Unholy Rites (34 page)

Marple looked aggrieved. “I'm a man of God. Surely you can't think I kidnapped Stephen—”

Danutia felt her temper rising.

Kevin smiled a tight and not very friendly smile. “My mind is open, Reverend. Tell me where you were and I'll check it out.”

“Very well then,” Marple said, clearing his throat as though the necessary words were dammed up inside him. “I have a younger sister who suffers from depression.” The sister, he went on to say, periodically went off her meds and had to be hospitalized. “This time she didn't talk about suicide, she turned on her gas oven. It was only by chance that a neighbor smelled the fumes and called 999 in time to save her. I took the train down to London as soon as I heard, and came back when she'd been stabilized.”

“I'm sorry to hear about your troubles,” said Kevin. “What time exactly did you go down?”

“Early evening. Around eight o'clock, I think,” Marple said. “The neighbor called me. Jennifer hates other people knowing about these episodes, even me. Now that she's in hospital, she won't want to see me for several weeks, as I know from past experience.” Marple's jowls sagged, giving him a woebegone expression.

Kevin's voice was gentler. “If you can just give me your sister's full name, your ticket stubs, and a phone number for someone you saw there, like the neighbor, the hospital, her doctor—”

“Of course,” Marple said. “Just give me a minute.”

As soon as he'd left the room, Kevin said, “I'll radio in this info. If the calls pan out, Marple's in the clear.”

Though softened by Marple's story, Danutia still wasn't satisfied. “What about Timothy Roberts? Aren't you going to ask him about that?”

“That file hasn't officially been reopened. I've gone as far as I can. Stephen has to be our first priority. If Marple checks out, we're gone.”

Heavy footsteps approached, and Kevin stood up. Taking the slip of paper and the ticket stubs Marple offered, he said, “I'll be back in a tick.”

“Let me switch on the porch light for you,” Marple said.

Danutia glanced out the window. The day was fast fading. She could make out the shape of a tree opposite, houses beyond. Soon the darkness would be complete. They were running out of time.

The two cases had to be related. There was nothing to stop her from asking questions, was there? Since she didn't have police authority, she wasn't bound by police procedure. This wasn't a formal interrogation, after all. Where to begin? Maybe with Alice . . . 

When Marple returned, Danutia said, “You mentioned that you'd seen Alice.”

“Ah yes, poor woman,” Marple said with gusto, as though relieved to turn the conversation elsewhere. “Stephen was the apple of her eye, that boy, a bright lad. She showed me his drawings. Not bad for a ten-year-old, I have to admit. Nice sense of composition.”

“You would know about that, wouldn't you,” Danutia said, grateful for the opening he'd given her. “I believe you taught art, some years ago. Around Bakewell. That's right, isn't it?”

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“I think you know why. A young boy in one of your classes died in a most peculiar way. I believe there were rumors that you were responsible. That must have been very upsetting.”

“That's a lie, young lady, an outrageous lie, and I'll thank you not to repeat it.”

“If you had nothing to do with Timothy Roberts's death, why would anyone have thought you did?”

Marple's arrogance and defensiveness suddenly collapsed and he looked years older. “I asked myself the same question a million times,” he said. “I concluded that someone must have known I'd left a former teaching position under a cloud, and used that against me.”

“Why did you leave the school, Mr. Marple?”

“A boy I'd given a failing grade complained, but not about the grade. He said I'd touched him inappropriately. I was given no chance to clear myself. The father was an Old Boy, and a benefactor to the school.”

“You deny any wrongdoing, in regard to the boy at your school, or Timothy Roberts, or Stephen?”

Marple looked at Danutia imploringly, “Please believe me, Miss. I'm a man of God. I wouldn't harm an innocent child.”

Danutia let the absurdity of that statement hang in the air. Allegations of priests abusing children regularly made the headlines, despite the efforts of church officials to protect the guilty. Arthur had been coming to see him and Arthur had disappeared. She played her trump card.

“Timothy Roberts's father holds you accountable for his son's death. Because of a note Tim left saying he was off for a midnight art adventure. You were his art teacher.”

“But the boy's death was an accident! The doctor was quite clear about that. There was no police investigation. It was only later that the rumors started. And again I had no way to clear myself. So I moved away. That's when I decided to give up teaching and go to seminary. I thought I might find out why God was punishing me so.”

Something in his outburst caught Danutia's attention. “You mentioned a doctor. Who was that?”

“Why, old Dr. Winslow, Geoff Nuttall's uncle. He was the doctor in Rowsley.”

“Geoff Nuttall is Winslow's nephew?”

“Yes, Dr. Geoff as he is now. Of course, it was his father as was the doctor then, old Dr. Nuttall. Geoff was only a boy, sixteen or seventeen. A difficult young man, as I remember. He was staying in Rowsley for a while with his aunt and uncle. He was in my art class too, the same one as Timothy Roberts, although he only came once. He was older than the others, and I think it was too easy for him.”

Two doctors. A father and a brother-in-law. A note given to the brother-in-law that never arrived in the police files. A son who became a doctor too, but who was also an artist. Nuttall, the last person, as far as she'd been able to discover, who'd seen Arthur. Danutia looked up to find Kevin standing in the doorway. She wondered whether he'd heard Marple's comments.

“Reverend, you're in the clear,” Kevin said. “The details check out, and the hospital physician remembers talking to you around ten o'clock Saturday night.” He looked towards Danutia. “What's this about Geoff Nuttall?”

“Reverend Marple says Nuttall was in Rowsley when Timothy Roberts died, and he was in Timothy's art class. Dr. Winslow, the family doctor, was his uncle.” She took a deep breath. “I have a terrible suspicion that we've been looking in the wrong places.”

Stephen limped back to
his chair, his leg hurting from where the flames had licked him. He looked at the burned place. There was a long white streak, like a bolt of lightning, and red around the edges. When he burned himself on the stove, his mum held his hand under cold running water, and then she put butter on it. He didn't think Dr. Geoff would do that.

He looked over to where the doctor was talking to Mr. Fairweather, not paying any attention. Mr. Fairweather said the doctor would let them go if he jumped three times. Stephen didn't believe that any more. If he meant to let them go, he'd do something about the burn. He was going to kill them, one way or another. Stephen could see it in his eyes. His eyes weren't angry, like his dad's. They were like Eric's when he squashed a beetle.

He was tired of playing this stupid game. Mr. Fairweather said to make things go slow so that the police would find them. He didn't see how that was going to happen. He knew his mum was looking for him, she'd never stop. But she wouldn't look for him here. She'd told him to stay away from the mill, and he did. He wondered what she was doing now, this very minute. He didn't want to picture her wandering around in the dark, or working at the pub. She would be at home waiting for him, baking some sticky buns, his favorite. His mum's were better than the bakery ones only she usually didn't have time to make them. Now she'd have time, because she was home, waiting for him.

He couldn't bear to think how his mum would cry when he was dead. He had to escape. But how?

“There's the playing field,”
Danutia said. “Nuttall's place should be on the left around this curve.”

Kevin's headlights caught the name
BRIDGE HOUSE
on a low stone pillar.

“That's it,” she said, and he slowed.

Bridge House sat far back from the road. Hewn from the same limestone as Marple's cottage, it was a long, low structure with arched windows and gargoyles under a peaked roof, larger than she would have imagined the young doctor could afford. Inherited, she supposed, along with the medical practice. And a penchant for murder? No time to think about that now.

“I don't see any lights,” Kevin said. Beside the house, an empty driveway disappeared behind a tall hedge.

“We're too late,” she said, heartsick.

“Let's check it out.” The road soon ended in a cul-de-sac where a sign pointed tourists to Sheepwash Bridge, a low hump over the River Wye. Kevin parked. Danutia grabbed a flashlight and flung open her car door, shutting it again on Roberts's loud snores. He'd been out again by the time they returned to the car. If they were lucky, he'd stay out.

They reached the stone pillar and followed the gravel driveway towards the house. “You take the back,” Kevin said. “I'll try the front door and then join you.”

Danutia nodded and slipped away. Past the hedge she was swallowed up in darkness. Flipping on the flashlight, she cupped a hand around the bulb and edged forward.

No lights shone from the back of the house. She played a thin beam over the windows. Closed, presumably locked. A flagstone path ran from the driveway to the back door, with patches of groundcover between the stones. She crept forward, and the scent of crushed thyme rose around her. She tried the back door. Locked.

The garden stretched out into the darkness, bounded by the tall hedge. A bird rustled in the shrubbery and was still. A woman's laugh floated over. Danutia pictured her leaning over the bridge, watching the Wye slip past, turning to share a kiss or two with her lover.

A longing swept over her. Where was Arthur? Where was Stephen? She tried to imagine them safe and unharmed, but her imagination failed. She refused to consider other possibilities. All she could do was follow the path that unfolded before her, and face whatever lay at its end. She turned back to the job at hand.

Less cautious now, she crossed the lawn to the two-car garage at the end of the driveway. The side door wasn't locked. She shone the flashlight over the empty first bay, the luxury sedan in the second. A black Mercedes. She'd seen Nuttall in this car, she was sure of it, but when? The morning of the accident. He'd driven past as she and Arthur were about to set out from Well Cottage. It would have been easy for him to follow them, unnoticed, and later sabotage the car. But why? She remembered the intruder who had disturbed Arthur's notes about Timothy Roberts's death. The doctor must have feared what Ethel's scrapbooks would reveal.

How ironic, Danutia thought. If it hadn't been for the accident, Arthur might never have delved into his mother's records. Even if he had, no one, herself included, might have paid any heed.

She closed the garage door behind her. No sign of garden tools inside. There must be a shed somewhere. She swept the beam around the perimeter hedge. There, in the far corner. A stone structure.

As she made her way towards it, she heard soft footfalls behind her. She snapped off the light and spun into a defensive crouch.

“It's me,” Kevin said out of the darkness. “No signs of life in the front.”

“His car's here. We need to go in. He could be holding Arthur and Stephen inside.”

“There's not a hope in hell of getting a search warrant,” Kevin said. He was beside her now, a solid shape against the gauzy night.

“How about a little break and enter?” she said softly. “Maybe Roberts would oblige.”

“I couldn't do that! Nuttall's from a wealthy family with connections. If we're wrong about him, he'll have my job in a minute.”

“That's more important than a little boy's life? Come on, Kevin, where are your priorities? What if it was one of your sons?” When he didn't respond, she held out a hand. “Give me your keys and take a walk.”

Kevin took a deep breath and shook his head. “If there was even one shred of evidence—”

“Let's find it. There's a garden shed or something in the far corner, well hidden from view . . .” She moved away, skirting a large oval bed where a willow drooped over tulips closed tight against the cool night. The sweet smell of hyacinths lingered on the air.

The garden shed resembled the tiny country churches she'd seen. Its design echoed that of the house, with a stone gargoyle above its arched doorway. The side windows had been boarded up. Beside the door, but too high to see in, was a tiny window. Danutia tried the catch on the heavy oak door. Locked.

“A little strange, don't you think, a Mercedes in an unlocked garage, and the lawnmower protected like the crown jewels?” she said.

“Maybe he keeps rat poison in there, wants to make sure kids don't break in. You get a lot of rats along the water.”

“Maybe he's one of them,” Danutia said, fuming at her partner's caution. “Give me a boost.”

She pointed to the small window. Kevin cupped his hands and she stepped up, fingertips clinging to the window ledge. Another couple of months and she wouldn't be able to keep her balance. She pulled herself up a few inches and then, bracing her left arm on the ledge, retrieved the flashlight from her pocket. The middle of the space was clear. Garden implements filled one wall and the far end. Along the other wall stood a deep cabinet, ropes coiled upon hooks at its side.

No sign that anyone had been held there. She'd led Kevin on a wild goose chase.

“Nothing,” she said, and let herself drop. She would have been fine except that Kevin tried to catch her foot again and missed. He staggered backwards and she landed in a heap.