Appointed to Die (36 page)

‘Have there been any further developments on what you were telling us last night – about the music festival books?' queried the Bishop.

‘Only that our man has determined that the irregularities seem to have something to do with the fabric fund – apparently there were some rather large sums transferred.' Inspector Drewitt looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘I shouldn't really have mentioned it at all, Bishop. It's all a bit awkward, you understand – until we're able to pin it down, and see what it has to do with this murder case.'

Dr Willoughby stroked his beard. ‘Yes, I see.'

‘So I'd appreciate it if none of you mentioned it to anyone just yet,' Drewitt went on, looking at David. ‘At some point we'll have to question the co-signatories on the account, Canon Greenwood and Canon Thetford, and find out what they know.'

‘And you don't want us getting in there first and buggering it all up for you,' David analysed wryly.

‘That's it exactly.' Drewitt grinned. ‘If you wouldn't mind . . .'

‘It really does make it difficult,' David said to Lucy later in their room, ‘not being able to ask Rupert Greenwood or Canon Thetford what the hell was going on with those books. I have a feeling it could be very important.' Absent-mindedly he went to the window and looked out at the black shape that was the cathedral.

‘Rowena Hunt doesn't have an alibi,' Lucy stated flatly, kicking off her shoes. ‘I think
that
could be important.'

He turned to watch her as she undressed. She was unselfconscious about being observed, her movements graceful without being deliberately seductive, yet the sight was always deeply arousing for David. He tried to keep his mind on the matter under discussion. ‘What about Jeremy Bartlett?' he reminded her. ‘He doesn't seem to have an alibi, either. And Drewitt said that the missing money has something to do with the fabric fund. Fabric, Lucy! That points the finger in the direction of your friend Jeremy, if you ask me. I'm sure he's the one who's had his hand in the till, and I wouldn't be surprised if he committed murder to cover it up, so that his cosy little arrangements with the Dean wouldn't be jeopardised.'

‘I don't know why you're so determined that Jeremy should be guilty, of murder or something else. I don't know why you dislike him so much.'

David was evasive. ‘I just don't trust him, that's all. There's something sort of . . . shifty . . . about him.'

‘You're being ridiculous,' she said, putting her arms around him.

But before David succumbed completely to her charms, he muttered, ‘There's something I wish I could remember. Something that someone told me. I can't think what it is . . .'

CHAPTER 36

    
My voice shalt thou hear betimes, O Lord: early in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

Psalm 5.3

The following morning, David's unconscious mind registered what he had been struggling to remember, as he woke to the sound of the cathedral's eight bells ringing rounds.

‘Lucy!' he said, suddenly wide awake. ‘It was the bell-ringers!'

‘The bell-ringers should be shot,' she moaned, burying her face in her pillow. ‘Isn't it a bit early to be making that kind of racket?'

‘Never mind that! It was the bell-ringers who said what I was trying to remember last night!'

‘What time is it?' She turned over and peered sleepily at the clock. ‘Half past eight on a Saturday morning – they must be mad!'

‘Listen to me, Lucy,' David insisted. ‘Todd told me at the breakfast here, after the service for Ivor Jones.'

‘I thought you said it was the bell-ringers.'

‘Todd told me something that the bell-ringers had said, something that he happened to overhear,' he explained patiently. ‘At the Dean's garden party. When the Dean started giving them a hard time for drinking beer, and said that they were a scandal, one of them told the Dean that the real scandal was happening down in the cathedral!'

Lucy wasn't wide awake enough to follow. ‘I don't understand. What does that have to do with . . . ?'

‘Don't you see? The Dean thought that he was talking about the organist and the choirboys, which was why he said the things that drove Ivor Jones to suicide. But what if he really meant the scandal of the fiddled accounts? What if the bell-ringers know something about it? It makes sense, Lucy!' He reached to the floor for his dressing gown.

‘You're not getting up, are you?'

‘Yes, I've got to go and talk to the bell-ringers, and see what they know – no one has thought to ask them!'

‘Don't go yet.' She put an entreating hand on his arm ‘There's plenty of time.'

It was tempting, but not tempting enough. ‘Sorry, love. I won't be good for anything until I find out.'

Lucy sighed. ‘Oh, be that way!' She pulled the covers over her head and stuffed her fingers in her ears to block out the sound of the bells.

Pat was up and in the kitchen when David came down, without Lucy. ‘Saturday is our day for a cooked breakfast,' she announced. ‘George should be back any minute from the eight o'clock service.'

‘The bells have started awfully early this morning, haven't they?'

‘They often start ringing a peal just after the eight o'clock service on a Saturday,' Pat explained. ‘If the peal is successful, it takes something like three hours and twenty minutes, and Mike Drewitt often goes on duty at noon, so if they don't start early they won't have his services. And he usually rings the tenor, so they can't very well do without him. The people in the Close are used to it – most of us have to be up early anyway.'

‘Lucy was a bit cross,' he admitted. ‘I think she was hoping for a lie-in this morning.'

‘Poor Lucy,' chuckled Pat.

David circled around the kitchen restlessly. ‘I need to talk to the bell-ringers – I've just remembered something that could be important, and I think the bell-ringers might be able to help.'

‘Well, you're not going to talk to them for the next few hours, unless they lose the peal,' she stated with unavoidable logic. ‘So you may as well sit down and have some breakfast. How do you like your eggs, my dear boy?'

David waited for them at the bottom of the spiral staircase in the south transept; a few minutes after the bells stopped ringing they began issuing forth. Inspector Drewitt was the first down, in a hurry to report for duty at noon. ‘I don't have time to stop,' he greeted David. ‘I've got to go to work.'

‘I'd quite like to have a chat with you some time, Inspector – just the two of us.'

Drewitt paused, thinking. ‘All right. Tomorrow evening? We could meet at the Monk's Head for a drink, if you like.'

‘Great. What time?'

‘Eight o'clock?'

‘Fine. I'll see you there.'

Drewitt was followed out of the stairwell by several young people, chattering noisily; their voices echoed in the vaulted transept. ‘The ringing master?' David asked them tentatively.

‘Barry's still up the tower – he'll be the last one down,' volunteered a sallow girl with spiky hair and a series of silver hoops in graduated sizes piercing the side of one ear. ‘You can go up, if you want,' she added helpfully.

David gulped; he'd never been very comfortable with heights. ‘No, thank you. I'll wait.'

It was only a few minutes later that the final group descended: a frail, wispy blonde girl, a sturdy young man with a prominent nose, and at last the tall, long-haired Barry Crabtree. David remembered having seen, though not met, the three of them at the Dean's garden party.

He stepped forward. ‘Barry?'

The tall young man turned. ‘Yes?'

David introduced himself, explaining that he was a friend of the Willoughbys; he had decided, while waiting, that that would get him farther with anyone in the Close than admitting that he was the Dean's solicitor.

‘This is my wife Liz,' introduced Barry, ‘and my mate Neil.'

‘Are you in a hurry? I'd like to buy you a drink,' David offered.

Barry and Neil looked at each other. ‘Why not?' Barry said.

‘I never turn down a pint,' added Neil with a gap-toothed grin.

Liz Crabtree shook her head. ‘I'm afraid not. I've left Caroline – she's our daughter—' she explained to David, ‘with Mrs Greenwood this morning, so I must go and fetch her.'

‘Oh, come on, Liz,' Barry urged. ‘You know that Mrs Greenwood loves having Caroline. She wouldn't mind you leaving her a bit longer.'

‘No, that's not fair. But you two go ahead,' she added. ‘I'll see you at home later, Barry.'

‘The Monk's Head?' David suggested, naming the only pub he knew of in Malbury.

‘Fine,' Barry agreed. ‘If you're paying. It's a bit dearer than our local, down at the other end of town.'

The two bell-ringers led the way into the town. David had spent very little time out of the Cathedral Close in the town of Malbury. Malbury, although technically a city by virtue of its cathedral, was in reality no more than a market town, albeit an ancient one, with picturesquely crooked black and white buildings elbowing each other closely along narrow streets in the town centre. Girdling the central area was a belt of substantial red brick Victorian dwellings constructed in the days of the railway boom, along with a number of more modestly proportioned terraced houses, built for brewery workers. The building boom between the wars had largely passed Malbury by, so there were few of the semi-detached villas of that period, but recent years had brought the inevitable additions, including a raw new housing estate at the edge of town, with identical boxy detached houses each on a tiny, treeless patch of lawn.

The Monk's Head, though, was situated near the cathedral, overlooking the open green space which separated the Close from the town. A rambling mock-Tudor building, it had pretensions of being more than a mere pub: it styled itself as an inn, by virtue of the accommodation it offered upstairs, several cramped, unimproved bedrooms. The pub downstairs, though, lived up to expectations, with oak beams and horse brasses and an open fire.

Despite their protestations, Barry and Neil were obviously well known in the establishment. They greeted the barman by name, placed their orders for pints of Ploughman's Bitter, and commandeered a table near the fire. David paid for and collected the drinks, then carried them, foaming and dripping, to the table.

‘Careful, mate!' grinned Neil. ‘I was hoping to drink most of that. Ta.' He raised the glass and drank deeply.

‘Thanks,' Barry acknowledged.

David rarely drank beer, but on this occasion he thought it a good idea to partake of the local brew along with his guests. The Ploughman's went down surprisingly easily, he found, and they were on their second round before he got around to the real business at hand.

‘I was talking to Todd Randall not long ago,' he began tentatively.

Barry nodded. ‘The American bloke.'

‘A nice bloke,' Neil put in. ‘Bar tried to get him interested in bell-ringing.'

‘Without success?'

‘Oh, he came up the tower once or twice,' Barry explained. ‘Gave it a go. But he couldn't quite get the hang of the timing, so he gave up.'

‘He said that he'd spent some time with you at the garden party after the Dean's installation.'

‘That's right,' confirmed Barry. ‘He joined us at our table, he and Kirsty Hunt.'

Neil grinned. ‘It was the beer rather than our company that attracted him, I reckon.'

Taking a sip of his beer, David chose his words carefully. ‘He told me that the Dean gave you a hard time about the beer.'

Barry snorted in derision. ‘That self-important little clown.'

‘But Bar gave it right back to him, didn't you, Bar?' There was relish in Neil's tone and he looked admiringly at his friend.

‘Well, I wouldn't say that.' Barry swirled the beer in his glass, suitably modest.

‘Cor, but you did!' Neil turned to David eagerly. ‘He told him that we weren't the disgrace – that the scandal was really down in the cathedral!'

David held his breath, then said as lightly as he could manage, ‘And what did you mean by that, Barry? Anything in particular, or were you just saying it to get at him?'

The young bell-ringer appraised him for a moment before replying. ‘Oh, I meant it, all right. Something funny was going on down there.'

‘Something funny?'

‘It was the scaffolding, you see. It went up in the summer, after the music festival, in the south transept round the Becket window, and outside the window as well.' Barry took a deep drink, emptying his glass. ‘And it stayed up until November, just before the Patronal Festival. But in all those months, in that whole bloomin' time, nothing ever happened. No workmen, nothing.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Oh, yes. We could see the exterior scaffolding quite clearly on the way up to the tower, and I'm up the tower a lot. Every day, near enough. No workmen,' he repeated. ‘They put the scaffolding up, and they left it a few months, and then they took it down again. Nothing else happened. Don't you think that's bloomin' odd?'

CHAPTER 37

    
Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips: and from a deceitful tongue.

Psalm 120.2

The more David thought about it, the more convinced he became that the Cathedral Architect was involved in the death of Arthur Brydges-ffrench. But to make Lucy happy, he agreed to pay a call on Rowena Hunt, to probe further into her lack of alibi.

He went on Sunday afternoon, after a subdued, even strained, morning service at which the Bishop presided, and a deliciously compensatory Sunday lunch.

Rowena raised her finely shaped brows at the sight of David on her doorstep; she invited him in politely enough, though she failed to offer him any refreshment. Her sitting room was tidy, with none of the Sunday paper clutter he'd left behind at the Bishop's House, and a fire burned cheerily in the grate. David wondered if she were expecting someone.