The Snares of Death (23 page)

‘Not if we don't tell him anything. Remember, Gwen, if he asks! We don't know anything!'

‘But . . .'

‘But nothing, Gwen. He can't prove a thing.' Alice pursed her lips together and folded her arms across her chest. ‘He can't prove a thing,' she repeated doggedly.

‘But what if he comes here? What if he gets a search warrant and searches the house?' Gwen chewed on her lower lip.

‘Clergymen don't get search warrants!' Alice glared at her with scorn. ‘He's not a policeman, Gwen!'

‘But if he came here . . . I really think we need to get it out of the house, Alice. I'm sure he'd find it here, if he came . . .' Her eyes went involuntarily to the old wing-backed chair, the one used only by the dogs, where the monstrance was concealed beneath the lumpy seat-cushion.

‘You mean you'd give it away,' Alice glowered. ‘Yes, you probably would at that. You're no good at keeping secrets, Gwen. No good at all.'

‘That's not true! I'd just feel better about it if it were . . . somewhere else,' she protested faintly.

‘Where else could we put it?' demanded Alice.

‘Could we give it to someone else?' Gwen suggested.

‘I'm not implicating Father Mark in this! He knows nothing about it! It wouldn't be right to involve him.'

‘Not Father Mark. How about . . . how about Elayne?'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous!' Alice barked. ‘You want to give it to Bob Dexter's wife, to hide in his own house?' She pounded furiously on the cushions of the pink dralon sofa, fluffing them up.

‘But Alice, don't you see? That's the one place he'd never think to look! In his own house!'

Alice stopped fluffing the cushions, and looked thoughtful. ‘You might just be right, Gwen. We wouldn't want to involve Becca, of course' – her face softened at the mention of Becca's name – ‘but Elayne . . .'

‘That's another reason why we need to get it out of this house,' Gwen pointed out. ‘Becca. We wouldn't want her to find it. And she's coming this afternoon to stay with Babs and Nell. While we're out delivering prayer cards. She might . . .'

‘Yes, I
know
that Becca is coming this afternoon, Gwen. You don't have to tell me.' Alice moved on to the chair cushions. ‘But surely she'll stay in the kitchen. She usually does. It's nice and cosy in there, by the Aga. There's no reason for her to come into the sitting room.'

‘You never know,' Gwen muttered.

Becca regularly had Saturday, as well as Sunday, off from working for her father, so she didn't have to ask his permission to go, or even inform him where she was going. Not that he'd really be able to object, she told herself – what harm could he find in looking after a couple of dogs? The ladies had a long way to go on their bicycles. It took them several hours, and they couldn't really leave Babs and Nell on their own that long. Daddy didn't like Miss Barnes and Miss Vernon, and didn't like her seeing them, but he wouldn't stop her from going. If only he knew . . .

Becca spent a long time getting ready. She'd washed her hair in the morning and had let it dry naturally – it took a long time to dry but it looked nicer, and felt softer, when she didn't have to use the hair dryer on it. She experimented with pulling it back, and with putting it up on top of her head, but decided in the end to leave it loose, cascading down her back in a shimmering silvery veil.
He
liked it that way – liked to stroke it while he kissed her. She was glad, now, that Daddy had never let her cut her hair.

She'd had a bath as well, and now she slipped out of her dressing gown and into her new underclothes. She'd bought them one day in Norwich, when Daddy had gone in to visit the Christian bookshop. Mere wisps of pink silk they were, a far cry from the utilitarian Marks & Spencer's cotton that she usually wore. In them she
felt
different, even after she'd covered them with her outer clothing. She felt like a woman, not a girl. A woman going to meet her lover.

Becca didn't ordinarily wear much make-up – she didn't need to – but today she enhanced her own colouring with a hint of blusher, and emphasised her wide eyes with a touch of pale blue shadow and a little mascara. The lipstick she would do without – it wouldn't stay in place long, anyway. As soon as the women were safely gone . . .

As luck would have it, she ran into her mother on the stairs. ‘You're going out?' Elayne asked.

‘Yes, to Monkey Puzzle Cottage. To look after the dogs.'

Elayne observed her with mild curiosity. ‘You look a bit dressed up for dog-sitting.'

Becca laughed. ‘Not really. I might go out later.'

‘With Toby?'

It was an innocent question, but Becca started guiltily. ‘Um, maybe. I'm not sure.'

Elayne smiled, and patted her daughter's shoulder. ‘Well, dear, have a nice time.'

A nice time.

When Becca returned home, several hours later, she was glad that her parents were nowhere in sight. She hurried to her room and closed the door, then examined her face closely in her dressing-table mirror.

She
must
look different. She was convinced of that: if they saw her now, they would know. They would know that she was no longer a little girl, but a real woman. Strangely, though, the mirror revealed no change. Her lips felt bruised with kissing, but they looked quite normal. Her eyes were bright – though not unusually so. There was perhaps a slight flush in her cheeks, but nothing her parents were likely to notice.

Her whole body sang with joy, but no one looking at her would know that. She smiled at herself in the mirror, remembering the feel of his arms around her, his body pressed to hers . . . To be on the safe side, she showered quickly then changed back into her Marks & Spencer's cotton undies; she was certain that she moved differently in the silk ones. A last quick check in the mirror revealed nothing amiss. Reassured, she went down to join her parents for dinner. Although she knew otherwise, to them she would still be their little Becca.

CHAPTER 30

    
I have declared thy righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, and that thou knowest.

    
I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart: my talk hath been of thy truth, and of thy salvation.

Psalm 40.11–12

And Bob Dexter saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Or so he thought to himself on a Thursday afternoon in early May as he inspected the changes he had wrought in St Mary's Church. He was meant to be meeting Mark Judd in the church that afternoon to review the progress of the sale of the church furnishings. Mark was a bit late, to his annoyance: why couldn't other people be on time, as he always was? It could be done – he was living proof of that – and it showed such wanton inconsideration for others to be late. Bob Dexter's time was valuable: he didn't squander it, and didn't appreciate others squandering it for him. So he filled the minutes while he waited, surveying the new and improved St Mary's Church.

He could scarcely remember it as it had been, dark and dim and uninviting. Now it was much brighter – the fluorescent striplights attached to the ancient pillars guaranteed that – and very much more welcoming. The walls had been given a coat of emulsion – magnolia, not quite so sterile as white would have been. And the red bricks and encaustic tiles of the nave floor had been covered with beige carpet-tiles. Much lighter, he thought approvingly, and it would be so much warmer in the winter than the cold brick. The organist might complain that the acoustics had been deadened, but that seemed a small price to pay for the increase in comfort.

The pews had been removed, of course: they had been far too limiting as far as use of the space was concerned, and their dark wood had contributed largely to the oppressive gloom of the church. In their place was an array of new chairs, made of a light-coloured composite material; Bob Dexter preferred not to call it plastic – that sounded too common.

The new nave communion table was a beauty, he reflected. It was also of a low-maintenance composite material, intended to look like wood but resembling no wood ever seen. It was semi-circular in shape, and held a large arrangement of showy spring flowers, only slightly wilted by Thursday. No candlesticks, of course. It was quite large, and completely blocked the entrance to the chancel, which was no problem since the chancel was no longer used.

St Mary's pulpit was ancient, the remainder of an eighteenth-century three-decker which had been cut down so that only the pulpit part was left. It, too, had received a coat of magnolia paint. That was only a temporary measure, though; eventually Dexter intended to replace it with a new one, more prominent as befitted the place where the Word of God was proclaimed. But that was something that would have to wait until all the furnishings had been sold and the money was in hand. Dexter stalked impatiently to the south porch and contemplated the things that were left. All of the statues had gone, even the Curé of Ars, sold to Mark Judd's idolatrous friends and colleagues. The riddel posts and other bits of the English altar were against the wall: why hadn't that been sold? The huge painting was there, sold but awaiting collection. And there were still a few assorted cheap candlesticks, brass flower vases, and miscellaneous tat. The one thing that was
not
there, and which had been nagging at Dexter's mind for some time, was the monstrance. As far as he'd been able to tell from Mark Judd's lists, it had not been sold, but he certainly hadn't been able to find it. That was one reason why he was particularly anxious to see Mark today.

For he had decided upon the monstrance as his ritual sacrifice. Several weeks ago in a conversation with Noah Gates, Noah had made it clear that in his opinion, if Dexter were ideologically pure, he would have destroyed the offensive contents of the church rather than sell them and thus perpetuate their ungodly use. Dexter had bridled at the implication. It was all very well for Noah to feel that way, but Noah was a man of great wealth and could afford to make gestures like that. He, Bob Dexter, had to be a steward of what God had provided – the only means to fund the changes that were necessary to make St Mary's into a church that was worthy of God. But the monstrance: that was expendable. Mark's enquiries had revealed that it was made of plated base metal and worth very little in monetary terms. And its usage, so totally contrary to Scripture, was hateful to Bob Dexter. When he located the monstrance, he would destroy it. Then no one else could ever use it.

Dexter went down the south aisle and into the chapel. Here, too, his plans had been carried out to great effect. The gold carpet had stayed, of course, and the tomato-ketchup curtain, but very little else: the chapel was now a Sunday School room. Some of the posters of Bible verses which he'd obtained from Noah Gates for the Institution ceremony had been relocated to the walls of the chapel, and had now been joined by the children's own efforts, crudely crayonned representations of Bible stories. It must have been the Good Shepherd last week, he thought, or perhaps it was the Lost Sheep – there was a proliferation of cotton wool stuck in blobs to the papers, all with little stick legs. But there, on the floor at the back – yes! Dexter ground his teeth and reached the spot in a few long strides. On the floor was a fresh nosegay of tender spring flowers, their blossoms still dewy. He swept them up and crushed them in his fist, then glared up with hatred at the serenely smiling Virgin.
Someone
was continuing in their idolatry, in spite of his best efforts to stamp it out. Every day, without fail, they were here – a little bunch of flowers, lovingly picked and carefully placed. With prayers and devotion, no doubt, he thought furiously. He'd never found the guilty person, despite his vigilance. He'd suspected at first that it was Miss Barnes and/or Miss Vernon, but when confronted they'd denied it, and at any rate he knew very well that they no longer had a key to the church. That was the puzzling thing about it: the flowers appeared at odd times of the day, sometimes when the church had been locked. As far as Bob Dexter knew, no one had a key. Well, one day he'd catch them in the act, he reflected, and then . . .

He looked up again at the Virgin. Her inaccessible niche had thus far protected her from the fate that her fellows had suffered. She had to go, he decided at that moment. Immediately. That would stop all this nonsense with the flowers. Anyway, that niche would be just the spot to put a speaker for the new sound reinforcement system, due to be installed within the next month. He was so deep in his plans that he started at a sudden noise in the church, then realised that Mark Judd had arrived at last.

He was hard put to conceal his irritation at the young man's lateness, though Mark was full of apologies. ‘It was a pilgrim party at the Shrine,' he explained. ‘One of the women was taken ill. I had to locate the chap in charge of the tour group . . .'

Dexter refrained from saying that Walsingham had that effect on a lot of people, himself included. ‘Never mind,' he said shortly. ‘Now, about the furnishings.' He led the young priest to the south porch. ‘I'd like an update on the status of the sale.'

Mark found his lists and consulted them. ‘Well, as you see, we've cleared most of it.'

‘This picture is taking up a great deal of space. It's going soon? It's been sold, hasn't it?'

‘Oh, yes,' Mark assured him. ‘Dr Pickering has bought it. It just hasn't been convenient for him to collect it. But I'll give him a ring and hurry him along, if you like.'

‘Yes, please,' Dexter asserted firmly. ‘And the English altar?'

‘I have a possible buyer for that. Someone is coming to have a look at it this weekend, I believe.'

‘Good. What about the other bits?'