Murder in Advent

by David Williams

  ‘That’s exactly what his daughter says, sir. Seems he’d become very forgetful lately. It’s the most likely explanation.’

  ‘And doesn’t affect the circumstances of his death. Since he never drank the tea. Or the dope,’ said Jones.

  ‘I imagine the Chief Inspector would still like to know how the stuff got in the Thermos,’ the banker commented.

  ‘That’s right, sir. And why.’

  ‘More than a loose end.’

  The policeman gave Treasure an appreciative nod. ‘The tea could have been doctored before ever Pounder got to the cathedral,’ said the Dean.

  ‘We’re taking that into account,’ Pride replied. ‘All the same, could I ask whether any of you gentlemen has any idea how the phenobarbitone was introduced?’ He paused. There was no response. ‘It’s not something commonly prescribed these days. Would any of you have any in your possession or know of anyone else who has? Sodium phenobarbitone or phenobarbitone?’

  ‘There’s a difference between them?’ asked Treasure.

  ‘The sodium’s a lot more soluble. Dissolves faster in liquid. The lab’s fairly certain it was sodium in the flask.’

  ‘I have some,’ volunteered Algy Merit. ‘Not sure which kind. Brand called Nembutal. Sovereign remedy for occasional sleeplessness. I didn’t put any in Pounder’s tea. And I doubt whether I had the opportunity.’

  ‘I see, sir. Does anyone else have access to your supply?’

  Merit shrugged. ‘My sister, I suppose. But I’m quite sure she’d never touch it. You interviewed her last night,’ which implied it was up to the Chief Inspector to do so again if he wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘Thank you, Canon Merit. Anyone else in possession of phenobarbitone?’

  Clive Brastow cleared his throat as if he was about to say something, then didn’t.

  ‘Will you all excuse me a moment?’ Pride got up and went to the door where his detective constable had just appeared. The two conferred briefly. ‘You don’t mind if my colleague sits in?’ said Pride returning to his seat: it was a rhetorical question and no one troubled to answer it. The younger man moved to a chair against the wall and produced a notebook.

  The senior officer looked around the group slowly before continuing: ‘I meant to mention we found the key to the Old Library. The one that went missing, Canon Jones. Not where you’d expect it. Lying on that grass square in the middle of Abbot’s Cloister. Like it was thrown there.’

  ‘Which indicates the murderer left by the cloister door, though the north door must still have been open,’ observed Algy Merit unexpectedly.

  ‘It could do, sir. Would you attach any significance to that?’

  ‘Some, yes. Those of us who live north of the cathedral seldom use that door.’

  ‘And it follows people who live in the cloisters always do, sir?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘A common thief could have gone for either door,’ suggested Bliter with spirit. He was the only cloister resident present.

  ‘You’re sure it was Pounder’s key?’ asked Treasure.

  ‘We wondered that, sir. But now we’re satisfied. Could I just ask Canon Jones, were you carrying a large leather document-case when you went to the cathedral at ten minutes past six last evening, sir?’ The policeman’s words had taken on a marginally more official ring.

  ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you before?’

  ‘No, you didn’t, sir.’

  ‘Well, it was to put the Magna Carta in. I had it inside my coat on both trips.’

  ‘At six-twelve you were allegedly seen from inside the cathedral leaving the building with the case under your left arm, sir.’

  ‘Prior to putting it back under my coat when I got outside, I expect.’

  ‘Was there anything in it then, sir?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t.’

  ‘Not the Magna Carta, sir?’

  ‘Certainly not. Is this a game, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Are we allowed to know who saw the Canon?’ the Dean interposed with unusual severity.

  ‘The head verger, Mr Duggan, sir.’

  ‘Does he say what he was doing in the cathedral at that time?’ This was Merit.

  ‘Seems he’d come back to fetch something he’d left in his locker, sir. A betting-shop receipt.’

  ‘Is there anything else, Chief Inspector?’ The Dean sounded tetchy.

  ‘Afraid so, sir. We’ve identified the key because it carried Mr Pounder’s fingerprints. Good clear ones.’ Pride glanced briefly at the constable before he went on. ‘And it’s just been reported to me it also has two other prints on it. One we haven’t identified as yet. The other belongs to Canon Jones.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Please sir, did they take your fingerprints, sir?’ Jackson Minor trebled from the back row of desks.

  ‘Did it hurt, sir?’ sniggered Mead, the Third Form jester.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Mead,’ chortled his neighbour, an angelic-looking child called Heyworth, while trying to elbow him in the groin under the desk.

  ‘Have they arrested anyone, sir?’ Mead persisted while retaliating with a tactical punch to Heyworth’s right kidney. Heyworth had been leaning forward to protect his front against an expected assault.

  ‘Swine!’ shrieked the angelic one.

  ‘Shut up, all of you. Mead, stop being a pain. Get on with your work,’ commanded Minor Canon Twist from the master’s desk on the podium in the painted brick classroom.

  ‘But, sir . . .’ Mead began a futile protest.

  Few of the fourteen pupils, all choristers, took much notice of Twist’s injunction. It wasn’t that he couldn’t keep order if he wanted, though he was no great disciplinarian. This morning his mind was on other things and his charges had sensed it.

  This was the lower middle form at the choir school in East Street: the ten-year-olds. They were quite responsive to music theory but less to divinity: Twist taught both to the whole school and he was supposed to be teaching divinity now.

  ‘Go on, sir. Tell us about the fingerprinting. Did you go to the police station?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ He’d relented only to keep the record straight. ‘You ink your fingers on a pad and press the tips on a card. Now, for heaven’s sake . . .’

  ‘Were you the only one, sir?’

  ‘Are you under deep suspicion, sir?’

  ‘Of course not. Mead, you’re an ass.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy acknowledged proudly.

  ‘Ee-oo! Ee-oo!’ brayed the rest of the class in unison.

  ‘So why did the fuzz take your dabs, sir?’ asked Perkins when the noise died down. He was a sickly child, short-sighted, permanently excused games but grudgingly respected for alleged connections with the underworld; the others believed his father, a window cleaner by trade, was actually a successful burglar.

  ‘I think they fingerprinted everyone who’d handled the Dean’s mace or been in the Old Library yesterday.’

  ‘Did they do Mrs Brastow, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jackson. They may have done.’

  ‘She was in the Old Library the day before. After matins.’

  ‘Plenty of people were. Did you touch the mace, sir – the murder weapon?’

  ‘Yes, as it happens. I’d taken it down from its bracket in the vestry. Yesterday, before evensong.’ And Canon Jones had put it back, he remembered. They’d been examining the semi-precious stones in it, assessing its value. In the end they’d decided it didn’t have much value. ‘Now get on with your . . .’

  ‘Please, sir, can Mead and I be your alibi, sir?’

  ‘Certainly not, Heyworth.’ But he was puzzled, and looked it. ‘What alibi?’ he enquired tentatively.

  ‘We saw you in North Street, sir. Last night. At quarter to seven. Going into Miss Purse’s flat, sir.’

  ‘Ooo!’ roared all the others, savouring the amatory implications of the disclosure and banging on their desks.

  ‘Shut up, all of you,’ ordered Twi
st, reddening. ‘And, anyway, it was earlier when I went . . . there.’ More ‘ooing’ followed.

  ‘It was quarter to by Mead’s watch, sir. It’s a new one. Show him your watch, Mead.’

  Mead jumped to his feet, pulled back his sleeve and showed the whole form, twirling his upraised fist. ‘It was a quarter to, sir,’ he corroborated. ‘We’d been to Heyworth’s house to get his conjuring set. It was when we’d been going there we saw Miss Purse going home.’

  ‘That was twenty to. Five minutes before we saw you, sir.’

  ‘We can alibi both of you, sir.’

  ‘Well, we don’t need alibis, thank you.’ And a fat lot of good an alibi for quarter to seven would be. ‘Now get on with your essays. Right now. Or else.’ They did, because this time the class consensus was that he probably meant it.

  Twist affected to be marking the papers he had in front of him but his mind was elsewhere. He knew the boys were right. He’d told her he hadn’t got to her place till later than she said, but she’d insisted they’d been together much earlier. She’d been concerned that she could witness where he’d been in the half-hour that mattered. But if she hadn’t got home till six-forty herself, how could they have been together before then?

  Only briefly did he wonder how she’d come to be so wrong. He didn’t wonder at all where she’d been herself at the time she’d insisted she could vouch for him, and – it followed – when he should have been able to vouch for her. But, then, Gerard Twist tended to think mostly of himself.

  ‘It was the lawyer who said it had to be that way. Young fellow. Said him and the bank manager would need to be there.’ Harry Jakes, who had just come in, hung his overcoat on the back of the kitchen door.

  ‘So we could look at our own property? I think that’s a liberty,’ Nora Jakes commented breathily from the cooker where she was preparing the midday meal.

  ‘Not our property. Not till after we’ve got a death certificate, they said.’ He pulled out a chair from the table and sat down.

  ‘But Dad made you his executor. I remember.’

  ‘Didn’t make any difference. Not for today.’

  ‘So you went to the bank? You and the lawyer?’

  ‘That’s right. And we saw the manager. In his office. And he sent for the cash-box your dad kept there. That’s after the lawyer said who I was. Showed the will.’

  ‘Lot of red tape, seems to me.’

  ‘Got to be. For the death duties. Got to prove to the tax people everything’s above board.’

  ‘What death duties? Dad didn’t leave enough for that.’ She looked around again at her husband. ‘He didn’t, did he?’

  ‘There was a little account-book in the box. A lot of cash. And pass-books with two building societies,’ he detailed carefully. ‘Cash had to be counted. Then put back. Till after we get probate.’

  ‘How much cash was there?’

  ‘Better sit down.’ He knew shocks were bad for her – for her heart: the doctor had said so after that last turn.

  ‘More than you expected, was it?’ She left what she was doing and sat at the table, wiping her hands on the pinafore she had on.

  He took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Thirteen thousand, four hundred pounds. That’s the cash. All in twenty-pound notes. In the box.’ He paused, watching her reaction before going on. ‘He’d put another eighteen thousand in the building societies. He never told you?’

  Her mouth had opened in astonishment. She shook her head slowly in denial. For a few moments she said nothing, then she offered weakly: ‘Where did Dad get all that?’

  ‘That’s what the bank manager was asking. Tactful like, but that’s what he meant. You sure your dad never mentioned . . . ?’

  ‘Course I’m sure. Oh dear. It’s made me feel all funny.’

  ‘You going to be all right, love?’

  ‘I think so.’ She took several deep breaths. ‘How long had he had it?’

  ‘Seems like since he put the box in the bank. That’s three years ago this month. So the manager said. He had records. And it fits with when Dad started the entries in the account-book. Very neat they are. Meticulous.’

  ‘That’s Dad all over.’

  ‘Seems he went to the box regular. Twice in a day at the end of every month.’

  ‘To take money out?’

  He nodded. ‘And the pass-books. He took money to put in the building societies. They both got branches in Market Square. Then he must have taken the pass-books again.’

  ‘How much did you say in the building societies?’

  ‘Nine thousand each. Plus interest over the three years. His account-book shows he took six hundred a month from the box. He . . . he put five hundred in the societies. Two-fifty in each. Don’t know what he did with the other hundred. But it was six hundred altogether every month. Like clockwork, it seems.’

  ‘He didn’t need the hundred for spending. He had his pension for that.’

  Jakes shrugged. ‘Fact is, according to that account-book, he started with thirty-five thousand in cash. What’s left is all in brand-new notes. Hundreds of ’em. With consecutive numbers. In packs of a thousand pounds. Like they all came in one lot.’

  ‘They weren’t stolen? Oh Lord, say they weren’t stolen.’

  ‘They weren’t. Or else it’s never been reported. The bank manger checked. The lawyer asked him.’

  ‘That was a nerve.’ Her jaw had tightened.

  ‘No, it was best to check, I said. So far as they could. The manager got the dates the notes were issued. Approximate anyway. From the Bank of England. Seems they’re four years old. Doesn’t mean he got the money four years ago.’

  ‘But why did he get it? And why put it in a box in the bank?’

  ‘Most likely he was laundering it, love.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Making it look respectable. More respectable,’ he added quickly after watching her frightened reaction. ‘How ever he got the money, seems he didn’t want people to know. Not even us. So he was paying it into building societies. Gradual. To look like it was savings. Earnings.’

  ‘Earnings? How could my dad have . . . ?’

  ‘From tips he could have been getting. For showing tourists round the cathedral.’

  ‘But he’d never have got that much. Not every month.’

  ‘Except it was more believable that way than if he’d got a lump sum. One he couldn’t explain. Like thirty-five thousand. It’s not as if he did the pools. And he didn’t have any premium bonds that we know of. Anyway, winnings could be explained.’

  ‘I suppose so. But not telling us. When he knew we’d find out some day.’

  ‘What’s the betting he’d have told us? In two years or so. When all the money would have been in savings accounts. It was just . . .’

  ‘That he died. Too soon. Oh dear.’ She wiped her eyes. The look of apprehension deepened. ‘So will we have to explain anything?’

  ‘Maybe, the lawyer said. But we’re to leave it to him. Not to say anything to anyone. Bank manager agreed.’ He paused. ‘There’s something else. In the will. Your dad added to it. A year ago. He left five thousand pounds to someone. To Cindy Larks.’

  ‘That girl in the choir?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s to pay for voice training for her. That’s what it says. Very thoughtful, the bank manager said. Everything else is left to you.’

  ‘Typical of Dad. Helping deserving people. Those in need.’

  ‘You sure I’m not stopping anything? Dropping in like this? Not interrupting the Muse?’

  Jennifer Bliter’s affected accent and high, piercing voice could have stopped a lot of things, and interrupted a brass quartet if she put her mind to it – was Margaret Hitt’s unvoiced opinion. Aloud she said: ‘Not at all. I always have a coffee break at eleven.’ She put the tray on the table beside her typewriter. ‘Milk and sugar? Help yourself.’

  The two women were in Mrs Hitt’s small workroom beside the kitchen at the back of the Deaner
y. It was the place where she did her ironing and wrote her novels. The furnishings and general clutter reflected the room’s dual function. The table was before a window that looked over a pretty corner of the garden.

  ‘I only came to bring back the book really.’ The last word spoiled the validity of the claim – as did the speaker’s state of only mildly suppressed excitement. ‘One of my rules. Never hang on to a borrowed book. Take it back straight away. As soon as you’ve read it. Earns you the privilege of borrowing another. Lord Cunningham taught me that. Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cunningham. When I was a very young girl. Dear man. Close friend of Daddy’s.’ She opened her bag. ‘No, I won’t smoke.’ She put back the cigarette-packet.

  ‘Feel free to take another book.’ The Dean’s wife waved at the painted, over-full shelves that occupied most of two walls.

  ‘More biography, then.’ Mrs Bliter took down a volume, then sat abruptly, leafing through it but not to any evident purpose. ‘Such a drag my book-buying days are over. The cost is quite prohibitive now. Different for writers, I expect. When books are tax deductible.’

  ‘Not very different. And only reference books. I suppose one buys more as a result.’

  Mrs Bliter closed the volume sharply. ‘I should take up writing again. I used to write, you know? Nothing published. I couldn’t be bothered at the time. Now it’d be different. With you to guide and advise. It’s what I needed before. The company of other writers.’

  ‘I’d be glad to look at anything for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Margaret.’ They had not long been on Christian-name terms: Mrs Bliter consciously renewed the licence at each meeting. ‘There’s drama all about us, of course. Right here, in Litchester.’

  ‘Has been today, certainly.’

  ‘Every day. For those with the imagination to spot it. Trollope showed us how.’

  ‘You enjoy him?’ came the distinct overtone that the speaker didn’t.

  ‘His pictures of cathedral life. The close. The community. The politics.’

  ‘Wonder how he’d have coped with the murder of Mr Pounder? If he’d allowed it to happen in Barchester? Life’s sterner than Trollope at the moment.’

  ‘He had villains. And chapter quarrels. And wives exchanging views. In confidence’ – Mrs Bliter took a sip of her coffee – ‘do you trust Donald Welt?’