The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries (9 page)

“I’ve actually quite taken to Veronica, although she is a pragmatic rather than a warm personality. She is organized and looks like doing her job thoroughly – which is more than Henry did, bless him!”

Laura, who understood Wendy to be referring to both the new Vicar of Claresby and the old, took the glass of sherry which Rupert was proffering her and said, “Yes, I thought she seemed practical and capable when I met her. I don’t think we want touchy-feely in our vicar, do we?”

“Not really. On the down side, it is a pity that she is quite so attractive and that she is a widow; not that the poor woman can be blamed for either of these facts. But the practical upshot is that half the men in the congregation have a crush on her and the rest disapprove of her, as if beauty is somehow inappropriate in a member of the clergy.”

“Yes, well physical beauty wasn’t an issue with Henry,” observed Laura, “although I’m sure that problems with young, handsome curates must have been an issue for centuries before the coming of women vicars. I don’t see why the fact that the vicar is an attractive woman should cause controversy.”

“Well, she doesn’t do herself any favours,” said Wendy. “There are rumours. Allowing Strider to come into the vicarage for food and the occasional shower doesn’t help.”

“I think that reflects well on her,” commented Rupert. “It is part of the vicar’s job to help the needy.”

“Strider was certainly in need of a shower,” guffawed Wendy’s husband, Phil. “He came into The Claresby Arms and stood next to me at the bar, so I was left in no doubt!”

“There isn’t any water or electricity in that caravan of his, and they won’t have him in the farmhouse with the children. Not that I think there is any harm in him, but he is odd,” Wendy replied.

“Yes,” mused Laura, “and he turned up about a week after the Reverend Dahl, which made it look like there was some connection.”

“Also, the Bishop is set against her, which isn’t going to make for a peaceful parish.”

They all nodded in agreement with Wendy, understanding that by the Bishop, she meant the churchwarden, Monty Howard, so called because he acted with such highhanded authority.

“To be honest, though, Monty did need bringing down a peg or two,” said Phil. “He is only the churchwarden. I’m not saying it isn’t a vital job and he does work very hard, but as Henry got older Monty was taking one in three of the morning services and nearly all those in the evening. During the interregnum he was virtually omniscient – and would have been if he could have presided at Holy Communion.”

“He was pretty impossible to work with on the PCC,” agreed Wendy, who was both a longstanding member of the church choir and currently a member of the parochial church council. “What I don’t understand is why he finally agreed to recommend the appointment of a woman vicar to Bishop John. He seemed implacably opposed to the idea, but when we interviewed candidates, Veronica was by far the most impressive.”

“It struck me,” said Phil, “that he agreed to it with the air of someone who foresaw that the appointment would be a disaster and relished the future opportunity of saying “I told you so!” when everything went wrong.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” sighed Wendy. “Veronica has had a bad enough time over the last year or so, let’s hope that that she settles in and is happy.”

Laura had left the little group whilst she basted potatoes and put the vegetables on to steam and by the time she returned to the red room the Reverend Dahl had joined them as had Dr Keith Lowe, the village GP and a handsome man in his early forties. As a bachelor he was always happy to dine at the manor house and, to Laura’s knowledge, he had not had a girlfriend in the six years he had lived in Claresby. The story told was that his fiancée had run off with his best friend weeks before their wedding and he was broken-hearted. He certainly never gave the impression of romantic melancholy, being a cheerful, humorous man with twinkling blue eyes. Laura could not imagine what the best friend could have had to offer that this man did not. Discussions had turned to the painting, The Sphinx by Sebastian Fullmarks, which looked very striking over the fireplace.

“I thought he was more modern than traditional,” the Reverend Dahl commented, looking closely and with admiration at the painting. “I’ve been reading up about him because he is helping with the design of our new stained glass – a tribute to the late Floyd Bailey.”

“Yes, well he does do a few traditional paintings as well as his more exotic and challenging works,” said Laura. “This was meant to be a view of Claresby Hall – but that’s another story. In fact Sebastian did go on to do a splendid painting of Claresby which is in the Great Hall; I’ll show you after dinner.”

“I’d like that.” The vicar turned and smiled at Laura.

“There used to be a handful of watercolours of old Claresby village on the walls in the vicarage,” began Keith Lowe. “Are they still there?”

Whilst he engaged Veronica in conversation Laura took the opportunity to look more closely at the woman. She was wearing black tailored trousers and a clerical style shirt with her dog collar. Rather than taking the edge off her femininity and beauty, these rather dour, masculine clothes had the effect of enhancing these attributes. Voluptuous was the word to describe Veronica Dahl. Of mid-height, she had an hourglass figure, her trim hips and slender waist enhanced by the cut of the trousers, whilst the sombre shirt failed to conceal the swell of her breasts. She had a wide, sensual mouth, green almond-shaped eyes, a nose a little sharp for absolute perfection and a heart-shaped face with well defined cheek-bones. Her hair was thick and lustrous and so dark a shade of brown as to look almost black. She did not appear to be wearing make-up other than the burgundy coloured lipstick that traced the full curve of her lips. Laura noticed, with the merest twinge of annoyance, that even Rupert seemed unable to take his eyes off her. She was speaking in a pleasant, low, slightly musical voice.

“The pictures and a few cumbersome pieces of old furniture were resident when I moved in. In fact the vicarage here at Claresby is so much bigger than my previous one that I am rattling around a bit. I moved just after Christmas, so everything was a bit chaotic and even after nearly two months I’ve still got things in boxes. I suspect a few of the inessentials will never see the light of day. I have a wall mounted bookshelf to reconstruct. The removal men took it apart for me, but I see no immediate likelihood of my developing the DIY knowhow to put it back together.”

“Oh, I could pop around to the vicarage and help you with that,” volunteered Keith Lowe.

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that.” The hint of a glow passed between them, but Laura interrupted the moment by suggesting that they went in to the kitchen as dinner would be ready to serve.

During the course of the meal the chat was casual and encompassed subjects such as the merits of nineteenth century literature and the popularity of the local allotments. After dessert had been eaten, Wendy asked Veronica how the services had gone that morning in church.

“Well enough,” replied Veronica, her cheeks becomingly flushed by wine and the warmth of the kitchen. “I was cheating a bit because I virtually recycled an old favourite sermon of mine. Just as well because of course I was a bit flustered and wasn’t up to the challenge of new territory.”

“Why flustered?” inquired Wendy, draining the last of her wine.

“Oh, I suppose none of you were there. I forgot - you’ve been out of the choir this week, Wendy, because you’ve only just got over that nasty bout of laryngitis. Well, some kind soul had daubed “HARLOT” across the wall in nice, red capitals. I suppose Monty will have to find a way of getting it removed. Anyway, by the time we noticed there was nothing we could do before everyone started to arrive for the family service. Goodness knows what they all made of it. Nobody said anything to me, but I could see them all looking. I had hoped that I had left that kind of thing behind.”

“That sounds rather unpleasant,” Laura commented. “But you make it sound as if this isn’t the first time that something of this nature has happened?”

Veronica sighed rather wearily. “Unfortunately this isn’t the first time. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness after Rory died, although I was too wrapped up in my own grief to really be bothered by it then. I’m surprised the whole story hasn’t preceded me here, but you may as well hear it from me. Rory, my husband, was quite a bit younger than me: twenty-six to my thirty-five. We had been married for just over a year and I think that people had just got over commenting about our age difference when Rory died. Well, when a young and apparently healthy man like Rory dies it is an outrage against nature and reason and I think people look for something or someone to blame,” Veronica rationalized. “Since I was the person closest to him they picked on me. It wasn’t a matter of common knowledge that he had a congenital heart defect, so they speculated on their own explanations for his death – very creative they were. And then there were his parents. Of course they did know about his heart, but they still blamed me. The fact that they refused to come to the funeral if I was there caused no end of gossip, as did the fact that I eventually stayed away – simply because I didn’t want to cause them any more distress.”

“Why on earth did his parents blame you?” exclaimed Wendy

“They had disapproved of our relationship from the start. Rory and I first met when he was only sixteen and I was briefly dating his older brother who had been at university with me. Rory and I had a bond from the start and stayed in touch. It wasn’t until he was in his twenties that we became romantically involved, but his parents still disapproved. Added to that, I encouraged Rory to live life to the full – which is what he wanted. His parents convinced themselves that his heart would have held out longer if he hadn’t had such an active life. The irony is that he died whilst quietly reading a book.”

“Perhaps just gently let it be known that your husband died of a heart attack and then any rumours will just fall flat here,” suggested Rupert.

“That’s pretty much what I intend to do,” said Veronica. “My hope is that as I settle in and people get to know me, all the gossip will just fizzle out. With any luck this incident is a one-off.”

But in these hopes Veronica Dahl was to be severely disappointed.

A cold February was blown into March by a series of blustery gales. Claresby Manor was left looking windswept and littered with small branches and large boughs along the margins of the woods. Having overseen the refurbishment of the house itself, Laura was beginning to turn her mind to the grounds, fluctuating between grandiose schemes to have the whole estate landscaped, to merely going out herself with wheelbarrow and gardening gloves to help Bob, the gardener, in trying to just keep the place in some semblance of order. Within the parish of Claresby the appointment of the Reverend Dahl continued to cause controversy. Opposition to her took two forms. There was the persistent grumbling of the old-guard of parishioners, headed by Monty Howard, who objected to the fact that their new vicar was a woman on principle and resisted every little attempt she made to bring the parish into the twenty-first century. A crèche for children was met with horror, the use of different forms of prayer were treated as sacrilege. Her sermons were considered to be too informal, her humour treated as an outrage. The suggestion of a service dedicated to parishioners’ pets resulted in the boycott of the church for two weeks by objecting parishioners, although Veronica observed wryly to Rupert, when he and Laura had lunch with her one day, that this was an absolute blessing, and she was considering substituting half the congregation with hamsters and rabbits on a permanent basis if it kept the complainers out for good.

There was, however, a second way in which objections to the Reverend Dahl were expressed and whilst the constant griping of elderly parishioners opposed to change was unpleasant, these attacks were both more sinister and more personal. They mostly took the form of notes being left in the hymn books accusing her of being a whore or a witch and even a murderess. Sometimes notices on this theme appeared on the board where hymn numbers were meant to be displayed and sometimes they were sent to the vicarage. Monty, as churchwarden, was suddenly and infuriatingly slow to remove any of the writing that occasionally appeared scrawled on the walls of the church and the word “HARLOT” was eventually removed by Dr Lowe on his afternoon off. Perversely the result of all this was a sudden increase in the congregation at Claresby Church, the newcomers made up of those curious to see the controversial new vicar and those hoping for a bit of scandal and possibly even an outbreak of abuse during the Sunday service itself.

Wendy, making one her regular visits for morning coffee with Laura, gave the folks at the manor their twice weekly update.

“Monty and his minions actually refused to follow her in prayers this week,” Wendy said, helping herself to an all-butter shortbread. “They talked amongst themselves. It was very awkward.”

“They sound like badly behaved school children; why didn’t Veronica chuck them out? In fact, why do they still attend every service if they are only going to try and undermine everything Veronica does?”

“Simply because it is undermining her. If they stopped coming, the problem would be solved. In their eyes it is their church and she has no right to be there. They want to drive her out. And Veronica is trying her best to ignore them – that’s what you do with bullies.”

“What percentage of the congregation is against her?”

“Well, that’s just the thing, only a very small percentage. I swear that Monty Howard is at the root of it all. Without him, there would have been one or two who grumbled a bit, but he is orchestrating a sustained campaign of hate. I never liked the man, but now I loathe him.”

“Is Veronica getting the support she needs?”

“The choir are squarely behind her. Anne Jones left in protest, but she was always a semitone flat, so we won’t miss her. Frank, our organist, is picking up the slack by doing a lot of the churchwarden’s duties about the place and checking up that Monty hasn’t failed to do something that will make problems for the vicar.”