‘My God,’ says Natalka. ‘She’s the next victim.’
‘I hope not,’ says Harbinder. ‘But I should talk to her. The only problem is that she’s going to a literary festival in Aberdeen tomorrow.’
‘Are you going to go to Aberdeen to question her?’ says Natalka.
‘I’d love to,’ says Harbinder. ‘I went to Scotland last year and it was beautiful. But I’ve got too much work to do here.’
‘Aberdeen is a long way away,’ says Natalka.
She’s wondering if it’s too far for the white Ford Fiesta.
15
Benedict
Two Candles
‘WE CAN’T GO to Aberdeen,’ says Benedict.
‘Why not?’ says Natalka.
‘We can’t just go charging round the country interviewing suspects. Besides, it’s miles away.’
‘I think it would be fun,’ says Edwin.
Benedict and Natalka exchange glances. Benedict knows that it hadn’t occurred to either of them that Edwin would want to come too. Edwin is only with them because he suddenly decided to go to mass that morning, to light a candle for Peggy. Benedict met him at Seaview Court and they walked to church together. It had been a surprise to find Natalka waiting for them outside afterwards.
Benedict has been attending this church since moving to Shoreham two years ago. It’s one of the things he likes about Catholics. He’s been going every Sunday and, although the elderly Irish priest always smiles and says hallo, no one has tried to get him involved with parish life. His friend, Richard, a priest who was once a Protestant vicar, says that, in the C of E, they have you arranging flowers and volunteering for Sunday School before you can say ‘amen’. Benedict knows that, if he went for coffee in the parish hall after mass, people would be friendly to him and someone would definitely try to sell him tickets for the Catholaity bazaar, but the parishioners seem to understand that he wants to be left on his own. It’s funny, Benedict is not normally a fan of his own company, but he has always liked hearing mass on his own. Even when he was a teenager, he used to sneak away to the Saturday evening service the way some of his contemporaries blagged their way into bars and nightclubs. When his mother found out about his mass habit, she threatened to take him to a psychiatrist.
It was very different going to church with Edwin. For a start, Edwin was tired after the walk and needed to sit down on a bench outside for five minutes. Several well-meaning people came up to them, asking if they were all right and offering helping arms. Then, when they finally got inside, Edwin wanted to sit at the front so he could hear. Benedict’s usual seat is in the back row, near the exit and the holy water stoup. It felt much more public at the business end of the church. The two nuns in front of them turned round and said hallo. A family sat behind them and Benedict found himself returning dropped toys and children’s missals. By the time the bell rang, he was on smiling terms with the whole family. Edwin and Sister Lucrezia were getting on famously.
After mass, they lit two candles for Peggy. Benedict put a pound coin in the slot marked ‘offerings’ and tried to say a prayer. ‘Eternal rest give unto her, Oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her . . .’ But Peggy herself kept coming between him and the words: her dauntless gaiety, her double espresso with hot milk on the side, her pink beret, her way of saying his name with an Italianate emphasis on the first syllable. What would she be saying if she could see them now? ‘Religion is the opium of the people’, probably. But she would have been pleased that they were thinking about her. Next to him, Edwin’s eyes are shut and his lips are moving.
Benedict said a prayer for Dex too. He remembered the confident, basso-profundo voice saying, ‘Bye, Ben. See you around.’ No one knows the day or the hour, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. He was glad, in a way, that Dex didn’t know, that he had a convivial evening in the pub and then went home, expecting a peaceful night and another morning. But, if he had known, maybe he could have protected himself. Don’t the Scriptures also tell you to ‘stay awake’ and ‘be ready’?
‘Shall we go?’ said Edwin.
In the porch, Father Brendan came towards them, hell-bent on friendliness.
‘Is this your father?’ he said, shaking Edwin’s hand.
‘No, just a friend,’ said Benedict.
‘Sure, and friendship is very precious.’
It was at this moment that Benedict spotted Natalka, sitting on the wall and vaping furiously. She’s trying to give up smoking.
They walked back together, stopping to look at the sea and for Edwin to get his breath back. It was a lovely morning and the promenade was busy: families with pushchairs, children on roller skates, elderly couples wrapped up against the autumn chill, a variety of dogs accompanied by a variety of owners. Benedict would like a dog but pets aren’t allowed in his digs. Edwin watched the scene with a smile that was at once sweet and slightly sad. This was when Natalka suggested the Aberdeen trip.
‘What about work?’ says Benedict.
‘I’m on a zero hours contract,’ says Natalka. ‘I can take time off.’
‘What about me?’
‘You can shut the Shack.’
‘I never shut it.’
‘It’s shut today, isn’t it?’
Benedict has no answer for this. He knows that he’s almost alone in believing that Sunday is a day of rest.
‘It’s a long drive,’ says Edwin, ‘but we could stop for the night in Northumberland. I love the border country.’
‘I don’t mind,’ says Natalka. ‘I like driving.’
‘Did you tell Harbinder that you were planning to see Julie Monroe?’ asks Benedict. He is worried by how quickly Edwin is turning this into a road trip.
‘We talked about it,’ says Natalka evasively. ‘She wanted to go herself but she’s too busy with the Dex Challoner case.’
‘Did you tell her what Maria said about Dex’s mother?’
‘Yes,’ says Natalka. ‘She thought it was an important clue. We both agreed that you should read the book and find out what it meant.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ says Benedict. He imagines the two women laughing about him, bookish ex-monk Benedict. For a moment, he surprises himself with a desire to impress them both with some reckless, mindless act of bravery. The trouble is he can’t even imagine what this might be . . .
‘You’ll have to take regular breaks, Natalka.’ Edwin is still thinking about the drive. ‘We must stop at service stations. They even do quite good coffee these days.’
‘I could share the driving,’ says Benedict, although he hasn’t driven in years. But it’s his way of accepting the inevitable.
* * *
BENEDICT HOPES THAT they might all have lunch together but, invigorated by the sea air, Edwin goes back to Seaview Court to research routes to Aberdeen (he is proud of his prowess as a silver surfer, even though he does refer to it as ‘the interweb’). Natalka accompanies Benedict as far as the high street but then slouches away to meet unspecified ‘friends’. Benedict goes to a café where he tries to eat a mushroom risotto mindfully. Even taking twenty seconds a bite, it’s only one thirty by the time that he’s finished. He walks slowly back to his digs, looking in the shops on the way. Most of them, unlike the Shack, are still open. He wanders into one of the many charity shops to look for a book. He’s irritated to see that the books are artfully arranged by the colours of their jackets. Books should be arranged by size or author or genre, not just because the woman on the front is wearing a red dress. Then he looks closer. One red book has black lettering on the spine and he sees the word ‘heaven’ (he thinks that he has a particular antenna for cosmological language). Thank Heaven Fasting by Sheila Atkins.
Back in his room, he makes himself a coffee, sits at the desk by the window and opens a notebook. He’s going to read this book in a methodical, Peggy-like way. Even so, he imagines his father saying, ‘That’s no way for an adult man to spend a Sunday.’ His father had always disapproved of reading for
its own sake, rather than as a means towards passing exams. Benedict’s older brother, Hugo, did very well in exams (better than Benedict) but afterwards never opened a book in public. What is Hugo doing now? Probably playing rugby for the over thirties, before going home to roast beef with all the trimmings. ‘Celia always does a proper Sunday lunch,’ Benedict’s mother said once, approvingly, and Benedict doesn’t expect that his sister-in-law has let the fact that she gave birth to a son four months ago affect her domestic goddess status.
Thank Heaven Fasting is a strange book. It’s about a woman called Adrienne who takes a job as a companion to a wheelchair-bound aristocrat in the South of France. There are some rather wonderful descriptions of the Riviera which make Benedict nostalgic for holidays that he has never had. The aristocrat, Lady Fitzroy (we never learn her first name), seems determined to make Adrienne marry her dissolute nephew, Giles. Adrienne, though reluctant, does so only to find Giles murdered and herself the main suspect. Benedict speed reads the next bit to find the twist in the tale. Lady Fitzroy and Adrienne planned it together so that Adrienne would inherit Giles’ money and Lady Fitzroy would be free of her detested relative (it’s never quite explained why she hates him so much). Lady Fitzroy was the killer, exploiting the fact—known only to Adrienne—that she was actually perfectly able to walk. The book ends with Adrienne emigrating to America and Lady Fitzroy walking to the beach where she is either going to swim or drown herself.
It’s dark by the time that he has finished and the lighthouse beam is beginning its slow sweep across the harbour. Benedict looks down at his notes to see that he has only written ‘France?’ There must be more to it than that. Why was this book so important that it was stolen at gunpoint? Why was Peggy’s clue about Weronika to be found in its pages? Benedict tries to organise his thoughts, to approach things logically. On one level, the book is about the difficulties encountered by single women in the nineteen thirties. Benedict supposes this is where the title quotation comes in. In As You Like It Rosalind (disguised as a man) tells Phoebe the shepherdess to be grateful for Silvius’s love: ‘down on your knees, And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love.’ Giles isn’t a good man but Adrienne is meant to be eternally grateful for the chance to marry him. Marriage and, soon afterwards, widowhood, gives Adrienne the status she craves. Lady Wheeler is also a rich widow but, as an elderly woman on her own, she too is trapped. Benedict supposes that this is symbolised by the wheelchair. Both women achieve their freedom by murdering a man. On another level, it’s a murder mystery with a thoroughly modern unreliable narrator. Sheila Atkins breaks several of the laws of crime writing, though, including having the narrator conceal things from the reader. As a Who Done It, the book is a failure. As a psychological thriller, it is slightly more interesting.
It really is an unusual book, thinks Benedict; even more extraordinary for having been published in 1938. What is the message? Is Peggy Lady Wheeler? Is Dex Giles? But then who is Adrienne? He opens his laptop and googles Sheila Atkins. Sheila May Atkins, born 7 April 1912, died 10 October 2012. Goodness, she’d been a hundred when she died. There are very few biographical notes on Wikipedia. Born in Guildford, Surrey, the author of ten crime novels. The titles are listed below:
Give Me the Daggers 1935
The Eye of Childhood 1936
A Painted Devil 1937
Thank Heaven Fasting 1938
Where Is Thy Lustre Now? 1950
The Prince of Darkness Is a Gentleman 1952
Pale Hecate’s Offerings 1955
A Burnished Throne 1960
Sea Change 1970
Rounded with a Sleep 1972
All the books are now out of print but some of the covers are reproduced, garish images that Benedict is sure do not reflect the stories inside. The cover of Thank Heaven Fasting shows a blonde in a red evening dress (Adrienne is described as dark) embracing a moustachioed gallant in a dinner jacket. As far as Benedict remembers, there had been no such embrace in the book. Giles’ proposal had been sealed by a ‘chilly kiss on the cheek’. Is there a clue in the titles, in the first words or first letters? Benedict scribbles for a few minutes but the best he can come up with is Give me the eye of a painted devil. Peggy was the one who liked crosswords, anagrams and word puzzles. She would have solved it in minutes but, of course, if she were there she could just tell him the answer straight out. ‘Oh, Peggy,’ he says aloud, ‘why did you have to be so clever?’
Sheila had started young, her first book published when she was only twenty-three. Then there had been several books, one a year for a while, and then a gap for the war years. Three books in the fifties, one in the sixties, then two in the seventies. Nothing else. Sheila Atkins had lived another thirty-odd years but had never written—or never published—another book. Is there a significance in the last two titles? Do they signify a change of some kind? They are both from The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play, and the final one is from Prospero’s epilogue, often thought to be Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
It really is beautiful, thinks Benedict. Perhaps he should have studied English literature, as his teachers had wanted, rather than going into the priesthood. He had good enough grades, he could have gone to university. Maybe he still could? But now is not the time for thinking about Shakespeare’s lyricism, now is the time for catching a murderer. He can’t deny a twinge of excitement at the idea that he, the former Brother Benedict, could even be having such an internal conversation.
Could Peggy have known Sheila Atkins? It’s possible although Sheila was at least twenty-five years older. Had they known each other during Peggy’s time in the civil service? But there’s no career history for Sheila. No husband or children either. Doesn’t mean she didn’t have them, of course.
Benedict googles ‘Peggy Smith’. Once he has discounted Peggy Sue Got Married and several Peggy Lee clips, there are only a few Peggys left, mostly of a certain age. His own Peggy is not there. She’s that rare creature, a person without a social media footprint. There’s only one photograph, a blurry picture of a group of women around a table. ‘Seaview Court Christmas Lunch 2008’ reads the caption and it’s been posted on the Seaview Court Facebook page. The page seems to have been dormant since 2009 and there are no more photographs. Benedict peers at the image of Peggy, who is wearing a pink paper hat. Next to her is another grey-haired woman who clearly has no truck with festive headgear. Is that Weronika? Benedict could imagine her being a resistance fighter.
He googles Weronika Challoner and the same picture pops up. There’s nothing else apart from the fact that Weronika once addressed the Lancing WI on ‘Life in Wartime Poland’. Benedict assumes that she missed out the part about being a schoolgirl assassin although, remembering his mother’s stories of the WI, maybe not. Had Weronika and Peggy known Sheila Atkins? Why did Peggy say that she knew someone who would be glad that Weronika was dead? What was the clue hidden in these strange, out-of-print books?
He gives up and starts searching for cheap hotels in Aberdeen.
16
Harbinder
TBR
‘IT’S NOT WHAT I was expecting,’ says Neil.
‘What were you expecting?’ asks Harbinder. ‘Solid gold books? People in togas declaiming poetry at you?’
‘No,’ says Neil, with dignity. ‘I just thought that a publishing company would be more . . . well, bookish. More like a
library.’
‘When did you last go to a library?’ says Harbinder. ‘They’re information hubs these days.’ But she thinks she knows what Neil means. Seventh Seal was a small publisher that was bought by a much larger conglomerate, and now functions as an imprint within that company. Their offices are faceless and corporate. They wait in reception surrounded by low sofas and cases which display books behind glass as if they are dangerous reptiles. Neil is nervous, jiggling his leg and fiddling with his phone. To get away from him, Harbinder goes to look at the books. ‘New Releases’ says the sign. High Rise Murder is there. Will they take it down? she wonders. Maybe they’ll drape it with black cloth like they do in churches. Then she sees the book beside it.
‘Neil!’
‘What is it?’
He lumbers over, more like a bear than a woodland animal.
She points at the book, which is displayed face outwards. It Was You by J. D. Monroe. It’s the same loopy writing, the same vaguely Tuscan scene on the cover.
‘J. D. Monroe,’ says Harbinder. ‘Julie Monroe. She got one of the threatening postcards too.’
‘Excuse me,’ says a soft voice. ‘I’m Tamsin, Miles’s assistant. Would you come with me, please?’
They pass through security gates that wouldn’t be out of place in an airport and whoosh upwards in a glass lift. Then Tamsin uses her lanyard to let them into an open-plan office full of people staring at their computer screens. It could be a larger version of the West Sussex CID rooms. Tamsin ushers them into a glass-walled meeting room where a bespectacled man is waiting for them.
Miles stands up to shake hands and Tamsin offers drinks. Harbinder and Neil both ask for coffee and Miles for herbal tea. Harbinder notices that Neil is too intimidated to ask for his usual two sugars.
The Postscript Murders Page 11