Evil Angels Among Them (26 page)

Matters moved quickly after that; David, aware that the inquest was scheduled for that afternoon, lost no time in ringing John Spring.

Hoping to forestall the sergeant's inevitable hopeful enquiry about a confession, he said, ‘I've come across something that could prove to be significant, John.'

‘What's that, then, mate?'

‘I think I might have found out how the murder was committed.' David paused. ‘And you might not be too happy to hear that if I'm right, as far as I'm concerned it puts my client in the clear. But it might do you just as much good as if she were to confess.'

‘Oh, yes?' Spring sounded distinctly sceptical. ‘And just how do you reckon that?'

‘I'm assuming that you'll have Miss Newall's handbag at the station,' he replied obliquely. ‘And I'm willing to bet that inside it you'll find a dispenser for artificial sweeteners. If I were you, John, I'd have the contents of that dispenser tested – and immediately. I'd send it to the lab by courier if I were you, and ask that it be tested on the spot. The results might interest one or two people, especially with the inquest opening this afternoon.'

John Spring was baffled. ‘Just what are you talking about, Dave?'

‘Your superiors will be impressed when you pull this one out of the hat, Inspector,' David said smoothly, with a tiny stress on the title. ‘There's no need to tell them that you had any help – we'll keep that just between us, if you understand me.' He hoped that Spring, not known for being quick on the uptake,
did
understand him.

‘Oh.
Oh
.' David could almost hear the wheels turning as the sergeant went for the bait which he'd dangled so invitingly. ‘Oh, I see. Well, thanks for the tip, Dave. I'll be in touch.'

‘Let me know when you get the results,' David requested. ‘That's all I ask, John.'

‘Will do, Dave,' he promised, and he was as good as his word.

His voice held admiration and a certain amount of bafflement when he rang back early in the afternoon. ‘You were right on target about the tablets, Dave,' he said. ‘Digitalis. Or something like it, anyway.'

‘Digoxin,' David supplied. ‘Essentially the same thing.'

‘That's it. But how did you know?'

‘It was a good guess,' David claimed with characteristic modesty.

‘The boss is dead impressed, mate. Hasn't done me any harm at all, I can tell you.'

‘Congratulations, then, Sergeant.' David's voice held not a trace of irony. ‘You've done well.'

John Spring was essentially a fair man. ‘All down to you, mate. Ta ever so much.'

‘Well, you know what they say, John.' David smiled. ‘That's what friends are for.'

The inquest later that afternoon was a mere formality, a preliminary hearing only. Fergus McNair provided evidence of identity and the coroner gave permission for the body to be released for the funeral. ‘It is clear,' said the coroner, ‘that a great deal more needs to be known about this death before we can consider its causes. Only today some additional evidence has come to light which substantially alters this case. I therefore adjourn this inquest for three weeks, or until such time as I feel that we are ready to proceed.'

‘Much ado about nothing,' David said to Lucy later. ‘Now we can go back to London. I suppose I'll have to come back in a few weeks when the inquest is reopened, to give moral support to Gill when she testifies. But I don't think we can really justify staying any longer. And I dread to think what will be waiting for me back at my office – my secretary will not be best pleased that I wasn't back at my desk this morning as I promised.'

‘But there's still a murderer on the loose in Walston,' Lucy pointed out. ‘We can't just walk away from that, can we?'

David shook his head. ‘It's out of our hands now, love. As I said this morning, I don't see any way for us to catch him. We've done all we can – we've more or less put Gill in the clear, and that's what we set out to do. Now I think we'll have to leave it to the police to take it from here.'

‘Sergeant Spring?' Lucy's voice was dismissive, scornful. ‘As Lou so pithily said, he thinks with his truncheon. How do you think he's going to catch someone who was clever enough to commit a murder like that?'

He laughed. ‘That may be so, but he'll have plenty of help with this one. Now that they know how it happened, it will be a full-blown murder enquiry. There's no room for us in that.'

For whatever reason, Lucy realised that she was extremely reluctant to leave Walston. She wasn't sure why, and wasn't sure that she even wanted to know why, but she acknowledged to herself that she was in no hurry to return to London. ‘Maybe you're right, darling. But we
will
stay for the funeral, won't we?'

‘I suppose we must,' David agreed. ‘And who knows – perhaps if we keep our eyes and ears open, we'll learn something important.'

‘Poor old Flora,' said Lucy. ‘I think we owe it to her to stay for the funeral.'

‘Yes, poor old Flora.' David nodded thoughtfully; he didn't really want to go back to London either, though his conscience was bothering him about it, and this seemed as good an excuse as any to stay away for a bit longer. ‘I suppose it's the least we can do for her.'

If the day of the inquest and the day of the funeral were days of remembering Flora in various ways, the intervening day was one given over to the trappings of death, in which Flora and her memory figured scarcely at all.

Harry Gaze was very much in his element, preparing the church for the funeral. He was there from early on Tuesday morning, carrying out a ritual as formalised in its way as the funeral service itself would be. First he got out the wrought-iron bier candlesticks, used no other time than at funerals, when they stood at the four corners of the coffin. Wax had dripped down on to the metal of the candlesticks, and Harry busied himself removing it with boiling water. He congratulated himself that he'd remembered to bring his electric kettle from home to boil the water. ‘Good job, that,' he muttered. ‘Candle wax is the very devil to get off any other way but with boiling water.'

The candlesticks tidy and in place, his next task was preparing the candles themselves. They were, of course, proper beeswax candles – unbleached and yellow as honey. Harry took the bundle from his storage cupboard and unwrapped them carefully; beeswax candles were expensive, reserved only for funerals, and reused as necessary. The wax had guttered over them, leaving unsightly runnels. ‘Don't know why I didn't clean them before I put them away the last time,' Harry grumbled, getting out his pocket knife to remove the wax dribbles.

It was thus occupied that David found him when he popped into the church. David was at a bit of a loose end that morning; Lucy had gone off with Becca to gather wildflowers for the funeral pedestals and Stephen had gone out to pay a call on Roger Staines. This would be Stephen's first funeral – a Requiem Mass – since he'd been in Walston, and he wanted to confer with his respected former churchwarden to find out how things were usually done at St Michael's.

‘Those are lovely candles,' David commented, for something to say.

‘Ay, wholly lovely,' Harry agreed. ‘For all that they cost an arm and a leg.' Glad for someone to talk to, he paused in his labours, cocked his head and looked at David. ‘Well I remember the last time as these candles were used.'

‘Back in Father Fuller's time?' David hazarded, remembering Harry's reverential respect for Stephen's predecessor.

‘No – for Father Fuller himself.' Harry crossed himself. ‘God rest his soul. Last year it was when he passed over to his eternal reward. We won't see his like again,' he added with regret.

Deciding that subject was something better not opened for discussion, David offered, ‘Can I help you with that?'

‘I'm just about finished with the candles. But you can help me get the frontal up on the high altar, if you like – that's a job as goes better with two.'

‘Yes, of course.' David followed the old man to the sacristy and helped him to lift the heavy lid of the chest where the altar hangings were stored.

‘It's way at the back, seeing as it's used so seldom,' Harry explained. ‘Even less than the rose-pink.' He reached behind purple and red and green and rose-pink frontals and dragged forth the pole on which the black frontal was hanging. ‘Beautiful piece of work,' he said proudly. ‘Shame it isn't used more often.'

David examined it: black moire trimmed with slightly tarnished silver braid. ‘Yes, it's lovely,' he agreed. It was as well he was there, he thought, as he helped the verger with the heavy pole. This really was a job for two, especially if one of them was an old man.

They carried the frontal out to the high altar; between the two of them they removed the white Easter frontal and replaced it with the sombre black. ‘Got to do them as well, of course,' Harry said, pointing to the curtains around the sides and back of the altar. ‘But I can do that myself, if needs be.'

‘It's a great deal of work for just one day,' David sympathised.

‘Oh, I don't mind.' Harry grinned. ‘To tell you the truth, I do like a good funeral. Especially if it's done wholly proper, like we've always done it here. As I said before, we haven't had one for a deal of time here at St Michael's. Not since Father Fuller, and before him old Miss Ivey. We're all too healthy here in Walston, that's the trouble.' He gave a chuckle. ‘Though I suppose as I shouldn't say that, since by rights I ought to be the next to go.'

David said what was expected of him. ‘I dare say you'll be around for a good many years yet.'

‘I'm counting on it. I'll tell you one thing, young man,' Harry confided. ‘I'm not ready to go yet. Not by a long chalk. Don't suppose as anyone ever is – excepting maybe Father Fuller, God rest his soul. He were a good man, and lived his life so as he'd always be ready to meet his maker.'

Father Fuller again, thought David. ‘There, that's done,' he said, helping to spread the fair linen cloth across the top of the altar and replacing the candlesticks.

‘And a wholly fine job we've made of it, young man.' Harry nodded in satisfaction. ‘Now it's time to get the pall ready.'

Once again David accompanied him to the sacristy; he had nothing better to do, and this at least was an interesting way of passing the time. Harry took a black chasuble from a drawer and put it on top of the vestment chest, smoothing out the folds. ‘Father Fuller looked wonderful in this,' he confided. ‘Just how a priest ought to look.' The chasuble, lined in red silk, matched the altar frontal; the workmanship was beautiful, but it looked to David as if it should be worn by Count Dracula rather than a priest of God. ‘No one could do a funeral quite like Father Fuller, I can tell you.' Another drawer yielded a black pall, carefully folded.

‘That looks like it's been around a few years,' David said.

Harry nodded in confirmation. ‘You're right about that, young man. No one knows quite how old it is. A gift from the Lovelidge family, of course, a long time ago. Used to bury every Lovelidge for generations. And everyone else in Walston, since the Lovelidges died out.' He took it out of the drawer and carried it to the ironing board which he'd set up in the corner of the sacristy. ‘Got to get the creases out,' he explained unnecessarily. ‘It gets creased, sitting in that drawer year in and year out. Can't have a churchwarden buried from this church with a wrinkled pall.'

He worked methodically and with care, David watching. But before the job was done, the sacristy door flew open. ‘Don't believe in knocking, eh?' Harry muttered when he saw that it was Enid Bletsoe.

‘Isn't the Rector here?' Enid demanded as her companions, Doris Wrightman and Marjorie Talbot-Shaw, crowded into the small room behind her.

Harry raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought as your eyes were better than that, Enid. You don't see him, do you?'

‘Well, where is he, then?'

‘He's not here,' Harry stated. ‘Hasn't been here since early Mass, neither.'

‘But where is he?' Doris echoed. ‘We need to ask him about the flowers.'

Used to being the unquestioned spokesperson, Enid glared at her sister. ‘We need to ask him about the flowers,' she repeated as if Doris hadn't spoken, then elaborated. ‘If he has anything special in mind for the funeral flowers. It's time to get on with them, and I haven't been able to reach him. He's not answering his phone, and neither is that wife of his. And no one seems to be home at the Rectory – we've just been there, and no one came to the door when we rang the bell.'

‘I think that we should just carry on,' Marjorie asserted. ‘After all, we've done enough of this sort of thing to know what's appropriate.
I
certainly have, in my years as a rector's wife.'

David debated whether he ought to speak; he didn't want to interfere, but in the end he decided that it might save a fair amount of unnecessary effort to say something now. ‘I think, actually, that Mrs Thorncroft is planning to do the flowers herself,' he said, as tactfully as possible. ‘She's gone out to get some things now, I believe.'

Enid, who had up to that point managed to ignore his presence in the sacristy, turned her attention to him. ‘Mrs Thorncroft! But she doesn't know the first thing about arranging flowers! She'll be wanting our help, of course.'

‘Lucy is with her,' David said. ‘She's asked Lucy to help.'

‘It
is
the privilege of the Rector's wife to do the flowers at times like this,' Marjorie admitted.

‘With the help of the ladies of the parish, of course!' Enid amended, frowning. ‘And what do you mean, she's gone out to get some things?
Where
has she gone? To the florist's shop in Upper Walston?'