Death on Lindisfarne

by Fay Sampson

  “There’s the post-mortem. We don’t know the result yet.”

  “Could it be anything other than drowning?”

  Lucy’s clear blue eyes met his unflinchingly. “Let’s wait and see.”

  Aidan stared back at her. This was his doing. He was the one who had told her about the coastguard’s doubts. He could feel himself colouring, imagining how that must look against his ginger hair and beard. He took a step closer. “Yesterday, I was coming down the stairs. I didn’t mean to listen in, but you were talking to Brother Simon. He told you to be careful.”

  She looked away. “Ah. You heard that, did you?”

  “What did he mean?”

  She turned her gaze back to him. She seemed to be considering whether it would be wise to confide in him. What was he to her, anyway? Just one of the people who had signed up for her history holiday. Someone she had known at a fairly superficial level for three days. Someone who had rebuffed her attempt at sympathy.

  “I don’t think I can discuss it. Not till I’ve told the police.”

  Alarm bells were ringing in Aidan’s mind now. Told the police? So something had happened. Something that had given Simon reason to fear for her. Thoughts went tumbling through Aidan’s mind. It had to do with Rachel’s death; with the growing suspicion they shared that it might not be suicide. And if it was not… Someone here on the island was implicated, and Lucy knew who it was.

  He felt the rush of fear for her that Simon must have felt.

  “Tell me,” he ordered. “Give me a name. If there’s a possibility you may be in danger, someone else should be looking out for you.”

  Surprise at the vehemence of his demand widened her eyes.

  “I can handle it. There may be nothing in it. Just something strange that happened, that’s all. It wouldn’t be fair to blacken someone’s name if it turns out not to mean what I think it might.”

  You told Simon, he thought.

  Simon’s an old friend. You’re not.

  She started to move back towards the house, walking swiftly now. He fell into step beside her.

  “I understand about confidentiality. But there’s a word neither of us is saying, isn’t there? If it’s not suicide, and not an accident. Shall I spell it out to you? The only option we’re left with is… murder.”

  The word fell between them, like a stone dropped from a great height.

  “I’ve been trying not to say that to myself,” she told him quietly.

  “And does this person whose name you won’t tell me know which way your thoughts are going? Is that why Simon thinks you’re in danger?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? As it happens, yes. I was given a warning to keep quiet.”

  Now Aidan felt the blood that had warmed his cheeks not long ago drain out of them.

  “And you still won’t tell me!”

  She looked at him sideways, uncertain. “I don’t think I can. Until I’ve told the police.”

  “Which this person presumably won’t want you to do.”

  “I was given strict orders not to.”

  He saw the determined tilt of her chin.

  “But you will?”

  “What choice do I have? Even if I hadn’t once been a police officer. I owe it to Rachel.”

  They were nearing the road in front of the house.

  “Let me make one guess. You can tell me if I’m wrong.”

  “I don’t think that it’s for you to make the rules.”

  “James?”

  He saw the start she gave. The flash of alarm in her eyes. Had he guessed right? Or was it surprise?

  She pressed her lips tight. “I told you. I’m not saying. I’ve probably told you too much already.”

  She loped ahead of him, through the gates of St Colman’s.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  LUCY PUT DOWN THE PHONE with a feeling of dissatisfaction. She had thought it would be easier to talk to the female detective sergeant. But DS Malham had listened non-committally to her tale of Elspeth’s offering Rachel cocaine, of Lucy’s scary visit from Valerie. She had asked a few basic questions, but she had not followed up this new revelation with the eagerness Lucy had anticipated. She had not even – and Lucy was aware of her own indignation – shown much concern for Lucy’s safety. Did she not take her seriously? She had said, as she was bound to, that she would pass the information on to DI Harland.

  It was professionalism, of course. DS Malham would feel obliged to hold her cards close to her chest. She wouldn’t reveal operational confidences to a member of the public.

  That’s all Lucy was now. The Reverend Lucy Pargeter. No longer a police officer. Did Malham know she had been? If so, did she guess why Lucy had left the force?

  Her words had vanished into thin air with no visible effect. Too late, she realized she could have asked Malham about the results of Rachel’s post-mortem.

  No, she sighed, she wouldn’t have told me.

  She stood up from the bed where she had been sitting and started to gather her things for the day. She hoisted the small knapsack onto her shoulder. Time to go out and meet her group at the front of the house.

  The brightness of the April morning still held. Daffodils flaunted their trumpets in gardens along the road. Some of the group gathered by the front door were turning their faces up to the sun.

  Not Peter. Her heart twisted as she saw him hunch his shoulders, still weighed down with grief. She ought to talk to him. To make a space where he could tell her how he was feeling.

  She ran her eyes quickly over the group. Melangell, bless her, as eager as ever. Her bearded father. There had still been that prickly wariness this morning on the beach. Yet he had seemed chivalrously alarmed for her. Could she trust that?

  Valerie and Elspeth. Her guts churned, remembering that visit last evening.

  Sue and James. She sighed. Aidan might have guessed wrongly about James being the one who had threatened her, but that didn’t mean the rival pastor was going to give her an easy ride.

  Somebody still missing. The Cavendishes.

  Lucy greeted them as brightly as she could. She jogged on the spot to get her adrenalin going. She would need the energy to put into her storytelling and hold the attention of her group in the face of everything else that had happened.

  Her phone rang. She glanced down at the screen.

  “Sorry, folks. I need to take this.”

  She loped away across the car park until her own VW partly hid her from view.

  “Ian! That was quick.”

  “Yeah, well. The station’s not been the same without you. The PM’s in, and you’re right. The pathologist reckons she didn’t drown. She was dead before she went into the water. Asphyxia.”

  “Oh!” Lucy let out a long sigh. It was what an uneasy part of her had feared all along. But it was still like a blow to the stomach to have it confirmed. She could hardly begin to imagine the implications.

  “You still there?”

  “Yes. Sorry. Look, I’m really grateful to you, Ian. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll be able to do anything in return, under the circumstances. But if ever…”

  “Forget it. I owe you from the past. But don’t, for God’s sake, let Harland know you’ve heard this. Never mind who from.”

  “Of course not. Thanks a million.”

  “Oh, and there was something else you might want to know. Drugs in her system. Cocaine. Recent.”

  “Yes. I rather expected that.”

  “Take care of yourself. Just like you to leave the force and still land yourself with a murder enquiry.”

  There, that word. Not from her own teeming imagination this time, but from a serving police officer.

  “I don’t think I’ll be putting the flags out. I’ve been trying not to believe that. She was a friend.”

  “Sorry! Me putting my big foot in it again. Are you OK?”

  “Not really. But I’ll cope. Not much point in being a minister of the Church if I can’t handle de
ath, is there?”

  She closed the phone and looked across the top of the car at the assortment of people gathered waiting for her. While she had been talking, the Cavendishes had joined the group. She drew a deep breath. Did she have to face the thought that there might be a murderer somewhere among them?

  She focused on the tall, dignified figure of Valerie Grayson. The neatly waved greying hair, the violet anorak, the steady eyes. Valerie had seemed the wise and serene member of the group. A loyal support. Until last night.

  The house was old compared with most buildings on the island. Warm, red stone, the same colour as the stones of the priory Aidan had photographed. In close-up now, he focused on the pleasing irregularity of the masonry.

  As Lucy led them to the door, he read the signboard on the wall: FELLOWSHIP OF ST EBBA AND ST OSWALD. So this was where Brother Simon led his semi-monastic life?

  The door opened. Aidan expected to see Simon’s burly, black-haired figure. Instead it was a spare-boned woman in a long calico apron, over a plain grey dress. Thin hair was scraped back behind her ears, but the radiant smile she gave outshone this initial severity.

  “Lucy! Come in.” She kissed her.

  Again Aidan had that unsettling feeling that Lucy was not the stranger here that the rest of them were. Aidan’s own brief visits to Lindisfarne had not engendered this closeness of friendship. He suspected that Lucy must have spent some time in this community. So why was this not just an interesting fact to add to his knowledge of her? Why did it make him feel shut out?

  The tallest of them had to stoop their heads under the low beams. The woman in grey, Sister Agnes, led them down steps into a comfortable, if small, sitting room. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Aidan did not have to study them long to realize they were crammed with books about Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history, and especially of their churches. There were other books of local interest: flowers, birds, the geology of this shifting coastline. More books, particularly the lavishly illustrated ones, were spread out on tables for visitors to enjoy. He spotted a facsimile edition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, with their angular interlace and mythical creatures forming the decorated capitals and surrounding the magnificent title pages. And – it came as an almost physical shock – the whole collection of Jenny’s books on the Celtic saints. He always thought of them as hers, even though it was his own photographs staring him in the face. It was Jenny’s inspiration his camera had served.

  Sister Agnes had turned back to Lucy. “My poor lamb. Simon told us all about it. What a tragedy for you! That poor girl.” She swung her deep blue eyes round the rest of the group crowding into the small room. “It can’t have been pleasant for you too, coming here for a holiday and expecting to go home rested and uplifted. But be assured. Rachel is at peace now, in the arms of mercy. It’s us poor sinners who have to struggle on with the weight of bereavement and guilt.”

  Guilt. The word brought Aidan up short. It was an odd expression to use.

  Agnes’s radiant smile dwelt on each of them in turn. “But that peace which now embraces Rachel is available to you all.”

  Was it? Aidan’s mind shot back to his encounter with Lucy on the beach this morning. Someone in this group had threatened Lucy. Surely that could only mean they knew something they ought not to about Rachel’s drowning. If she had drowned.

  He half-turned to find James behind him. The younger man was disconcertingly taller than Aidan at close quarters. And undeniably more handsome, he thought wryly. The shaved hair and plaster did nothing to minimize that. He thought again about Rachel’s bright eyes the first time he had met her, on Saturday afternoon. There had been something almost flirtatious about her then. A total contrast from the fearful face, withdrawn behind her curtain of lank hair, that she had shown the next time he saw her, as she crept unwillingly into the introductory meeting. It had almost certainly been Rachel in her red jacket he had seen on the beach through his zoom lens as he and Melangell crossed the sands. Had it been James with her? And what had happened to turn those bright eyes into fear?

  He found himself pulling Melangell away from James.

  “Sit down, everyone,” Lucy was saying. “There are just about enough seats for us.”

  He squeezed into a small battered sofa beside Peter. Melangell curled up at his feet.

  He watched James cross the room, heading for another sofa. The Cavendishes got there first. James checked, with a look of outraged entitlement, and found the only other one occupied by Elspeth and Valerie. Elspeth’s ample figure overflowed it. With an air of affront, James took the only other option. An upright chair behind the Cavendishes’ sofa. Sue had slipped into an armchair just inside the door. She jumped up now, with a look of guilt.

  “James! Sit here.”

  He waved her away with a martyred air. James, visibly wounded, only out of hospital yesterday. Was he really the victim? Or something worse?

  Aidan watched Sue subside onto the armchair. She perched on the edge of it now, as if she did not deserve to be there. He could see by the way she was looking at James that she felt it was wrong to sit in comfort while her pastor did not.

  A new thought crawled slowly through Aidan’s mind. Sue was utterly devoted to James. Whatever he said was law to her. If James had some reason to get rid of Rachel, Sue was more than capable of doing it for him. Aidan had not the slightest doubt that she would risk life imprisonment for him.

  Did that mean…? His eyes shot back to Lucy. She was the only one of the group still standing. She looked young today, in a pink clerical shirt showing a glimpse of a dog collar beneath the navy-blue tracksuit. An oddly heart-twisting blend. The authority of ministerial office with a youthful female vulnerability. Could it have been Sue, not James, who had threatened Lucy, and made Brother Simon fear for her safety?

  Whoever it was, as long as they stayed on this island, Lucy could not help but be in close daily proximity to someone who knew more about Rachel’s death than they should, and who saw Lucy as a threat.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  LUCY LOOKED OUTWARDLY UNCONCERNED. She had clearly decided to pick up the threads and carry on the week as she had planned. She raised her clear voice and the room settled. Sister Agnes gave her a reassuring smile and slipped out of the room.

  “I’ve brought you here because it’s one of the best places on the island to see the wealth of Celtic tradition on which Aidan’s abbey was founded. Well, maybe the Priory Museum or the Lindisfarne Centre would have been better still, but they’re not the places to tell you the story of the Synod of Whitby, with visitors coming and going all around us. But I’ll take you on to the Centre after this. If you haven’t seen it already, you’re in for a treat.

  “Look around you. You’ll see evidence of the artefacts. The gorgeous manuscripts, the carved stone crosses, the island sanctuaries that became beacons of learning. All that came to us from Ireland, via St Columba’s Iona on the west coast of Scotland. St Aidan was Irish, sent here from Iona. King Oswald and his sister Ebba, for whom this fellowship here is named, were English, but they grew up schooled on Iona, in Oswald’s case, and the nearby Island of Women, for Ebba. The Celtic tradition was the wellspring of their Christianity.

  “The Venerable Bede tells us that their difference from the Roman Church was about the date of Easter and the style of tonsure with which monks shaved their heads. But believe me, it was more than that. The Celtic Church was not a monolithic structure, ruled top-down from Rome. Each abbey was autonomous, adopting its own Rule after comparison with others. And the abbeys mattered. They were seats of learning and mission. Spiritual power in Celtic lands did not lie in the court of Christian kings. Lindisfarne’s abbey is where it is, because it was separated from the palace at Bamburgh. Near enough for King Oswald and Aidan to talk whenever they needed to, but far enough for Aidan to keep his independence and speak truth to kings.

  “These abbeys could be headed by women as well as men. Hild, as I told you, had a great company of men and women a
t Whitby. Monks and nuns alike became scholars and teachers.

  “Then back came Wilfrid from Rome, fired with visions of the Roman Church’s material wealth and glory, its claim to universal authority. His ambition was to bring Northumbria within that empire.

  “He found an ally in King Oswy’s son, Prince Alchfrith. Alchfrith ruled the southern part of Northumbria, roughly Yorkshire. He gave Wilfrid the abbey of Ripon. Wilfrid turned out the Celtic abbot and monks who refused to convert to Roman ways. Setting up his own brand of the Church in his father’s Celtic Christian kingdom was just one act of Prince Alchfrith’s bid for defiance against his father’s power.

  “King Oswy moved in. At all costs, he was determined to keep Northumbria one kingdom. He called the Synod of Whitby to decide the matter once and for all. Should Northumbria be Celtic or Roman? There’s no doubt where his own heart lay. He had been brought up on Iona, like Oswald.”

  Lucy’s eyes moved round the group. She was willing them to care about this outcome, more than thirteen hundred years later.

  “It seemed luck was on his side. The Roman party chose as its leader Agilbert, a Frankish bishop. Bishops had foremost authority in the Roman Church, but Agilbert had been thrown out of Wessex because the king there couldn’t stand his appalling English. Everything he said at the Synod would have to be translated.

  “The Celtic party was led, as was only proper, by the abbot of Lindisfarne, St Colman.”

  “Is that the same as St Colman’s House, where we’re staying?” Frances asked.

  “Yes, he’s the one.” Lucy beamed encouragement. It was not often Frances joined in their discussions. “Colman was another Irishman, but had served in Northumbria for many years. He was deeply versed in the tradition of St Columba and Iona. In the Celtic Church’s favourite Gospel of St John, with its message of love.

  “When Hild as host opened the Synod it must have looked like a foregone conclusion.