A Killer's Christmas in Wales

by Elizabeth J Duncan

  She looked at her friend. “What about you? Do you miss having someone special in your life at this time of year?”

  Victoria thought for a moment. “In a way, yes, I do. It can be difficult on your own. But you were alone for a few years before you met Gareth, so you’d know all about that.”

  Penny nodded. “There was someone once, a long time ago. Another policeman, in fact. Tim. I still think of him, but it doesn’t hurt the way it used to.” They fell silent, each remembering the lovers’ ghosts of Christmases past. A few minutes later Victoria brought them back to the present.

  “Are you all ready for the big day?”

  “I think so. I’ve got everything in that Gwennie told me to get. She’s coming over early in the morning to put the turkey in the oven and start on the vegetables. She said she’d be here about eight. I gave her a key so she could let herself in. She said it would be very helpful if I could peel and parboil the potatoes and set the table tonight.” She raised a hopeful eyebrow.

  “Right. You set the table, I’ll start on the potatoes,” Victoria said, hauling herself out of the chair and heading for the kitchen. “I hate these winter nights when it gets dark so early,” she said a few minutes later as she picked up another potato. “It always feels so much later than it is.”

  Beside her, Penny reached into the cupboard and with her fingers counted out the number of plates she needed.

  “How many?” Victoria asked.

  “You, me, Gareth, Bethan, and Jimmy. Five.”

  “And Gwennie. Six.”

  “Gwennie said she’d walk to church with me but will sit with her sister and brother-in-law. And she said she won’t eat with us. She prefers to eat afterward in the kitchen, by herself.”

  “Yes, I can see that. It’ll be what she got used to at the Hall.” Victoria dropped another peeled potato into the pot.

  * * *

  Penny awoke Christmas morning to the sound of someone moving about downstairs. At first panicked, thinking she was being burgled, she started up in bed. When she realized it must be Gwennie, who had let herself in with the key Penny had given her, arriving to start work on the lunch, she shrank back into her comforting bedclothes. She checked the time on her bedside clock. The luminescent numbers winked back at her: 7:34. She would enjoy a few more minutes in her warm bed, going over all the things that still needed doing, and then…

  An hour later she groaned and sat up, just as Gwennie knocked on her door.

  “You’d better think about getting up, Miss Penny, if you want to make morning service on time,” she said, opening the door slightly. “I’ve just put the coffee on. Would you like a boiled egg?”

  “That would be great, thanks, Gwennie,” Penny replied, and then added, “Happy Christmas.”

  “And to you,” called Gwennie from halfway down the stairs.

  The damp fogginess of the last two days had dissipated, replaced by a crisp, sunlit morning.

  Frost glittered on the stone fences and added sparkle to the holly bushes in the hedgerows, bursting with red bright berries displayed against their backdrop of glossy, pointed leaves. There had been an abundance of holly berries this year, and the townsfolk who had strolled along the country lanes over the past few days, taking small cuttings off the holly to adorn their Christmas puddings, had made not the slightest dent in their numbers.

  Warmly dressed against the cold, Penny and Gwennie walked together through the quiet streets. Smoke from wood and coal fires curled from the chimneys, wafting skyward and drifting up and away, then disappearing into a bright blue sky. They parted company on the steps of the church, as Gwennie left to sit with her sister and brother-in-law and Penny, meeting Victoria, made her way to a pew on the right side of the church. At Penny’s suggestion they chose a pew near the back, Penny turning occasionally to see if Davies and Bethan had arrived. She smiled as Mrs. Lloyd made her entrance, Florence trailing along behind her like a doleful bridesmaid.

  She waved to Davies when she spotted him with Bethan and Jimmy at the entrance to the church and then slid along in her seat so they could squeeze in.

  Everyone seemed to arrive at once, and soon the church was as full as Penny had ever seen it. Bronwyn Evans took her place in the front row and Reverend Thomas Evans appeared in front of them.

  “Bore da, bawb. Nadolig Llawen,” he greeted them in Welsh. “Good morning, everyone. Merry Christmas.”

  The service began with voices raised in joyful song as the familiar words of a timeless carol rang through the church.

  When the rustling of the congregation settling into their seats had subsided, Reverend Evans began his Christmas sermon.

  “I was browsing the Internet the other day,” Reverend Evans began, “and I came across a website that promised to help me write a Christmas sermon in just a few minutes that would sound as if I’d spent a lot of time on it. And that got me thinking about how we do things today. Everything has to be fast. We want a recipe for a five-minute meal made from three ingredients that looks as if it took a Cordon Bleu chef all day to prepare. If we can find the time to read at all, we are looking for a book with well-developed characters and a complicated plot that still promises to be a fast, easy read. We have learned to be multitaskers. We talk on the phone while we draft an e-mail. We eat and text while we drive.

  “So I would ask you on this beautiful Christmas morning to consider those three wise men who made that journey to Bethlehem two thousand years ago and…”

  Penny’s attention drifted away. She shifted in her seat and gazed slowly around the church. I wonder if this person is here this morning, she thought, this person who killed two people. She spotted a few members of her art group, sitting with their husbands and grown-up children. One reached over to comfort a bored grandchild who struggled to get down out of his father’s tight hold. Her eyes moved on to Huw Bowen, the bank manager, staring stiffly ahead while his wife, Glynnis, stifled a yawn behind a black-gloved hand. I wonder how her manicure’s holding up, Penny thought. Behind the Bowens, her friend Alwynne reached over to pick up a hymnbook and began leafing through it, turning the pages slowly. When she reached the place she was looking for, she stuck a marker between the pages and returned the book to the rack in front of her. She smiled at her husband then turned her face toward the raised lecturn where Reverend Evans was wrapping up his sermon.

  “I hope you will all take the time to reflect on the bounty and blessings of the season,” he was saying. “And now, let us pray.”

  The light that had been streaming in through the multicoloured stained-glass windows had become muted and dimmed.

  As the service drew to a close, the congregation rose for one last carol and then began to make their way slowly out of the church, stopping to exchange a few words with Reverend Evans as he shook everyone’s hand. Friends greeted one another, wishing them all the joys of the season. Penny slipped her arm through Gareth’s as they walked off a few paces to wait for Victoria, who had stayed behind to talk to Bronwyn. A few snowflakes drifted lazily down, and although the sky had clouded over, the snow felt temporary.

  The Bowens emerged and stood off to one side turned slightly toward each other. As a few snowflakes settled on Huw’s collar, Glynnis reached up and brushed them off. Something in the gesture startled Penny. It was at once intimate and yet somehow out of place. And then she remembered where she’d seen it before. On that very snowy night when she had spotted the couple in the churchyard. She had thought one of them was married and assumed it was the man. But it wasn’t the man, it was Glynnis. And could the man have been… She struggled to bring the scene into focus, to imagine them as they were in that embrace.

  “Penny, are you ready to go?”

  “What? Sorry, I was thinking about something else. Sorry.”

  “We’re heading back to your cottage now, Penny,” said Victoria, tucking one end of her scarf through its loop as Gareth approached. “Are you ready? Gwennie left a few minutes ago. Said she wanted to get the app
etizers in the oven. And Bethan should have arrived with Jimmy by the time we get there.” After exchanging greetings with those around them, the three set off for Penny’s cottage.

  Twenty-five

  After shaking the hand of the last of his parishoners, Reverend Thomas Evans headed back into the church and, after stopping at one pew to pick up a hymnbook and replace it in the rack, entered the small office beside the vestry where he and his wife, Bronwyn, would count the morning’s collection. Bronwyn, who had slipped over to the comfortable rectory to fetch their cairn terrier, Robbie, while her husband was seeing off the last of his flock, was beginning to sort the contributions placed in the collection plates during morning service. She placed the cash in one pile, and the small, white numbered envelopes preferred by regular members of the congregation in another, then set aside the collection plate. As Reverend Evans slipped off his surplice, Bronwyn removed a brown envelope from the second collection plate. She turned it over and then held it out to her husband.

  “What do you suppose this is, Thomas?” she asked.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” he replied good-naturedly. “But first, I have a little something for us before we start the counting.” He reached behind his desk and pulled out a bottle of sherry and two glasses. “What do you say, my dear? Just this once, because it’s Christmas, shall we have a little libation while we count the takings?”

  “Oh, go on then,” said Bronwyn, laughing as Robbie wagged his tail enthusiastically. “But just a small one. We don’t want to arrive at Mrs. Lloyd’s stinking of sherry!”

  She took a small sip and set down her glass.

  As Reverend Evans reached for a pencil and a piece of scrap paper that he would use to help them count the morning offering, Bronwyn opened the envelope and peered inside. Then, turning the envelope upside down, she shook out its contents, revealing a small red box and a piece of ordinary lined notepaper.

  She picked up the box as Reverend Evans stopped to watch.

  She opened it, shrugged, and then showed it to her husband.

  “Empty.” He pointed at the folded piece of paper. “What does the note say?”

  Bronwyn opened it slowly, read it to herself, then held it out to the rector.

  “‘Penny Brannigan-Feliz Navi-dead!’” he read, then looked at his wife. “What on earth does that mean? And how did that dreadful thing get in our collection plate?”

  “Somebody put it there,” said Bronwyn. “And it’s Spanish for Merry Christmas, only it should be Feliz Navidad.”

  “Well, yes, but who could have put it there?”

  “I don’t know, dear. But we have to figure out what to do about it. It could be some kind of stupid joke, I suppose.”

  The rector drained the last of his sherry and looked longingly at the bottle on his desk.

  “Thomas,” his wife said sharply, “listen to me. If this is a threat, and it sounds like it to me, then there’s only one thing we can do. We need to call the police.”

  “Yes, but it’s Christmas Day. We wouldn’t want to waste their time. Especially not today. Do you think this is important enough to warrant their attention? It might just be a sick joke of some kind.”

  “I think we should let them be the judge of that. From what I’ve heard, if Penny’s in danger, that police inspector friend of hers, Gareth Davies, would want to be the first to know about it.”

  The rector reached for the telephone on his cluttered desk.

  “Right you are as usual, Bronwyn dear.”

  * * *

  “Everything looks beautiful, Gwennie!” exclaimed Penny as everyone admired the table setting before taking their seats. Victoria had arranged a small bouquet of red roses, their stems trimmed, in a setting of holly and tied it all together with a plaid ribbon. Penny and Gareth sat at the ends of the table, with Jimmy on one side and Victoria and Bethan across from him.

  Jimmy beamed at everyone around the table and chuckled.

  “If anyone had told me that one day I’d be having Christmas dinner with not one but two coppers, I would have said they were mad,” he said.

  Penny laughed. “I would have thought the same thing myself not so long ago.”

  All eyes turned toward Gwennie, who emerged from the kitchen with a beautiful golden brown turkey on a large platter, which she set down in front of Davies. “Here you are, sir,” she said. “It’s been resting and ready for carving. I’ll bring the vegetables through now.”

  She stopped, startled, as Bethan’s phone rang. With an apologetic shrug at Penny, Bethan pulled the phone out of her pocket and glanced at the caller ID. “I’d better take this,” she said, getting to her feet. “Excuse me.” She walked a few steps away from the table and put the phone to her ear.

  The conversation at the table continued as Davies picked up the carving knife and fork. He sliced off a piece of breast meat and set it down carefully, held between the sharp knife and large fork, onto a smaller platter.

  “Is there any news of the identity of that body found in your spa?” Jimmy asked Penny.

  “We know a little more than we did. We know who she was but not what happened to her.” She provided a few more details and, with an anxious glance at Davies, finished up, “But of course, after all this time we may never know what happened to her.”

  Bethan ended the call and signaled to Davies. “A word, sir, please.”

  Trying to hide his annoyance, Davies set down the carving knife and fork and joined Bethan. They spoke together in urgent, low tones as Davies cast an anxious glance in Penny’s direction.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” Davies said, “but we’re going to have to go out for a bit. A call’s just come in that we need to follow up on. We’ll be as quick as we can.”

  Penny started to rise from her chair, but Davies put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “No, you carry on with your meal. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  “If you’re not back, we’ll keep it warm for you.”

  “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

  “Can’t you just tell us what’s happened?” Penny asked.

  “Later, when we know more.”

  * * *

  Gwennie reentered the room carrying a large bowl of roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts, which she set down beside Penny.

  “Shall I carry on with the carving while you pass the vegetables?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you, Gwennie, I think that would be best.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Penny. We’ll save some for them, and it’ll be no bother to warm it up when they return.”

  “I’m so sorry about this, Gwennie. And everything looks so wonderful, too.”

  The others murmured their agreement.

  “That’s how it is, Miss Penny. At the Hall, back in the old days, dinners were often interrupted when one of the Labs decided that was a good time to have her puppies or it was lambing time or any number of things. But we just carried on, the way you do. Dinners can always be reheated. Now then, who’s for a nice bit of drumstick?”

  “So this woman’s body in the spa, then,” said Jimmy. “They found out she’s related to that man who went over the wall at Conwy Castle, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s right,” said Victoria. “They think the woman’s body had been there since the 1960s. And then all these years later, her son turns up dead, too.”

  A thoughtful look crossed Gwennie’s face.

  “If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll see to Trixxi in the kitchen.” She hesitated. “Miss Penny, would it be all right if I used your telephone? I’d like to ring my sister.”

  “Yes, of course, Gwennie.”

  * * *

  The two police officers entered the church office where the Evanses, who had finished counting the Christmas offering, were waiting for them.

  “We’re so very sorry to call you out today, of all days,” Reverend Evans began, “we weren’t really sure what to do, but we thought you’d want
to see this.” He pointed at the little red box.

  Bethan pulled an evidence bag out of the kit she kept in her car and wrapped it around the box. “I’m assuming you touched this? If so, we’ll need to get your fingerprints for elimination.” She looked from one to the other.

  Reverend Evans nodded. “Yes, I think we both touched it. At least, we might have.” He looked at his wife. “Would you need us to do that today? It’s just that we’re meant to be having Christmas lunch with Mrs. Lloyd and Florence and we’re already so late.”

  “No, that’s all right,” said Davies. “You can pop into the station tomorrow and they’ll take your prints.”

  “But why are you so interested in the box?” Bronwyn asked. “There’s nothing in it. We couldn’t understand why someone would put that in the collection plate. It was the note we thought you should see.” She reached out to pick up the note but then pulled back as if she had touched a hot stove.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Forgot I shouldn’t touch it in case of fingerprints. But that note,” she said, gesturing at it. “See what it says.”

  Using a pencil she had picked up from the rector’s desk, Bethan unfolded the corners of the note. She and Davies read it, and then Davies looked at the rector.

  “You did right to call us and we’re very glad you did. Tell me how you came by this. It’s very important.”

  * * *

  Penny filled a cup with coffee, added a splash of cream, and handed the cup to Victoria, who took it over to Jimmy, seated on the sofa.

  He took an appreciative sip and then set the cup down on the small table that had been placed in front of him.

  “Very nice, thank you, Penny. Just the way I like it. And I enjoyed lunch very much.”

  “Well, when you’ve finished your coffee, Victoria and I’ll drive you over to Mrs. Lloyd’s. I hear Florence is looking forward to seeing you again.”