The Mills of God (7 page)

‘Sorry to interrupt.' She held out her hand and said, ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Roseanna Culpepper.'

Nick thought as he shook hands that the name became her. She looked rather like a rose that is just beginning to lose its first radiant beauty. Indeed the more he stared into her face the more he could see evidence of just how lovely she must once have been. Her scent, too, spoke of another era. Sniffing it delicately Nick thought he could detect Mitsouko by Guerlain, a perfume beloved of his mother.

She was smiling at him, a delicate, questioning smile. ‘What is all the fuss that is going on in the High Street?'

‘You haven't heard?'

‘No. My husband is away, doing a play in London. He usually brings me the news.'

‘There's been a murder, I'm afraid. The Patels who ran the supermarket.'

‘What? Both of them?'

‘I believe so.'

‘How dreadful!' Roseanna's hands were raised to her mouth and she looked at the vicar piteously. ‘But who could have done such a terrible thing?'

He shook his head. ‘I have no idea. It must have been a burglary that went wrong.'

But he didn't believe that. Surely no burglar, no matter how high he might have been on drink and drugs, could have taken the lives of two people in cold blood.

Roseanna shook her head. ‘Well, I must be on my way. I have one or two bits to buy.' She turned her glorious eyes on him. ‘But with the supermarket closed I'd better get the car out and go to town.'

Nick stood up. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Culpepper. It's been so nice to meet you.'

‘Goodbye.'

She wafted out, her dress catching in the autumn wind which forced her to hold her slouch hat to her head. Nick stared after her with a kind of fascination. Then turned and made himself a strong black coffee.

News that he was in Cheltenham House doling out cuppas must have spread amongst the onlookers at the scene of crime because a steady stream of parishioners made their way in and, as if speaking in one voice, asked him about the murder. And despite his protests that he knew as little as they there was an air about them that he was withholding information on the instructions of the police.

Eventually they dwindled away and Nick was on the point of leaving when footsteps in the hall told him that somebody else was coming in. He looked up and into the interesting face of the senior policeman, this time dressed in a formal suit and tie, devoid of his protective clothing.

He was not a notably tall man, of average height, about five foot eight or nine, and slim of build. But his features were most arresting. A mass of black hair, longish and inclined to be wavy, the man had a pixieish look about him, caused, Nick thought, by those great brilliant eyes of his, the colour of gooseberries in a sun-ripened garden.

The detective held out his hand. ‘I've caught up with you at last, Vicar. Sorry to be so long. There was rather a lot to see to.'

‘How do you do?' Nick answered, clearing his throat. ‘Nick Lawrence, newly arrived in Lakehurst. Terrible business this. The villagers have taken it extremely badly.'

The quizzical eyes flashed in Nick's direction with an unreadable expression. ‘I'm sure they have. Particularly with their local shop out of bounds. Now, tell me what you know about it.'

‘Not much, really. As I said, I'm newly arrived.'

‘Quite so. Did you manage to find anything out whilst chatting this morning?'

‘Nothing that would interest you, I'm afraid. Everyone seemed very upset – genuinely so – at the deaths.'

The pixie-face pulled a wry expression. ‘I see. I believe you gave a party last night which a great many of the churchgoers attended.'

‘Not only them. I asked everyone I had met locally.'

‘I wonder if you'd be kind enough to let me have a list of those who attended.' The man beamed a sudden smile and said, ‘But I haven't introduced myself. How remiss of me. My name is Dominic Tennant. Detective Inspector,' he added by way of an afterthought.

Nick shook hands solemnly.

‘I can certainly give you a list. Is there anything more, Inspector?'

‘Yes. Can you tell me what time the party ended?'

‘About ten thirty. The last to leave were Olivia Beauchamp . . .'

‘The concert violinist?' Tennant interrupted surprisingly.

‘Yes. And Dr Rudniski – he's one of the local GPs.'

The inspector nodded. ‘And can you tell me where you were at around midnight last night, Vicar?'

‘At home in bed.'

‘Alone?'

For some ridiculous reason Nick felt himself going red. ‘Yes. I'm not married, Inspector.'

‘No, I didn't think you were.'

Tennant grinned and after a moment so did the vicar.

‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?'

‘Not at this time. But I'll be in touch should anything arise. I take it you are living in the vicarage?'

‘Yes. It's in the High Street. May I ask you a question?'

‘Certainly.'

‘How did the Patels die?'

‘They were stabbed as they slept in their bed. Several times.'

Nick looked a little sick. ‘How ghastly. Who could have done such a thing?'

‘I don't know but I fully intend to find out,' Tennant answered. He looked at his watch. ‘Well, I must be off. No doubt we shall meet again.'

‘No doubt,' answered Nick, as the Inspector made a somewhat dramatic exit from the room, whirling his longish coat with a flourish.

An hour later the vicar was just finishing a late breakfast when the phone rang.

‘Nick, it's Olivia. I just wanted to thank you for the party last night.'

‘Oh hello. I'm so glad you enjoyed it.' He paused, then said, ‘Did you leave early this morning?'

‘Very. I caught the seven twenty-seven. Why?'

‘Because there's been a murder in the village. The Patels were killed during the night.'

There was a shocked silence, then Olivia said, ‘Both of them?'

‘Yes. According to the police they were stabbed in their bed. Around midnight, I believe.'

‘Oh God, how awful. Do they know who did it?'

‘Well, not yet. There's a very on-the-ball inspector though. I'm sure he'll crack the case if anyone can.'

‘Did you give him my name?'

‘Well, yes, I had to. I told him that you and Kasper were the last to leave my party.'

Olivia suddenly gave an unexpected laugh. ‘I said goodbye to the good doctor outside your front door. He walked home. I should have done but I risked driving. So I have no alibi.'

Nick suddenly felt immensely cheered. ‘That makes two of us.'

There was a silence before Olivia said, ‘Sorry, I've got to go. I'm being called for a rehearsal. Goodbye, Nick. Keep me posted about what's going on.'

‘I don't know your mobile number,' he said before he realized that she'd ended the call. Replacing his receiver, the vicar slowly dialled 1471 to be informed that the caller had withheld their number.

SEVEN

I
nspector Tennant sat in his office at police headquarters in Lewes, moodily staring out of the window and slowly chewing a peppermint, a habit he had taken up when he stopped smoking some seven years ago. At that moment he was not thinking of the murders in Lakehurst but instead about his ex-wife, who had gone off with her leading man after playing Eliza Doolittle to his Professor Higgins in an amateur production of
My Fair Lady
. It still grieved Dominic that she had taken with her his highly prized collection of Staffordshire pottery and had then proceeded to sell the lot on. Mind you, he had managed to replace some of the pieces but the rarer figures – some of which had been left to him by his parents – were irreplaceable.

‘Bitch,' he muttered under his breath.

He had had several associations with women since his marriage had ended three years earlier but none of them had been of any lasting nature. He supposed that he had become warier, more suspicious of the female sex. In other words when it came to the time when he should have made some kind of commitment, he had shied away. This had not always been easy, for Dominic Tennant was a keen amateur actor himself and so mixed with a fairly tight-knit bunch of people. He was keenly aware that amongst the women he was labelled as being bad news and as a result had thrown himself into his work as the only alternative. Reminding himself of this, he pulled the report of various interviews he had had with the inhabitants of Lakehurst towards him and started to study them.

They were a strange lot, Tennant reckoned. From the totally eccentric to the bad and scheming. In the first category he placed Ceinwen Carruthers, in the second Sonia Tate. However, their stories were almost identical. It seemed that almost the entire village had gone to the vicar's party in the evening and had left in a body at ten thirty or thereabouts. All of them – and this included everyone with the exception of Dr Rudniski and Olivia Beauchamp, both of whom the inspector had yet to interview – had apparently gone home to their beds where they had snuggled down like good Christian souls.

Tennant looked at the list of names and pictured each one. Ceinwen Carruthers, dirndl skirt and glasses; Mavis Cox, picture of respectability; Ivy Bagshot, he couldn't see her stripping off to do a calendar; the woman in the post office, village gossip; Jack Boggis, dour Yorkshireman but fancied himself with the ladies. That left him with Giles Fielding, apparently likeable, and poor little Kylie who had discovered the bodies and been in a state of shock ever since. Left to track down were the Culpeppers, Kylie's brother Dwayne, together with the doctor, the violinist, Gerrard Riddell and Cheryl Hamilton-Harty. The inspector sighed and drew towards him something found at the scene of the crime.

The Patels had been discovered lying in a great sea of blood, the victims of a frenzied knife attack. The police doctor had counted fifteen stab wounds on Mrs Patel and about twenty on poor Ali. On the bed head, above where they lay, had been pinned a piece of paper. Tennant looked at it now, wrapped in its evidence bag. It said, ‘The first of the ten. Be on your guard. The Acting Light of the World.'

It was obviously the work of a religious maniac – or someone trying to fool the police into thinking so. The frenzy of the attack would tie in with that but Tennant had come across these sorts of tricks before and deliberately kept a completely open mind. He turned the message over and noticed that it was scrawled in red ink on a standard piece of A4. It seemed to him to be a con but on the other hand it could just be genuine.

There was a knock on the door and his sergeant, Mark Potter, stuck his head round.

‘Can I see you a minute, sir?'

‘Of course. Come in.'

Potter walked in, shut the door softly behind him and took a seat on the other side of the desk. He was a neat young man, quiet of manner and tidy of appearance, and quite, in Tennant's opinion, unsuited to police work.

‘What is it, Potter?'

‘I have caught up with Roseanna Culpepper, sir.'

‘Oh good. What did you think of her?'

‘Hard to say. The general impression is that she's come from another era. She was a very well-known actress years ago but not any longer. She didn't go to the vicar's party even though she was invited. She told me she had a migraine and went to bed early. I think she's a bit strange.'

‘I see. I'll have a word with her myself and see if I get the same reaction. What about the Hamilton-Harty woman?'

‘I went out to Speckled Wood and interviewed her. What can I say? She's very slight, like all these women who ride – or most of 'em anyway. She's got jet black hair, dyed. She likes to give the impression that she's terribly young and frisky but when you look into her face you can see all her lines and wrinkles. She runs a riding stable for yuppies who come down to ride at the weekends and stable their horses with her during the week. She was one of the few who was not invited to the vicar's party as she does not go to church because it clashes with her riding lessons. I got very little else out of her.'

‘Did you discover where she was on Friday night?'

‘She was terribly arch about the whole thing but eventually admitted that she stayed in with a friend.'

‘Male or female?'

‘Male of course. I reckon it was one of the blokes who keeps his horse stabled with her.'

Tennant grinned. ‘And not only his horse it would seem.'

‘As you say, sir.'

‘I'll go and see her tomorrow along with the others. By the way, have you made any progress with Olivia Beauchamp?'

‘She's on tour with the Royal Philharmonic. She's playing in Birmingham in two days time.'

Tennant groaned. ‘She would be. And I really want to speak to her.'

‘Really, sir? said Potter with a grin.

He had been to Tennant's flat on more than one occasion and noticed amongst his collection of CDs several depicting a dishy looking girl clutching a violin and wearing extremely alluring evening dresses. The name beneath had been Olivia Beauchamp.

Tennant, glimpsing the smile, said severely, ‘Yes, really.'

‘Very good, sir,' Potter answered, and made a hasty exit.

Left alone, Tennant pulled the polythene bag containing the apparently lunatic message towards him. ‘The first of the ten' he read. What the devil did that mean? Surely it wasn't threatening ten murders? He sighed aloud. At the moment he was rehearsing
The Corn is Green
by Emlyn Williams, playing the part of the vacuous Squire. If there were going to be any more victims in Lakehurst this would be yet another show that he would have to drop out of.