“Which drugs?”
“I don’t know. Just, you know … something.”
Tom received this information with dismay. It contradicted Colm’s insistence that Sybella had been staying out of trouble. And it amplified what much of the village was likely thinking was true: that Sybella had not reformed. But he was alert to Charlie’s phrasing.
“You mean,” he responded, “that Sybella was going around offering some sorts of drugs to you and your friends?”
Charlie continued to stare at his feet. “No,” he mumbled finally. “I mean, not that I know of.” He flicked a nervous glance at Tom. “I asked her.”
“And she agreed, I take it.”
“Yes.”
Tom looked at the boy writhing in shame, vaguely recalling his own experimentations at that age. The allure. Thinking one was so sophisticated. Poor Charlie—he didn’t even know which drug he thought he wanted. “Then what happened?”
“She didn’t have any.”
“On her?”
“At all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She didn’t use any of that stuff anymore, she said. She said she only pretended to, to get up the noses of people in Thornford, and that I was a prat for even wanting to because it would fu … mess up my life and get me into trouble and she knew because she had been there.” Charlie stopped, as if surprised at his own volubility. Then his face was suffused again with blood. His voice rose a notch. “She laughed at me. She said I had spots!”
Tom suppressed a smile. Not only had Charlie spots, they were Himalayan. Though his own had been nothing like Charlie’s, he could recall his own mortal agonies over adolescent acne—the mirror gazing, the popping, the creams. Then a cheerless thought intruded. He recalled the fierce blow Charlie had inflicted on Declan only the day before. Then, the punch had been triggered by simple frustration and perhaps a little chivalry. How had Charlie reacted to Sybella’s taunts some few hours earlier?
“What did you do?”
Something in Tom’s expression must have alerted the boy, because his face blazed. “I didn’t hit her! I didn’t! I …”
“What?”
“… I heard something. I heard someone come in the front doors. So I ran out.”
“But wouldn’t you have crossed paths with—”
“I went out the fire exit, by the kitchen.”
“In the small hall? You were in the small hall?”
“Yes.”
“And no alarm was set off?”
“It says ‘fire exit,’ but it’s not alarmed.”
“And Sybella stayed behind?”
Charlie snuffled. “I expect so.”
Tom let his mind range over the possible chain of events. “Your mum locks up, yes?” Charlie nodded. “Then how did you get in? Was Sybella already inside?”
“My mum leaves all her keys—to the village hall and to the cottages she cleans—in a drawer in the hallway, so I took them. I met Sybella outside the hall. She said to meet there at ten o’clock and we’ll … you know, inside.”
Tom frowned. By ten o’clock, even in late May with the solstice less than a month away, the village was plunged into darkness. He could think of several secluded spots in and around the village that would offer haven to a would-be drug dealer: the Old Orchard, the deeper reaches of the churchyard, the trees along the millpond. Why inside the village hall? He said as much to Charlie.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Sorry.”
Tom regarded the miserable teenager. “And you have no idea who it was coming into the hall? A familiar voice? No one called out? Outside, did you see anyone? A familiar car?”
To each question, Charlie shook his head.
“Did you switch on the lights in the small hall?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be there. I mean …” He hung his head. “… I didn’t ask if I could take the keys …”
“It would have been quite dark inside.”
“There was a bit of moonlight, but my mum’s the caretaker so I’ve been in the hall lots of times.”
“You know your way around.”
Charlie nodded.
Outside, drops of new rain splattered against the vicarage windows, lending a cosy insularity to the room. Tom ran his finger absently around his dog collar. “Charlie,” he said gently, “you’re not to blame for Sybella’s death, you know.”
“But I was the one who was on at her about buying drugs,” he wailed.
“But, as you said, it was her idea to meet you in the village hall.” Clearly, Tom thought, Sybella had had some other reason for seeking entrance to the hall Sunday night.
But, he wondered, whatever could it be?
The Vicarage
Thornford Regis TC9 6QX
28 MAY
Dear Mum,
When I wrote yesterday and told you that young Sybella had died, it never occurred to me that she might have died by someone else’s hand. But it turns out to be true! Two detectives came around yesterday afternoon and talked with Mr. Christmas and they’ve been talking with other people in the village, too, though not me yet. It feels very odd for this to have happened in dear old Thornford R and of course when I went down the post office yesterday to mail your letter Sybella was all everyone could talk about. No one could recall anyone being murdered in the village before. Can you? I shall have to go through Dad’s history very carefully and see if there’s any mention. All I could think of was the time one of the Jecks twins put an axe into the head of the other, only being drunk he hit his brother with the blunt end and his brother being so thick skulled, he lived. I think I was about 8 at the time. Anyway, at the post office no one had any good idea why anyone would really want to take poor Sybella’s life. I use the word “really” because a couple of people did mention that Sybella gave them the same feeling she gave me which I told you about yesterday—that she somehow knew something secret about you. But how could she, I said, as she hadn’t lived in Thornford all that long, but it was a bit funny, Mum, since everyone started to look a bit as if they really did have a guilty secret. Karla finally said they were all being very silly and that they’d see in the end that it was some drugs thing involving someone from London or maybe Torquay, and I supported her, though I was tempted to say that Mr. Christmas is certain it isn’t anything to do with drugs. He said so after his confirmation class last night—something to do with Charlie Pike who stayed behind to have a private word with the vicar, though I’m not sure what as I couldn’t hear through the door, though I could tell that Charlie was very upset about something. The Neighbourhood Watch has called a special meeting tomorrow morning at the v. hall to consider all this as there is some worry that there might be someone very unsavoury in the area up to no good. But you mustn’t worry. The vicarage is safe as houses the grave Windsor Castle and Jago is very good with his fists, as you know from when he was a lad, so I expect if anyone tries to get into his cottage, they’ll wish they hadn’t. Sybella’s funeral is set for Friday morning and vicar’s talking about getting in something called CCTV so the service can be broadcast outside on a big television as there will likely be a crush of folk since Colm knew people in the entertainment business and, of course, there’s Oona Blanc, who will probably come with some great entourage. Quite exciting, really, though I mustn’t think about it that way. Poor Colm. I do feel so badly for him. Less so for Celia, which is uncharitable of me, but I can’t help it. I was at the farm shop at Thorn Barton yesterday morning getting some lovely chicken for Mr. C.’s and Miranda’s supper, when Celia trotted up on her horse dressed as casual as you please—here’s a death in her family and you’d think she’d stop in and console her husband rather than be seen out enjoying herself, but there she was putting in a large order for the Big House, though perhaps it’s for a grand funeral tea—just thought of that now! Anyway, I said how sorry I was and she was very gracious, in that practised way she has, of course, but I could tell there wasn’t much love lost on that unfortunate ch
ild. Funny, Celia believes it’s drugs-related, too, involving some nasty person from Sybella’s past, and she must know since she’s a psycolo psychologist and probably sees the signs. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Colm’s first wife to her. Penella Neels came out from the back when we were there and offered her condolences, too. And of course she was at confirmation class again last night. Funny how Penella was never interested in being confirmed when Mr. James-Douglas was vicar, but as soon as young Mr. Kinsey and young Mr. Christmas came into view, suddenly the Church is just the thing. She didn’t quite finish her classes with Mr. Kinsey, as he went and disappeared, so here she is all over again. She was wearing a very tight jumper, but if she fancies her chances then she’s got another think coming. Mr. C. is too clever for that kind of show, and she wouldn’t be a suitable mother to Miranda. Late afternoon, I went up to hospital to visit Phillip, who wasn’t in the best shape, poor man. At least he’s in a room of his own, but then he can afford to go private. They have him drugged for pain, so he did ramble on a bit. He seemed very fretful. I’m not sure if he even knew I was in the room. Well, must go and start breakfast. Holy Communion this morning, so we’re off to an early start what with everything else to do. Cats are well. Jago told me he was going to have his Kerra apply to Liam Drewe for a server spot at the Waterside. I said I thought it was a bit previous what with Sybella gone and all, but you know what Jago’s like—can’t bear to see the grass grow under anyone’s feet. I think Kerra will have a time. She’s a sweet girl and Liam’s a terror. Sybella could stand up to him—tough as nails, she was. That’s what London can do to you, I suppose, though why the daughter of Colm Parry and Oona Blanc was working as a waitress seems peculiar. “Work therapy” Celia called it at one of her WI talks. But all the other village girls who have worked at the Waterside haven’t lasted long. We shall see. Love to Aunt Gwen. Hope you have a better day than we’re having in TR!
Much love,
Madrun
P.S. Mr. Christmas was asking me about Phillip’s walking stick yesterday, which I thought was peculiar, until I realised he was worried that Phillip’s stick might be the thing that killed Sybella! You see, he’d Phillip had forgotten it overnight in the v. hall, so someone could have picked it up and done the deed! Dreadful!
P.P.S. What has the doctor said about your leg? It’s very odd that only one would swell and not the other. Can anyone help you on with your compression tights?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Had Sebastian left the vestry door unlocked last night? Tom wondered as his key met no resistance in the Yale lock. He pushed against the stout old oak door, the events of the past few days triggering unwelcome thoughts for what might await inside, and scrutinised the untidy room as shadow yielded to sunlight. Then, through a haze of dust motes, he saw the figure of a woman silhouetted. Small, trim, she was turned away from him, hair silvered by light from the single lancet window.
“Good morning, Vicar.” The figure did not turn.
“Ah, Miss Skynner, good morning,” Tom responded with a modicum of relief and a dab of apprehension, recognising the no-nonsense voice as he stepped into the vestry. “I didn’t expect to find you in here.”
“I’m checking the list of weddings. I wanted to see if a certain date in September was free.”
“May I be of any assistance?”
“No. Thank you. I can manage.” She turned, the sunlight catching the sharp eyes behind the lenses of her spectacles. Tom had the feeling, as he often had in the presence of this particular churchwarden, that she was weighing him in some balance, as she might a parcel in the village post office that she managed, and was finding him wanting—poorly sellotaped, perhaps, or incorrectly addressed.
“I understand Charlie Pike has gone to the police about this worrying business at the village hall.”
Tom gave a moment’s thought to the many marvellous linkings that brought a private conversation to public knowledge within twelve short hours.
“I see the village drums have been beating,” he responded.
“I’m not sure ‘drums’ is an apt metaphor in this instance, given that young woman’s death,” Karla countered predictably, brushing a dust mote off her shoulder.
“Yes, quite. I’m sorry.” Tom stepped around her to the vestry’s inner corner where his cassock was hanging from a peg in an open closet. As he did so, his leg banged against the sharp edge of a framed picture sticking out between the closet and the scarred black oak vestry table.
“Christ!” he exclaimed, groping for his shin, as the picture toppled over and crashed onto the stone floor, sending a nasty crack across the covering glass.
“Mr. Christmas!”
“I was merely invoking the deity, Miss Skynner; I am a priest,” Tom gasped, hopping on one foot.
“Mind how you pick that up,” Karla cautioned, making no move to do so herself. “A shard may slip out onto the floor.”
As he indulged himself by caressing his shin, Tom surveyed the litter of papers, the old parish registry records and magazines, the towering piles of old hymnals, the limp drapery, the jumble of cleaning supplies, the boxes of candles. He muttered: “This vestry really is a tip.”
“I don’t disagree, but I don’t think we should be throwing things out, do you? We might have need of them.”
How typically Anglican, Tom decided, bending to lift the artwork off the floor. The dust on the frame edge adhered to his fingers. “Mr. Kinsey was wont to throw things out,” Karla continued. “But I was able to prevail upon his better sensibilities to at least store them in here for the time being.”
“Such as this picture, I presume.” Tom gingerly slid it under the vestry table. Mercifully, the glass remained secure, though it would have to be replaced if the picture was to be returned to the sanctuary. It was a reproduction print of Saint Nicholas—presumably—ministering in some fashion to three children squashed into a wooden bathing tub, a garish and syrupy Victorian portrait that he was just as happy to let remain tucked in the vestry.
“A number of pictures and other things were taken down from the Lady chapel when the church was repainted a year ago … well, a little more than that—before my father died.” Karla slapped closed the records book she was looking in. “Mr. Kinsey preferred a simpler aesthetic, and I can’t say I disagreed, really—the place was a bit of a hodgepodge. Phillip and Roger wanted everything put back up, of course. They’re both rather sentimental in that regard.”
“You could have put them back up, I suppose, once Peter had—”
“Having a missing vicar rather concentrates the mind elsewhere, Mr. Christmas.” Karla turned to him, her mouth set thin and bloodless. Her hair was pulled so tightly into a grey bun that her face was reined to the smoothness of tautly drawn cotton. Tom wondered, not for the first time, whether she ever let her hair down. Perhaps it fell—literally and metaphorically—on her annual January holiday with Madrun in Tenerife.
“Quite,” was all he could think to say. He had been made aware of the commotion that ensued. A priest leaving is one thing; a priest vanishing is very much another. He looked again at the picture. “Anyway, I expect everyone’s got used to the way things are now. No one has mentioned to me the notion of restoring this”—he wanted to say “treacly thing,” but didn’t—“picture to the church.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind if this one went up,” Karla declared, perversely. “It’s been in the church for over a hundred years, I believe. I was less fond of the other two.”
“What other two?” Tom asked, glancing around the melancholy little room. Perhaps some new lighting, he thought, raising his eyes to the low-raftered ceiling with its single fluorescent light.
“They were rather … Romish.” Karla reset her glasses to peer at him. “One, I believe, depicted the Immaculate Conception, which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, Vicar, is not quite the thing in the Church of England.”
Tom sighed inwardly. How these things mattered to some people. Instead he said: “B
ut Mr. James-Douglas was a bit High Church, was he not?”
“A bit, I suppose you could say.” Karla’s lips set a disapproving line. “But he was really just being kind to old Mr. Northmore.”
“The colonel?”
“No, no, Vicar. Old Mr. Northmore. The colonel’s father. I’m sure someone’s told you about old Mr. Northmore’s reduced circumstances in the years after the war. Mr. James-Douglas bought the paintings from old Mr. Northmore, I think, just to help him along financially. Mr. James-Douglas was a very kind man,” she added and flicked him a glance to suggest that perhaps he wasn’t, or at least lacked the potential to be. “Anyway, I remember the two paintings going up in the Lady chapel when I was, oh, not quite a teenager. There was a little ceremony, I seem to recall.” She paused and tucked an errant hair into her bun. “But as you say, Vicar, people get used to things. After a time, no one gave them a second glance.”
“Where are they now?” Tom buttoned his cassock.
“I expect they’re here somewhere. They weren’t anywhere near as big as the Saint Nicolas portrait.”
Tom watched her glance around as he reached for his surplice, then noted a look of enlightenment cross her face.
“I’m wrong,” she said, and Tom thrilled to the words: So nice to hear them from the lips of a churchwarden, particularly this one. “Mr. Kinsey sent them out for cleaning … or restoration. Or both.”
Mildly surprised, Tom said: “Then he must have been reconsidering them for the Lady chapel.”
“Possibly.”
“The restorers are certainly taking their time.”
“Possibly,” she said again. “But then I know very little about art, Mr. Christmas.”
“Nor I.”
“But I do know what I like. What a good thing you bumped into that Saint Nicholas. Being as its back has been to us all these months, I’d quite forgotten about it, but now that I see it …” Karla sidled past him towards the door that connected to the sanctuary. “… I think we ought to put it up, don’t you? We’ll need to send it off to those restorers to fix the glass.”
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