A Dead Man Out of Mind (29 page)

‘Vera's dead.'

‘Emily said.'

‘Oh, David. It was so horrible. I can't tell you how awful it was.' Her body trembled in a convulsive spasm as she remembered the scene vividly once again in every dreadful detail.

He held her tighter. ‘Oh, love. Don't think about it.'

‘How can I forget it?' Lucy raised her eyes to his face. ‘I'll
never
forget it.'

Emily had held the meal until David's arrival, so after a while, the twins tucked into bed, they adjourned to the dining room for a simple, subdued meal.

It was inevitable that there should be one primary topic of conversation: Vera Bright's murder, and the light that it cast on the previous deaths.

There was no question this time of excluding Ruth. She was very much a part of the discussion; in fact, wallowing in guilt, she very nearly stole the limelight from Lucy.

She'd been very quiet for a few minutes before her initial outburst. ‘It's all my fault,' she wailed suddenly. ‘I practically killed her myself!'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' David snapped, being in no mood for her histrionics.

‘But don't you see? She'd still be alive now if I hadn't said what I did after the funeral!'

‘What do you mean?' Gabriel asked slowly.

‘You were there – you heard me. I told Aunt Lucy that Miss Bright knew who killed Rachel.'

Lucy nodded. ‘I'm afraid that nearly everyone heard you.'

‘That's just the point! I was so excited that I didn't realise how loud my voice was, and everyone heard me. Including the murderer, and then he knew that he had to kill her, too. To stop her telling anyone what she knew.'

There was an appalled silence around the table, as everyone acknowledged the probable truth of her reasoning.

‘How could I have been so stupid?' Ruth said shrilly. ‘I should have known that the murderer would have been there, and would have heard what I said. But I thought it was Dolly Topping, and she wasn't in the dining room.'

‘Her husband was,' Emily pointed out. ‘He could have told her quite easily, or so could a number of other people. As you said, you didn't exactly lower your voice.'

‘Oh, I'll never forgive myself. Poor Miss Bright – she didn't deserve to die. She didn't deserve what I did to her.'

David looked across the table and saw Lucy's expression of distress. ‘Stop it!' he said sharply to Ruth. ‘Can't you see that you're upsetting your aunt?'

Ruth wasn't about to let up. ‘At least now everyone will believe that Rachel was murdered,' she stated. ‘I mean, Miss Bright's death wasn't exactly an accident, and no one could say that it was. Now maybe the police will start looking for the murderer.'

Lucy shook her head suddenly. ‘No,' she said. ‘The police think that Vera Bright was killed by a burglar who'd broken into her house. That's all they'll be looking for – a burglar like the one who supposedly killed Father Julian.'

‘Father Julian?' Ruth hadn't yet heard about the previous curate. Between them, they explained.

The girl was incensed. ‘You mean that
three
people have been murdered, and the police still aren't doing anything?'

‘That's about the extent of it,' said Emily.

David stood up. ‘I'm going to ring my contact on the police,' he announced. ‘I want to see what they have to say about what happened today. Surely they
can't
think that it was a burglar.'

He returned a few minutes later. ‘You were right,' he told Lucy. ‘Her father, the old doctor, insists that it couldn't have been a burglar, but they've dismissed him as a senile old man. The way they reckon it, the burglar came through the back door into the kitchen. Either she was there when he came in, or else she came in from the garden a few minutes later and caught him red-handed. He panicked, grabbed a plastic bag that was lying in the kitchen, popped it over her head, and, as he so colourfully said, “Bob's your uncle”. Sorry, love,' he added contritely at the look on her face.

‘It's all right.' She gave a brave smile. ‘We have to talk about it, don't we? It's clear that the police aren't going to do anything.'

‘No, they're not,' he confirmed. ‘No more than they did for Father Julian.'

‘Or Rachel,' put in a loyal Ruth.

‘They didn't really listen to Dr Bright, but what he said made perfect sense,' Lucy said. ‘He told me – just like he told the police – that Vera never shopped at any of those smart Knightsbridge shops. That may have sounded like an old man's nonsensical ramblings, but what he was trying to say was that whoever killed her came into the house armed with that carrier bag.'

‘What do you mean?' Emily asked.

Lucy gulped as she visualised the green bag. ‘The bag that suffocated her came from a shop she never went to, so the murderer must have brought the bag with him.'

‘Or her,' David amended.

‘Or her. And there was other evidence that she knew the murderer, and probably let him, or her, in herself.'

She had their undivided attention.

‘Her father was taking a nap, so someone might have even rung the bell and come in through the front. Apparently he takes a nap every morning, and probably everyone at the church knows that, so it wouldn't really be taking any chances to come quite openly while he was asleep. And I believe he's a bit deaf as well.'

‘But what's the other evidence?' demanded Ruth impatiently.

‘The mugs. There were three mugs on a tray, ready for morning coffee – one for me as well, since she was expecting me. But there were also two mugs on the draining board, rinsed out but recently used. I saw them myself, and Dr Bright mentioned it to me later.'

‘Couldn't they have been left over from their breakfast?'Gabriel asked.

‘Apparently not, according to Dr Bright. He told me that she always washed up and put away the breakfast dishes straightaway. He'd watched her do it this morning, as usual, so those mugs had been used since then.'

‘By Vera and the murderer,' said Emily slowly. ‘But didn't he tell the police about the mugs?'

‘Yes, of course he did. More than once, probably. But again, they didn't understand the significance. They thought that he was just rambling.'

‘So,' David summed up. ‘It looks as though it's down to us.'

* * *

It was odd that no one had thought to ask before, but in the drama surrounding Vera's death it scarcely seemed to matter. Not until they were eating the fresh fruit that served for a dessert did Gabriel enquire, ‘And where were
you
today, David, by the way?'

‘Brighton,' David said deliberately, watching Gabriel's face.

With an effort Gabriel controlled his expression, betraying emotion only with a flicker of his eyelids. ‘Oh?'

‘But that's the end of the story, really, rather than the beginning,' David went on. ‘I had lunch at Robin West's restaurant, and had a little chat with him about Father Julian. He told me, with great relish, that Father Julian had had a lodger at Magdalen House.'

‘Oh?' This time it was Lucy, giving David a warning look as she kicked him under the table and indicated Ruth with a slight inclination of her head.

But Ruth, peeling a banana, was oblivious both to her aunt's concern and to the subtext of David's statement. David looked at Ruth and the banana with equal distaste, but resolved to couch his story in terms that would not offend or corrupt innocent young ears. ‘It turns out that this lodger, a chap by the name of Alistair Duncan, is an unemployed hairdresser, currently living in Brighton and acting as housekeeper for the new Vicar of St Dunstan's.'

‘A man housekeeper – that's funny,' Ruth said scornfully. ‘I don't suppose he's very good at it.'

Her comment covered the sound of Gabriel dropping his fruit knife. He picked it up again, hoping that no one had noticed. ‘St Dunstan's? What a coincidence,' he remarked in a hearty voice. Turning to Ruth, he explained genially, ‘I was a curate at St Dunstan's, a long time ago.'

‘Oh, yes?' She didn't try very hard to sound interested. It must have been a
very
long time ago, she thought, since the Archdeacon was now so elderly. Forty, at least. As old as her father.

‘And your Uncle David was there at the same time, as a server.'

‘Don't call him my uncle,' she muttered fiercely. ‘He's not my uncle. He's living in sin with my aunt, not married to her!'

There was a long, embarrassed silence, then Gabriel turned back to David. ‘So you actually went to St Dunstan's, then?'

‘To the clergy house.'

‘And how was it?' Gabriel would have given anything at that moment if he and David could have been alone having this conversation, launching into a reminiscence of old times, reaffirming the ties that had never completely disappeared. As it was, he fought to keep the yearning and the enthusiasm from his voice.

‘Very much the same.' David's tone was dry. ‘Though Ruth is right – Alistair Duncan
isn't
a very good housekeeper. Everything was a bit dusty and grimy.'

Gabriel produced a chuckle. ‘Wouldn't old Mrs Ellison turn over in her grave, then?'

That
was her name, thought David. ‘I dare say she's spinning even as we speak.'

Emily was growing impatient with all this nostalgic chat, from which she rightly felt excluded. ‘So what about this Alistair Duncan? Did he tell you anything useful about Father Julian?'

‘Oh, yes. He gave me a great deal of background information, which I won't go into now,' he said; the flick of his eyes in Ruth's direction was immediately understood by the others. ‘And,' he went on, ‘he gave me Father Julian's diary for last year.' With a flourish he produced it from his pocket.

‘His diary!' Lucy looked up at last from the extended examination of some satsuma peel to which Gabriel and David's exchange had driven her.

He opened it up to the first week in December. ‘Did you ever tell us, Gabriel, exactly what day he was killed?'

‘It was on a Friday night or Saturday morning at the beginning of December, that first week. He was found in the sacristy on Saturday morning, but they're not sure exactly what time he died, because of the effect of the cold temperature of the church in delaying rigor mortis,' the Archdeacon explained with technical precision.

‘Well, that makes it the fourth or the fifth. And look,' David stated triumphantly, pointing to the entry in the diary. ‘This is what I think is significant. On Friday the fourth of December, Father Julian had an appointment with VB at 2 o'clock. That must be Vera Bright! Don't you see? Rachel talked to Vera Bright the day before she died, and so did Father Julian!'

Ruth practically bounced up and down in her seat with excitement. ‘So I was right! They both told her something, didn't they? She
did
know who killed them!'

‘It certainly looks that way,' David agreed. ‘And look what else I think is interesting. Right after he saw Vera Bright, he had a meeting with NT. Norman Topping – what do you think of that?'

* * *

Not surprisingly, Lucy didn't sleep very well that night. Vera's death, and the circumstances surrounding it, had hit her hard, intensifying the distress that Rachel's death had aroused in her. She tossed and turned, dozing intermittently, but every time she dropped off it was to a gut-wrenching dream of that outstretched, pathetic hand, a slumped body with a green bag where a head should be, or alternatively the pleading eyes of an old man who begged her, ‘Find out who killed my Vera.'

Vera Bright. Vera Bright. Vera Bright. The name pounded in her head like an unwelcome mantra, impossible to exorcise. In a desperate effort to counteract it, she tried to project her thoughts into the future rather than the past. After all, they were a long way from knowing who had murdered Vera Bright, even if they did know why. And the motive for the other two deaths was still unclear.

What could they do –
she
do – to find out? She had failed signally, it must be admitted, in the task assigned to her, to talk to Vera Bright. She had been just a little too late, and because of that, Vera had died, and her knowledge with her.

Was there anything else she could do? She had intended, she remembered, to deliver the finished painting to Vanessa Bairstow, and have a chat with her. Vanessa Bairstow, as different as could be imagined from Vera Bright, beautifully coiffed and elegant. Vanessa Bairstow. Vera Bright.

She sat up in bed and shook David's shoulder urgently. ‘David darling, wake up!'

He had been sleeping rather better than she – he, after all, had not found a dead body that day, but had done some fairly tiring travelling – so it was surprising how quickly he came to life. ‘What's wrong, love?'

‘Vanessa Bairstow. It might have been Vanessa Bairstow.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Listen, darling. It was natural that you should have thought that Father Julian went to see Vera Bright on the day before he died, since we know that Rachel did. But it could have been Vanessa Bairstow. VB – don't you see?'

He grasped her point. ‘Oh. But I don't . . .'

‘And that's not all. I just remembered something that she said, the first time I met her. She said that she had a new hairdresser, because her old one had just moved to Brighton.'

‘But . . .'

‘We've thought about her husband as someone who might be involved in the deaths. But what if
she
has something to do with it, directly or indirectly?'

‘It's possible, I suppose,' David admitted sleepily.

‘I'm not sure how it all fits together, but there could be some connection. I'll go and see her tomorrow.' She thought for a moment, then added, ‘But there's something you can do, as well – you can ring your friend Alistair, and see if he knows anything about Vanessa Bairstow.'