Murder at Benbury Brook: An absolutely gripping English cozy mystery (A Melissa Craig Mystery Book 9)

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘Please.’

  The time flew while Melissa sat spellbound, almost forgetting to take notes, as Edith Ingram recounted her experiences as a chorister in the local church where—although her voice was, as she put it, no longer up to snuff—she still played an active rôle. She was, Melissa judged, in her middle to late sixties, with the slightly weather-beaten appearance that comes from years spent largely out of doors in a coastal environment. Yet her skin was firm and clear and the lines round her eyes and mouth owed as much to laughter as to age. Those lines had plenty of exercise as she recalled one episode after another, some moving, some hilarious or mildly shocking, and others—mostly in relation to funerals—containing elements of black humour which occasionally reduced both women to helpless giggles.

  ‘This is wonderful stuff,’ Melissa said when they paused for breath, giving her an opportunity to jot down a few of the choicest items. After a minute or two Edith went to recharge the coffee pot, leaving Melissa to refer to her own list of prepared questions which had somehow been entirely overlooked as her hostess came out with revelation after revelation.

  ‘Well, you’ve given me a terrific insight into the choristers’ point of view,’ she said as Edith refilled her cup, ‘I’m wondering, though, whether you can help me with some details about the actual work of the choirmaster. Ideally, of course,’ she went on, ‘I should talk directly to one. A local doctor plays the organ for our family services but our parish is too small to support a choir.’

  ‘What a pity. I always think choral music in a church is so uplifting.’

  ‘I think so too. It so happens,’—at this point, Melissa adopted the casual tone of someone about to throw in an unimportant aside—‘that there is a retired choirmaster and organist living in our village, but for some reason or other he didn’t want to talk about his work. I don’t think he approves of the kind of books I write,’ she finished with a deprecating smile.

  Edith picked up the plate of biscuits and offered them, saying, ‘Do have another one of these—I made them especially for you. I’m not allowed sugary things with my diabetes.’ She put the plate down and looked directly at Melissa with the hint of a twinkle in her bright blue eyes. ‘You’re speaking of Gideon Lane, from St Laurence’s, Warefield, of course. I was wondering when you’d get around to mentioning him. He’s the real reason for your being here, isn’t he?’

  Melissa felt her own eyes stretching on hearing her cover so confidently blown. ‘What makes you think that?’ she asked feebly.

  ‘Several reasons. One, I know my nephew and I can always tell when there’s some ulterior motive behind something he wants from me.’

  Melissa chuckled, once more at her ease. ‘I’ve noticed that myself from time to time,’ she acknowledged with a certain glee. ‘It’s the journalist’s mind at work.’

  ‘Quite so. And yours, if I may say so, is the mystery writer’s mind—which I find eternally fascinating,’ Edith hastened to add as if afraid she might have given offence. ‘You see, Melissa, I have read and reread all your crime novels and I find you reveal as much of yourself in your writing as you do about your characters.’

  ‘Gosh, that’s a bit scarey.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean to be.’

  ‘You mentioned several reasons.’

  ‘Another one is that it’s taken you over an hour to come out with something I’d have expected you to mention at the outset. And a third,’—at this point, Edith bent down and took a magazine from a ledge under the table—‘is this piece from Crime and Mystery Monthly.’ She flipped it open at a page where a report headed ‘Passing of a Sleuth’ had been marked in red. ‘According to this, Mel Craig has ‘finally and irrevocably’ decided to forswear crime fiction, pension off her famous detective, Nathan Latimer, and concentrate exclusively in the future on a more literary genre. “I was going to arrange for Nathan to die in the line of duty,” you are quoted as saying before going on to admit that you couldn’t actually bring yourself to “bump the old boy off”. So, when Bruce told me this yarn about setting a new Nathan Latimer mystery in an organ loft, having already asked me ever so casually whether I knew a recently retired church organist from Warefield, I was pretty sure that was just a pretext for probing into Gideon Lane’s past.’ She handed over the magazine and waited for Melissa’s comments; when none came she asked, ‘So, what’s the old pervert been up to now?’

  Melissa gaped at her. ‘Is he a pervert?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘Is that what’s behind his early retirement on the grounds of ill-health?’

  ‘Of course. I hinted as much to Bruce, although I wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. Conversations on these portable things can be so easily picked up by other people—remember the man who found himself listening in to some rather salacious details concerning a member of the aristocracy? Not that I imagine the misdeeds of a country choirmaster to be of national interest, but locally it would attract more readers than a dead donkey story. And I know from a friend who lives in the parish how desperate the PCC at St Laurence’s were to hush up the whole sordid little episode.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me about it now?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me your interest first.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with perversion on Mr Lane’s part, so far as I know.’ Melissa referred to her list. ‘But on second thoughts,’ she added, conscious of a twinge of excitement as the idea took hold, ‘it’s always possible, I suppose. It started with the death by drowning in a stream of a young village girl.’

  Edith listened with mounting bewilderment while Melissa read out the brief account she had prepared of Cissie’s death and the unresolved mystery surrounding its cause, followed by the apparently unrelated attack on Tommy Judd and his determination not to have it reported. ‘Are you suggesting that Gideon Lane has some responsibility for the girl’s death, or that he attacked that poor old man?’ she exclaimed. ‘I find that hard to believe. He’s been guilty of very grave misdemeanours, I know, but it has never been suggested that he’s capable of anything so dreadful. But of course, one never knows.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything of the kind,’ Melissa assured her, ‘but when I found out that Lane is in the habit of calling on Tommy Judd from time to time, it occurred to me that he might have noticed someone behaving suspiciously, not necessarily on the day Cissie died but perhaps a short time beforehand. It seemed a harmless enough thing to ask, but when he and his sisters were so obviously disturbed by my questions I began to think they must be hiding something. So when Bruce mentioned that you live in the area he came from, and offered to put me in touch with you, it seemed a Heaven-sent opportunity to find out a bit more about him. The story about researching a new novel was his idea, by the way.’

  ‘It sounds just like him.’ The blue eyes twinkled more brightly than ever. ‘One thing bothers me, though. Why have you come to me, and not the police?’

  ‘Good question. The fact is, they think they’ve got their man, and I’m convinced they’re mistaken.’

  ‘I see.’ Edith’s expression became serious. ‘Does this mean you suspect someone else of causing that girl’s death?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not convinced anyone is directly responsible, but the fact remains that someone pulled her body out of the water and then left it for others to find. I’m trying to find out who that person is.’

  ‘And you’re convinced that it wasn’t—what’s the man’s name?’

  ‘Graham Shipley. Yes, I really believe his story. So if you’d be good enough to tell me a little more about Mr Lane’s “misdemeanours” and what caused him to leave his post in such a hurry…?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Well, according to my friend, it was generally known that he had, how shall I put it, an eye for the ladies, particularly the young and nubile members of his choir, but it always seemed pretty innocent and people used to joke about it, call him a naughty old man—but only in fun, no one ever believed there was any real harm in him. He always took what he himself
described as a fatherly interest in the girls’ welfare. They loved him and he trained them to sing so beautifully—the choir was quite renowned in this part of the world. And then one day—they can’t think what got into him, maybe he’d had a drop to drink or something—he was helping one of the girls to adjust her surplice and he suddenly bent down and put his hand right up her cassock and squeezed her bottom. She let out a yell, right there in the vestry with the congregation already assembling for morning worship.’

  ‘He did that in front of the rest of the choir?’

  ‘No, it seems there’s a small room off the vestry—well, hardly a room, more a partitioned-off corner, my friend said—where the choir hang their cassocks and surplices. They were in there.’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘There was a great kerfuffle, of course, and the vicar rushed over to see what it was all about and then hurried into the church and got the girl’s mother. They managed to quieten her down and the service went ahead, but of course everyone in the church was wondering what on earth had happened.’

  ‘So how did they account for the screaming?’

  ‘Oh, they concocted some story of how she’d somehow tripped and wrenched her ankle.’

  ‘But the other members of the choir must have known … or guessed?’

  ‘Oh yes … and then I suppose they got talking among themselves and other stories began to come out. It was the first time he’d done anything quite so shocking, but several of the girls told their parents of suggestive remarks he used to make and how now and then he’d patted their bottoms, or brushed his hand against their breasts while pretending to flick specks of dust off their clothes, that kind of thing.’

  ‘But none of them had said anything before?’

  ‘Apparently not. And for all we know, there were other cases that never came to light at all. He was very popular, you see, and so he got away with it, until he … well, as I said, no one could understand what got into him.’

  ‘I take it he was never charged with indecent assault?’

  ‘No, and in my view that was a very grave mistake.’ Edith Ingram’s voice took on a steely edge and her expression hardened. ‘Apparently everyone—the vicar, the other members of the choir, the PCC—were much more concerned to avoid a scandal than to make sure the dirty beast got his just desserts. They managed to talk the girl’s parents into agreeing that she might suffer psychological and emotional harm from a lot of publicity—such a load of psychobabble.’ Her lip curled in disgust at what she evidently considered a chicken-hearted attitude all round. ‘So it was all hushed up on condition he left the village quietly and never showed his face there again. The story about “early retirement for health reasons” was concocted as a cover, of course.’

  ‘And he fetched up in our village, where there are a number of vulnerable young girls,’ said Melissa grimly. ‘And now one of them is dead.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  Melissa put down her notebook and sat back in her chair. She stared out at the wide expanse of blue sea, its surface glittering in the autumn sunshine and dotted here and there with sailing boats skimming along before a steady but moderate breeze. So peaceful, so innocent, so harmless—yet with the latent power to hurt and even destroy. She thought of the choir of St Laurence’s church, singing their hearts out at the Sunday services, giving of their best under the direction of a man they and the congregation held in such high regard, whose benign and charming exterior nevertheless hid a dreadful weakness.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said at last. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Twenty

  It was nearly half past three when Melissa joined the M5 on her journey home. Edith Ingram had left her alone for a short time on the pretext of ‘having to see to something in the kitchen’ and she had been very grateful for the opportunity to write up her notes and put her thoughts into some kind of order.

  The revelations concerning Gideon Lane certainly explained his and his sisters’ refusal to admit the possibility of his being able to help the police enquiry into the death of Cissie Wilcox. Anything that might lead to his name being mentioned in the press carried a risk of recognition by someone with knowledge of his recent disgrace, someone who had kept quiet so far in the interest of avoiding scandal but who might—given the fact that the death of a young girl had been involved—consider it their duty to pass on that knowledge. Esther Lane and Judith Waghorne were proud women; whether or not their brother had anything significant to contribute to the investigation might carry little weight with them when compared with their desire to protect their good name. They would be aware that further visits from the police would inevitably give rise to speculation in the village. Mrs Foster in particular, who had many times voiced her resentment of Esther Lane’s haughty, overbearing attitude,—‘Tells everyone what to do as if she owned the place’ was an oft-repeated grumble—would not hesitate to seize on the opportunity to suggest, with many a nod and wink, that for all their airs and graces they were no more perfect than anyone else.

  Melissa’s mind went back to the lighthearted comment in her recent letter to Iris about Gideon Lane’s ‘mischievous twinkle’ and the possibility that he might have ‘an interesting past.’ The old adage about many a true word being spoken—or, in this case, written—in jest took on a new and sinister meaning. That the man had unpleasant predilections which made him a menace to young women and girls was beyond doubt—but a potential killer? From what little she knew of him it seemed unlikely, but having once narrowly escaped public disgrace, who could tell to what lengths he would go to avoid exposure? His sisters obviously knew about his record—why else would they be so cagey?—but how far had he confided in them over his movements on the day of Cissie’s death? And now that she, Melissa, had learned their secret, would she be justified in putting pressure on them to reveal what they knew? Most importantly of all, would such a revelation help to remove suspicion from Graham Shipley?

  Her thoughts had been interrupted by the reappearance of Edith carrying a laden tray and saying rather shyly, ‘I do hope you can stay a little longer so that we can have a chat about your books. I’ve made a little something for our lunch.’ The ‘little something’ had turned out to be smoked salmon sandwiches made with home-made bread, followed by a dish of raspberries and cream, and the chat had developed into a stimulating and wide-ranging conversation that provided a welcome distraction from Gideon’s sordid past. Edith’s observations had been shrewd and stimulating and to her surprise Melissa found her mind actively considering a mystery plot based on the mock-up she had concocted as a pretext for her visit. By the time she left the motorway and was approaching the outskirts of Stowbridge she had almost decided to bring Nathan Latimer out of retirement once the current ‘literary’ novel, of which Joe and her editor had such high expectations, was completed and handed over. Poor Joe, she thought as she negotiated the final roundabout before entering the town, it’s as well you don’t know about this latest twist in my campaign to clear Graham Shipley.

  She forced herself to consider more practical matters. It was Friday, the weekend was approaching and she was running short of cash. She found an empty space in one of the town’s car parks and walked along the High Street to her bank; she was waiting in the queue at the cash dispenser when the bank’s door swung open and Becky Tanner emerged. In one hand was a plastic shopping bag; the other held a deposit account book, the open pages of which she was studying with an air of considerable satisfaction. On hearing Melissa’s greeting she hastily closed the book and stuffed it into her shoulder bag.

  ‘Oh, er, hello, Mrs Craig,’ she said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Fancy seeing you,’ Melissa responded with a smile. ‘I’m glad to see you’re taking good care of your money.’

  It was obvious that Becky was embarrassed by this lighthearted reference to her financial affairs; her colour rose and she avoided meeting Melissa’s eye. ‘Well, actually … I j
ust opened the account … it’s a secret,’ she said jerkily. ‘I’m saving up for Dad’s Christmas present, see … it’s to be a surprise … you won’t tell, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The story did not ring true, but Melissa let it pass. ‘You look different,’ she went on, giving Becky an appraising glance. ‘I know what it is, you’ve had your hair done differently.’

  ‘My friend Dorrie cut it for me.’ Rather self-consciously, Becky patted the smooth, glossy style that replaced the former abundant and at times unruly mane. ‘D’you like it?’

  ‘Very much, it really suits you.’ And makes you look older as well, Melissa added mentally. Whoever would believe this is a fourteen-year-old? Aloud, she observed, with a glance at the plastic carrier that sported in impressive gold lettering the name of Stowbridge’s most up-market boutique, ‘Shopping at Jane’s, too. You have been splashing out!’

  Becky’s air of confusion deepened. ‘N-no, I haven’t… I mean, I haven’t bought anything there … this is an old carrier. Dorrie’s Mum bought something at Jane’s a while back … Dorrie and I take it in turns to use it ’cos we reckon it looks kinda posh.’ This hastily gabbled explanation was—given the pristine nature of the article in question—such a blatant lie that Melissa was on the point of challenging it, but at that moment she found herself at the head of the queue for the cash machine. By the time she finished her transaction, Becky had disappeared into the crowd of Friday afternoon shoppers.

  Melissa found the encounter vaguely disturbing. Prices at Jane’s boutique were notoriously high and the hair-do—which looked far too professional to have been done by an amateur—would have cost many times the amount a girl of Becky’s age and background could be reasonably expected to receive as pocket-money. Of course, she picked up the occasional stint as a baby-sitter … and within the past couple of days she had put in a few hours doing housework at Benbury Manor, but even so … An ugly suspicion began to form in Melissa’s mind; she tried to thrust it away, telling herself that there were several ways in which the girl could have come by an unexpected windfall. From a lottery scratch card, perhaps? She was too young to buy her own, but she might easily have prevailed upon a sixteen-year-old acquaintance to buy one for her.