Past Praying For (25 page)

‘
Good gracious, Tommy Compton, is that you under that cap?’

One
of the children sniggered, but Jean, oblivious, twittered on happily.

‘
Well! Your mother told me you’d gone and joined the police force, but this is the first time I’ve seen you in all your glory. Let me look at you – yes, very smart! And they do always say poachers make the best gamekeepers, don’t they?’

A
volley of stifled giggles came from the children, now listening with undisguised glee, and the young man’s face proclaimed an even deeper shade of embarrassment.

Jean
tidied him to one side.

‘
Now I’m just popping in to sort out some things to take to Miss Moon in hospital, all right?’

He
opened his mouth, but before he could find his voice she was hurrying up the path. He shut it again hastily, aware of his young tormentors and reluctant to afford them more amusement by futile protest. There would be other, less inhibited lines of defence if these were deemed necessary.

But
Jean encountered no further opposition. Apart from the area of fire damage, the house would not hold useful evidence, and the detective in charge was quite prepared to accede to her request.

‘
Her cleaner’s upstairs already, starting to clear up,’ he said, and was startled to be put aside with a force totally unexpected from one of such small stature and nervous appearance.

‘
Is she, indeed!’ said Jean, and with the light of battle in her eyes shot up the stairs.

Minnie
Groak jumped guiltily as, entirely without warning, the bedroom door was flung open. She had just settled down to a comfortable and luxurious rummage through Miss Moon’s bedroom drawers. She had been saving the best till last, but now realized the folly of her strategy; anyone might have guessed at the Boots’ cosmetics and the Marks and Spencer’s knickers, but now she would never know what riches her trawl through the vicar’s correspondence files in her study might have yielded.

‘
And just what do you think you’re doing here, Minnie Groak?’

Mrs
Brancombe stood in the doorway like a small avenging angel, the flaming sword all but visible as she prepared to expel the other woman from her anticipated paradise.

Minnie
’s eyes fell. She was afraid of direct confrontation, an uneasiness rooted in her schooldays when, caught out in some pernicious piece of tale-bearing, she had suffered condign punishment. There was a whine in her voice when she spoke.

‘
I’m sure I don’t know why you should go asking me like that, Mrs Brancombe. I came here out of the goodness of my heart, and who else should come and sort things out for the poor lady, I should like to know?’

Jean
eyed the open drawers pointedly, but retreated from direct accusation.

‘
Well, Minnie, if you really want to be helpful you could get a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush and start cleaning the kitchen walls and floor; there’s a lot of hard work needed down there.’

Minnie
smirked triumphantly.

‘
Well I would of, naturally, only the policeman said I might be in the way. But I could go and clean out her study – ’

But
Jean’s blood was up, and she had no hesitation in quashing this attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

‘
I think Miss Moon would prefer to do that herself. If you really want to do your Christian duty, the church needs a bit of cleaning and tidying for Sunday. It’s my day, but I have to get some things Miss Moon needs in hospital. I’ll give you the key. Be sure to lock up after you, and someone will be round to get it back from you tomorrow.’

Routed,
Minnie accepted it meekly and Jean supervised her departure. Now she must see to it that the police never admitted that wretched woman again.

***

Margaret had forgotten how much afraid she had been of the dark as a child, forgotten over the comfortable adult years when darkness was a benison before the greater blessing of sleep. She had forgotten how thickly-peopled with demons that darkness had been.

As
she lay now, blinded as yet only by the benign, soothing pads they had bound across her eyes, she discovered that the demons had never been truly vanquished. Beneath the shell of her stated optimism they gnawed like rats at the soft underbelly of her fear.

Last
night she had made all the right noises while the hospital staff repeatedly sluiced her streaming, burning eyes and made her sip some liquid which did something to alleviate the raw agony of her throat. They were, they had said, practically sure there would be no permanent damage, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they, and practically wasn’t quite sufficient reassurance when you were lying with nothing to do except consider the worst-case scenario.

She
made an effort to control her thoughts. This was just a more dramatic example of 3 a.m. despair, and there were few people who didn’t know all about that. But then, perhaps if you were – blind (she forced herself to shape the word) daylight never came to reduce the Giants Despair of darkness to human scale.

There
was no means of knowing how long she had been lying awake, or what time it was. She could have slept for one hour or ten; it could be daylight or the middle of the night. She could be alone, or someone could be watching her in silence. And how could she tell who it was, whether it was a nurse, or a friend, or the fiend who had tried to kill her last night, returned? It was all she could do not to scream.

***

Minnie was fuming as she pushed through the group still hanging about the gate, ignoring the eager questions of a couple of women she knew. If Jean Brancombe thought that she, Minnie, was going to go and do her chores for her, she had another think coming. Still...She fingered the key in her pocket speculatively.

You
never knew what might be kept in the church. Miss Moon quite often saw people in the little vestry, and if the key let her in there...

Well,
she didn’t mind doing a bit of dusting, after all. Not if it was going to help out. She was a fool to herself, she knew that, and she would get no thanks for it. But then, she should be used to that after all this time. Blessed is she who expecteth nothing, for she shall not be disappointed, as her mother always said.

She
had begun to feel positively virtuous by the time she arrived at the church.

It
was the key to the side door that she had been given, and she went round by the little path, shielded from the road by the low branches of two ancient yew trees.

There
was a parcel lying on the doorstep. It was fairly small, wrapped in brown paper; taped on to the front was a piece of paper with the direction, ‘Rev. Margaret Moon, Vicar, St Mary’s Church’, printed on it. Minnie picked it up, opened the door and went in.

She
paused as the chilly stillness of the empty church struck her almost like a blow, but only briefly. With the parcel in her hand she headed straight for the vestry door. She had every excuse now; obviously she must place this parcel on Miss Moon’s desk. She had the key ready in her hand, large, solid and old-fashioned.

There
was no point in even trying it. She could see that the lock on the vestry door was small, neat and modern, a thoroughly efficient mortice lock, to thwart modern thieves who knew all about the value of ecclesiastical plate.

Thwarted
herself, Minnie sat down on the nearest pew with a sense of injustice. Here she was trying to be helpful and people treated her as if she wasn’t to be trusted. Jean Brancombe could have given her the key to the vestry and then she could have put the parcel in and dusted the room a bit for poor Miss Moon.

She
cast a disparaging look around, at the flowers up by the altar, dropping their petals and wilting. One of the carved saints from his niche seemed to be giving her a hard stare, and she stared insolently back. If they thought that after an insult like this she was going to clean their stupid church, they were out of luck. Stuff the lot of them!

She
was still holding the parcel, and now looked at it again with automatic curiosity. She shook it, tentatively, then felt the edges. A book, by the feel of it; not much interest in that. Probably just someone returning one they had borrowed.

Minnie
turned it over idly. There was writing on the back, she noticed suddenly, near the bottom of the left-hand side: a small, neat, distinctive script.

‘
Pray for us sinners,’ it read, ‘now and at the hour of our death.’

Her
eyes narrowed in sudden interest, and she looked at the package hungrily.

After
all, it could be urgent, couldn’t it? There could be a message inside that Miss Moon needed to get at once, and with the poor lady in hospital, Minnie saw her own duty clear.

Delicately
she slid her finger under the sealing tape and prised it off.

***

Margaret had not been aware of falling asleep again, but she awoke to a cheerful nurse asking her to sit up so that she could remove the bandages.

There
was no time to agonize. First there was weak light, then strong, and then she was blinking blearily in a world she had almost managed to convince herself she would never see again. Her eyes were watering, she explained defensively to the nurse in what remained of her voice, only because of their sudden exposure to light.

‘
Of course,’ the nurse agreed sympathetically and found tissues so that she could give her nose a good blow. Promising some of the ice cream and jelly they kept for tonsils patients, she left Margaret to appreciate the riches of normal existence.

She
groped for her glasses on the bedside table and put them on, and the fuzzy outlines of the room jumped into vivid focus. Her eyes were smarting, her throat felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to it, and now she considered it, she was probably homeless as well. But she could see, and she was hungry; to these blessings were added the sight of Robert coming in at the door.

‘
Goodness,’ she grated. ‘You do look peculiar!’

The
strain which had been etched so markedly on his face eased.

‘
You have no idea how happy I am that you are able to tell me that, even though it shows an appalling disrespect for Jean’s handiwork and Ted’s taste.

‘
But don’t try to talk. It’s obviously painful, and anyway you wouldn’t wish to deprive me of the only opportunity I may ever have to talk uninterrupted while you are in the room. I’ll let you tell me if there’s anything special you want, but keep it brief.’

The
nurse brought in a tray as Margaret squawked, ‘Information!’ then obediently subsided to address herself to soup, milk, and the promised jelly and ice cream with a good appetite.

‘
Well, the house first of all –’

Catching
sight of her frown, he checked himself. ‘Oh, Pyewacket, I suppose. I can’t think why you need to ask. He saved his own elegant skin via the cat-flap of course, and is now being so pampered by Jean that he may never deign to return.’

She
thought about laughing, but deciding that might be too ambitious smiled instead.

‘
The house isn’t as bad as you might think, though I’m afraid one end of the sitting room is pretty much a write-off. You’ve lost quite a few books and a couple of paintings and of course that old suite, but that was what caused the trouble with the fumes anyway. There’s some smoke damage, but Jean Brancombe’s been round there and had all the windows open, and she says that once the clothes and the curtains have been to the dry-cleaners and the carpets have been professionally cleaned – she’s arranging all that – there won’t be much damaged beyond repair except the mattresses. And your insurance will take care of all that.’

Margaret
nodded, making impatient ‘get-on-with-it’ signals with her hands.

‘
The police work? Well, there’s not much to say, unfortunately. The sitting-room window was broken, fireflighters were laid along the window ledge inside by the curtains, so that they caught, then fell on to the armchair – and the rest you know. There are no footprints except a smudge of mud that might or might not have something to do with it.

‘
They’ll be taking fingerprints from you and me – oh, and the dreaded Minnie Groak, I suppose – for elimination purposes, though they don’t think they have anything meaningful.

‘
They’re questioning all the women who fit the profile, which as you can imagine is causing no end of fuss. Vezey says there have been four complaints to the Chief Constable already, two alleging that nothing is being done and two complaining about harassment.

‘
Is there anything you can suggest yourself? I’ll get you a pen and paper so you can write it down.’

He
failed to register Margaret’s hesitation. Then she shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t need paper,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I won’t talk much, but my throat’s quite bearable now it isn’t so dry.’