When Markby returned to the church he found a scene of some confusion. The crowd was as numerous as before and additional vehicles had arrived including one near which stood two sombre men, waiting patient and motionless. Though the sightseers were jostling for a good view of the church, around the van and the men there was a space. A cordon sanitaire, thought Markby with grim amusement. On the one hand the crowd was fascinated by a violent death. On the other hand, the formalities of death itself were too close to home.
Pearce appeared clad in protective clothing as Markby made his way into the porch.
‘They won’t disperse!’ he said irritably. He put his hand to his jaw.
‘Something wrong?’ Markby enquired.
‘What? Oh, no. I’m just fed up with that lot of ghouls out there. Why won’t they go home?’
‘It’s never any different, Dave. They’ll go home once the body’s been taken away.’
Pearce sniffed. ‘Dr Fuller’s here.’
‘Better go and have a word with him, then,’ Markby murmured. ‘Got a spare suit there?’
Inside the church lighting had been set up but the photographer was beginning to pack away his cameras. Fuller, the pathologist, teddy bear like in his one-piece disposable suit, was standing a little forlornly by the corpse.
‘This is very inconvenient,’ he said as Markby, now similarly clad, came up. ‘You’ll be wanting a post mortem as soon as possible and I’ve tickets for a concert at the Festival Hall tonight. My wife and I have been looking forward to it but it does mean travelling up there this afternoon. We had hoped,’ Fuller continued, fixing Markby with a look which suggested all this was his fault, ‘to stay overnight in London. My wife wants to do some shopping.’
‘What about Streeter?’ Markby named Dr Fuller’s assistant.
‘In Marrakesh,’ returned Fuller.
‘On holiday?’
‘Not a holiday, a conference. Don’t ask me why they chose Marrakesh.’ Fuller turned his discontented stare on the hapless Hester Millar. ‘This lady has considerably upset my plans. I shall have to leave Miriam in London and return on an early train to carry out this examination.’
Markby didn’t know whether to be amused or cross. He’d known Fuller for years. Fuller’s obsession with music and his family were famous. Nevertheless, the man was meticulous as regarded his profession. Markby knew he’d get the post mortem results through within a couple of days. Fuller was just letting off steam.
‘Now you’ve seen her,’ Fuller was saying, indicating the body. ‘Perhaps we could take her away? The chaps are waiting outside.’
‘I saw them,’ Markby murmured. ‘Unless Inspector Pearce has other ideas, let them take the body by all means.’
The undertaker’s men arrived with their temporary coffin. They lifted the inert mass which had been Hester Millar gently from the pew. As they did something glinted on the ground by her feet.
Markby stepped forward and using a biro, hooked up a ring of keys.
Hester’s body was zipped into a black body bag and deposited neatly in the coffin. Markby and Dr Fuller followed it from the church. The crowd fell silent as it appeared, was loaded into the van and driven away. Markby turned to the watchers.
‘Right, you might as well all go home now. We’ll be busy here for a long time but there will be nothing for you to see.’
They shuffled about but then began to go their various ways, several of the men disappearing into the Fitzroy Arms. Fuller had driven away.
‘Thank goodness for that!’ muttered a voice at his elbow and Markby turned to see Pearce. He beckoned the inspector back inside the church and held up the keyring.
‘These were hidden by the body. She’d used them to open up. Then she walked over to that pew, put the keys down on the little ledge here and when she fell forward, stabbed, they were knocked to the ground.’
He held the biro with the dangling keyring towards Pearce who searched in his pocket, produced a small plastic bag, and slipped it over the keys.
‘And,’ Markby went on, producing Ruth’s keyring from his
own pocket, ‘Mrs Aston has lent me her set. Have you checked the vestry, Dave?’
‘We’ve been in there,’ Pearce said. ‘It’s behind that curtain. There is a small area at the rear behind a screen, locked off. I was hoping to get some keys from Mrs Aston. I didn’t fancy breaking it down, being a church. The tower’s locked, too.’
‘Then we’d better put Ruth Aston’s set to good use.’
The two of them made their way to the vestry. It was empty of furniture except for an old wooden table scored with the initials of choirboys long dead. Rows of pegs along the wall were bare of the robes which might once have hung there. The screen to which Pearce referred was of blackened oak and rose nearly to the ceiling. The gap above had been filled in with what looked like chicken wire.
Markby inserted the key labelled ‘Vestry’ in the lock. It turned easily. ‘Someone comes in here,’ he observed. ‘Oiled.’
But there was nothing in the tiny office behind the door but a box of candles, two tall wooden candle-holders, once gilded but now scratched and faded, and a tin of polish. A sepia photograph hanging crookedly on the wall depicted a nineteenth-century clergyman with muttonchop whiskers and a look of confidence which provided ironic contrast to the stripped surroundings.
‘Perhaps they use it when someone takes a service here,’ Pearce suggested, poking around in the candle box. ‘Nothing here.’
Markby slammed the door of an empty cupboard. ‘All the church records must’ve been moved out when the building fell out of regular use.’ He pointed at a paler patch on the dusty floor. ‘There must have been a safe there once.’
They relocked the vestry and went back to the nave. By common consent they made for the tower door. Here entry also proved easy. Markby peered at the lock.
‘This has been oiled, too. That’s odd. Ruth Aston told me they never climbed the tower.’
The door clicked open and swung silently inwards. Markby ran his finger over the hinges and showed Pearce the resultant smear of oil. A spiral of stone steps ran upwards, thickly coated with dust but showing clearly the imprint of footwear.
Markby pointed at the prints. ‘Two people. Trainer soles, from the pattern. One set larger than the other. A couple of youngsters, one older? Or a man and a youngish woman, casually dressed?’
‘Perhaps whoever it is chews gum,’ Pearce said excitedly. ‘We found a piece over there, stuck on an effigy on a tomb. But it was all dried out, been there a week or more. Still, perhaps they were up here when Miss Millar came into the church—’
‘Then why not just wait until she left again?’ Markby pointed at the line of footprints. ‘Anyway, the prints have had time to gather their own dust, lighter than the surrounding grime, so they aren’t so very recent. I’d say made at least ten to fifteen days ago. Your theory won’t work, Dave, I’m afraid. It’s been a week or more since anyone came up here, too, for whatever purpose. Time enough for fresh dust to settle. Hester Millar’s killer wasn’t hiding up here.’
Pearce, a promising line of investigation abruptly terminated, mumbled, ‘Pity.’
The two of them climbed the narrow twisting stairs, taking care to keep to one side, clear of the trainer imprints. Pearce, treading in Markby’s footsteps, thought ruefully he was like
the page who followed that king who went out in the snow, in the Christmas carol. At intervals they passed window slits through which they could see across the surrounding churchyard and village street. At the top, they came out into a small room smelling strongly of age, damp mortar and bat urine. The bells hung above their heads, the ropes disappearing down through a square hole in the floor. Markby touched Pearce’s arm to indicate caution.
But Pearce was looking at something in the corner. ‘See there! Someone’s been camping out in here.’
A candle stub in a pottery holder stood on the floor beside an old sleeping bag which had been unzipped and opened out flat. Markby stooped and picked up a small empty packet. He held it up so Pearce could see it.
‘Here’s your explanation. Condoms. Either the youth of the village have found this spot or someone was making a illicit tryst. Whoever it is must have found a key which would turn the tower lock downstairs. As soon as one of the churchwardens has opened up the church of a morning, whoever it is contacts his or her partner and they rendezvous up here.’
They retreated to the floor of the church and locked up the tower again.
Markby handed the keys to Pearce. ‘You’d better keep these. I’ve told Mrs Aston we’ll return them in due course.’ He frowned. ‘We’ll have to find out who holds that other tower key, though just how I don’t know. Our mystery lovers are hardly likely to come forward and admit to desecrating the church. They may just have an odd key which turns the lock. These old-fashioned mortice locks can sometimes be opened like that. My mother used to keep a whole boxful of odd keys
for emergency use if one went missing. If that’s the case, we don’t have to worry. On the other hand, they may hold the entire set for the church, entrances and vestry, which would really put the cat among the pigeons. Yet Ruth says only she, Hester and James Holland have keys. I’ll have to check that one out with James. The idea of a spare set of keys hanging around really muddies the water.’
Pearce grunted and pushed the keys into his pocket. ‘How did you get on at the house, sir? With Mrs Aston and that other batty old dear with the striped sweater?’
Markby summed up the rest of his conversation with Ruth Aston and added Meredith’s account of seeing someone leaving the churchyard at the far end as she’d approached the church.
‘It seems likely that she saw this old fellow, Twelvetrees. He’s the local gossip but he doesn’t seem to have put in an appearance here. At least, I couldn’t see anyone in the crowd who answered the description Meredith gave me. I thought I’d go along to his cottage and see what’s going on there.’
‘They’re a funny lot,’ observed Pearce of the villagers in general. ‘What with shenanigans in the belfry and all the rest of it. Good luck.’
Markby was well aware that his short progress from the church to Billy Twelvetrees’ cottage was being observed. It couldn’t be helped. There was no way any investigations in this village could be carried out with any kind of privacy, much less discretion. The atmosphere of excitement all around him was palpable. It could only get worse when the commuting population of incomers returned that evening and made for the Fitzroy Arms to soak up details of the day’s events. Mixed with
the excitement was a kind of decent horror and even a sense of being offended that this could happen here in their quiet community.
Or am I, Markby asked himself, looking back to that last enquiry I conducted here and translating what I felt then to what I feel now? It was a curious feeling, he supposed one could call it déjà vu, to be knocking on doors in Lower Stovey again after a gap of more than twenty years. The physical appearance of the village had changed in the intervening time, as he’d noticed on his visit to the Old Vicarage with Meredith yet, despite the loss of shop and school, it looked prosperous. Nearly all the cottages in the main street had been painted up and garnished with carriage lamps and the like. He guessed at second homes.
In this line of gleaming prosperity, the Twelvetrees’ dwelling stood out like a rotten tooth in an array of perfect gnashers. It hadn’t been painted for years. Its thatched roof was dark brown and disintegrating, held together by a hairnet of chicken wire through which could be seen patches of moss and sprouting weeds. The wooden frames of the windows were crumbling but the panes were well polished as was the fox-head doorknocker. He lifted it and rapped on the door. He hadn’t seen inside yet, but he could guess what he’d find.
No one came for a few minutes during which he heard a rattle above his head and knew someone was looking from the tiny window under the mouldering thatch to see who the visitor was. Eventually the door shuddered and was pulled open.
He found himself looking at a middle-aged woman in a pink overall, the colour oddly matched by her salmon-pink tightly-curled
hair. Her face was round and snub-nosed. Her lower lip was fuller than her upper lip and overlapped it, suggesting what dentists call an ‘overbite’ when the lower jaw protrudes further than the upper one. Her expression was truculent and he was forcibly reminded of a surly bulldog. He held up his identification.
‘We’ve got nothing to do with it!’ snapped the woman.
He ignored this. ‘Could I speak to Mr Twelvetrees? This is his house?’
‘Dad’s not in. He didn’t have anything to do with it, either. How could he at his age and in his state of health?’
‘Where is he?’ asked Markby bluntly.
‘I dunno. Gone out for a walk, like he does.’
‘Where does he walk normally?’
She uttered a sort of hiss which issued from the sides of her mouth. ‘Just round and about. He can’t go far, not with his hip.’
‘Oh?’ Markby smiled innocently at her. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Does he have a stick?’
‘He’s got one of them.’ She nodded her head and Markby was reminded of all the tinned salmon sandwiches he’d been obliged to eat as a child. ‘But what he needs is one of them new hips. Doctor says so. Only he’s obstinate, is Dad. He won’t go in no hospital.’
She glared at Markby and in the ensuing silence came a diversion. From the far end of the narrow hall, behind a door, another door slammed. They could hear someone wheezing and a sound like a stick tapping on flagstones. There must be a back entrance, an alley or such running behind these cottages.
Markby smiled at the woman again, something which
seemed to alarm her. ‘It sounds as if your father’s come home. Why don’t you go and see?’
He moved forward as he spoke and she retreated, allowing him to squeeze into the hall. As he did, the door at the far end opened and the sturdy outline of an elderly man appeared, filling the aperture. He raised his stick and jabbed it aggressively at the stranger.
‘Who’s this feller, then?’ he asked.
‘Policeman, Dad,’ said his daughter. ‘Don’t know what he wants. Well, he says he wants to talk to you. Can’t think why.’ This was accompanied by a sidelong contemptuous glance at Markby. ‘I suppose they’ve got to look as if they’re doing something. There’s been a bit of bother, someone’s died. I told him, you’ve got nothing to do with it.’
‘Murder,’ declared the old man with some satisfaction. ‘I met someone on my way home as told me about it. Well, Mr Policeman. You’d better come into my parlour, as the spider said to the fly.’ And disconcerting Markby considerably, he burst into a cackle of laughter.
His daughter shot forward and bundled him back into the kitchen. ‘You got to take them dirty boots off, Dad!’ she said loudly. Over her shoulder to Markby, she added, ‘You go on and wait for him. He’ll be with you direct.’
Markby obediently went into the parlour. The room in which he found himself spoke of poverty, not a recent lack of income but a generations-long want. Poor people begetting poor people, trapped in a narrow existence not only by lack of cash but by lack of education and a deep mistrust and fear of the outside world. He wasn’t surprised Billy Twelvetrees didn’t want to go to hospital. He suspected the very idea was terrifying to the old
man. He’d lived here for his entire life and he had no wish to be surrounded by strangers at this late stage.
He knew he had a few minutes to examine his surroundings. Billy and his daughter would be exchanging information and arguing what was the best thing to do with the visitor. Billy’s curiosity might make him eager to chat. His daughter’s instinct would be to tell him to button his lip and get rid of that copper, that it was nothing to do with them. The woman was a not unfamiliar type. It would be a mistake to think that because of her appearance and manner she didn’t have a sharp brain. She also had the instincts of her type, which were to round up and protect her young at any hint of danger from an intruder by physically placing herself between the threat and her charges. Her elderly parent had become, due to age and infirmity, her child. It was that curious and sad reversal of roles so often observed when the carer becomes the cared-for.
The room was cramped and full of furniture, all of it rickety. By the fire was an armchair with faded loose covers and the look of having been much sat in. Billy’s chair, he guessed. Above the mantelshelf hung a sepia portrait of a man in First World War uniform. Beneath it, along the shelf, stood further photographs. There was one, also sepia, of two children, a boy and a girl, dressed in their best and staring miserably at the camera. Next to it, in complete contrast, was a recent picture of a plump woman, bearing some resemblance to the one who’d opened the door to him, but better dressed in a floral skirt and white top and beaming happily at the lens. The building behind her looked unreal, an extravaganza of turrets. Markby was peering at it in an attempt to identify it, when the door opened. He turned guiltily.
Billy Twelvetrees stomped in, banging his stick down on the worn carpet. Behind him hovered his daughter but he soon dismissed her with ‘You go and bring us some tea, Dilys.’
Dilys went and Billy sat down in his armchair. If there’d been an argument in the kitchen, Billy had won it. Markby, guessing he wouldn’t be invited to sit, sat down anyway on a straight-backed Edwardian dining chair which didn’t feel too safe under him.
‘You were looking at our pictures,’ said Billy with a certain pride. He raised his stick again and used it to point in the manner of an old-fashioned schoolmaster. ‘That big ‘un, that’s my father. That one there is me and my sister, Lilian. Her son, Norman, he runs the pub here now. Done well for himself, Norman. That one is my elder daughter Sandra taken in Floree-da, at Disneyland. That one on the end is my wife and my kids, took when my boy was just starting school. We had a school in them days. It’s houses now.’
Markby looked at the photo which showed a plump sullen woman holding a baby on her lap. To either side of her stood two other children, a boy about five and a girl a little younger. The baby must be Dilys.
‘Your daughter, the one I’ve met, she lives with you, Mr Twelvetrees?’
‘Lived with me for years. I gave her a home. Her husband, Ernie Pullen, done a bunk. He was gone six months after their wedding day, run off with the barmaid at the Fitzroy Arms. Never saw hide nor hair of either of them again. I don’t know why he married our Dilys in the first place. She was never no oil-painting.’
The door opened as he spoke and Dilys entered with the tea. Her red face indicated she’d overheard his disparaging remarks. She put the tin tray down with unnecessary force on a small table and withdrew silently.
Billy chuckled. He picked up a mug and sipped from it though the amount of steam rising from it suggested it was very hot. Markby touched his mug tentatively and withdrew his hand.
‘Hester Millar, as I hear,’ said Billy, abruptly introducing the reason for Markby’s call. ‘Dead murdered.’
‘That’s correct. You would know her, of course.’
The old man nodded, slurping more hot tea. ‘Her and Mrs Aston, they look after the church. Mrs Aston is the old vicar’s daughter.’
‘You like to go in the church and talk to them, I hear.’
‘Did you?’ Billy glared at him. ‘And where did you hear that, I wonder?’
Markby only gave a bland smile.
‘I might do,’ Billy agreed grudgingly.
‘When did you last talk to one of them in the church?’
‘That’s a bit of a daft question, ain’t it? I don’t know. Maybe yesterday, maybe the day before. One day’s much like another to me. You’ll find that out when you get to my age.’
‘But not today?’
‘No,’ Billy’s small malevolent eyes met Markby’s without flinching. ‘I wasn’t in there today.’
‘Did you see Miss Millar outside the church, say walking towards it?’
‘No, why should I?’
‘Because I understand you were in the churchyard.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Billy promptly.
‘A witness saw you hurrying away from the building, over in the far corner of the churchyard.’
Billy scowled. ‘Who’s your witness? He wants spectacles, whoever he is.’
Markby waited silently. Billy turned the matter over in his mind. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘Only might, mind you! I might have cut across the corner of the churchyard on my walk. I often do that. I can’t recall exactly. At my age, your memory gives out. But I know I never went near the church itself. And I never saw no one.’
Billy appeared pleased with this somewhat contradictory statement. ‘That’s it,’ he said and picked up his mug again.
‘Does anyone else have a habit of dropping in the church?’ Markby asked him.
‘No.’ Billy shrugged. ‘Unless it’s visitors. They come to see the monuments. We got some very good monuments. They was nearly all put up to the Fitzroys. They used to be the big family around here. There’s none of ’em left now. There was a visitor in only the other day, tall good-looking woman. She and her partner, as she called him …’Billy sniggered, ‘they’d come looking to buy the old vicarage. Wants their heads seeing to, darn great place like that. It’s what you’d call a white ellyphant.’
‘Yes,’ said Markby, discomfited. ‘I don’t think we need count them. No one else?’
‘Who else,’ countered Billy, ‘comes to Lower Stovey? It’s the end of the world is Lower Stovey.’
‘But you’ve lived here all your life?’ Markby contemplated him.
‘It used to be a good deal livelier,’ Billy grumbled. ‘Before they took our school away and never replaced the old vicar. We had a couple of little shops, and all. They’ve gone. Now a feller comes a couple of times a week with a van selling groceries. He charges the earth. Mrs Aston, she takes Dilys with her into Bamford once a week and Dilys does our shopping then. Dilys cleans for her. She’s a nice lady, Mrs Aston.’
‘And Miss Millar? Was she a nice lady?’
‘She was.’ Billy sucked his discoloured teeth. ‘But she wasn’t a local. Mrs Aston, she’s one of us.’
Whether poor Ruth Aston liked it or not, reflected Markby, she was for ever to be associated with Lower Stovey in the minds of its native population.
‘She went to the village school for a bit,’ went on Billy. ‘She went to school with our Sandra and Dilys.’
Markby couldn’t help but think that time had dealt more kindly with Ruth Aston than with Dilys, who must be the same age but looked ten years older.
‘I remember when the village had a school,’ he said.
Billy stiffened. He put his mug down slowly. ‘How’s that, then?’
‘I was here before, oh, a long time ago. Twenty-two years. You still had the school then and a post office.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Billy, treating him to a wary look. ‘They never ought to have taken away our post office. I got nowhere to draw my pension. Dilys has to draw it for me when she goes to Bamford.’
There was a note of genuine resentment in his voice. Markby wondered if this meant that having got her hands on his pension money first, Dilys put most of it towards the housekeeping,
and doled out tiny amounts to her father which limited his spending power in the local pub.
‘There were a number of attacks on women in Stovey Woods,’ he prompted Billy. ‘That’s why I came here before.’
‘So they said,’ mumbled Billy, gazing into his empty mug. He looked up and his withered lips twisted in an unkind smile. ‘I never reckoned to it. Them girls give it away and then they took fright in case they found themselves in the family way. They made up that story. You ask anyone in the village.’
Markby well remembered this attitude at the time. It angered him as much now as it had then. He snapped, ‘Two of the victims were from outside the village, a hiker and a cyclist on the old drovers’ way.’
‘There you are, then,’ returned Billy unrepentantly. ‘What were they doing up there, all alone, a couple of young girls like that? Not decent. Asking for trouble and they got it.’ He jabbed a finger at Markby. ‘The police never found anyone, did they? Stands to reason they didn’t. There never were no Potato Man.’
‘You remember his nickname then,’ Markby observed drily.
‘‘Course I do. But that don’t mean he ever was real. He weren’t Ever since I was a boy there’s been stories about Stovey Woods. People used to reckon it was haunted. They said the old Green Man was up there. You know about him?’
‘I’ve heard of the Green Man,’ Markby told him.
‘Right, then you’ve heard all you need to. Folk have always believed there was something in those woods and when those girls started telling their stories, people remembered the old tales. Only instead of Green Man, they called him the Potato Man. But it’s the same feller and just as much twaddle.’
Billy pointed at the photograph of Sandra outside Disneyland. ‘It’s all as real as anything you’d see at that place. Dwarves and fairies and the like. In the old days, people believed anything. They was simple,’ concluded Billy, dismissing his forebears. ‘Daft as a brush.’
Markby got to his feet. ‘I don’t think you’re daft as a brush, Mr Twelvetrees. I want you to think carefully about today, about your walk, about the churchyard, about whether or not you went into the church or saw Miss Millar or anyone else. The police will call on you again. Not me, probably, but someone else.’
‘I’ll tell him the same as I told you,’ said Billy sourly. He brightened. ‘Here, tell ‘em to send one of the young policewomen!’ He gave Markby a cunning sidelong look. ‘I might talk to one of them.’
‘I’ll let myself out,’ Markby told him, ignoring this suggestion. What an unpleasant old devil he was. And lying through his teeth. He either saw Hester outside or inside the church. Markby would bet his bottom dollar on it.
The hall was empty but he could hear Dilys moving about in the kitchen. He tapped on the door and pushed it open. He was rewarded with a view of Dilys’s pink nylon rear as she bent over a chipped enamel pedal bin. He cleared his throat.
Dilys jumped up and the lid of the pedal bin clashed down. She whirled round.
‘I’m leaving,’ said Markby.
‘Right you are, then.’ She looked relieved. ‘Dad didn’t have anything to say to you, then?’
‘I expect he’ll tell you all about it. I understand you clean for Mrs Aston – and Miss Millar.’
‘I work for Mrs Aston,’ returned Dilys pedantically. ‘Miss Millar only lived there. It wasn’t her house.’
‘Were you there today?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t go every day this time of year, only Tuesday and Friday. I do a bit extra in the winter because of the stove in the old hearth. They burn logs in it. The ladies make no mess. I just go over there and do the rough work, such as it is.’
‘You went to school with Ruth Aston, your father tells me.’
She blinked. ‘Only for a couple of years. Then the vicar took her out of our school and sent her off to some fancy one. Don’t know why they ever sent her to our school in the first place. But the old vicar, he was full of ideas like that. You know, he thought he was being one of the villagers.’ Dily snorted. ‘Him? I often thought he ought to have been a schoolmaster himself, always with his head in books as he was. He had all kinds of daft ideas, always wanting to know about what he called local legends.’
‘Like the Green Man?’ Markby asked.
‘Oh yes, he was very keen on the old Green Man. He’d knock on people’s doors and ask them if they knew any stories. What he called folk memory. No wonder half the village thought he was crackers.’
Markby held out his hand. ‘Thank you, Dilys.’
She looked at his outstretched palm in dismay but nervously placed her stubby fingers on his. ‘No trouble I’m sure,’ she said with an assumed prissy gentility.
Back in his car, Markby stretched his hand out to put the key in the ignition and saw, to his surprise, that his shirt cuff
was stained with a pinkish smear. He’d been careful to touch neither the body nor anything in the area where it had been found. He frowned, peered at the offending stain, sniffed at it and finally, cautiously touched it. It was sugary, something he’d brushed against in Dilys’s kitchen. It would probably be difficult to remove. Dilys, in her own way, had had the last word.
Having left Pearce conducting investigations in Lower Stovey, Markby drove back to Bamford. As he put distance between himself and the village, he felt as if he drove out of thick cloud into sunshine. It was a feeling which had nothing to do with the weather which was mild and unremarkable. It was the atmosphere which clung to the place. But he couldn’t distance himself from what had happened there that day completely. He had a call to make.
Bamford vicarage was familiar to Markby and the vicar, James Holland, an old friend. But he wasn’t normally given to calling on James unannounced. As he walked up to the front door later that day he reflected that the vicar would guess it was police business of some kind as soon as he saw who stood on his doorstep.
‘Alan!’ exclaimed James with a flattering note of pleasure in his voice, before adding, as Markby had known he would, ‘Something wrong? Come on in and tell me about it.’
The vicar led the way to the antiquated kitchen, filled the kettle and plugged it in, then turned to his visitor. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, please, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘Comes out of the same kettle,’ returned James placidly,
unwittingly reminding Markby of the drinks dispenser at Regional HQ.
James’s tea was, thankfully, a big improvement on the brew dribbled out by the dread machine. They carried their mugs into the study and sat, facing one another, in large, rickety, comfortable armchairs. To Markby’s right were french windows giving on to the overgrown garden. The early evening sun bathed them in a warm orange glow.
‘This is a nice room,’ he said appreciatively.
James nodded. ‘It’s a nice house or would be, if it were done up. No chance of that. The bishop is still keen to sell it and put me in a modern three-bed box somewhere on one of the new estates. The PCC is fighting him tooth and nail and Bamford Council isn’t keen for fear of what might happen to what is a well-known building in the town. So I continue to sit here and the place continues to crumble about my ears.’
‘Meredith and I have been to view a former vicarage,’ Markby told him. ‘Out at Lower Stovey.’
‘The house-hunting, how’s it going? Lower Stovey,’ James went on meditatively. ‘Bit remote, I’d have thought.’ He drank some tea and as he did, his mug half vanished into his bushy black beard.
‘Its souls are in your charge, I believe.’
The vicar nodded. ‘I only get out there once a month. Sometimes old Picton-Wilkes takes a service for me there. He’s retired, over eighty, but likes to keep his hand in. The church is called St Barnabas and is quite a fine building. But it represents a problem to the diocese.’
‘Surplus to requirements?’
Another nod. ‘There’s hardly any congregation and the place is kept up by the dedicated efforts of a pair of ladies who act as churchwardens. One of them, Ruth Aston, is the daughter of the last incumbent. He died, let’s see, eighteen years ago but the problems had already begun. The population of the village was dwindling, few young families. Frankly, Pattinson, the vicar, was gaga for the last year. The decision was taken not to replace him and to attach St Barnabas to our church here in Bamford. The same thing happened to Westerfield church. So now I run the joint parishes. As regards Lower Stovey, a few new homes have been built there in the last five or six years, most when the old school was sold off for development. But it hasn’t made any difference to the community. The backbone of that was broken long ago.’
James sighed. ‘Mrs Aston is in her late fifties, as is her fellow-warden. They won’t want to carry on for ever. Within the next five years the crunch will come.’
‘I’m afraid, James, that the crunch has already come,’ Markby said, putting down his mug. ‘But not in any way you could have anticipated. One of your churchwardens, not Mrs Aston, the other one, Hester Millar, is dead.’
His words were met with shocked silence. Then James asked quietly, ‘How?’
Markby told him. ‘As it happened in the church, I’ve come not only to inform you, but to pick your brains.’
Father Holland stirred from the deep thought into which he’d been plunged since Markby began his tale. ‘About Lower Stovey? I’m afraid there’s little I can tell you about the place. To my shame my monthly visits are all I see of it. Ruth Aston could tell you—’
He broke off and shook his head. ‘But poor Ruth won’t be in a state to tell you anything. She and Hester were very old friends. After Gerald Aston died, Hester moved in with Ruth. My own acquaintance with Hester dates from then. She was a practical sort, no nonsense and absolutely no malice in her. I liked her but I can’t say I knew her well. Look, of course you’ll need to talk to Ruth, but anything to do with the church I’d rather you discussed with me. As for Ruth, I doubt she’ll make much sense in the circumstances.’
‘There’s something else I should tell you which you may or may not wish to tell Mrs Aston,’ Markby told him apologetically. ‘There are signs that someone has gained access to the church tower for – er – romantic reasons on at least one occasion.’
‘What?’ James sat up straight in his chair. ‘Fornicating in the church?’
‘It looks like it. In the belfry room to be exact. We found a packet of condoms and a sleeping bag up there.’
‘That does it,’ said James grimly. ‘We’ll have to rethink having the church open during the day. It looks as if we’ll have to keep it locked all the time. I’ll discuss it with Ruth when – when she’s over the initial shock of Hester’s death. But in the end, it’s my decision, and after what you tell me—’
‘I was hoping,’ Markby interrupted him, ‘that you could tell me if there are any sets of keys to St Barnabas other than the one you hold and those held by the churchwardens. Whoever has been using the tower for unofficial purposes uses a key to unlock the tower door.’
James paled. ‘Someone has a key? How is that? The only other set I know of is held by Harry Picton-Wilkes. I hardly think he’s been misbehaving in the tower.’
‘Then could I ask you if you’d kindly find out on my behalf where the reverend gentleman keeps his keys and whether they’re accessible to anyone else. Are they hanging up in a pantry or something like that?’
‘Yes, of course I will. I need to know, too!’ James looked flustered.
‘Do you know whether Hester Millar had relatives?’ Markby brought the subject back to the victim.
Again a shake of the head. ‘I can only repeat I know – knew – little or nothing about Hester. What I know of Ruth is really only through her connection with the church and, of course, through Gerald, her late husband whom I knew slightly. I’m afraid I can only refer you to Ruth for details of Hester’s background.’
Markby looked through the small square panes of the french windows at the untrimmed hedges and weed-choked borders. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on this garden.
‘Just now you spoke of the backbone of the community of Lower Stovey as being broken. Were you referring only to the population drift away?’
He was aware of James Holland’s intelligent gaze fixed on him. The vicar took his time before replying. Eventually he said:
‘I understand that there were some very unfortunate happenings there more than twenty years ago, before my time.’
‘A series of rapes,’ Markby said. ‘We never caught him.’
‘More’s the pity, and not only because such a monster must be caught in any circumstances. In a small community like that, such a terrible thing can shatter it and nothing can put it together again. Did the police suspect anyone? A village man?’
‘We had no suspects. He might have been a villager but equally he might not. Two of the attacks took place on the old drovers’ way. He might have been a tramp, a wandering psychopath. Perhaps someone who’d been in trouble elsewhere and had taken to the road on the run? We don’t know.’
‘And because the police never nailed him, the villagers were left harbouring suspicions about their neighbours,’ James said. ‘The old trust and reliance on one another were destroyed. That’s what broke the back of Lower Stovey. It’s probably what did for Pattinson’s mental faculties. They couldn’t cope and neither could he.’
‘That’s when I first visited the vicarage there, in the course of those enquiries,’ Markby told him. ‘I had a long chat with Pattinson. I remember him as an old-fashioned, bookish sort of chap. He certainly wasn’t gaga then. Not quite in tune with the modern world, perhaps.’
The vicar’s beard moved indicating that beneath it he was pulling a wry grimace. ‘I hadn’t realised you were involved, Alan. I didn’t intend to sound as if I blamed Lower Stovey’s collapse on any failure on the part of the police.’
‘But we did fail,’ Markby said. ‘And when we fail, communities do suffer. An unsolved serious crime is like an open sore, never healing.’
‘And now you have a murder, Hester’s murder,’ James said.
‘Exactly. I don’t mean to fail Lower Stovey a second time.’
Something more than ordinary resolution in his tone had worried the vicar, who frowned. ‘Don’t take it personally, Alan. You’re a professional, as I am. You know as I do that sometimes you don’t win or you can’t rearrange matters. You and I both deal with cases which move us deeply. We’re human beings
and we get angry, distressed, depressed. But we can’t help others if we get carried away ourselves.’
Markby burst out energetically, ‘I do take it personally!’ He flushed and added, ‘Sorry. I know you’re right. It’s just …’ His voice tailed away.
James was nodding. After a moment he said, ‘Didn’t someone find bones in Stovey Woods recently? I read something in the local paper.’
Markby’s gaze was on the garden again. ‘Oh yes, the bones. I wonder, if they hadn’t been found, whether Hester Millar would be alive today.’
He had shocked the vicar for a third time in their conversation. ‘You think there’s a connection?’ James Holland frowned.
Markby put his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself upright. ‘Who knows? Probably not. I had no reason to say that and perhaps I shouldn’t have. But I don’t like coincidences, James.’ He smiled sadly. ‘You probably try to see the best in people. My problem is that I tend to see the worst. I’m like an old-time seafarer whose charts are marked by sightings of mermen and sea-monsters. I float precariously on a world seething with dangers, known and unknown. I see evil, James. I’m attuned to it. I smell it. I pick up its vibes. I scent evil in Lower Stovey.’
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, ‘Sorry, 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, ‘Yes?’
‘Ruth?’
She recognised the voice as belonging to James Holland and heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, James, I was thinking about phoning you. Have you—?’ She broke off.
‘Yes, 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. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said, ‘about 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.
‘We’ll worry about that later. Are you alone, Ruth? I’ll come out there straight away.’
‘No!’ She feared her voice was too sharp. ‘Thank you, James, but I’m fine, really.’ Ruth paused. ‘No, not really, but I can manage. You know what I mean. I’d rather be alone this evening.’
‘Then I’ll come over first thing in the morning.’ His voice was both competent and soothing. ‘Don’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, ‘Look, I’m very concerned about you. Have you eaten, Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ 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.
‘Have 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, ‘Hester?’
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, ‘Who’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.
‘Oh, Dilys!’ Ruth gasped, half relieved and half dismayed.
‘I 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.
‘I brought a bit of stew,’ Dilys said.‘’Cos I thought you’d probably not eaten anything. You need to keep your strength up.’
‘Thank you,’ Ruth replied weakly, stretching out her hands to take the dish.
‘I was watching out front,’ Dilys went on, ‘because 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.’
‘No, 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?
‘Dad 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. ‘Mr Pattinson wouldn’t have liked any of this, in his church, too.’
‘None of us likes any of it!’ Ruth almost shouted at her. She controlled herself and added, ‘But it’s kind of you, Dilys, and kind of your father to be concerned. Give him my thanks.’
Dilys nodded. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow morning, same as usual.’
Ruth opened her mouth, lost courage, and said meekly, ‘Yes, Dilys.’
‘You pop that in the oven straight away.’ Dilys indicated the casserole.
‘I 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.