by Agatha Frost
“I assume you heard about Father David’s arrest?” Julia asked as she rested the cup on her knee.
“I did!” Percy poured himself a cup of tea and added plenty of milk. “I saw the commotion at the church, but I couldn’t quite see over the crowd. I was rather shocked when Dorothy told me what was going on.”
“You were?”
“Of course!” Percy slurped his tea as he settled into the armchair across from Julia. “I know I overheard his telephone conversation, but I didn’t really think he was involved. Who would expect a man of God to resort to murder?”
Julia narrowed her eyes. She wanted to figure the man out, but she couldn’t see if anything more lay beneath his sweet exterior.
“I heard you were once an item with Gloria.” Julia prompted, changing direction. “That’s what Flora said, at least.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say we were ‘an item’, dear.” Percy chuckled as he placed his cup on a side table. He fiddled with his bowtie. “Do you like magic?”
“Magic?”
“Tricks!” Percy pulled a pack of cards from his pocket. “I was quite the magician back in my day.” He shuffled the cards before holding them out to Julia. “Pick a card but don’t show me.”
Julia plucked a card from the pack. Four of diamonds. When instructed, she placed it back in the deck and watched Percy reshuffle them. He waved his hand over the deck and pulled up the top card.
“Was this your card?”
Julia shook her head at the three of spades.
“Oh, rats!” he cried as he slotted the cards back in the breast pocket of his shirt. “I fear I’ve lost my touch with age. The Magic Circle would revoke my membership in a heartbeat if they knew. Still, I was quite good back in my day.” He nodded at a poster on the wall. “They called me Percival the Great. Oh, it was a lot of fun. I travelled all over the Cotswolds with my act. Those days are far behind me now.”
The poster depicted a cartoon rendering of Percy in a top hat and cape. He wore his round glasses, but he appeared much younger and had a full head of hair.
“I retired decades ago,” he explained. “But I never lost the bug! Nothing brings me more joy than tricking someone with a sprinkle of magic, but it’s a young man’s game. Where was I?”
“Gloria.”
“Ah, right you are!” He wagged his finger as he readjusted himself in his seat. “I enjoyed a decade of retirement, but I was itching to get back on the stage if only one more time. The spotlight is a tempting mistress. I never knew how much I craved the audience’s energy until it went away. I’m eighty now, but I wanted to do one last show before I turned seventy, so I must have been sixty-nine at the time. I announced one final show to end all shows. The Return of Percival the Great! I expected it to be a little show at the village hall with a dozen or so people, but tickets sold out.”
Percy paused and sipped his tea.
“It stroked my ego a little too much, pushing me to announce a week of shows,” he continued. “They all sold out too! It was going to be my big send-off. One last bite of the apple before I finally settled down into my old age.” He paused to sip his tea as he stared at the poster on the wall. “Of course, it was an epic failure! Most of my tricks went wrong on the first night. I picked Gloria at random from the audience to be the woman I sawed in half. The box couldn’t sustain her weight, so the bottom caved, ruining the whole illusion! I was laughed off stage. Word got around, and by the end of the week, most people had asked for refunds.”
Percy shook his head and exhaled.
“Gloria came back for the final show, and we somehow ended up having a drink together at The Plough. She was twenty years younger than me, so I knew it was never going to work, but it was fun to have some female attention. My poor Joyce was taken from me before I retired, so I’d been rather lonely in this little flat on my own.”
“What happened with you and Gloria?”
“We went on a couple of dates, but it was obvious things weren’t going to work. I called things off before they got too serious.”
“Flora said Gloria ended things.”
“Well, she would say that!” Percy laughed. “She was one of the reasons things weren’t going to work. She kept turning up on every date and inserting herself into it. Gloria didn’t seem to mind, but I did! And then Gloria expected me to pay for everything. I know it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, but I was, and still am, a pensioner! My years on the stage didn’t bring me riches. After forking out all those refunds, I was scraping by, and paying for Gloria’s three-course meals wasn’t in my budget. Oh, that woman could eat! Still, things ended amicably, and I joined the choir soon after. It gave me something to do with my days, and I got to enjoy a bit of performing again, even if Gloria always insisted on being the centre of attention.”
“And what about Rita? What was your relationship like with her?”
“I didn’t have one, dear.” Percy frowned before sipping his tea. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I don’t think I ever said two words to the woman. Rita was only ever concerned with Rita. I doubt she even knew I was there half the time.” Percy paused and looked down into his tea. His expression softened, and he looked up at Julia with a sad smile. “You think it was me, don’t you?”
“I-I-I—”
“Your grandmother told me all about your gift for unravelling a mystery.” Percy pulled a silk cloth from his pocket and wiped his glasses. “I can assure you, dear, I had nothing to do with their deaths. Why would you think I had?”
“Because you knew about Father David’s debt,” she explained. “Someone wrote to the police to tell them to search the church. They arrested Father David because they found the stolen church items and the arsenic in his vestry.”
“What stolen church items?” Percy put his glasses back on. “I can assure you, this is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Julia instantly wanted to believe him, but a voice in the back of her head reminded her not to trust him. He had, after all, admitted that he loved playing tricks on people. Had his years on the stage perfected his acting skills?
“Rita caught someone stealing from the church on the morning of my wedding.” Julia leaned forward and placed the untouched cup on the table next to the radio exclusively playing Elvis tunes. “Rita was the target all along. Gloria stole Rita’s water bottle, which I suspect had the arsenic in it.”
“Yes, the water bottle.” Percy nodded. “I was there when she took it. Gloria was always doing things like that to people. She had a nasty edge to her that always came out in those choir meetings. I saw a softer side to her on our handful of dates, but I don’t think many got to see that. Why on earth do you think I would want to kill either of those women?”
“For the money.”
“Money?” Percy chuckled as he bobbed his head from side to side. “What do I want money for? Look around you, dear. I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in the cupboards, and, now, the company of a great woman. Money is temporary. It comes and goes, and you can’t take it with you. I only have a few years left on this planet, if I’m lucky. I’m fortunate to still have my mind and health. Why would I want to jeopardise being a free man in the last act of my life for something as pointless as money, especially when I have found the one thing I thought I would never experience again.”
“But you were the only one who knew about Father David’s debt,” Julia said, hearing the desperation in her tone. “Unless you told people?”
“I told Dorothy and you, but that’s it.” Percy paused to think. “If I overheard that phone conversation, it’s more than likely that others overheard other phone calls, and that’s only if Father David really is innocent. Have you considered that he might be guilty?”
Julia shook her head. She wanted the comfortable couch to swallow her up and take her away from Percy’s flat. She had been in such a rush to question him, she hadn’t taken a second to consider the likelihood that she might be jumping the gun.
Percy opened his mouth, but whatever he might have said was cut off by a high-pitched sneeze coming from a door next to the kitchen. Julia turned to the door as another louder sneeze followed the first. Without waiting for an explanation, Julia jumped up and walked over to the door. She turned back and looked at Percy before opening it.
“Gran?” Julia cried as she stared down at Dot, who was crammed on the floor between a mop bucket and a vacuum cleaner. “What are you doing down there?”
“Hiding from you.” Dot held a hand out. “Help me up, dear.”
Julia pulled Dot up off the floor. She stepped out of the cupboard as she dusted down her navy pleated skirt. She shook out her short grey curls and adjusted her brooch.
“I thought you were here to give Percy ‘the talk’,” Dot said as just closed the door behind her. “The ‘hurt my grandmother, and I’ll chop off your fingers’ talk. We panicked, so I hid. I wanted to eavesdrop, but you were speaking far too quietly.”
“She thinks I killed Gloria and Rita,” Percy announced from his seat as he sipped his tea. “Thinks I needed the money.”
“She did?” Dot waved her hand with a chuckle. “Oh, Julia! I think you’re losing your touch. Why would Percy want to kill those silly women?”
“That’s what I said,” Percy added. “She wants to know where I was on the night Rita was murdered. Should you tell her, or should I?”
Julia and Dot walked back to the couch. They sat across from Percy, and Dot reached out and plucked a biscuit from the plate. She offered one to Julia, who took it because she felt ridiculous for thinking they’d been poisoned.
“After our date at The Comfy Corner and our tipple at the pub, he walked me home and left,” Dot mumbled through a mouthful of digestive. “He came back ten minutes later telling me he’d lost his keys. I invited him in for a nightcap, and, well, he ended up staying the night.”
“Oh.” Julia choked on her biscuit.
“Not like that, dear,” Dot said, pursing her lips. “We’re not like you young whipper-snappers doing all that nonsense before marriage! I poured us a drink, and I borrowed Alfie’s computer-tablet thingy. What it’s called again, dear?”
“U-pad?” Percy said. “Or a me-pad? Something like that.”
“iPad,” Julia corrected him.
“That’s it!” Dot slapped her leg. “Marvellous invention! I wish we’d had those back in my day. I don’t think I would have left the house. No wonder kids today are so fat!” Dot took another bite of her biscuit. “Alfie showed me how to watch films. You click a button, and there they all are! Hundreds of them! It’s like someone put the silver screen into a computer. We fell into a hole of watching movie after movie. It’s hard not to when all you have to do is click.”
“The kids call it ‘binge-eating’,” Percy said with a knowing nod.
“Binge-watching,” Julia corrected again.
“We watched All About Eve, Ben-Hur, Singin’ in the Rain, Some Like it Hot, and The Bridge on the River Kwai,” Dot continued. “All the classics.”
“They don’t make them like that anymore.” Percy stabbed his finger on the chair arm. “It’s all crash, bang, and wallop now! Nobody tells real stories.”
“We didn’t realise what time it was until the birds started chirping,” Dot said. “Percy still didn’t have his keys, and I didn’t want him wandering around the village looking for them all night, so he slept on my couch. When you caught us out after I missed Vinnie’s party, we’d only just woken. I felt like a teenager again! It’d been many decades since I’d stayed up to see a sunrise.”
“Apart from ten minutes when I was at the church,” Percy said, turning to Julia and smiling, “I was with Dorothy all night. Unless you think I could have run to Fern Moore and back in that time, I think you’ll agree that I couldn’t possibly have murdered Rita.”
“Easy mistake, dear.” Dot patted Julia on the shoulder. “You can’t get it right every time. Back to the drawing board!”
Julia was too embarrassed to say another word. She finished her biscuit and left them to enjoy the rest of their afternoon together.
Mulberry Lane was even busier, with more of marketgoers making their way to the historical shopping street. Julia looked around for Barker, whom she spotted helping her father at the antique barn. As she crossed the road to tell him what she had found out, her phone rang in her handbag. She pulled it out, surprised to see that Alfie was calling her.
“Julia? It’s me. I need to see you.”
“What’s wrong?” Julia replied as she waved to Barker who had spotted her.
“I’m at my builder’s yard,” he replied. “Can you come now? I need to speak to you face to face.”
Julia hung up and walked to the builder’s yard, which was situated at the bottom of a narrow lane behind the antique barn. The chatter of the crowd died away, replaced by the grinding of an electronic saw. When she reached A to B Builders Yard, which was run by Alfie and Billy, she saw Billy cutting through lengths of wood with a giant circular saw. Jessie sat on a barrel behind him, her face buried in her phone. Neither noticed her as she walked towards Alfie’s office, which was up a flight of rickety wooden stairs in the main building.
Alfie jumped up from behind his desk when Julia opened the door. He had changed into his filthy blue overalls, which were rolled up at the sleeves to show his completely inked skin. Alfie had been in their life since April and had integrated well into Peridale. A building job had brought him to the village, but finding Jessie, the long-lost sister who had been ripped away from him and put into the care system when she was a baby, was what had kept him here.
“That was quick,” Alfie exclaimed as he pulled out a seat for her.
“I was only on Mulberry Lane.” Julia sat in the seat and watched as Alfie closed the blinds that looked out onto the courtyard. “You sounded distressed on the phone.”
“That’s one word for it.” Alfie paced in front of the closed window, his fingers in knots. “I wanted to tell you right away, but I felt like I was put on the spot. I called the second I was alone.”
“Tell me what?”
“I lied to you.” Alfie’s pacing came to a halt. “Well, I went along with a lie, which is as good as lying. It took me by surprise, and I didn’t know how to come clean in the moment.”
Julia had an idea what he was talking about, but she wanted to hear it from his lips. She nodded for him to continue. He sat down, and his tattooed fingers drummed on the surface of his desk.
“I wasn’t at the cinema with Skye on the night Rita was killed,” he started, the drumming intensifying. “I was at Malcolm Johnson’s house until the early hours, fixing his roof in that awful rain. I didn’t see Skye at all that day.”
“I suspected as much.”
“You did?” Alfie’s fingers stopped drumming. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to reveal my hand to her.” Julia leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her forehead; the whiplash of the day was giving her a headache. “She wasn’t very convincing, and I was sure the film she said you saw had its last viewing the day before.”
“She just blurted it out, and I felt like I had to go along. I didn’t want to embarrass her.”
“Did she explain why she lied?”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“I wonder why.” Julia chuckled. “Things are hardly looking good for her, are they? This is the second time I’ve caught her lying about her alibi. She said she wasn’t in Peridale on the morning of my wedding, but I have video proof to show she was.”
“Do you think she’s behind all of this?”
“I don’t know,” Julia admitted. “But the fingers are starting to point in her direction.”
> “I really like her,” Alfie said, his voice low. “Have I been a fool?”
“Not a fool, no.” Julia offered him a smile. “You’re just seeing the best in her. It happens to all of us. I know I’ve been guilty of that on more than one occasion. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“There’s more.” He exhaled. “I lent her some money.”
“How much?”
“£500.”
“Oh, Alfie…”
“I know!” he cried. “I am a fool. She’s in debt up to her eyeballs from her student days. She took out loans all over the place to get through. She kept talking about all the letters she was getting from people saying they were going to her house to take her stuff. I felt bad for her, so I asked how much it would take to at least pay off one letter. I make a decent living here, and I don’t like to see people suffer like that. She was in tears.”
“Do you know where she is?” Julia asked as she stood up. “I really need to talk to her.”
Alfie joined Julia in standing. “She left almost immediately after you spoke to us at the market. I’ve tried calling her since, but she’s not picking up.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know.” Alfie shrugged. “We’ve only really been seeing each other in the village. I think she mentioned something about living in Riverswick, and I know she works at the cinema in Cheltenham.”
“Call me if you see or hear from her.” Julia walked towards the door before turning back to Alfie. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
Leaving Alfie to get on with his work, Julia snuck out of the builder’s yard and hurried back to Mulberry Lane. Barker was still at the antique barn, helping Julia’s father lift a mahogany dresser into the back of a white van. She hung back and waited for him to finish. The second he did, she pulled him away from the action.
“It’s Skye,” Julia said. “I think she’s behind all this.”
Chapter Thirteen