Immaculate Deception

by Hannah Weston Price

  “I know,” Reggie said. “Give us three of both. He might find the memory of a simpler time soothing. I can’t tell you how many stressful nights have been soothed with the old mac and cheese.”

  As Sandy prepared their order, Reggie suddenly remembered something and asked, “I hope nobody thinks me Nosy, but I’ve been trying to find out if Elsa was seeing anyone, like maybe a boyfriend?”

  Behind them something clattered and they all turned to see Vivian looking embarrassed and delicately mopping the small spill with her napkin.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. And when she didn’t attempt to add anything further, Reggie turned back to the group.

  “I’d like to think she would have at least told me she was seeing someone,” Summer said.

  Sandy just shook her head. “The only people I ever saw her with were Summer and John. If she was seeing someone, they kept it very hush-hush.”

  Mr. Peterson made an odd sort of choking sound. “Sorry.” He held up a cough drop packet. “Swallowed my lozenge.”

  Huh, Reggie mused. Two odd reactions to the question of Elsa’s boyfriend. Could easily be coincidental she supposed.

  They left the shop with a box of cake and goodies and made their way to John’s flat on the other side of the square.

  “That Mr. Peterson seemed nice,” Reggie said. “He seems young to be a teacher.” She laughed. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.”

  “I remember him in his high school uniform back when we were still in grade school.”

  That made Reggie laugh again. “I can’t imagine working with the same people that were my teachers in school. I’d be constantly working out excuses for not doing the homework.”

  “Vicar!” Summer stopped. “I would never have taken you for a person who didn’t do their homework.”

  “Well I…” Reggie stammered to find an acceptable excuse then made a face at Summer’s laughing. “I suppose you, John, and Elsa were right little swots in school.”

  “Yes, actually,” Summer said, preening. “Except Elsa. She was always good at art and English but if it wasn’t for Mr. Peterson’s extra tutoring three afternoons a week, she would have failed math and had to repeat her final year.”

  The stocky block of flats were red and cream brick, each with pretty little balconies, some with flowers, one with what looked like a little fruit tree.

  Summer led the way up a winding staircase to a long hall of doors. “John’s in four.”

  She knocked gently at first then, with a look at Reggie, shrugged and knocked harder.

  “John!” Summer called, knocking again. “It’s me and I’ve brought the Vicar.”

  They waited for a moment then the door opened just enough to show that the chain was locked.

  “Please go away,” John said, his voice so quiet they could barely hear him.

  Inside the flat looked dark and he looked rough; unshaven, red eyes, stained shirt.

  “I just wanted to see if you needed anything,” Reggie said. “We won’t stay long.”

  “I don’t need anything,” he replied.

  “Please, John,” Reggie said. “Elsa was your friend and I know how horrible this feeling is. But talking can help.”

  John’s gaze shifted from Reggie to Summer. “I’m sorry.” John shut the door and the women heard him engage the deadbolt.

  “John!” Summer pounded on the door now. “You open this door right this minute.”

  Reggie pulled her back and met Summer’s glare with a calm expression of genuine sympathy. “We’ll come back and try again tomorrow.”

  Summer turned her glare on the door. “How can he be so selfish?”

  “Pain makes us selfish,” Reggie said. “We’ll leave the box here and come back tomorrow.”

  “What if he doesn’t let us in tomorrow either?”

  “Then we come back the next day.”

  Summer huffed and looked for a moment like she might start pounding on the door again. “How long will this go on?”

  Reggie wished she had an answer. Instead she opened the box and offered the young woman a cake. Summer chose the chocolate.

  ***

  Inside the flat, John pressed his back against the door and slid down till he was sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched like a child.

  His hands covered his face as he sobbed silently, open mouthed, alone. He was weak. He was a coward. Summer needed him, he knew she did, but he couldn’t face her.

  Not after what he’d done.

  Chapter Eight

  The police station turned out to be little more than a slightly larger cottage with a little blue and white sign out the front. Making Reggie feel as though she had walked onto the set of Hamish Macbeth or some such similar cozy television series.

  “Hello there, Vicar.” A slim, middle-aged woman with thick blond hair piled high on her head and impossibly long red nails gave her a finger-waggling wave from the desk. “I suppose you’re here to see Detective Thornton. Might be a bit of a wait.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice to a loud whisper. “He’s in there with Mr. Blackwell.” And her cringe was punctuated by a series of loud yells and snarled threats although neither of the women could make out any actual words through the muffling door.

  “Denise, isn’t it?” Reggie asked then smiled when Denise nodded. “Is it worth my waiting or should I come back later.”

  Just then the door marked Detective Thornton slammed open. Marcus Blackwell stood, holding the door in one large hand as he glared into the office.

  “Just get this cleaned up, Detective. The girl’s death was a suicide. Stop trying to make this into a bigger case than it is.”

  “Mr. Blackwell, I’m going to do my job,” came Detective Thornton’s calm response. “Just because she has no family looking over my shoulder doesn’t mean I get to neglect my duties.”

  Marcus flushed and, if possible, became quite a bit taller as he loomed back into the doorway. But almost like a sixth sense, he looked towards the waiting room to see both the Vicar and Denise watching him.

  His jaw worked, and he performed an odd kind of nod in greeting to them both. It was actually quite comical to watch such a large, well-groomed man physically reigning in his temper.

  He turned back into the office and held up a finger. “Just remember, Detective. Your job is to serve the people of this community, not your own ego. Patchwork Hill is not some steppingstone you can use to build some brilliant career.”

  “You’ve given up your own aspirations to become Prime Minister then have you, Marcus?” The Detective replied.

  Marcus went very still, his gaze flicking from the ladies and back into the office. His jaw worked again but he didn’t bite.

  “I believe your next appointment has arrived.” Mr. Blackwell said, his voice smooth and practiced again. “Remember what I said.”

  Marcus Blackwell marched out without a backwards glance.

  Denise whistled and shook her head. “He don’t half get worked up. I haven’t seen our MP get that riled up since…” She stopped and shook her head. “Ah it’s all old gossip now.” She turned and yelled into the still open office, “The Vicar is here, can I send her in?”

  Reggie didn’t quite hear his reply, but she thought she made out the words, “Couldn’t get much worse.”

  The office was snug and dimly lit, looking more like the office of a seedy private-eye than a police officer. On noticing her slight frown, Harry crossed his arms and sat back in a very closed position.

  “Not to your liking, Vicar?”

  “Perhaps some light?” She suggested. “All this dimness can’t be good for your eyes. And perhaps some kind pot plant would bring some life into the room.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’ll take your suggestions under advisement. Now if you could just take a seat, you can tell me what you remember from yesterday and the evening before when you said you saw her last.”

  “Well…” Reggie looked dubiously around the office. “Shouldn’t we do
that in the interview room? You know, with a recorder and that two-way mirror thing that I pretend to not know I’m being filmed and watched through?”

  “We keep those rooms mainly for suspects. I tend to think my office is more comfortable for smaller cases like this.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a small digital recorder and placed it on the desk. “I keep it hidden so as not to make people uncomfortable but since you’re from the city.”

  Reggie narrowed her eyes on the little green light showing that the recorder had been running the whole time.

  “So, you were recording Mr. Blackwell too?”

  The detective didn’t smile but something sparkled in his eyes. “Politicians tend to use guys like me as scapegoats when things go bad for them. I like to be prepared.”

  Reggie took a seat, “Good plan. It’s only a matter of time before he’s caught nobbing someone behind his wife’s back and needs a distraction. And an out of control crime rate never fails to scare people into looking the other way.”

  Thornton coughed. “You’re not allowed to say that, are you?” He wasn’t quite smiling but not frowning either.

  Reggie met his curious expression with a smile. “What with all the crisis happening in the world today, I’m sure I can be excused the occasional naughty word.”

  “Ah so you’re determined to be one of those hip priests.” His tone turned condescending as did his expression. “Down with the kids and all that?”

  “Yeah, I’m so hip I’ve apparently been roped into taking the elderly ladies of the village for weekly shopping trips. How groovy and wicked does that sound?”

  He cleared his throat again and his mouth twitched but he quickly schooled it into a stern frown. “Is that van even safe for escorting out elderly residents?”

  “Apparently it will be once Bernie has finished with it. God knows how I’m going to pay for that. I was considering going to have a chat with that MP you’re planning to blackmail to see if he’d be interested making a donation.”

  That broke him. Detective Thornton let out a bark of laughter and continued laughing loudly and quite obnoxiously for almost a full minute. Long enough that Denise popped her head in to check on them.

  A moment later she came in carrying a tray of tea and biscuits and the distraction was enough to allow the detective to get himself back under control.

  “Okay, Reverend Watson, tell me everything that happened starting from when Elsa came to see you the night before she died.”

  “Yes, well um…” Reggie felt her mind go a bit foggy with the sudden switch in tone but after a sip of tea and two of the biscuits, she started to speak.

  She told him everything she could remember, filling him in when he asked questions, and trying to remember as much as she could. And he had lots of questions. What was Elsa wearing, had she been drinking, had Reggie been drinking, to which she responded that she definitely had not. He seemed to want to make sure that Elsa had been wearing the same clothes that she was found in, the evening before when she visited the church.

  Reggie wondered if perhaps he was testing her memory and thus her reliability as a witness. But as his questions continued, she realized that what he was trying to ascertain was whether Elsa had returned home and changed before meeting her end.

  As far as Reggie could remember, Elsa had been wearing the same clothes when Reggie found her as she had been the night before. But what did that mean? If she’d returned home to change was it more or less likely to be suicide? If she’d returned home that might mean things hadn’t gone well with her boyfriend or the test. But she could have also returned home but not gotten changed…

  “Vicar, I can hear the cogs turning in your head,” Detective Thornton said. “Don’t get too excited. Building a timeline of her last twenty-four to forty-eight hours is just procedure.”

  “I’m not getting excited,” she replied testily then pointed at her head. “This thing between my ears doesn’t just turn off on command. Plus, I couldn’t help overhearing that Elsa had no family in town. But surely there’s someone we should contact.”

  The detective spread his hands, palms up. “Her mother died when she was a teenager, her grandparents passed when she was still a baby, and nobody knows who her father was.”

  The words, she was her mother’s daughter in the end, slithered about the back of Reggie’s mind. How forgiving would a small village like this be to the child of a single mother? As Sunday school teacher, Elsa had clearly earned herself a place and a modicum of respect, but how quickly had that nasty gossip spread? How fast did the village simply accept that the girl was as wild and unstable as her mother and dismiss her?

  It made Reggie suddenly very sad. “Even if this was suicide,” she heard herself say. “I want to know why. That nasty gossip didn’t come from nowhere.”

  Everyone shrugged it off like it was just a bit of fun but an affair with the MP and a teacher is the kind of innuendo that could lose a young lady the little respect she has in such a small village. The head of the Parish council could have her removed from teaching Sunday school based on her reputation, founded or not.

  “Regardless of whether she was murdered or not, someone was hurting her. Aren’t you the least bit curious who was spreading lies to discredit a young woman who seemed otherwise well liked?”

  “What makes you so sure they were lies?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said when she came into the church, she was saying that she was sure she was pregnant. But to who? She wasn’t married and as far as anyone knew didn’t have a steady boyfriend.”

  “So, because she thought she was pregnant that means she must have been shagging half the town? It’s not possible that because of the rumors she’d been keeping her relationship a secret?”

  “Nobody has come forward to say anything about being her boyfriend. We’re not in some TV cop show. I can’t just pull some random bit of fluff out of the air and run with it.”

  “She told me that she was taking the pregnancy test with her, so she and her boyfriend could see the result together.” Reggie sat forward, more certain now. “Harry, I know you only have my word to go on, but I swear, she was happy, and she genuinely believed that her boyfriend would be just as happy when he heard the news.”

  His expression turned thoughtful. “You’re suggesting that maybe she was wrong, and he wasn’t so happy about her being pregnant, or perhaps didn’t want the news of their relationship getting out.”

  “Maybe? I don’t know that we are never going to understand this case until we know who her boyfriend was and who resented her so much that they would spread such vicious rumors.”

  “We?” He replied with an arched brow. “I think you mean, I. I am the police detective and I will be the one to get a handle on whether her death was murder or self-inflicted.”

  “Well…” Reggie frowned. He was right but still. “Maybe I can help. People tend to talk to me about all sorts of things and let’s be honest, they’re more likely to open up to the parish vicar than…” Her words drifted off as his eyes narrowed.

  “Reverend Watson,” he began. “This is not the city. I am not some cold faceless copper. I’ve been a well-respected official in this village for many years. The people of Patchwork Hill trust me.”

  Reggie had that feeling again of being an outsider. She had after all only been in town a couple of days. She really didn’t know anything about Elsa or the kind of trouble she might have found for herself.

  A flash of memory showed Elsa standing in the church, glowing in the late afternoon light. That radiant smile, those dancing eyes.

  “Let’s say for argument sake,” Reggie started. “That the whole thing was simply a series of unfortunate events. A pretty, smart, sensitive young woman might make some of the other women in the village quite jealous.”

  “More than a few going by how fast the rumors spread.”

  “And then say she did have a boyfriend and they kept their relationship quiet because of those rum
ors or maybe they just wanted to keep it secret for a bit. She thinks she pregnant and buys a test but within hours the news that the village bad girl is unmarried and in trouble. Then something happens that makes everything too unbearable and she takes her own life.”

  Reggie leaned closer, her fingertips not quite touching those of the detective. “How horrible do you think all those people feel right now?”

  “Pretty damn horrible,” Thornton conceded. “And probably in need of some words from the parish Vicar.”

  She tapped her nose and winked.

  “Alright, I see your point.” He didn’t look happy about it. “Don’t go getting involved though. If you hear anything, you bring it to me. You’re not the Vicar of Dibley.”

  “I think you mean Father Brown.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I thought I remembered Dawn French as the amateur sleuth.”

  “Nope.” Reggie’s eyes widened. “But how cool would that be? The case of the Nosy Vicar!”

  “Get out.”

  Reggie stopped at the door and turned back with a smirk. “You know, your tone says that you’re angry and annoyed and can’t wait for me to go away.”

  “Really?” His sardonic tone just made her smile wider.

  “Yes, but you’re going to need me before this is all over and when that happens, I might not be so willing to help.”

  “Oh, woe is me!” Harry jumped to his feet with his hands gripping his heart. “How will I ever manage without the wise guidance of our fine reverend who apparently cannot even remember the chorus of Rocket Man!”

  Reggie was so shocked that she backed up a step and before she could reply the door was slammed in her face.

  “Well,” she said, her mouth still open in shock at his rudeness. She looked up at the ceiling. “I hope you saw that.”

  Denise squinted at the reverend then raised her eyes to whatever it was she was talking to. Vicars were a strange lot, that was for sure.

  Chapter Nine

  Marcus Blackwell pulled his sporty BMW to a screeching stop outside his manor house. For a long time, he just sat there, his hands gripping the wheel till his knuckles turned white.