The Reluctant Detective (Faith Morgan Mysteries)

by Ockley, Martha

  “That Don?” Faith had heard the name, but she’d never really been around enough to notice Sean’s friends. Then she wondered if Don had recognized her. If so, why hadn’t he said anything?

  The coincidences were unsettling. It was as if Winchester was reclaiming her. Sean gave her a lazy smile.

  “Good to see you.”

  “You too. We must catch up.”

  He glanced down the corridor leading back to Don. He grimaced.

  “Maybe not tonight, though. I was thinking of staying in town with Dad.”

  Sean’s father Brian had left Ruth when Sean was a baby. He was an ambitious IT salesman who had traded up to a wife whom he considered more suitable to his career path. Brian had always liked money. Faith had never thought much of him, but he was an amiable father. He and his latest wife had a townhouse in the centre of Winchester and they always welcomed Sean there.

  “Perhaps you could stay with Don,” she ventured.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll look in on him,” said Sean. “Are you staying around long?”

  “Another day or two at least,” Faith said. “We can catch up later. Maybe at your mum’s.”

  He looked a little dubious. “These coffees are getting cold.” He began to back away. “If you want some, the machine’s just round there. Ben’s there.”

  “Ben?”

  “Yeah. He’s on Don’s case – how’s that for weird, eh?” Sean did a neat about-turn without spilling the coffees, and disappeared.

  Weird indeed. Faith felt as if she had fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole – Sean appearing then disappearing down one elbow of the tubular corridor, and Ben waiting somewhere around the next bend.

  The coffee machine. And there was Ben leaning against the wall talking into his mobile.

  They exchanged a brief nod. He went on talking into the phone. Faith focused on getting her purse out of her bag. At last she rolled the coins into the slot. One slipped away from her. She bent over from the waist to pick it up, blood rushing to her face. As her fingers felt the coin, she realized her back was to Ben. She straightened up. Out of the corner of her eye she caught him looking away. The cup fell into the dispenser. She listened to the coffee being hosed into the plastic. Ben closed his phone.

  “Black, one sugar for me.”

  She hesitated.

  “I’ve got the money.” He made an elaborate gesture towards his pocket.

  She waved a hand and punched in the code. “I’ll treat you.”

  Faith sipped the hot coffee in silence. It was really quite disgusting.

  “Knew you couldn’t stay away.”

  “I’m with the bishop’s wife; she wanted to check on Don Ingram.”

  He looked down at her under his lashes, his eyes crinkling at the sides. She gave in.

  “Oh, all right! I’m curious. So it’s poison?”

  “Not officially. We’re waiting for the tests to come back – but yes. Looks like it. So much for Christian charity.”

  “It’s such an awful thing to do.”

  “Murder usually is.”

  “You know what I mean. Right there in the midst of the communion service, so public and so, well…”

  “…blasphemous?” Ben suggested, rolling his eyes. “So you don’t fancy one of the congregation?”

  “I can’t see a committed Christian…well, to murder a man at the height of the most important part of the service? It’s not just about the individual – it’s a direct insult to God.”

  “Perhaps the murderer thought Ingram had insulted God. Struck him down – a wrath of God thing.”

  “In Little Worthy?” Faith said, raising her eyebrows.

  He smiled down at her indulgently. “How did you ever survive four years in the force?”

  “Just because I don’t see criminals and psychopaths at every turn! I see people as they are.”

  “You keep on thinking that.” He lobbed his empty cup into the bin and half-turned away. He hesitated.

  “Heard you might be moving back this way,” he said.

  How could he have heard? They hadn’t spoken for nearly a year. At first there had been phone calls – but it just seemed too painful. They had tapered off to email and then the occasional postcard. He glanced at her. His eyes were such a vivid blue.

  “Sammy told me.”

  Sammy. Of course. Sammy was the wife of Ben’s first chief inspector, Eric. She was their last remaining link.

  “Saw Sean just now.” Ben interrupted her thoughts. “Looks like your family are well embedded in this case. You staying with Ruth?”

  “For a few days at least.”

  “And do I infer from your pastoral interest in young Ingram that I shall be seeing you around Little Worthy – for a few days at least?”

  Faith didn’t want to answer that.

  He leaned towards her with a grin. “You can be my spy in the camp,” he said, conspiratorially.

  Faith watched him walk away. I’m not your anything any more, she thought, and was annoyed with herself because that sounded wistful. And I certainly won’t be your spy, she assured herself firmly. Still, the prospect of divided loyalties lingered indigestibly.

  Then her mind returned to the question flashing in neon over them all. Who in Little Worthy could be mad enough to poison communion wine?

  CHAPTER

  4

  “I’M WORRIED ABOUT HER.” Ruth stood at the window of her compact kitchen, peeling onions under running water at the sink. She had moved into the house as a new build. She said she liked the convenience – everything at arm’s length. The kitchen reminded Faith of a doll’s house. She was slightly nervous of leaning against the fittings in case, being fully grown, she broke something. She was only a couple of inches taller, but at five foot four and slight with it, Ruth had always made much of her smaller size.

  “She seems fine to me,” Faith responded. Ruth worried about Mum perpetually. Faith took a sip of the wine she had brought. She’d stopped off to pick it up at the twenty-four-hour place on the roundabout on her way back from the hospital. Sunday trading. She supposed she ought to feel guilty, but there was no getting around it; it was convenient.

  “I want her to move back here, where I can keep an eye on her.” Ruth wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The water treatment wasn’t working too well. Her eyes were tearing.

  “She has her own life; her own friends. She likes it in Birmingham,” Faith responded soothingly. After their father died, five years ago, Mum had chosen to move back to Birmingham. Marianne Morgan had grown up in the city and she still thought of it as home, even though she had brought her daughters up in Winchester.

  Ruth was Faith’s elder by four years. Unlike Faith, who had gone off to college, she had married young and had Sean. She prided herself on her superior sensitivity and expertise in family matters. To her mind their mother, being now in her seventies, was in that phase in her life when she needed to be “looked after”. Faith never thought of her mother like that. In her eyes, Marianne was still the humorous, capable, self-reliant woman she had always been. They enjoyed each other’s company and Faith had been pleased to find a post in a neighbouring parish, near to her mother, for her first curacy.

  Despite her red eyes, Ruth cast her one of her superior big sister looks.

  “I know you only live down the road, but you’re so busy with the parish. I ring her every day. I don’t think she’s coping.”

  Here it comes, thought Faith.

  The phone rang in the hall.

  Ruth was scrabbling around for a tea towel to dry her hands. Faith went into the hall, grateful for the interruption.

  “I’ll get it,” she said as she picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Just the woman I was looking for,” the familiar voice said in her ear.

  “Ben.”

  In the kitchen, Ruth turned away. She had a smug look on her face.

  “The one and only.” He sounded as if he had been drinking. Faith looked at her o
wn glass on the hall table. Who was she to judge?

  “Thought you’d like to know. Had the prelims back. Looks like someone spiked the wine with pesticide.”

  “You sure? It couldn’t be a mistake? Contamination at the bottling plant…” As she spoke she knew how ridiculous it sounded. Ben’s silence at the other end spoke volumes. “I know, I know. Not likely.”

  “Not unless something’s wrong with the phones and congregations up and down the land have been suffering fatalities without mentioning it,” he said. She felt the corners of her mouth curving upwards, smiling against her will. The pause lengthened between them.

  “Found out anything I should know about?”

  The question jolted her back to reality. She was balancing over a rift: Ben and his investigation on one side, and the church in the persons of the bishop and the congregation of St James’s of Little Worthy on the other. She thought of what the bishop’s wife had said about the dispute with the neighbouring farmer. She felt uncomfortable about repeating it. She wasn’t sure of her facts. She wasn’t in the police force any more. It wasn’t her job to spy for Ben.

  “Nothing worth reporting.”

  “Right.” His tone was sarcastic. He knew her too well. “So what is it that’s not worth reporting? Come on. What did his holiness give up?”

  “Don’t. Bishop Anthony’s a good man. He deserves respect.”

  “All right. I’m sorry.” He sounded contrite. He’d always kept doing that; just when she was convinced he was impossible, he’d surprise her.

  “So what did he say?” Ben prompted.

  He never gave up.

  “It was nothing. There was just a mention that whoever farms next to the vicarage was upset about some church covenants he thought were restricting his use of the land. Just normal country stuff.”

  “Covenants?” Ben queried.

  “I’m not sure; I assume the land once belonged to the church and it was sold with a covenant on it restricting the uses the land could be put to,” Faith explained. “Perhaps the farmer’s not allowed to build on it. I don’t know. The bishop didn’t go into details. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “So why did it come up?”

  “The bishop’s wife suggested that Alastair Ingram had been a bit stressed.”

  “Suicide?”

  “No! Nothing like that.”

  “So what? Poison pen letters, shouting matches, vandalism…” He stopped. Sometimes Ben’s intuition was unnerving. “Vandalism?”

  “Just some manure dumped in the vicarage driveway one night. Childishness.”

  Ben was silent at the other end of the phone.

  “There’s no reason to think it connects,” Faith protested.

  “I’d better leave you to your evening. Supper with sister?” he asked cheekily. “Remember me to Ruth.” That was sarcasm. He had never really taken to Ruth – despite her being rather struck by him.

  “What are you…?” Faith began, but he had already rung off. She put the receiver back in the cradle with a snap. Ben always had to be unsettling.

  In the kitchen, Ruth was stirring hamburger ingredients in a large steel bowl.

  “So that was Ben,” her big sister said.

  Faith didn’t really want to talk about it.

  “I saw Sean at the hospital,” she said instead. “He was with Don Ingram, the murdered vicar’s son.”

  Ruth stirred vigorously. “They’re friends. Been friends since school and now they’re at uni together.”

  “That’s good. Uni can be a lonely place, everyone trying to impress each other.”

  Ruth plonked the bowl down on the surface and dug her hands into the mixture, bringing out a fistful of ground mince. She rolled it between her hands, patting it into shape. “I hardly see him at all anymore,” she said. “He used to ring twice a week, but now I’m lucky if we snatch five minutes in a month. Usually he doesn’t even pick up!”

  “You know what it’s like,” said Faith. “There are lots of distractions.”

  Ruth slapped the half-formed hamburger on the counter. “Mmm. But back to Ben.”

  Oh Lord!

  “So?” Ruth lay her freshly formed hamburger into the frying pan she had heating on the stove. “Ben. He’s here; you could move here. Have you finally come to your senses?”

  She wore a wry smile, but Faith knew that Ruth had never really understood why she broke up with Ben. In Ruth’s mind, Ben was a class-A catch: strong, decisive, handsome, a proper man. Ruth had never really got over being abandoned by Brian, either. For her little sister to throw away a catch like Ben – well, it was not only wasteful, but provoking. Faith understood that much.

  “Ruth, we don’t fit,” she said. Her sister looked a little impatient. Faith ploughed on. “We live in different worlds. He has his life; I have mine.”

  “You used to be in the same world.”

  Ruth was an atheist. She didn’t like imponderables. Faith sipped her wine, but didn’t want to get into an argument.

  Ruth flipped the hamburger, sending up a splash of hot fat that stung her on the inside of the wrist. She sucked it impatiently.

  “And I haven’t decided whether or not I’m moving yet. I don’t know whether I fit back here, either.” Faith fetched a piece of kitchen towel. She ran it under the cold water tap and pressed it to the round red burn on her sister’s wrist. “This mad tragedy at Little Worthy – well, it’s not really my business, and I don’t see there’s any reason why I should have anything much more to do with it.”

  “You’re just hanging around?”

  “I’m visiting my loving sister. I don’t need any other reason.” Faith banged her forehead softly against her sister’s thick hair.

  “Huh!” Ruth snorted through her nose and gave the hamburger a smack with her spatula.

  Faith went to bed early. Relaxed by a couple of glasses of wine, she drifted off in the narrow bed in the small spare room, for once oblivious to Ruth’s collection of Cabbage Patch dolls looming grotesquely from the shelf running around the dado rail.

  In the depths of the night, she stood again next to the stained altar cloth and peered down at Alistair Ingram’s crumpled form. Her head was buzzing. There was coloured light streaming in through the stained-glass window. Emerald green and yellow. Bishop Anthony stepped over the vicar’s body. “Here,” he said. “Take it.” She looked down at his hands and saw he was holding out the chalice. It was sticky with spilled wine. Up in the window, the stained-glass lamb smiled enigmatically. Its expression somehow reminded her of Ben. She gasped for air.

  “Phone!” She was being shaken. “Faith, wake up. The phone.”

  She opened her eyes and saw Ruth.

  “It’s past eight and the bishop is on the phone for you.”

  Faith sat up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Can I call him back?”

  “He’s waited this long. I’d take it,” said her sister unhelpfully, leaving the room. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  Faith slipped her feet into her pink Percy Pig slippers and padded to the phone. On her way down the stairs she stretched in an exaggerated yawn, hoping to wake up her vocal cords. Bishop Anthony probably never slept in.

  “I am sorry to ring first thing,” said the bishop briskly, “but I was hoping to have a word with you about Little Worthy.”

  Faith stared at the phone. Was she still dreaming?

  “I’ve had a chat with Bishop Michael and he says they can spare you.” Bishop Michael was her bishop back in Birmingham. “I was hoping that you might stay with us a while and fill in at Little Worthy – for the time being at least. This tragedy. The congregation need support, all the more so in the run-up to Easter. Since you happened to be…Are you there?”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. Just it is all rather sudden.”

  “Indeed.” Bishop Anthony was respectfully quiet for a moment.

  “But of course, I am happy to do anything I can to help,” Faith said.

  “Excellent!
We are lucky to have you. Perhaps you can come and have a chat. Today? Ten-ish? Would that suit you?”

  Faith looked at her wrist. Her watch was upstairs. What time was it? She felt dizzy, disorientated.

  “Fine,” she heard herself say.

  “I’ll see you at ten,” Bishop Anthony said, and rang off.

  She put the phone down and stared at it. What had she just agreed to? She’d spoken on instinct. She couldn’t take it back.

  Was I supposed to do that?

  Let’s find out.

  Bishop Anthony’s secretary was a dumpy woman with iron-grey hair who looked as if she found life a trial. She ushered Faith through a heavy oak door and retreated to answer a ringing phone.

  The room was lined floor to ceiling with bookcases crammed with files and leather-bound journals and books. The one uncluttered space was the upper half of the chimney breast. Beneath it, an ugly electric bar heater glowed within the shell of a Georgian fireplace. Bishop Anthony sat with his back to the window, behind an over-sized desk. He was not alone. A slim young clergyman with an intense expression and receding hair cropped close was sitting in one of a pair of green wing armchairs upholstered in a durable acrylic bouclé.

  “Faith – so glad you could join us.” Bishop Anthony emerged from behind the solid mass of his desk to greet her with warmth. “Let me introduce you to George Casey, our diocesan press officer.”

  Casey had clear eyes and the even tan of a fair-weather sailor. He rocked out of the upholstered depths to grasp the tips of her fingers in a brief, snapping grip before dropping back into his seat as if to indicate that there were more pressing matters at hand.

  “George was hoping to catch a word with you about the situation at Little Worthy,” explained the bishop as he waved Faith into the second chair.

  “I’ve no need to emphasize, I am sure, the negative implications for the diocese if this story should get away from us, Miss Morgan.” Casey’s delivery was clipped.

  The chair was roomier than Faith had anticipated. It engulfed her. The seat seemed to be on an incline, tipping her weight backwards into the mossy depths. Her view of the room was reduced to a vignette of the looming press officer, and a distant Bishop Anthony behind his desk. Faith felt at a distinct disadvantage.