Death on Lindisfarne (19 page)

She pressed her lips tight. “I told you. I'm not saying. I've probably told you too much already.”

She loped ahead of him, through the gates of St Colman's.

L
UCY PUT DOWN THE PHONE
with a feeling of dissatisfaction. She had thought it would be easier to talk to the female detective sergeant. But DS Malham had listened non-committally to her tale of Elspeth's offering Rachel cocaine, of Lucy's scary visit from Valerie. She had asked a few basic questions, but she had not followed up this new revelation with the eagerness Lucy had anticipated. She had not even – and Lucy was aware of her own indignation – shown much concern for Lucy's safety. Did she not take her seriously? She had said, as she was bound to, that she would pass the information on to DI Harland.

It was professionalism, of course. DS Malham would feel obliged to hold her cards close to her chest. She wouldn't reveal operational confidences to a member of the public.

That's all Lucy was now. The Reverend Lucy Pargeter. No longer a police officer. Did Malham know she had been? If so, did she guess why Lucy had left the force?

Her words had vanished into thin air with no visible effect. Too late, she realized she could have asked Malham about the results of Rachel's post-mortem.

No,
she sighed,
she wouldn't have told me.

She stood up from the bed where she had been sitting and started to gather her things for the day. She hoisted the small knapsack onto her shoulder. Time to go out and meet her group at the front of the house.

The brightness of the April morning still held. Daffodils flaunted their trumpets in gardens along the road. Some of the group gathered by the front door were turning their faces up to the sun.

Not Peter. Her heart twisted as she saw him hunch his shoulders, still weighed down with grief. She ought to talk to him. To make a space where he could tell her how he was feeling.

She ran her eyes quickly over the group. Melangell, bless her, as eager as ever. Her bearded father. There had still been that prickly wariness this morning on the beach. Yet he had seemed chivalrously alarmed for her. Could she trust that?

Valerie and Elspeth. Her guts churned, remembering that visit last evening.

Sue and James. She sighed. Aidan might have guessed wrongly about James being the one who had threatened her, but that didn't mean the rival pastor was going to give her an easy ride.

Somebody still missing. The Cavendishes.

Lucy greeted them as brightly as she could. She jogged on the spot to get her adrenalin going. She would need the energy to put into her storytelling and hold the attention of her group in the face of everything else that had happened.

Her phone rang. She glanced down at the screen.

“Sorry, folks. I need to take this.”

She loped away across the car park until her own VW partly hid her from view.

“Ian! That was quick.”

“Yeah, well. The station's not been the same without you. The PM's in, and you're right. The pathologist reckons she didn't drown. She was dead before she went into the water. Asphyxia.”

“Oh!” Lucy let out a long sigh. It was what an uneasy part of her had feared all along. But it was still like a blow to the stomach to have it confirmed. She could hardly begin to imagine the implications.

“You still there?”

“Yes. Sorry. Look, I'm really grateful to you, Ian. I don't think it's likely I'll be able to do anything in return, under the circumstances. But if ever…”

“Forget it. I owe you from the past. But don't, for God's sake, let Harland know you've heard this. Never mind who from.”

“Of course not. Thanks a million.”

“Oh, and there was something else you might want to know. Drugs in her system. Cocaine. Recent.”

“Yes. I rather expected that.”

“Take care of yourself. Just like you to leave the force and still land yourself with a murder enquiry.”

There, that word. Not from her own teeming imagination this time, but from a serving police officer.

“I don't think I'll be putting the flags out. I've been trying not to believe that. She was a friend.”

“Sorry! Me putting my big foot in it again. Are you OK?”

“Not really. But I'll cope. Not much point in being a minister of the Church if I can't handle death, is there?”

She closed the phone and looked across the top of the car at the assortment of people gathered waiting for her. While she had been talking, the Cavendishes had joined the group. She drew a deep breath. Did she have to face the thought that there might be a murderer somewhere among them?

She focused on the tall, dignified figure of Valerie Grayson. The neatly waved greying hair, the violet anorak, the steady eyes. Valerie had seemed the wise and serene member of the group. A loyal support. Until last night.

The house was old compared with most buildings on the island. Warm, red stone, the same colour as the stones of the priory Aidan had photographed. In close-up now, he focused on the pleasing irregularity of the masonry.

As Lucy led them to the door, he read the signboard on the wall: FELLOWSHIP OF ST EBBA AND ST OSWALD. So this was where Brother Simon led his semi-monastic life?

The door opened. Aidan expected to see Simon's burly, black-haired
figure. Instead it was a spare-boned woman in a long calico apron, over a plain grey dress. Thin hair was scraped back behind her ears, but the radiant smile she gave outshone this initial severity.

“Lucy! Come in.” She kissed her.

Again Aidan had that unsettling feeling that Lucy was not the stranger here that the rest of them were. Aidan's own brief visits to Lindisfarne had not engendered this closeness of friendship. He suspected that Lucy must have spent some time in this community. So why was this not just an interesting fact to add to his knowledge of her? Why did it make him feel shut out?

The tallest of them had to stoop their heads under the low beams. The woman in grey, Sister Agnes, led them down steps into a comfortable, if small, sitting room. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Aidan did not have to study them long to realize they were crammed with books about Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history, and especially of their churches. There were other books of local interest: flowers, birds, the geology of this shifting coastline. More books, particularly the lavishly illustrated ones, were spread out on tables for visitors to enjoy. He spotted a facsimile edition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, with their angular interlace and mythical creatures forming the decorated capitals and surrounding the magnificent title pages. And – it came as an almost physical shock – the whole collection of Jenny's books on the Celtic saints. He always thought of them as hers, even though it was his own photographs staring him in the face. It was Jenny's inspiration his camera had served.

Sister Agnes had turned back to Lucy. “My poor lamb. Simon told us all about it. What a tragedy for you! That poor girl.” She swung her deep blue eyes round the rest of the group crowding into the small room. “It can't have been pleasant for you too, coming here for a holiday and expecting to go home rested and uplifted. But be assured. Rachel is at peace now, in the arms of mercy. It's us poor sinners who have to struggle on with the weight of bereavement and guilt.”

Guilt. The word brought Aidan up short. It was an odd expression to use.

Agnes's radiant smile dwelt on each of them in turn. “But that peace which now embraces Rachel is available to you all.”

Was it? Aidan's mind shot back to his encounter with Lucy on the beach this morning. Someone in this group had threatened Lucy. Surely that could only mean they knew something they ought not to about Rachel's drowning. If she
had
drowned.

He half-turned to find James behind him. The younger man was disconcertingly taller than Aidan at close quarters. And undeniably more handsome, he thought wryly. The shaved hair and plaster did nothing to minimize that. He thought again about Rachel's bright eyes the first time he had met her, on Saturday afternoon. There had been something almost flirtatious about her then. A total contrast from the fearful face, withdrawn behind her curtain of lank hair, that she had shown the next time he saw her, as she crept unwillingly into the introductory meeting. It had almost certainly been Rachel in her red jacket he had seen on the beach through his zoom lens as he and Melangell crossed the sands. Had it been James with her? And what had happened to turn those bright eyes into fear?

He found himself pulling Melangell away from James.

“Sit down, everyone,” Lucy was saying. “There are just about enough seats for us.”

He squeezed into a small battered sofa beside Peter. Melangell curled up at his feet.

He watched James cross the room, heading for another sofa. The Cavendishes got there first. James checked, with a look of outraged entitlement, and found the only other one occupied by Elspeth and Valerie. Elspeth's ample figure overflowed it. With an air of affront, James took the only other option. An upright chair behind the Cavendishes' sofa. Sue had slipped into an armchair just inside the door. She jumped up now, with a look of guilt.

“James! Sit here.”

He waved her away with a martyred air. James, visibly wounded, only out of hospital yesterday. Was he really the victim? Or something worse?

Aidan watched Sue subside onto the armchair. She perched on the edge of it now, as if she did not deserve to be there. He could see by the way she was looking at James that she felt it was wrong to sit in comfort while her pastor did not.

A new thought crawled slowly through Aidan's mind. Sue was utterly devoted to James. Whatever he said was law to her. If James had some reason to get rid of Rachel, Sue was more than capable of doing it for him. Aidan had not the slightest doubt that she would risk life imprisonment for him.

Did that mean…? His eyes shot back to Lucy. She was the only one of the group still standing. She looked young today, in a pink clerical shirt showing a glimpse of a dog collar beneath the navy-blue tracksuit. An oddly heart-twisting blend. The authority of ministerial office with a youthful female vulnerability. Could it have been Sue, not James, who had threatened Lucy, and made Brother Simon fear for her safety?

Whoever it was, as long as they stayed on this island, Lucy could not help but be in close daily proximity to someone who knew more about Rachel's death than they should, and who saw Lucy as a threat.

L
UCY LOOKED OUTWARDLY UNCONCERNED
. She had clearly decided to pick up the threads and carry on the week as she had planned. She raised her clear voice and the room settled. Sister Agnes gave her a reassuring smile and slipped out of the room.

“I've brought you here because it's one of the best places on the island to see the wealth of Celtic tradition on which Aidan's abbey was founded. Well, maybe the Priory Museum or the Lindisfarne Centre would have been better still, but they're not the places to tell you the story of the Synod of Whitby, with visitors coming and going all around us. But I'll take you on to the Centre after this. If you haven't seen it already, you're in for a treat.

“Look around you. You'll see evidence of the artefacts. The gorgeous manuscripts, the carved stone crosses, the island sanctuaries that became beacons of learning. All that came to us from Ireland, via St Columba's Iona on the west coast of Scotland. St Aidan was Irish, sent here from Iona. King Oswald and his sister Ebba, for whom this fellowship here is named, were English, but they grew up schooled on Iona, in Oswald's case, and the nearby Island of Women, for Ebba. The Celtic tradition was the wellspring of their Christianity.

“The Venerable Bede tells us that their difference from the Roman Church was about the date of Easter and the style of tonsure with which monks shaved their heads. But believe me, it was more than that. The Celtic Church was not a monolithic structure, ruled top-down from Rome. Each abbey was autonomous, adopting its own Rule after comparison with others. And the abbeys mattered. They were seats of learning and mission. Spiritual power in Celtic lands did not lie in
the court of Christian kings. Lindisfarne's abbey is where it is, because it was separated from the palace at Bamburgh. Near enough for King Oswald and Aidan to talk whenever they needed to, but far enough for Aidan to keep his independence and speak truth to kings.

“These abbeys could be headed by women as well as men. Hild, as I told you, had a great company of men and women at Whitby. Monks and nuns alike became scholars and teachers.

“Then back came Wilfrid from Rome, fired with visions of the Roman Church's material wealth and glory, its claim to universal authority. His ambition was to bring Northumbria within that empire.

“He found an ally in King Oswy's son, Prince Alchfrith. Alchfrith ruled the southern part of Northumbria, roughly Yorkshire. He gave Wilfrid the abbey of Ripon. Wilfrid turned out the Celtic abbot and monks who refused to convert to Roman ways. Setting up his own brand of the Church in his father's Celtic Christian kingdom was just one act of Prince Alchfrith's bid for defiance against his father's power.

“King Oswy moved in. At all costs, he was determined to keep Northumbria one kingdom. He called the Synod of Whitby to decide the matter once and for all. Should Northumbria be Celtic or Roman? There's no doubt where his own heart lay. He had been brought up on Iona, like Oswald.”

Lucy's eyes moved round the group. She was willing them to care about this outcome, more than thirteen hundred years later.

“It seemed luck was on his side. The Roman party chose as its leader Agilbert, a Frankish bishop. Bishops had foremost authority in the Roman Church, but Agilbert had been thrown out of Wessex because the king there couldn't stand his appalling English. Everything he said at the Synod would have to be translated.

“The Celtic party was led, as was only proper, by the abbot of Lindisfarne, St Colman.”

“Is that the same as St Colman's House, where we're staying?” Frances asked.

“Yes, he's the one.” Lucy beamed encouragement. It was not often Frances joined in their discussions. “Colman was another Irishman, but had served in Northumbria for many years. He was deeply versed in
the tradition of St Columba and Iona. In the Celtic Church's favourite Gospel of St John, with its message of love.

“When Hild as host opened the Synod it must have looked like a foregone conclusion.

“Then the Romans sprang their trap. Since Bishop Agilbert struggled to speak English, Wilfrid would present their case. And Wilfrid was a passionate and clever orator. He ran rings round Colman. He baffled him with computations of the calendar that fixed the date of Easter. He derided Iona as a tiny island on the outermost edge of the world. He even poured scorn on the revered St Columba, whom the Celtic Christians held to be next to Christ. Poor old Colman was left shocked and speechless. Then Wilfrid played his trump card. Was it true, he asked Colman, that Jesus had entrusted to St Peter the keys of heaven? Honest scholar that he was, Colman could only say yes. Wilfrid appealed to the king.”

Lucy's blue eyes held her audience.

“Remember, King Oswy of Northumbria had much on his conscience. There was that matter of the murder of a rival king that had caused St Aidan to fast to death outside his fortress. He saw himself as a sinner, approaching the gates of heaven and pleading with St Peter for admission. He made his choice. ‘If St Peter holds the keys to heaven, then who am I to go against his Church?' The king ruled that henceforth the whole of Northumbria should go over to the authority of Rome.

“It was the death knell for women like Hild. No longer would spiritual leadership be in the hands of the abbeys. From now on, it would be the bishops who led the church. And bishops could only be male. Abbesses continued to attend councils, but no longer with the authority they had had. In time, they were pushed back behind convent walls, no longer out in the world influencing kings and peasants alike, the way they had done. At the Synod of Whitby, uniformity and male hierarchy won.”

“And so it should.” James's self-righteous voice cut across the room.

Lucy's phone rang. “Sorry!” She started guiltily. “I meant to turn it off.” She snapped the button without looking at the screen. “Right. Any questions?”

Aidan watched the smile of triumph with which James was gazing at her. As though he had her where he wanted her. How far was he prepared to take male power?

The discussion ended.

“Before we leave for the Lindisfarne Centre, folks, I want to give you time to look at the books and artefacts here. It's a far better collection than the few things I brought for you to see at St Colman's House.” Lucy gestured at the displays around them.

Aidan saw her slip her mobile out of her pocket and switch it on.

There was a general movement, as people rose from their seats and moved forward. Aidan found himself less concerned with the exhibitions of the Celtic Church than with the faces and body language of the people crowding the room. He moved deliberately to stand between James and Lucy. He knew he was being foolish. Whoever was threatening her would surely not do anything in a room full of people. On Lucy's other side, Valerie was talking to her. The tall figure of the older woman stooped forward over the minister's smaller body. She was asking something about King Oswy's baby daughter, who had been given to Hild's abbey at Whitby in fulfilment of his vow.

Nothing to worry about there, he told himself. Valerie had always seemed to be on Lucy's side.

Aidan turned away, his eye caught by a display of photographs of Holy Island. His eyes widened in admiration. Whoever had taken these pictures had captured the subtleties of colour in the flats of mud and sand at low tide. There was another of an oystercatcher with pink legs leaving a track of wedge-shaped prints across the beach, like Babylonian cuneiform. A haze of sea pinks turned the salt marshes into a rosy mist.

He heard Melangell's clear voice rise above the subdued murmur of voices. “They've got Mummy's book about St Chad.”

Lucy swung round. “Yes. He was one of the first English boys at St Aidan's school on Holy Island. He went south to Lichfield, when one of King Oswy's daughters married the Prince of Mercia.
Together, they brought Christianity to the Midlands.”

Melangell was holding the little book with Aidan's photograph of Chad's hermitage beside the lake at Lichfield on the cover.

“This was the last book Mummy wrote before she died.”

The room fell still. Appalled, Aidan realized that everyone was looking from Melangell to him. He wished himself anywhere but here, under the unbearable gaze of so much sympathy.

Lucy turned to face him. She was so close their arms were touching. He saw two spots of colour burn on her cheekbones. There was the shock of guilt in her blue eyes.

“Aidan!” It was almost a whisper. “I didn't realize. I'm so sorry! I thought from the way you spoke…”

“That we were separated,” he muttered. His face felt stiff with an illogical anger. “I meant you to. I didn't want to talk about it.”

He felt her eyes read his face. She was too close, but he couldn't move away. The ample figure of Sue was close behind him, hemming him in.

Lucy's phone rang again. For a second more, her gaze held his. Then she extricated herself from the crowd and moved away to the door. She was lifting the phone to her ear as she left the sitting room for the quieter hall.

He was left with the rest of them, the murmured awkward condolences he could not bear. He longed to flee the room, to find the quiet outside, an empty beach.

He had only taken a step towards the door when Lucy reappeared. One look at her told him that something had happened. She was tense, her face alive with something between agitation and elation.

Her voice rang out across the room. “Folks, I'm sorry. There's been a change of plan. I've just had a call from Detective Inspector Harland. He's back on the island, at the village school. He wants to see all of us right away.”

A wave of astonishment and apprehension ran through the group.

Elspeth was the first to put a name to the alarm surfacing in all their minds. “So he's decided she didn't throw herself off a rock. He thinks Rachel was murdered. And one of us here did it.”