The Man with a Load of Mischief (28 page)

“Who is it this time?” asked Appleby, wearing a smile like a Christmas wreath.

Jury, feeling shabby and guilty about the vicars death — could he have averted it by being in Long Piddleton instead of Weatherington? — said bleakly, ‘The Reverend Smith. Denzil Smith. He was vicar of St. Rules.”

The police photographer — they always reminded Jury of rather grim-faced tourists — was taking pictures of the corpse from every conceivable angle, bending himself like a contortionist. Jury fingered a cigarette out of his packet and watched the print man with his glass and brush dusting everything from doorknobs to lampshades. One detective constable had stationed himself at the door, one was roaming the upstairs, and one was about to start taking directions in this room from whoever wanted to give them.

When the picture taking was finished, Dr. Appleby bent over the body, and Wiggins stood behind him, notebook in hand. Wiggins looked peaked. And no wonder. Appleby droned on with the details about the manner of death, the condition of the victim — height, weight, years. He put the approximate time as between six and eight that evening. But state of rigor, he said, was not that conclusive. There was a jarring familiarity about everything, as if the same film were being run again and again.

There was another crunch of tires, slamming doors, opening doors, and the stretcher men came in for the removal of the body. They stood mutely at attention waiting for Appleby to give the sign. Appleby finished his cursory examination, and they wrapped the body in a rubber sheet.

When everyone had finished in the library, and the print man had trudged upstairs with a detective sergeant, Appleby
lit up. He blew a small smoke ring and said, “I was considering a little cottage here for my retirement. But in the circumstances, I'm not sure it would be a good investment.” He snapped up his bag and was at the front door when he turned to tell Jury he would see him. Soon.

“That doctor's got a weird sense of humor,” said Melrose.

Jury was back at the desk, plucking the paper up and studying the notes the vicar had made. There had been a smear of ink on his finger, Jury had noticed, and there was a similar smear on the paper.

Car doors outside were opening and slamming shut. Headlights turned the fog yellow as the cars backed up. Wiggins returned and collapsed on the couch, pulling out his handkerchief. Long Piddleton was doing his mythical ailments no good at all. A clap of thunder and a terrified shout from Wiggins made Jury whirl round to see, in a flash of lightning, a shape and a pale face outlined beyond the French window behind the desk. Jury bolted toward the window and then stopped, seeing who it was: “Lady Ardry! What in the
hell
— ?”

“Agatha!” exclaimed Melrose.

She stepped inside, dripping buckets of water. “No need for obscenities, Inspector. I've been watching the proceedings.”

Jury had had enough. “Wiggins! Slap the cuffs on her!”

Her face went through a selection of random expressions from disbelief to tooth-clattering fear. Wiggins, who had no cuffs and never had, was looking at Jury with wonder.

She found her voice. “Melrose! Tell this crazy policeman he can't —”

Melrose merely lit up a cigar in leisurely fashion. “I'll get you a good solicitor, never fear.”

She was about to go for her nephew, when Jury stepped between them. “Very well. We shan't take you in yet. But what were you doing out there?”

“Watching, naturally. I wasn't standing about trying to get a suntan,” she snapped.

“I shouldn't take that tone with the inspector, Agatha.
You may have been the last person to see the vicar alive!”

She gulped and went dead white. She might want to be a
witness, but not that much of one. “Well, I followed you. Shortly after you left the inn. Borrowed Matchett's bicycle. Damned unpleasant ride it was, too.”

“You stood outside all this time?”

“Got here when that doctor was messing about over the body. I saw it! Trueblood's letter opener! Told you, didn't I?” Then she must have remembered poor Denzil was a good friend, and she dropped her head in her hands. There were moans.

Jury said to her. “You saw the bracelet here earlier?”

She nodded. “Feel a bit faint. A spot of brandy, perhaps?”

Plant went to get her the drink and Jury sat down opposite her. “Lady Ardry, what was the vicar doing while you were here?”

“Talking to me, naturally.”

Jury said impatiently, “I mean, what else?”

“I don't know. Wait a bit. Yes, he was doing his sermon. Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as usual. Some sort of gibberish about church building.” She accepted the snifter from Melrose, knocked back half the drink, wiped her mouth rather inelegantly on her new leather glove and looked round the room bleakly.

Jury produced the paper from the desk. “Does this look like anything the vicar might have included in his sermon?”

Agatha got out her glasses, peered closely at the notation on the paper and said, “What's this nonsense? ‘God encompasseth us'? Doesn't make sense. Doesn't sound like Denzil, either. Too religious.”

Jury folded the paper and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “If you saw the bracelet, where was it then?”

She pointed: “He took it out of the desk drawer.”

“And said he was going to put it back in the same place he found it, is that right?” She nodded. “We've searched this house top to bottom,” said Jury, shaking his head.

“How about the church?” asked Melrose.

“My God!” said Jury. “Of course — no one thought of the church. Let's have a look, then.” He told Wiggins to stay in the house.

 • • • 

“Stay clear of the dog's side,” whispered Agatha as they made their way up the church walk, she trailing.

“The what?”

“Oh, you know. They always bury a dog underneath un-baptized babies and suicides to keep them from walking.”

“How interesting,” said Jury.

 • • • 

Jury had his electric torch, and Plant had got another from the Bentley. The church was damp, very cold, and lit by spider-webs of moonlight diffused through the window traceries. Switching on his torch, Jury let it play over the pews, which ran the length of the nave. Empty squares in the side panelings showed there had once been nameplates — now, democratically, removed. He imagined one of them had been the private pew of Melrose Plant's family. The larger pews were lined with baize or puce. Rows of plainer ones were meant for the farmers and simpler folk, and were unlined.

Since Agatha had no torch and could not get Plant's out of his hand, she held first to one sleeve, then to another. At one point, she caught her heel in the loose, soft carpeting that lay over the brass rubbings and nearly fell. Jury and Plant heaved her up.

“Where the devil are the lights?” asked Jury. No one seemed to know.

They walked down the nave, fanning the aisles with their torches, and Agatha plucking at their sleeves like a blind woman.

There was a rood loft, no doubt rebuilt after the Reformation. A loft staircase had been cut in the masonry. The pulpit was higher than any Jury had ever seen before, one of those eighteenth-century “three-deckers,” the pulpit, lectern, and clerk's seat combined in three tiers. A little staircase running up to the pulpit allowed the vicar to ascend.

“I'll just have a look up here,” said Jury, mounting the narrow, thin stair. There was a shelf running around the inside of the pulpit, on which were a few books, and he ran his flashlight over them. Only a well-thumbed New Testament, and a Book of Common Prayer.

“Find anything?” asked Melrose.

Jury shook his head, and then noticed the lamp, which was hung over the pulpit on a brass arm. He reached up and pulled the beaded cord. A pool of warm light spread across the pulpit and fanned out through the chancel, where it ended weakly before the altar.

He descended the steps and the three of them walked under the chancel arch, Lady Ardry still plucking at Plant's coat as if the murderer were at that moment breathing heavily in the dark seclusion of one of the unlit aisles. The altar had been freshly decked with flowers for the holiday services. In the dimly lit and damp enclosure, they gave off a fragrance that was heady and exotic. There was a small sacristy in the southeast corner, which opened into the church by a door in the chancel wall. Jury went through it, played his light over the tiny room, and let it stop a moment on the chalice. Perhaps it was his insatiable policeman's curiosity. He walked over to it and drew the napkin off the top.

Inside the cup was a gold charm bracelet.

Quickly, he pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket, shook it open, and reached into the chalice. He went back out to the altar, where the two others were standing, looking at the altar.

“Goor Lord!” said Agatha when she saw what he was holding.

“In the chalice, if you can believe it.”

There was a brief silence as they considered their prize. “But wouldn't it have been found last Sunday?”

“No Communion,” said Lady Ardry. “Denzil was always forgetting Communion. Anyway, he'd not have used that. Thought it unsanitary. He used small, silver cups, occasionally.”

“You're assuming,” said Melrose, “it was Ruby left it there? Before she disappeared?”

“Yes. It was rather clever, really. I think it was a kind of insurance. She knew the bracelet was important, and knew it would eventually be discovered, if she didn't get back to claim it herself. One would almost think she'd a head on her shoulders.”

“That,” said Lady Ardry, “is doubtful.”

 • • • 

When they returned to the Man with a Load of Mischief fifteen minutes later, Jury found that Pluck had managed to arrive and detain the others, and that they were none too happy about it. They were bunched up at the bar: Trueblood, Simon Matchett, the Bicester-Strachans, and Vivian Rivington. Isabel sat alone at the bar drinking a syrupy liqueur. Sheila Hogg, according to Pluck, had left before he got there, apparently in a fit of temper over a flirtation between Darrington and Mrs. Bicester-Strachan.

Jury asked Daphne Murch to bring him cigarettes and read through the statements Pluck had taken down. There was not one of them who could substantiate an alibi for the hour or two before they got to the inn. He seemed to remember Plant's saying that Lady Ardry had been with him during that time, and, if so, she might be clear. But Jury would take a bit of delight in keeping that to himself for a while. As for the others, any one of them could have left the inn here at almost any time without attracting undue attention. It was only a few minutes to the vicarage, and cars were always pulling in and leaving the cobbled courtyard. Jury learned from Pluck's notes that Darrington had driven Lorraine home to get her checkbook. Likely story, that. Sheila Hogg must have thought so too. At one point, Jury remembered Matchett's leaving the lounge bar. And at another, Isabel had been missing. Maybe just to the loo, but, still, there it was. Everyone and no one.

When he looked up from his notes, everyone was staring or fiddling with buttons, or laces, or hair. Jury told Wiggins to go after Sheila Hogg and get a statement from her; he would stay here and follow up on Constable Pluck's notes.

It was Simon Matchett who broke the tension by saying: “I've a feeling of
déjà vu
about this. One might think we were all back here the night that man Small was . . .” But his voice broke over the last few words.

“How true, Mr. Matchett. And now, if I could see each of you? Constable Pluck, I think the best place might be the small room in the front.”

 • • • 

“Mr. Bicester-Strachan, I'm sure this is extremely painful for you. I know you were a very good friend of the vicar.” Bicester-Strachan kept his head averted, taking out his handkerchief, then stuffing it back in his pocket. “You were supposed to meet Mr. Smith here, I believe you said?”

Bicester-Strachan nodded: “Yes. We were to have a game of draughts after dinner. That is, he wasn't coming here for dinner, but after he had done his sermon for tomorrow . . .” The voice cracked.

“When did you see him to make these arrangements?”

“Just this afternoon. About two, I suppose it was.” The old man's gaze wandered round the room, as if he were trying to fix on something to take his mind off the vicar's death.

“You went outside for a walk — did you leave the premises?”

“What? Oh, no. Just walked up and down in the lot. It gets so stuffy in the bar with all the cigarette smoke. And I was concerned about Denzil.” He looked puzzled. “He's always so prompt.” And Bicester-Strachan turned toward the door as if he might expect the vicar to walk through it, even then.

“Do you recognize this, Mr. Bicester-Strachan?” Ruby Judd's bracelet was lying on the gate-legged table, resting on Jury's handkerchief. Bicester-Strachan shook his head and looked annoyed, as if Jury really shouldn't be so frivolous as to bring the subject around to jewelry.

“But you knew Mr. Smith had found it this morning.”

Bicester-Strachan frowned. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Didn't the vicar inform you he had found a bracelet belonging to Ruby Judd?”

“Ruby? That poor girl who was . . . yes, I suppose he did. But I didn't think much about it.”

Jury thanked him and excused him, thinking the man looked as if he'd aged a good ten years in the course of these two hours.

 • • • 

“Mr. Darrington, you drove Mrs. Bicester-Strachan home for her checkbook, is that right?”

“Yes.” Oliver didn't meet his eyes.

“Why did she need it?”

“Why? Good Lord, how should I know?”

“Well, surely, Mr. Bicester-Strachan had money for dinner. Or Matchett would put anything on a chit for any of you, surely.”