The Chorister at the Abbey

by Lis Howell

  ‘Well, possibly.’ Robert sighed. He understood her longing to see Morris praised in print, and the local paper was what mattered most to her. It would be good for business too! He hoped that Edwin would be able to come up with something from Morris’s paperwork that was worth publishing. So much of it seemed to be collations of other people’s work or half-formulated, slightly mad theories.

  And there was the spite, of course. Robert had been distressed by the cruel emails, and relieved never to have received one. And, like Edwin, he felt some guilt and sadness too. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss Morris as an old bore. Maybe that evening, if he had gone for a drink with Morris, then Morris would not have gone to the college and met his attacker.

  But Morris hadn’t acted as if he’d had an important meeting to go to. He had indicated that Tom Firth should join him for a drink. But maybe Morris was being clever. Taunting Tom would ensure the boy went his own way and, looking back, Robert realized Morris had said nothing to his fellow basses about going to the pub. Clearly, Morris had not wanted to advertise his meeting at the college. Edwin would surely find out more about that when he talked to Wanda Wisley.

  In the meantime, Robert arranged to go and see David Johnstone in hospital on his way home on Monday evening. Robert didn’t like to admit it, but he didn’t want to spend Sunday at David Johnstone’s bedside when he could be at home with Suzy. Their relationship had resumed its old warmth even if there was still a sense of its being unresolved.

  He waited for Suzy to get home from dropping Jake at the practice at Fellside Fellowship. And Molly was out at her best friend’s house. They would have The Briars to themselves, and this time he wasn’t going to retire to his study.

  Edwin had telephoned Wanda Wisley on Sunday morning. She had sounded distinctly ill, and his first thought was that she had a hangover.

  ‘I’ve got a tummy bug,’ she said grumpily. ‘I feel like shit.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s something I’d like to discuss with you. It’s rather important. If you’re unable to come out, would you be able to see me at your cottage for half an hour?’

  ‘Is this department business?’

  ‘Yes.’ Well, in a sense it was.

  ‘Oh God, if you must.’ Wanda sounded world-weary but slightly less snappy than usual.

  Since discovering that she had failed to tell the police about her abandoned meeting with Morris, Edwin had let his anger with her slowly grow. But he hadn’t been sure how to approach her. Now he was involved with the other three in what Suzy called their ‘research’, he felt more aggressive. At the back of his mind he rebuked himself for not having the balls earlier to try and do something for Marilyn’s brothers. He had believed that the Frost boys were capable of murder. But not this murder. It made no sense.

  When he arrived at her cottage, Wanda was waiting for him, dressed in old jeans and a massive sweatshirt which he guessed belonged to Freddie. She looked very pale without her make-up and her nose was red and shiny.

  ‘Come in. I don’t know what it was that wouldn’t wait.’

  ‘I need to talk to you about Morris Little.’

  ‘The old bore who got himself murdered?’

  ‘Yes. Is Freddie about?’

  ‘He’s upstairs, and believe me when he’s up there with his legs in plaster I’m not bringing him down, if I don’t have to. He’s watching DVDs in the bedroom.’ She looked around shiftily. Edwin thought, she doesn’t want Freddie to hear this.

  They sat down in the funny cramped sitting room which took up the whole ground floor, with the big fireplace, and stairs in the corner making a fake inglenook.

  ‘Wanda, I know Morris had arranged to meet you the night he died.’

  ‘Oh, fuck. How did you find out?’

  ‘Morris’s wife asked me to clear out his emails. You need to know that there are several of us who think the Frost kids are innocent. We want to go to the police with more evidence. It’s important. Was Morris definitely coming to see you?’

  ‘Well, we’d spoken on the phone and I’d said perhaps I’d be there . . .’ She reddened. ‘I didn’t think of it as a real commitment.’

  ‘So what did Morris say? Did he say he’d come over at a certain time? Was he coming alone? Did he mention bringing someone else?’

  Wanda thought carefully. ‘He said he’d got an interesting document. Something to do with one of those stodgy Victorians he was obsessed with.’

  ‘Cecil Quaile Woods?’

  ‘That’s the guy!’ Now that she realized Edwin wasn’t going to cart her off to the police station, or threaten to tell the Principal, Wanda was more co-operative. ‘Actually, you know, he did say it would be handy to meet me around six o’clock, because he had some other people to see.’

  ‘Other people?’

  ‘Yes. I remember that because when it got to three o’clock I thought, oh bugger this, I’m going shopping.’ She wasn’t going to confess that she had completely forgotten about meeting Morris. ‘I wasn’t going to hang around until six o’clock. I called Freddie and said we’d meet outside McCrea’s.’

  ‘So you were out with Freddie all afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly was! Do you think it was me who hit that old fart over the head with a plank? Not that I’d have stopped myself, if he bored me any more than he had done already. But no, I’m not your villain. I was out all afternoon in various stores, and even when Freddie left me hanging about for half an hour the Principal saw me – so there!’

  ‘Where was Freddie for that half-hour?’ Edwin asked suddenly.

  ‘God, I don’t know. In McCrea’s some of the time buying a disgusting waistcoat for himself and a tatty red velvet scarf for me. He didn’t come back till after six o’clock. He was probably chatting up the waitress in Figaro’s. You know what he’s like.’ Wanda laughed. She’s so relieved that she’s not implicated, Edwin thought, that she hasn’t realized she’s exposed Freddie.

  There was movement at the top of the staircase.

  ‘Wanda,’ Freddie said, his voice booming gruffer than ever, ‘you never told me we had a visitor.’

  He hung on to the landing banisters which made a sort of gallery over the sitting room and smiled at Edwin, but – whether it was the pain in his legs or something else – his grin was more of a grimace. Wanda might not have realized that she’d dropped Freddie in it, Edwin thought, but Freddie had heard exactly what she’d said. And he knew just what it meant. She had an alibi, but he didn’t.

  At hospital on Monday night, Robert looked at a much-reduced David Johnstone. He was asleep, breathing noisily, tubes attached to his nostrils. Robert had had no idea that he was so ill. He looked very yellow.

  Pat Johnstone was there, fidgeting. She laughed her usual cackle when she saw Robert.

  ‘Nice of you to come. It’s so boring here!’ She laughed again, as if Robert had come to see her rather than David. ‘I’m off to my son and daughter-in-law’s tomorrow for a break, but I’ve got to be back at the end of the week. He’ – she shrugged towards the immobile figure on the bed – ‘has had another op but they say he needs more tests. Funny colour, isn’t he?’ She sounded annoyed.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not recovering as well as they’d hoped. That’s why they’re doing tests on him. Obviously’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a real nuisance.’

  She and Robert looked at each other across the bed. What can I say? Robert thought. I’ve no idea how to make small talk with Pat Johnstone.

  ‘Is David’s business coping without him?’

  ‘Seems to be. The branch offices are anyway. Of course he always had other schemes on the go.’ She cackled. ‘Don’t know what’s going to happen about them.’

  Her eyes glinted, and Robert remembered what Alex had told them. Pat needed to get her hands on David’s money. She must live in fear of him leaving her for one of his girlfriends, and taking the money wit
h him.

  ‘Property schemes?’ Robert asked, innocently.

  ‘Usually.’ Pat’s eyes narrowed. ‘He had a lot of interests.’ She talked in the past tense.

  Robert searched for something to say to fill the silence. Fishing, he asked ‘D’you mean hobbies? Was he interested in family history? That’s the new craze, isn’t it?’

  Pat cackled even more than usual. ‘Hobbies? David? You must be joking. And the less we know about his family the better. No, the only family history David would be interested in was who owned what! Now, that would get him going. Like that other chap who came a cropper.’ There was a sort of malevolence in Pat’s face that Robert hadn’t seen before.

  ‘Who? Freddie Fabrikant?’

  ‘Nah. He’s just a big windbag. I meant that chap David couldn’t stand. Morris Little from Uplands store. They were allus arguing about buildings. Now they’re both out of it.’ Pat seemed pleased.

  Robert thought: What’s this all about? David had behaved like Morris’s greatest fan. The idea that David and Morris were at odds was news. He looked down at the sick man, still in his drugged sleep. ‘I’ll come back when he’s awake,’ Robert said. ‘Tell him that the Abbey Chorus is thinking of him.’

  ‘I bet,’ said Pat nastily, and cackled again.

  On Tuesday night at nine o’clock, Suzy, Robert, Edwin and Alex sat around the big kitchen table at The Briars, eating pancakes.

  ‘So what’ve we got?’ said Suzy, with her mouth full.

  ‘Nothing of interest in Morris’s family tree, but he was clearly investigating someone. He was into all the ancestry sites,’ said Alex. ‘But not his own, unless his wife can enlighten us.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing from Norma Little. I can’t see her till next week at least,’ Robert said. ‘However, Pat Johnstone is interesting. She said that Morris and David were at each other’s throats over something to do with buildings. Property deals maybe?’

  ‘That’s new,’ said Alex. ‘Johnstone was always saying that Morris was a great bloke, lying obviously. And the property angle is interesting. Maybe my bungalow is part of that. What have you got, Edwin?’

  ‘Wanda admits that she abandoned a meeting she had planned with Morris where he was going to show her some documents. Maybe one of them was the psalter.’

  ‘And I heard from Mark Wilson’ – Suzy blushed slightly – ‘that Paul was due to meet Morris the night he died.’

  ‘So a lot of people could have met Morris that night. And are we all agreed that the Psalms come into this somehow? Or is that just fanciful?’ Robert asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Edwin. ‘There’s the question of the missing psalter. That’s fact.’

  ‘So what hypothesis would fit all this random evidence?’ Suzy asked.

  Alex Gibson thought hard. Plotting was surely her bag. But it was different when you couldn’t start from scratch. Finding a thread between real clues was much harder. Edwin suddenly put his hand on her arm and she felt it like an electric shock.

  ‘Could it be that the psalter held some sort of evidence which the attacker didn’t want Morris to reveal?’ he asked.

  ‘Like what?’ Suzy said. ‘A controversial new chant, for example? I don’t think so, Edwin. Not in the twenty-first century. Unless it was written for Britney.’

  ‘OK, I take your point.’ Edwin smiled, surprisingly relaxed these days. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘you must agree, Suzy, the book is crucial to all this. And Alex says it was the beginning that was missing. What usually goes at the beginning of books?’

  ‘The dedication! So maybe it was the dedication which was the point,’ Alex rushed in.

  ‘Yes. Someone didn’t want the front page of a unique old book to be seen. A book that would be a curiosity perhaps, but not necessarily terribly valuable. The idea of a dedication does fit,’ said Edwin.

  Robert had been writing on the back of his notes. ‘I think we’re looking at this wrongly. Instead of trying to get a crime to fit, let’s look at the people in the frame. We’re all agreed the Frosts are not necessarily the murderers, aren’t we? So who do we know could have met Morris? OK, half of Norbridge of course, but he was in the Music Department on the quietest afternoon of the year, and he was being discreet about the meeting. So whoever met him either had to have an arrangement to meet him, or to know he was there, or to bump into him.’

  ‘So there’s Wanda Wisley, though she says the Principal saw her in the shopping mall. And by extension, Freddie Fabrikant,’ Edwin said. ‘And you should have seen his face when he realized that Wanda had put him in the frame.’

  ‘But why would Freddie kill Morris? Anyway, Freddie was injured himself later.’

  ‘No, Suzy, don’t ask about motives. Just list those people who knew he would be at the college, and who had the opportunity,’ Robert said. ‘So far there’s Freddie, and Wanda – unless we check out her alibi with the Principal. And the Frosts – we can’t count them out.’

  ‘And Rev Paul,’ Alex said unhappily. ‘I don’t want it to be him, but he was supposed to be meeting Morris.’

  ‘And he’s mad on genealogy,’ added Suzy.

  ‘Not to mention the Psalms,’ Edwin said grimly.

  ‘Do you think we’re really on to something?’ Suzy said suddenly. ‘Or is it that we’re just bleeding heart liberals who want the Frosts in the clear?’

  ‘Some of us might have other motives,’ said Alex, looking at Edwin.

  ‘You mean Marilyn?’ Edwin said. ‘Yes, that is part of it for me. I know Marilyn’s brothers were horrible, and capable of violence. But I don’t want them to be Morris’s murderers.’

  ‘So why isn’t Marilyn involved in trying to exonerate them?’ Suzy voiced the question Alex had been desperate to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ Alex added. ‘Shouldn’t we talk to Marilyn? After all, this is more her bag than ours, isn’t it?’

  Edwin’s face darkened, giving him once again the cold saturnine look which Suzy found so off-putting. He looked down, failing to meet their eyes.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you think it’s so important, I’ll ask Marilyn to meet us.’

  Alex felt a fleeting moment of triumph, followed quickly by fear. What will this do to our friendship? she thought. Oh God, what have I done?

  35

  Man goeth forth to his work, and to his labour, until the evening. Psalm 104:23

  Tom Firth couldn’t sleep. It was a Wednesday morning and he was due at college at ten o’clock for a class. But he felt both excited and frustrated. It would be weeks before he saw Poppy again. He needed to get the cash together for a trip to Newcastle, and anyway he couldn’t stand the thought of his dad finding out he was going to see a girl, and taking the piss. The only thing worse would be his mother’s delight which would be quickly followed by silly questions. Parents! So irritating.

  Though maybe that wasn’t entirely fair. His mam especially had always been on his side, in her own nosy way. And from what Poppy said about her parents, they’d been all for her going to uni, and they’d helped her out with money. It wasn’t that parents were bad, necessarily. They were just . . . irritating. And stupid too, a lot of the time.

  But Chloe Clifford’s parents weren’t stupid. For a priest, Neil Clifford was OK. He had come to see Tom again after Christmas and had said sensible things.

  Tom had asked him: ‘About Morris’s body. It keeps coming back to me.’

  ‘Don’t try and put it out of your mind. Think about it. Talk about it to people. People who won’t fuss. Me. Your counsellor. Perhaps Alex Gibson? There’s a fine line between repressing the memory and dwelling on it too much. You are the only person who will know the difference. It’s not that easy. But I think you’re bright enough to understand what I’m saying, aren’t you?’

  Tom had nodded. That was exactly it. He had been asking himself: when did thinking about it get morbid?

  ‘Anyway,’ Neil had added, ‘at your age lots of new things happen. Be open to them. Something
else will crowd out that memory soon.’

  He had been so right. Getting off with Poppy had been brilliant. And it took up all his thoughts. Except . . . there was still Chloe. Neil seemed such a good bloke – but his own daughter was all over the place. Chloe’s mum was nice, too. He remembered going round to the rectory in the summer holidays when she’d been listening to Bach’s Magnificat in the kitchen. He’d commented and she’d smiled. She hadn’t gasped and said, ‘Fancy you knowing that!’ or raised her eyebrows or made questioning noises or started talking about effing exams. Mrs Clifford was all right.

  So why was Chloe all wrong? What was going on with her? Tom thought about when he and Poppy had tried following her. That had been a miserable failure. Chloe had got off the bus in Fellside and disappeared.

  Tom tossed about in bed, his long scrawny body winding the thin duvet all round him, till he threw it off in annoyance and got up to pad through the cold room and stand by the radiator under the window. It was early. From his house he could see over the other terraces’ roofs to where the fells started like a dirty smear on the horizon.

  He got dressed quickly without bothering with a shower. He left the tangled bed, grabbed his hat – it would be cold out there and anyway Poppy wasn’t around – and pulled on his parka, picked up his bag and flung the strap over his shoulder. His dad was away and his mam and little brother were asleep. He crept down the stairs and into the kitchen. He took some scrap paper out of his bag and scribbled a note saying he had gone to college early. That would surprise them, but there would be no questions till tea-time and he’d think of something to tell them by then.

  He shut the front door behind him quietly, left the gate of the tiny front garden swinging, and strode down the street. The air was cool. If he walked briskly he could be at the Uplands crossroads in ten minutes and pick up the bus to Fellside. Then he would walk up and down the high street until he could work out exactly where Chloe Clifford had disappeared to.

  There had to be some turn-off he’d missed, unless she’d gone into someone’s house. But surely she’d have had to stand on the step for a minute, and they’d have seen her – unless she’d had a key, but even then she’d have had to get that key out and open the door. Anyway the houses on that end of the street were either converted to council offices, or small shops, or lived in by a few old people. And she had literally disappeared in seconds.