Murder at the Old Vicarage

by Jill McGown

  ‘Right, thanks. Let’s go and have a look,’ Lloyd said. ‘Do you know the family?’

  ‘I’ve passed the time of day with Mr Wheeler,’ he said. ‘And I know Mrs Wheeler and the daughter by sight – but I’ve not been here long.’ He pulled the door to, in case he was over-heard. ‘The daughter’s been staying with them since October,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know she was married until tonight.’

  Lloyd nodded, and pushed open the door again.

  They trooped into a long, wide, Christmas-decorated hallway, where there was a tree surrounded by presents.

  ‘The body’s upstairs in one of the bedrooms,’ the constable said. ‘The family are in the kitchen, and no one’s been in the other rooms since I arrived. They say it must have been an intruder, so I thought you would probably want to check the rest of the house, just in case.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Lloyd said. ‘Good lad.’ As he spoke, another car appeared in the driveway. ‘Freddie,’ said Lloyd to Judy. ‘It’s the doctor, constable – show him upstairs, and ID the body. OK?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Lloyd briefly introduced himself and Judy to the family, who sat round the kitchen table, rather as though they were at a board meeting. A big, well-built man who looked slightly out of place in a clerical collar. A pretty wife – wearing a trouser suit, which rather surprised Lloyd. He still expected the wives of clergy to wear twinsets and pearls, but it had been about thirty years since he’d had anything to do with that sort of thing. A daughter who was probably pretty when she hadn’t been beaten up. No tears, no hysterics. Mr Wheeler stood up to shake hands.

  The courtesies completed, Lloyd apologised. ‘I’m afraid the snow’s caught us all on the hop,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit shorthanded here. We’ll be back in a few moments, if you’d excuse us.’

  ‘You’d better go and say hello to Freddie,’ he said to Judy, once they were out in the hallway. ‘Send Parks down, will you?’

  So it wasn’t straightforward, and he would have to bring forensic in. Lloyd glanced up as Parks came downstairs. ‘What’s it like up there?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said the constable, ‘I wouldn’t want my mum to see it.’

  Poor Judy. Lloyd left Parks phoning for back-up, and went back in to the silent group in the kitchen.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Elstow?’ he asked. ‘Do you want a doctor?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m all right, thank you.’

  Her face, pale beneath the discoloured skin, belied the polite answer.

  ‘Well,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s start with what happened to you.’

  She glanced quickly at her mother, who took a preparatory breath.

  ‘I’d rather hear it from Mrs Elstow herself,’ said Lloyd quickly.

  ‘I – that is . . .’ the girl began, then stopped. ‘Graham – that’s my husband – he . . .’

  Lloyd sat down at the table. ‘You’d left him,’ he said, hoping his guess was right.

  She nodded.

  ‘And why was he here?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘He came to ask me to go back with him,’ she said, dully. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Lloyd put his chin on his hands and looked at her. ‘And that was how he hoped to persuade you?’ he said.

  Her eyes met his defiantly. ‘He got angry,’ she said, and it was said in her husband’s defence.

  Lloyd sat back, and nodded slowly. ‘And when was this, Mrs Elstow?’

  Again, a glance at her mother, who looked down at her hands.

  ‘This afternoon. Evening. I don’t know.’ Then she added, in a low voice, ‘About five.’

  ‘Mr – Lloyd, is it?’ said Wheeler, ‘I don’t quite see what this has to do with what happened.’

  Lloyd raised his eyebrows at him.

  ‘We were all out,’ he said. ‘Someone must have—’

  ‘So when was he found?’ asked Lloyd, talking through him. ‘Just before one o’clock,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘I found him. We’d been to the midnight service.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lloyd. ‘Which of you saw him last?’

  They all looked at one another; no one looked at him.

  ‘I did,’ said Joanna Elstow. ‘At five.’

  Slowly, painfully, the story emerged. Lloyd didn’t ask for detail, or for clarification. He made a mental note of the points that puzzled him, but he didn’t ask about them. He just listened. George Wheeler and his daughter had left the house at seven. Mrs Wheeler had gone out at about ten to eight. Wheeler and his daughter had returned first, to find themselves locked out. Mrs Wheeler had let them in when she got home, and they had all left again at eleven for the midnight service.

  Lloyd had heard the others arrive during his patient questioning of the family. When Marian Wheeler completed the story with her account of finding Elstow, he thanked them, giving every indication that he accepted their story as gospel. Which was appropriate, he thought, as he stood up. ‘Excuse me again, please,’ he said, and went upstairs, where Judy was directing the activities of the photographer. The fingerprint lad was whistling quietly, as he carefully stepped over the body; the photographer impassively snapped away, the doctor was making interested noises, and Judy looked green.

  ‘What do you think?’ Lloyd said.

  ‘I think I want to go home and let Miss Marple get on with it,’ she said.

  So she had been listening to his one-sided conversation in the car, he thought. She was just being bloody-minded, which at least was in character. ‘You go down and see what you can get,’ he said, having given her the bare bones.

  Judy escaped, and Lloyd looked round the room. The poker lay on the floor by the body; he peered at it before it was bagged up, then squatted down beside the doctor. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘How long?’

  ‘Under twelve hours. Anything between five and eleven hours. That’s very rough – I’ll be able to narrow it down.’

  Lloyd checked the time. ‘Between four-thirty and ten-thirty p.m.?’

  ‘Well – my guess is eight to ten hours. The PM will probably confirm that.’

  ‘Could a woman have done it?’ Lloyd asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. They’re heavy blows, but a woman with a good double-handed backhand could have done it.’ He grinned, altering his thin, serious face. ‘Judging from that,’ he said, nodding at the decanter which was being dusted for prints, ‘and the smell, I’d say he made it easy for whoever did it. I’ll confirm that at the lab.’

  ‘His wife says he’d had a lot to drink before he got here.’

  Freddie nodded. ‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘And he’d been hitting someone.’ He smiled broadly again. ‘If that’s any help.’

  ‘His wife,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Ah. The Case of the Turning Worm?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘They were all out when it happened,’ said Lloyd, his eyes wide, his hands held out in helpless innocence.

  ‘Of course they were,’ said Freddie. ‘Can you give me a photograph from this angle, please?’ he asked the photographer, indicating what he meant. ‘Looks like a woman’s prints on the poker.’

  The flash made Lloyd blink. ‘How long between the attack and death?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long. Look.’

  Lloyd didn’t really. He’d developed a trick of making his eyes blur.

  ‘Not all that much blood.’

  ‘What?’ Lloyd looked at the bed.

  ‘Oh, there’s a lot splashed about,’ Freddie said. ‘But he didn’t lie bleeding on the floor for long. I’ll know better when I’ve had the chance to make a proper examination. I can do it today, if you want to arrange for someone to be present,’ he said. ‘Spoil someone’s Christmas dinner.’

  ‘It had better be mine,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Pity,’ said the doctor. ‘I thought I might get a couple of hours in Sergeant Hill’s company.’

  Lloyd smiled. ‘I’m not that cruel,’ he said.

  ‘Is it the blood, or me?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘Sir!’

  Lloy
d went to the fireplace, where it was just possible to see the charred remains of clothing.

  Freddie bent down to take a closer look. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Enough left to identify it, I’m sure.’ He straightened up. ‘You’re home and dry this time, Lloyd.’

  Joanna sat at the table, her mother on one side, and Sergeant Hill on the other. Her father was over by the fire.

  Sergeant Hill was very attractive, Joanna thought absently. Good clothes.

  ‘Can you tell me why he hit you?’ she was asking.

  ‘He came to see if I would go back with him, and I wouldn’t,’ Joanna said, her voice light. She wasn’t going to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the sergeant said. ‘I know this must be very difficult for you, and I won’t keep you long, I promise. But I do have to know what went on in here tonight.’

  ‘That wasn’t tonight,’ her father said. ‘It was this afternoon. It had nothing to do with what happened tonight.’

  The sergeant looked over her shoulder. ‘Were you here, Mr Wheeler?’ she asked. She was simply requesting information, but Joanna saw her father’s colour rise a little.

  ‘No, I was not!’

  ‘George,’ said her mother, ‘the sergeant has to ask questions.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Mr Wheeler,’ Sergeant Hill said. She turned back to Joanna. ‘When did it happen?’ she asked.

  ‘I told the inspector,’ Joanna said. ‘Five o’clock.’ She could still hear the clock chiming as Graham advanced on her. Her head ached, and she wanted to close the eyes that it was so painful to keep open. She wanted to be alone, to assess her position, to work out what it all meant, how she felt. Graham was gone. And with his going, the ever-present fear had slipped away from her. But that wasn’t all she was going to feel. She needed the chance to find out.

  ‘He only stopped because he heard us coming home,’ her father said.

  ‘You and Mrs Wheeler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time was that?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said her father, ‘I stayed at the church for a while. I must have left at about quarter-past five, I think. Is it important?’

  Sergeant Hill smiled apologetically. ‘You never really know at this stage in an investigation,’ she said.

  ‘There were other people there until just before I left,’ he said. ‘You could check with them.’

  ‘I picked you up at about twenty past,’ said her mother. She turned to Sergeant Hill. ‘We came straight here,’ she said.

  ‘And is that right, Joanna?’ the sergeant asked. ‘He stopped because he heard your parents coming in?’

  ‘When he heard their car,’ Joanna said miserably. ‘He went upstairs.’

  The inspector came back in then, and apologised for all the disruption, as if it was his fault.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll be here for some time,’ he said. ‘There’s a great deal of difficulty getting vehicles here. And there’s—’ He waved a hand. ‘A lot to see to,’ he said.

  He meant that they couldn’t get Graham out yet, Joanna thought grimly.

  ‘Especially,’ he went on, ‘since you say it happened while you were out.’

  ‘Say?’

  Joanna flinched, hearing the danger signals in her father’s voice.

  Inspector Lloyd came over to the table, and leant both hands on it, bending down almost conspiratorially. ‘We’ve had to get the lab boys in,’ he said, and Joanna noticed his Welsh accent for the first time. ‘To tell us what went on in there.’ There was a pause. ‘And they can,’ he said, straightening up. ‘Make no mistake. Everything in that room’s got a story to tell.’ He looked directly at Joanna when he spoke again. ‘So if any of you could save us some time and trouble . . .’ He waited.

  Joanna looked steadily back at him. He had blue eyes.

  ‘Mrs Elstow?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

  He stepped back from the table, and went over to stand by the door, as though she might make a break for it.

  ‘Joanna,’ Sergeant Hill said. ‘You said just now that Graham ran upstairs? Where did you have the fight with him?’

  ‘It wasn’t a fight,’ Joanna said helplessly. Then again, almost to herself, ‘It wasn’t a fight.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Where were you when he hit you?’

  ‘The sitting room.’

  ‘Where’s that, love?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘The last door on the left,’ she said.

  He opened the kitchen door, and looked down the hall. ‘You weren’t upstairs with him at any point?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  The sergeant glanced at him, and Joanna saw him give a tiny nod.

  ‘Are you sure, Joanna?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘Did you try to defend yourself?’

  Defend herself. Joanna shook her head. ‘I just tried to get away,’ she said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I ran to the door, but he slammed it.’

  The inspector got up and went out; for some reason that she couldn’t fathom, Joanna felt safer with him there.

  ‘Didn’t you try to fight back?’

  Joanna looked at her, at the clear brown eyes that watched her so closely. ‘You can’t fight back,’ she explained, to this woman who had never been in that position. For all Joanna knew, Sergeant Hill regularly waded into pub brawls and mad axe-men. But she had never been knocked off her feet by her own husband.

  ‘You must have been angry, Joanna.’

  ‘Angry?’ Joanna repeated, genuinely puzzled.

  The sergeant frowned. ‘Weren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I was frightened,’ she said. ‘Frightened.’

  The sergeant wrote that down. She wrote everything down. It was beginning to irritate Joanna.

  ‘What did you do after he’d gone upstairs?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But your parents had come home,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you see them?’

  ‘No. I didn’t leave the sitting room. I heard them come in, and then they went upstairs.’

  ‘And you stayed where you were?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘It would be about a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes,’ her father supplied. ‘We didn’t know any of this had happened, and we just went up to change. We thought—’ He broke off. ‘We thought Joanna was in her room,’ he said. ‘We didn’t want to disturb her.’

  The sergeant looked back at Joanna. ‘But you were downstairs all the time?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Until Daddy came in and found me.’

  ‘Why, Joanna?’

  ‘Look – is this really necessary?’ her father demanded.

  ‘Why?’ asked Sergeant Hill again.

  Joanna swallowed.

  ‘Why didn’t you come out when your parents came home? Why didn’t you tell them what had happened?’

  ‘Because—’ Joanna could feel her skin redden, as she tried to explain. ‘Because you feel ashamed,’ she said.

  *

  Eleanor quietly placed the pedal-car at the foot of the bed. The pale moonlight lit the room, with assistance from the snow, and for a second, she recalled exactly the moment of waking to find her stocking bulging and lumpy with presents.

  Tessa would be awake in a couple of hours, she told herself. It wasn’t sensible to stay up half the night worrying about something she couldn’t alter.

  She cried, as she watched Tessa sleep. If only Tessa had known him; if only he could have seen her. But the tears weren’t for Richard. He was beyond tears, and had been from the moment the car hit him. For a while, during the long evening, she had thought that she had been released from the crushing loneliness. George had needed her, and it had been so long since anyone at all had needed her.

  Tessa needed her, she reminded
herself, as she watched her turn, and sigh contentedly. But that was dependence, and that wasn’t the same. A two-year-old takes love where she finds it; she was as happy with her grandmother as she was with Eleanor. But George had needed her. Not someone who would feed him and clothe him, and keep him safe. He could do that for himself. He had needed her, and she had helped him. She hadn’t been able to help Richard, and that had been the worst part. It had been a long time since she had been able to offer rather than ask for help. It had been a step towards the open door, the light from which now paled the edges of her darkness.

  Today had been a turning point. But she shouldn’t have done what she did; she knew that even at the time, though she couldn’t have stopped herself. She had waited so long. So perhaps the tears were remorse. A brief moment of satisfaction, followed by the reckoning. The tears were for herself.

  She tucked the quilt round Tessa’s sleeping figure. Perhaps it hadn’t been the release she had longed for, but it had been a moment’s respite; she deserved that.

  And the tears were drying.

  They were taking the tumble-dried clothes out of the washing-machine. They had asked politely enough, and George had given his permission with a co-operative readiness that he did not feel. George watched the two constables who were carefully listing the clothes, then dragged his attention back to the inspector.

  ‘When did you and your daughter get back from the pub?’ he asked.

  ‘Just before ten,’ said George quickly, not looking at Joanna. ‘Joanna was tired, so we left a little earlier than usual.’

  ‘And you came straight home?’

  ‘Yes,’ said George. ‘But as Joanna said, we were locked out. Surely that’s important?’ he asked. The inspector hadn’t seemed terribly interested. ‘It wasn’t accidental,’ he said. ‘We never lock the doors.’

  ‘Never?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s still no need to lock doors in Byford. Not the vicarage doors, at any rate. We’ve nothing here worth stealing.’

  ‘But you still think someone came in to steal tonight?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘I think we had an intruder,’ George said carefully. ‘When whoever it was went into Joanna’s room, Elstow presumably startled him. And for some reason, he must have locked the doors when he left.’