Fete Fatale (14 page)

‘I certainly won't be asking him to run the Lads' Brigade, anyway. But it wasn't those two I came to talk to you about, Helen.'

‘I rather hoped you were just doing a tour of inspection of your new parish.'

‘I was, until I saw you here. As a matter of fact, I was escaping from the Blatchley children. Everyone in that house is very kind, but of course they don't realize how exhausting children can be to an ageing bachelor.' He sat down on the grass, patted Jasper, who was beginning to give signs that this was not what he came out for, and looked at me concernedly. ‘From what you say, I gather that you don't want to talk about your husband?'

I considered for a while.

‘I shall eventually want to talk about him—and about
it
, to make sense of it in some way. Oh, don't worry: I'm not one of the sort of nutter who sees the fire in York Minster as God's divine thunderbolt punishing heresy, and I don't see any divine intervention in Marcus's death. I'm not going to lose my faith, such as it is, because I don't understand God's purpose in this. He doesn't have one, and this is a normal, messy, human affair. That's the trouble. Until I've reduced it to some kind of order in my mind, I can't focus on Marcus—on
himself—
as I want to. His end, and the randomness of it, keep getting in the way. So until the police find out who did it—'

‘Or until you do—'

I looked up at him sharply.

‘You've been talking to somebody.'

‘Mrs Nielson did mention that you hoped to go around talking to people, perhaps getting to hear things that a Superintendent from Leeds is unlikely to be told.'

I sighed.

‘However you put it, it sounds horribly Enid Blyton, doesn't it? I ought to be ashamed—'

‘Not at all. My experience suggests that
any
activity is beneficial after a sudden loss—and yours was more horribly sudden than most. And of course you do know things about Hexton—the web of
customs and conventions, the alliances and animosities—that the police could take months to get any real grasp of. I don't think there is anything
childish
as such in what you propose to do. Only, be careful—'

‘Because she may strike again? I've thought of that. I'll be on my guard.'

‘How can you be on your guard when you've already assumed it's a woman?'

He sounded quite exasperated by my silliness, and he did have a point. It was hardly prudent to have wiped fifty per cent of the population clean of suspicion. Father Battersby sat thinking for a moment, and then said:

‘Tell me, have you come to the conclusion that this was a planned murder?'

This I had thought out.

‘I think it's possible. It would be easy enough to persuade Marcus to go round Castle Walk. It was one of his favourite spots. He told me that he was finishing his stint on the Test Your Strength machine at three-thirty, so he could have told anyone, or anyone could have overheard. Easy enough to intercept him on his way home.'

‘Quite. And yet . . . You know, I incline to think this was a quite off-the-cuff affair.'

‘Do people murder off the cuff?'

‘I put it badly. I mean the result of a sudden impulse. After all, if it was planned, then it was a terribly dangerous and chancy murder, wasn't it? Let us grant that the murderer had gone over this castle thoroughly, to make sure that stretch of the path was not visible from any part of it. But that committed him
to
that part, and only that part. Then there are the fields on the other side of the river: that part of Castle Walk is not thickly vegetated, so someone with good eyesight might easily have seen something from the fields. How could he or she be sure no one would be in view on the path? What would he have done if someone had been? Planned, it seems so unlikely. On an impulse, it seems credible.'

‘What could arouse anyone to such an impulse against Marcus? The least impulsive of men himself . . . ?'

‘Something he said, in a quarrel . . . '

‘Marcus hardly ever quarrelled in his life. He had used up a ten-year
ration of harsh words in the weeks before you arrived. On the other hand a feeling, welling up, of humiliation and failure . . . after your reception at the fête . . . '

‘You've made up your mind that that was the motive, haven't you?'

Again, he was obviously trying to stop me committing myself to one notion.

‘I think it must have something to do with it. Of course, I realize you won't like members of your flock being suspected.'

‘Come, come. I know as well as any that Christians can commit murder. Quite apart from anything else, I've been a jail chaplain. I'm only trying to tell you that you shouldn't settle on a motive, commit yourself to it, too early. I'm sure the police haven't.'

‘Where were you,' I asked, out of the blue, for why, after all, should anyone suspect Father Battersby, ‘when Marcus was killed?'

Father Battersby said cautiously: ‘I'm not sure that I know exactly when Marcus was killed.'

‘Let's say he left the meadows around half past three, or five or ten minutes after that. That would give us some time between a quarter to four and four o'clock for his arrival at that point on Castle Walk.'

Father Battersby sat, his chin in his cupped hand, his robe spread out around him, like a ballerina in mourning.

‘From the point of view of an alibi, it's the later the better for me. I saw the Blatchleys going across the meadows on their way home, and I joined them. When we got home it was ten past four, because we commented that it had been a long day. So I was probably with them from about five to four. But before that—well, I suppose I was around and about, as I had been all day.'

‘Enjoying your triumph,' I said, and it was not difficult for him to catch the note of bitterness in my voice.

‘Truly I didn't regard it in that light. Nor, I may say, did Marcus.'

‘No, I'm sorry. I never did live up to Marcus's standards, and even after his death I can't. But it's worth remembering that it's not how you two regarded it that's important. As far as other people were concerned, you had had—how shall I put it?—an exceptionally successful day. I gather Marcus said something of the sort to Mary Morse, on his way out from the fête.'

‘Really?' His eyebrows went up.

‘In some tactful and generalized form. Tell me, is it your impression that Mary Morse was still at the fête when you left? I ask because you were one who had a great number of opportunities of observing her.'

‘She did rather put herself in my way . . . My impression is that none of those encounters occurred later than, say, three or three-fifteen. But that's an impression only. Similarly, my predecessor's lady wife—who, by the way, is departing rather earlier than planned—wasn't greatly in evidence in the later part of the afternoon.'

‘And why,' I asked sharply, ‘is Thyrza Primp departing early for the gaieties of Harrogate?'

‘I should have thought that there was one obvious explanation. You may not have heard, but she and Mary Morse were alone on their—' he smiled deprecatingly—‘God bus yesterday. It can hardly have been a happy experience for her.'

‘That's one explanation. I can think of others. I shall have to pay my call on her as soon as possible.'

At this point, though Father Battersby was talking, was most probably giving me words of advice or remonstration, my attention was drawn back to Castle Walk. The breeze that had fluttered the hem of his soutane when we started the conversation had risen to a real wind by now, and real winds make themselves felt on Castle Walk. Coming round the bend, from the point where Marcus had been killed
(how
people managed casually to pass by there, it seemed!) and heading towards town, was Mrs Mipchin. The wind drove her drab linen dress to cling immodestly around her legs and thighs, and tore at the scarf around her neck, and the pale grey felt hat on her head. As I watched, it nearly took the hat away, and Mrs Mipchin clutched at it, then drew from it a pin, and held both hat and pin in the safety of her hands.

‘So, I repeat: take care,' Father Battersby concluded. ‘Avoid making assumptions, don't act on them if you do.'

I looked around, but already he was striding away towards the gateway, over the trim lawns, his soutane billowing and giving him the air of a restless but purposive blackbird, flapping his way from crust to crust. I felt towards him warmly, yet he made me uneasy.

I turned back to Castle Walk and Mrs Mipchin, making her way
grimly towards town. Clutched in her right hand, mesmerizing me, was that long, steel hatpin—a pin much like those that I had sold in such numbers on the day of the fête.

As Father Battersby disappeared through the gatehouse, I scrambled to my feet. Jasper barked his approbation, for the walk had not so far turned out at all as he had hoped. This earned us a frown from the bossy functionary as we hurried out into the wynds again. With a bit of luck Mrs Mipchin would be on her way home, and would pass by the cottages just below the castle. Jasper and I hurried ahead to meet her.

Her expression, as she saw us tripping down the steps, stumbling in our eagerness, was rather along the lines of Macbeth when he sees there is no empty seat at the feast. I, and Jasper, seemed to embody all that she most feared to encounter. I was not foolish enough to put this down to feelings of guilt: what she feared, most probably, was a social contretemps, a situation which no rules of behaviour had taught her how to cope with. It was rather like the Queen waking up to find a wild-eyed Irishman in her bedroom, but, if report be true, handled with considerably less aplomb.

‘Oh, Mrs Kitt—Helen . . . This
is
surprising.'

‘Hardly,' I said drily. ‘I imagine Hexton has been buzzing with my flouting of its rules and conventions over the past day or two. I've met with nothing but embarrassment and avoidance every time I've put my nose outside my door.'

‘I've always said,' Elspeth Mipchin enunciated, with that infuriating Edinburgh primness, ‘that if we look behind what we call rules, we'll see that there is usually sound sense about human nature at the bottom of them.'

‘Have you?' I said, with flat scorn in my tones. She had that sort of thin, genteel voice that often reads the serials on
Woman's Hour.
Her dreary complacency irritated me no end. ‘The trouble is that people differ.'

‘Ye-e-es,' she agreed. (How much better, it was implied, if they
had not been so wilful as to do so, if they had all modelled themselves on the impeccable Elspeth Mipchin.)

‘And I've already come to the conclusion that these rules are designed to spare people at large, not to help the bereaved.' Mrs Mipchin was not so stupid that she did not register that I was including her in a collective charge of hypocrisy and selfishness. I pressed home the advantage by saying: ‘I was thinking of flouting the rules still more dramatically by asking you for a cup of tea.'

‘Oh yes—of course—naturally.' Mrs Mipchin's house was only two minutes away, while mine was on the outskirts, and it seemed to be impossible to refuse, if only on humanitarian grounds. I did not want to leave her with the impression, however, that in my enfeebled and widowed state I had been exhausted by the afternoon sun. I said:

‘I realize it should be
you
calling on
me
, but as you know I'm a perverse creature, and I don't know how long I'm going to be in Hexton to receive calls.'

Mrs Mipchin shot me a glance—composed of I know not what—as we walked through the narrow wynds.

‘You are thinking of leaving Hexton?'

‘As soon as I know who killed my husband,' I said calmly.

When we got to the Mipchins' front door—they lived in one of the stone houses that opened directly on to the wynds—Elspeth Mipchin looked pointedly at Jasper. Then we made our way without a word round to the back, and she waited while I tied him to the line post—neither asking nor suggesting that I do that, but taking it for granted that I knew that no dog was allowed to pollute the Mipchin interior with hairs, boisterousness or smell. Jasper spotted a King Charles bitch in the next garden, and seemed quite happy. Then Mrs Mipchin led me round again to the front door. To go in through the kitchen was unthinkable.

As we came through the door I thought I heard the sound of a television being switched off. Mrs Mipchin's ears also seemed to twitch suspiciously. She put her hat—the hatpin reinserted—into the hall cupboard and marched into the living-room.

‘Mrs Kitterege has called for tea,' she announced, the ice of disapproval quite undisguised. The Mipchin residence was furnished with heavy and dark pieces of a kind that is rather unfairly called ‘traditional'. It all sat squarely on the floor and announced ‘I
was not cheap.' Mr Mipchin was sitting over a coffee-table on which was a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, apparently of a vast cornfield in Upper Silesia. It looked very difficult, which was just as well, because I suspected it was just a blind to cover telly-watching when his wife was out of the way.

Elspeth Mipchin announced: ‘I'll get the tea.'

That was a departure. George Mipchin was generally ordered to make the tea, while Elspeth saw to the dainties (who rated walnut sponge, and who could be fobbed off with lemon fingers being matters that demanded the nicest discrimination). Now she was undertaking both, no doubt intending to take her time, and leaving the hapless George to break the social ice. He did his duty well, if fussily, and ushered me into a chair by the empty grate.

‘So you're getting about a bit again? Not shutting yourself away? That's right . . . That's good.'

‘I find it helps, seeing people,' I said. ‘Besides, I don't know how long I will be staying in Hexton, and I want to get things . . . sorted out.'