A Dead Man Out of Mind (37 page)

‘Why don't you tell me,' David invited.

Everitt decided that there was nothing to lose; it was obvious that David knew something about it already, and he was actually quite proud of his own cleverness, welcoming a chance to share it. ‘I was approached,' he said. ‘The first time, it was just one that they wanted. One marriage certificate. A chap approached me and asked if I could get it for them. They offered me a thousand pounds for it. So I said yes.'

‘They asked you because you were the Administrator?'

‘Yes, of course. They knew that I'd have access to the certificates. It was no problem,' he boasted. ‘Father Keble Smythe never checks the registers. He's always allowed me to fill them out and to do the reports for the registrar, so it couldn't have been simpler.'

‘Then they wanted more?'

‘As many as I could get for them, they said. They'd pay me a thousand pounds apiece for as many blank marriage certificates as I could supply.'

David knew that he had to keep him talking as long as possible. ‘Then Father Julian stumbled on to your little . . . sideline?'

Everitt laughed. ‘He was too conscientious by half. He decided that he wanted to fill out the register for the weddings he took, and he discovered that the numbers didn't match up. Fortunately he came to me instead of going to Father Keble Smythe.'

‘So you killed him.'

‘I had no choice – he would have exposed me. And there was an added benefit. Two, actually.' He chuckled softly to himself. ‘I was able to take a whole book of certificates, as though it were part of the burglary. Later I reported them as stolen to the registrar, and was sent a whole new book. And of course there was the chalice.'

‘But you didn't know how valuable it was when you took it, did you?'

‘No, of course not. No one knew that the silver was worth anything. I took it just to add authenticity to the burglary, and put it at the back of my wardrobe at home. And then you came along and told me that it was worth thousands. I couldn't resist selling it.'

Lucy spoke for the first time. ‘What about Rachel? Why did you have to kill
her
?'

Everitt frowned. ‘They came back to me later, and wanted more certificates, only a few this time. She had weddings two Saturdays in a row. I'd taken the certificates during that week, and she noticed that the numbers were off. She was going to tell the Vicar – I was with him when she rang to say that she wanted to talk to him. I knew that she'd found out, so I took my chance.'

‘And Miss Bright,' Lucy said. ‘Did she really know that you'd killed them?'

His laugh was unpleasant. ‘I don't know if she knew anything or not. But I couldn't chance it, could I? I don't think that she
did
know anything – she let me into her house quite happily, and made me a cup of coffee.'

Lucy shuddered; David squeezed her hand.

‘What is the meaning of this?' The authoritative and outraged tones of the Archdeacon were heard at the sacristy door, triggering another rapid sequence of events.

Everitt turned his head sharply towards the door, for an instant slackening the pressure of the knife on Ruth's throat. She sensed her opportunity and sank her metal-encrusted teeth into the hand that covered her mouth; he shrieked in agony. And David, with a well-judged movement of his foot, kicked the silver choir cross which leaned against the wall, unbalancing it and causing it to topple over on to Everitt. It was over six feet tall and extremely heavy; the top of the cross caught him on the side of the head as it fell and sent him sprawling, unconscious. Ruth sprang clear, to be grabbed by Lucy with fierce protectiveness.

It had all happened so quickly, in a matter of seconds. Gabriel stood at the door, astonished.

Weak with relief, David grinned. ‘Hello, Archdeacon,' he drawled. ‘Well timed, though I confess I was beginning to think that you'd never get here. Why don't you make yourself useful and go ring 999?'

‘Let me do it,' Ruth demanded, resilient as ever. ‘Let
me
ring 999 – after all, I'm the one who discovered him.'

A few hours later they were all in the Archdeacon's drawing room. The ambulance had been and gone, and of course the police as well, who had taken their statements, collected certain evidence from the sacristy in consequence, and sent them home.

The shock was beginning to wear off, though Lucy still looked pale and was unusually subdued. Emily, the only one who had missed out on the excitement first hand, cosseted her with cups of strong tea and, when that didn't seem to have the desired effect, with brandy instead.

Of course David had to relate to Emily and to Gabriel the substance of Everitt's admissions of guilt, aided ably by Ruth's interjections. ‘I still don't understand why he did it,' Emily said at the end, shaking her head in bafflement. ‘Was there some reason that he needed the money?'

‘I was just about to ask him, when your husband got round to rescuing us,' David put in with a wry grin.

Gabriel, who had been on the phone with the police, ignored David's jibe. ‘He made a full statement to the police after he regained consciousness. They didn't want to tell me what he said, of course, but I threw my weight around a bit. Said that as Archdeacon I had a right to know, so they told me. It seems that his wife's a bit of a social climber. Keeping up with the Bairstows seems to be the chief concern – and that's where the problems began. Martin Bairstow is a successful businessman with more money than he and his wife between them know what to do with, and Stanley Everitt is – was – a Parish Administrator, making barely enough to survive. His wife doesn't work, and they have no additional income. So he thought that this would give him a little extra cash so that his wife would stop nagging him.'

‘Everything she served at that meeting at her house a few weeks back came from Knightsbridge,' recalled Emily. ‘I thought at the time that she seemed to be trying to out-do Vanessa.'

‘And hence the carrier bag,' David added with a grim smile.

Lucy nodded. ‘When she found out that Vanessa had commissioned a painting from me, she said that she wanted one as well. I wondered how on earth she could afford it, but at that meeting she said that she definitely wanted to go ahead with it.'

‘Presumably,' David deduced, ‘that was about the time that her husband went back to the well again, and stole the last few marriage certificates – the ones that made Rachel suspicious.'

‘I think,' said Emily slowly, ‘that there was more to it than that. More than just his wife, I mean. I think that, if anything, that was just an excuse for what he did.'

‘What do you mean?' queried Gabriel.

‘I think that it was his way of getting revenge on the Church. He was turned down by the Board of Ministry, wasn't he?'

‘Yes,' Gabriel confirmed. ‘Three times.'

‘He wanted to be a priest,' remembered David. ‘He told me so – and he was really bitter that the Church didn't want him, didn't value his talents.'

Emily nodded. ‘That's what I mean. He had to be satisfied with being Administrator, always telling people how important he was. And surely it's significant that two of the people that he killed were curates. Something he'd never be, no matter how much he wanted it.'

‘But what about Miss Bright?' Ruth put in. ‘Why did he have to kill her too? When he wasn't even sure that she knew anything?'

‘I think that by that time he'd got to like killing people,' Emily analysed shrewdly. ‘I think he enjoyed the feeling of power that it gave him.' She shook her head. ‘I think he's a real psychopath.'

Gabriel sighed. ‘If only I'd been here that day when Rachel phoned. It was too late for Julian Piper, but two other deaths might have been prevented.'

‘You mustn't think that.' Emily went to him, perching on the edge of his chair and putting a protective arm around his shoulders.

‘Yes, well,' David put in quickly, in an attempt to forestall Ruth's breastbeating routine over Vera Bright. ‘For a while I had the wrong end of the stick altogether. I was running round after Francis Nightingale.'

True to form, Ruth favoured him with an accusing glare. ‘You never said.'

‘Francis Nightingale?' Emily turned to him blankly. ‘Colin's brother, you mean?'

‘Yes.' David ignored Ruth. ‘I don't think I ever told you about him. I was convinced that if anyone had killed Rachel, it had been him, because he was the one who benefited financially from her death. He needed money badly, I found out.'

‘And after what Rachel said to me about him pulling the plug on Colin . . .' Emily surmised.

‘Exactly. I think that he
did
pull the plug on Colin in the end, as it happens, but that's neither here nor there.'

Emily looked thoughtful. ‘David, you still haven't told us how you figured it out about the marriage certificates. And how you knew that Stanley Everitt was the one who'd taken them.'

His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. ‘I should have known much sooner, actually. All of the evidence about the marriage certificates had been staring me in the face all along.'

‘What do you mean?' Emily pressed him.

‘I have a client called Justin Thymme,' he began, then paused at Emily and Gabriel's disbelieving looks to assure them, ‘Yes, that's really his name. He's run into some trouble with the immigration office because he's married a Hong Kong Chinese woman. I won't bore you with the details, but for various reasons the immigration officer in charge of the case feels that the marriage might be a fraudulent one, entered into so that the wife can claim residency in this country, and eventually be eligible for a British passport, so that she can then bring all of her family in.' He took a sip of his whisky and went on. ‘I happen to believe that she's right, but that's also neither here nor there. When I met the immigration officer, she was quite frank with me. She explained that some people will stop at nothing to get a British passport, and mentioned that there was a thriving trade in stolen marriage certificates going on. And where else would one steal marriage certificates, if not from a church? But I didn't make the connection, not then, and not till much later.'

Emily tried to make him feel better. ‘But why should you have made the connection?'

‘I knew about the burglary at St Margaret's, but as far as I was aware, nothing but the chalice had been stolen,' he acknowledged. ‘I didn't even know, until you told me less than a week ago, that Father Julian had been killed in the burglary. But I
did
know that Rachel Nightingale performed a wedding on the Saturday before her death, because she told us so when we ran into her later that day at Westminster Abbey, and she mentioned that she had one the following week as well. And when I obtained Father Julian's diary, I also knew that he was to have performed a wedding on the Saturday after his death. But when I was looking for links, for connections, the weddings never occurred to me. And after Rachel had made a point of telling us that weddings were something that even deacons could perform!' He shook his head. ‘I had a feeling all along that those two deaths had something to do with the fact that both of them were curates, but I was on completely the wrong track.'

Gabriel leaned forward. ‘But once you'd figured out about the marriage certificates, how did you know that it was Stanley Everitt who had taken them?'

‘Before I tell you that, why don't you explain to Lucy how the whole business of marriage certificates works?' David suggested, aware of her silence and mindful that she might be confused.

The Archdeacon nodded. ‘Ordinarily,' he explained, ‘the vicar is the one who fills out the register when a marriage takes place. Or the curate, of course. There are very strict rules about it, and it has to be done very carefully. Each entry is numbered, and the numbers in the register correspond to the numbers on the certificate which is given to the couple. Every quarter, each incumbent is required to fill out a form for the registrar, copying the information from the registers and supplying the numbers. A bit of a fiddle, because it has to be done just right, but one of those things that most clergy just get on with as part of the job. Apparently, though, Father Keble Smythe thought that it was a job which could safely be left to his Administrator.'

David took up the tale. ‘So it seemed to me that it almost certainly had to be either the Administrator or the Vicar, as they were the only two people, apart from the curates, who would have had access to the marriage registers and the certificates. An inside job, in the vernacular,' he grinned. ‘But which one? I had reason to suspect Father Keble Smythe, but I had no proof in either direction. And then, as I was on my way to St Margaret's, I remembered two things. I remembered that I'd run into Stanley Everitt in South Ken tube station, the day that there'd been an IRA bomb scare. And that, according to Mr Atkins the antique dealer, was the day that a man purporting to be Father William Keble Smythe had sold him a valuable chalice. Someone had been killed by a bomb – Mr Atkins and I both recalled it. And that was the day after I told the churchwardens and Everitt that the silver was worth a small fortune.'

‘Hardly conclusive evidence,' Gabriel commented neutrally. ‘But you said two things?'

‘Oh, yes. The other thing that I remembered was Father Julian's diary.'

‘You already mentioned that,' Emily pointed out. ‘About the weddings.'

David shook his head. ‘Not the weddings. Something else. You know that Father Julian's diary was in a sort of shorthand, so that he could fit everything in? Initials, and so forth?' He gave a dry laugh. ‘That shorthand misled us more than once already, when we jumped to certain conclusions – remember VB and NT? Well, the mistake I made was even more unforgivable than that, for one who professes to know something about churches.'