After calling on the Brayshaws, Tom and Fran returned to the home of Dr Owen, where they found that Mrs Smith had completed her duties at the parish church and was settled in front of a brightly blazing fire in the drawing room. No sooner had they been ushered in than Mrs Smith insisted on ringing for tea and cakes, which Fran would have preferred to decline, but the atmosphere in which they were received was already frosty, the blazing fire notwithstanding, and she decided it would be unwise to give offence by refusing them.
‘Florence Ripley said you were going to assist their family in some way by talking to people about Mrs Ripley’s death,’ their hostess said. ‘Though I can’t see why she would think your intervention likely to be of any assistance. Naturally I have agreed to see you, because one can only feel sorry for that poor child in her time of need. However, as I said to Father Pinder this morning, when he called into church while I was titivating the flowers, I am extremely hesitant to cooperate with people who may have been involved in some kind of deception.’
‘What deception do you mean, Mrs Smith?’ Tom asked politely.
‘I’m sure someone originally told me that you had come to stay with Miss Venn for reasons entirely unconnected with Mrs Ripley’s death.’
‘Miss Venn is my aunt,’ Tom said. ‘So I hardly need to invent a reason for coming to stay with her. As for Mrs Ripley’s death, the official doubts about what happened to her have only surfaced since we first came to visit. Mrs Ripley was originally believed to have died of natural causes.’
‘Mrs Ripley died because she stood against the Lord’s true way,’ Mrs Smith declared emphatically. ‘Her death is a sign, just as the others were.’
‘The others?’ Fran prompted. Privately she and Tom had already speculated about how, when they were supposed to be talking about Mrs Ripley, they might manage to persuade Mrs Smith to speak about the deaths of Miss Tilling and Mr Vardy, but now Mrs Smith herself had just made it easy for them.
‘James Vardy and Ellen Tilling. The Lord moves in mysterious ways and we are all His instruments,’ Mrs Smith said firmly.
‘But surely, those deaths were accidents?’
‘There is no such thing as an accident, Mrs Black. The Lord’s hand is everywhere. He watches our going out and our coming in.’
‘Well, of course,’ Fran said carefully, deciding this was no time for a theological debate as to whether or not God ought to get the blame for everything. ‘I didn’t mean that God isn’t with us at all times, but I find it a little hard to believe that He would strike someone down just for having a disagreement with the vicar.’
‘Father Pinder is no ordinary priest. “The Lord revengeth and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries”. Nahum, chapter one.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Fran could see that Tom was itching to disagree with this uncompromising view, but it was vital to try and keep Dulcie Smith onside, so she said quickly, ‘I must say, I found Father Pinder’s sermon on charity quite an inspiration. The point about Mr Vardy’s and Miss Tilling’s deaths, though – setting aside our acceptance that God’s hand is everywhere – is that to the lay person, as it were, they could both be described as accidents, couldn’t they, inasmuch as it appears that there was no human agency involved?’
‘James Vardy drank too much, everyone knew it,’ Mrs Smith said. ‘He walked too close to the edge of the pond, slipped in the mud and fell in. He couldn’t get out, of course. Not with that great heavy coat and his working boots. Unless you were standing in the lane, you couldn’t hear him shout. There’s nothing closer than the Bird in Hand beerhouse, and they heard nothing there.’ There was a grim satisfaction in her voice. ‘That was the first of the signs. As it says in Deuteronomy, “Take heed and hearken”. But, of course, no one did.’
‘Didn’t Miss Tilling fall down the stairs?’ Fran prompted.
‘Miss Tilling lived at the house opposite, didn’t she?’ Tom put in, gesturing toward the bay window as he spoke. ‘You have an excellent view of it from here. I suppose you would have been able to confirm that there were no visitors to the house that afternoon.’
‘I could do nothing of the sort.’ Mrs Smith seemed affronted by the question. ‘I was asked the self-same thing by the policeman who called here the day after they found her. Anyone hearing him might have thought I spent half my life gazing out of the window, when nothing could be further from the truth. I told him that I am a very busy woman. I run this house for my brother, often taking his telephone calls and assisting with his appointment diary, and at very busy times I have even helped in the dispensary on a few occasions. As if that were not enough, I have many responsibilities at the parish church and I am frequently out of the house on a variety of errands, usually doing the Lord’s work. That is why I was out of the house when Miss Tilling died.’
‘Of course,’ Fran said. ‘How silly of me. I suppose it was just that sitting here, with the front door of Miss Tilling’s house plainly in sight, I sort of pictured you sitting where you are now and able to see people come and go.’
‘Imagination,’ sniffed Mrs Smith, ‘is a very dangerous thing.’
‘And anyway, no one really believes that someone came along that afternoon and pushed Miss Tilling downstairs, do they?’ Tom said.
‘Don’t they? I have no idea what anyone else thinks.’
‘May I ask what you think?’
Mrs Smith looked Tom straight in the eye. ‘I know that the Lord’s hand was at work.’
Oh dear, Fran thought. We seem to have come full circle. Aloud, she said, ‘The situation with Mrs Ripley is very different, of course. We know that Mrs Ripley’s death was not an accident. The analyst has found arsenic in her remains.’
‘The death of Mrs Ripley is a sign, nonetheless.’
Tom managed to stifle a sigh. ‘Did you happen to call on Mrs Ripley yourself during her last illness?’
‘I understood that Mrs Ripley was not well enough to see me when I called at the house.’
‘Your brother had been attending her, I believe.’
‘Frank attends all the people of quality in the village – and a great many of lesser status too.’
‘I suppose you knew Mrs Ripley fairly well?’
Mrs Smith considered this for a moment before she said, ‘No, I did not know either of the Ripleys particularly well. Mr Ripley grew up in a village not far from here, I believe, but we didn’t know his family. He and his wife moved into the village in 1921, I think it was, when Mr Ripley replaced old Mr Dukes as manager at the bank. My brother deals with all financial matters, so I seldom came into contact with Mr Ripley, and although they attended the parish church, I had very little to do with Mrs Ripley either, since she seldom helped with good works or any fundraising on account of her supposed poor health.’
Dulcie Smith sniffed expressively. ‘Mrs Ripley found standing behind the handicrafts stall for a couple of hours too much of a strain for her, though of course nothing ever stopped her from jaunting off down to Eastbourne for her summer holiday. To think that a person who did almost nothing for the church thought she could put her name to a letter attacking its spiritual leader!’ Mrs Smith’s frizzy curls positively bounced with indignation.
‘You never took her illnesses particularly seriously then?’
‘Our Lord instructed us to care for the sick and the weak, Mr Dod. Naturally whenever I heard that Mrs Ripley was unwell, I called to enquire after her health, and sometimes left her a pot of quince jelly or some elderflower cordial, both of which are very soothing to invalids.’
‘Which was most generous of you,’ Tom said. ‘Particularly if you suspected that she was shamming.’
‘I never said such a thing.’
‘Pardon me, but I got the impression that you thought Mrs Ripley had sometimes exaggerated her condition. Did your brother share that opinion?’
‘That is hardly for me to say. In any case, Frank is thoroughly professional and never discusses his patients with me. Have some angel cake, Mrs Black. You will find it’s very good. Maisie has a very light touch.’
‘I suppose Maisie wouldn’t have seen whether anyone called on Miss Tilling on the afternoon she died?’ Tom ventured. But Mrs Smith dismissed the idea at once, firmly stating that the staff would always be at the rear of the house at that time of day and, as for her brother, he had been out on his afternoon house calls.