The Hour of Death

by Jane Willan

  Although Treven had assured her that Father Selwyn was perfectly fine, she felt a surge of relief to see him standing there, prayer book in hand. Tall and balding, with a slight paunch that spoke of too many buttered scones and Glamorgan sausages, Father Selwyn chose to wear the traditional black cassock—when he remembered to iron it—and dog collar—when he could find it. (In the absence of his collar, he sometimes folded an index card and slipped it into his collar tabs.) Beloved by the Pryderi community and by the nuns at Gwenafwy Abbey, it was said that Father Selwyn could comfort those who grieved, encourage those who needed it, and ignore those who complained. The perfect skills required for a parish vicar Sister Agatha always thought.

  Constable Barnes stood at the far end of the parish hall talking on his mobile. She was glad that he didn’t look up when she came through the doors. He had made it clear in the past that he did not approve of her detective work, though she had practically saved his job for him over last summer’s murder at the abbey.

  Dr. Hedin Beese, coroner for Wrexham County, stood off to the side taking notes on an electronic tablet. Beese, just out of medical school, was far younger than Sister Agatha thought a doctor should be, but she had to admit that she had proved herself very capable. And unlike Constable Barnes, she kept an open mind.

  Father Selwyn nodded to her as he opened his prayer book and knelt beside the body of Tiffany.

  “Who called it in?” she asked, stepping next to him.

  “Lewis Colwyn. He came down to the hall to check the thermostat at about six this morning. He’s been filling in as sexton during school vacation.” Two ancient boilers supplied heat to the entire church, and reliability wasn’t their strong point. “He was very shaken. I guess he didn’t turn the light on and almost stepped on her,” Father Selwyn said. Lewis Colwyn was a popular teacher at the secondary school and an avid gardener on the side. He and Sister Matilda were fast friends, united by their love of plants. Sister Agatha knew that when he wasn’t busy with his growing family, he was always helping out at the church.

  Tiffany Reese lay slumped on the floor with her back to the wall, legs splayed out in front of her, as if she had fallen backward against the wall and slid down it. Her face, drained white, had a blueish-gray tinge around the nose, eyes, and fingertips. Her chin had fallen onto her chest. Her mouth was halfway open and slack. Both arms had fallen to her sides. A large diamond sparkled on her ring finger. Sister Agatha said a quiet prayer of her own as Father Selwyn began the prayers for the dead.

  The church hall, usually cluttered with folding chairs, a few tables, and a jumble of equipment from the St. Anselm village daycare, had been emptied of anything that didn’t relate to the art show. Rows of paintings displayed on the white walls, each with a small descriptive card underneath, represented a year’s work from the Art Society women. The refreshments committee had pushed a long table covered with a lace cloth against the far wall. Sister Agatha could see piles of neatly arranged cocktail napkins, dessert plates, the WI silver service, and the huge church coffee urn.

  She desperately wished she had her notebook and settled instead for a cocktail napkin. She pulled her paperback copy of Murder on the Orient Express out of her book bag to use as something to write on. It would have to do. She noticed that lying on the floor at Tiffany’s right side was a teacup. The teacup was delicate—bone china?—and was broken into two pieces. She longed to put on latex gloves and examine the porcelain. Much as she loved being an Anglican nun, Sister Agatha sometimes fantasized about being a real detective. She imagined herself handing the pieces of teacup over to her second-in-command with a gruff instruction to “bag it.” Coming out of her reverie, she instead retrieved the Sharpie from her jumper pocket and made a quick sketch of the scene on the cocktail napkin, noting the angle of the body, the exits to the room, and the position of the teacup.

  What would Inspector Rupert McFarland do right now? Rupert McFarland, retired lieutenant at the Strathclyde Police headquarters in Glasgow, was a best-selling mystery writer and the host of the Radio Wales pod-cast Write Now. Sister Agatha never missed the weekly show. Every Sunday evening, Inspector McFarland tackled the toughest crime-writing dilemmas—from weak verbs to weak witnesses, questionable alibis to sloppy syntax. He had taught her more than her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of St. David ever had. She thought for a moment and remembered his advice just last Sunday night: Don’t let your imagination get in the way of hard facts. On the other hand, there is no detective work without imagination.

  Dr. Beese walked over and, saying an abrupt good morning to Sister Agatha, crouched next to the body, across from Father Selwyn. She continued tapping on her electronic tablet as Father Selwyn stood up, slipping the prayer book into his cassock pocket. Sister Agatha stepped back and swept the room with a piercing glance. Was this a crime scene with a dead body or was her imagination running toward murder without any facts? If Tiffany died of unnatural causes, then the crime scene had just been horribly compromised by the early morning visit of Lewis Colwyn. Sister Agatha imagined him tromping across the room in the dark on his way to the thermostat, which sat directly above the dead body, and nearly stepping on it. She shook her head and could almost hear Inspector McFarland’s Scottish brogue, Keep your crime scene secure, laddies! A crime scene without integrity is a crime scene without its day in court.

  “You didn’t step on the body or anything did you?” she asked Father Selwyn

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s just that if this is a crime scene and you came plodding across it in your size-twelve brogues, well …”

  “Crime scene!” he said in a loud whisper with a glance backward at Constable Barnes, still on his mobile. “We’ve no idea what happened here. You can’t start calling it a crime scene.”

  “You never know,” she said. “It seems suspicious to me.”

  “Everything seems suspicious to you.”

  Sister Agatha ignored him. She looked around again and made a few more notes on the cocktail napkin. The spot directly above Tiffany’s dead body, where a painting should have hung, was empty. She noticed a small hole for the nail and, scanning the floor, saw it—a nail had rolled to the edge of the baseboard. She picked it up and slipped it in her jumper pocket. Underneath the spot where the painting should have been was a small placard reading “Melyn yr Ei thin,” Yellow Bird of the Gorse. She took a snapshot of it with her mobile.

  “Sister!” Constable Barnes’ voice boomed across the hall. “What are you doing here?” Constable Heath Barnes sang bass in the St. Anselm choir, and although Sister Agatha liked him as a person and appreciated that he was a faithful member of the parish, she had her doubts about his competence when it came to crime. Especially murder. Constable Barnes started toward her. “The public is not allowed in here. A woman has died.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But since I’m already here—could you tell me what happened?” She looked over at Father Selwyn, who widened his eyes at her, and then back to Constable Barnes, whose heavy face had turned from pink to red and splotchy. The sight of her snapping any more photos might tip Constable Barnes into the coronary he looked like he was about to have, so she slipped her mobile into her jumper and tried to set the scene to memory, noting that the teacup was broken almost perfectly down the center. She also remembered that every woman in the Women’s Institute had a teacup with her name on it in the church kitchen. Everyone who used the church kitchen knew never to drink from a WI teacup: they were the sole property of the ladies. This teacup did not have a name. Did that mean that Tiffany had used someone else’s? Or was she drinking tea at all? What if someone else had been in the room with her and had dropped the teacup?

  “No, I cannot tell you what happened—except that the poor woman is dead,” Constable Barnes said. “We won’t know anything until Dr. Beese has finished. And please don’t start your interfering. There’s been no foul play as far as I can tell.”

  Sister Agat
ha tried not to roll her eyes, and she was almost successful. Constable Barnes never thought there was foul play no matter how foul the play looked. She resisted reminding him how wrong he had been the last time. He preempted her. “I’ll thank you to not go jumping to conclusions just because of … well, because of you-know-what.” Obviously, last summer’s murder at the abbey was still a sore spot for the constable.

  Dr. Beese stood and smoothed the front of her black skirt. “If I had to guess,” she said, looking directly at Constable Barnes. “I would say a stroke or heart attack. Most likely a heart attack. But I will know more if there is an autopsy.”

  Sister Agatha began to write as quickly as she could, using the cocktail napkin placed on top of Murder on the Orient Express as her detective’s notebook. “If there is an autopsy?” she said. “Surely this mysterious death requires a complete forensic autopsy. I was thinking …”

  Dr. Beese cut her off. “There is no sign of foul play,” she said. “At least not that I can see at this point. And it isn’t that mysterious.”

  “Ligature marks?” Sister Agatha asked. “Injection sites?” Inspector Rupert McFarland had an exhaustive list of all the most probable ways that one’s victim could die. She ticked them off in her head: knife, poison, sword, a blow to the head, gun, garrote. “Blood that has pooled and we can’t see?” Sister Agatha had just finished reading a lengthy article on dual lividity and she was anxious to apply her newly acquired knowledge.

  “No.” Dr. Beese paused, her brow wrinkled. “At the risk of breaking confidentiality, Mrs. Reese was a patient of mine and had very high blood pressure. I had advised her to take care of her blood pressure because it made her susceptible to heart disease or a stroke. I don’t mean to jump to conclusions, however.” Dr. Beese opened her tablet, read for a moment, and then looked up. “Time of death … between nine and twelve PM last night.”

  “She must have stopped by the church to finish setting up for the art show,” Father Selwyn said. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Which opens in exactly two hours, by the way.”

  “Will you do a tox screen?” Sister Agatha asked.

  “Why?” Dr. Beese looked thoughtful. “What are you thinking?”

  “With no trauma to the body, one would consider death by poison. Just a thought.” Sister Agatha’s voice trailed off as she heard Constable Barnes snort.

  “Interesting.” Dr. Beese looked down at Tiffany’s body and cocked her head. “Some poisons do induce a heart attack. But I don’t think so in this case. I’m not sure I could justify sending off to Cardiff for a tox screen.”

  “There will be no tox screen and no autopsy,” Constable Barnes said. “Unless the family requests it.” He shot a withering glance at Sister Agatha.

  Dr. Beese stuffed the tablet into her black holdall and snapped it shut. “I agree,” she said, slipping on her coat and buttoning it. “The death is not suspicious. Mrs. Reese died of natural causes.” She paused, and slinging the holdall over her shoulder, gave Sister Agatha a sympathetic look. “But I appreciate your concern, Sister. It’s always good to stay open to possibility.” They all watched as Dr. Beese turned and walked to the door of the parish hall, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

  * * *

  Father Selwyn and Sister Agatha climbed the stairs to Father Selwyn’s study, occupied with their own thoughts. Sister Agatha went over the details of the scene. And Father Selwyn, she assumed, was processing the shock of a death in the parish. It wasn’t every day that one came across a dead body in the parish hall. She watched as he put the kettle on the single burner. An electric log burned cheerfully in the grate. She settled into her usual spot—the squishy leather sofa that faced the fireplace. It was the kind of sofa that, once you had sat down, it was hard to get up from again. Still neither spoke. Father Selwyn heaved a sigh as he lowered himself into one of the wingback chairs that flanked the fireplace. He fingered his prayer beads, his face drawn as he watched the tea kettle.

  She was glad to take refuge in Father Selwyn’s office. It was a haven for her, and one of the few places where she found pure contentment—contentment as well as a steady supply of tea and cakes. The winter sun cast a beam through the stained-glass window, making a pattern of richly colored squares on the carpet. Overburdened bookshelves stuffed with everything from fishing journals to systematic theology lined the walls of the study. Comfortable, if slightly shabby, furniture sat invitingly in front of a small fire burning in the grate, and in the air was the slightest whiff of cinnamon. Cinnamon mixed with candle wax.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  “I am. I put in a call to Tiffany’s brother, Kendrick. According to the housekeeper, he’s out of town. And he doesn’t pick up his mobile.” Father Selwyn stretched and pulled the dog collar out of the tabs at the top of his cassock. “It’s not as though I can leave something like this on his voice mail.” The kettle soon began to sing, and she watched as he poured hot water into the ceramic pot on the small table between them, dropping in a few bags of her favorite tea, Welsh Brew. And then, sitting back down, looked at her thoughtfully but didn’t speak. Father Selwyn was good at waiting and listening. He didn’t have to keep up an endless stream of conversation like so many people seemed to these days.

  “I managed to take a few more photos when Constable Barnes wasn’t looking. Do you want to see them?” she asked.

  “I do,” Father Selwyn said. “Do you want a Welsh cake?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’ve already missed my library meeting, so I don’t suppose Reverend Mother will mind if I take time for tea.” She handed the phone to Father Selwyn across the coffee table. “Scroll from the top.” She bit into a Welsh cake and said, her mouth full, “You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?”

  “That Tiffany was murdered?” He squinted at the tiny mobile screen and then fished his spectacles out of his cassock pocket.

  “So, you’re thinking it too?”

  “No. But I know you. I could see the wheels turning back in parish hall.”

  “Do you really think she died of a heart attack?”

  Father Selwyn held up the mobile and looked at it. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward and selected a Welsh cake. “Bevan must have left these for us. That was thoughtful of him.” Bevan was St. Anselm’s indispensable administrative assistant.

  “Has anyone reported her missing?” Sister Agatha finished her Welsh cake. This was just how Welsh cakes were supposed to be—crispy on the outside and crumbly with butter and sugar on the inside. “When she didn’t come home last night?”

  “Tiffany lives alone. No children, and her husband died ten years ago, at least.”

  “She’s a pretty active member of the parish, right?”

  He nodded. “Big time. Chair of the WI. Runs the Altar Guild. A member of the vestry.”

  “So she’ll be missed.” She waited while Father Selwyn sat munching the oatcake. “What? Tiffany won’t be missed?”

  “No. Of course she’ll be missed. It’s just that …” He chewed and swallowed. “Tiffany was kind of over-the-top. She had a way of offending. You know, alienating.” Father Selwyn poured more tea into both their cups. “Tiffany was … how shall I say it? A little annoying. Pushy. Difficult.” He sighed. “I’ll admit it. She drove me crazy. Yet, she always got the job done. Our yearly jumble sale was never so successful as when Tiffany organized it. The WI runs like clockwork. The Altar Guild won a diocesan award for liturgical design.” He put his teacup on the coffee table. “I hate looking at a screen. Do you mind if I print these?” Without waiting for an answer, Father Selwyn made several swipes and taps on the phone and then, a moment later, Sister Agatha watched as the four photos came churning out of the printer next to his desk. “I enlarged them too,” he said.

  “I’m impressed,” she said. Father Selwyn was not known for his technical prowess.

  “Bevan taught me.” They both looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Most people knocked and then just pushed i
n. “Come in,” Father Selwyn said.

  The door opened and Millicent Pritchard, whom Sister Agatha recognized as the young woman who worked behind the counter at the Just-for-You Florist shop on Main Street, stepped into the study.

  “Sorry to bother you, Father,” she said, giving Sister Agatha a weak smile. Millicent stood in the door of the study, her expression diffident, eyes wide-open. Thick brown curls tumbled from under a floppy felt hat. Sister Agatha’s first impression was that Millicent was disheveled. After a second glance, though, she decided that “disheveled” didn’t quite do it. It was more like a tornado of clothes had wrapped themselves around Millicent’s fireplug body. And her entire wardrobe seemed to have come from the St. Anselm jumble sale. Well, nothing wrong with shopping at the jumble, Sister Agatha thought to herself. Most of the village shopped at the jumble at one point or another. Although perhaps they didn’t layer on all of their purchases at the same time. Millicent tugged at the crocheted purple muffler swathed around her neck, its ends festooned with minuscule pink pompoms for fringe. “Is it true? When I came by with the Advent wreaths just now and I couldn’t get in and I heard that Tiffany …” Millicent looked imploringly at Father Selwyn.

  “It was Tiffany Reese, I’m afraid.” Father Selwyn stood and moved across the small room in two steps to take Millicent’s hand. “I’m so sorry. You were friends, weren’t you?”

  “Kind of. Yes. I mean, sort of.”

  Sister Agatha found that rather curious and reached for her notebook. Which wasn’t there. She committed Millicent’s comment to memory. In Sister Agatha’s world, either you were friends or you weren’t. None of this “sort of” business. “Do you always make deliveries to the church on Saturday mornings?” she asked.