Other than the one current account, there was no evidence in the desk of any other bank or savings account. Nor was there any cash.
“I suggest we search the house to see if there are any more financial documents, any cash, and any will,” Amos told Swift.
They worked quickly and methodically through the large house but produced none of the items that Amos had listed. Nor was there anything else that seemed in any way relevant to the case.
As he glanced round, Amos noticed finger marks on the trapdoor leading up into the roof space. There was no ladder in sight so Amos grabbed a chair from one of the bedrooms and placed it on the landing under the trapdoor.
Although he was slightly short for a police officer, he could easily reach the ceiling and he gave the edge of the trapdoor a slight push. It sprung back and opened automatically. An expanding ladder was attached to the top side.
Amos pulled down the ladder and started to climb up into the darkness.
“Switch the landing light on please, Juliet,” he requested. “It may just give me enough light.”
She did so. By the time Amos was at the top of the ladder she was back with a bedside light with a beam that could be directed. She plugged it into a socket on the landing and passed it up to the inspector.
There was a pause as Amos looked round.
Finally he said: “This is where Knowles keeps his cash. Quite a bit of it, where it can’t be seen. All stacked in £20, £10 and £5 piles.”
Chapter 13
Amos was up at 7am next morning and was geared up for his “bowl of porridge for one” routine but Mrs Amos stirred as he got out of bed and that meant doing toast, which threw him.
His wife preferred toast and marmalade on Sunday just so that the day would be different, a habit she had got into because she had never been a churchgoer and her husband had worked as many Sundays as he had had off, so one day was pretty much the same as another.
Making toast for his wife and porridge for himself involved too much thinking so early in the morning. Should he have cereal? That difficult decision could be postponed.
So: empty half the kettle that Mrs Amos persisted in overfilling the night before; switch the kettle on; put two pieces of sliced bread into the toaster; put teabags into two beakers; put plate, butter and marmalade on tray.
Damn, the toast is ready too soon. Must have left too much water in the kettle. Quick decision, leave the toast in the toaster to keep warm. Now the kettle is boiling and the water can be poured into the beakers but the tea needs time to brew.
Grab two knives from the cutlery drawer and put them on the tray. Mrs Amos insists you cannot put the butter knife into the marmalade because that causes mould to form.
Her toast is now tepid but that solves one decision. Amos put the two pieces of toast onto his plate and put two fresh slices into the toaster. They would be ready by the time the tea had brewed, the teabags had been consigned to the waste bin and the milk had been added.
Amos took his wife’s breakfast tray upstairs. Now there was another problem to resolve: when to have Sunday lunch. The Amoses preferred lunchtime on Sunday, or failing that as soon after 5pm as possible and no later than 7pm; otherwise on Monday or, in extremis, Tuesday.
But whenever they had it, it was always Sunday lunch: roast pork, beef, lamb or chicken in strict rotation with roast potatoes. Two hours notice was required. If Amos was home, he cooked it; if not, his wife did.
“Sunday lunch?” Mrs Amos inevitably asked as Amos handed her the breakfast tray.
“Definitely not lunchtime,” Amos replied. “Tea time should be fine. Say six.”
His wife grunted. “I’ll make it seven. Ring me before five to let me know one way or another.”
A second crisis over, Amos returned to his own breakfast. The toast was cold and he had forgotten to remove his own teabag, so the tea was stewed.
He could do without this hassle in the morning and now he realised that the butter was up in the bedroom. So was the marmalade. The apricot jam was taunting him from inside the open cupboard.
Amos slammed the toast and tea bag into the bin and poured muesli into his bowl. Bother, he had put the milk back into the fridge without thinking.
With a sigh, he settled down at the kitchen table with muesli and rebrewed tea. The Sunday newspaper had not yet arrived so there was nothing to read. What an exasperating start to the day. Amos hated his breakfast routine to go badly on a day when he was on duty.
Worse was to come when, as arranged, he picked up Detective Sergeant Swift from her home. Amos had driven to police headquarters at Nettleham just outside Lincoln and commandeered a marked police vehicle to avoid the ignominy of two parking tickets in successive days.
Jason, Swift’s boyfriend, was in one of his maudlin, self-pitying strops. He stormed out to the car as Amos pulled up, the driver’s side to the kerb.
“Juliet’s supposed to be off duty today,” Jason blurted out accusingly. “It’s been arranged for ages. She worked yesterday. It’s my cup match. Juliet promised she’d support me. It’s my big chance.”
“I can’t help it, Jason,” Amos said irritably. He usually talked Jason round with sympathy, the only method that seemed to work, but this morning Amos had neither the time nor inclination for delicacies. “Murders don’t make allowances for the rugby season.”
Swift was already opening the front passenger door.
“Get back inside, Jason, and pull yourself together,” she snapped. “You know my work has to come first. You’re not earning.”
As Amos drove off hastily, he could see in the wing mirror the hapless Jason standing forlorn and tearful on the pavement watching the love of his life forsake him in his hour of need.
“Ah well,” Amos said without conviction. “The day can only get better.”
The rest of the morning, however, proved equally frustrating.
Chapter 14
“We’ll go down the A15 to Sleaford and take the A17 into Boston,” Amos said. “There’s no point in calling in at Sibsey en route. Johnson, Fred Worthington’s neighbour, rang HQ and left me a message.
“He had, as I asked him yesterday, given Worthington my phone number when he returned last night. Needless to say, Worthington didn’t get in touch and Johnson suspected that he wouldn’t from his attitude.
“Johnson heard a car starting up at about six this morning and he looked out of his bedroom window to see Worthington driving off. He rang to let us know.”
Amos had, in fact, intended letting Swift, the faster driver, take the wheel in the hope of catching the elusive Fred Worthington at the Stump but swapping over would have meant prolonging the embarrassing altercation with Jason. In the event, the roads were pretty clear with not a tractor in sight so they reached Boston parish church by 10am in time to slip discretely into a pew furthest from the altar as morning service began.
The service was lightly attended.
“Looks like the faithful are not so keen that they get out of bed early in a Sunday morning,” Swift muttered sardonically to Amos, who ignored her remark and continued to allow his gaze to wander around the congregation. Worthington was not readily visible.
Swift settled down in her seat for what was going to be, from her point of view, a boring hour. Her parents had not attended any church of any denomination, out of apathy rather than antagonism, and the whole rigmarole left her cold.
Amos stared passively at the ceiling through the opening prayers but to Swift’s surprise he stood briskly as the introductory chords of the first hymn filled the vast chancel.
Swift remained seated sulkily, confident that she would not attract attention right at the back, although she glanced at Amos for any indication that she should comply with religious etiquette. The inspector, however, completely ignored her.
Despite having no hymn book, Amos joined in with gusto. To Swift’s amazement, given that she knew Amos never went to church and was occasionally openly critical of organised religions of
various kinds, the inspector knew all the words and the tune.
Swift cringed, glad that she had kept her head down. It was not that Amos sang out of key, it was that he sang in several different keys within the course of the hymn, sometimes sliding up or down a tone in mid-sentence, rather as the Beatles did in the middle of ‘Strawberry Fields’.
Swift slowly lifted her head and looked down the nave. The sizable gaps between small groups of worshippers gave her ample opportunity to see if anyone flinched. The substantial choir, numbering in Swift’s eyes as many as the congregation, were providing the bulk of the volume. Amos was filling in from the back. The feeble middle was swallowed up.
Swift leaned back again and closed her eyes. She tried to relax, as nothing could be done until this nonsense had run its course. Even the discomfort of the wooden pews could not offset her tiredness after a night of disrupted sleep following the guilt trip that Jason had put her through over missing the wretched rugby match. Time and again she half dozed off before some event or another rudely interrupted her somnolence.
Amos seemed to detach himself from the service, not kneeling for prayers, Swift noticed as she was stirred back to life by the shuffling of feet and rustling of bodies, or paying attention during the drone of the sermon, which brought her merciful relieve.
Then he was back with a vengeance each time the organ struck up, jolting her like an electric shock.
At last the service ended. Swift glanced at her watch. It was five to eleven, almost an hour wasted in a day when she was not supposed to be on duty and had things to do. Nor was there any sign of Fred Worthington, conspicuous once again by his absence.
Amos pushed past Swift as soon as the service concluded and was quickly up to the transept in search of his quarry before the congregation, such as it was, could start milling in the central aisle.
He spotted one of the church stalwarts who had been present on the ill-fated previous day. The man was evasive and unhelpful in shedding light on Worthington’s movements that morning or his current whereabouts.
The vicar and choristers emerged from the vestry. They, too, showed no inclination to help.
Swift had held back and only after several unproductive minutes had passed did she realise that a woman standing by her right shoulder was Dr Lesley Austin. The GP had either come in after the service or she must have been sitting directly in front of the two police officers so that they had not recognised her from behind.
“Did you say you were looking for Fred Worthington?” Austin asked.
Swift was surprised, as she had not mentioned Worthington or indeed anyone else and Austin would have needed remarkably sharp hearing or good lip reading skills to hear Amos, who had spoken softly to minimise the fuss.
Before Swift could reply, however, Austin continued without waiting for confirmation: “Look for him at the Pilgrims’ Memorial. He’s obsessed with it.”
Swift hastened to abstract Amos from the unhelpful throng a good 50 yards further up the nave. By now members of the congregation were standing talking in small groups in the aisle. As Swift reached the transept, she and Amos turned to see Austin sauntering casually out through the South door.
There were too many people milling around in the central aisle to catch her. Amos tried to push through but was thwarted by an influx of tourists arriving in a coachload, their entry timed to miss the morning service.
Then he spotted the young woman from the shop opening her door.
“Excuse me young lady,” he said, in a stumbling fashion designed to give the impression of a helpless old man, a tactic that usually drew solicitous aid from any woman less than half his age. “Can you tell me where in the church I would find the Pilgrims’ Memorial. I believe I will find Mr Worthington there.”
The assistant chuckled.
“I’m afraid it’s not in the church, sir,” she replied. “It’s at Fishtoft.”
Then seeing the puzzled look on Amos’s face, she explained in a kindly voice normally reserved for those of lesser intelligence: “The memorial marks the spot at which the pilgrim fathers attempted to flee to Holland where they could get a ship to New England. They were arrested and imprisoned in Boston Guildhall before they escaped and eventually made it to America.
“It’s on the North Bank of the channel that runs between the Wash to Boston port. They were trying to get far enough out of Boston so they could leave undetected. You can get through more directly from halfway round John Adams Way but it’s a bit tricky. The easiest way to find it if you don’t know the route is to follow the Skegness road and at Freiston turn right for Fishtoft. Then look out for the Pilgrims’ Memorial sign.”
Amos thanked the woman and looked for a last time round the church, which was emptying of worshippers and filling up with tourists, two small streams intermingling and swirling past without acknowledging each other.
It was too much to hope that Fred Worthington would be crawling out of the stonework that seemed capable of swallowing him like a ghost.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders with a sigh, turned to Swift and said: “Looks as good as anything. We really can’t get much further forward until we speak to Worthington.”
Swift nodded her agreement.
Following the directions to the memorial was easy but the road to what seemed like the middle of nowhere had more twists and turns than a convoluted detective story.
Unaware that the alternative route from near the port down along the bank of the Haven was much shorter, Amos remarked: “No wonder the pilgrims thought they could escape undetected from here.”
Finally they found a rough piece of land at the roadside that passed for a parking spot. There was one car in it. Swift, who was driving, parked alongside it and the two police officers clambered up a steep bank that protected the land from high North Sea tides.
As they came over the top, they saw below them a lone figure sitting motionless on the grass at the water’s edge and staring blankly at a small cargo ship manoeuvring gingerly down the narrow channel to the Wash.
Chapter 15
Fred Worthington failed to move a muscle as Amos and Swift bore down on him, although he must have been aware of their presence as they slithered down the rough path. As they came round him on either side, his gaze continued to follow the vessel.
“It must be good to just climb on board and leave everything behind. I wonder where it is going,” he suddenly said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
“You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Amos said. “Yet you have gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid us.”
“Just playing for time,” Worthington replied wearily. “Just playing for time.”
“Mr Worthington,” Amos said with exasperation and only the minimum of courtesy. “We are conducting a murder inquiry which, with your church background, I would have thought that you would want to assist, not bring us on a wild goose chase round the fens.”
“Quite so,” Worthington replied absentmindedly, his gaze still on the retreating ship.
“Then will you kindly pay attention and account for your movements yesterday morning. When did you arrive at the Stump?”
“About eight. Give or take.”
“And what did you do?”
“This and that. Just seeing everything was in order for the big event. Welcoming guests.”
“Did you stay within the main body of the church? Did you go outside at all?”
“I was inside seeing that equipment wasn’t left lying around for people to fall over. And making sure that visitors could get in without people blocking the doorway.”
“Did you speak to anyone?”
“Lots of people.”
“Such as?” The questions were becoming increasingly curt as Amos’s patience boiled over.
“Lots of people,” Worthington repeated, his eyes moving increasingly to the horizon as he followed the vessel that he wished he was on travelling to oblivion. “Church staff. The woman from the bookshop. Tourists. The ab
seiling club.”
“Did you speak to Simeon Knowles? Or Dr Austin?”
“Yes, and yes,” came the world-weary reply.
“Did you see anyone tamper with Knowles’s harness at any point before he went up the tower? Or anyone with a knife before or after?”
“No and no,” Worthington said hastily but firmly. His eyes moved momentarily to the ground as he emitted his answer, then they returned to the disappearing cargo ship.
“Look at me,” Amos commanded. Worthington slowly complied.
“Why did you go up to the bell-ringers’ room?”
“Just seeing that everything was OK,” Worthington replied simply. “I was in a state of shock.”
“You were looking for something,” Amos went on, ignoring the feeble excuse. “What?”
Worthington shook his head but uttered no sound. His gaze met Amos’s stare, then he turned seawards again to observe the now empty horizon.
“I can see we’re going to get nowhere,” Amos stated the obvious. “I gave you every chance to cooperate. If you won’t tell us what you removed from the Stump, perhaps we’ll find it at your house. I’ll get a search warrant.”
Amos hated tearing other people’s homes apart, even when they were guilty. It was an invasion of their privacy almost as obscene as a burglar breaking in and turning the place over. The intrusion was all the more offensive when he knew he was highly unlikely to find anything that would incriminate the hapless churchwarden.
It was therefore something of a relief when Worthington rose slowly to his feet and looked at Amos properly for the first time before saying: “No need. You can look for what you want. You won’t find anything.”
I’m sure he’s right, Amos thought to himself, but I’m going to put him through it after the way he’s messed us around.
“Very well,” the inspector said sarcastically. “We’ll take up your gracious offer. Detective Sergeant Swift will accompany you in your car back to your house…” Then seeing the look of horror on Swift’s face, he swiftly corrected himself: “Better still, I will ride in your car and my sergeant will follow in the police car.”
Holy Murder Page 5