by Kate Charles
Mercifully soon, Julia reappeared to announce the meal. They trooped into a dining room dominated by a huge family-sized table; places were set around it at widely spaced intervals. Passing the salt could be interesting, David envisioned.
The fish fingers were fully as appalling as he had imagined, but surprisingly the addition of Julia to the gathering improved the conversation considerably.
‘I’m so sorry about Ignatius,’ she began. ‘He really is a very naughty little doggie.’ She put her head to one side, listening to the persistent and hysterical barking from somewhere outside. ‘Do you like dogs, David?’
‘Yes, very much,’ he replied without thinking, then, afraid she would interpret his reply as an invitation to bring Ignatius back, quickly changed the subject. ‘How did your cake stall do at the fête?’
‘Oh, very well indeed. We sold out before the afternoon, and took in nearly five hundred pounds. It’s the best we’ve ever done.’
Unthinkingly, he responded, ‘Mrs Conwell said that the fête had raised more money than ever before. When I saw her in the sacristy,’ he added lamely, when he saw their horrified faces staring at him. Julia’s mouth hung open like a fish, and her chin trembled. Roger licked his lips nervously. Francis looked blank, but Teresa had at last, bizarrely, come alive. Her eyes glittered avidly.
‘I heard that when Mr Bead found her, her lips were blue, and her eyes were popping out,’ she whispered intensely, in the first complete sentence David had heard her utter.
Startled, he said. ‘Yes, I believe that’s true.’
‘Teresa! That’s quite enough!’ her mother quavered. ‘Poor Mavis! How could you be so callous!’
Teresa looked down at her plate, but not before David caught the look of satisfaction in her eyes.
‘David,’ Julia appealed to him. ‘Has Daphne said anything to you about the funeral arrangements?’
‘She mentioned that there were some preliminary plans. I think it’s to be next Tuesday.’
‘At St Anne’s?’ Julia asked, her eyes wide.
‘That was certainly the impression I got.’
‘Shocking!’ was Roger Dawson’s reaction, addressed to the potted lily on the sideboard.
‘Why . . .’
‘A suicide! A woman who killed herself – to be given a Christian funeral, and her ashes buried in consecrated ground! I just don’t believe it!’
‘Whatever can Father Gabriel be thinking of?’ Julia added with a shaking voice.
Teresa raised her eyes again. ‘Maybe it wasn’t suicide,’ she announced with relish. ‘Maybe it was . . . murder!’
After a sweet of tinned fruit with ice-cream, they returned to the lounge. David wondered how soon he could decently escape, but Julia had other ideas. ‘We thought you might enjoy looking at some family pictures,’ she suggested, hauling out a mammoth album.
‘Oh, yes, that would be lovely,’ David lied. He settled the album on his lap. Julia and Roger flanked him on either side of the sofa, and Teresa returned to her chair in the corner. Francis disappeared, and shortly David could hear the faint sound of a television from somewhere else in the house. Outside, Ignatius’s frantic barking had transmuted into a steady howl.
He opened the album to be confronted by a mind-numbing array of Dawsons, at all stages of life and in every possible combination. There were baby Dawsons – unmistakably Dawsons, all of them – in prams, in cots, in pushchairs. Toddler Dawsons in the park, on the beach. Dawsons in school uniforms. Dawsons in cassocks and albs. Dawson dogs, of course, each one more unappealing than the last. And innumerable Dawson relations. ‘That’s Uncle Edmund,’ Julia pointed out.
‘He’s dead,’ Teresa said in sepulchral tones. ‘He got run over by a train.’
Dawson cousins, Dawson grandparents. ‘Grandmother Dawson,’ indicated Roger.
‘She died last year,’ added Teresa. ‘Blood poisoning.’
Dawsons on holiday, Dawsons standing in front of churches. David occasionally stopped to ask a question, to identify a person or place.
He looked at a photo of two young Dawson girls, dressed in virginal white with wreaths of flowers in their hair, posed in front of St Anne’s with another little girl, similarly attired. ‘Bridgie and Clare,’ Julia explained, ‘after they were in the Procession of Our Lady one year. The girl with them is Cecily Framlingham’s daughter.’
‘But she died,’ Teresa announced. ‘She drowned, on holiday at Bournemouth.’
‘How terrible,’ said David. He turned the page and looked at a picture of the Dawson he had come to recognise as Nick, sitting with a good-looking young man who was clearly not a Dawson, not even a Dawson cousin.
‘That’s Nick and his room-mate, his first year at university,’ Roger explained.
Teresa opened her mouth, and David anticipated her words. ‘He’s dead, too. He . . .’
‘Teresa, that’s quite enough of your morbid stories,’ her mother said shrilly. With a sulky yet venomous look, Teresa got up and left the room. Julia turned to David apologetically. ‘I’m sorry about Teresa. You know how teenagers are.’
‘Yes, of course.’ And David settled back for yet more of the pictorial Dawson chronicles.
*
‘Poor David. They didn’t even offer you a drink?’ Daphne sympathised later.
‘Not a drop. Not a sherry before . . . the meal – I won’t call it dinner – and the bottle of wine I took disappeared without a trace. Nothing after, either. Just a cup of insipid instant coffee.’
‘Well, no one said it would be a fun evening,’ she said, pouring him a generous whisky. ‘But did you actually find out why they’d invited you?’
He laughed. ‘Eventually. After an agonising evening of looking at family pictures, they finally got round to the reason for the invitation.’
‘Which was . . . ?’
‘They were after some free legal advice, of course. I should have suspected it! It was something to do with Grandmother Dawson’s will – they were just too mean to pay a solicitor, and thought I could help them.’
‘Of course,’ Daphne chuckled. ‘That makes perfect sense.’
‘They’re the strangest family I’ve ever met.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘Roger gives me the creeps, the way he never looks straight at you. Julia seems like she’s always about to burst into tears. Francis – well, gormless is the right word for him. And that girl . . .’
‘Teresa?’
‘She’s the most peculiar of all – she’s a right little ghoul. What a household.’
‘Does that mean you’re not going to invite them to stop for a visit on their next trip to Walsingham?’ Daphne asked with a straight face. ‘They go on the National Pilgrimage every year.’
‘Yes, I’m sure they do,’ he groaned. ‘Promise you won’t tell them where I live.’
‘I’ll draw them a map to your front door, unless you stop all this Dawson talk and tell me right now what all this is about Miles! I’ve been sitting here all evening trying to decipher your hints!’
‘Ah.’ He smiled, immensely pleased with himself, and leaned back in his chair.
‘What on earth have you found out, David?’
‘Only that Miles is no longer off the list of suspects. He’s back at the top of the list!’ She looked dubious but fascinated, as he went on to explain his discovery about the organ-playing computer, and his subsequent conversation with Miles.
‘Oh, David. This changes everything.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘He could so easily have gone down the stairs from the console – they’re right there in that corridor – and nipped into the sacristy without anyone seeing him. All the while the organ was playing. How long is that piece, by the way? The one he had on the computer today?’
‘Twelve or thirteen minutes, I suppose. That would give him plenty of time. Or he could even have taken longer if necessary. Lucy says he can programme in a whole sequence of pieces for the machine to play. I should have known,’ he a
dded. ‘When he “played” the Great G Minor today, all the mistakes were exactly the same, just like a recording. I just thought he hadn’t practised.’
‘But how could you have known about the machine? I certainly didn’t, though I suppose I should have. I just never pay that much attention to Miles and his antics.’
‘Lucy says it’s the latest thing. Emily told her that he went to the PCC and said he had to have it, and threatened to quit if he didn’t get it.’
She snorted. ‘Thank God I’m not on the PCC. I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been keen to spend that kind of money, just so Miles could have a smoke! He probably spun them some plausible tale about being in the forefront of technological progress . . .’
‘But the question is, Daphne, what do I do now? He’s hiding something, but there’s no way I’m going to find out what it is. Not here in London, anyway.’
‘I think you’ll have to go to Selby,’ Daphne said practically. ‘That’s where the answer is.’
David nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. The sooner the better, I suppose. Will you come with me?’
She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I should; you don’t know how long it will take, and I need to be here on Sunday. Anyway, it’s better for me to stay and keep an eye on things here.’
‘I can’t go tomorrow,’ he remembered. ‘I’m having tea with Lady Constance, and I wouldn’t want to stand her up.’
‘And don’t forget stall seats at the Proms tomorrow night.’
‘Of course. But Friday – I can go on Friday. You’ll have to help me think of a strategy. Miles Taylor may think he’s clever, but between us, Daphne, we’ll outsmart him.’
CHAPTER 30
Forsake me not, O God, in mine old age, when I am grey-headed: until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to all them that are yet for to come.
Psalm 71.16
The contrast could not have been more marked, David reflected, between yesterday and today: between the tasteless clutter of the Dawsons’ lounge and the understated elegance of Lady Constance’s drawing room, between the nasty frozen fish fingers and the tasty finger sandwiches, between, indeed, the twitchy peculiarity of the Dawsons and the calm patrician aura of Lady Constance herself.
He had found Lady Constance looking rather tired, the lines on her face more pronounced than on previous meetings, and he inquired with concern. ‘It’s nothing, young man,’ she reassured him. ‘Old age, that’s all. I find I tire so quickly these days. It’s a terrible thing to get old.’
‘But it’s better than the alternative,’ he replied lightly.
‘Sometimes I wonder,’ she said softly, but the smile belied her words.
‘Perhaps Saturday was too much for you,’ he suggested. ‘Walking about in the hot sun.’
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed. A shadow fell over her face. ‘A terrible business, that on Saturday. It has quite upset me.’
‘Oh, Mrs Conwell’s . . . death. Yes, it was. But you said she was a dreadful woman.’
‘And indeed she was. But . . . I certainly never wished her dead. For the woman to take her own life like that – how desperate she must have been. That must surely be the worst thing in the world, to feel so . . . trapped, that to make such a choice seems the only way out.’ Lady Constance’s voice was soft and troubled, and David was touched by her deep empathy with a woman she hadn’t even liked.
‘But are you sure she took her own life?’
She looked at him with surprise. ‘Father Neville came to see me on Monday. He explained what the police had found – that Mrs Conwell had been taking money from the church, and when faced with . . . exposure . . . she had . . . hanged herself. Is there any reason to believe . . .’
Impulsively, he leaned forward. ‘Would you feel any better about it if she hadn’t killed herself? If . . . there was another explanation?’
Lady Constance was alert, intent. ‘Young man, what do you know about this? Please tell me.’
He was already beginning to regret his impulse, but decided that there was no reason not to tell her, if it would somehow lessen her distress. ‘I can’t tell you the details,’ he explained, ‘but I have very good reason to believe that Mrs Conwell was murdered.’
‘Murdered!’
‘Yes. I believe she was.’
‘But have you told this to the police?’
‘No, I haven’t. I didn’t think they’d listen to me, without any hard evidence. But I’ve been making . . . certain inquiries myself, and I think I’m getting close to an answer. When I have something concrete, then I’ll go to the police. The inquest isn’t until next week, so the case is still technically open, even though they’re not pursuing it.’
‘But what have you found out?’
David hesitated. ‘I can’t say, until I’m sure myself, or at least until I have some proof. I’m going to leave London for a few days, to do some . . . research elsewhere, but I hope to be back by the beginning of next week.’
She smiled with an effort. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean that the chapel is being neglected,’ she said lightly.
He answered her smile, and matched her tone. ‘Not at all, Lady Constance. I have it well in hand.’
‘Very good. What can you tell me about it?’
‘The workmen began on Tuesday,’ David explained. ‘I was there all morning to get them started, and showed them exactly what to do. They’re very good, though, and seem to know what they’re about. This morning I checked on their progress. They’ve done the damp-proofing where necessary, and are working on the replastering.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘I’m afraid that once they’ve done the plaster, which they ought to finish within a day or so, they’ll have to leave it for six weeks before they can apply any paint to that bit. But there’s still a few days’ work for them now with the other painting, and the gilding. Some of it needs retouching. That’s a very tricky business.’
‘You will be able to supervise that?’ she asked with concern.
‘Yes, next week. I’ll be back by then. I’ll make sure they do it properly,’ he reassured her.
Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘It’s very good of you, Mr Middleton-Brown, to humour an old woman like this. You must think me very silly to worry about it so.’
‘Not at all.’
She looked out of the window, in the vague direction of St Anne’s. ‘That church means very much to me,’ she explained softly. ‘My husband and I – we never had children. St Anne’s has been almost like my child. I care very much about what happens to it.’
‘I understand.’
‘Yes, I believe you do.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘You’re a very sensitive young man. You love beautiful things. I trust you . . .’
After the sandwiches, after the scones, when the maid had brought in the cakes and a fresh pot of tea, David led the conversation around to the subject of Miles. ‘I went to the organ recital yesterday,’ he remarked casually.
‘Oh, you did? Did you find it enjoyable?’
‘Yes, indeed. The quality of the music at St Anne’s is most impressive.’
‘In spite of the Director of Music sometimes,’ she replied somewhat tartly. ‘Though that’s not really fair of me. My taste in music and his are very different, I’m afraid.’
‘Why, what does he like?’
Lady Constance sniffed disparagingly. ‘Modern music. Dissonant noise, I call it. He’s forever pestering the Vicar to let the choir sing things that were written five minutes ago. I’m afraid I don’t approve of things that haven’t stood the test of time. As long as I have anything to say about what happens at St Anne’s, you won’t be hearing the music that Mr Taylor prefers.’
‘And he complains about that?’
‘He complains about it all the time. Not to me, you understand,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘He’s not that reckless.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mr Taylor may be a somewhat outspoken yo
ung man, but he’s not stupid. He’s never less than completely courteous to me. I think he would dearly like to number me among what Mrs Neville quaintly calls his “Fan Club”.’
‘And are you among them?’ he asked boldly.
‘No. I’m not as easy to get around as someone like Mary Hughes. I can see quite clearly what he’s up to.’
‘And what is he up to?’ David queried with an innocent air.
‘Come now, young man. You’re not that naive. Mr Taylor is what one might call an opportunist. His primary concern is always what’s best for Miles Taylor, and nothing else. He has all the time in the world for the elderly ladies at St Anne’s, especially if they have a bit of money and no one in particular to leave it to when they’re gone.’
David admired her candour, and her shrewdness. ‘Has he been successful with many of them?’
‘Oh, yes. He’s had several rather nice little legacies over the past few years, both for the music fund and for himself personally. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Mary Hughes were to make him her primary heir. She thinks he’s marvellous.’
‘Is Miss Hughes well off?’
‘Well enough. She has a private income, and a house in Kensington. That would suit Mr Taylor very well, I’m sure.’
David spoke even more frankly. ‘Has he tried . . . to make up to you?’
‘He’s tried, all right. He’s revoltingly ingratiating to me, and that I can’t abide. He hasn’t quite had the cheek to invite himself to tea, but he’s dropped enough hints.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘No, you’re much more my style, young man. And I do hope you’ll come again.’