An Unholy Shame

by Joyce Cato

  Soft silt and mud squeezed instantly between Monica’s toes and a cold shiver shot up her spine.

  ‘Oh crikey!’ Jessica said beside her, clinging onto the grass on the bank, precariously half in and half out of the water.

  Monica found herself laughing helplessly. From the riverbank, Carole Anne watched them suspiciously. ‘Mum, is it really cold?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Er… no sweetheart,’ Monica lied shamelessly. ‘It’s what’s called bracing.’

  She caught Jessica’s rolling eyes and hastily looked away. ‘They say it’s best to do it all at once,’ Monica said helplessly. ‘Just throw yourself in and submerse yourself all in one fell swoop. Apparently it’s harder doing it bit by bit.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Jessica muttered. The two women looked at each other, then turned and saw a white-haired lady cleric swim serenely by (who must have been seventy if she was a day) and suddenly rather shame-faced, the two women pushed away into near identical breast-strokes.

  Monica managed to refrain from swearing like a trooper, but only by biting her bottom lip – hard! Beside her, Jessica began saying the Lord’s Prayer under her breath.

  ‘Here I come!’ Carole Anne said, and Monica turned just in time to see her daughter take a running jump and do a cannon-ball landing between them. In her defence, she didn’t have the breath to cry out a warning, and besides, it would have been far too late anyway.

  Carole Anne’s sleek silver-blonde head popped up between them and her shuddering daughter promptly showed that she had no trouble in swearing at all. Behind her, a large, florid-faced, middle-aged canon from Northumberland lazily interrupted his amateur crawl to grin over at her admiringly.

  ‘Haven’t heard language like that since I was a Padre in the navy, young lady,’ he complimented her.

  Monica felt herself go scarlet. ‘Carole Anne!’ she finally found her breath.

  ‘Well! It’s p-p-perishing,’ Carole Anne shot back.

  ‘Start swimming then and warm up,’ Monica said tartly. ‘In fact, that’s probably good advice for all of us,’ she added to Jessica, who needed no prompting.

  And so for the next five minutes the three of them proceeded to swim about twenty yards downstream before turning and fighting their way back up, against the current. Luckily all the self-respecting fish, toads, and newts had long since departed for a less noisy part of the river, and they were left with just the emerald and electric blue damozels and a very curious orange-tip butterfly that almost landed on Carole Anne’s nose.

  They carefully skirted a large patch of lime-green floating river weed as Sir Andrew cut past them, doing a very fast and rather professional-looking crawl.

  Up on the bank, Monica saw Bishop Bryce and his wife arrive. She was not surprised to notice that Chloe Bryce was wearing a streamlined, professional-looking black swimming costume, and watched as the elegant woman effortlessly tucked her hair into a sleek black swimming cap and duck-dived cleanly into the water with barely a ripple. She swam several yards below the surface before coming up for air, and didn’t seem at all affected by the sudden drop in her body temperature.

  Her husband, chunkier around the middle, but also clad in black, slid more cautiously into the water and swam much more hesitantly out to join his wife.

  ‘Oh you finally made it, then,’ Monica heard an old man’s voice say, and from where she and Jessica were treading water whilst waiting for a pair of swimmers to pass them by, she looked up to see Archdeacon Pierrepont greet another man.

  The newcomer was vaguely familiar – silver-haired, and like Arthur Bryce, looking rather chunky around the middle in a pair of white swimming trunks. She finally placed him as the man from the museum – the one who was overseeing the loan of the famous old manuscript.

  Dr Simon Grade, Monica thought with a look of surprise and concern, looked almost ill. He was pale and sweating and the smile he managed to summon up for the archdeacon was pitiful indeed. ‘Oh yes, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Simon said. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me. Er… . You’re not swimming yourself I see,’ he added, rather unnecessarily, since the archdeacon was wearing a long, scarlet-trimmed black cassock.

  The elderly cleric waved his curious long hooked pole in the air. ‘No, no. Rheumatism and all that,’ the older man said. ‘But don’t let me keep you, young fellah. Have at it,’ he said, with a rather cruel smile, sweeping his hand out encouragingly towards the water.

  Monica could clearly see that his companion looked at the river with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, and she could well image that the academic was probably one of those men who probably abhorred all sports, and hearty, healthy, outdoor sports most of all.

  ‘Oh, er, yes, of course.’

  Not wanting to watch the poor man struggle down the bank and then flop about like a stunned fish when the temperature of the river water registered, Monica turned and swam fast to catch up with Jessica, who was now just a little ahead of her.

  Carole Anne swam briskly and competently past, quickly out-pacing her mother. Monica didn’t mind. Now that she’d had a chance to acclimatize to the river, she was beginning to enjoy herself. As were those around her. A makeshift game of water polo seemed to be taking place a little further downstream and she noticed that Sir Andrew was still swimming steadily up and down, having clearly delegated himself as a lifeguard.

  Monica had just caught up with Jessica by the large patch of river weed again, when it happened. One moment she was doing her usual, less than efficient over-arm crawl and the next she was suddenly pulled under water. She was so taken aback that, luckily, she gasped automatically in surprise, and thus took in a good lung-full of air. Finding her head suddenly underwater, she panicked a bit and instantly closed her eyes. Not the best of swimmers, she thrashed her legs about spasmodically as the water, closing over her ears, muted the sound of the other people around her, but amplified the fast thud-thud-thud of her own elevated heart-beat.

  She could feel something slimy and cold around her calf and realised that she must have got too close to the river weed, which had entangled her legs and must be pulling her under.

  For a moment, it seemed as if she simply couldn’t break free, and she knew a moment of stark, primordial terror. Then, all at once, it was as if the river let her go, and her head broke the surface. Opening her eyes again she took a deep, shuddering breath. The sunlight had never looked so bright or so welcome. Using a shaky hand, she brushed her dark hair out of her eyes.

  ‘Mum, are you all right?’ It was Carole Anne’s voice, and she turned with relief to see her daughter’s concerned face as she swam up to her. ‘I saw you suddenly disappear. Did you mean to do that?’

  Monica gave a shaky little laugh. ‘I’m fine. And no, I didn’t. I think some weed… . Jessica!’ she broke off as her friend, who’d been alerted by Carole Anne’s sharp call to her mother and had come swimming over, suddenly likewise abruptly disappeared from view.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s going on?’ Carole Anne muttered, and taking a deep breath, quickly bobbed down out of sight. Since Monica knew that her daughter swam like a fish, and liked going underwater, she didn’t panic. Besides, Carole Anne had clearly done so of her own free will.

  She did a quick full circle turn, anxiously scanning for the dark-haired colour of her friend’s head, and a moment later, both Jessica and Carole Anne popped up again. Carole Anne was holding on to Jessica Taylor firmly. The older woman started to cough.

  Monica somewhat clumsily splashed over to them. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked her friend.

  Jessica looked pale, and coughed up a bit more river water. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she croaked, obviously lying. ‘I felt something cold and slippery around my leg, and then I was under water. It felt like something was deliberately pulling me down! It was scary, I can tell you.’

  ‘I know just how you feel,’ Monica said, with feeling, and looked at her friend anxiously. ‘There must be a really bad patch of weed around here. Perhaps it’s tim
e to get out now anyway,’ she added, seeing Jessica was struggling for breath.

  ‘Good idea,’ her friend agreed.

  Carole Anne gave her mother a long look as together, with Jessica between them, they slowly made their way to the bank. They let Jessica get out first, helping her up the bank, as her legs were clearly feeling a bit wobbly, and then followed her to where she’d left her towel.

  ‘Oh, the sun’s lovely and warm,’ Jessica said, still a little shakily. ‘I think I’ll lie down and sunbathe for a bit.’

  ‘Good idea. Is there anything I can get you?’ Monica asked. ‘Some lemon squash? I bought a flask with us.’

  ‘Thank you, I think I might just take you up on that. That river water tasted foul!’ Jessica laughed.

  ‘We’ll be right back,’ Monica promised, moving away to find her own spot and the wicker basket she’d left by the towels. As she did so Carole Anne, loping alongside her, said quietly, ‘You know Mum, when I went down after Jessica, I could have sworn there was another swimmer down there with us.’

  Monica, reaching for the flask of lemon squash in her bag, looked across at the teenager sharply. ‘What do you mean? Someone else caught in the weeds?’ she asked sharply. ‘Carole Anne, we need too… .’

  ‘No, no, don’t panic. I don’t mean anyone else in trouble. Just someone else swimming away from us. It was hard to tell, the silt had been all churned up. So I might have been wrong.’ Carole Anne shrugged, but her mother could tell the young girl looked both puzzled and faintly perturbed.

  Monica thoughtfully returned to her friend, and poured out a drink. As she did so, she let her eyes drift around.

  Over by the riverbank, Chloe Bryce and her husband were now sitting close together, but she noticed that neither of them was talking to the other. A little further away, Dr Simon Grade had also climbed out and was forlornly rubbing himself down with a towel. He still looked grim and now thoroughly depressed. Archdeacon Pierrepont was at the side of the bank, and the hook on his long pole was dripping wet. As he turned, Monica could see that a little green wisp of river weed was still clinging to the metal. And still swimming up and down, keeping careful watch, was Sir Andrew Courtenay. Who obviously couldn’t have noticed that first Monica and then Jessica had run into a bit of trouble. Which was odd, when you thought about it.

  Telling herself not to make a drama out of a crisis, Monica began to talk to Jessica about husbands, and the perils and pitfalls of trying to combine church work with the modern world.

  But beneath the laughter, she was worried. Very worried.

  CHAPTER 15

  The blackbirds were singing in the shrubbery as Graham opened his front door to a reddening sunset, and followed David Carew out onto the gravel-lined path.

  ‘Well, the conference is breaking up tomorrow,’ the bishop said, with more than a hint of relief in his voice. ‘Not that that’ll mean the end of things, of course,’ he added flatly. ‘The police …’ he let the sentence trail off with a heavy sigh.

  Graham knew how he felt. ‘The police, I suppose, asked everyone to stay on another day?’ The conference had, he recalled, originally been due to break up that afternoon.

  ‘So it seems,’ the bishop agreed, then held out his hand. ‘Well, Graham, take care.’

  Graham shook his bishop’s hand with a smile and a promise to do just that, then waited until he’d disappeared from sight before going back inside. There he found Monica sitting in the lounge, the television on, but her mind obviously not on the programme. She looked up swiftly.

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’ he asked, and not for the first time. When she’d returned home and told him what had happened at that afternoon’s impromptu wild-swimming event, he’d been deeply worried. In spite of her protestations that both she and Carole Anne were none the worse for their bit of fright, he wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Monica said, giving him a mock-scowl. ‘Don’t fuss. How did things go with the bishop?’ she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  Graham sighed heavily.

  ‘Problems?’ she interpreted sympathetically.

  Graham smiled. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  It didn’t strike Monica as at all odd that David had chosen her husband to come and tell all his woes to. So she listened gravely as he told her about the possible question mark hanging over the St Bede’s manuscript.

  ‘And if it is a fake,’ Monica said sadly, ‘won’t his critics crow?’ She knew the manuscript had been very much David Carew’s baby.

  ‘Not if they get it back,’ Graham said and wondered, even as he spoke, how realistically that could be hoped for. ‘And there’s something else worrying him. The big conference next year …’

  Again Monica listened intently as he told her about the competition for the chair between the murdered woman and Bishop Arthur Bryce, and about the rumours circulating about Arthur Bryce’s affair with one of his parishioners.

  ‘Do you really think Jason suspects him? Bryce, I mean?’ Graham asked when Monica had had time to digest this bit of news in silence.

  To his consternation, she merely shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’

  It hadn’t been what he wanted to hear. ‘But Monica, it’s just so … preposterous. Churchmen simply don’t go around killing off rivals in order to get promoted. Or at least, not in this day and age they don’t,’ he added darkly.

  Monica smiled. ‘No, it does seem a bit drastic,’ she agreed. ‘But Chloe Bryce would make a rather fine Lady Macbeth, don’t you think?’ she teased.

  Graham smiled. ‘Well, she’s obviously one hundred per cent behind her husband’s career,’ he agreed cautiously. ‘But even so …’

  Yes, even so, he was concerned and she understood that. Any major scandal affecting a member of his church was bound to shake him to the core. Monica reached for his hand and squeezed it comfortingly. ‘I know and I agree. I don’t think we’ve discovered the real motive yet,’ she said firmly, watching the worry lines that had creased his forehead slowly ease away.

  She kissed him gently and ran a finger across his cheek. ‘But we should have discovered the real reasons behind it by now,’ she added fretfully.

  Graham frowned at her, turning on the settee to look at her more fully. ‘What do you mean?’

  Monica shook her head restlessly. All day long she’d been going over all that she knew which, due to her various sources, was most of what Jason and his team also knew. And something told her that she should have some sort of a glimmering by now. So what was she missing? Or not seeing? Or at least, not seeing in the right way? She knew this feeling from the past. Twice before, she’d had this sort of tingling in the back of her mind that told her that she knew the identity of a killer. If only she would think about it.

  And, what’s more, someone had said something important to her only recently. Jessica Taylor, perhaps? Apart from the people she’d talked to on the Manor House lawns for the past two days, she’s spoken to Jessica the most. No. Perhaps it wasn’t Jessica after all. But somebody, somewhere had said something that … Oh, it was no use. It just wouldn’t come.

  Monica sighed heavily and hoped Jason was having better luck than she was.

  Just so long as he wasn’t building up a case against them.

  As it happened, Jason was building up a case against someone, but it was not the Nobles. It began with yet another routine report. It was Flora, going over the latest batch, who had suddenly caught her breath and stood up excitedly. ‘Sir, look at this.’

  Jason, who’d been staring at the clock and thinking about going home to a cook-in-a-bag dinner and the latest James Bond DVD felt his stomach clench at the excited tone in his sergeant’s voice. He held out his hand and quickly skimmed the report, surprised to discover that it was on Sir Andrew Courtenay, then found his eyes skidding to a halt at the mention of a certain name, as had Flora’s before him.

  There, in a dry-as-dust report about the death of the squire’s daughter,
was the information that she’d been married in Bath, by one Reverend Celia Gordon.

  Jason stared at the stark piece of information for several seconds then looked up at his sergeant. ‘Well, he kept quiet about that, didn’t he?’ he said softly.

  He supposed he should be feeling good right about now, or at least gratified. But he didn’t. A picture of the grieving man they’d met only briefly flickered at the back of his mind and haunted him, in some strange way.

  Flora nodded. ‘He did, sir,’ she agreed grimly. Something in her tone made Jason wonder if she was feeling as deflated as he did. Absurd as it was, he knew that neither of them wanted it to be Andrew Courtenay, but as police officers investigating a murder, such an attitude had to be stamped on. And quickly.

  ‘He said he’d never met her,’ Flora said flatly.

  ‘Not quite,’ Jason replied, recalling now what had struck him as so strange, when they’d first asked Sir Andrew if he’d met Celia Gordon before. ‘Didn’t he say something like … “I don’t know her” or “I never knew her”?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. I can look it up in the notes, sir,’ she said, but Jason was already shaking his head and getting to his feet.

  ‘No. But look out that report on his daughter’s accidental overdose again, will you?’

  For a few minutes, both of them re-read the report on the death of Sandra Jane Simmonds, nee Courtenay and that of her husband, Clive. The stark facts stated at the inquest hadn’t changed. It was the considered opinion of the police investigating the case that Clive Simmonds, a well-known user and sometime pusher, had procured a fatally large and unusually pure dose of heroin and that the consequent deaths of him and his wife had been recorded as an accidental overdose, rather than suicide. They’d both been found dead in their beds in the rather run-down semi that Clive’s parents had bought for them as a wedding present.

  ‘Sounds as if the Simmonds were fairly well to do, sir,’ Flora commented. ‘If they can afford to give their son a house, I mean. Even if they did then let it go to rack and ruin.’