THE FLOWER ARRANGER AT ALL SAINTS a gripping cozy murder mystery full of twists (Suzy Spencer Mysteries Book 1)

by Lis Howell

  So what’s up with the Bells? Suzy wondered.

  * * *

  In the vicarage, Stevie Nesbit was sitting looking at Nick Melling in despair.

  ‘Please, Stevie.’ Nick’s face was twisted with anxiety. ‘If you won’t tell me why you are so worried, there’s little I can do.’ Nick was deeply confused. Despite all his training, he found it very difficult to deal with real people and the complications they brought with them. He was great on the theory. He’d read all the right books and even contributed a chapter to a compilation of essays on sex and spirituality. But when it came down to meeting human misery on his settee, he was at a loss.

  This was the second visit from Stevie. The first time, Stevie had just wanted to rant about how Alan didn’t love him, and there had been an embarrassing moment when Stevie had reached out his hand to Nick, and Nick had recoiled before taking it and replacing it on Stevie’s lap.

  Nick was acutely aware of his own attractiveness and it had occurred to him that Stevie might be nurturing ideas of a closer relationship. Nick Melling had spent a long time thinking about his own sexuality. In his late teens he’d had girlfriends like everyone else. But in his twenties the thought of marriage had terrified him. In his original profession of not-terribly-successful public relations guru, he had worked on the image of the gorgeous, inaccessible bachelor until he had woken up to the fact that he hadn’t had a sexual relationship for over a year. He was becoming estranged from people generally, he realized one Saturday morning when cleaning the classic Boxster down at the local car wash. He’d called an old friend from Oxford, and gone to stay the next weekend. They’d been to an inspirational church service aimed at young, bright academics, and in the evening a couple of friends had joined them and they had sat in front of the fire, while the grey rain pattered outside, talking about religion.

  Nick had taken a few more days off work. In the dreamy atmosphere, with an autumn mist coming from the river and brown leaves curling round his feet, he’d felt that the Church was calling him. He’d attended both an evangelical meeting, and a baroque Choral Eucharist with smells and bells. Charismatic young priests held the stage at each service. He had felt a vocation, at once. The Church of England was right for him, he thought — it really didn’t matter which branch. And until now Nick had been a hit wherever he’d gone, culminating in his captivation of his current Bishop who thought he was marvellous.

  With the realization that he was a success had come his determination to put sex and marriage on the back burner until he was settled in a parish of his own.

  Of course that had come more quickly than it should, with George Pattinson’s mysterious illness. Nick sighed. He had thought of George as a ‘character’, a vicar from central casting who stood for the past while he, the bright young curate, was the symbol of the future. But now, he wondered if there was more to George’s success than that. Until his breakdown, George had seemed able to handle anything Tarnfield could throw at him and, as Nick was learning, quite a lot could be chucked your way. Like Stevie Nesbit’s problems.

  He had hoped Stevie wouldn’t come back. But here he was.

  ‘Please, Stevie. Everything you tell me is in total confidence. I can see you’re very unhappy.’ They had tried prayer but Stevie had just cried. Nick was running out of technique.

  ‘If we can’t get any progress towards closure on this I think we will just have to leave it in the Lord’s hands.’

  Somewhere in his conscience Nick recognized that this was a cop-out, but he was stumped. Stevie gave a cry of genuine pain.

  ‘No, I couldn’t bear it if you abandoned me too.’ He turned his big, blue, only slightly wrinkled eyes to Nick who looked away in embarrassment.

  ‘All right, all right, Nick,’ he whimpered. ‘I’ll tell you. Yvonne Wait is blackmailing me.’ Even in his distress, Stevie couldn’t resist peeping up to see the effect of his words.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Please let me have misheard, Nick thought, but he knew he hadn’t. I’m really out of my depth here, he thought. Stevie was calm now he had made the decision to talk. His voice sounded deeper, more masculine.

  ‘Every year or so, I go back to London. I tell Alan it’s to do voice-overs, or perhaps help a friend with a drama workshop. And usually that’s true. Except that I also take the opportunity to visit some of my former gay haunts. It’s a few days’ break that I really need, but Alan would never understand.’ He paused to get Nick’s sympathy.

  ‘And the trouble is, Nick, that you can never be absolutely sure about HIV. So, after my last trip I took a test. I did it locally, and the GP was absolutely discreet. But somehow, Yvonne found out about it. It had to go to the hospital to be processed, I suppose, and she has some sort of means of finding things out.’

  ‘And she’s threatening to tell Alan?’

  ‘Absolutely. She wants me to persuade him to sell some land to her — the orchard, to be precise. But he won’t sell, so she’s putting more and more pressure on me. If he finds out he’ll throw me out. And if he does that I don’t know what will become of me.’ Stevie’s voice was rising again.

  Nick Melling stood up and walked around the room. He had absolutely no idea how to deal with this. He was shocked about Yvonne, but not entirely surprised. And he was also angry with himself because his prevailing feeling was disgust. He had always been fastidious. The thought of what Stevie got up to, in those clubs, revolted him.

  ‘Was the test positive?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. But that isn’t the point, is it? Just taking a test means I’ve been unfaithful.’

  What a mess, Nick Melling thought. ‘Is it out of the question to tell Alan?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly.’ Stevie was crying noisily now, with no consideration for how he looked. ‘It’s all that ghastly woman’s fault,’ he sobbed. ‘I could kill her.’

  17

  Rogation and Ascension

  Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

  From the Epistle for Rogation Sunday, James 1:22

  In the North of England, like everywhere else in Britain, Easter is felt to be the beginning of spring weather — but sometimes this seems like a southern assumption which has been imposed on the cold wet soggy farmland and scratchy bare fells. Like Phyllis, Suzy felt that it was a time of broken promises, dishwater sunlight which drained away to leave steel skies, and lukewarm patches which were swept away whenever the wintry wind roistered round the corner.

  It had been a fortnight after Easter when Suzy had been in Lo-cost, chatting about the weather, and she had heard a woman who looked like an older version of Janice Jones laugh and say, ‘Well, ne’er cast a clout till May is out.’ Well, these days you could cast your cloths and prance round Carlisle with your belly button showing in January, thanks to central heating and alcohol. But Suzy knew what Janice’s mother had been getting at. It still wasn’t remotely warm despite some deceptive days. There was a sprinkling of blossom, but from a distance the tough bits of cream petal on the trees looked like stones from the shale-covered paths that had been scattered into the branches. There was no sense that summer was anything more than a Technicolor memory, and it seemed certain that anyone who stripped off so much as a liberty-bodice would go down with pneumonia.

  It was a busy period at Tynedale TV. Jake and Molly were back at school. Sharon Strickland was babysitting and Suzy was commuting from Monday to Thursday. On the long drives Suzy found she couldn’t help going back over things, even though she tried to distract herself for the sake of her own security. She knew she had run away from Robert because there was something there she couldn’t face. But no amount of radio or CD playing could stop the sudden memory of the bloodstained altar cloth or the crushed lilies snapping garishly into her mind like unwanted porn on a PC screen. She was compelled to look. She unpicked and re-sorted all the details in her mind again and again. However much she tried to explain it, she was still sure someone had wounded Phyllis’s ha
nd before she died. And she was doubly sure Robert Clark had been about to tell her something.

  At the weekends she found herself looking up Church festivals on the internet. So Easter was originally the festival of the fertility goddess Eostre. The original church in Britain, the Celtic Church of St Columba, had celebrated Christ’s Resurrection on a different date from everyone else in the world. At the Synod of Whitby, the British had turned their backs on their ascetic, independent saints and turned to the warm sun of the south and to Rome, adopting the Roman Catholic way of calculating the date of the festival.

  When was the Synod of Whitby? She looked that up too. It was in AD 664. So the North of England had been the hub of the universe in the seventh century! It had to be something to do with access from the coast. No one in his or her right mind would voluntarily attempt something like Tarnfield Scar on foot, especially in sandals and a monk’s habit.

  On that day when Suzy had come out of the supermarket into a blast of vicious wind and rain, she found Janice waiting for her mum, her puffy anorak pulled up round her head, her hands in woolly gloves clasped around the handle of her toddler’s buggy.

  ‘Your mum’s still at the till,’ Suzy told her.

  Janice had nodded, and said suddenly, ‘But she can follow me on. I’ll walk up to Tarn Acres with you.’

  Suzy was surprised. She hadn’t spoken to Janice since the lunch at the Bells’. She looked at her. The face that the younger woman turned into the biting wind was not just wet from the fine, insistent rain, but also with a sheen of tears. Janice walked as if on a route march, pushing the buggy and saying nothing. But she clearly wanted to talk.

  ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?’ Suzy asked.

  ‘I can’t. Mam’s on her way up. She’s furious anyway today. Have you heard the latest, Suzy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rogation Sunday. Nick Melling isn’t doing anything about it and it’s causing a lot of trouble with the older folk. I think Mam’ll be falling out with Kevin over it. As if there wasn’t enough trouble between us at the moment!’

  ‘Rogation Sunday?’ Suzy didn’t want to admit her ignorance, and anyway the wind was whipping through her tweed coat.

  ‘I agree the Church has to move with the times . . .’ Janice said, tossing her head. For a moment she seemed strong and healthy again, rather than the pasty-faced young woman Suzy had found snivelling outside the supermarket, ‘. . . but try telling that to my mother. Anyway, Nick says there’ll be no beating the bounds this year. It was missed last year because Mr Pattinson was taken ill. So now Nick says there’s no point in reviving it.’

  ‘Beating the bounds? You mean walking around the parish?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Suzy couldn’t imagine Nick Melling wanting to trample through the mud and over the dry-stone walls of outlying Tarnfield with no audience except a couple of dour farming families and a few sheep. It would have been different if he could have worn resplendent robes and blessed a shipping fleet for a crowd of bronzed Mediterranean males. But in Cumbria, during one of the coldest Aprils on record . . . Suzy smiled grimly.

  She glanced sideways at Janice, who was making no effort now to stop the tears dripping down her face. She sniffed, and then absorbed the stream with her woolly glove which had a grey matted look. In the buggy her little girl arched her back and took a deep breath, preparing for a scream.

  ‘Why not pop in tomorrow for a coffee?’ Suzy said. ‘Molly would love to play with the baby.’

  She had been aware for about a week, without being able to put her finger on it, that there was something wrong between Janice and Kevin, and vaguely conscious that it had something to do with the debacle at the Bible reading group. They hadn’t been seen walking down to the shop together, and on the few occasions she had bumped into Kevin he had lacked his usual self-satisfied expression.

  ‘I can’t,’ Janice said bluntly. She would have sounded ungracious if she hadn’t been so obviously unhappy. She had wanted some company, Suzy was sure, but she was too gauche to know how to ask. ‘Kevin likes me to be in on a Saturday. And Nick sometimes comes to see us. Kevin would be angry if I wasn’t in when he came. Anyway, I’ll have to go. Here’s Mam.’

  A beaten-up Land Rover was rounding the corner and heaving its way up Tarn Acres. Janice moved off, pushing the buggy like an offensive weapon, jabbing it into her path. She didn’t even wave back at Suzy. Poor Janice, Suzy thought, caught between two strong personalities like her mother and Kevin Jones.

  Suzy had gone home intending to do some work, but found herself wondering about Rogation. It didn’t take long to look it up on the net. It was a service to do with prayer, which seemed to have become a calling for God’s support for the natural world, and covered everything from a sort of rural England Green approach, to praying to be spared from huge calamities like tsunamis. There were three Rogation Days in the Church of England, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day. Sick of looking at the screen, she went and found the old Prayer Book she’d been given when she was confirmed. She found the readings for Rogation Sunday quite easily, though for a brief moment she wished she could call Robert Clark and ask him to explain it all for her. Why should ‘beating the bounds’ be a Rogation thing? It was in three weeks’ time, the fifth Sunday after Easter.

  And four days later came Ascension Day, forty days after Easter. Suzy remembered trying to get Nick Melling to explain to her exactly what he believed about Jesus ascending into heaven. But he had brushed her away, horrified that she should find the concept difficult. Well, she wouldn’t challenge him again this year. Nick Melling seemed to have trouble enough on his hands without Suzy’s contribution.

  But she still liked to go to church. She had attended on a couple of the Sundays after Easter, and chatted to Monica and even to Jane Simpson, but she failed to pick up any gossip about whether Phyllis’s bungalow would be inherited by Yvonne. Yvonne was looking pretty sleek, and was taking an executive interest in the preparations for the Whitsun Flower Festival, which were going well. It wasn’t to be the major evangelical event Daisy had envisaged, but everyone had agreed on a compromise. Nick Melling had actually consented to big floral displays on the church pillars, thanks to pressure from Daisy, and flyers had been sent round the Church of England school in Norbridge and the surrounding hamlets. It was rumoured that the choir had been practising a modern anthem, and that Stevie Nesbit was going to play the keyboard with Nick Melling on guitar.

  Suzy collared Kevin when she saw him washing his car outside the house.

  ‘I need someone to help me decorate the church. It needs to be someone fit, who’s capable of getting the swags up there.’

  ‘What about Frank Bell?’ Kevin said churlishly.

  ‘Frank would normally do it, but Monica says he’s got work over in Hexham at the moment which is keeping him busy.’

  ‘What exactly are you making?’

  ‘Big, bright, modern decorations to symbolize the Holy Spirit. The kids are finishing them off on Whit Saturday afternoon. It’s good outreach. Bring your two along. We could really do with you and Janice.’

  After a minute Kevin said grudgingly, ‘All right.’

  Suzy took a risk. ‘You asked me for Sharon Strickland’s phone number, don’t you remember, so you could get her to babysit when you went out? I didn’t have it on me then, but I’ve got it here. D’you want it?’

  He could hardly say no. After a pause he said grumpily, ‘Might as well.’

  ‘If you ask her to sit this Saturday, tell me how she gets on.’ She added innocently, ‘I wouldn’t like to recommend her without getting some feedback. Not with something as important as babysitting.’ Kevin paused, then grunted. Good, Suzy thought. At least she’d put him in a position where he felt he ought to take his wife out, if only because now he had to report back on the babysitter!

  A week later, Sharon mentioned that she’d been asked to mind the kids next door, and the following Sat
urday Suzy saw the Joneses walking hand in hand, pushing the buggy, to the Plough at lunchtime. What is happening to me, watching the neighbours? she thought. I’m getting as bad as Babs Piefield! But at least some sort of harmony had been restored, although Janice’s mother had announced she was leaving All Saints if the church wasn’t prepared to ‘beat the bounds’ next year.

  And during all of this, no one had said anything more about Phyllis Drysdale. Suzy had gone through it all in one of her increasingly long and dependent conversations with Rachel.

  ‘Isn’t there anyone at all that you can talk to in Tarnfield?’ Rachel had asked.

  ‘No, not really. Robert Clark was the nearest but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know. We were talking everything over and suddenly I had the impression he wanted to tell me more.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rachel. It gave me the creeps. It was as if he wanted to confess. What if it was Robert who used the reed to hurt Phyllis?’

  ‘Then why would he encourage you to investigate? Perhaps he wanted to spill the beans about something else.’

  ‘But what sort of beans?’

  ‘Runners, to get you so worried. Though from what you’ve said, he doesn’t seem the type to mutilate elderly ladies.’

  ‘No, but there was something going on. I could see it in his eyes.’

  ‘That’s because you were too close. Serves you right!’

  But despite her manner, Rachel sounded worried. She offered to come up and stay with Suzy for a long weekend as soon as she could.

  ‘That would be great, Rache. Let’s hope I’m not insane by then.’

  ‘You’ll know, when you start sticking flowers up people’s bottoms. Or whatever it is that turns you lot on up there.’

  ‘It was her hand, Rachel. And it wasn’t funny.’

  ‘OK, OK, I just had a good taste failure. Look, you sound quite low. Why don’t you return the compliment and come to me at the start of the summer holidays? Bring the kids. They could go to a couple of museums . . .’