But the ward sister’s vouchsafed moment or two drew nigh. He decided. He was a priest. The office subsumed the man. He could do no other. But there was a caveat. He spoke quickly:
“Confession is part of contrition, Alastair. And contrition means facing up to the responsibility of what you’ve done. I cannot—I will not absolve you unless you agree to go to the police with me afterwards. Do you understand?”
Alastair folded his arms behind his back and bowed his head. His expression passed into shadow. “Of course.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Are you locking me in?”
Tom turned the ancient key in the lock of the north door and then slipped it back into his trousers pocket. He had pulled the great bolt across the south door. The outside door to the vestry he knew was locked. He had made sure when he’d gone into the vestry to fetch a copy of the Common Worship text appropriate to private confession.
“No, Alastair, I’m locking everyone else out. Given the gravity of this … occasion, I don’t want folk wandering in. I suggest the Lady chapel.” He moved purposefully down the north aisle.
Inside the chapel, a single votive candle burned on a pricket stand. Tom pulled two straight-backed chairs forwards and beckoned Alastair to sit. Battling a visceral repugnance, he remained standing and regarded the man who had been his wife’s lover, who might have been her husband, had not he, Tom, fallen into the Cam that day and thus changed the course of four lives. In the car, returning to Thornford, he had wondered again if he could bear this, bear hearing Alastair’s confession, bear being an instrument of God’s clemency in this instance. He had heard not many formal private confessions during his years of ministry. A few divorced men and women had confessed past wrongdoings—their “manifold sins and wickedness”—seeking to wipe the slate clean before remarrying. He had had two instances of men confessing to abusing children, but each in sorting out his life had reached the end of a road and knew and accepted that police involvement was inevitable. The details had been grim, their remorse grievous and pitiable in expression, and Tom had absolved them. But he had never heard, nor had he expected to ever hear, a confession to murder. Reconciliation lay at the foundation of his vocation, but he felt his heart cold and barren as he faced Alastair. Summoning what fortitude he could he sat down and spoke.
“Before we begin, we must have a conversation. I need to know that your desire to unburden your conscience is sincere. Then we’ll go to the Old School Room and meet with Bliss and Blessing. If they’ll permit, we’ll return here and perform the rite together at the font. If not, wherever the police designate will be fine.”
Alastair’s hands were folded in his lap. “And you will keep my confidence?”
“To the grave, Alastair, unless you permit me otherwise.”
“Then it’s true. I confess it. I did kill Peter Kinsey. I didn’t intend to. I didn’t plan it.” His eyes darted towards the mullioned window over the altar and he affected a sorrowful little shrug. “It … simply happened.”
“Are you suggesting you’re not responsible?”
“No, Tom, I’m saying it wasn’t done in cold blood … though I was bloody-minded, I don’t mind saying. I didn’t plan it—that’s all.”
“You’d better explain.”
Alastair paused. “Your visit last year came at the very wrong moment. I had had some … shocking—I suppose you could say—information on the Friday before your arrival.”
“Yes …?”
Alastair’s mouth twisted. “Julia, I learned, had had a termination.” He glanced at Tom and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem at all bothered. You know about it, I suppose. You two are thick as thieves now, aren’t you? After all the years of indifference.”
“Your wife is the assistant organist and choirmaster of this church, Alastair,” Tom responded with some exasperation. “Of course I see more of her than I see of you.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Your question being …?”
“Did you know about Julia’s termination?”
“If I should start telling you what people in the village have told me in confidence, then how could you trust me to keep your confidences?”
Alastair appeared hardly mollified. “Then you must excuse me if I’m being redundant, but as you may or may not know Julia and I cannot—or, rather, should not—have children. The child we conceived some years ago was miscarried—that you know—but what you don’t know, or probably don’t know—is that there was a second miscarriage. We are genetically mismatched, it turns out. We were tested. I’ll spare you the details, but almost any pregnancy will result in miscarriage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was devastating. I know you may not believe me—I know Lisbeth never believed it—but I love Julia with all my heart. There’s nothing I’ve wanted more than to have a child with her.”
“There are other solutions.”
“I don’t want a divorce. I want Julia.”
“I meant adoption or surrogacy or the like.”
“Yes, well … I was coming around to that. But the disappointment after the second miscarriage was so enormous, we could barely speak of children. I think it must hurt Julia to go off and teach them each day.” Alastair paused. “Lisbeth made the wise choice, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Lisbeth and Julia were sisters. The same thing might have happened had Lisbeth and I—”
Vexed at another reminder of this history, Tom interrupted, “Perhaps you should get on with your story.”
Alastair’s expression hardened. “I’m afraid a certain amount of meaning leached from our marriage after the miscarriages, after the test. I’m sure you’ve noticed—the sleeping arrangements when you were staying at ours, for instance. They haven’t changed. It’s as though sleeping together is simply a reminder of … well, never mind.” He straightened in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle. “At any rate, sometime early last year, Julia had an abortion. I think you can figure that she hadn’t conceived the child with me.
“I stewed about it most of that weekend,” Alastair continued, “but then you and Miranda arrived, so I had to put on a face for the guests.” He paused. “You’re very lucky to have Miranda.”
If this was a bid for sympathy, it wasn’t working well, Tom thought. He made a noncommittal noise and gestured at Alastair to get on with it.
“Anyway, on Monday evening, as you know, since you were there, Enid Pattimore called with one of her manufactured emergencies. The woman is a hypochondriac, but as she’s one of my few remaining private patients I indulge her whims.
“When I’d walked as far as Church Lane I happened to look left and noted Kinsey going through the lych-gate towards the church. I suppose if I’d never turned my head, or if I’d left Westways five minutes later … anyway, I followed him into the church and found him in the vestry.”
“Why would you turn your attention to Peter Kinsey?” Tom interrupted.
“You know perfectly well why by now.” Alastair brought the chair forwards with a bang on the stone floor. “The little shit was having it off with my wife.”
“But how did you know?”
“I knew, that’s all. I was told.” Alastair’s face flared. “At least about the termination.”
“By Sybella?”
“What? No. What are you talking about? One of my colleagues, learning of the termination through his wife, a doctor who works at the clinic in Exeter, and assuming the termination was wrapped up in our genetic mismatch, happened to commiserate with me. Of course, I had no idea.
“Figuring it was Kinsey wasn’t hard. I’d heard that stupid rumour about Sebastian, but I didn’t believe it. Sebastian’s too … pure. Not Kinsey, though. I could think of no other man in her orbit that would fit. Besides, Kinsey admitted it. I accused him, and he didn’t deny it. In fact, he hardly seemed repentant. He had the cheek to blame Julia. He implied that it was she
who made a play for him. He said priests get it all the time from lonely women with inattentive husbands. ‘Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church,’ he had the gall to preach to me, as if it were now all my fault. The arrogance of the man!”
Alastair turned silent for a moment, stared off towards the pricket stand where the candle, now low, began to flicker garishly. Tom’s eyes, too, went to the pricket stand and then travelled to a homely felt banner depicting the Virgin and Child in a scene with Thornford’s millpond, the handiwork of some devoted parishioner. On the wall above the banner, he thought he could see in the fresh paint the ghosts of holes that must have supported the screws that had held the missing Guercinos. He had hoped the Lady chapel might be a comforting venue for this ghastly interview, but he was wrong. Pallid, cool light filtered through the plain faceted glass of the north and east windows, greying the colours of the banner and the altar cloth and weighting the air. He sensed damp seeping into his bones as he waited for Alastair to resume. And when Alastair did, it was in a voice of wonder, as if he were seeing his own actions for the first time on a screen:
“It was a blinding moment, Tom. I gave no thought to what I was about to do. He simply dismissed me and showed me his back. The verger’s staff was on the vestry table near the door. My hand reached for it and …”
Tom felt a shiver course down his spine as Alastair paused again. In his mind’s eye, he could see the staff, with its crucifix atop a heavy brass ball, whipping the air, smashing downward to crush the bone at the back of the skull, then the body flopping raggedly, sinking to the cold stone floor.
“It was a killing blow,” Alastair resumed, adding with some little surprise, “only a slight tear to the skin. Very little blood. Remarkable.”
Tom looked at him aghast. “And you simply left him there?”
“I lost my nerve, I suppose you might say. It’s not an unreasonable reaction. I don’t think I knew what I was doing until I found myself by the gate next to Pattimore’s shop and realised I’d left my bag in the vestry. That’s when the colonel happened by. I affected that I was going through to the back on my way to see Enid.”
Tom was suddenly possessed by the vision of Lisbeth lying in the south porch of St. Dunstan’s, her life’s blood draining. Someone had left her there, too. Some swine, some coward. Choking back his growing disgust, he was barely listening, as Alastair continued, voluble now, as if telling the tale to someone for the first time, as he was.
“When the colonel turned at Church Lane, I thought before long a cry would be raised, that the road would be crawling with police cars and ambulances, and I would soon be found out. The colonel wasn’t walking Bumble. He’s not often in the pub. One rarely sees him about at that time of the evening. He had some business either with Sebastian or with the vicar—and the vicar was in the church. I must admit I waited with some trepidation. But it wasn’t five minutes before he reappeared, coming out of The Square into Orchard Hill, walking rather briskly back to Farthings. Whatever he had been up to, I presumed he had not come across Kinsey’s body.” He scowled at Tom. “Or at least I presumed it then.”
Tom didn’t respond to the provocation. Alastair’s mouth settled into a hard, thin line for a moment; then he resumed:
“I managed to get back to the church without being seen. Thank God the English love their television. I went into The Square, through the little side gate into the churchyard—which was the way I had come. I suppose I was in a bit of a lather, but it’s a marvel what the mind can come up with under pressure. I knew Ned’s funeral was the next day. I could see the grave prepared at the bottom of the churchyard when I passed through. Kinsey wasn’t a big man, and I’m fairly fit. It was a bit of a chore getting him off the floor, but I was able to put him over my shoulder, pick up my case, and get out of the church. No one was about. It was twilight. Everything was in shadow. I dropped him in the hole, near to one side of the grave—which wasn’t wise in retrospect, given Fred’s pulling a stone away later—lifted the synthetic grass over the mound of earth, shovelled in some dirt—Fred had conveniently left his tools leaning against the tree—and it was done and dusted.”
An odd smile played at the corners of Alastair’s lips. “And then the next day, you—as it happened—committed Ned to his grave.”
Tom doubted calm and simplicity had reigned over this appalling exercise. He imagined Alastair panicked, sweating, frantically shovelling earth. He imagined Enid, later, perhaps wondering at his appearance, if she wasn’t too absorbed in her health or in the television. If only, he thought, he’d paid more attention that evening. He remembered seeing Alastair leave after Enid’s phone call, but remembered only hearing him come back—it must have been sometime after eight; they were well into the Disney DVD—and not joining them in the living room at Westways. They could hear Alastair in the kitchen; Julia had called out to him, but Alastair had replied that he was having an early night, and gone to the ground-floor bedroom suite.
“It’s hardly amusing, Alastair,” he responded.
“I’m sorry. Really. I was merely reflecting that it worked so well. I could hardly believe it. Kinsey seemed to have disappeared. People disappear all the time, don’t they? There was no evidence anything had happened. The grave was soon filled, the vestry trampled by the likes of Karla, Roger, whoever … you. I did wipe prints from the verger’s staff, but I hardly needed to. Other hands would hold it in the days ahead. All in all, really, a perfect …”
“Were you going to say ‘crime’?”
“I was going to say ‘solution.’ I thought with Kinsey … gone, Julia and I would get back on track.”
“You didn’t think she might mourn Peter’s loss? Or mourn having a termination?”
“I thought that in due course everything would right itself. Julia would invite me back into her bed.”
“You’re very forgiving for a man whose wife broke her wedding declaration to be faithful.”
“I told you I love her. I forgave her.”
Was it love or possessiveness that motivated him? Tom wondered. True love was terra firma; possessiveness was quicksand. People who seek to possess live in fear of loss, and those who fear can commit terrible acts. He took a head-clearing breath. He was dreading what he had to say next:
“It was a perfect … solution, perhaps, until you walked into the village hall last Sunday afternoon when Mitsuko was installing her memory quilts.”
There was a beat of silence, in which Alastair turned to stare at him. “What are you on about?”
“You noted one of Mitsuko’s quilts featured a picture of the churchyard taken from the tower and you noted the date stamp on it—the date of the very day Peter Kinsey was last seen. You also noted a lone figure near a freshly dug grave. It was you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Alastair, who else would nick that particular quilt? Who else would have a reason to slip into Mitsuko’s studio and take her computer and camera? You’re the only one in the village that I can think of. Mitsuko had been taking hundreds of pictures with her digital. Who knew that she had taken a sequence of pictures from the church tower that, if they were blown up or scrutinised in some way, would reveal a man burying something just about the time of Kinsey’s disappearance? Maybe someone in the village would look at the quilt at the opening and think, ‘That’s odd. Isn’t that Dr. Hennis?’ There would be questions, curiosity. You know what this village is like.
“I expect you were desperate to get your hands on that quilt before anyone started to give it a close look,” Tom continued, reaching into his jacket pocket. “What you didn’t know was that, late in the evening, there would be someone in the village hall—Sybella Parry. In the dark, you thought it was Mitsuko—well, kill two birds with one stone, yes? Who knew what she might remember of that evening more than a year ago? Vanish the living memory along with the memory quilt.”
“This is outrageous.”
“Do you have no
remorse for killing that young woman?”
“There’s not a scrap of evidence that I had anything to do with her death.”
Tom responded with an icy stare. He held his right hand palm upwards, tilted slightly forwards for Alastair’s viewing. Balanced between his thumb and his forefinger was the wizard’s cap, the gnome’s hat—top side up, the golf tee.
Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s your lucky tee, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he responded tightly. “I’ve been wondering where it had got to.”
“Miranda found it.”
“Then give it back.”
Tom brought his left hand over the top of the tee, as if to pick it up. “She found it in the village hall, near the skirting board of the large hall.”
“I must have dropped it Sunday afternoon.”
“Possibly.” Tom’s left hand closed over the tee. “But you know how diligent Joyce Pike is. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t have swept this up at the end of the day and put it in the bin with the sweepings. Miranda found your tee on Monday afternoon, almost exactly where the missing quilt should have been.”
“Would you give me my tee!”
“She’s a very clever girl, my daughter. She knew it was your golf tee and she knew in her heart it was somewhere it shouldn’t be. She’s known it all week. Poor thing,” Tom continued with rising anger, “she simply didn’t want to get anyone into trouble. She’s lost her mother. She didn’t want another family member out of the picture. She’s fond of you.”
“The tee, please.”
Tom closed his left fist and held it out towards Alastair. “I’m sure if your golfing mates were questioned,” he said, moving his right hand in a circular motion over his bunched left fist, “they would recall that you didn’t have your lucky tee with you Bank Holiday Monday morning.”
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