Ruth Aston sat at the kitchen table in the Old Forge and watched the shadows lengthen as the sun went down, touching the sky with rose-coloured fingers. Everything about the kitchen was familiar and ought to have been reassuring. But there was only emptiness and pain in every aspect. Hester's well-thumbed cookery books were stacked on a shelf. Hester's cooking
implements hung in a neat row beneath. In the larder was half an apple pie made by Hester the previous day and intended to be finished at lunchtime today. But by noon this day Hester lay dead.
The whole thing seemed unreal. She sat in a world in a different dimension to that inhabited by everyone else. Ruth found herself thinking:
The door will open in a minute and Hester will come in
. But the door wouldn't open for a long time and, when it eventually did, whoever walked through it wouldn't be Hester. The most likely next arrival at the kitchen door would be Dilys Twelvetrees. Tomorrow was one of her cleaning days. Ruth wondered whether she should walk up to Billy's cottage and push a note through the door, asking Dilys to give the next day a miss. She really didn't want the woman there, clumping round in her stolid way as if everything was normal, which it wasn't. The Twelvetrees had no telephone and the effort of writing out a note and walking the short length of Church Lane to deliver it, seemed a task of Herculean proportions. Besides which, she might meet someone who'd want to talk about Hester and what had happened. Worst of all, she'd see the blue and white ribbon the police had placed across the entry to the churchyard. The church, which had been so much a part of her childhood and for the last few years her life here in the Old Forge, had become a Scene of Crime, tainted for ever.
At this point, with a pang of guilt, Ruth remembered Father Holland at Bamford. St Barnabas was in his care. He ought to be told what had happened. It was her job as churchwarden to inform him. But perhaps the police had already told him of the dreadful desecration? She wished she knew. She should have
asked Markby or that other man, Pearce. Would it require some kind of cleansing ritual before it could be used again as a house of prayer? Would she, Ruth, ever be able to set foot inside it again?
Not only lunch had been missed. She'd eaten nothing all day since breakfast-time, it seemed a lifetime ago. Aware of a sinking feeling in the stomach, Ruth got up and went to fetch Hester's apple pie. She couldn't throw it out. Hester would be so upset. Neither did she feel like eating any of it. But it was the only thing available which didn't require defrosting. Even a sandwich required preparation which she felt was beyond her. It was ironic that, with a full freezer and larder full of jars, she had nothing she could just pick up and eat.
She cut a small wedge of apple pie and put it on a plate. But after two mouthfuls, swallowed with great difficulty, she gave up. Saying aloud, âSorry, Hester, I really am!' she picked up the pie and her uneaten wedge and tipped the whole lot into a plastic bag. She rolled it up, took it outside, and deposited it with the greatest care and reverence in the dustbin feeling like a worshipper laying an offering before an altar.
Ruth went back inside and had just put the pie plates in the dishwasher when the phone rang. She'd been remiss in not switching it over to the answering machine. She had to pick it up. It might be the police. Ruth lifted the receiver gingerly and managed to say, âYes?'
âRuth?'
She recognised the voice as belonging to James Holland and heaved a sigh of relief. âOh, James, I was thinking about phoning you. Have youâ?' She broke off.
âYes, I've heard about it. Superintendent Markby came to see me. I'm very sorry, Ruth.'
She'd be hearing the last words a lot over the coming weeks with varying degrees of sympathy and sincerity. James, at least, meant it. âI've been wondering,' she said, âabout the church. Whether it will have to be rededicated or anything.'
It crossed her mind that he'd think it odd that she'd be worrying about such a detail at a time like this. But it was better than talking about Hester or directly about the dreadful deed that had taken her friend from her.
He probably understood. She believed he was a sensitive man for all his hirsute appearance and his fondness for roaring round the countryside on a motorcycle. He was also a good priest. He was phoning her because she was a bereaved parishioner, not because she was a churchwarden in whose charge the church had been so foully violated.
âWe'll worry about that later. Are you alone, Ruth? I'll come out there straight away.'
âNo!' She feared her voice was too sharp. âThank you, James, but I'm fine, really.' Ruth paused. âNo, not really, but I can manage. You know what I mean. I'd rather be alone this evening.'
âThen I'll come over first thing in the morning.' His voice was both competent and soothing. âDon't worry about the police activities, Ruth. I'll deal with whatever I can, make 'em go through me wherever possible. Though you must brace yourself to answering questions, I'm afraid. They will want to know as much about Hester as you can tell them.'
She tried to answer but it only came out as a suppressed sob.
Anxiously, he was asking, âLook, I'm very concerned about you. Have you eaten, Ruth?'
âYes,' she lied. Well, not a complete lie. The two mouthfuls of pie lay heavily on her stomach. She strongly suspected that before long she'd throw them up again.
âHave a drop of brandy,' he advised.
She lied again, promising she would, and hung up.
It was nearly dark now and she switched on a lamp before going to the window to pull the curtains. Outside Church Lane was poorly lit. Yet it seemed to her that opposite the Old Forge, in the dark recess between two buildings, something moved. Her heart jumped in alarm. It wasn't just her overwrought imagination. There was someone there. Someone watched the house. A police officer? The murderer, knife in hand? No, there was something familiar about the figure.
Ruth's heart leapt in sudden hope. She did something completely irrational about which she was afterwards deeply embarrassed. She ran to the front door, pulled it open and called out, âHester?'
As the name passed her lips, she realised how foolish she was being. There were no ghosts. It wasn't all some ghastly mistake. Pulling herself together, she called, âWho's there? Who is it?'
The shape became a squat form moving towards her with quiet resolution. The light fell on the visitor's face and she recognised Dilys Twelvetrees.
âOh, Dilys!' Ruth gasped, half relieved and half dismayed.
âI come to see if you were all right,' came Dilys's voice.
Ruth realised that she was framed in the doorway, lit by the lamp behind her. Anyone else watching would have a good
view. Unwillingly she stepped aside to let Dilys over the threshold. She saw, as Dilys lumbered by, that the woman was carrying a small earthenware casserole.
âI brought a bit of stew,' Dilys said.â'Cos I thought you'd probably not eaten anything. You need to keep your strength up.'
âThank you,' Ruth replied weakly, stretching out her hands to take the dish.
âI was watching out front,' Dilys went on, âbecause I wasn't sure if you'd gone to bed already. The house was all dark. But then you switched on a light. I didn't come to the back door because I didn't want to give you a fright but I dare say I did that, anyway.'
âNo, not at all.' Ruth reflected that she was telling a lot of lies this evening. Had Dilys heard that despairing cry, heard her call to a friend now gone beyond hearing?
âDad said as I should come and see how you were doing. He thinks a lot of you, does Dad, you being the old vicar's daughter and all.' Dilys tut-tutted. âMr Pattinson wouldn't have liked any of this, in his church, too.'
âNone of us likes any of it!' Ruth almost shouted at her. She controlled herself and added, âBut it's kind of you, Dilys, and kind of your father to be concerned. Give him my thanks.'
Dilys nodded. âI'll be in tomorrow morning, same as usual.'
Ruth opened her mouth, lost courage, and said meekly, âYes, Dilys.'
âYou pop that in the oven straight away.' Dilys indicated the casserole.
âI will.' Ruth finished her evening of lies with yet another. It was getting easy.
Dilys departed. When she was sure the woman had left Church Lane, Ruth went back to the kitchen, found another plastic bag and tipped the stew into it. It flowed glutinously, mud brown, dotted with yellow scraps of carrot, and smelling strongly of onions and Oxo cubes. Ruth put the plastic bag inside another and then wrapped the whole lot in newspaper.
Fearing she'd be observed and a report reach Dilys, she switched off all the lights before opening the back door and slipping outside. Moonlight fell palely over the garden. The field beyond was a watery silver lake. Only Stovey Woods were a dark forbidding mass on the horizon.
Ruth found her way back to the dustbin and pushed the parcel of stew deep down inside beneath other rubbish. The bag containing Hester's pie, lying on top, looked startlingly white in the moonlight. Ruth, in a kind of revulsion mixed with fear, pushed it also deep down beneath the garbage, so that neither of them should know, neither Dilys nor Hester.
She went back indoors and slowly got ready for bed, wondering how many more lies she'd be obliged to tell before all this was over.
The following morning, Friday, Meredith rang her Foreign Office department and explained she wouldn't be coming to work.
âAre you sick?' asked Lionel, the colleague she'd reached, in his familiar nicotine-laden growl.
âNo, I'm a material witness in a murder case. I need to be on hand if the police want to go over my statement.'
There was a pause. âAnybody you know?'
Meredith interpreted this query as referring to the victim. In the commercial world, her reason for absence might have been received with more scepticism, shock, excitement, morbid curiosity and so on. Lionel, a grizzled veteran of a wandering life in the service of HM Government, was inured to sudden alarms and out of the way occurrences. His first reaction was to establish the degree of consolation she might require, followed by a mental assessment of what action would be required of her and â eventually â how much inevitable paperwork.
âI didn't know the person. I just happened to be in the wrong place.'
âBad luck. Take whatever time you need. Keep in touch.' With a note of mischief he added, âDo you want a character reference?'
âNot yet,' she told him. âBut you never know.'
By the end of the day she was beginning to wish she had gone up to London and got away from it all. She'd expected to find herself giving her statement to Dave Pearce but found herself instead closeted with a sergeant she knew but only slightly, Steve Prescott. An amiable giant, he'd taken her through her statement an unnecessary number of times, or so it had seemed to her. His explanation was that âsomething might come back to her'. Eventually even Prescott was persuaded that nothing new was likely to surface in her brain by this method and that his interviewee was growing mutinous. Meredith was allowed to scrawl her name on a typed version of her statement and told she could go home. So eager was she to get through the door, she'd raised only a token objection to the way in which Prescott had translated some of her words into a form he thought more suitable. She did strike out âobserved' as in âI observed the figure of a woman' and replaced it with âsaw' but left it at that. However she phrased it and whatever the vocabulary, she couldn't add anything to the stark reality which had been Hester Millar's blood-soaked scarf and pale, frozen eye. She thought the sergeant, too, looked relieved at having the encounter over.
Alan reappeared in the early evening on her doorstep, looking equally frazzled. They slumped in facing (and mismatching) armchairs in Meredith's tiny sitting room.
âThis will never do!' Meredith said suddenly. âCome on, let's go out and eat somewhere.'
âWe haven't booked,' he objected in the voice of a man who having found somewhere quiet to relax and nod off, was less than keen at the idea of being chivvied out of it.
âFriday won't be as busy as Saturday. It's not seven yet. I'll give the Fisherman's Rest a ring.'
âYou aren't too tired â not, um, stressed?' he asked wistfully.
âListen,' she told him. âIt's been a very tiring and stressful week, let alone today. We need to put it behind us. Dozing in front of a television screen all evening will make us feel worse.'
Later, at the restaurant, she was beginning to doubt this was quite the bright idea it'd seemed at the time. That Alan was still preoccupied was obvious. For her own part, she was still unable to rid her memory of that silent huddled form in the church, something she'd spent the day talking about and hoped this outing would wipe away if only for an evening. Around them the air was heavy with the smell of food and noisy with the chatter of voices. It had begun to make her head ache and the food odours which normally she would've found enticing now only made her nauseous. She toyed with her
saumon en croûte
and noticed that Alan was making only slighter better headway with his steak
au poivre.
They sat in what had once been the snug of a public house. But, as the nature of menu made clear, the Fisherman's Rest hadn't been that kind of pub for some years. No fishermen had crossed its threshold for a long time, neither for rest nor sustenance. Nor was it the sort of place local people dropped into for a pint. Most of the people present that evening, Meredith guessed, had driven some miles to be there, as she and Alan had done. The Fisherman's Rest was well known, both for its food and its situation. They'd been here several
times before and both of them liked it. Tonight, however, it was failing to work its usual magic.
The restaurant sat atop the river bank, looking out across the gentle landscape of the Windrush valley. By this time of the evening the further bank was veiled in the mist creeping across the meadows and swirling in wraith-like tendrils across the water. The string of lights decorating the facade of the restaurant were reflected in the rippling river surface. The building itself, at least two hundred years old, was painted white and as the daylight faded it seemed to glow eerily in the dusk.
Inside it was warm, attractive, in every way welcoming. Every other patron was having a wonderful evening. Only she and Alan sat, monosyllabic, picking at this excellent dinner.
Eventually, Meredith asked, âIs it the house-hunting or the murder which is worrying you?'
He was immediately apologetic as she'd known he'd be and it made her feel guilty. Her own input into the conversation had been minimal.
âIn a way it's neither,' Alan was saying. He looked up, caught her eye and set down his knife and fork. âI shouldn't be doing this, but I can't help brooding over the investigation I conducted in Lower Stovey years ago. It's Friday evening and I should be taking advantage of the free weekend to which my illustrious rank entitles me. Taking work around with me in my free time is something I've always tried to avoid. Taking it around with me in
your
free time is inexcusable.'
Meredith abandoned the salmon, pushed her plate aside and rested her clasped hands on the table. âI shouldn't have dragged you out here. I thought it would help. But like you, I'm still brooding. It can't be helped and I was stupid to think we could
either of us just set it all aside. Can't you tell me about the old case? Was that when you had reason to interview Ruth's father, the Reverend Pattinson?'
âThat's right. James Holland tells me Pattinson was gaga in his last years but when I saw him he was lucid enough and really quite vehement in defence of his flock.'
âWho were accused of what?'
âNone of them was ever accused of anything. We never even got that far.' And he told her about the Potato Man.
âNasty,' Meredith said soberly. âAnd very, very scary. To think of him stealing something from each of those poor women, taking it home and gloating over it. It's sick.'
She pushed back her thick brown hair in a gesture which Markby knew betokened thought. âI wished you'd told me all about it before.'
âHardly the stuff of pleasant conversation. You've got enough on your mind already.'
âYou've had this bothering you for the last twenty-two years. You know, Ruth made a remark about bad things happening in Stovey Woods and that must be what she was talking about. But there's no connection, surely? Not with what's happened now? Twenty-two years is a long, long time.'
âA connection with the death of Hester Millar? Probably not, at least not directly. But who knows? Or a connection with the bones Dr Morgan found in Stovey Woods? That sounds more of a distinct possibility on the face of it. But I don't want to jump to conclusions. It all depends what the experts have to say about the bones themselves, how long they'd been there before the good doctor fell down a bank and stuck his head in a fox-hole.'
He paused. âI don't like coincidences. I told James Holland so. Nothing of a criminal or startling nature has happened in Lower Stovey to my knowledge since the Potato Man vanished all those twenty-two years ago. A long time, as you say. Now, within a fortnight, someone finds human remains in the woods and a local resident, a blameless lady who appears to have had not an enemy in the world, is found stabbed in the church. Hester clearly had no connection with the Potato Man. She wasn't living in Lower Stovey at that time. But the finding of those bones may well have given someone in Lower Stovey a severe fright. Someone who has something to hide. And that brings it up to the present day and the unfortunate Miss Millar. Though I still,' he added disconsolately, âcan't imagine what she could have discovered that might have made her a threat to anyone. Still, it may, in some tortuous fashion, all connect up.'
âI've been wondering, too,' Meredith confessed. She tucked a swathe of hair behind one ear. It promptly fell forward again. She put both hands up and tucked the hair on both sides of her face behind either ear. One side stayed put, the other fell forward again.
Markby reached across the table and took her hand. âYou're fidgeting with your hair. It means you're going to come out with some theory.'
âNo. But I've been thinking about Hester, too. I did find her body.'
He wrinkled his forehead in dismay. âIt was a terrible shock for you. I shouldn't have mentioned Lower Stovey.' He sighed. âSorry, this outing tonight is falling pretty flat, isn't it?'
âIt was my idea to come,' she pointed out. âI thought it'd take our minds off everything.'
âExactly. You're trying to blot out what you saw. That's normal and I should have been aware of it!' He released her hand after a brief squeeze of her fingers and added wryly, âThe thing is, on a personal level I'd like to help you forget it. On a professional level, the last thing I want is for you to blot out that picture altogether. You are, you see, my witness.'
Meredith said slowly, as someone laying out a mental puzzle as she might the pieces of a jigsaw, âOf course I've been wondering about Hester though I haven't come up with any theory as yet, sorry to disappoint you. That's because I've nothing to go on. I didn't see Hester die. I didn't know Hester although I knew of her existence because Ruth had mentioned her to me. So when I saw her â saw her body there, I didn't know who she was. Muriel Scott told me. There was something really weird about Muriel's reaction. She seemed â ' Meredith paused.
âYes?' Alan was watching her intently.
âShe seemed surprised without being shocked. In fact, until she saw who it was, her manner was quite brisk. It was strange, somehow. I don't know how to describe it better. From the moment I told her I'd called the police, she seemed to have no doubt it would turn out to be what you'd call a suspicious death. It didn't seem to cross her mind that it might be a case of heart attack or a lump of masonry falling off one of those monuments and clonking someone on the head. Then, when Muriel saw who was dead, she said, “It's not anyone I'd have expected to see.” It left me wondering if there was someone she
wouldn't
have been surprised to see lying there dead. It's particularly odd because Hester, of all the people in Lower Stovey, was regularly in the church and Muriel shouldn't have
been surprised to see her there, alive naturally. It wasn't that Hester was
dead,
but that
Hester
was dead, which seemed to throw her. It was the emphasis in her remark. Do you follow?'
âI follow. It's intriguing, I admit. However, a shocked person can make some odd, even garbled, statements. Whatever you say, to find Hester Millar stabbed in St Barnabas's was enough to shake the sang-froid even of the redoubtable Mrs Scott.'
âPoor Ruth Aston, of course, was horribly shocked, devastated,' Meredith continued. âThe real thing bugging me is another perhaps trivial detail. I keep wondering what Hester was actually doing in the church when she was attacked. I mean,' she added hastily, âI know that she, along with Ruth, was a churchwarden. I understand that she'd gone to open up the building. My mind's working in a more literal way. What action was she actually engaged in? You see, from her attitude she'd been kneeling in a pew praying when the assailant struck.'
Alan smiled faintly. âPeople do still pray in churches.'
âYes, and probably Hester was just doing something she always did when she visited the church. But it might be worth asking Ruth if Hester was in the habit of kneeling in prayer for a few minutes when she went into the church. We know why Ruth looks after the church. Her father was its last vicar. It means a lot to her. But it has â had â no personal association for Hester. So, was she a particularly religious woman? After all, it looks as if she was a churchwarden because Ruth was one and it must have been convenient for the two of them to share duties, keeping an eye on the church. I was wondering, you see, if she was kneeling in prayer because something was worrying her and she didn't know what to do. She was seeking
guidance. The other thing that occurred to me â and probably already has to you, too â is that whoever approached Hester near enough to attack her either did so very quietly, so that Hester didn't hear them and look up or move, or was someone Hester knew and whose presence she felt she could ignore.'