by Fay Sampson
‘Head down the drive. You’ll see the footpath sign.’
‘Did you go upstream or downstream?’ Hilary persisted.
‘Down. Look what is this? The DI’s been all over this. He knows where all of us were.’
‘Assuming everybody’s telling him the truth,’ Jake laughed.
Downstream, towards Totnes. Veronica and Hilary had walked into town themselves, though by the road.
‘Then I think the DI might want another word with you. I wouldn’t go to bed just yet.’
‘Come on, Hilary! You can’t just leave it at that,’ Jake exploded. ‘You have to come clean. Why is he questioning some of us again?’
Hairs prickled on Hilary’s neck. Was that all the police were doing? Questioning them? Or was it possible that there were officers searching other bedrooms, looking for a navy tracksuit with white stripes on the sleeves and legs? A thought struck her. What might be hidden in the boots of cars parked across the road from the entrance arch? But surely, if that seeming youth was the killer, he’d have got rid of any clothing which might bear the faintest trace of Melissa’s DNA?
She did not realize she had lapsed into silence until David said, ‘I think we ought to get you to bed.’
He was standing over her, a glass of tomato juice in his hand. He cast a wide smile around the room.
‘Sorry, folks! I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But Hilary looks all in.’
He sank on to the sofa beside her. Behind him, Veronica had risen to examine the book display while she sipped her gin and tonic. She turned to them, holding Gavin’s most famous work in her hand, just as Hilary had.
‘The Long Crippler again. It’s eerie, isn’t it? You said that was the name of the spring where we found Melissa. But if it was someone from the Morland Abbey course who killed her, and the Leechwells were meant to be significant, which they obviously are, why didn’t they leave her in the Snake pool? She was the leader of the Snake group. The Slowworms are Gavin’s lot.’
‘Did someone want to throw suspicion on Gavin?’ Ben suggested.
‘Or was it actually Gavin? Obsessed with his own cleverness and his wretched book.’ The question came from Jo. ‘Flaunting it, and defying us to pin it on him.’ Her eyes were sparkling at the idea.
‘That sort of speculation will have to wait until the morning,’ David said. ‘Bed for us, folks.’
Obediently, Hilary rose with him. She really did want to be in bed.
It was natural that Veronica should join them on David’s other side.
NINETEEN
They said goodnight to Veronica outside her bedroom. Veronica opened her door hesitantly and looked inside.
‘It seems untouched. If they have searched it, they’ve put everything back in its place. All the same … it feels like a violation. They say that’s how you feel when you’ve been burgled. A stranger going through your things.’
‘But we know they couldn’t have found anything.’
‘Are you going to be all right?’ There was concern in David’s voice.
‘Yes, thank you. It’s an odd feeling, though. You know you’re innocent, but the police can make you feel as though you’re not.’
Hilary turned away. She felt an odd embarrassment about sharing her own room with David now. True, it had a generously large double bed. She had been unexpectedly glad to see him. She should welcome the comfort of his warmth beside her. Was it just the knowledge that Veronica was sleeping alone which made her feel awkward? Or that snide comment of Jo’s about Veronica being so much prettier, and the shared private laughter of her friend and her husband as they entered the lounge?
Rather grumpily, she began to get undressed.
David had brought only a light overnight bag. He took out his pyjamas, his toilet things.
‘Bathroom’s across the corridor, she told him. ‘They don’t do en-suites up here.’
He had hardly reached the door on his way out when there was a quick knocking.
‘Can I come in?’ Veronica’s voice.
David pulled the door open. ‘We’re more or less respectable.’ He gave her a ready smile. ‘What’s up?’
Hilary paused in the act of unbuttoning her shirt. There was no reason why Veronica shouldn’t see her in her underwear. They had shared a room many times. But it irked her that David had not even looked over his shoulder for her consent.
While Hilary felt unspeakably weary, there was an excitement about Veronica’s face, despite the late hour and all that had happened in a dramatic day. Something Hilary had caught in Ben and Jake, eager to find their solution to the murder.
‘There’s a light outside. Just a pencil torch, by the look of it. But someone’s going along the path towards the chapel.’
Veronica’s room was on the other side of the corridor from Hilary’s. While her own overlooked the cloisters, Veronica had a view of the path that ran alongside the Great Barn to the gardens beyond. A little way to the left, Hilary remembered, was the Lady Chapel, which was all that remained of the magnificent abbey church.
‘You think it’s significant?’ David asked. ‘It’s certainly an odd time of night for someone to be going for a walk.’
‘Security,’ Hilary said dismissively. ‘Fiona said there was someone on duty twenty-four/seven. They probably check the buildings at night. Or couldn’t it be the police? I don’t imagine for a minute that they’ve all gone home.’ She heard the scepticism in her voice that this could be a further twist in the mystery. All she wanted was to get to bed.
‘One person or more?’ David asked. He was already on his feet, moving across the corridor towards Veronica’s room.
‘Impossible to tell.’ Her voice was retreating. ‘I couldn’t actually see anyone. Just this moving light.’
Hilary sighed and buttoned up her blouse again. She followed them outside to Veronica’s door. It was a much smaller room than Hilary’s. They all crowded to the window.
Hilary was the last of the three, and the shortest. By the time she was able to glimpse through the curtains between Veronica and David’s shoulders, the Great Barn opposite was in darkness. To her right, a bright overhead lamp showed where the path alongside it met the cobbled yard in front of the Chapter House. It was some moments before her eyes adjusted and she picked out the much smaller pinprick of light some way to her left.
‘It certainly looks as if they’re going to the chapel, unless they’re going past it to the gardens.’ She meant to keep her voice low, but it sounded louder than she intended in the darkened room. It occurred to her that Veronica must have put the light out before she opened the curtains.
The other two turned swiftly. David held his finger to his lips. Hilary felt idiotically rebuked. The window was closed on a rainy autumn night. It was surely impossible for anyone to have heard her.
‘Are they going to meet someone in the chapel?’ Veronica whispered.
‘Only one way to find out,’ David whispered back. ‘Stay here.’
He made for the door, squeezing past Hilary.
A moment later, Hilary was out in the corridor after him. ‘You don’t know the layout,’ she hissed. ‘Or the quickest way out. And I’m more likely to recognize who it is than you are.’
David was still fully clothed. Hilary had shed her cardigan when she started to undress. She grabbed a rain jacket from the inside of the door of her room as she passed.
‘This way.’
Veronica still stood at her bedroom door. ‘I’d better stay and watch what happens,’ she suggested, ‘in case someone comes or leaves before you get there.’
‘Good thinking.’
Adrenalin was pumping through Hilary. She felt more awake, now that she was doing something. There was a little triumph that she had managed to be the one to accompany David, not Veronica.
They crept down the first flight of stairs as fast as caution would allow. It brought them to the glass door where Hilary had bumped into Melissa that first evening. Hilary led the way to th
e fire exit on that landing on the side away from the courtyard. It was hard to see outside in the dim light from the corridor, but she knew that steps ran down to the path beside the barn. It would lead them directly to the chapel.
It was not totally dark outside. Clouds were torn across the night sky, letting through occasional flashes of moonlight or a tranche of stars. There was a spattering of rain.
The path beside the rough stone wall of the barn was now a dark gulf. There was more light to their right from the distant lamp on the cobbled square. They turned away from it. There was no sign of the torch ahead now. It was impossible to pick out the chapel at the end with any certainty against the background of dark trees. Was the night prowler, whoever it was, inside? Hilary had only an indistinct memory of the interior. Was it an arranged meeting place? Might whoever he or she had hoped to meet already be there? She strained for voices.
David strode ahead. Suddenly the hard surface under Hilary’s feet gave way to grass. They were out in the confusion of the monks’ graveyard. They had lost the path. She stumbled after David.
Hilary felt, as much as saw, the dark bulk of stone looming over them.
David whispered. ‘There’s a door here, but it’s locked. Padlocked, I think.’
‘The main door’s round the other side.’
She had been here on previous visits to the abbey, but she could not remember it distinctly. An isolated memory did come back to her from earlier this weekend. Ceri from Totnes had chosen for her fictional crime scene, not somewhere in the town she knew so well, but this very chapel.
Could it be she who had arranged to meet someone here? And if so whom?
A shudder ran down Hilary that was not all to do with the rainy autumn night.
In a sudden moment of panic, she realized that she had lost David. She hurried round the corner of the Lady Chapel and found herself in the lighter space of the ruined church. A sudden shaft of moonlight showed her David crouched before a second, larger door down a short flight of steps. It was closed. Hilary hurried to catch up with him while the brief light lasted. Was he listening to something, or someone, or hearing only silence? If that other person was not already inside … In alarm, she looked over her shoulder. Could someone else be following them, bound for this same rendezvous?
As she turned, her foot slipped off the top step. Something cracked under her heel. Glass, by the sound of it. In the silent darkness it had the effect of a gunshot. She was aware of David suddenly straightening up.
The door to the chapel flew open. There was a faint light inside, but it only served to throw the figure who stood on the threshold as a black silhouette.
‘Who’s there?’ The demand rapped out.
Past David’s shoulder, Hilary gasped, ‘Gavin!’
Thoughts rushed through her tired brain, confusing her. Why should she be startled to find it was Gavin here? He had been the focus of her suspicions ever since Veronica had heard that conversation with Theresa. She had tried to push the thought away after Melissa’s murder, seeing him instead as the bereaved husband, but it came crowding back. Yet why would Gavin and Theresa need to meet here in the chapel, when they probably had rooms on the same corridor in the East Cloister? That faint light inside was partially blocked by the half-open door. The moonlight had vanished behind hurrying clouds. The lamp on the Chapter House courtyard was now far away. Who else might be hidden inside there?
But Gavin turned on his torch again and swung the slender beam from Hilary to David.
‘Who are you?’
‘Hilary’s husband.’ David took a step back to stand protectively alongside Hilary on the darkened path.
‘And what might you be doing at Morland Abbey, taking a walk in the dark through the ruins?’
We might ask the same question of you, Hilary thought.
Instead, belatedly, the terrible events of the day caught up with her. This was the first time she had seen Gavin since he had received the news of Melissa’s death – or had he had reason to know that news before Hilary and Veronica found her corpse?
‘Gavin! I’m so sorry. It must have been a terrible shock. I expect the police told you it was Veronica and I who found her.’
‘What?’ Gavin turned back to her. He sounded disorientated, but it had taken the focus of his attention away from David.
Her husband, however, could speak for himself. ‘Naturally, Hilary rang to tell me what was happening. I knew it would have been traumatic for her, finding your wife like that, and not helped by knowing that whoever did it was still at large. Since she said the police wanted everybody to stay until tomorrow, I thought the least I could do was to drive over here and back her up.’
No mention of Veronica. It was a small satisfaction, an unworthy part of her heart told her.
‘How chivalrous.’
Hilary took a step forward. She was craning to see past Gavin into the dimly lit chapel, but it was not going to give up its secret. Gavin stood firmly on the threshold, blocking the way.
‘I think it might be a good thing if you went back to your beds.’ Gavin’s voice held a note of authority. ‘This is not the sort of situation for people to be wandering around in the dark.’
If he realized the irony of that statement, he gave nothing away.
‘We saw a light outside. David thought he should investigate.’
She caught the tilt of Gavin’s head as he lifted his shadowed face up to the row of windows along the East Cloister behind them.
‘I seem to remember you had a room overlooking the cloisters. Top floor. Am I right?’
Hilary remained silent, unsure how much more to give away.
She did not need to. She heard the knowledge dawn in his altered voice.
‘Ah! Your friend, Veronica Taylor. Delightful lady. The two of you on the top corridor of the East Cloister, while most people are over in the West Cloister. We put ourselves and the speaker, of course, on the floor below you. Poor Dinah. And you two were only just overhead. Veronica’s room is on this side, if I remember, looking out on the Great Barn. I expect she’s watching us, even now, isn’t she? Did the three of you come to the same idiotic conclusion? That the murderer would be stalking the grounds at night, on some nefarious errand, giving himself away by flashing a torch?’
Hilary felt her cheeks grow hot in that same torchlight. That had been what they were thinking. It sounded ridiculous now, summed up in that cool, amused tone of Gavin’s.
Remarkably self-contained, under the circumstances.
It was left to David to ask the obvious question. ‘As a matter of interest, what were you doing here at this hour of night?’
‘This is a consecrated chapel. Would it surprise you to know that I came here to pray? My wife was murdered today. I asked Fiona for the key.’
Hilary felt the ground cut from under her feet. She was sure there was somebody else in the Lady Chapel, but it would have taken a very insensitive man or woman to blunder on after a statement like that.
It might even be true. Whoever had been waiting for Gavin might have been someone he trusted as a close friend. Perhaps the two of them really had agreed to meet here, in this place of worship that was all that remained of the great abbey church. Everyone else had gone to their rooms and there was no danger of encountering a member of the course, gushing with sympathy he did not feel he could handle.
It was just possible. But did she believe it?
There was nothing for it. With a gruff, ‘I’m sorry,’ she turned on her heel.
As she picked her way back along the path, with David following, she turned. A gleam of moonlight showed her Gavin still staring up at Veronica’s window.
David and Hilary climbed the steps to the first floor of the East Cloister. Hilary nearly jumped out of her skin as a deep voice challenged them.
‘Hold on there. Who might you be?’
The lights were on in the corridor. Hilary had time to make out the dark bulk of a uniformed figure beyond David.
&nb
sp; ‘Sorry, Officer. It’s Dr and Mrs Masters. We’re on our way to bed.’
David’s appeasing voice addressed the burly officer blocking their way.
‘And what might you have been doing out there at this hour?’
Hilary inserted herself between them. ‘There’s something you need to know. Gavin Standforth is meeting someone in the Lady Chapel. We couldn’t see whom.’
‘Is he, indeed?’
‘If you’re quick, you might catch them together.’
‘You seem in a hurry to get rid of me, ma’am.’
‘Because you can insist on going past him into the chapel, and we couldn’t.’
He studied them for a moment. Then he said, ‘Well, then, if you’ll excuse me.’ He pushed past them through the open fire door. A much more powerful torch sprang into life, illuminating the uneven walls of the Great Barn.
‘Damn,’ said David, none too softly. ‘That’ll scare them off before he’s anywhere near the chapel.’
Hilary went back to the fire escape. She watched the bright beam receding swiftly along the path. David was right. Gavin and whoever he had gone to meet could have vanished into the maze of paths through Morland’s grounds before the policeman got there. A wasted opportunity.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she said. ‘It’s been a very long day.’
Veronica’s room on the top floor was still in darkness. She turned from the window as they entered, a slender shadow before the indistinct light beyond the glass.
‘How did it go?’ she said softly. ‘Did you manage to see who it was, and whom he was meeting?’
‘My fault,’ Hilary admitted. ‘I stepped on something that broke under my heel. It was Gavin inside, but we never got to see who was with him, let alone hear what was going on between them.’
‘What’s that?’
A sudden brightness outside had caught Veronica’s attention. She swung back to the window.
‘Only the police,’ Hilary sighed. ‘He caught us coming back indoors. We told him about the pair in the chapel. I hoped he might have the authority to get past Gavin and find out who the other person was. But instead of that, he switched on a torch as bright as a searchlight. They’ll be miles away by the time he gets there.’
