As I drew breath to invite Letty Butler-Melville inside, she made that unnecessary by stalking past me, barely missing stamping on my toes. I shut the door and followed her into the sitting room.
“Really, Dr. Kirby-Jones”—she continued her harangue, arms akimbo, hands on hips, her voice husky with emotion—“I had thought you a much more sensible individual.” Despite the fact that I was a lowly American? “How could, you upset poor Neville with such tales?”
“My dear Mrs. Butler-Melville,” I protested, “I do assure you that I had no wish whatsoever to discompose the vicar to such an extent I had no idea that he was so sensitive to, er, bad news.”
The vicar’s wife didn’t seem much mollified by my conciliatory tone. One hand now twitched at the ever-present scarf around her throat while she kept glaring at me.
“I realize that you are only lately come to Snupperton Mumsley, Dr. Kirby-Jones, but surely even in your benighted homeland you don’t descend upon unsuspecting souls and burden them with such horrendous and preposterous stories.”
Good grief! I thought. Someone needs desperately to tell this woman how the cow ate the cabbage. Normally I am the politest of souls (and please don’t be persnickety about vampires not having souls at this very moment), but when faced with such out-and-out hostility, I feel my own hackles rising.
“Perhaps you have been too busy scurrying about doing your good deeds for the parish,” I said, my tone indicating that her good deeds probably included humping every available man over the age of consent, “but while you were on your errands of mercy, I was informed by no less a personage than Detective Inspector Chase himself that poor Miss Winterton was most foully murdered.” I glared hard, and she took a step backward.
This cow suddenly got more of the cabbage than she ever bargained for, I noted with satisfaction. Letty Butler-Melville went white, and her right hand twisted her scarf so hard, I thought she’d choke herself right in front of me.
“Mur-murdered?” she finally managed to croak through her constricted throat. “But I thought it was an... an accident! I had no idea it was murder!”
Making a show of my concern, I approached her and, taking hold of her right arm, steered her gently to a chair. “Can I get you something? Some brandy, perhaps? Or maybe some hot tea?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you,” she whispered. She stared up at me, her eyes wide with fear. “How... how did it happen?”
I took a seat in a nearby chair and watched her carefully. “She was strangled.”
“Oh, dear God,” she said, her voice tight and low. “God have mercy upon her soul.” She crossed herself nervously.
I wasn’t completely convinced that Letty Butler-Melville’s obvious distress had all that much to do with the state of Abigail Winterton’s immortal soul. There seemed to be something rather calculating about the vicar’s wife, even in extremis. Deciding to take advantage of the situation, I observed casually, “You know, the thing that puzzles me is, why would someone want to murder her? I had met her only briefly on three occasions, and I can’t see what someone would have had against her.” And I didn’t bat an eyelash at the lie.
Letty Butler-Melville’s face hardened almost imperceptibly. If I hadn’t been watching her intently, I would have missed it. “Abigail could on occasion be difficult about some things,” she finally said, “but like you, I can’t imagine what would move someone to do something so vicious as this.”
She stood up abruptly. “I must get back to my husband, Dr. Kirby-Jones. I will ask you in the future to remember my husband’s sensitive nature and to do your best not to upset him. Neville must guard his strength in order to shepherd his flock, and I am certain you can understand why I must be so protective of him.”
I was beginning to have a few ideas about that, but I refrained from sharing them with her at this very moment. I had no doubt that Mrs. Vicar and I would tangle again at some point in the not-so-distant future. She was afraid of something, and I wasn’t sure just yet what that was. But I would find out, I promised myself. She was a tougher nut than her husband, but I’d get something out of her eventually.
“Let me show you out, Mrs. Butler-Melville,” I responded, not giving her an inch. She stared hard at me, then stalked ahead of me to the front door of the cottage. With a barely audible sniff, she stomped out the door and down the lane toward the vicarage.
“What was all that about?” Giles asked from behind me.
He stood in the doorway of my office, a stack of files in his hands. His handsome face quivered with curiosity.
“I’m sorry,” he went on, “but I couldn’t help but overhear a little of it. She was upset about something.” I nodded. “I discovered today that the vicar has a rather delicate constitution when it comes to emotional distress, and apparently I upset him. She came to tell me not to do it again.”
Giles snorted in derision. “Oh, is that all! I should have known. Nothing gets Mrs. Butler-Melville so excited as a threat to the vicar’s peace of mind.”
“No kidding!” I said. “After that little scene I’m almost convinced that dragons are not extinct, after all.”
Giles laughed. “She has only one little chick to defend, and she does it with a vengeance. We’ve all learned not to bother the vicar with anything. She won’t stand for it”
“Does the man not have a backbone?” I asked.
“Not noticeably, no,” Giles said, laughing. “Otherwise, do you think any man that attractive, with a reasonable amount of ambition, would stay in Snupperton Mumsley for twenty years?”
I shook my head. “No, I suppose not.”
“My mother says that when he first came here, he was quite different. Much more energetic, much more involved in his actual clerical and pastoral duties. But over the years, he’s turned into what you see now.” Giles grinned. “Of course, I was very young when he first came here, so I don’t remember much about him.”
“Interesting,” I commented, wondering whether I should broach the subject of Abigail Winterton’s murder at this point.
Giles gestured at the folders in his hands. “I have questions about some of these, if you have a moment.”
“Certainly,” I said, and followed him into my office. Giles dropped the folders onto the top of my now bare desktop and spread them out I stood next to him as he went through his questions. At one point he leaned closer to reach a folder that had slipped slightly out of reach, and when he had grasped it, he didn’t move back. His arm rubbed against mine, and when he turned his head to look at me, his face was disconcertingly close.
I stepped casually back and answered his question. His eyes flashed briefly with disappointment. A moment later, I left him, after giving quick instructions on several boxes that I wanted unpacked and sorted.
I retrieved those abandoned glasses from the hall and took them to the kitchen, where I rinsed them out in the sink. As the water ran, I thought about what had just happened in my office. I wasn’t naive enough to think that Giles’s brushing against me like that had been accidental. Giles was certainly not naive, at least not in matters of that nature, and I could spot a come-on when I saw one. I sighed. What was he really after? The job? Or me?
Frankly, I was as much irritated as I was flattered. He was undeniably attractive, and he was only about ten years younger than I (that is, if I were still alive and aging at the normal rate). What was it about this village? I laughed aloud. How many other gay men were there wandering about? No wonder Tristan had enjoyed it so.
I had to admit that Giles was a good bit more attractive, as far as personality went, than I had first suspected. Away from his mother, he was quite different. But was I ready for Lady Prunella as a mother-in-law? I shuddered at the thought.
A loud crash from the direction of my office caught my attention. I reached the door of the office quickly and stopped in the doorway. Giles was sitting on the floor in front of one of the overly laden bookshelves, a box of my assorted office knickknacks and junk spilled on the floor beside him. He looked surprised but otherwise unhurt. I walked in and reached down to offer him a hand. He took it and hoisted himself up. As he did, we both heard a loud rip. The back of his shirt had caught on something on the bookshelf behind him, and the shirt tore as he stood up.
Giles stood facing me, a rueful grin giving him a most boyish look. “Sorry about your things,” he said. “I was checking the boxes on the shelves for more files, and I got a bit overbalanced. If anything is broken, I’ll replace it.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, surveying the damage on the floor. “There was nothing particularly valuable in that box. But what about your shirt?”
Giles shook his head. “Nothing terribly expensive, I assure you. And more than a bit aged, else it wouldn’t have torn so easily.” He twisted around, and I could see that the shirt was indeed ruined. It had ripped up the back to almost the neckline.
Staring at Giles’s back. I got quite a surprise. He pulled the shirt off over his head, his back toward me. Spread across his back, extending around over his left shoulder, down his left arm to the elbow, and onto his chest, as I could see when he turned to face me again, was a large and beautifully executed dragon tattoo. The dragon breathed fire across his chest, which was lightly furred with dark hair. Giles grinned when he saw the expression on my face.
“Yet another little secret from Mummy,” he said.
“I can imagine,” I responded dryly. “One doesn’t expect a flower of the English aristocracy to have such colorful taste in body decoration.”
Giles stepped closer. “You can pet him if you like. He doesn’t bite.”
I flashed him one of my better smiles. “No, but I imagine you do.”
“Only if you ask nicely,” Giles assured, his eyes doing their best to tempt me.
I stepped back, and Giles’s face fell. “It’s not that I’m not tempted,” I told him honestly, “because you are just about as attractive as you think you are.” I flashed him another smile, even higher wattage this time, and he smiled back, charmed despite himself into forgiving me. “But I don’t mix business with pleasure.” For now, I added silently.
“Fair enough,” Giles said, but something about his tone told me he wouldn’t stop trying.
And, at that opportune moment, the doorbell rang.