as to who was buried beneath them.
I’d heard the police arrive and said to Rafe that we should join the others. He motioned me to go on ahead. When I walked back around to the front of the church, the scene hadn’t changed very much. Except that now there were several police cars lined up. I recognized Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm, his reddish-blond hair catching the light as he bent to listen to Beatrice, who seemed to have worked herself up into hysterics again. Another officer I recognized, Sergeant Barnes, was talking with Alistair. Harry Bloom stood with his wife and Philip Wallington. He seemed unsure as to whether he should stay or go. Their dog sat gazing up as though wondering as well which way his master was going to go.
An ambulance was parked out front, and two paramedics stood outside the church with the stretcher. I wondered why they didn’t go in.
Violet caught sight of me and came over. “Ian Chisholm was looking for you.”
I was about to make my way over to him when the fire brigade showed up. Then I understood why the paramedics hadn’t gone inside the church. No doubt the police had decreed that no one could enter until the fire department got there. They had the kind of equipment for unstable structures. And, as had been evidenced this morning, this church was clearly unstable.
In the end, it wasn’t Ian but a uniformed constable who took my statement. I admitted that I had thought I’d heard creaking in the beams, but nothing that had led me to believe the roof was about to cave in. “It was more like when you walk across the floor and hit a squeaky bit.”
Nigel Potts came up to me. He repositioned his glasses, not that he needed to, but I suspected it was a nervous gesture. He was to have been my escort back down the aisle if the wedding had followed protocol. “I’m awfully sorry, Lucy, but I won’t be able to escort you to the reception. Alistair has to go and make a formal identification of his father. I said I’d go with him.”
“Yes. Of course. Does Alistair mind very much if we still offer the wedding guests food?”
“No. He insisted that Charlie and Alice go ahead. He said it’s what his father would’ve wanted. And I imagine that’s true. Rupert loved a party.”
I felt my eyes prickle at the death of this man I barely even knew. A man who’d bought brand-new shoes to come to the weddi
ng.
“Of course.”
Then Philip Wallington left the Blooms. He stepped up onto a flat-topped stone that edged the walk up to the church door. It was a makeshift pulpit, but it allowed him to see and be seen. He still looked shaken, but he managed to sound calm and in control as he called for attention. Everyone stopped talking and gathered around him, as though grateful that here was someone who would tell them what to do. How to go on.
“Alice and Charlie, friends. God does indeed move in mysterious ways. Who can say why Rupert Grendell-Smythe was taken from us so cruelly and so suddenly today? In the midst of great joy, we now experience great sorrow. Our thoughts are with his son, Alistair, and all his family and loved ones. Let us pray.”
It was a short, moving prayer. Then he said, “Charlie and Alice, with Alistair Grendell-Smythe’s blessing, have asked me to tell you all that they would be glad to see you, as planned, at Crosyer Manor. And the police have asked me to let you know that you’re all now free to leave. God bless you all.”
Everyone turned back to whatever group they’d been part of and began to talk. Behind me, I heard an older woman say, “I don’t know. Should we go? Seems a bit macabre.” I didn’t know the speaker, but I turned immediately to a couple who stood, uncertain. No doubt they were family friends of bride or groom and had traveled a fair way for the wedding. “Please,” I said, feeling that my bridesmaid dress gave me some right to intrude. “Please come. The caterers have done such a wonderful job. It would be terrible to see all that lovely food go to waste. I believe that Mr. Grendell-Smythe would want Alice and Charlie to have their friends and family around them at this time.”
The woman, peering at me from under a large, pale blue hat, looked grateful for my interference. “All right, dear. I suppose it’s best.”
Surprisingly enough, the vicar came to Charlie and Alice’s wedding reception. He looked gray. Was it the normal pallor of a man who’s had a shock? Or was there guilt involved? I didn’t want to think of the nice vicar as someone who had enemies, but if someone had deliberately tampered with that beam, then Rafe might be right. It could be the church itself or the vicar in particular who had been the real target. This felt like the early hours after a terrorist attack. I found myself waiting for someone to claim responsibility.
