Corpse in Waiting

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘That was as good as a whodunnit play,’ I said over lunch at The Moon and Sixpence. ‘Your entry I mean. A Not Quite Inspector Calls. A bit over the top if you ask me.’

  ‘Over the top?’ Patrick echoed.

  ‘You both pulling out all the stops to get there, just because I was talking to a suspect.’

  Patrick laid down his knife and fork. ‘Ingrid, you talking to suspects usually has the same effect as throwing lighted matches into a petrol tank. We didn’t want you to go up with it.’

  ‘How sweet.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘I’m not buying the house,’ I said, the decision having just been made. ‘I don’t want it now. It was a dream that tarnished. I’d never be able to forget that poor woman and the way she died.’

  At Patrick’s suggestion we spent the afternoon at Bath Races, something we had never done before. It felt like the continuation of our short holiday, as though what had taken place since had never happened.

  When we returned to the rectory it was in a state of turmoil, furniture in the hallway, piles of books everywhere, the smell of fresh paint pervading everything.

  ‘There,’ Elspeth said, ‘you’ve beaten us all to it.’

  ‘I did try to stay out as long as possible,’ Patrick said to her.

  I homed in on what appeared to be the centre of activity, John’s study. The room had been stripped right out, the old wallpaper removed and Katie and Matthew were finishing off emulsioning the walls in two shades of apricot. Carrie appeared with some toning fabric with gorgeous flowers on it over her arm, curtains, I saw when I looked closer. She flashed a smile at me, touched the freshly painted wall over by the window to check that it was dry and mounted a stepladder to hang them.

  ‘Is this quite John?’ I tentatively queried.

  ‘No, it’s for you,’ Elspeth replied. ‘It’s your new writing room.’

  ‘For me! But—’

  ‘He suggested it,’ she said firmly. ‘We have a spare bedroom that we simply don’t need and it was high time this lot,’ she waved vaguely in the direction of the stuff piled in the hall, ‘was sorted out. We’ve found minutes of meetings going back over forty years that were here when we arrived! Plus newspapers that the church has a mention in, fishing magazines that he couldn’t bear to throw away, even old choir robes all damp and full of the moth. It was all a horrible fire hazard. The room in the annex is plenty big enough even with the bookshelves moved in there and it’s actually warmer for John now he’s getting on in life. And I won’t have to walk a quarter of a mile to tell him that his meals are ready. The only thing that has to stay is the safe we keep the church silver in. I hope you don’t mind but we simply couldn’t shift it.’

  I went right in and gazed around. ‘It’s heaven,’ I whispered utterly truthfully.

  ‘He’s in the annex,’ Elspeth said, a little misty-eyed.

  John looked up from reading a newspaper. ‘Like it?’

  I went over and gave him a kiss. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘You deserve somewhere quiet to work. And I want to thank you too, for what you’ve done for Patrick. I’m convinced he would have gone right off the rails after his leg injuries if it hadn’t been for you. He might even have gone the other way and turned to a life of crime. There’s a dark side to him that might have taken over his mind completely.’

  He would have made a very successful criminal though.