A Crowded Coffin

by Nicola Slade

  ‘They did tell you Canon Hathaway died yesterday afternoon, didn’t they?’

  chapter fourteen

  ‘S-S-Sam?’ His name hung in the air as Harriet’s world trembled on the brink of destruction. Pain; she hunched over, feeling the pain, like a burning in her stomach, rising to her throat, as a scream of denial gathered. Then Rory, ignoring the gun, staggered over and put his arms round her.

  ‘Shh, Harriet, it’s not true.’ He held her tightly, whispering urgently in her ear. ‘He means Dr Sutherland – he thinks it was Sam.’ She was shuddering now and he whispered again, ‘Sam rang me last night, about half past ten. He’s safe, Harriet, he’s safe. Believe me.’

  John Forrester had delivered his bombshell, and was now strolling along the gallery, peering at the portraits. He seemed unconcerned that Rory was no longer semi-conscious or that Harriet, though still grey with shock, had subsided quivering in her chair. ‘You’re sure?’ she breathed and sighed with relief at Rory’s surreptitious nod.

  She was too shaken at first, the imagined loss of Sam, dearest friend, most beloved companion, making her weak and hollow. Out of John’s eyeline, Rory gave an infinitesimal nod and held his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t let him know,’ he breathed, then, as John sauntered back towards them, Rory slumped on the floor beside Harriet, apparently close to collapse.

  ‘I was sorry about Canon Hathaway.’ Speaking in a conversational tone, John nodded towards Harriet. ‘I hardly knew him but he didn’t like me much, which did rather make him stand out.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I’m used to people thinking I’m a pretty straight kind of guy. Didn’t bother me too much, though, his not taking to me, but when he started asking questions recently, I had to take notice. He was such a dogged old devil too, and clever with it, asking the right questions of the right people. Very inconvenient for me.’

  He shrugged as he looked over at Harriet. ‘And then when I realized he’d got you at it as well, playing detectives, that was the last straw. Meant I had to take steps to stop him.’

  For a moment Harriet felt indignant at the assumption that Sam had been encouraging her, when it had been all her own idea, then the sinister implications of what John had said struck her. She shivered and sat back quietly, not daring to meet his eyes.

  ‘What, what did you do?’ That was Rory, half whispering.

  ‘Mmm? Oh, it was simple enough and quite painless, I do assure you, Harriet. I got Mike Goldstein to keep an eye on your cousin for me. We had a little transaction to carry out so I’d chosen the cathedral as our meeting place, nice and anonymous, you see. The other two, Mike and Brendan, knew I was getting irritated by Sam Hathaway, so when Mike spotted him on the High Street, he texted me and followed him at a discreet distance. I kept a lookout and spotted him, fast asleep, dozing under that ridiculous panama hat that all the locals know by sight. He didn’t notice me when I sat down beside him and neither did anyone else. We were just two of several devout worshippers.’

  He let out a short, mirthless laugh.

  ‘An injection of potassium solution brings about a quick death with all the appearance of a heart attack and of course it has the advantage of being undetectable at a post mortem, or so I understand. He’d even got a couple of scratches on his wrist and I injected into one of them so there’d be no puncture mark. I had the hypodermic ready in my pocket – it was left over from when Gillian…. I had to be incredibly quick, in and out of the chapel in less than three minutes. I assure you, Harriet, he didn’t feel a thing, barely stirred when I did it because he was so sound asleep.’

  Harriet gritted her teeth and raised a hand to her eyes. Let him think this was grief, anything but the incandescent rage that was bubbling up inside her at his casual dismissal of a valuable life. She kept her cool, though; the vicar’s mental balance seemed less stable somehow, now he believed he was on the brink of finding the fabled jewel. Rory clearly felt the same, because he spoke nervously but calmly.

  ‘What had Canon Hathaway discovered that was so important to you that you had to – to silence him?’

  John’s brow furrowed and he looked increasingly irritated. ‘He’d been poking about in the archives, asking questions about Colin Price, and I couldn’t have that. Besides that, he’d been asking questions about Gillian, about her health. And her death.’

  ‘Why did that matter?’ Harriet was very impressed by Rory. His quiet voice and calm, non-threatening manner, were just right. He was trying to keep things evenly balanced and not give a loaded significance to any question. Poor lad, she thought, he learned diplomacy in a hard school in that prison.

  The vicar’s assurance that he didn’t want to hurt them began increasingly to ring hollow, she realized with a shiver, in view of the confidences that were beginning to spill out.

  ‘Did it matter what Sam found out?’ Rory repeated the question evenly. ‘You don’t mean Gillian really did kill herself, do you? That she jumped?’

  John Forrester stared at him in astonishment then threw back his head and laughed out loud in what appeared to be genuine amusement.

  ‘Jump? Gillian? Of course she didn’t jump. I pushed her!’

  ‘You – you pushed her?’ Harriet’s head came up with a jerk as she choked out the question. John gazed at her, looking mildly surprised.

  ‘Of course, didn’t you realize? Oh dear, you disappoint me, Harriet. I thought you were clever. Oh yes, all that distraught husband business, I did do it well, didn’t I? I was a distraught husband all right, but that was before she died, when she decided to stop my allowance and started threatening to alter her will. Plus, she found out about my handy little arrangement with Colin Price, among other things. Besides….’

  He paused, staring at the wall, a frown furrowing his brow.

  ‘She was viciously possessive. She bought me with the promise of keeping me in decent comfort and ultimately leaving me her money and she never let me forget it. But as I said, when she started talking about changing her will, I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t hard to get drugs and I took it steadily at first, so that her behaviour became erratic, particularly when we were out, at dinners or public events. Just enough for people to start to wonder. Was she menopausal? A drunk? Was it drugs?

  ‘I played the anxious, supportive husband to the hilt, in denial when anyone broached the difficult subject, but soon it was common knowledge: Gillian Forrester was an addict and her poor husband such a kind, patient man.’

  Harriet was still sitting quietly, Rory the same, she noticed, anxious not to disturb John’s train of thought or provoke any violent reaction. Memory surfaced as she recalled a teacher at her previous school, whose short-lived appointment had made life extremely difficult for the staff. At first sight the woman had been charming, an inspirational teacher, warm and friendly, but gradually it was borne in on Harriet and her senior staff that Miss Crawford was a liar of a high order.

  Avril, Sam’s wife, had been alive then, head of the English department. Harriet recalled her bursting into the staffroom one morning. ‘I’ve been doing some research,’ she’d exulted. ‘There’s something called a charismatic psychopath, just listen to the symptoms: charming, attractive liars, usually gifted and manipulative. Often leaders of religious cults, they can be irresistible and surrounded by friends, talking their way out of difficulties and taking as their due the praise of others.’

  Harriet’s eyes widened and she slid a speculative glance at the vicar, remembering how struck she and the rest of the staff had been by this. Avril had continued reading from her notes: ‘There’s no empathy, they don’t feel sorry for anyone or anything and when they’ve got what they want, they move on to another victim.’

  Was this John? It certainly sounded like him and it had fitted that long-ago member of staff. In that case though, the woman had moved on after only two terms, blithely accepting a more enticing offer and not caring twopence for the inconvenience this might have caused. As it was they heaved a collective sigh of relief and Harriet made
a note to take more care in future. Now, today, at this moment, things were a good deal more complicated.

  Oblivious to Harriet’s train of thought, the vicar was reminiscing, looking very pleased with himself and, Harriet noted with a nod to the memory she’d dredged up, with not a trace of remorse or sorrow.

  ‘It was simple,’ he said, with a complacent smile. ‘New Year’s Eve, lots going on, plenty of to-ing and fro-ing around the village. I’d been invited to join the bell-ringers for the last hour, to bless the bells and so forth, as they rang in the New Year, and to join them at the end for a celebratory pint.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dear God, I should have got an Oscar for that night’s performance. In turns I was the solemn parish priest on duty, the good bloke sharing a joke and a drink, but all the time letting the anxious, harassed husband peek out from behind the mask. I tell you, I had them in the palm of my hand and I even managed a tear, or at least the impression of one, when I rang home to check on Gillian. There was no answer, of course, but I sighed and smiled and said, with a slight choke in my voice, that she must be asleep and I wouldn’t disturb her. There wasn’t one person in the belfry who didn’t understand that I meant she was stoned out of her mind and that I was covering up for her – as always.

  ‘Anyway, I rang again and when there was no reply, I did my saintly husband thing and told them I’d better go and check. It was quite difficult stopping one or two of them who wanted to go with me, but I choked them off. I couldn’t have timed it better.’ His brown eyes gleamed. ‘Gill was just staggering out of the bathroom when I got in, so I nipped upstairs, twirled her round and gave her a very gentle shove.’

  Harriet schooled herself to receive this remarkable information without a blink, noting with approval that Rory too was absolutely deadpan. She had to grip her hands tightly, however, to hide the trembling.

  ‘Enough of ancient history,’ John said, almost gaily, as he started to circle the gallery once more. ‘Time to have a go at this panelling again. I’m convinced there’s some kind of hiding place behind it, somewhere near the portrait of Dame Margery. That has to be what the piece of paper refers to, the one Brendan dropped. I checked out her tomb in the church but it would take a block and tackle to shift, not to mention the attention it would attract. I just hope the portrait’s not another blind alley, but in it Dame Margery’s definitely wearing a jewel, which may be a reliquary, and I’m sure there’s no other mention of Aelfryth’s Tears. It would be considered a national treasure, from the scraps of information I’ve come across, and it’s inconceivable that if it had been found it would have remained in obscurity. The Attlins would probably have done something noble but stupid, like donating it to the British Museum. At the very least they’d have lent it to some prestigious institution.’

  Evidently tiring of conversation, the vicar went back to tapping industriously at the panelling, centring his attentions on the area round the Tudor portrait of Dame Margery. Rory caught Harriet’s eye and indicated the gun but it was clear that any attempt to jump John Forrester would end in disaster, so they let it alone.

  To Harriet’s astonishment, John suddenly let out a yelp of delight. ‘I’ve got it!’ After tapping and banging all over the ancient carving he had somehow managed to slide his penknife into an almost invisible crack. A moment or two later he had the catch undone and with a protesting creak of rusty hinges, the panel swung outwards, showing another small door three feet away through the thickness of the wall. It must lead to the roof, Harriet supposed, keeping a wary eye on their captor.

  Into her mind slid a dangerous thought: Would John begin to wonder, as she was herself, how the occupants of such an old house had missed this particular door? For instance, Walter had told her once that much of the roof had been replaced back in the 1920s and it was beyond belief that then, even if not before, the little outer door should not have been discovered. Time enough to consider this when they were out of this pickle, she decided, directing a ferocious frown at Rory who responded with an almost invisible nod.

  ‘Oh yes.’ It was a cry of triumph. John had reached into the gap where a tiny hatch was let into the brickwork. Almost sobbing with delight, he managed to wrench it open and reach into the cavity for a box of blackened and tarnished metal, measuring about four inches long by three deep and only about two inches to the top of its domed lid.

  He drew it carefully out into the open, sighing with pleasure. ‘This looks like silver,’ he remarked in a conversational tone, huffing on the metal and rubbing it with his sleeve. ‘Yes, see how it’s polishing up?’

  Delicately, infinitely slowly, savouring the moment, he negotiated the catch on the front of the little coffer. There was no key and he lifted the tiny latch. Inside, wrapped in faded silk, lay a small, jewelled object, the gold untarnished by the centuries.

  Rory and Harriet forgot, for a moment, their predicament, and craned their necks to look at the treasure. Harriet frowned but stayed silent. Rory stared at it, puzzled. It was clearly the jewel in the portrait, the knotwork casing that held the large garnet, surmounted by small pearls, but why did he feel cheated? To his dismay he realized he was not the only one to feel that way.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ It was a howl of rage from John Forrester. ‘This isn’t Aelfryth’s Tears, this is a copy.’

  Furiously disappointed he flung the little silver chest with its bejewelled contents onto a small table and turned on Harriet and Rory. ‘Don’t you see?’ he demanded. ‘Look at the workmanship. Oh, I grant you it’s not bad, in fact it could be considered very good, of its kind. Of its kind, though…. I couldn’t say offhand what date it is, but I don’t even know that it’s real gold, could be pinchbeck, and they’ve just made random marks instead of the correct runic inscription. It should read, “Joy, Prosperity and Fruitfulness”. And as for the pearl….’

  It was almost a wail of fury and despair. ‘I don’t know about the garnet, could be glass and the pearls don’t look right either. At a guess I’d say it’s an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century fake.’ He picked it up again and fiddled with it. ‘Could be earlier, I suppose, parts of it recycled, perhaps.’

  His probing brought results at last and the garnet in its basketwork casing swung back on a minute hinge, revealing a cavity the size of a hazelnut. ‘See? In the real jewel, this compartment would be smooth and polished. This isn’t bad, but it’s not the quality you’d expect. The real one ought to have a glass inner seal too because of the Virgin’s tears inside.’

  He fidgeted for a few minutes, eyeing up the aperture behind the panelling, then he turned to them with narrowed eyes. ‘I’m going to try and get through there,’ he said, glancing at the gun. ‘You’ll stay here and not try anything clever. I’d rather not shoot you, the noise will draw unwelcome attention, but it won’t bother me if I have to.’

  Rory was surely looking more grey and weary than just now. Harriet slid a sidelong look at him, her own head throbbing badly. She turned away and nodded slightly in response to a lifted eyebrow from the vicar, watching as he wrestled with the outer door, a struggle in the cramped space as he wrenched at the ancient, rusted bolts. At last he succeeded and the door creaked open, revealing a minute platform on the leads and slates of the roof; probably an access door for maintenance, Harriet supposed, but not in use for a very long time now. It was bolted on the inside, she noted, so maybe those workmen on the roof, back in the twenties, could just have assumed it was sealed up and disused.

  As John scrambled back down into the gallery, Harriet checked her watch. Oh God, what if the cavalry turned up now? She ventured a question.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked. ‘Join Colin Price wherever he’s hiding out? You won’t get away with it, you know.’

  She was fleetingly aware of Rory’s consternation and realized he had, like Harriet herself, begun to formulate a theory about the missing man’s disappearance and was afraid lest she remind John of any of his previous opponents. However, John merely smiled at Harri
et with the patronizing air he reserved for most women and she was close enough to Rory to catch his sigh of relief. He clearly understood now that she was trying to distract the other man. Perhaps – perhaps it would turn out all right.

  ‘I mean, did he go abroad as the police have suggested?’ she persisted. ‘Did you help him to go away?’

  He laughed at her this time. ‘Oh yes, I helped him to go away. You could say that.’

  His meaning was unmistakable, even to Harriet’s reluctant ears, but she couldn’t restrain herself. ‘You’re a man of the cloth,’ she whispered and he looked amused, relishing her naivety.

  ‘But – how did you manage it?’ She was stammering slightly now, praying that she could keep John’s attention long enough for the police to arrive. Where the hell were they? She didn’t dare sidle over to the window to look. ‘I mean, the police checked his room and he’d paid his rent in full, they said. And taken a bag of clothes. His passport was gone and he had money, so he could just disappear.’

  ‘Well, of course.’ He was still mildly amused by her, still instructive. ‘That’s just what I’d told him to do. I met him, you see, the day before Gillian’s funeral. It was just a casual encounter and he offered his condolences.’

  He smiled with remembered satisfaction. ‘It was all beautifully planned. Gillian was becoming impossible and Colin was getting greedy, demanding a bigger cut. He said he had to take all the risks, set up the deals, see the contacts and that was worth more money. He did a lot of sailing, you see, so he took care of that side of the operation in Jersey and across the Channel. I wondered if I could get rid of the pair of them at the same time and for a while I toyed with the idea of the poor, tormented vicar suffering the ultimate humiliation of having his wife decamp with a toy boy, but I decided it was a bit contrived. It was easy to work out what to do about Gillian, but solving the problem of Colin’s “disappearance” took more thought.