An Unholy Shame

by Joyce Cato

  Monica sighed. ‘So it seems,’ she said firmly, handing over the money and reaching for the shopping bag. And even Phyllis, given such a monumental hint, had to give it up as a bad job and let her go on her way.

  The killer was also up early and was now staring thoughtfully down at the long rectangular azure blue length of the indoor swimming pool.

  At this hour in the morning, only a few of the more hardy delegates were taking advantage of it to get in a few pre-breakfast lengths. Several of these called out a vague but cheerful ‘good morning’ to the figure strolling casually around the pool, and were rewarded with a brief smile.

  Surely there were possibilities here? After all, you heard of people accidentally drowning in private swimming pools every day, didn’t you? True, they were usually either children or drunken celebrities, but those were the only ones that the media ever bothered to report. The police must come across fatalities of ordinary citizens every day.

  But after one suspicious death already, nobody would be willing to believe that a second fatal accident had occurred. But the killer was beginning to accept the fact that, no matter what, that would inevitably be the case. No, a simple, straightforward killing, with no pretences or fancy touches, might just have to be the way to go.

  But even given that, how could you go about luring your victim down here when you could be sure that nobody else would be around to witness what happened next? A phone call might be recorded and a note might be retained by your target and found later by police.

  And it had to be harder than you thought to actually drown someone in a swimming pool, didn’t it? They would fight back and unless you could somehow manage to smash your victim’s head on the side of the tiles in order to incapacitate them, the margin for error was simply too great. Anything could go wrong.

  No, the killer thought, reluctantly abandoning the pool. As tempting as it might have seemed, there was no help here.

  Jason had driven through the early morning rain hours ago and had already gone through yesterday’s interview reports in fine detail. So he was glad when Flora arrived with some fresh data. If he had to read again who said what to somebody else just before Celia Gordon began to choke, he’d start climbing the walls.

  ‘Sir, something interesting on our Dr Grade. Or at least, about that rinky-dink museum he runs,’ Flora said, depositing one specific folder in his lap.

  Jason read it quickly. The report was of a break-in at the museum some time ago. ‘Nothing much taken it seems,’ he said, frowning slightly. ‘Why bother breaking in, then only taking a couple of Renaissance snuff boxes or whatever the hell they were?’ he demanded.

  Flora shrugged. ‘Probably thought they’d find something more worthwhile? Not all burglars are smart, sir. They might have thought a museum, any museum, would have valuable paintings or gold items or stuff like that.’

  ‘Hmm. I see his security arrangements weren’t up to much,’ he said, with a typical policeman’s scorn for inadequate means of crime prevention. ‘At least he had a better system installed afterwards,’ he added, then snorted. ‘Nothing like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

  ‘No sir. Still, I can’t see how it’s relevant to our inquiry though,’ Flora sighed.

  ‘No, neither can I,’ Jason admitted. Nevertheless, something about the report niggled him, and continued to niggle him all day.

  Sir Andrew Courtenay walked through the water meadow, his old, hand-made boots getting wetter and wetter. His head was down, his shoulders hunched, and he was oblivious to the brightening weather around him. Eventually he paused on the bank of the weed-strewn river and stared down into the water. Then he looked around vaguely.

  No fisherman lined the bank, and beyond, no villager walked a dog. He cast a look behind him, but saw only cows chewing the cud and staring at him curiously. Nervously, and a shade reluctantly, he reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He stood looking down at it for a few moments, a bleak look in the depths of his eyes, and then with a violent gesture threw it overhand far into the river.

  It floated for a short while in the current and then slowly sank.

  Sir Andrew stood for a few minutes longer as the clouds broke up overhead and the first rays of sun began to shine through. Then he turned and tramped heavily back to the manor.

  Breakfast was all but over when he stepped back into the lobby, and from the open French doors leading into the dining hall, the last scrapes of knives and forks on plates made his teeth tingle. As he made his way to the back of the hall and to the corridor leading to his private quarters, he noticed the lean, stooped, old man who came out of the dining hall.

  Archdeacon Pierrepont glanced up as Sir Andrew stepped back into the lobby. The old man glanced furtively around, then followed the squire into his private office.

  ‘Got rid of it then?’ Matthew Pierrepont asked gruffly, coming straight to the point.

  As Sir Andrew studied the old man in front of him, a vague look of distrust and fear seemed to cross his face.

  Sir Matthew Pierrepont didn’t like the look of it.

  ‘Yes,’ Sir Andrew said shortly. ‘And I suggest you never speak of it again. Not to me, nor to anyone else.’

  Sir Matthew gave a gruff, scornful laugh. ‘I’m not likely to, am I?’ he snorted. He had an egg stain on his shirtfront and ash in the turn-ups of his old trousers. He smelt of old man. With a hidden grimace of distaste, Sir Andrew moved behind his desk and sat down in a gesture of unmistakable exhaustion. He hadn’t slept again last night.

  ‘I’m not joking, Sir Matthew. You can’t brag about this. Or joke about it. You can’t mention it to any of your cronies, no matter how much you trust them, or think they’ll sympathize with our actions. You’ve got to keep your mouth shut. Firmly shut. Do you understand me?’ There was steel in his voice now, unmistakable and threatening.

  Sir Matthew straightened his stooped shoulders. His own eyes glinted. ‘You can rely on me, sir,’ Sir Matthew said gruffly. ‘I shan’t let you down.’

  Sir Andrew smiled wryly. He wasn’t much of a betting man, but if he had been, he wouldn’t have put much money on the surety of Pierrepont’s word.

  Back in the incident room, Flora was busy taking notes. ‘So, we’re building up a picture at last,’ Jason was saying. ‘The killer hears at breakfast on Saturday morning that Celia Gordon loves oranges and is allergic to nuts. There is both duck a la orange and an orange and citrus gateau on the menu for that night. We’ve confirmed that the menus on the tables included details for that evening’s dinner?’

  ‘Yes sir. Geoff Banks say they always do that – give out the menus for the whole day at breakfast time, I mean. He says it gives guests a chance to see what’s for dinner, and say if they don’t like the choices, order something different. That way the chef has a chance to prepare something else. Not that many guests do, it seems, since the range of choices is quite wide.’

  ‘Right,’ Jason said, waving a hand impatiently. ‘So our killer is instantly presented with a relatively easy way to do away with Celia Gordon. To make things even easier, he or she spots Graham Noble with a bag of peanuts that very lunchtime, either in the hall, when they’re discussing that blasted manuscript, or later in the lecture hall. We have confirmation of his story, right?’

  ‘Yes sir. A lot of people who attended the lecture said they saw him put the bag of peanuts on the blackboard. And no one recalls seeing him pick them back up again afterwards.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Jason said wryly. ‘They’re suddenly a very observant bunch, aren’t they?’ he drawled. But he was not really angry. It put Graham Noble, if not in the clear, then at least further down the list of likely suspects. ‘So, our killer waits until the hall is empty, then nips back and retrieves the nuts. That means the paste wasn’t made and put on the cake until after the lunch hour, not during, as we’d previously supposed. The chef says the sponges were out and cooling until 3.30 at least. Let’s say three 3.45 to make it simpler. Graham’s lec
ture ended at 3. That gives our killer half an hour. Come on, let’s time it and just make sure that it’s all feasible.’

  Jason had a bag of peanuts on him, having bought some earlier and knowing that he’d be going through this reconstruction later. Together, the two police officers went upstairs to an empty bedroom that Geoff Banks had allocated to them for this purpose. It was a typical guest bedroom, with double bed, velvet curtains and attractive furnishings.

  ‘Right. Here’s the bag of nuts,’ Jason said, holding it aloft, and looking around the well-appointed room. ‘Our killer needs to make a paste to go on a sponge. How easy would it be? There’s a little mini-bar, for a start. When we’ve got the analysis back from the lab we’ll know whether or not there was any alcohol mixed in with it. We’ll say, for argument’s sake, that there was. It would help disguise the taste. What else would he or she need?’

  ‘Well, here’s a big round glass ashtray sir,’ Flora picked one up. ‘And a cup and saucer. We’ve got a kettle and sugar on the complimentary tea-and-coffee tray,’ she pointed them out.

  ‘Right.’ Jason emptied some of the nuts into the glass ashtray, then using the bottom of the cup as a pestle, quickly ground the nuts to a fine mush. He then boiled the kettle, added some sugar and the hot water and a dash of spirits to the mix, and with the teaspoon, got to work. Within a few minutes he had a fine peanut paste which could be easily spread onto a sponge cake.

  ‘Time?’ he asked.

  Flora checked her watch. ‘Just under ten minutes, sir.’

  ‘Right. Plenty of time to go downstairs and into the kitchen. We don’t need to go down there again – we’ve already seen what a mad house that is.’

  ‘Right, and that little dog-leg arrangement of rooms down there must have been a real bonus,’ Flora added grimly.

  ‘It’s almost certain that the killer must have scouted the area earlier and already knew about the sponges cooling on the trays,’ Jason was thinking hard, ‘or else he or she would be going down there blind, just on the off chance that they’d be able to infect something. And that sounds too iffy to me.’

  ‘Right,’ Flora agreed. ‘So we know how it was done, and roughly the timing. We know Graham Noble unknowingly provided the murder weapon. We know they all knew about Celia’s allergy.’

  ‘With a few possible exceptions,’ Jason reminded her carefully. It sounded good, but in reality … ‘OK, what we need to do now is re-question the chambermaids. It’s a long shot, but someone may have noticed something. I doubt we’ll get much joy out of rifling the bins for empty booze bottles – I’ll bet half the conference has got through the contents of their complimentary mini-bar by now.’

  Flora grinned.

  ‘What we need them to concentrate on is anything unusual – cups or ashtrays or anything else the killer might have used, that were unusually dirty.’

  ‘Or smelt of peanuts?’ Flora put in.

  ‘Hell no,’ Jason said quickly. ‘Ask them that, and they’ll suddenly be “remembering” how everything smelt odd, from so-and-so’s shoes to somebody else’s aftershave lotion. No, let’s keep it simple.’

  ‘Sir,’ Flora said. Then, ‘But surely the killer will have cleaned up after himself? I mean, he’d hardly be likely to leave traces of peanut paste in his or her room.’

  Jason sighed heavily. ‘I know it. If we could just get forensics in! But we can’t do that until we know whose room to concentrate on. We’d never get a judge to give us a warrant to search every room. Damn, I wish we didn’t have to tread so carefully around these people.’

  ‘Civil rights apply to vicars, too, sir,’ Flora muttered sympathetically. ‘I can just see the newspaper headlines now if we get it wrong.’

  Jason laughed. So could he! ‘Mind you, I can’t see anybody suing us for wrongful arrest. They’re more or less obliged to turn the other cheek, aren’t they?’

  Flora laughed again. ‘I knew there had to be a plus side to all this somewhere, sir.’

  Jason scratched the side of his nose thoughtfully. ‘It still seems fantastic to me,’ he muttered, suddenly sombre again. ‘This whole thing, I mean. Vicars killing vicars. And let’s just picture the scene down in the kitchen for a minute. The killer has the paste. He or she has to sneak down to the kitchen without being seen. Has to get into that little side room and apply the paste. The killer must have heard them all in the kitchen just yards away, and knew someone could walk in on him at any minute.’

  ‘There were plenty of places to hide though, sir,’ Flora pointed out. ‘You said so yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but even so. The sheer gall of it. The risk. The killer must have been desperate. And why was he so desperate?’ Jason stared at his sergeant in frustration. ‘That’s what I can’t get hold of. What was it that Celia Gordon did, or said, or knew that made her so dangerous to somebody?’

  Flora scratched her head with the end of her ballpoint pen. ‘It might have been brewing for some time, sir,’ she said, but without much conviction. ‘Something in her past perhaps?’

  Jason sighed. ‘In which case, why wait until now to kill her? This peanut business has all the hallmarks of a hastily constructed, ad hoc killing to me. But even if the killer knew before coming here about her allergy, why wait until now to do it?’

  ‘Because he’d have a house full of other suspects to divert suspicion from himself perhaps?’ Flora hazarded, but again without much conviction.

  Jason sighed. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. We have no one here from her past on hand to kill her, right? We’ve got someone down in Bath checking that that’s so?’

  ‘Yes sir. No one who knew her down there has followed her up here as far as we can tell.’

  ‘Right. So it’s not likely to be something to do with her life or work in Bath. But on the other hand, we’ve got no motive for anyone here to want to kill her either – they are all relative strangers to her. Except our old friend, the archdeacon, who may or may not be senile.’

  ‘Reverend Noble fits the bill,’ Flora said quietly. ‘He knew her before and he was here on the spot.’

  Jason shook his head. ‘Too tenuous. Besides, he might not be the only one. Jessica Taylor said she thought there was something going on between Celia and Sir Andrew. Could they have had an affair in the past? Something that turned sour? He’s been a widower for quite some time. And Celia was an ambitious sort of woman. She might have seen herself as lady of the manor as a mean’s of climbing the old ecclesiastical ladder.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Flora said dubiously. ‘It seems to me like we’re clutching at straws there.’

  ‘And how,’ Jason agreed ruefully. ‘Nevertheless, get those chaps who are running down the background on Sir Andrew to dig a little deeper. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.’

  Flora wasn’t about to argue. She’d seen the Chief Inspector prove himself right far too often to ignore his gut instincts now.

  The killer stumbled upon the old boathouse more or less by accident. Disconsolately wandering around the grounds in search of inspiration, the side of the weathered timbered wood had peeped through the greenery.

  It had obviously not been in use for some time, for stinging nettles were growing around the door that had once been securely padlocked, but time, warping the old wooden doors out of shape, now rendered such security pointless.

  The killer eased between the gap and found another world inside – a green-dappled, dank smelling world, where precarious decking led out to an entrance onto the river and old, mouldering canoes and kayaks lay rotting, scattered around the base of the lichen and moss-covered walls.

  What a pity the conference centre didn’t have this place up and running. There had to be possibilities in a boating accident, surely?

  And then the killer thought. Did there really though? Even supposing the boats were in good working order, and the facilities did include river trips, what good would it have done? You could only fit two to some canoes, and even in the bigger boats, three or four
at most. Which meant, if you managed to get your victim into a two-boat canoe and only one of you came back, you might just as well hand yourself over to the police then and there. After all, who else could be responsible?

  And if you got into a bigger boat, how on earth did you manage to hoist someone overboard and drown them without your fellow passengers noticing?

  With a cry of rage, the killer stormed out of the boathouse and tramped alongside the river, hands clenching into fists, impotent rage making purple and red lights flash across eyes screwed shut in frustration.

  Time is running out! I have to think of something. I have to do something.

  The killer’s opened eyes then alighted once more on the river. It was a pretty river, and looked deep in places. Lime-green weed swayed like a maiden’s hair in the current. White-flowering water crowsfoot littered the surface and dragonflies darted everyone. It was a picturesque, delightful place.

  Slowly, tentatively, the killer began to smile.

  Monica smiled across the table. ‘Have another biscuit.’

  Jessica laughed and patted her flat stomach. ‘Better not. They’re lovely though, did you bake them yourself?’

  ‘Good grief no,’ Monica laughed. ‘I’m no whizz in the kitchen. I used to be in advertising!’

  For the next half-hour, they talked about Monica’s previous life in London and the way she’d coped, exchanging that lifestyle for a totally different one as a rural vicar’s wife. From there it was a short step to Jessica’s own married life, her work in her mother-and-child clinic, and thence to her lecture for the conference and the events there during the last 48 hours.

  When Jessica left an hour later, she didn’t realize it, but she’d given Monica huge chunks of information that she didn’t have before. Information about what was said and done from the time Celia arrived until the fateful dinner that Saturday night, about the rumours of Sir Matthew Pierrepont’s past sins, about the constraint between Celia and Sir Andrew. And, although Jessica had no idea that she’d given this impression, her own dislike of Arthur Bryce and his very attractive wife, Chloe.