Appointed to Die (40 page)

Even in her current state, Rowena recognised the truth in that. With a shuddering sigh, she began. ‘He came to see me this morning. To tell me that it was all over.' Saying the words aloud was a great release; she wept gustily for a few minutes. Lucy, wise enough not to probe, merely squeezed her hand in a comforting way, knowing that it would all come out eventually. After a number of snuffling sobs, Rowena continued. ‘It was Mike's wife. She found out. And she told him that if he went on seeing me, she'd make trouble – tell his superior officers. She'd tell them that he visited me when he was on duty – it's a lie, the common bitch! But they'd believe it, and he'd be reprimanded, might even lose his job. He couldn't risk it, he said. So it's all over. When the doorbell rang, I thought perhaps he'd changed his mind, had come back . . . But it was only you, and he won't be coming back. I've lost him for good.' Restlessly she shook off Lucy's hand, got up and went to her dressing table, peering at her swollen face in the mirror. ‘Look at me. I'm not young any more. What am I supposed to do now?'

Lucy spoke at last, in what she hoped was a convincingly reassuring voice. ‘There are plenty of other men. You're a beautiful woman, Rowena, and he's not the only fish in the sea.'

‘That's bloody easy for you to say,' Rowena lashed out bitterly. ‘You're younger than I am, and you've got your man! But who is there for me, here in this bloody town, in this bloody cathedral? No one but a load of dried-up old clerics!'

‘There's Jeremy,' said Lucy. It seemed a reasonable thing to say, and she was completely unprepared for Rowena's reaction: Rowena laughed, on the verge of hysteria, for a very long time.

‘Jeremy!' she spat out with scorn, meeting Lucy's eyes in the mirror. ‘He may as well be a dried-up old cleric, for all the good he is to me!'

‘What do you mean? He's . . .'

Rowena turned to face her, looking defiant. ‘There's no reason why you shouldn't know, not now. Now that I've lost Mike.' Taking a deep breath, she went on in disjointed sentences. ‘Last week. He came here for supper. We had things to discuss . . . things about . . . things. Cathedral business. He had Arthur's keys. He came through the cathedral – no one saw him. No one knew he was here. We ate. We talked. We got on better than we ever had before. He told me how lonely he was, since his wife died. I felt sorry for him. And I rather fancied him. So we . . . well, we ended up here. In bed. But he . . . well, he couldn't manage it. Nothing. We tried for hours, but he couldn't do a bloody thing. God, it was humiliating!' With a dramatic gesture she covered her face with her hands. ‘Nothing like that has ever happened to me before!'

Lucy stared at her as the realisation trickled through to her brain. ‘It was last Monday, wasn't it?' she whispered.

‘Of course it was bloody Monday! Why do you think I wouldn't tell the police, or your friend David, what I was doing? Mike would have found out, and I would have lost him. But now . . . none of it matters any more. I've lost him anyway.' She caught her breath on a sob.

The questions had to be asked nonetheless. ‘What time was he here? When did he come? When did he leave?'

Incurious, Rowena supplied the answers that would give an ironclad alibi not only to herself, but also to Jeremy. ‘He came about half past seven. We must have been in bed when the sirens went – we didn't hear them. And he left after that, just gone midnight. We were together the whole evening.'

CHAPTER 41

    
For he hath delivered me out of all my trouble: and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.

Psalm 54.7

David was at the kitchen table with Todd and Pat, all with mugs of coffee, when Lucy returned. ‘Where on earth have you been, Lucy love?' he demanded, his tone expressing concern rather than irritation. ‘I've looked all over the house for you – you didn't say that you were going out.'

‘I'm sorry – I didn't realise when I left that I'd be gone so long. I've been to see Rowena.'

‘Rowena?' David frowned. ‘But Rowena had nothing to do with it. Listen, love,' he went on enthusiastically. ‘We were just talking. If Jeremy had . . .'

‘No.' Lucy felt numb with her new knowledge, and her voice was flat, but it cut across his; they all turned to look at her. ‘You're not going to like what I have to tell you, but Jeremy didn't do it. Rowena didn't do it. Neither of them could have done it: they were together when it happened.' She went on to tell them what she had learned, omitting, out of consideration for Rowena, the factors that had led the other woman to confess to her.

‘Good Lord,' said David into the stunned silence that followed. ‘Rowena . . . and Jeremy? But why would she have told you, when she wouldn't tell
me
? And wouldn't tell the police?'

‘Never mind that. She
did
tell me – that's all that's important. Neither she nor Jeremy could have been involved.'

‘Unless they were in it together,' offered Todd. ‘What about that?'

Pat shook her head. ‘No, I don't think so. It really wasn't that kind of crime, was it?'

‘But that means there aren't any suspects left,' stated the young man in bewilderment. ‘Just the Dean.'

‘We
did
think about Victoria and Albert,' David remembered. ‘They might have kept a box of Turkish Delight, and not mentioned it.'

Lucy protested. ‘I can't picture it. Not Victoria and Albert – they're completely harmless.'

‘Then how,' asked David, expecting no answer, ‘could it have happened?'

At that point they rehashed all that they knew about the case, for Todd's benefit and in the hope that some hitherto overlooked fact would take on sudden illuminating significance. The discussion took them through lunch and well into the afternoon; they explained to Todd about Inspector Drewitt's role of unofficial informant, and told him what they knew of the police investigations from that most helpful source.

‘So they've searched Canon Brydges-ffrench's house as well as the Deanery?' Todd asked.

‘Yes,' said Pat. ‘Mike said that they didn't find anything, apart from a half-eaten box of Turkish Delight, and a sheet of sermon notes that he seems to have been working on just before he died.'

‘Sermon notes?' Todd frowned. ‘But Canon Brydges-ffrench never made notes for his sermons – he always wrote them straight out, in ink, and never changed a word. I've seen him at it plenty of times, sitting at his desk or in his chair with a pad of paper and that gold pen of his, scribbling away. He never made notes,' he repeated with emphasis.

Pat raised her eyebrows. ‘Then what . . .' said David.

‘Did the police take it away?' asked Lucy.

‘I don't think so,' Pat replied. ‘They didn't seem to find it significant.'

‘Let's go over there and see,' Todd suggested excitedly. ‘I've still got the keys. We can go right now.'

Pat hesitated. ‘I'm not sure that the police would be very happy about that.'

‘They needn't know,' David countered. ‘Come on, Todd. Let's go.' The young man didn't wait to be asked twice; he jumped up and went off in search of the ring of keys.

‘I'm coming too,' stated Lucy.

‘I'll stay here,' said Pat. ‘So come back as soon as you can.'

The house had a closed-up feeling, an air of extended neglect, although it had been scarcely more than a week since the Subdean had left it for the last time. Neither David nor Lucy had been in the house before, so Todd led the way to the study, off the dim entrance hall.

Curtains drawn, the study was as dark as the hall. Todd was conscious of the potential hazards which lay in wait for the unwary explorer – the endless stacks of books which littered the floor – so he switched on the overhead light and picked his way through the books to the desk while David and Lucy remained by the door. ‘But it's not quite right,' he whispered, puzzled and frowning. ‘I don't think the books are where he left them. The piles are too neat. He always knew where everything was, but it was a mess.'

David found himself whispering as well, a natural response to being without permission in the hushed and dusty house of a dead man. ‘What about the desk?'

Todd surveyed it carefully. The Turkish Delight box was clearly visible on one side, and on the other, to his surprise, he found a brown envelope addressed to him in Arthur Brydges-ffrench's crabbed hand. In the centre, tucked into an old leather-bound Bible, was the sheet of purported sermon notes. ‘There's an envelope here with my name on it,' he announced. ‘I wonder what it could be?'

‘Bring it with you,' Lucy suggested softly. ‘I don't think we should stay here.' She shivered.

David put a protective arm around her. ‘Yes, come on, Todd. Let's go. Bring the box of Turkish Delight, and the notes as well.'

‘They're inside his Bible,' Todd reported.

‘Well, bring that too.'

Todd retraced his steps, carrying the various things. They left the house quickly, locking up behind them, and hurried back through the Close to the welcoming warmth of Pat's kitchen.

‘Well, what did you find?' she asked immediately.

Todd put his burden down on the table. ‘Here's his Bible, with the notes inside. And we brought the Turkish Delight as well.'

‘And he's left something for Todd,' added Lucy.

‘What is it?' Pat queried.

‘I'm not sure.' They all expected him to rip into the envelope to find out, but he seemed curiously reluctant to do so. ‘Let's have some tea,' he suggested. ‘Then I'll open it.'

While the kettle boiled, they sat in silence and looked at the array of items on the table. The doorbell rang; Pat went to answer it and the rest of them jumped guiltily as Pat ushered Inspector Drewitt into the kitchen.

‘The Inspector has come to join us for a cup of tea,' she announced.

Todd, following the Inspector's curious gaze to the table, felt compelled to explain. ‘We . . . um, we went to Canon Brydges-ffrench's house and brought a few things back.'

Drewitt looked amused at their sheepish expressions. ‘It's quite all right. We've finished there, as I explained last week. There wasn't anything of particular interest to us.'

Pat opened the box of Turkish Delight and looked inside. ‘It's about half empty,' she observed. ‘And it seems to be missing its wax lining paper.'

‘I suppose he threw it away,' Drewitt said easily. ‘Or perhaps it was a manufacturing fault at the factory. The one at the Deanery had two, so I suppose it just shows that those machines make mistakes all the time.'

The tea having brewed sufficiently, Pat poured it out; while the others drank, Todd picked up the envelope and examined it, tracing his name on the front with a tentative finger. ‘It's kind of like a last message to me,' he explained softly. ‘I'm almost afraid to open it. I don't understand what it means.'

‘Get on with it,' David urged. Todd slit the top of the envelope with a knife provided by Pat, and peered into it apprehensively, then shook it out on to the table. There was no letter, no note: only a tiny, flat book.

Lucy stated the obvious. ‘A book?'

It was bound in leather, with no title on the cover; Todd opened it and read out the title. ‘
Sir Walter Raleigh's Instructions to his Sonne, and to Posterity
.' He looked around the table, puzzled. ‘I don't understand.'

‘It's a present, obviously,' Pat said. ‘Something he wanted you to have, because he was fond of you.'

‘But why
then
? It's almost as if he knew . . .'

‘Perhaps, as he'd planned to resign, he thought he'd be gone before you returned to Malbury, and he wanted to leave it for you to find later,' Lucy suggested.

David spotted a slip of paper as Todd turned the book over in his hands. ‘Is that a marker in it?'

The young man opened the book and read aloud from the last page. ‘“Serve GOD, let him bee the Author of all your actions, commend all your endeavors to him that must eyther wither or prosper them, please him with prayer, least if hee frown, he confound all your fortunes & labours like drops of Rayne on the Sandy ground: let my experienced advice and fatherly instructions sink deep into your heart; So GOD direct you in all his wayes and fill your heart with his grace.” But what does it mean? He hasn't left a letter or anything with it.'

‘He's left this.' David picked up the Bible and took out the sheet of paper. ‘Samson,' he read. ‘“Out of the strong came forth sweetness. Judges 14.14. Judges 16.29–30.” Does that mean anything to you, Todd?'

‘Let me see that.' Todd scrutinised the paper for a moment. ‘It's not sermon notes,' he stated. ‘As I said, he never made them. No, I think it's a kind of a riddle. Or a puzzle.'

‘A riddle?' echoed David, with rising excitement. ‘A puzzle?'

Pat demonstrated knowledge gained from years of teaching Sunday School. ‘Isn't that Samson's riddle? “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness”?'

‘Yes, of course!' David confirmed, looking up the first reference in the Bible.

Todd looked at the list again. ‘It's like clues to a crossword puzzle, or something like that. You know how fond Canon Brydges-ffrench was of his crosswords and his riddles. He used to play around with things like this sometimes, to amuse himself.'

‘Read them out,' commanded David. ‘I'm sure they must all mean something. Perhaps it has something to do with the decision he was trying to make, whether to resign or not.'

‘Well, it looks like they're in two sections,' Todd analysed. ‘Underneath Samson, and the two references from Judges, it says Abraham and Isaac, Genesis 22.7–8. Then there's a space, and it says Matthew 7.6, Amos 6.12, Psalm 109.20–30, and finally Psalm 109.8.'