by Fay Sampson
Veronica peered out into the night. ‘You’re right. There’s no sign of anyone there now. So it was Gavin, was it? The one with the pencil torch? I thought it might be. There was something about that rather theatrical way he walks.’
‘He seemed remarkably in control of the situation. If it was put on, then he’s a very good actor,’ David said. ‘His wife was murdered today. That would probably be enough to break most of us in pieces.’
Hilary felt a surge of emotion as she sensed him turn his head towards her in the darkness.
More practically, she said, ‘Unless, of course, he was the one who killed her.’
‘I keep thinking over that meeting with Theresa,’ Veronica mused. ‘I wish I’d heard more of it. There was certainly complicity between those two about something. And it had to do with a death. Do you suppose it was her in the chapel? I forgot to tell you, but someone came out while you two were walking back to this building.’
Hilary and David were suddenly attentive.
‘Who?’
‘I couldn’t see more than a glimpse. There was just a flicker of moonlight between the clouds. I caught a sort of pale gleam between the shadows. I got the impression that it was a woman, but I can’t say why. Something about the way she moved, perhaps.’
‘Theresa?’
‘That was the first thought that came into my mind, of course. Her sort of figure ought to be easy to recognize. But I’m not sure. It could have been. But it seemed as if she was wearing an anorak with the hood pulled up. It could have made her look bulkier than she really was.’
The hood pulled up. Hilary’s mind shot to the description of the youth in the hoodie in Leechwell Lane. But that had been a tracksuit, not an anorak. And the black would not have shown up against the shadowing trees. Still, the Lady Chapel was some distance away, and the path to it in near darkness. Veronica might easily have been mistaken about that detail.
‘There was something else.’ Veronica’s voice slowed. ‘The one I now take to be Gavin said something to her. Then the two of them looked up. I got the feeling that they were staring straight at this window. As though they knew I was here watching them.’
‘They did,’ Hilary said bluntly. ‘Gavin has a remarkably accurate memory of which rooms we’ve been allocated. He knows we’re here on the top floor. That my room overlooks the cloisters and yours faces this way. He even made loaded comments about how close we were to Dinah Halsgrove’s room. As though we were the ones under suspicion. And yes, I’m afraid he’d worked out that you must be the one who saw his torch from your window.’
She was aware of Veronica’s shiver.
David stepped in. ‘Look, let’s not get melodramatic. But how would it be if Veronica sleeps in Hilary’s room tonight and I take this one. You’ve got a bed big enough for both of you.’
‘Are you sure?’ Hilary heard the relief in her friend’s voice. ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance.’
‘No problem. I’m travelling light. I’ve only got my pyjamas and wash bag to move.’
Hilary felt something precious being taken away from her. For all her jealousy of his shared laughter with Veronica, she really would have liked to snuggle against the comforting warmth of David tonight, of all nights.
The two women readied themselves for bed in Hilary’s room. Veronica sat on the edge furthest from the window, brushing her fair hair.
‘It’s silly, but it does feel better having David here. Though I don’t suppose anything would have happened to me.’
TWENTY
For all her exhaustion, Hilary could not fall asleep. She lay in the unfamiliar room listening to the even sound of Veronica’s breathing on the other side of the bed. She twisted in frustration. Only a short time ago, she had felt a ridiculous resentment at sharing this room with David, who seemed more concerned about Veronica than about her. Now she longed for his warm reassuring presence in the same bed, only to find it taken away from her. For a moment, she even wondered whether she should pad her way along the corridor and creep into the single bed David had taken over from Veronica. Then she remembered. The object of the switch was so that Veronica should not have to sleep alone. She threw the bedclothes off her, then snatched them back again.
It was a wide bed. Veronica slept on undisturbed. She was the one who was supposed to be in danger, but it was Hilary who could not sleep.
She thought about the rooms on the corridor beneath her. In one of those, Dinah Halsgrove had been taken seriously ill. Was the elderly author still in hospital, or had they allowed her to go home? Certainly she would not be coming back to the room in which she had been so nearly fatally poisoned. What about Melissa and Gavin? Presumably they had shared a room as husband and wife. Melissa’s side of the bed would be cold and empty tonight. Melissa herself no doubt lay in an even colder bed in a morgue somewhere. Was Gavin back in their room from that strange encounter in the Lady Chapel? Was he the grieving husband, or Melissa’s killer? How was he living with that emptiness?
Theresa? Hilary shook off the thought that it might have been she whom Gavin was meeting in the chapel. Despite the conversation that Veronica had overheard, it made no sense for them to meet there. He had only needed to take a short step along the corridor to find her.
Who, then? Someone staying in the West Cloister? Her mind’s eye took her across the lawn, fitfully lit by the moonlight between the clouds. That was where many of the course members were sleeping. Gavin would not have wanted to face them, in the wake of such a terrible bereavement. And someone from the West Cloister might well have been spotted skirting the cloister to visit him here. The chapel would make sense for a secret nocturnal meeting place.
But why? Why would Gavin be in collusion with one of the would-be novelists?
Always supposing the stranger in the chapel was indeed someone on the crime-writing course.
She sighed. It was scarcely likely that any one of this random collection of people would have a motive for disposing of Melissa, or of abetting Gavin in doing so.
But what did she know about them? What history of intrigue and unfaithfulness might lie behind that relationship? And yet, murder? It seemed to be carrying a failed marriage to ludicrous extremes.
She tossed restlessly. Who else, then? Someone on the Morland Abbey staff? The ever-helpful Fiona?
Stupid to think that she could solve this, when the police knew far more than she did, and had the authority to find out still more.
She twisted again, unable to get her body comfortable or her mind relaxed.
That figure in the hooded anorak. The one Veronica had felt was a woman.
She tried to picture the police artist’s sketch that DS Blunt had pushed before her earlier that evening. The figure in the hooded tracksuit, who they thought was a teenage boy.
She startled awake to find Veronica’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Wake up, Hilary. It’s breakfast in ten minutes’ time.’
There was no answer from David’s room. As they turned away, Hilary heard rapid footsteps on the stairs just out of sight below them. David’s balding head appeared, the coronet of fairish hair circling it beaded with rain. As he came round the bend in the stairs, his lean face was aglow with health and a cheerfulness that belied the seriousness of the situation that had brought him here.
Something in the familiarity, the normality of seeing him here, contracted Hilary’s heart. David returning from his run, as he did every morning. She was shy of telling him how much she cherished his presence. In the rush of gratitude at seeing him, she was ashamed of the jealousy she had felt yesterday.
He gave her a casual hug and kissed her, as though this was an everyday place for them to meet.
‘You don’t know what you’re missing. The best part of the day’s gone before you’re out of bed. How can you stay indoors while you have all this to enjoy?’
The large wave of his hand took in the window behind him and the glimpse of the mist-shrouded cloisters. Beyond, Hilary knew, were the gardens and ti
ltyard, backed by a rising bank with flights of steps, shrubs, paths and statuary. How far had his run taken him?
‘Later,’ she said firmly. ‘It sounds as though we’ve got plenty of time on our hands before lunchtime. And I doubt you could see anything much before this mist lifts.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
He opened the door to what had been Veronica’s room. The curtains of the window opposite had been drawn apart. David strode across to it.
‘Our little foray last night seems to have borne dividends. They’ve taped off the area around the chapel. I went to have a look, but the arm of the law is guarding it.’
Veronica and Hilary joined him.
‘Hmm,’ Hilary said. ‘So they can’t pin enough on Gavin to arrest him, but they do suspect him. They’re obviously hoping to find forensic evidence there to tell them whom he was meeting.’
‘The woman in the anorak – if it was a woman,’ Veronica agreed.
‘Most murders are committed by someone the victim knows,’ mused Hilary. ‘Gavin does seem the most obvious target. Last night – I may be turning into a nervous old woman, but he gave me the creeps. The way he looked up at this window.’
David’s hand rested on her shoulder. ‘He certainly seemed to be trying to scare us off. But nothing happened. No one tried my door to strangle me in my sleep – Sorry, Veronica!’
Hilary’s mind flew to her own door latch lifting, that first night.
‘I have to admit I’d have felt scared sleeping here alone, after you told me that,’ Veronica confessed.
‘Today’s a new day,’ David reassured her. ‘Let’s find breakfast. I’ve worked up a prodigious appetite. Then all you have to do is sit it out until this afternoon. Then, home. You can put all this behind you.’
‘I doubt it,’ Hilary said. ‘Some things never leave you.’
The sight of Melissa’s body snaked over the lip of the Leechwells. Her face pale and lifeless when they turned her over. The feel of her cold lips.
They were not the only ones late to breakfast. The morning before, the would-be crime writers had assembled eagerly, curious to know what the first of their tasks would be. Sunday morning seemed to have left most of them with a feeling of purposelessness. The shadow of death hanging over Morland Abbey was deepened by the presence of the police. DI Foulks, DS Blunt and three other officers, one uniformed, two in civilian clothes, were seated at a table of their own.
‘Good morning, ladies, Dr Masters.’ Colonel Truscott tried to cast an air of normal civility over the grim situation. ‘It looks as though we shall be left to our own devices this morning. I hardly imagine from what you said that you will be joining our band of amateur sleuths for – what did they call it? – brainstorming.’ He made the word sound like a newly invented and unsavoury occupation.
‘I thought I might go to church.’ The words surprised Hilary, even as she said them. And yet she was suddenly sure that this was what she wanted – no, needed – to do.
She turned to David. He nodded. ‘I’m with you.’
‘I’d rather like to come too,’ Veronica said. ‘Where were you thinking of going? The village church, or Totnes?’
‘I hadn’t really thought.’
She had assumed, as they all had, that Sunday morning would be the last full session of the course. If all had gone according to plan, they would have established their setting and one significant character and would now be working on their plots.
But a different plot had overtaken them and caught them in its snares.
‘Do you think we need to clear it with the police?’ Veronica asked, casting an apprehensive glance across at the table where DI Foulks sat sipping his coffee. ‘He wanted to keep us all on hand as potential witnesses.’
‘I shall tell him,’ Hilary said, getting to her feet.
She felt the eyes of the dining hall on her as she made her way to the police table.
‘Inspector.’
He turned courteously. ‘Mrs Masters?’
‘Is it all right with you if my husband and I and Veronica push off to church this morning? You don’t need us for anything more?’
‘You’re coming back for lunch?’
‘Of course. You asked us to stay until the course officially closes this afternoon. Though it’s hardly much of a course with our leader in mourning.’
‘People will have made plans, booked trains. I’m only asking you to keep to those plans. I have no authority to make you stay.’
Hilary looked across at a uniformed policeman tucking into bacon, sausage and eggs. She did not think it was the larger officer with the powerful torch they had run into last night.
‘I suppose one of your officers told you that Gavin was out last night, meeting someone in the old chapel. All that’s left of the abbey church. David tells me you’ve taped it off this morning.’
He studied her for a moment without speaking. The long intelligent face was creased with thought.
‘Of course. Thank you for drawing that to our attention. It seems that you and Mrs Taylor have a knack for being in a position that makes you vital witnesses.’
Was that praise or an accusation? Or just a wry comment on coincidence?
It gave her a cold feeling in her spine to know that she did not herself believe in coincidences. Looked at from the detective inspector’s viewpoint, it must seem strange that she and Veronica should be so conspicuously in the centre of the frame. What did he really think about them? His courteous demeanour gave nothing away.
Surely he must by now have questioned Gavin Standforth about whom he was meeting in the chapel? What had Gavin told him? And would it have been the truth?
What innocent explanation could there have been for such a clandestine meeting?
Gavin’s own words came back to her. ‘Would it surprise you to know that I came here to pray? My wife was murdered today.’
It was not unlike the reason she had just given DI Foulks for leaving Morland Abbey for Totnes.
Was it even possible that it was true? That Gavin was innocent of his wife’s death? That they had wronged him grievously?
She would have a lot to pray about this morning.
There was a stir of interest. Hilary looked up. It was something of a shock to see Theresa enter the dining room. Immediately she checked herself. She did not know why she should feel that.
Yes, she did. Even before Melissa’s murder, had there not been something sinister about Theresa? The Toad, squatting, largely silent, over her group of writers.
She had to remind herself that, to the people of Totnes, the Toad spring was a source of healing. The warty reptile was said to cure skin diseases. Things were not always what they seemed.
The disquieting feeling continued. She tried to shake it away as she watched Theresa walk past their table and take an empty place beside Harry Walters. The plump-faced man seemed too embarrassed to know what to say. We’re all like that in the face of bereavement, Hilary thought. We can’t find the right words. And Theresa is bereaved too, isn’t she? She has lost at least a colleague, and probably a close friend, in the most appalling manner. Hilary wished now that Veronica had not heard that conversation from the tiltyard. It had seemed that Gavin and Theresa nursed some anger against Melissa. She found it chilling to think that Theresa might be the murderer. To know that so much venom was sitting at the next table. Sharing food. Better to believe that it was someone she had never set eyes on who had done the deed. That stranger in the tracksuit.
David called her attention away. ‘Ah, I beat her to it. Last time we met she was running past the Henry Moore statue at the top of the grounds.’
Hilary turned to see Jo Walters striding lithely across the room towards Harry. There was an enviable glow about her. Hilary sighed. She could never imagine herself donning a tracksuit or leggings and jogging round the paths of Morland Abbey before breakfast. Jo would have showered and washed her hair to emerge radiant and confident. She wore a high-necked green jumper, a
bove which her cheeks were rosier than normal.
It was perhaps not quite in the best of taste to arrive looking so healthy and happy on a morning like this.
Hilary had just turned her eyes to spreading black cherry jam on her toast when a greater stillness fell over the room. Her eyes followed the direction of everyone else’s.
Gavin.
The hush was more intense than that which had marked Theresa’s entrance. It dawned on her that this was the first time most of them had seen him since news of Melissa’s death reached Morland Abbey.
She remembered, with a mixture of fear and embarrassment, that encounter in the dark outside the chapel. There had been something malevolent about him then, hadn’t there? The way he had looked up at Veronica’s window, knowing exactly where she was and what she was doing there.
Or had Hilary let herself be carried away by the conventions of crime writing? To see a murderer where there was only a shocked and bereaved husband?
What were the rest of the company thinking as they watched him make his solitary way across the room?
She had thought he might take the empty seat beside Theresa, at the same table as Harry and Jo. But he found a small table where no one else sat. She tried to tear her eyes away, not to stare as he walked across to the buffet bar to help himself to fruit juice like everyone else. If he really was innocent, she must allow him the courtesy of privacy as he came to terms with his dreadful circumstances.
If he was not … That was for the police to decide. She could see heads turning curiously on that table too. What did they know? What did they suspect?
‘Hilary,’ Veronica said patiently. ‘Did you hear? I’m suggesting we go to the parish church in Totnes. Is that OK?’
She turned back, distracted. ‘Yes. Fine.’
Hilary looked around her ancient bedroom with a feeling of bereavement. It had been such a joy to open the door and discover it on Friday afternoon. That vast arching beam spanning the room beyond the foot of the bed. The view from the window across the lawn to the West Cloister, the arched gatehouse to the south. Even the tiles around the small fireplace had evidently not come from a DIY store on an industrial estate. She stroked the cream and brown chequerboard, and studied the occasional patterned tile. She found a canopied well, which reminded her of the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill, a bird of prey, head bent over its victim, what looked like a leaping goat, a man like an onion seller, with his wares dangling from his outstretched arms. Were these random images, or did they mean something more than she could grasp? Her fingers found the pitted timbers of the room with the same nostalgia. Five hundred years or more under her hand. Whatever happened, this would be her last day at Morland Abbey. Although they were not leaving until the afternoon, she needed to pack her bag, vacate this room, and hand in the key.
