The Reluctant Detective (Faith Morgan Mysteries) (10 page)

“He loved her,” Don said quietly. “To be honest, I think they loved each other.”

“And what about Trevor Shoesmith?”

“What about him?”

“Did you know that they were friends – Jessica and Trevor?”

“You’ve got a dirty mind,” he chided, flicking a glance at her dog collar with a sly grin. “Nah. It wasn’t like that. I think she was just doing good works.”

He stopped short, a few feet from the vestry door. Faith glanced up and was surprised by his tense expression.

“I’m not going in there,” he said flatly.

Faith took the tray from him.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

He began to move away, backing in the direction they’d come. His usual confidence clicked into place as if it had never faltered.

“But come see me after, eh? Let me know what’s going on. I’ll make you a sandwich,” he ended with a wave.

Faith nodded a vague acknowledgment, and carried the tray into the church.

Ben greeted the tea with barely suppressed frustration. Jessica was wan and silent. There was a faintly stubborn look about her mouth. He can’t have brought up Trevor’s suicide yet, then, thought Faith. She felt a twinge of guilt at being party to such a deception. She resumed her seat next to Jessica on the pew. Behind them, Ben sat back. She took the movement as tacit approval.

“Jessica,” she said, handing her a mug, “I was wondering why you didn’t mention your relationship with Alistair Ingram.”

All credit to Ben. He didn’t move a muscle. Jessica, on the other hand, blushed like a guilty teenager.

“Well, I…” She wouldn’t meet Faith’s eye.

Faith took a sip of tea. “Was it a serious relationship?” she enquired conversationally. Behind her, she heard Ben exhale brusquely through his nose. Jessica looked at Faith, shocked, as if she hadn’t expected such a query from a vicar.

“Of course! We were engaged to be married.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Alistair thought it was best he was retired before we made it public. We were in love.” Her voice was reverent. “He was the most wonderful man I have ever known. And he’s gone.”

There was such loss in that small phrase. Faith cleared her throat. She felt filthy, prying like this, but she had to ask.

“Did Don know of the engagement?”

“Alistair was going to tell him that day – that morning.”

Why hadn’t Don mentioned the engagement? Perhaps his father died before he could broach the subject. Faith thought of her first glimpse of Don storming away from his father, and his father reaching out to him from the vestry door. She wondered about a son who had lost his mother and then, in his eyes, lost his father to the church. Just how angry might such a son have been to learn that that father was prepared to give up the church that had appeared to mean so much more to him than his surviving family, for this woman?

She saw Don stopping short at the vestry door just a few moments ago.
I’m not going in there.

“How about Trevor Shoesmith?” Faith started at the sound of Ben’s voice. She had almost forgotten he was there.

“Trevor?” Jessica repeated. She seemed bemused.

“Didn’t he fancy himself in love with you, too?”

Ben could have phrased that more tactfully! Faith glared at him behind Jessica’s back. He rolled his eyes at her in an entirely unprofessional way as he felt in his pocket. He took out a letter in a plastic evidence bag, and read:

“
I am sitting here thinking of the barn and the feel of your hair against my skin. Jessica, you know what you are to me – everything. In your arms I can be all those things you say I can.
”

Faith felt like a pervert. She wished she was anywhere else but sitting there in that pew. Ben seemed entirely unaffected by what he was doing. He was watching Jessica. She was rigid.

“Were you having a relationship with Mr Shoesmith?” asked Ben.

“No!” Jessica was indignant. “It was nothing like that.”

“No?” Ben looked down at the letter in its plastic bag. “So what did happen…in the barn?”

Jessica tucked a strand of her hair behind an ear and squirmed in her seat. “It was one time…Trevor told me some things about his past; he got upset; I tried to comfort him. It was a tender moment – but not passionate,” she said emphatically, and shook her head once. “I didn’t feel that way about Trevor.”

“Did you tell him that?” Ben’s voice was sarcastic.

“Oh yes, I did. I did tell him.” Jessica’s eyes filled with tears again.

“But he hadn’t given up his hopes?”

She raised a small fist to her mouth. “No,” she said, and began to sob.

Faith put her arms around her and held her as she cried. Behind them, Ben sat back relaxed, one arm stretched out along the pew back, watching and waiting. She tried to ignore him.

“This morning,” Faith spoke softly, “what happened? Why did you leave him?”

Jessica’s voice was clogged with tears. “He’d started again,” she said.

“Started again?”

Leaning into her like a child, with one hand Jessica drew a vague slicing gesture across her arm just below the elbow.

“Trevor would cut himself?” asked Faith.

The blonde head nodded once, like a puppet. “He’d been doing it off and on for years, I think. I’ve been trying to help him.” Jessica rummaged around in a pocket and brought out another handkerchief.

“So you did your best,” Faith’s voice was gentle.

Again the puppet nod. “I did my best.” She blew her nose.

Jessica lifted her head. She turned to look back at Ben. “How did you get that letter?”

He looked back at her in silence.

“Where’s Trevor?” Jessica asked. She blinked twice, then gave a tiny shake of her head. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Ben.

“I am so sorry, Jessica.” Faith wished words weren’t so inadequate. She wondered how Ben could sit there so unmoved. Now Jessica’s beautiful eyes, full of tears, turned wildly to her.

“I left him!” Her voice was shrill. “I left him there this morning. I knew the state he was in and I left him!”

“Why did you leave?”

Jessica made a clumsy gesture in the direction of the letter Ben held, and her hand hit the pew hard. She didn’t even flinch.

“Because of that. Oh, I knew he had feelings for me! I thought we’d had that out months ago – I made it clear: we were just friends, that was all. He said he understood. But then, this morning he got so worked up – pleading with me. He said he was doing it for me! What was he trying to prove? The blood! It was disgusting. I knew he’d had times like this before. He told me once it was a release. A release? How could it be a release?” She was rocking back and forth now, with an intensity Faith found worrying. Her phrases came out in an odd, mechanical rhythm. “I was making it worse. I had to leave – but I took the pesticide, in case…”

“In case he used it on himself?” Faith asked, hoping to cut into her mounting hysteria.

Jessica nodded, her lips compressed, her jaw rigid.

“And what did Trevor think of your relationship with Alistair Ingram?” Ben’s voice intruded. Faith glared at him. His question galvanized Jessica. She swung to face him.

“Trevor was a good and kind man!” she howled at him. “He
never
hurt anyone but himself!” She folded herself up as if she wanted to disappear and began to rock, moaning in a way that made the hairs stand up on the back of Faith’s neck.

F
AITH FELT WRUNG OUT
. S
HE SAT
in her car outside her sister’s house, too tired to get out. It was exhausting, dealing so intimately with misery and death.

They’d had to call a doctor to Jessica. He’d given her a sedative. Faith had seen her home, limp and passive, to her cottage in a hamlet outside Little Worthy. Jessica’s neighbour, Di, a primary school teacher with three grown-up children, had offered to stay with her. Together they had put her to bed in her low-eaved room with its embroidered linen and limewashed French furniture. In the sunny room Jessica’s head lay on the freshly laundered pillow, her face blotchy with tears, clutching the bedclothes under her chin like a child.

Despite everything, Faith had made her meeting with the rural dean on time. Life goes on. Canon Matthews had been sympathetic, but businesslike. They had discussed plans for Alistair Ingram’s funeral that coming Friday. The bishop would take it. It would be a public affair. The press had got wind of the story. Faith wondered how Don was feeling about the church assuming charge of Alistair Ingram’s final farewell as if he belonged to them, his son no more than a mourner. She tried to raise this with the rural dean, but Canon Matthews merely looked wise and said something about anger being a natural stage of bereavement. Faith let it drop for the time being: perhaps she should speak to the bishop himself. Canon Matthews had frowned at her idea of physically cleaning the church alongside her parishioners, asking if there wasn’t a regular cleaning rota. Faith had said that wasn’t quite the point and he had shrugged, admitting it might serve some “symbolic” function.

Faith didn’t want to go into her sister’s house. Ruth lived in a modern close. Ten properties arranged in a neat horseshoe like some blow-moulded Barbie set, each house so like the next, as if individual humanity was an embarrassment – something to be hidden from the neighbours. Given the fallout she had been dealing with of late, it occurred to Faith that perhaps someone had a point.

She thought longingly of her own Birmingham flat with its high ceilings and familiar clutter. She imagined herself coming home. She would kick off her shoes and make herself a mug of tea and read her post at the bleached pine table. Later she might grill herself some chicken, toss a salad and eat in front of the TV. No questions. No explanations. No making conversation. Just quiet.

The plastic-coated front door opened and Ruth stood there shoeless in her work suit. She looked cross.

“So – are you coming in or what?” she yelled. “You’ve been sitting out there for ages!”

Faith forced a smile and obediently gathered up her things.

“You won’t believe the day I’ve had,” said Ruth, as she led the way down the hall.

“Shall I make us some tea?”

“You know what? I fancy a sherry.”

Faith sighed internally. Ruth was in the mood for a bit of sisterly commiseration.

“Maybe I’ll stick to tea.”

“Oh, don’t say that! I can’t drink alone with you sipping tea.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“It’s not as if I’m a drinker,” Ruth said belligerently. Faith saw that her participation in the sherry drinking had become a point of principle.

“Come on. I have had a pig of a day.” Ruth marched to the kitchen and got out two glasses and a bottle of sweet white wine. “There’s this young career woman type they’ve taken on to run some stupid ‘vision’ committee – a waste of money if ever I saw one.” Ruth worked as an administrator at the county council offices in Winchester. “She comes swanning in at ten to three and demands I get this typing done on the double because she wants it at the printers at four. The cheek of it! Thinks she can just come in and give me orders without a thought to the system.”

“Perhaps if she’s new she doesn’t know the system,” offered Faith mildly, sipping her wine and longing for tea.

Ruth snorted derisively. “Well, I told her, I am the chief executive’s assistant, and I have plenty of jobs of my own, thank you. Put it on the pile for the juniors and maybe someone will get round to it next week. Ha!” Ruth exclaimed with bitter self-satisfaction.

Faith leaned back in her chair and stretched her neck.

“What’s up with you?” demanded Ruth.

“Oh, just a long day.”

“Seen much of Ben?” Her sister’s eyes turned beady.

“A bit.” Faith got up and headed towards the kitchen. “What do you fancy to eat? I think I should cook for you tonight.”

“Check the fridge.” Ruth followed her, glass in hand, crowding her in the tiny kitchen. “So, spill. How was it? How are you two getting along?”

It was as if a perished rubber band gave way somewhere deep inside.

“We found a man hanging in a barn,” Faith stated. “Then we spent an unpleasant couple of hours interrogating the person closest to the suicide. We had to call the doctor. It wasn’t what you’d call romantic.”

She shouldn’t have let it out like that. It was as if she had spat out something toxic, polluting the mundane familiarity of that kitchen. Ruth stared at her, perplexed and uncertain. Faith could see she didn’t know what to say. Who would?

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said at last.

“Me, too.”

Ruth rubbed her arm and patted it. “More wine?” she said, with a nervous half-giggle.

“Actually, I prefer tea.”

“So who was the suicide?” Ruth said, putting on the kettle.

“Trevor Shoesmith.”

Her sister swung round to face her. “No! Oh, Mum will be upset.”

I’m not sure why, Faith thought. Mum hadn’t seen Trevor for years. These exclamations people made on the news of death – they were so insufficient; conventional phrases obscuring the reality that no words could build a bridge into the misery of those truly caught up in the loss. Faith curled up inside at the thought of all the gasping expressions of sympathy there would be from strangers about Trevor Shoesmith’s suicide. Ghoulishness masquerading as concern!

You
are
in a bad mood, commented a detached voice in the back of her head.

“Well, at least Ben was there,” she heard her sister say.

Faith closed her eyes. When faced with the unknowable, harp on the familiar. It is only human nature. Be charitable.

“I just don’t see why you are being so silly about him!” Ruth was picking up speed now that she was back on familiar territory. “Ben’s clearly still interested – although why, after the way you’ve treated him, I don’t know. It’s not as if you’ve got any other prospects. And now you’re local. You’re not getting any younger!”

“Roo – not now. OK?” Faith pleaded. “Have mercy!”

The phone rang.

“I’m going to have a bath,” said her sister curtly. “You can answer that.” She flounced up the stairs.

Faith answered the phone. “Yes?” she snapped.

“You’re in a good mood,” said Ben’s voice in her ear.

“The world’s such a glorious place!” she quipped bitterly.

“Mmm. Tough day.”

“That it was.”

The electricity of the open line crackled between them.

“Thought I would check on how you left Mrs Rose,” he said.

“For heaven’s sake! She was numb with shock – she couldn’t even speak coherently.” The words tumbled out with a violence that caught Faith by surprise. “She wasn’t in any condition to make any further confessions, and I wasn’t in the mood to pry.” After all they had witnessed that day, he was still expecting her to spy for him!

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” responded Ben in a flat voice.

“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t being fair. Faith sat down on the bottom stair and propped herself up against the café au lait-painted wall. She began again in a more reasonable tone. “She was exhausted. We put her to bed. The neighbour’s keeping an eye on her.”

“I’ve alerted victim services. They’re sending someone to check on her tomorrow.”

“Good.”

Again the silence stretched out between them. It was dim on the stairs. Ruth was trying to save electricity.

“Did you find a suicide note?”

“Under the dog.”

Faith had a brief mental image. “That’s unpleasant.”

“Mmm. Bit of a mess.”

“What did it say?”

“Brief and not very helpful. It’s addressed to Jessica.”

“And says?”

“I loved you. I’m sorry,” he said.

“Meaning I’m sorry I loved you?”

“More – I loved you – stop – I’m sorry – stop. Two distinct sentiments.”

Faith shrugged. “Still, the impact’s the same. Guilt trip placed firmly on Jessica.”

“Maybe he didn’t even put them together in his own head – who can tell,” Ben said philosophically. Faith knew such sidetracks didn’t interest him.

“Suicide is such a miserable act.” She knew it was a pointless statement, but the waste made her cross. “It inflicts such open-ended guilt on those left behind.”

“Maybe that is the suicide’s point.”

“The ultimate passive-aggressive revenge.”

“Pointless since you’re not there to enjoy it.” He paused. She heard the shift in his voice. “It’s just been confirmed. Trevor Shoesmith had an alibi for Ingram’s death.”

He waited as if he expected her to crow, or at least offer an “I told you so”, but she just felt exhaustingly sad.

“Where was he?”

“We have witnesses that put him in a pub in a neighbouring village on Saturday night. He got so plastered a friend gave him a bed for the night.”

“And the friend’s reliable?”

“A respected farmer and his wife.” Ben sounded tired. “According to them, Shoesmith was out of it. He didn’t wake up until late morning on Sunday – after Ingram was already dead.”

So Trevor Shoesmith was harried in his final days for nothing – all because she had repeated gossip to Ben.

“So you’re not going say it?” Ben prompted.

“Would it make you feel better if I did?”

Ben grunted. The noise of water filling the bath upstairs was loud in the still hall. Ruth went into the bathroom and closed the door.

“So it’s back to basics,” Ben said.

Let’s move on. Ben Shorter has a murderer to catch.

She pulled herself up. It was true; that was his job. And hers was to find God in the midst of this tragedy, and serve the community of St James’s.

“What’ve you got?” she heard herself ask. When they were together, they would always do this at the end of the day – discuss the case in hand, go over things. Old habits were hard to break. “When was the poison put in the wine?”

She heard a rustle down the line. She imagined Ben leaning back in his chair, stretching out his long legs as he ordered his thoughts.

“Well, they had an eight o’clock communion service that morning. No problems there. Mr Partridge, the churchwarden, says he poured the wine out into that carafe thing…”

“The cruet,” Faith supplied.

“Whatever – he opened a new bottle for that first service. We’ve checked the bottle. Nothing there. After the eight o’clock service, they’d run low and Mr Partridge says the vicar refilled the
cruet
,” Ben paused ironically to emphasize his mastery of the term. Alone in Ruth’s hall, Faith smiled. “It was left on that side table by the altar ready for the next service. When pushed, Mr Partridge admitted he might have left the vestry unlocked when he went home for a snack between the services – his usual practice, I am told.”

“So the poison was put in the cruet after the wine was decanted?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of time?”

“Best guess the wine was left unattended for ten, fifteen minutes between the church emptying after the eight o’clock service and people arriving for the ten o’clock.”

Faith visualized the vestry and the approach from the vicarage screened by the lime trees, the open field beyond the stone wall. That offered the most discreet access. Slip across the short cut from the lane by Shoesmith’s farm and behind the church. Someone could conceal themselves behind that stone wall and wait opposite the vestry door for the coast to be clear. The front of the church was overlooked from too many points – there was a good chance that passers-by or people in the houses across the green would spot somebody approaching that way.

“The poisoner would have to be pretty confident,” she commented. “I mean, there is always a chance that one of the churchwardens would come in early, or the vicar.”

“Puts the focus on people who had a reason to be there – the churchwardens?” said Ben.

Faith thought of Fred Partridge and Pat Montesque. They were both so ordinary and normal-looking.

“That’s insane.”

“Is it? Fred Partridge is a farmer’s merchant. He sells the stuff that killed the vicar.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I can see he would carry pesticide, but can you identify the particular pesticide used?”

“Down to brand and batch. The brand is common enough, but it’s only sold through agricultural suppliers – and Partridge is on the list of local stockists. As for batch – apparently each lot has some distinguishable marker – the lab’s made an ID. I’m waiting for the manufacturers to come back with a list of who was supplied with that particular batch. Then we’ll have something to run down.”

Faith thought of Fred’s homely, open face. “But what could be his motive?”

“Don’t know. But we might dig something up,” he said. “Wasn’t it good old Fred who pointed the finger at Trevor?” Ben’s question sidled in, crab-like.

Could she possibly have misread Fred? She hated this. She prided herself on her ability to weigh up people, but poisoning was such a sneaking way of death. It infected the whole community; anyone could be a suspect. All it took was a good actor, or someone delusional. Pat Montesque’s round, powdered face sprang to mind.
She lives in one of the houses across the green and Jessica’s afraid of her.
Not in that way! Don’t be ridiculous!

Ben’s voice intruded, breaking into her thoughts.

“You might be half-right though. What if the poisoner
is
insane – just someone with a grudge against the church, or the rite, or heard a voice. But none of that helps us. Whoever it was, he or she had good luck…”

“Hardly luck!” Faith interrupted.