A Dead Man Out of Mind (25 page)

‘But he didn't refuse?' Lucy put in.

‘No, he didn't. He was desperate, of course, but he actually seemed rather keen to give it a try. Don't ask me why. I was surprised at his position – I even tried to talk him out of it. I pointed out that a parish like St Margaret's would probably not take very kindly to a woman curate, that it wouldn't be fair on her. But he insisted.'

‘What about this letter?' David prompted.

‘Yes. The letter. It came last week, just about the time that Rachel died. In it he said that the appointment
I'd
insisted on had been a mistake, and he wondered if anything could be done to rectify it.'

‘Don't you see?' Emily interrupted her husband. ‘In the first place, he must have known that nothing could be done to
un
-appoint Rachel at that point. And Gabriel
hadn't
insisted on their having her.'

‘Curiouser and curiouser,' said Lucy, pushing her hair back from her face.

David added a comment in a somewhat flippant tone. ‘I don't understand why he was so desperate in the first place. Didn't he know that he was going to lose his previous curate? Why hadn't he made arrangements for a replacement before the old curate left? That doesn't sound like our friend Father Keble Smythe at all!'

Gabriel looked at him as though he'd just told a joke in rather bad taste. ‘That's not really very funny.'

‘Why? What happened to him?' David asked idly.

‘You don't know?'

‘Don't know what?'

‘You don't know what happened to Father Julian? Honestly?'

David was baffled at his tone. ‘I'd rather supposed he'd got his own parish somewhere. Not that I'd given it all that much thought.'

‘Father Julian was killed in the burglary at St Margaret's last December,' Gabriel said with appropriate gravity. ‘The burglary in the sacristy. Surely you've heard about that.'

‘Killed?' David stared at him for a moment, trying to absorb it. ‘Good Lord.'

Lucy stopped with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth. ‘You mean he was murdered?'

Gabriel shrugged. ‘Accidentally. It would seem that he was unlucky enough to surprise the burglars, and had his head smashed in for his pains.'

That horrific fact, so casually delivered, made Lucy wince. ‘But have they caught the people who did it? Surely the police have tracked them down somehow.'

‘No, they haven't, as a matter of fact. He was under my jurisdiction, of course, so they've kept me informed. And so far they haven't managed to find anything – no prints at the scene of the crime, so they didn't really have much to go on.' He shrugged again. ‘I think that after a few weeks they just gave up and shoved it into the files. A sad thing, but I'm sure it happens all the time.'

While he was speaking, David was engaged in serious re-evaluation of the situation, in the light of this second death. ‘It just doesn't wash, you know,' he interjected suddenly. ‘Two curates at the same church, dead within four months. Accidentally. It's statistically impossible.'

‘Oscar Wilde might have said that to lose one curate could be counted as unfortunate . . .' said Gabriel, waiting for David to complete his thought as he had done so many times in the past.

‘But to lose two is careless,' David finished. ‘I think that in this case it's gone a bit beyond careless. Don't you agree?'

It was the previously undisclosed fact of Father Julian's murder – for surely it could be called nothing short of murder – that finally turned the tide in David's mind, and convinced him, in spite of his prejudice against Ruth and her intuition, that Rachel Nightingale's death could not have been an accident. Nothing else would have persuaded him to agree to Gabriel's request for his – and Lucy's – help with a discreet investigation into the circumstances of a death on which the police had closed the book, apart from a desultory search for the driver of the hit-and-run car.

Once that agreement had been obtained, they proceeded to make more detailed plans. ‘It must have been someone who was at St Margaret's that night, when they had the row,' David thought aloud. ‘No one else would have known that she would be going at that particular time.'

‘That doesn't really narrow things down too much,' Emily pointed out. ‘From what I've heard, everyone was there.'

‘Except Father Keble Smythe,' Gabriel added slowly.

‘Well, that lets the Vicar out, then,' David stated. ‘The one person with an alibi.'

‘But it leaves us with quite a few others as possibilities,' said Lucy. ‘I should think that the churchwardens would have to come top of the list.'

‘Martin Bairstow, yes,' David agreed. ‘But not Norman Topping. He wouldn't have the bottle.'

Lucy smiled. ‘Unless Dolly told him to.'

‘Lady Macbeth, handing her wimpy husband the dagger,' said Emily the English scholar. ‘Or Dolly might have done it herself,' she added. ‘Let's not be sexist here – a woman could have done it just as easily as a man.'

By this time they had moved back to the sitting room for their coffee; Gabriel added a dollop of cream to his and stirred it thoughtfully. ‘It seems to me,' he said, ‘that the first thing you need to do, David, is to talk to the churchwardens. With or without the Vicar – I don't think it makes much difference, unless you think he might be able to shed any light.'

‘But how can I do that?' David protested. ‘I don't have a credible excuse. As far as they're concerned, my usefulness is over. I discovered that their silver was valuable, but I wasn't able to persuade the diocese to let them sell it. I can't just ring them up . . .'

‘Oh, but you can,' Gabriel interrupted smoothly. ‘What if you were to ring Martin Bairstow and tell him that your old friend the Archdeacon – and you made a point of our long-standing friendship, if you'll remember – has had a change of heart about the silver? That he's willing to consider recommending to the DAC that since there are two ciboria, one of them might be sold to the V & A?'

David sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose that would work. I could ask them to come to my office to see me, to talk about the details.'

‘It would be better to see them at the church, surely?'

‘Yes, all right,' David gave in. ‘I'll talk to them.'

Gabriel got up and went to the drinks tray. ‘Can I offer you a drink with your coffee? Cognac, or a liqueur, Lucy?'

‘I'll have a Cointreau, thanks.'

He dispensed it, then lifted a bottle of single-malt whisky. ‘And is this still your favourite tipple, David?'

‘Yes, thanks. How kind of you to remember.'

No one in the room, least of all Gabriel, could have been unaware of the irony in his tone, but he poured the drink and passed it to David without further comment.

Lucy put down her coffee cup with an abrupt movement and a clatter of spoon and saucer. ‘I think there's something we're overlooking,' she stated. ‘You may be disinclined to believe anything that Ruth says, David darling, but don't forget what she said about Vera Bright.'

Gabriel turned towards her. ‘Oh, yes. That business at the vicarage yesterday. What was that all about? Who
is
Vera Bright?'

‘Vera Bright is a member of the congregation at St Margaret's,' Lucy explained. ‘Ruth met her through Rachel. Yesterday at the vicarage Ruth was talking to her, and she said something that made Ruth think that she not only believed Rachel had been murdered, but that she knew who was behind it. Based on something that Rachel had said to her, apparently – though she wouldn't tell Ruth what it was, or whom she suspects.'

‘Just another of Ruth's fantasies, I expect.' David waved his hand dismissively.

Gabriel, however, got up and paced across the room. ‘I don't think we can afford to ignore it out of hand, David. There may be something in it. Does anyone know this Vera Bright? Besides Ruth, that is?'

Lucy nodded. ‘Well, I've met her, anyway, though I don't really know her. Do you think I should have a word with her?'

‘If you would,' said Gabriel. ‘At least you might be able to get some feeling about whether she really knows anything, or if it's all in Ruth's mind.'

‘All right. I'll go on Monday.'

‘Shouldn't someone talk to the churchwardens' wives?' suggested Emily. ‘To Dolly Topping, anyway?'

‘I've got a good excuse to see Vanessa,' Lucy admitted. ‘The painting she commissioned is just about finished, and I could deliver it to her this week. But I can't really think of any plausible way that I could talk to Dolly.'

Emily sighed. ‘I suppose it's my turn to be noble. Much as I loathe the woman, I'll invite her round for a cup of tea this week, and get her talking about Rachel.'

‘Will she come?' David wanted to know.

‘Oh, she'll come.' Emily smiled smugly. ‘In her circle, one doesn't turn down invitations from the Archdeacon's wife. If you understand me.'

‘Yes, of course.' David lifted his glass and squinted through the pale straw-coloured liquid. ‘I'm thinking,' he said slowly, ‘that it might be a mistake to concentrate on Rachel, without considering this Father Julian as well. Perhaps the two deaths are actually connected in some way.'

Gabriel gave him a sharp look. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, maybe they both died because of something they had in common. And as far as I can tell, that's only one thing.'

‘Yes?' With one raised eyebrow, Gabriel invited him to continue.

‘I mean, it doesn't seem that there was much commonality there. He was a man and she was a woman. She was married, and he was . . . ?'

‘Not.' Gabriel's voice might have conveyed a trace of disapproval or even distaste.

‘She was a deacon, and he was a priest. But . . .' David looked around at the three of them. ‘They were both curates of St Jude's and St Margaret's. That's the link, and that may be important.'

‘So what are you implying?'

David continued with some reluctance. ‘That we won't really be doing everything we can to discover the truth about Rachel's death unless we find out something about Father Julian as well. About who he was, first of all, and then about how he died, and why. And there's only one person I can think of who could almost certainly tell us the answer to at least the first of those questions.' He paused, and forced himself to say it. ‘Robin West. The sacristan at St Margaret's.'

‘Ah.' Gabriel's mouth twitched in what might have been a suppressed smile; clearly he had run across him in the course of his official duties. ‘I think that talking to him is just the job for you, David.'

‘Can't someone else do it?' he pleaded without much hope. ‘Gabriel, how about you?'

‘Oh, no. That wouldn't be the done thing at all. I'm afraid it's got to be you, David.' He smirked. ‘Pull up your socks and take your medicine like a man.'

‘That's the whole problem,' David muttered miserably.

‘Well, then.' Gabriel rubbed his hands together in a brisk manner. ‘We all know what we have to do within the next week or so. I suggest that we meet again next weekend to compare notes and see where we've got. Emily, you're to chat with Dolly Topping. Lucy, you've got Vera Bright and Mrs Bairstow to talk to. And David, you need to see the churchwardens and the sacristan.'

‘Wait a minute,' said David. ‘What about
you
?'

‘Oh, I'm the Archdeacon. It wouldn't be proper for me to get involved directly. But,' Gabriel added, ‘let me know if there's anything at all that I can do to back you up. That's what I'm here for.'

CHAPTER 22

    
Let his posterity be destroyed: and in the next generation let his name be clean put out.

Psalm 109.12

Lucy rang Vera Bright on Monday morning, reminding the older woman that she was Ruth's aunt, and asking if it might be convenient for her to call and see her a bit later. Vera agreed readily; any visitor was a welcome change from her father's sole company.

‘What time would be best for you?' Lucy asked, mindful of the intrusion.

‘Any time. Any time at all. It's such a nice morning that I thought I might venture out into the garden for a bit, but I'd be happy to see you whenever you can make it. For coffee, perhaps? Around eleven?'

‘If that's not putting you out.'

‘Not at all. I'll look forward to seeing you later, Miss Kingsley. And may I say,' she added shyly, ‘that I find your niece a delightful young lady. Absolutely delightful. A credit to you and your family.'

‘Oh. Thank you.' Nonplussed, Lucy put the phone down; it was the first time since Ruth's arrival that anyone other than Rachel had said a good word about her.

It was indeed a beautiful morning, the air mild and fresh and promising real warmth as the day progressed. So spring has come at long last, Lucy reflected as she walked the short distance to Vera's house. On a day like this she could almost believe that somehow, one day soon when Ruth had gone, things would return to normal, in spite of the trauma of Rachel's death.

She found the Brights' house without difficulty. It was in a street that was respectable rather than prestigious, but it was freshly painted and beautifully maintained on the outside. Lucy rang the bell. There was no reply, so after a few minutes she pushed it again, holding it in for a rather longer time; Vera might be in the garden, she realised, and might not have heard the bell.

After a delay, Lucy heard sounds from inside the house: heavy footsteps and a querulous old voice. ‘Vera!' said an old man's scratchy grumble. ‘Are you deaf, girl? Can't you hear the bell?' Then, as he got nearer, ‘Hold your horses, out there. I'm coming.' The door flew open, and the old man from the post-funeral gathering peered out at Lucy. Ever susceptible to a pretty face, Walter Bright transformed his scowl into an approximation of a smile, baring a mouth full of surprisingly sound teeth. ‘Oh, it's you! I saw you at the vicarage, didn't I?'