by Hazel Holt
“Well, I hope not. Do you know, he remembered Inspector Ivor! He asked me in a jokey way how I thought he would have tackled this case!”
“What did you say?”
“I said that Ivor was never one to go for the obvious and that the murderer would probably turn out to be one of the minor canons, a sinister figure from Francis’s past!”
“Well,” I said, going over to put the empty cups into the dishwasher, “you never know. All sorts of people have pasts stuffed full of sinister figures. It seems to me like a wide open case, endless possibilities. After all, with a person as disagreeable as Francis there may well be masses of people who wanted to kill him. It’s just a question of finding ways they could have got at that food and I’m sure we can do that if we set our minds to it.”
“What do you mean?” David asked suspiciously. “If we set our minds to it?”
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t poke about a bit ourselves, ask a few questions. After all,” I said virtuously, “the inspector did ask me to keep my eyes open.”
Chapter 11
I’d gone into Woolworth’s to get some more lightbulbs (isn’t it extraordinary how they always seem to go in pairs?) and I was wandering aimlessly around the aisles as I always do in this particular store, a hangover, I suppose, from the days of my childhood, when nearly every Saturday morning I’d prowl around the counters trying to decide what to spend my pocket money on.
By the piled-up beach balls and other toys I saw two familiar figures. “Hello, Roger,” I said, “are you spending your day off child-minding?”
Roger Eliot—Inspector Roger Eliot of the Taviscombe CID and husband of my goddaughter Jilly—turned and said with a rueful smile, “As you see! Jilly’s taken Alex to the clinic so I said I’d look after Delia. I always forget what hard work small children are! In fact, I have to admit, we’re here to purchase a bribe.”
“It’s often the only way,” I agreed. “Hello, Delia, what are you going to choose?”
“I have this dolly,” Delia said decisively, clutching a box containing a flaxen-haired doll with wholesome, retroussé features and dressed in a flowered dirndl dress.
“That’s a pretty one,” I said, looking at it. “Made in China. How extraordinary, they’ve all got blond plaits and blue eyes. I wonder if the Chinese think all Western children look like something out of The Sound of Music!”
“Are you sure you want another doll?” Roger asked. He turned to me and said, “She’s got about twenty dolls already, the house is full of them! Jilly will go mad if we go back with another one.”
Delia shook her head. “Want this dolly,” she said firmly.
“How about this nice book?” Roger suggested. “Or these lovely crayons?”
“Want this dolly,” Delia repeated, this time with a hint of tears in her voice.
“All right,” Roger said hastily, “we’ll get the dolly.”
We all three made our way to the cash desk, Delia, now restored to smiles, telling me about her other dolls.
“The naughty dollies pulled the heads off all the flowers,” she said confidentially, “and they spilled Mummy’s perfume all over the floor—it was everywhere. They were very naughty dollies and I had to smack them. Not Patty-doll,” she amended, “she didn’t spill perfume, only Raggy-doll and Betsy-doll and Mary-doll and Jane-doll ...” The litany continued until we were outside the shop.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“We’ve got some bread to feed the seagulls,” Roger said. “Do you feel like coming too?”
“All right,” I said. “I haven’t fed the seagulls for years, not, come to think of it, since Michael was little.”
“You’d better get in training for when you’re a grandmother.”
“No sign of that yet,” I said regretfully. “I often wonder if Michael will ever settle down.”
We made our way through the town to the seafront and picked our way carefully down the seaweedy steps onto the beach. The tide was out and the sand was dry and crunchy under our feet. Roger gave Delia some pieces of bread and tried to show her how to throw them toward the seagulls, who, seeing a bag opened, had gathered hopefully in some numbers. But Delia’s small, inexpert hands couldn’t throw the bread far enough, though one gull, braver than its fellows, swooped in and took a crust almost from under her feet, causing her to cry out in alarm and hide behind her father.
So Roger and I enjoyed ourselves, tossing bread in the air as high as we could so the gulls came circling and diving, calling shrilly, while Delia ran about laughing and shouting with excitement.
“There,” Roger said, when all the bread was gone and the birds had departed in search of other patrons, “wasn’t that fun!”
“Simple pleasures are the best,” I agreed, laughing. “And, actually, I could do with a bit of pleasure at the moment. You know about Francis Beaumont? Of course you do—Inspector Hosegood said you’d discussed it.”
“Yes, we were both at a divisional meeting and he told me about the case then.”
“He came to see David and me yesterday,” I said. “It seems that David was actually there when it happened. And, of course, he did have a motive for killing his brother, I can understand why the inspector’s suspicious. But David wasn’t the only one, by any means ....”
“I thought you might have a few thoughts on the subject,” Roger said, looking at me quizzically. “That’s why I suggested that Hosegood should have a talk with you—apart from the fact that you were at the deanery anyway.”
“He said you’d had a word.”
“Hosegood’s a shrewd man,” Roger said, “don’t let that bucolic appearance fool you. He agrees with me that knowing the people concerned and the general setup is very important—things the police can’t be expected to know about. I told him how useful your particular sort of curiosity has been to me in the past and he was very interested.”
“If I can help in any way, of course I will. And I do have one advantage over the police.”
“What’s that?”
“I know that David didn’t do it—so that’s one person eliminated.”
Roger smiled. “You should never get carried away by your personal feelings in any investigation.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” I said. “It’s the way I feel about people, from my own knowledge of them, that makes me able to investigate them, as you put it. If you’ve known someone for ages you’re far more likely to know what sort of person he or she really is and what sort of thing they’d be capable of.”
“Well, do what you can.”
Delia, who had been splashing about in the rock pools, rushed over to her father and clasped him lovingly around the knees.
“Oh, heavens, look at her dress, it’s absolutely soaked. We’d better go back and get her changed before Jilly sees it!”
“Ice cream,” Delia chanted, “ice cream, ice cream.”
“Yes, all right,” Roger said placatingly, “we’ll get an ice cream on the way back.” He looked at me defensively. “Yes, I know,” he said, “I’m spoiling her!”
I laughed. “I think it’s sweet. My father always used to spoil me—that’s what fathers are for.”
Roger hoisted his daughter onto his shoulders and we went up onto the promenade where an ice-cream van was always strategically parked.
“Right,” I said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Good hunting,” Roger said. “Hosegood really will listen to anything you find out, or even any theories you may have. He’s sensible enough to accept help from any quarter.”
I told David what Roger had said while we were having lunch.
“I don’t know,” David said doubtfully. “I mean, poking about in other people’s lives!”
“Look,” I said, putting an extra spoonful of kedgeree onto his plate, “I’m fond of Joan and Mary, and even Adrian, though I’ve never known him very well, but I’m fonder of you! And as long as the police think you killed Francis we�
�ve simply got to find reasons why other people had equally good motives. What’s wrong with that?”
“When you put it like that ... But how on earth does one go about it?”
“You ask me that! After all those years of being Inspector Ivor!”
“I had a script, dear, I didn’t make it up as I went along!”
“Right,” I said briskly, “then, if necessary, we’ll provide you with a script.”
“Anyhow, Inspector Ivor had all the police paraphernalia behind him. We’re just civilians.”
“Actually, that’s our strength. What we do is simply go over to Culminster and talk to people, just casually. You’d be surprised what you can find out from a little idle chat!”
“Well,” David said doubtfully, “I’ll do my best, but you’ll have to tell me what to do and what to ask.”
“You don’t actually ask,” I explained, “you sort of let things emerge. Would you like a banana or a piece of cake or just coffee?”
“Coffee, please. Then after this I must go out and order some flowers for Nana.”
“Are you all right for money?” I asked tentatively.
“Yes, bless you, dear. Julian sent me the check for this month’s rent today so I’m fine. I must say, I’ll be glad after tomorrow when the funeral’s over and done with.”
Because Francis had made all the arrangements for Nana’s funeral and had intended to take part in the service himself, the whole thing had been postponed because of his death, which had somehow added to our feelings of uncertainty and disorientation.
“I did tell you, didn’t I, that Joan rang to say that, if we didn’t mind, she wouldn’t be coming.”
“Yes. It would have been a bit stressful for the poor soul. So I expect it’ll be just us.”
It wasn’t quite. There were several old ladies who sat together in a pew at the back and an old man with a hearing aid who came into the front pew with David and me. Although it was quite a bright day and shafts of brilliant sunlight made patterns on the floor of the nave, the church felt cold. The words of the service seemed to fall heavily on our ears in that empty space and, during the Twenty-third Psalm, while we were saying “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” a cloud moved across the sun and the light in the church was momentarily quenched. I shivered and I felt David stiffen beside me.
After the service, I half expected the old man to get into the funeral car with us to go to the cemetery, but he shuffled off with one of the elderly ladies and we never did find out who he was (“Perhaps he’s hired by the undertakers,” David said, “the modern equivalent of the funeral mute!”). So it was just David and me at the graveside as the clergyman spoke the solemn words of the committal.
Taviscombe Cemetery is a pleasant place, surrounded by hills, which the early ling was just touching with purple; sheep were grazing and, with the sound of the traffic on the road outside muted by a line of fine poplars, it was very peaceful. When the vicar had gone, we stood for a moment, looking at the wreaths: one from David, one from Michael and me, one from Joan, Mary and Adrian, and a sheaf of flowers with a card that read “Happy Memories, Esme, from Edith and Lily.” I was glad that there was some recognition that Nana had been a person in her own right, with a life and friends of her own.
David sighed. “Poor Nana. I keep remembering how devoted she was to my father. All the difficulties came from that—it was only her love for him. I should have been more patient.”
“You were always very good to her,” I said, taking his arm consolingly, “and she was fond of you, you know she was. And she did get very peculiar toward the end.”
“Well, perhaps she is better ‘out of the miseries of the sinful world,’ ” David said. Then, as we moved away toward the car, he went on more cheerfully, “You know, I’ve played so many clergymen in my time, I felt, in a way, I should have been taking the service and I found myself saying the words under my breath! Is that sacrilegious, I wonder?”
“How did it go?” Michael asked that evening. “Sorry I couldn’t come, but there was this client I had to see in Taunton.”
“Sad, of course,” I replied, “as these things always are, especially when there are so few people there.”
“I don’t expect she had much of a social life,” David said, “and almost all the people she knew when she was young have died. It must be awful to outlive your own generation.”
“I’m afraid it’ll be a little time before you can expect to sort out the house,” Michael said, “what with the inquest and the police investigation, not to mention the whole business of probate. I should imagine Mortimer and Shaw were Francis’s solicitors—they’re the largest firm in Culminster and do a lot of cathedral business.”
“Surely the bank will hold their collective hand,” I said, “now that you can tell them that the house really is going onto the market and can be a proper security for your loan.” A sudden thought struck me. “Anyway, don’t you own the whole thing now that Francis is dead?”
“Yes, I suppose I do, that’s what Father’s will said—if the house hadn’t already been sold, then the survivor would inherit the whole thing.”
“Well, that’s fine, then. I’m sure the bank will be reasonable.”
“Oh dear, though,” David said ruefully, “it does rather increase my motive. I don’t think the inspector will like that at all!”
“All the more reason,” I said, “for making our own investigations.”
“Now do be careful, Ma!” Michael said warningly. He turned to David, “She’s terrible when she gets the bit between her teeth and goes plunging about pretending to be a private eye.”
“I’m only going to chat to a few people in Culminster,” I said defensively. “Joan and Mary and Adrian. Oh yes, and if I go over there tomorrow, I should be able to have a word with Monica Woodward. I think it’s her day for being on duty in the cathedral.”
“What on earth do you expect to get out of her?” David asked. “I thought she was a witness for the prosecution.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said vaguely, “something useful might emerge.”
“Actually,” David said, “I really must get my hair cut tomorrow, so if you don’t mind ...”
I’ve noticed, over the years, that men always seem to need to have their hair cut when some activity is proposed in which they don’t wish to participate.
“Coward!” I said. “Still, I may well do better without you.”
Chapter 12
I was lucky to find a parking space quite near to the cathedral. I didn’t particularly want to go into the close and park at the deanery, since I wasn’t really sure I’d want to go and see Joan. It was too soon after lunch for there to be many visitors and the great building was very quiet. As I made my way down the nave, I glanced up at the triforium, the upper story above the aisle, with its bays of stone vaulting, and thought how strange it was that something as ugly as murder should have taken place behind that beautiful facade.
I was glad to see that Monica was on duty, sitting at her table reading what appeared to be some sort of diocesan newsletter. She looked up and exclaimed in surprise, “Sheila! Fancy seeing you! Have you come to look at the library?”
“Well no, not as such,” I said, having prepared my excuse in advance. “I’ve really come to see Mary. I imagine she’s still working in the muniment room, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she’s still there. Though I had heard”—Monica leaned forward to impart what she felt was confidential information—“that she’s thinking of leaving. Too many sad memories, I suppose. Quite understandable. But, of course, the whole family will have to find somewhere else to live. Dreadful for them, to have to be thinking of such a thing at a time like this!”
“Yes, poor Joan, she must feel it terribly.”
“I couldn’t believe it, when they told me,” Monica went on, her prominent blue eyes positively bulging with excitement. “The dean dead! The police everywhere, questioning people. And the
n when they said it was murder! Well!”
“I don’t think they’ve actually decided that it was murder,” I said. “It might be accidental death.”
“Morphine, that’s what I heard. You don’t go taking something like that accidentally, now do you?”
“Well ...”
“No, it’s obvious someone killed him, poor man. From all the questions the police asked me”—she emphasized the word to indicate her own importance in the investigation—“it looks as if they thought it happened right here, that afternoon you and his brother came.”
“It is possible.”
She looked around melodramatically to make sure that we were alone and said, “A terrible quarrel, it was, shouting! You wouldn’t believe! Well, the brother was, I couldn’t hear what the dean was saying, all about money. And, of course”—Monica leaned back, her lips set in an emphatic grimace—“when families fall out about money ...”
“So you heard it all?” I asked.
She looked a little disconcerted. “I couldn’t help hearing,” she said. “As I said, there were raised voices, shouting. And then he—the brother, that is—rushed out, slammed the door right in the dean’s face. Very nasty! Here in the cathedral! I was quite upset.”
“I’m sure you must have been,” I said soothingly. “So you were able to tell the police exactly what happened?”
“Oh yes, they said I’d been really helpful.”
“I’m sure.”
“You see, I was on duty here all afternoon, all the time. Right from when Mrs. Beaumont brought all the tea things over, until the dean went away after his brother left.”
“Oh, did Mrs. Beaumont bring the food over herself?”
“Oh yes, she always did. Such a nice woman. Just between ourselves,” Monica confided, “I wouldn’t say she was what I’d call a very good manager—I know the dean felt that sometimes—but she was devoted to him.”