“You’ve been talking to Inga,” he said as he set a steaming cup of tea before me at the kitchen table.
“My goodness, you do get an early start on the day, don’t you?” I said lightly to cover my tightened nerves.
“She rang up,” he said. The pause that ensued was what used to be called “pregnant.”
“You think I killed him, don’t you?”
I didn’t spill my tea—quite. “Of course not!” I began, but the intense blue eyes forced me to be honest.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You had good reasons to hate him. I hope you didn’t kill the man, and I don’t think your temper works that way, but I can’t honestly say I’m sure either way. If Inga—”
“Inga didn’t do it!” he exploded, standing up with an angry scrape of his chair that jarred the teacups.
“Nigel, sit down!” All the schoolteacher in me came to the top. “We won’t get anywhere if you can’t discuss this like a reasonable adult!”
He sat. With all the relaxed languor of a panther ready to spring, true, but he sat.
“That’s better. Now, what makes you think Inga had anything to do with the canon’s murder?”
He would have liked to murder me just then; the eyes flashed blue fire. “I said—”
“I heard what you said, or rather shouted. I should think Emmy heard it, next door. You wouldn’t have said anything of the kind if you hadn’t thought it a possibility, you know. Either you’re sure she’ll be unjustly suspected, because of her family’s quarrel with Canon Billings, or you’re sure she did it and can’t get the horror of it out of your mind. Which?”
He looked at the floor, sullenly, his arms clasped tightly in the attitude I remembered from Christmas Eve.
“Nigel,” I said more gently, “I’m involved in this, too. I’m very fond of Inga, and for some utterly incomprehensible reason I’m growing fond of you, too. Won’t you help me?”
He wasn’t quite ready to surrender. “Why did you bring up her name, just now? You started to say, ‘If Inga murdered him,’ or something like that.”
I had to think for a moment. “Oh. When you nearly upset the table, you mean. What I started to say was, ‘If Inga told you I think you’re a murderer, she’s wrong.’ Or something like that. I seem to remember that you speak first and think later, right?”
He unclasped his arms and leaned back in his chair with the first hint of a smile. “Right. Sorry. But I thought . . . oh, well. I may as well tell you, I suppose. Rehearsal for talking to Old Bill.”
“Old Bill? Who’s he?”
He actually laughed. “The fuzz, I think you used to call them. The coppers. The police. I have been very politely asked to come down to headquarters this afternoon to answer a few more questions.”
My mouth felt dry; I took a sip of cold tea. “Questions about what?”
“I won’t know that till they ask, will I? I suppose more about where I was that night. I wouldn’t tell them much, before, but when Inga rang up she said the police were on their way to the Rose and Crown to talk about it, and she was going to have to tell the truth.”
The laughter was gone from his face and his voice. My mouth went drier still. “The truth being?”
“That she was there that night. We both were. At Billings’s house.”
Now that he had made up his mind to tell me, the story came easily enough.
“I went round to talk to him, after the children’s service. I thought he might be in a better mood, full of goodwill toward men, you know. Or at any rate I hoped he would. I need that job badly, and Inga had told me what a fool I was to get on the wrong side of him. After I left the Rose and Crown—”
“For the first time, or the second? You were there twice on Christmas Eve, weren’t you?”
“The second time. I went back to lick my wounds after Billings gave me his tongue-lashing, but I got no sympathy, I can tell you. She got me to admit exactly what happened and told me I’d got what I blood—what I deserved, that they’d fight their own battles, thank you. Her parents gave me a bite and a nip of Christmas cheer, in the spirit of the season, but they were all put out with me, and too busy to bother, in any case. So I left.”
“When was this?”
“About five, I think. It was before the rain started, I know, because I walked for a while, round the Close and back again, trying to cool off. Then it started to rain, and my jacket got soaked through in about five minutes. I was just outside the south porch, so I went in thinking I could dry out a bit. That was when I decided to talk to him again, do all the groveling necessary to get my job back.”
“And you followed him to his house? Was that wise, dogging his footsteps that way when he was already seriously annoyed with you?”
“Aha! Now who’s leaping to conclusions? I didn’t follow him anywhere, because he wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t where? At the cathedral or at his house?”
“Wasn’t anywhere. I couldn’t find him in the church, so I went to his house—”
I interrupted again, leaning across the table. “Nigel, I’m sorry, but this could be terribly important! When was this, exactly?”
“I walked into the church at exactly a quarter to six. I don’t have a watch, but the clock struck three quarters just as I was going through the door. The children’s service had only been over a little while, but the kids were gone. There were people all over the place, though, getting ready for the late service. So it took me a little while to decide Billings wasn’t there.”
“And you left through which door?”
“The cloister door, of course. It was the nearest to—oh.”
I leaned back again and looked at him grimly. “Exactly. Were there any lights on?”
“Not in that transept, because the electricity is off there. But they still had lights in the rest of the church, and there was quite enough light to see. He wasn’t there.”
“The police will have to know that,” I said firmly.
Nigel squirmed. “Ye-es. But. You see—when I got outside it was raining harder than ever, so I was nearly at his front door, across the Close, before I saw . . .”
He ran down, and I finished for him. “You saw Inga.”
He nodded. “The thing was, Mrs. Martin, she was coming out of his door!”
WHAT IT BOILED down to, after we had hashed it out thoroughly, was that he had seen Inga just closing Billings’s door behind her. He hadn’t particularly wanted to talk to her right then, so he’d turned away, but not, apparently, before she’d seen him and ignored him for the same reason. Later, when the murder was discovered, they’d both brooded about a different interpretation of their actions and gotten scared.
Of course, I thought as I squelched home, not waiting for Jane after all, if they were both telling the truth they each half-suspected the other. That proved the innocence of both. Didn’t it?
As soon as the sleet let up a little I headed for the cathedral. I had some questions that needed answering. First of all, I wanted to find out where Wallingford and Sayers were during the relevant period—whatever that was. I had worked out, though, that the children’s service was over about five-thirty and people had started coming to the late service about ten-thirty. Surely no one would have dared put the body where it was found after that, so I had five hours to think about.
Second, I wanted to verify my two suspects’ motives. I had no idea how I was going to do that; a bridge to cross when necessary. Third, I was going to try to find out something about the murder weapon, and finally, I intended to figure out where he was murdered.
Sure, you and who else, Sherlock, one of the voices jeered as my sodden shoes slapped against the paving stones of the Close. The sleet had stopped, but not the rain. I ignored the voice, however; I had just thought of another intriguing problem: Why was the body moved to where I found it? Of course it was moved from the scene of the crime for obvious reasons—but why to a cathedral chapel on Christmas Eve? If you’re going to go around
moving a body, surely it would be just as easy to take it to some place where there would not shortly be thousands of people—Billings’s house, for instance. Unless he was killed there, of course.
The cathedral seemed deserted this gloomy afternoon, and very quiet. My wet shoes splooshed loudly on the paving stones; I wasn’t surprised when a verger materialized and bore down on me.
“May I help you, madam? Oh, Mrs. Martin, how are you? Dear, dear, dear, how wet you are! Come to the office and let me take that coat, and dry your shoes.”
It was one of the vergers I knew by sight, but not by name, a fussy little man with a round little bald head and round little rimless spectacles. He bustled me away like someone shooing hens. I thought he cared more about the unseemly noise and mess I was making than my comfort, but his turning up was providential, all the same.
“Mr. Wallingford seems to be busy these days,” I commented casually once I was ensconced in the stuffy little den the vergers used for their office. An electric heater put the temperature somewhere up around August, and I wasn’t sorry to shed my coat and shoes for Fusspot to look after. “I suppose Mr. Swansworthy must still be ill?” I sat down casually on the chair with the frayed cane back.
“Humph!” snorted Fusspot (I must learn his name, I thought). “There are some who come to work whether they’re ill or not. And then there are some who make a great show of working, but we’d all be better off without them, if the truth were told.”
Oh, my! The little man was obviously bursting with grievances. Pure gold, if I could mine it properly.
“Really?” I said mildly, crossing my fingers and hoping I’d gotten it right. “I thought I saw Mr. Wallingford running about working very hard indeed on Christmas Eve. Around seven, it was.” I tried to think of some excuse for my fictitious presence in the cathedral at that hour, but the verger didn’t even notice.
“Well, I must say, if you saw him, it’s more than anyone else did. We were run off our feet, getting ready for midnight Mass. It’s always the same, too much to do and too little time to do it in, and no one to take charge and see it’s done properly. And where was our fine Robert when we could have used him? I looked high and low for him myself when the others whined they couldn’t find him. I want you to know I ended by putting up every one of those candles in the nave myself. Sixteen dozen of them!” He gave a vicious swipe to my left shoe.
I seriously doubted that. Sixteen dozen candles is a good many. However, I didn’t want to dry up the flow. “Oh, dear, what a pity. I must have been mistaken, then. I wasn’t paying much attention, really, I was actually looking for Mr. Sayers.”
He looked at me pityingly as he finished the other shoe. “My dear lady, you really should have your ears checked, as well as your eyes. He was practicing the organ for hours, and I really had to complain to the dean later; it was so loud it gave me a terrible headache. I’m a martyr to migraine, you know, and what with all that extra work, I was nearly prostrated. Here are your shoes. Would you like to leave your things here while you—er—do whatever it is you came to do?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t impose.” Butter him up, keep him talking. “You know, I wonder—you do so much here, and you must hear talk now and again—I’d heard that Mr. Sayers might be taking another job.” Was that a sufficiently diplomatic way to put it?
It wasn’t. The little man sniffed. “I hope, madam, that you do not take me for a gossip. I never discuss cathedral business; I would consider it a breach of trust to do so. Now I really am quite busy, so if you will excuse me . . .”
I made my apologies and my escape. I’d blown that one, but I’d learned a good deal first. So Wallingford wasn’t around on Christmas Eve, and Sayers was, eh? It wasn’t proof. The verger could have been someplace out of the way, and the organ music could just conceivably have been on tape. But it was an indication, and one I was the more inclined to accept because I rather liked Jeremy Sayers and couldn’t stand Wallingford. I felt I was doing rather well.
I wandered, idly trying to make out the Latin on some of the old tombs in the north transept. Did I want to drop into the library? Would the place where Billings had worked offer any hints, clues perhaps to his last project? I went up to the chapter-house door, but it was locked. That made sense. No librarian, no assistant at least for the moment. The Dean and Chapter were going to have some staffing problems to consider when the holidays were over. I turned from the door and felt as if an icicle were going down my back.
There he was again, the monk, just gliding past in the shadows, making no sound, showing no face. I leaned against the thick, brass-studded chapter-house door, swallowed, and took several deep breaths. This would have to stop; I was too old for such shocks. If I was going to be seeing ghosts all the time, I’d better get used to it and teach my heart to behave.
All the same, I took a close look around before I left the security of that good solid door. I saw no one, dead or alive, but voices not too far away sounded blessedly normal. Looking down the transept, I saw Mrs. Allenby, with another woman I knew by sight, arranging flowers at the parish altar. I made for them like a frightened child.
“Mrs. Martin, how pleasant,” the dean’s wife said comfortably. “You know Mrs. Peters, don’t you?” The other woman, a soft round little dove with china-blue eyes, lovely white hair, and the complexion of a very soft, faded rose petal, smiled and murmured something gentle.
“Mrs. Martin found our body the other night, you know,” Mrs. Allenby went on, and turned to me. “You look as though you’re feeling better.”
“Much, thank you, although—” I hesitated, and then plunged on, “—although I’d be better still if I didn’t keep seeing ghosts. It’s unnerving.”
Mrs. Allenby cut a red carnation to the proper length while Mrs. Peters deftly snipped off some brownish juniper. “I expect you’ve seen our monk,” Mrs. Peters said softly. “You needn’t let him upset you; he’s rather an old dear, really.”
“I feel sorry for him,” said Mrs. Allenby, placidly poking flowers into the brass vase. “He’s surely earned his rest after all these years. I asked Kenneth once why he thought the poor man wandered, and he was annoyed; the Church of England doesn’t believe in ghosts, officially, you know.”
Above our heads the organ suddenly spoke: a series of squeaks and growls interspersed with little runs and chords. “Oh, dear, it’s later than I thought, if Jeremy is already choosing the stops for Evensong. We’d best be off, Dulcie. Do you think these look all right, Mrs. Martin?”
“Lovely,” I said absently. “I do like to hear Mr. Sayers practice; he’s very good, isn’t he?”
“Very good, indeed,” said Mrs. Allenby approvingly. “I am so glad he’s decided to stay.”
“You don’t mean to say he was planning to leave?” I asked innocently.
“Oh, not seriously, I don’t think, but there was some little disagreement with Canon Billings, and for a bit there was talk . . . but now, of course, there’s no need for him to think about leaving us. We’re extremely lucky to have him; I know Kenneth thinks so, too. Music is so important to the services, don’t you agree?”
I agreed, rejoicing in success and trying to figure out how to turn the conversation in the direction of vergers in general and Wallingford in particular when the man himself appeared from the choir. He was moving with the same pompous tread he employed in procession—chin up, leaning just slightly backward—a posture that displayed to great advantage his well-curved front elevation.
“Good h’afternoon, Mrs. Allenby, Mrs. Peters.” He bowed, deferentially to the dean’s wife, coolly to the flower volunteer. “Mrs. Martin.” A slight nod put me firmly in my place. “I shall ’ave to ask you ladies to h’abandon your labors; h’Evensong will begin in . . .” he produced a pocket watch from some hidden recess of his cassock, “h’exactly nineteen minutes.”
“Yes, I am aware of the time, Mr. Wallingford,” said Mrs. Allenby in as near to a snub as I had ever heard her administer. “Shall we g
o, Dulcie? Mrs. Martin, I’m delighted to see you looking better.” She turned her back and swept away, a performance that both impressed and astonished me, in view of her usual motherly disposition.
The verger had turned ponderously away, ignoring me altogether, but I wasn’t about to let him go now that I had him in my web, so to speak. “Oh, Mr. Wallingford,” I trilled, “I did want to tell you how beautifully the service went on Christmas Eve.” That, at least, was true. “I’m sure you must have worked terribly hard to get everything so perfectly organized.” My fingers were crossed again.
Wallingford condescended to turn back. The nod this time was slightly warmer, acknowledging the praise as only his due. “It is h’always somewhat trying on Christmas Eve, preparing for the late service whilst tidying up after the children’s service. I may say that I ’ave never, in the h’eight years I ’ave served this cathedral, been so fortunate as to partake of h’either tea or dinner on Christmas Eve.”
“Why, that’s terrible! Do you mean to say you didn’t get a chance to leave at all?” My fingers were crossed so hard they were beginning to cramp.
“I was, as usual, going about my h’appointed duties ’ere from well before Matins until well past midnight, with a brief respite for tea and a cold pork pie in the early h’afternoon,” said the martyr to duty. “H’it is gratifying to know that the sacrifice was h’appreciated. I h’assume, madam, that you are planning to h’attend h’Evensong?”
“Well, no . . .”
“H’although,” said Wallingford weightily, “the rule states that h’anyone not ’ere in a religious capacity is required to leave during services, I am prepared to make an h’exception in your case. I trust that you will not create any h’undue disturbance should you remain, madam.” Another inclination of the head graciously bestowed his permission to stay. “Good h’afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” I said through gritted teeth. He moved away toward a small group of tourists, to whom he spoke officiously. They scuttled out, no doubt with a fine impression of the warm Christian hospitality the cathedral had to offer. I felt a twinge in a tooth I suspected was due for a root canal, and unclenched my jaw. But really, how dare the man! You couldn’t have people wandering about making noise during a service, of course. But you could be nice about it; you didn’t have to make them feel like worms under your pompous, snobbish feet. What a lazy, self-important, stupid, boring . . .
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