Appointed to Die (10 page)

‘Early thirteenth century,' Bert confirmed.

The man whistled, impressed. ‘Now
that's
old! Where I come from, we don't have windows that old. Or anything else, for that matter. That window must be worth a lot of money! Do they have to do anything special to take care of it?'

‘Oh, it's well maintained. Isn't it, Mr Bartlett?' asked Bert, deferring to Jeremy's specialist knowledge.

‘Absolutely,' Jeremy assured the American with a smile. ‘After all, it's Malbury Cathedral's greatest treasure. We look after it very well. It was completely re-leaded not more than ten years ago, and all the stonework was renewed.'

Bert interposed, ‘Mr Bartlett is the Cathedral Architect.'

The American looked impressed. ‘Well, then, maybe you can answer a question for me about those big fat pillars. If you took those away, would the cathedral fall down?'

‘Most assuredly,' Jeremy said solemnly, with only a twitch of his eyebrow to betray his amusement to Lucy.

Lucy, with sort of a vested interest in the sale of the Malbury Festival sweatshirts – although she was not profiting financially, it would give her a certain artistic satisfaction to see her painting widely displayed on various chests – was eavesdropping discreetly on Victor's conversation with the American woman. The woman, whose deeply tanned bare legs were at least more attractive than Victor's blond hairy ones, seemed dissatisfied with the choice of garments available. ‘But I don't
want
a sweatshirt,' she said to Victor petulantly. ‘It's too hot for a sweatshirt. I want a T-shirt.'

Victor gurgled. ‘I'm afraid this weather has taken us all a bit by surprise. I mean, who would actually expect it to be
hot
in England in August?'

‘And I was hoping,' the woman went on in her aggressively nasal voice, ‘that you'd have some T-shirts for my grandchildren. You know. One that says, “GRANDMA AND GRANDPA WENT TO THE MALBURY MUSIC FESTIVAL, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT”. With a Union Jack. You know.'

‘Well, no. Nothing like that, actually.'

Frowning, the woman turned and appealed to Lucy. ‘Wouldn't you think that the official Cathedral Gift Shop would have something like that? Well, wouldn't you?'

Lucy merely smiled noncommittally, and escaped to the corner of the shop where Kirsty Hunt stood behind the till. Kirsty beamed in pleased recognition. ‘Hello again.'

‘Hello. I heard that you were helping out today – to cope with the rush.'

‘Well, it hasn't exactly been a rush,' the girl laughed, with an expressive gesture. ‘More like a trickle.'

‘Oh, well. Maybe before Evensong.'

‘Maybe.' Kirsty shrugged. ‘Were you looking for anything in particular?'

‘Crème de menthe Turkish Delight,' said Lucy, grimacing. ‘My father said that I could get it here.'

‘For Uncle Arthur, I suppose. He absolutely adores it.' The girl ran her fingers through her dark curls. ‘But I'm not sure where the boys keep it. I don't think it's out on display anywhere. Not really something there's much demand for, I shouldn't think, apart from Uncle Arthur.'

‘Well, I can wait until one of them is finished. No hurry,' Lucy assured her.

The American pair concluded their respective conversations and moved over to Kirsty at the till; Lucy stood aside as the man began laboriously counting out his coins. In a moment they left the shop; Lucy caught the husband's words, whispered furtively, as they went through the door. ‘Honey, you don't think those two men were . . . you know?' He flapped his wrist limply. His wife's reply was lost in the slam of the door.

Suppressing a laugh, Lucy turned to Victor, who hovered nearby, his attention now fixed on her. ‘My father asked me to get a box of crème de menthe Turkish Delight,' she explained. ‘Kirsty wasn't sure where you kept it.'

‘For Canon Brydges-ffrench, no doubt,' said Victor, kneeling down and reaching under the counter. ‘There's no point giving it shelf-space – he's the only one in Malbury who eats the stuff.'

‘Why do you even stock it?' she asked.

‘As a special favour for the Canon. There's nowhere else in town that he can get it.'

Bert joined them and added, ‘He used to buy it at a posh confectioner's shop in the High Street. But they closed down a year or two ago, and he asked us if we could keep it in stock for him.'

‘He buys that much of it, then?'

Victor rolled his eyes. ‘My dear, have you
seen
his teeth? I mean, really!'

‘Arthur's not so bad,' protested Bert.

‘He's an absolute poppet, darling,' Victor countered. ‘Dear old Arthur. But let's be honest, my dear – he's not exactly the type to set one's heart a-flutter, is he?'

Bert's reply was forestalled by another customer, whose presence was announced by a thick cloud of cheap scent mingled with cigarette smoke. ‘I need a birthday card,' said the woman; her voice, Cockney overlaid with broad Shropshire, was additionally coarsened by years of heavy smoking. ‘For me old mum,' she added. ‘Not that she'd appreciate being called old, mind.'

Bert looked with distaste at the cigarette. ‘No smoking in the shop, if you don't mind.'

‘Sorry, luv.' The woman grinned cheerfully, winking at Jeremy, then dropped the cigarette on the floor, and ground it out with the toe of her spike-heeled shoe.

The woman's dress, which was fractionally too short and too tight for her ripe figure, would have been better suited to a night at a disco than an afternoon in the Cathedral Close. It would also have been more suitable for a woman half her age. She was in her forties, though she might have been older; constant smoking had etched her face with a network of premature wrinkles, especially around her mouth. Her attempts to disguise the ageing lines with make-up were largely unsuccessful, though her make-up was heavy and as overdone as her dress: she wore eyeshadow as blue, and as unnatural, as the tinted carnations in Victor and Bert's cathedral flower arrangement, and a thick application of eyeliner which ended well beyond the corners of her eyes. Her hair was platinum-coloured, and brittle from repeated bleaching and teasing.

She moved to the rack of greeting cards and began flicking through them with a chipped mauve fingernail. ‘I've been over to the cathedral to see them flowers,' she said conversationally. ‘Can't really see what all the fuss is about, myself.' Her remarks were addressed exclusively to Jeremy, who, as the only eligible man present, was the only one worthy of her notice. ‘And that stuck-up bitch Mrs Hunt lording it over everyone – she made me pay a pound to get in! Can you beat that? After all my husband's done for that bloomin' cathedral! She even wanted money for the programme – I told her where she could put her programme!' She paused in her flicking and smiled in satisfaction at the recollection. ‘She didn't know what to say! Mrs Bloody Hunt – I don't know who she thinks she is. She doesn't half fancy herself, that one.' She plucked a card, festooned with garish flowers and a cute striped kitten, from the rack. ‘Here. This'll do. How much?'

‘One pound,' said Victor.

‘A bit dear,' she frowned. ‘I could do better on the market, you know. But I guess me mum is worth it. And it's only once a year.' She fished in her handbag for the money, then slapped the pound coin on the counter.

‘Thank you, Mrs Drewitt,' Victor said. ‘See you again soon.'

‘With prices like those, don't expect my custom very often,' she stated grandly, smiling at Jeremy over her shoulder and reaching for her cigarettes as she made her exit.

‘Mrs Drewitt?' Lucy asked incredulously. ‘She's not married to . . .'

‘Inspector Michael Drewitt,' Bert confirmed.

‘Dead common, my dear,' Victor pronounced in a melodramatic whisper.

‘Tarty,' added Bert with a moue of distaste.

‘And
he's
so dishy. As policemen go, that is. If you like the strong, silent type.' Victor gurgled. ‘Which I do, don't I, Bert dear?' He sighed. ‘Such a waste . . .'

The Festival Evensong was to begin at five, so there was still plenty of time for tea when Lucy and Jeremy got away from the Cathedral Shop shortly after four; the refectory was located just to the east of the shop, a minute's walk away. Familiar with the routine, Jeremy took a tray and led Lucy to the serving counter where the available offerings were arrayed.

Behind the counter, Dorothy Unworth presided over the Bakewell tarts with the same fierce intensity that she lavished on her gladioli. ‘Would you like one?' she demanded, wielding a pair of plastic serving tongs over the sickly white tarts with their obscenely red candied cherries.

Lucy shook her head. ‘It's not good for my figure,' she said with an attempt at tact. ‘I'll just have tea, thanks.' The stout woman narrowed her eyes in a glare, and Lucy realised that she'd said the wrong thing.

‘I'll have two, please,' Jeremy said quickly, with grave courtesy. Miss Unworth rewarded him with a grudging smile.

Lucy looked round the room. ‘Where do we sit?'

‘There's an empty table over in that corner.' On their way to the empty table, however, they passed Judith Greenwood, sitting alone; she caught Lucy's eye with a fleeting smile, then, embarrassed, looked down at her tray.

‘Oh, hello.' Lucy stopped, glad for an excuse not to be alone with Jeremy. ‘Mind if we join you, Judith?'

‘Please do.' Judith smiled again, shyly. They had a brief glimpse of her violet eyes as they settled down across from her, but soon there was an awkward silence, and it was clear that her attention was elsewhere.

‘Dorothy didn't intimidate you into buying one of her Bakewell tarts, then?' Jeremy, trying to make the best of what was obviously not an ideal situation from his point of view, addressed the Precentor's wife with a wry chuckle and a characteristic lift of one eyebrow.

‘What? Oh, no.' Judith turned her head to look at him. ‘Rock cakes. Aptly named, I'm afraid.'

Lucy laughed as Judith indicated the pebble-like crumbs on her plate. ‘I can see that.' Another silence followed, longer this time; curiously, Lucy followed the other woman's gaze to a table on the other side of the room. It was in fact several tables pushed together, with Rupert Greenwood at one end and the small, taciturn organist Ivor Jones at the other, drinking tea. In between were a number of young boys in red cassocks, voraciously and single-mindedly devouring plates of sandwiches, sausage rolls, biscuits, and even Bakewell tarts. In their concentration the boys were remarkably quiet; Lucy hadn't even noticed them until now. ‘The choir?' she asked into the silence.

Once again Judith's head turned back. ‘Yes. Having a break from their rehearsal before Evensong.'

‘Your husband seems to have them under control.'

‘Oh, yes. Rupert manages his boys very well.' There was an unmistakable note of bitterness in her voice, but she forced a smile to cover it. ‘His boys,' she repeated, almost to herself.

‘Tea, Jeremy?' Lucy suggested brightly, pouring the almost viscous dark liquid from the small red plastic pot. Jeremy launched into some inconsequential chatter about the music festival, capturing Judith's attention at last, if only superficially. But as the choir finished their hurried snack and got up to leave, giggling and knocking their chairs about, her eyes followed them hungrily. Renewing his efforts, Jeremy began a wickedly accurate impersonation of Victoria and Albert, complete with hand gestures; Judith laughed with real amusement and Lucy, also laughing, admired not only his skill at mimicry but also his ability to distract.

A moment later, though, Judith appeared to have sunk back into contemplation. This time the object of her covert scrutiny was at the next table: a thin young woman with a pinched face and limp fair hair who was trying to set down her tray and at the same time control a toddling baby. The baby was in a harness and the woman held the reins, but the child was resisting all efforts to be put into a high chair and was pulling determinedly in the other direction, towards their table. ‘Oh, bugger,' the woman swore softly as the red plastic pot tipped over on the tray; she dropped the reins and the baby toddled closer to them.

Judith's face lit up as though by a candle. ‘Hello, there,' she said softly to the baby, who regarded her solemnly. It was an odd, gnomic-looking child, Lucy thought, with a huge round head way out of proportion to its body, small pinched features and no hair at all. It was dressed in an androgynous sunsuit, and Lucy assumed that it was a boy.

Her assumption was proved wrong. ‘Oh, Caroline, look what you've done!' the child's mother fretted, mopping at the spilled tea with a serviette. She reached over and recaptured the trailing reins. ‘I'm so sorry,' she apologised to Judith. ‘She just wanted to come and see you, Mrs Greenwood. I hope you don't mind.'

‘No, of course not.' Judith didn't take her eyes off the baby, and her face had an expression Lucy had not seen before, an expression of intent rapture.

It was clear that no introductions would be forthcoming from that quarter, so it was up to Jeremy to introduce Lucy to the baby's mother. Liz Crabtree, it transpired, was, along with her husband Barry, one of the cathedral bell-ringers.

‘We're ringing for Evensong tonight,' she explained. ‘With the festival and all, it's meant to be something special. I've come on ahead with Caroline, to get myself some tea.' She looked ruefully at the wreckage on her tray. ‘Barry and his mate Neil said they'd rather have a pint. So I'm meeting them up the tower in a bit.'

‘Here,' said Jeremy quickly. ‘Have one of my Bakewell tarts. Have them both. And I'll go and get you some more tea.'

‘Are you sure?' She smiled with gratitude as he made for the counter. ‘Ta very much.'