Feted to Die: An Inspector Constable Murder Mystery

by Roger Keevil

  “Ah, so none of the certainties of the good old days, then?”

  “Oh, sergeant, you couldn’t be more wrong,” smiled the vicar. “There was nothing ‘good’ about the old days. We have accounts of witches and black masses in medieval times, and one poor woman was even hanged from the old yew tree in the churchyard.” His face grew solemn. “Yes, I’m afraid there are some really quite nasty things tucked away in the church records. Which reminds me, you wanted to ask me about Mr. Cope, didn’t you?”

  “Now that’s interesting, Mr. Pugh,” said Andy Constable. “Why should mention of the church records put you in mind of Horace Cope?”

  “Because, inspector, the records are actually what brought Horace into the church more often than not. Including yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh yes, sir?” The inspector raised his eyebrows.

  “Why – do you think it may be important?”

  “That all depends on what he was doing, doesn’t it, sir,” replied the inspector evenly.

  “Well, he said he’d come to spend some time at the Well – he called it ‘communing with the spirits’, which I don’t believe for a moment. I think he said these things simply to annoy me and see what my reaction would be. As I say, inspector, he did not have a particularly pleasant character sometimes, although I would not wish to speak ill of him, God rest his soul. But then he wanted to look at the records – again – and as I couldn’t very well stop him, I left him to it.”

  “You say ‘again’. Did Mr. Cope come to the church often?”

  “Oh goodness, yes,” said the vicar. “He wasn’t what you’d call a regular worshipper – in fact, I’m not sure that he was any sort of worshipper, but I tend to follow Queen Elizabeth in that respect.”

  Dave Copper looked up from his notebook, puzzled. “Sorry, sir? Where on earth does the Queen come into this?”

  “The first Queen Elizabeth, sergeant,” explained the vicar. And as Dave Copper continued to look utterly baffled, “At the time of the Anglican settlement. She commented that as long as people behaved outwardly as she wished, she would not make ‘windows into men’s souls’.”

  “Hmmm,” muttered Copper. “A few windows into men’s souls would make my job a lot easier.”

  “You were telling us about Horace in church, vicar,” said Andy Constable in an effort to get the investigation back on track.

  “Of course, inspector. Yes, well, Mr. Cope did seem to spend an awful lot of time going through old records and registers. ‘Historical research’, he called it, but I really can’t see how some of the recent registers could possibly be relevant to that, so I suspect that some of it may not have been all that historical. Certainly I can’t see any relevance to his foretelling the future, or whatever it was he was claiming. And of course, that other so-called clairvoyant Seymour Cummings spends a lot of time in the village, but I believe that’s because he’s a very old friend of Sandra’s – sorry, I mean Lady Lawdown.”

  “And would you say that Mr. Cummings and Her Ladyship are …?” Dave Copper tailed off delicately.

  “Oh, goodness me, nothing like that, I’m sure,” said the vicar hastily. “No, they’re simply old friends, and he visits her a great deal. Now, where was I?”

  “Horace in church, sir?” repeated Constable a little wearily.

  “I do beg your pardon, inspector. I’m afraid I do have something of a tendency to get sidetracked. But yes, Horace and Seymour in church! That’s the point!”

  “And the point would be …?”

  “It was only a few days ago. Tuesday, would it be? I’d seen Mr. Cope coming up through the churchyard, and I know it’s probably most un-Christian, but I really didn’t want to get involved in a conversation with him, so I tucked myself away in Sunday School corner. There’s always a little task I can be getting on with, and on that particular day it was the choir hymn-books. I dare say you’ll be shocked, inspector, but I have quite a regular job going through the books and rubbing out the rude remarks the choirboys write in them. Sometimes I don’t know whether I should be horrified at some of the words the boys know, or impressed at the breadth of the education they’re receiving at the village school. And some of the drawings, too – quite surprisingly anatomically correct. I think perhaps I shall have to make my sermons a little shorter in future. I confess I can be a bit long-winded at times, and the boys probably get bored, and as we all know, the devil will always find work for idle hands.”

  “And you were mentioning Mr. Cope and Mr. Cummings …”

  “Yes! Mr. Cope was … well, I’m really not sure what exactly he was doing, because I was trying to avoid being noticed, and suddenly the door crashed open, which made me jump out of my skin, and Seymour Cummings came in and strode up to Mr. Cope and said ‘Why are you trying to cause trouble for me?’ And in an extremely belligerent tone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Seymour so hot under the collar, so he was obviously thoroughly upset.”

  “And what was Mr. Cope’s reaction to this?”

  “Well, inspector, he smiled blandly, and said to Seymour that he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.”

  “Did Mr. Cummings explain?”

  “Seymour said he knew perfectly well that Horace had been on to the editor of the Daily Stir – that’s the newspaper Seymour writes for, inspector; I don’t know if you knew that – accusing Seymour of getting all his predictions off the internet. It sounded to me very much as if Horace was accusing Seymour of being a fraud.”

  “And do you reckon he is, sir?” put in Dave Copper.

  “I really wouldn’t like to say what Mr. Cummings’s real beliefs are, sergeant,” replied the vicar a little primly. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. That’s what we are taught. But I don’t think that was what had made Seymour so worked up.”

  “So what do you think it was, sir?”

  “Well, sergeant, the Daily Stir is owned by that Canadian who also owns the television station, and of course it’s supposed to be a great secret, but everybody knows that there’s a new show being planned which Seymour and Horace both wanted to be on. But of course, they couldn’t both do it, so they were great rivals.”

  “Deadly rivals, as you might say,” murmured Dave Copper.

  “So then Seymour said that he wasn’t going to be the victim of a smear campaign to keep him off the new show,” continued the vicar, “and if Horace thought that he was going to stand in his way, he’d soon find out he was wrong.”

  “So in fact,” interposed Andy Constable, “it sounds very much as if Mr. Cummings was threatening Mr. Cope?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to draw your own conclusions, inspector,” replied the vicar. “I can only tell you what I heard. But then Horace replied ‘I don’t think there’s a damned thing you can do about it, dear boy’, in the most patronising tones imaginable, which seemed to make Seymour’s blood boil even more, and he just blurted out ‘Balls!’ and stormed out. Very unholy language.”

  “But there was no actual violence, sir? Nothing physical?” Dave Copper sounded disappointed.

  “Certainly not, sergeant. I really can’t imagine anything of that sort happening.”

  “Well, it has now, hasn’t it, sir?” commented Copper bluntly.

  “Oh dear.” Reverend Pugh sounded troubled. “Inspector, you don’t suppose … oh dear. Perhaps I should have said something. You know – blessed are the peacemakers, and so forth. Oh dear.”

  “Now I really don’t think you should feel responsible, Mr. Pugh,” remarked Andy Constable in a reassuring tone. “We are talking about something that happened several days ago. Plenty of time for tempers to have cooled. So we shan’t be jumping to any conclusions. Let’s just stick to gathering as much information as we can. Have there been any other incidents involving Mr. Cope that might be helpful?”

  “Well …” The vicar hesitated. “Not really, no. Well, not actually an incident … I’m beginning to sound like a gossi
p, and I can’t see that it can possibly be important.”

  “Suppose you tell us about whatever it was, sir, and then we shall know, shan’t we? When did this non-incident occur?”

  “Oh, it was the same afternoon – I suppose it must have been about half an hour after Seymour left. I was out in the church porch giving my hassocks a good beating …”

  An explosive snort burst forth from Dave Copper. In response to the inspector’s glare, he swiftly buried his face back in his notebook.

  “It’s not funny at all, sergeant,” rebuked the vicar. “They do get so very dusty, and it’s an extremely dirty job, but there’s nobody else to do it.”

  “Be that as it may, sir …” Andy Constable tried once again to steer Mr. Pugh back to his narrative.

  “Yes, inspector. As I say, I was in the porch, and Mr. Cope was coming out of the church just as Lady Lawdown arrived for bell-ringing practice.”

  “Her ladyship’s one of your bell-ringers?”

  “Oh yes, inspector. She’s really a very enthusiastic campanologist. I suppose you wouldn’t expect it from the Lady of the Manor, but we can always rely on her to give a good strong pull on Little Jim.”

  Both detectives gazed at the vicar in total bewilderment.

  “Sorry, sir … little who?” Dave Copper’s pencil was poised over his notebook.

  “I do beg your pardon, sergeant. It’s just one of our little parish jokes,” explained Reverend Pugh. “Her ladyship always rings the largest of our bells, which is named for St. James the Less, so of course we all call it Little Jim. Or I should say, ‘her’. Bells are female, you know. Most people probably aren’t aware of that.” He smiled brightly.

  “So Lady Lawdown arrived at the church …?” Andy Constable made yet another effort to bring the vicar back to the point.

  “Yes, inspector. As a matter of fact, she was a little early, or I don’t suppose she and Mr. Cope would have met at all. Anyway, as it was, she was coming in as he was going out, and she just nodded to him, and he said, ‘Hello, Alex. Off to do your bit for the serfs and peasants? I’ve been having a lovely time this afternoon.”

  “And what was her response to that?”

  “She just said ‘What?’, just like that. Abrupt. Frankly, and I really don’t like to sound as if I’m criticising, but I thought she was rather short with him, which isn’t like her at all. I’ve always found her to be extremely gracious. Anyway, she tried to carry on past Mr. Cope, but then he actually took hold of her by the arm to stop her and said ‘I’ve been going through the parish records again. Great fun.’ I can’t explain why, but I got the impression that he was almost … well, taunting her.”

  “Taunting her. But why would he do that? I was under the impression that they were friends.”

  “That’s as may be, inspector. I’m just telling you what I heard. So then she just said ‘Really?’, and then Mr. Cope said, ‘It’s all so very interesting. Almost as interesting as the Family Records Office at Kew – you know, all the old Somerset House Births, Marriages and Deaths. Fascinating what turns up there sometimes. And even better, what doesn’t turn up. Well, must go. I’ll talk to you soon.’ And then off he went, looking smug. Although now I think of it, he looked smug most of the time.”

  “And how did her ladyship look?” asked Constable.

  “Ah, now that I’m afraid I can’t tell you, inspector, because I was watching Mr. Cope go off down the path, and by the time I turned back, her ladyship had gone into the church, so I never had a chance to speak to her. And then all my other bell-ringers arrived, so of course we all went up into the tower, and I forgot all about it.”

  Chapter 9

  “So what next, guv?”

  The two detectives stood on the steps at the front door of the Hall, gazing out over the grounds towards the lake. Andy Constable seemed pre-occupied.

  “Thinking time, sergeant. I’m going for a stroll.”

  “Do you want me to come with you, sir? We could go through my notes.”

  “No. You go and sit yourself down somewhere and look through them. See if you can find any gaps in any of the information people have given us. I swear someone’s not telling us everything.”

  As he took the path which followed the reed-fringed shore of the lake, Inspector Constable cast his mind over the individuals in the case. It seemed a highly unlikely list of suspects, and yet each of them appeared to have a reason to dislike Horace Cope.

  Lady Lawdown seemed the least likely person in the world to be a suspect in a murder case. The local aristocrat from the big house, a magistrate, on close terms with the Chief Constable of the county – all in all, a pillar of the community. Although, from one or two things which had been let drop, not a particularly wealthy one. Laura’s comment that there was not much in the way of valuables in the house – the remarks about the roof – how many murders over the years had been committed for financial gain? And yet Horace’s death seemed unlikely to benefit Lady Lawdown financially. Lady Lawdown’s attitude seemed inconsistent – at one point, she was describing Horace Cope as a ‘wretched little man’, but in very nearly the same breath she was almost gushing in her praise for his talents as a clairvoyant. According to her daughter, Horace was a very old friend of the family, and yet the vicar was the unwilling witness to a confrontation between Lady Lawdown and Horace which seemed to have left him purring with self-satisfaction and her rattled and jumpy over something. But what? Had it anything to do with whatever Amelia Cook saw her bundling hurriedly into her handbag?

  Lady Lawdown’s daughter Laura was another whose relationship with Horace held inconsistencies. ‘Uncle Horace’, she called him. He gave her presents and took her out. In fact, he had been originally responsible in a way, having introduced her mother to Lord Lawdown, for Laura’s position as a favoured daughter of a notable county family. Step-daughter, of course, as the child of Lady Lawdown’s original marriage. So in the context of all this, what was the meaning of the conversation between Laura and Horace in Amelia Cook’s teashop? Obviously it degenerated into unpleasantness, as Laura spoke of getting Horace stopped by using her mother’s influence. And Horace’s retort about Laura’s mother not being much of a lady was hardly the remark of a good friend.

  And then there was the other conversation in the ‘Copper Kettle’ which Amelia Cook had overheard. Andy Constable sent up a silent prayer of thanks for inquisitive and gossipy old ladies. If Horace Cope had been giving Helen Highwater’s books bad reviews in his newspaper critic’s column, it was hardly surprising that she in her turn should not be Horace’s greatest fan. But Amelia had the impression that this was all water under the bridge, since Helen and Horace were having coffee together, but then some other factor seemed to have crept in. ‘Don’t you dare!’, Helen had said. Dare what? Horace had talked about the value of something. With luck Amelia’s memory would eventually come up with the missing remark which might throw more light on the exchange. But whatever it was, the meeting had not ended happily, that was clear. And Horace already had a copy of Helen’s new book. But hadn’t he turned down Helen’s offer of a copy? Was he just threatening another bad review? Surely authors get used to such things. And a writer of Helen Highwater’s standing, with the immense success of the Carrie Otter books, could afford to shrug off one unfavourable newspaper article.

  Thinking about newspapers, Seymour Cummings had described himself as Horace Cope’s deadly rival. Of course, he had been speaking in jest. But how funny did he actually find it? Not very funny at all, if the conversation which the vicar had overheard in the church was anything to go by. In fact, Horace seemed to be posing a considerable threat to Seymour’s career. The only stock-in-trade which a professional clairvoyant has is his reputation, and if that is destroyed, he has nothing. The evidence of the email on Horace’s computer showed that he was determined to put the largest of spokes into Seymour’s wheel. If it became public knowledge that Seymour’s predictions were not the result of his o
wn psychic talents, but were plagiarised from other sources, whether the allegation were true or not, Seymour’s career would be wrecked. Not only would his newspaper column be discredited, but any chance of the lucrative contract for the much-heralded television show would vanish. Seymour would find it virtually impossible to demonstrate his innocence – how do you prove a negative? He would be ruined. So Seymour’s threat to Horace Cope may not have been an idle one, but the reaction of a desperate man.

  As his eye fell on Gideon Porter, loading the last of his beer barrels on to a truck with the assistance of two beefy red-faced youngsters who, from the marked resemblance even at this distance, could only be his sons, Andy Constable was reminded of the conversations which the landlord had overheard at the Dammett Well Inn. What was it Gideon had said? ‘You ever want to know anything, you just come and stand in my pub for a bit.’ Certainly local knowledge helped. And local knowledge was an essential part of the work of a local solicitor, and without doubt, Robin Allday was another pillar of the Dammett Worthy community. In the course of his activities, a solicitor becomes privy to a great many confidences and secrets, and people need to trust such a man. Knowledge, it is said, is power. But the question was, not what Robin Allday knew about other people, but what Horace Cope knew about him. Horace evidently trusted Robin enough to draw up his will, but the mention of property dealings hung in the air in an uncomfortable fashion. There was evidently something Horace knew which rattled Robin badly, and it had to do with his handling of property transactions. Allegations of fraud hovered unspoken. But what was it that Horace knew, how did he come to know it, and most importantly of all, what was he proposing to do about it?

  And then, last of all, Albert Ross. Horace’s cousin, his closest – indeed, his only – relative, but for all that, an outsider in terms of the close-knit community of friends and family which made up Dammett Worthy. Horace’s relationship with Albert seemed to have been a strange mixture – on the one hand, Horace had taken him in when Albert had fallen on hard times, something for which Albert had shown a faintly pathetic gratitude – a rock, he had called Horace, a very generous man – but on the other, Horace had not exactly lavished an overdose of caring family consideration on his cousin. He housed him in the meanest accommodation compared with the overstated opulence of his own room. He used him almost as an unpaid servant, and ordered him about in front of others in a fashion verging on the humiliating. And again, the exchange overheard by Gideon showed that Horace was holding some kind of threat over Albert. Was the threat a result of Albert’s suspected dishonesty, or had Albert tried to take some kind of compensation for himself as a payback for Horace’s unpleasant treatment of him? And had the payback finally taken one step too far? Albert had been markedly jumpy during his interview with the police officers. Was this simply the natural nervousness of any person in that situation, or was it a result of the shock of the murder of his only family, or was it fear and guilt on account of his actions? As Constable knew only too well, sometimes the meekest worm will turn.