Killer at the Cult

by Alison Golden

  In addition to Scott’s forge and anvil, there was an old, well-worn wooden workbench. Marks, cuts, and gouges all spoke to the fact that the bench had been used over many years. On top of the workbench, there was a huge vise, its handle laying in the two o’clock position over the edge of the bench. Strewn on the surface, around it, and on the wall were a myriad of tools, all of them made from cast iron and wood, some greatly weathered. Annabelle couldn’t see a modern, mass manufactured tool among them.

  “How did you come by all these old tools? I feel I’ve stepped back in time, like I’m on one of those living history programs.”

  “Some I brought with me, but most were already here. It was like time had stood still when I arrived. I walked into a smithy fully equipped with tools that probably hadn’t been used since the early 1900s. I couldn’t believe it when I showed up. They might look old and worn, but you won’t find anything near as good at any of those DIY shops in town. It’s a privilege to work with tools made to this level of craftsmanship.”

  “What are you making now?”

  “Ah, this? It’s a fireside set. Shovel, poker, and tongs. They sell well around these parts.”

  “What else do you make?”

  “I shoe horses, and the farmers will often bring me their tools for mending. A lot of them have their favorites, often from way back. Even though they have all these newfangled machines, they like their old faithfuls the best.”

  “What are these?” On a table in the corner, there was a basket of thin iron rods, each about four inches long.

  “Oh that’s a custom order. For Brian Dawson.”

  “He makes doors doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he uses these in his hinges.”

  Annabelle continued to walk around the workshop, looking high and low at the workman’s treasures that filled the room. There were shelves crammed with jam jars full of screws, screwdrivers, hammers, planes, saws, drills and their bits, files, borers, calipers, scrapers, wrenches, pliers, and punches. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of tools. Different lengths of wood were propped around the walls, cobwebs strung between them. She counted four ladders. Five chains of different weights hung from the ceiling, and various contraptions made from pipes and sheet metal bolted or welded together graced other parts of the floor.

  “How long have you been doing this work, Scott?”

  “All my life. My grandfather taught me. Being a smithy was his life’s work, but my dad wanted no part of it. Pops was delighted I showed an interest. He taught me everything he knew. It’s all I’ve ever done.”

  “Tell me again, how did you end up in the Brotherhood?”

  Scott took the kettle off the coals with a hooked metal stick and set it on the workbench. With his apron protecting his hands, he poured the water into two tin mugs, dropped in a couple of teabags, and stirred with a battered metal spoon.

  “Sugar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He fetched some milk from a thermos.

  “Don’t tell Julia,” he said, his voice low, even though Julia was hardly likely to hear him.

  After fishing the teabags out, he handed one of the mugs to Annabelle. He walked over to where blocks of tree trunk were piled up ready for chopping into firewood. He pulled two out for them to sit on.

  “Please, sit down, Vicar.”

  She took the mug he offered her. Despite his best efforts, he had managed to transfer a spread of sooty fingerprints onto the mug. Annabelle blew across the steaming surface before taking a sip.

  “Theo recruited me.”

  Theo. Always Theo.

  “I was living mostly off my farrier work, shoeing horses, but that’s not really enough to live on, not even in Suffolk.” Annabelle raised her eyebrows. “Newmarket, the racehorses, you know?” Annabelle nodded. She wasn’t a fan, but she knew about Newmarket, the British epicenter of horseracing. She blew on her tea again. “Anyway, I’d make a few things and sell them at the local markets. That’s where I met Theo. I wasn’t interested at first, but he kept coming around and talking to me. Said I could do so much better if I lived with the Brotherhood and that he could help me get more work and bigger projects like fencing and gates and railings for the big houses in these parts. It still wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but you know, needs must, and this seemed an opportunity to get out of a rut.”

  “What did you really want to do?”

  “I’d like to work in films.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah, there’s lots of money for metalworkers in the movies. Especially with all those historical and fantasy films they put on now. They all need weapons and helmets and armor. You can make a good living doing that if you know the right people.”

  “So why are you here in deepest Cornwall? We’re almost off the end of the country. Surely the film industry is based in London?”

  “Yeah well, it were Sally who persuaded me. Theo gave up, at least he stopped coming round, and Sally started showing up at my stall instead.” Scott’s eyes softened. “She seemed so nice. I thought it couldn’t hurt to join them, just for a bit. To see how they were. How they lived.”

  “And how long ago was that, Scott?” Annabelle looked down at the dregs of her tea. There were tiny flat black bits at the bottom, ash probably or perhaps tiny splinters of metal. Annabelle suppressed a shudder. “Roughage,” her mum would have called it.

  “Aw, see. Must be a year or so ago now.”

  “And you’re still here.”

  “Yeah, still here, toddling along. Not going anywhere though really, am I?” Scott breathed in deeply and let out a long exhale.

  “That’s a big sigh.”

  Scott looked at her. He was leaning with his elbows on his knees, his mug of tea between them. “Yeah, I suppose,” he said looking ahead again. He swirled the tea in his mug and took a swig.

  “What will you do now?”

  “Now?”

  “Now that Theo is dead?”

  “I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it. Think I’m going to stop being a farrier, though. It’s becoming too dangerous. I had a skittish pony in here yesterday. Wouldn’t stand still for nothing. Kicked out a bunch of times right at my head, and we had a hard time getting even two new shoes on. Had to abandon the job partway through, and the owner took him away. Said she hadn’t had him long. She’d bought the pony for her daughter, but the girl hadn’t been able to handle him. She said if he didn’t settle soon, they’d have to sell him on. She’ll have trouble selling one like that, though.”

  “Hmm, that’s unusual. People around here know their horses. They don’t normally overreach. Do you know who the owner was?”

  “No, but she did say she came over from Folly’s Bottom. Brought him over in a trailer because he was too difficult to ride. I haven’t had one that obstreperous in a long time, and I’ve shod some of the most purebred horses on earth. I’ve never known horses as badly behaved as the ones I’ve had here recently. The pony yesterday was just mean. The one I had in just before you came was no walk in the park, neither.”

  He gave his tea another swirl and threw the dregs on to the cobblestones outside. “Anyhow, Vicar, if you don’t mind, I must get on.”

  Annabelle jumped up. “Yes, of course.”

  Scott put out his hand to take her mug. “Maybe now he’s gone, it’ll be better without him.”

  “How do you mean, Scott?” She looked at him, but he averted his eyes.

  “Just that Theo could be a little…divisive. He liked to pit people against each other. Good people. Kind people. People who otherwise got along. He liked fooling them. It was like a game to him. He’d make them think he was all charm and good looks, then once they’d fallen for his game, he’d laugh at them behind their backs.”

  “You didn’t like him much, then?”

  “Hah! I didn’t like him at all. Not that I’d kill him, mind,” he added quickly. “He knew he couldn’t pull the wool over my eyes. I could see him for what he
really were. Mostly, he stayed away from me.”

  “Scott,” Annabelle said, walking up closer to him, “I heard that you had an argument with Theo a few days ago.”

  Scott stood and started cleaning up. He began to rub down his anvil with a rag. “Did you?”

  “I heard from two people that it was a furious row and that you grabbed him at one point.”

  Scott stopped his cleaning. He threw the dirty cloth onto the anvil and stood looking down at it with his hands on his hips.

  “Well, maybe I did, Vicar. But so what?” He looked at her evenly. He shrugged. “My work brings in the most money for the group, not that you’d know it. All the money we make goes into one pot. There’s a budget for our food and stuff, and we share what’s left over equally. That’s what we agree to when we join.

  “Theo managed the money, but he didn’t keep records so we never really knew how much we made or spent or shared. And I think he used to take more for himself. Keep money back. I challenged him, and we got into a bit of a barney. He denied it all, of course, and the others think the sun shines out of his you-know-where so they’re blind to his game. He just used to slip and slide around, cheating us all, making us mad with one another, and he’d get away with it!” Scott’s voice got thicker as he spoke, and he splayed his hands. “Finally, it all got to me, and when he came here on Monday, I lost my temper. Yes, I got angry with him, and yes, I grabbed him. But nothing more!”

  “So if you didn’t like one another, and you weren’t doing the kind of work you really wanted, why did you stay?”

  “Because I’m a fool.”

  “You don’t seem like much of a fool to me.”

  “Maybe not, but we can all be made fools of by other people, the right people. No one is immune.” Scott stared off into space, before snapping back to the present, his attention caught by someone outside. Before she could turn to see who it was, Annabelle heard Sally’s voice.

  “Come to bring you some tea, Scott.” Sally appeared at the doorway and smiled sadly. The gruff, grizzly man melted. His shoulders dropped, and he smiled shyly. His face was red from the heat of the forge but Annabelle could have sworn he was blushing.

  “Oh, thanks Sally, love. That’s too kind.”

  Annabelle took a moment to wonder why Sally would bring tea from the house when Scott had his own tea-making facilities at the forge. Her tea was bound to be stone cold.

  “How are you feeling now, Sally? Do you feel better?”

  “Oh, yes, Reverend. I’m much better, thank you. I needed some fresh air, so I thought I’d wander down here to see Scott.”

  Scott ducked his head and brushed at his face. He turned his back on the two women and busied himself at his workbench. Sally walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She spoke quietly to him, and he took the mug from her. He held it in two hands and they chatted quietly. Sally laughed gently at something he said. Annabelle couldn’t hear what they were saying but one thing was obvious.

  It hadn’t been Theo who’d been making a fool of Scott. It was Sally.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Thomas dropped the paper into the developing fluid. He watched it sink to the bottom of the tray, swimming from side to side like a stingray. He looked up at the pictures he’d taken. They were drying on the lines that zig-zagged across the room. He peered closely at them.

  Like many of the rooms in the big, old house, the window went from floor to ceiling, making it problematic as a darkroom. When he’d moved in, he’d taped black paper, several layers, to the cracking, peeling, metal window frame, sealing the edges with extra tape to prevent chinks of light seeping in. He’d stacked a jumble of old clothes by the door, and every time he closeted himself inside the room, he stuffed the clothes into the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. To complete the conversion of the former bedroom to a darkroom, he’d tacked a rubber strip around the entire doorframe and rigged a developer’s lamp to the existing light fitting. The lamp gave him a muted glow to work from, and he never switched on the regular light.

  Thomas was never happier than when he was in his darkroom. He’d often wondered if he’d been a small, earth-living creature in a previous life, some kind of scurrying or burrowing animal. He loved being solitary, observing the daily interactions of everyday living. He enjoyed being unremarkable and going about his business undisturbed. It was what made him a good photographer. He was unobtrusive and able to catch life on film in its most natural state.

  Thomas was old-school. Not for him the intangible indiscrimination of digital photography, the manic clicking that resulted from the sense that there was no downside or waste to taking twenty shots where one would have sufficed. He composed his frames carefully, and every time he set his camera into motion, there was purpose and meaning behind his shot. Where other photographers clicked away at all and anything, Thomas’ eyes darted around constantly searching for a composition that supplied enough substance for him to release his camera’s shutter. He even enjoyed the cumbersome process of developing prints, the smell of the chemicals involved, and the way the photographic paper slowly gave up its secrets. The old photographic ways suited Thomas’ personality: unhurried, restrained, methodical, and consequential.

  He looked across his lines of prints, examining each one in turn. One was of Sally, hiding behind a tree. Her back leaned against the trunk, her palms flat against it. Her eyes were closed behind her elaborately painted mask, her dramatic black eyebrows testimony to her artistic ability and steady hand. There was a shot of Theo, running, his ugly mask incongruous against the rest of his attire, his jeans and shirt. Thomas had slowed the shutter speed on his camera so there was motion blur. It trailed behind his subject giving it an eerie glow. It was almost certainly the last image of Theo alive. Shots of Suki and Scott in mock combat were next. Suki was laughing. Scott’s mood was less easy to discern underneath his mask, but the exaggerated way he stood in apparent threat implied that Suki had no reason to fear him.

  The final shots were not of people, but of woodland nightlife. That Thomas had been able to shoot any at all was surprising considering the amount of shrieking and activity taking place. It would have been understandable if the shy, quiet, nocturnal animals that lived underground or in trees or who cloistered themselves away in the camouflage of the bush had stayed hidden until the drama was over, but Thomas’ quick eye and low-key presence had rendered some nightlife nature portraits that were truly striking.

  He’d caught a hedgehog, its spines various shades of brown and gray, strolling through the undergrowth, hidden mostly from view by a layer of last year’s leaves. Its snout was lifted to the camera, its black eyes, inquisitive and alert, giving Thomas the perfect view of its dainty face peering out. In another image, a barn owl sat proud and serene on a branch, its white and gold colors blending into its surroundings, apparently impervious to the undignified revelries going on beneath him.

  Thomas continued to scan the lines of drying images, silently selecting his keepers. He looked down at one print that he’d just submerged. The picture was appearing before his eyes. As it manifested, he leaned forward. He lifted his glasses to peer even closer, his face inches from the fluid’s surface. He picked up a pair of tweezers and lifted the print to the nylon wire above. He suspended it with a peg. He stared at the photograph again, then at the others on the line, flicking back and forth between them, his heartbeat quickening. He heard a noise and turned toward the door, his eyes wide. He dropped his glasses to his nose, a slick of sweat appearing on his brow.

  The door opened slowly. Thomas didn’t move even though light streamed in from the hallway outside. A dark figure silhouetted against the light moved into the room and shut the door.

  “You. It was you,” Thomas heard himself say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Annabelle pushed open the door to the Dog and Duck. Barbara was behind the bar. She tipped her head toward a solitary figure sitting by the unlit fireplace.

  Ann
abelle could see Richard Venables’ slight, wiry body was wound taut. He was leaning on his elbow staring into a pint, cupping his cheek in his hand. With the other, he methodically turned over a fifty pence piece on the wooden tabletop, heptagonal side by heptagonal side.

  “Good evening, Richard. How are you doing?”

  Venables looked up, “Who are you?”

  “Annabelle Dixon, Reverend of St. Mary’s.” She stuck out her hand. “I was at dinner the other evening, just before Theo Westmoreland was killed.”

  Venables took her hand, but there was no enthusiasm in the shake he gave it. He returned to staring into his pint and turning the coin. “I don’t remember, sorry.”

  Annabelle sat down. She could see Barbara in the background miming. She shook her head. No drink for her. She refocused her attention on Venables. “I’ve been talking to Sally.”

  Richard stopped his fidgeting and looked up.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s very upset. Her friend is dead, and her father was arrested for the murder.”

  Venables sighed and returned to fidgeting with the coin. “I didn’t do it. They let me go.” His voice was flat.

  “You were involved in an argument with Theo. You threatened to kill him.”

  “Yeah, and? I didn’t kill him,” he repeated, looking up at Annabelle, his chin still supported on his hand. “I wouldn’t! After they threw me out of the house that night, I simply wandered around, furious. I thought I’d keep walking until I’d calmed down. After a bit, there was all this noise, people running around. I could see they were doing funny stuff in masks and such, so I walked away from it all. I didn’t want them to see me and for there to be another scene.”

  “So what did you do between the time you left the house and the time the police picked you up?”