by Fay Sampson
Melissa, the leader of the Snakes, was dead, but she had been lying in the Long Crippler pool.
People were rising from their seats, spilling into the aisle. Hilary realized with a start that she had not given the service the full attention she had meant to. When the congregation exchanged the peace before the Eucharist, David had kissed her on the cheek. She had shaken hands automatically with the people in the pew in front of her, but had not turned round to those behind. Her still agitated mind had been darting off in all directions.
‘Sorry!’ she said to God. ‘But I really did come here because I needed you. I’m all of a muddle this morning, but you’re used to that, aren’t you? It’s a blessing that you know what I need before I ask you. Only I should have been putting more work into praying for those who need you even more than I do.’
‘Good morning,’ she heard Veronica say to someone in the pew behind them. ‘I didn’t realize you were here too.’
Hilary turned to find that Theresa had been sitting directly behind her for the past hour.
She gave a small shudder, then felt a rush of confusion. She wished she could make up her mind what she felt about their group leader. A co-conspirator with Gavin, behind Melissa’s back? A secret lover, even? Or a colleague who, beneath the composure which gave nothing away, had been knocked sideways by the shocking loss of her friend?
Instead, Hilary took refuge in what she did know.
‘You know what they say about that hole in the wall of the chancel? That it’s a leper squint, so that the lepers of St Mary Magdalen’s hospital could sit in the side chapel to watch the sacrament. Nonsense, of course. Like Leechwell Lane being a leper path. They’d hardly use one so narrow that you’d be rubbing shoulders with them on the way to the healing well.’
‘The healing well. Where you found the body.’
Theresa’s expression was unreadable. But Hilary was shocked by the crassness of what she had just said.
‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean …’
‘It wasn’t exactly healing for Melissa, was it?’
Theresa turned and walked away.
‘There’s something about that woman that unsettles me,’ Hilary confided to David as they stood in the aisle. ‘I’m probably being grossly unfair, but when I’m within a ten-yard radius of her I feel as though ants are walking up my spine.’
‘She does seem a bit strange,’ David agreed. ‘I mean, I know it must have been a terrible shock, the course leader’s wife dying like this, and in the worst possible way. But someone should have taken charge. If Gavin’s out of commission, then the obvious person is Theresa. Yet she seems content to let the rest of you muddle on as best you can.’
‘I suppose she thinks we wouldn’t even be here if DI Foulks hadn’t insisted that we stay till the end. He’s obviously still hoping something new is going to turn up, that one of us will remember something, and any one of us might be needed as a witness.’
‘Still, there’s only a few more hours to go. I have hopes of the Chapter House’s Sunday lunch. And then it’s home. You’ll be glad to see the back of this place. Morland Abbey, I mean.’
‘Yes … and no. I hope it doesn’t spoil it for me completely. I’ve so enjoyed coming here in the past. I’m glad at least the murder didn’t happen there.’
Veronica was making her way up the aisle towards the chancel. Hilary assumed she had gone to inspect the magnificent rood screen which separated it from the nave. Mercifully, it had escaped the ravages of the Reformation. Fifteenth-century, she recalled, intricately and surprisingly carved, not out of wood, but sandstone.
Her attention was snatched back to the present. Veronica had not been heading for the screen. Instead, she had stopped to talk to someone. Her head was bent solicitously towards a middle-aged man in a brown jacket. Harry Walters.
‘Excuse me,’ Hilary said to David. ‘I’d better go and have a word with Harry. He looks a bit down this morning.’
‘Unlike his wife. She was a picture of health, jogging round the grounds before breakfast.’
‘She’s brighter than Harry. She’s got caught up with this group who think they can solve the mystery before CID do. I’ve called them callous, but I suppose it’s a way of taking their minds off the emotional reality of what’s taken place. Turn it into an intellectual game. Keep your mind so busy that there’s no time for the heart to get involved. I guess that’s what the police have to do, let alone the pathologists who conduct the autopsy. If they cared too much they’d go under.’
‘Yes,’ said David. ‘That’s kind of how it works.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Hilary was conscience-stricken. ‘I wasn’t talking about you. I mean, I know you’re a doctor. You’ve seen terrible things. Gaza. Yemen. But you’re the most caring person I know.’
‘No offence taken.’ He smiled at her fondly. ‘There’s a lot in what you say. We call it professionalism.’
Hilary approached Harry and Veronica. Close to, she found to her astonishment that Harry’s face was wet with tears.
‘Morning, Harry,’ she said, with a forced cheerfulness to cover her embarrassment. She did not know whether she should mention the tears. Veronica was better at the sympathy thing than she was. ‘I see we’re not the only ones seeking solace in the arms of Mother Church. It’s good to know that places like this are always here when we need them.’
Harry made a gallant attempt to swallow back his emotion. ‘Jo’s braver than I am. She said life has to go on. She kept saying we had to find out who killed Melissa. As if … But … but I keep remembering. It was only this time yesterday we were sitting in Melissa’s group in Morland Abbey. I never pretended to be much of a hand at this writing business. I only came along because of Jo. But Melissa was so kind … She treated me as though I was as good as any of you others. She said if I couldn’t manage to put a plot together this morning, she’d help me. She was a lovely lady.’ Fresh tears spilled over. ‘I’m so sorry!’
Hilary put out an awkward hand and squeezed his arm. ‘No need to be ashamed, just because you’ve got a warmer heart than the rest of us. I think we’re all waiting for DI Foulks to drop the starting flag, so that we can be off home.’
‘Apparently the police have a suspect,’ Veronica added. ‘Rob.’
Harry shook his head blankly.
‘Tania’s partner. The Wirral Whippet. Oh, I forgot. You’re not in our group. You may not have met him.’
Harry brushed his tears away. ‘The police will never find the true killer. Someone who’s much too clever for them.’
TWENTY-TWO
They were on their way to the church door and the contrast of bright sunshine outside.
‘Do you want to stay behind for a coffee?’ David asked. ‘Say hello to the congregation?’
‘I’m not sure I’m feeling that sociable yet,’ Hilary replied. ‘Perhaps not.’
Someone was chatting to the rector at the door: Ceri. When she moved on, David, Hilary and Veronica took their turns for a handshake and a word of welcome.
‘Sad business, I’m afraid,’ he said when he heard they had come from the abbey. ‘It must have been a terrible shock for all of you.’
‘It was kind of you to remember Melissa in your prayers,’ said Veronica.
‘It’s the least that any of us can do. If it would help to talk …?’
‘Thank you. We’re managing fine.’ It was not true, but Hilary longed to be quiet now.
When they stepped out on to the churchyard path, Ceri was waiting. Her dark eyes smiled briefly at them.
‘I’m glad somebody knows what to do with a Sunday morning. I was never happy about giving up morning service to write a crime novel. I said something to Gavin about it, but he just laughed and told me I could go to Evensong if I was that keen. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. We have this morning.’
‘You seemed upset about Gavin’s attitude to more than one thing,’ Hilary observed. ‘His use of the characters from the Leechwells, for insta
nce.’
A strange expression came over Ceri’s face. A mixture of indignation and something else. Fear? ‘I thought he was mocking them. Toad, Snake, Crippler.’
‘You speak as though they’re real people,’ Veronica said.
Ceri rounded on her. ‘They are real. Not people. But real just the same. We don’t leave flowers and hang ribbons just for the sake of an old folk tale. But something angered them. Crippler in particular. You can hardly have failed to notice that Melissa was leader of Gavin’s Snake group, and she wasn’t found in the Snake pool.’
‘We’re hardly likely to forget,’ Hilary told her through tight lips. ‘We found her.’
‘Yes, of course! I’m sorry. I should have remembered. Poor you … All the same, I can’t help being glad we’re in the Toad group. Touch wood, nothing’s happened to us. I’d be scared if I was in either of the others.’
‘Like poor old Harry, you mean? He looked in a bad way. He’s really cut up about it.’
‘So he should be. There’s a meaning behind this.’
They parted from her at the church gate. As the three of them walked back to Hilary’s car, she felt a heightened sense of the short, fragile time allowed to them. They had just less than an hour before Sunday lunch. Then DI Foulks wanted a final meeting in Lady Jane’s Chamber, before the shattered course disintegrated.
Nothing more could happen between now and then, could it?
As he opened the passenger door for Veronica, David said, ‘I’ve been thinking. What you said about the detective sergeant showing you a drawing of a boy in a tracksuit. She wasn’t wearing a tracksuit when I met her out running this morning, but she could have got rid of it. I think Jo Walters could pass for a teenager under a hood. She’s slim enough. If she hunched her shoulders a bit, stuck her hands in her pockets …’ He closed the door and got into the back seat, behind the two women. ‘Sorry! It’s ridiculous to make an accusation like that when I don’t know the woman from Eve, and on such a flimsy supposition. But it’s an idea.’
‘You know,’ Veronica said, ‘that could just explain why Harry was so upset this morning. He said it was because of Melissa, which is reasonable enough. But what if Jo has said or done something to make him wonder the same thing?’
David’s voice came from the back seat. ‘Harry would know whether Jo had a navy tracksuit with white stripes. She was wearing grey leggings and a pink tee shirt when I saw her this morning.’
‘But I doubt he’d tell the inspector if she had,’ Veronica countered.
‘You two think she could have killed Melissa?’ Hilary swung the car out into the traffic. ‘But why ever would she?’
‘What do we know? Somebody had a reason for it,’ Veronica replied.
‘The woman in the anorak.’ David leaned forward suddenly. ‘The one you saw last night leaving the chapel. Could that have been her too?’
‘Meeting Gavin?’ Hilary asked. ‘After she’d killed his wife?’
David sat back. ‘I suppose not.’
They had driven some way out of town before Hilary started so violently, she nearly drove into the kerb.
‘We’re forgetting! What if it wasn’t a woman at the chapel? Could that have been Rob? Yesterday, Tania was wearing a black tracksuit. It wasn’t navy, and the white stripes didn’t go right down the sleeves and legs, but it was close enough. What if Rob borrowed it?’
There was a breath-held silence.
Then Veronica said, ‘But surely, if he was wearing that tracksuit when he did it, he’d have got rid of it, wouldn’t he?’
But the alternative possibility nagged at Hilary on the short drive back from Totnes and up the tree-hung drive of the abbey. For a time that half-heard conversation between Theresa and Gavin in the tiltyard had made her suspect an affair involving the two of them, necessitating the removal of Melissa. She had dismissed this as extreme in these days of easy divorce. Yet what if Gavin’s mistress was not the plain-faced Theresa, but Jo Walters? Lively, youthful, a surprisingly attractive mate for poor old Harry.
Jo and Gavin. She pondered the combination. It made more sense. Jo, hooded and anonymous in Leechwell Lane. Jo, meeting Gavin in the chapel at night, while Theresa would only have had to walk along the East Cloister corridor.
Did it make more sense than Rob?
Still, she ran up against the same problem, like a physical barrier. Why would either of them resort to murder?
Somewhere in the distance came the wail of an emergency vehicle’s siren.
‘I hate it when they do that,’ Hilary muttered. ‘I can never tell where it’s coming from, and what I’m supposed to do.’
She pulled over to the side of the road as an ambulance went racing past, followed soon after by two police cars.
‘Accident, by the look of it,’ David remarked.
Hilary took the turning for the Morland Abbey estate.
An insidious thought was creeping into her mind as the car mounted the slope to the abbey’s car park.
Jo had seemed more eager than any of them to engage with the murder mystery weekend and produce a bestselling crime novel. Jo had reacted with enthusiasm to the idea of a brainstorming session about Melissa’s death. What if some aberration of her personality had led the intellectual challenge of committing a successful murder to trump the normal rules of morality and common sense? For her own satisfaction and to prove to bestselling author Gavin that she could do it too? Only in real life?
It was a chilling thought, but there were psychopaths who did think like that.
That babyish face, beneath the blonde curls.
‘Something’s happened,’ Veronica said suddenly. ‘Look at all those people at the gatehouse.’
In front of the arch that led to the cloisters and the Great Barn, members of the crime course were gathered. Knots of people were discussing something with a suppressed excitement. Even from inside the car, Hilary could feel the tension. She swung into the nearest space in the car park. In moments, the three of them were out and hurrying across the drive to join the others.
Heads lifted at their hasty approach. Some eyes brightened at the thought that this time they would be the ones to tell the newcomers the startling truth.
‘What’s up?’ Hilary barked as she sped with dangerous haste along the cobbled entrance.
It was Jake who got in first, his grey eyes avid with the news.
‘It’s Jo,’ he said. ‘Jo Walters. She’s been attacked. On the path down by the river.’
‘Is she …?’ Veronica’s words trailed off.
‘Dead? Apparently not. But unconscious, Fiona says, with a nasty crack on the head. It’s anyone’s guess if she’ll pull through.’
‘Do they need medical help?’ David was urgent, practical.
Ben chipped in. ‘The person who found her – apparently Lin Bell – called nine-nine-nine, then rang the abbey. We heard the ambulance siren just now. We were all for going to help her, but DI Foulks ordered us to wait here, damn him. CID have gone racing off.’
Did you really want to help her, Hilary thought, or to satisfy your morbid curiosity about how the victim looked? She thought of the diminutive Lin Bell, with her neat silver hair. A small slight figure, probably in her seventies. So the walking stick and knapsack had meant that she planned a riverside walk after the brainstorming session. And so, apparently, had Jo.
A shocking thought occurred to her. It was not just Jo who could pass as a teenage boy in a hooded tracksuit. And Jo was now the victim herself.
Hilary could feel the blood draining from her own cheeks. Only minutes ago she had been casting Jo Walters in the role of murderer. Now someone else had attacked her, evidently with murderous intent. Wherever Jo fitted into this mystery, it could surely not now be as Melissa’s killer.
The suspicion was swinging inevitably back to Rob.
Or … It had been Lin who had made that phone call.
TWENTY-THREE
Hilary looked around suddenly. ‘Where’s Harry?
’
Nowhere in the press of anxious faces could she see the broad, usually genial countenance she had last seen streaming with tears in St Mary’s church.
Ben and Jake’s looks questioned those around them.
‘Sorry. Haven’t seen him.’
‘He was probably down by the river with Jo when it happened,’ Jake suggested.
‘He wasn’t,’ Hilary said firmly. ‘He was in church with us.’
‘Ah! The God Squad.’ Ben grinned.
‘If you like to call it that. Some of us have an idea what to do with Sunday morning other than point the finger at people for murder on precious little evidence.’
‘Ouch!’
‘As it happens,’ Jake supplied, ‘the session didn’t last all that long. We were a bit short on numbers. Rob and Tania were out of it, of course. You heard he’d …?’
‘Yes,’ Hilary said curtly.
‘And Jo wasn’t there …’ His voice tailed away. ‘We never imagined why.’
‘I guess the rest of us ran out of ideas,’ Ben added, ‘apart from wondering where on earth Rob fitted in.’
‘Unless you count that old theory that Gavin set this all up for the publicity.’
‘And happened to have an expendable wife.’
Was that a twinkle in Ben’s eye? Even at a time like this? Hilary stared him down. ‘You two are impossible. A third woman may be at death’s door and you think it’s a joke?’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’ There might have been contrition as well as mockery in his expression. It was hard to tell.
‘Anyway, that was Rob and Tania’s idea, wasn’t it?’ Hilary pointed out.
‘You mean they put it up to divert attention from Rob?’
‘How can any of us know? Anyway, there’s a very real possibility that poor old Harry is on his way back here from church, not yet knowing his wife’s been attacked.’
There was another emergency siren approaching. It stopped further down the hill, just out of sight. Hilary made a decision.
‘I’ve got to go and see.’
‘Hilary, the inspector asked us to stay here,’ Veronica intervened.
