A Dead Man Out of Mind (28 page)

‘What did you mean, that you didn't have much choice?'

The young man shrugged, and answered baldly. ‘I had to move out of Magdalen House after Jules died, didn't I? I was having trouble finding new digs that I could afford. Gil had been offered this new post here in Brighton. He'd always fancied me, even when I was with Jules, so he said I could come along and be his housekeeper.' He shrugged again, looking down into his tea cup. ‘It's not so bad. Gil's all right. We rub along well together. But it's not like it was with Jules . . .'

‘Why don't you tell me about Jules, if you feel that you can,' David suggested gently.

Alistair's voice changed as he talked about him. ‘Oh, Jules was special, he was. Ask anyone at that bloody church and they'll tell you the same. A caring man – he got involved with people. He really cared about them, and their problems. And he was good at his job. Conscientious. All that bloody paperwork that some priests can't be bothered with – he did all that, too. It seemed like he spent half his time doing things that that useless bugger of a vicar didn't want to deal with.'

‘Father Keble Smythe?' asked David, smiling at the description.

‘Him.' His dismissively scornful tone indicated what he thought of the Vicar of St Jude's and St Margaret's. ‘Jules wouldn't hear a word against him, but I thought he was a waste of space. And I know a few things about him, through the Scottish grapevine, that I don't think he'd want his precious congregation to know. They think he's some bloody saint or something.'

‘Did Father Julian get on with the churchwardens?' David probed, mindful of his mission.

‘Oh, aye. Jules got on with everyone. There wasn't a soul who didn't like Jules.' A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘And I know what you're thinking – that I'm just saying that because I loved him. But it's true. Jules was a grand lad, with a heart as big as a house. Or a church. He loved all those people, just like they loved him.'

And one of them had killed him. The thought popped unbidden into David's head, but as he articulated it to himself he knew that it was true. One of them had killed him, and made it look like a bungled burglary. The same person who had cut Rachel Nightingale's life short. What dangerous knowledge had the two curates of St Margaret's shared? Knowledge so deadly that it had cost both of those loving and gentle people their lives . . .

‘Do you by any chance have a photo of Father Julian that you could show me?' requested David.

‘Oh, aye. I have to keep them well hidden from Gil, you understand.' The young man left the room for a minute or two, after providing David with a fresh cup of tea; he returned bearing a heavy photograph album. ‘This goes back a long time,' he explained, sitting next to David on the sofa. He opened it to the first page and pointed. ‘Here's Jules. Years ago, when we first met.' A fresh-faced, happy young man, little more than a youth, grinned at the camera. He had straight dark hair, worn rather long, and honest blue eyes. ‘And here I am.' A younger version of Alistair, with the same lopsided smile, inhabited the next photo, equally young and equally happy as his friend.

Alistair flipped through the pages of the album, lingering over some pages with nostalgic melancholy, providing occasional explanations or commentary for David when it seemed called for. Most of the photos were of the two young men, separately as they turned the camera on each other, formally posed or candid, and sometimes together when they found a third party to press the shutter. Some of the most hilarious were, Alistair explained, experiments with the camera's self-timer: the two young men together in absurd and antic poses, with various humorous props. ‘Oh, we did have a grand time,' he said, and David could believe it.

As the pages progressed, the young men matured. Julian's face lost some of its fresh innocence, but none of its gentle good humour. Premature threads of grey emerged in his dark hair even before the dog collar appeared. Eventually the grey replaced the dark in almost equal measure, adding a certain air of gravitas that was not at all unattractive.

Then, suddenly, they were at the last page, or at least the last page with pictures on it; a number of blank sheets followed, poignant testimony to holidays never to be taken and occasions never to be shared. ‘Last summer, on our holiday in Scotland,' Alistair said, his voice bleak. ‘There may be a few more in the camera, as a matter of fact. I haven't used it since . . . since Jules died.' No antic snapshot sessions with Father Gilbert, then, David thought. He was moved: Julian Piper looked like a man who would have been worth knowing.

‘Your Jules looks like a lovely man,' he offered inadequately, but it was enough.

‘I have some other things I could show you, if you were interested,' Alistair suggested in a tentative way.

David turned to him with eagerness. ‘Yes, of course. I'd like to see anything you've got.'

‘Actually, I've got all of his things. Most, anyway. His family took a few things, but the house had to be cleared, so I took what was left.'

‘And you have it? Here?' He tried to control his excitement.

‘In a chest in the loft.' Father Gilbert again. ‘Most of it wouldn't mean much to anyone but me, but there are a few bits you might find of interest.'

He disappeared for a few more minutes, returning with an armload of scrapbooks and other ephemera of a life, left behind like a butterfly's discarded cocoon. Perched on top was an item of even less use than most in the next life, but one upon which David's attention was immediately fixed. ‘Can I see that?' he asked eagerly.

‘Oh, aye. I thought you might like to look at his diary.' Alistair put down his burden and handed David the diary, the date of the previous year stamped in gold on the cover.

As David took it, the clock chimed six. ‘Good Lord, is that really the time?' he said with a start.

‘I'm afraid so. Gil will be back from saying Evensong soon, so we don't have long to look at Jules's bits and pieces. Would you like to join us for supper?' he added diffidently but sincerely. ‘It won't be much, but you're welcome to stay.'

‘Thanks, but I really can't.' David checked his watch in disbelief. ‘Listen, would you mind awfully if I used your phone to make an important call? It's to London, I'm afraid. But my girlfriend doesn't know where I am.' It was amazing how easily the word tripped from his tongue once he was used to it.

‘No problem.' Alistair grinned. ‘Talk as long as you like. The diocese pays the phone bill.' He led David to the phone in the hall, then withdrew discreetly.

Whatever would Lucy be thinking? David worried as he dialled the number. She would be expecting him home by now. He prepared his apologies as it started to ring. The phone was picked up on the third ring, but it wasn't Lucy's voice which answered.

‘Hello?' said Ruth.

Ruth. Good Lord, thought David, stricken. He'd forgotten all about the
enfant terrible
. ‘Oh, hello,' he said casually, deciding to bluff it out. ‘Can I have a word with Lucy?'

‘She's not here.' Ruth's voice was outraged. ‘And I don't know where she is, either. What's going on around here? What's happened to everybody? First you go off and leave me without a word, and then Aunt Lucy disappears. It's just a good thing that I've got a key to this place. My parents aren't going to be very impressed when I tell them how you've neglected me. I waited for you,' she added accusingly. ‘I waited until half-past five at the office, and then I had to come back here by myself. Anything could have happened to me. I could have been mugged on the Underground, or even murdered, and you wouldn't have cared.'

No, I
wouldn't
have cared, he thought savagely. All he cared about at the moment was Lucy. Where the hell was she?

‘And the cat is starving as well,' she went on in an excess of gratuitous malice. ‘I'm sure that the RSPCA would like to hear about that.'

‘Just stay there,' he told her with as much civility as he could muster, which wasn't a great deal. ‘Fix yourself something to eat. I'll be home eventually.'

He took a deep breath and tried to apply logic to the situation. Who would know where Lucy was? Emily, he apprehended in a flash of inspiration. If anyone knew where Lucy was, it would be Emily.

Of course he didn't have the number. But that was one advantage to being in a clergy house: on the desk in the hall, sticking out from under the Brighton phone directory, was a copy of the
Church of England Year Book
. He pulled it out, opened it to the section on the London diocese, and found the number for the Archdeacon of Kensington.

Emily answered the phone on the second ring. ‘David, thank God,' she said in a heartfelt voice when he'd identified himself.

His heart rose to his throat. ‘Lucy?' he choked.

‘Oh, she'll be all right. But we've been trying to reach you all afternoon. Something terrible has happened. I won't go into it on the phone – I'll tell you all about it when you get here. But hurry, David. Lucy needs you.'

CHAPTER 24

    
Why art thou so heavy, O my soul: and why art thou so disquieted within me?

Psalm 43.5

The trip between Brighton and London had never seemed longer, as David's fevered imagination ran riot over all the lurid possibilities. Lucy injured, or ill. Perhaps she'd been attacked by someone who knew that she was getting close to the truth about Rachel's death. That possibility couldn't be underestimated, he realised: after all, two people had already died to protect whatever secret someone was hiding. Emily had said that it was something terrible. Oh God, what could it be?

He didn't have much recollection of getting from the clergy house to the station, or indeed of anything after the phone call, but after a time he became aware, sitting on the train, that Father Julian Piper's diary was still clutched in his hand. Either Alistair had given him permission to take it, or hadn't realised that he still had it – David couldn't remember which.

To take his mind off his painful but ultimately fruitless speculations, he opened the diary and flipped through it. It was the sort with a week to a page, so there was little space for detailed annotation. Father Julian, with the busy life that he had obviously led, had developed a kind of shorthand to squeeze as much information as possible into each daily square. David applied his brain to cracking the code.

Some of it was easy. A single ‘M' quite clearly stood for Mass, as there was one noted for each day, with a time and either ‘SJ' or ‘SM': St Jude's and St Margaret's, and far more of the latter than the former. A single ‘S', usually on a Sunday, most likely indicated a sermon. On Saturdays there often appeared a ‘W' – weddings, thought David. And there were ‘F's as well, sprinkled throughout. Funerals, both at SJ and SM. Other double letters were probably initials, indicating people with whom he was meeting for pastoral counselling or various other reasons.

Interested in spite of himself, David turned through the months to December. What had Father Julian been doing around the time of his death? He tried to remember the exact day that the priest had died, deciding that perhaps Gabriel hadn't told him more than that it had been at the beginning of December.

Advent, the start of the Church's year. The season of penitence as much as of anticipation. ‘Lo, he comes with clouds descending', but also ‘deeply wailing', and ‘That day of wrath, that dreadful day'. In the diary, the usual daily ‘M', an ‘AP' on the first Sunday – Advent Procession, translated David – and a ‘W' on the following Saturday. Unusual to have a wedding during Advent, since flowers were not normally allowed in the church, but it wasn't unknown.

Then his attention was truly caught by a notation on the Friday of that week. ‘VB, 2', it said, and right under it, ‘NT, 4'. ‘Vera Bright,' he said aloud, drawing a dubious look from the woman across from him. Father Julian had seen Vera Bright right around the time he had been killed, as Rachel Nightingale had done just before her death. And then, seemingly, he had seen Norman Topping on the same day, before Solemn Evensong.

If he hadn't been so worried about Lucy, he would have been jubilant. He wondered, though, if Lucy had managed to talk to Vera Bright, and if so what she had found out. This was convincing evidence, if such had been necessary, that Vera Bright might well hold the key to the two curates' deaths. Galling as it was to admit it, Ruth might have been right in her belief that Vera knew who had killed Rachel. And Father Julian, David added to himself, tucking the diary into his pocket for safekeeping.

Emily met him at the door. ‘She's all right, really she is,' she assured him. ‘Just a bit shaken up. But she was in no fit state to be on her own, so I brought her here.'

‘But what happened? Has she been hurt? You said something terrible . . .'

‘Nothing like that. Vera Bright is dead, and Lucy found her body,' Emily told him bluntly.

David experienced a jumble of conflicting emotions: relief that Lucy wasn't hurt, dismay about Vera Bright, and a great sense of powerlessness and frustration. ‘Dead?!'

‘Murdered.'

‘Oh, God. Where's Lucy?'

‘In the drawing room.'

With two strides he was at the door to the room. In the back of his mind David registered the fact that Gabriel was there, and somehow Ruth had appeared as well – presumably Lucy had remembered her and someone had fetched her. But Lucy was the only one he saw. She rose from the sofa as he appeared at the door, her eyes huge in a white face. ‘David,' she said as he crossed the room to her and crushed her against his chest.

‘Oh, my love,' he murmured with great tenderness. ‘Lucy, my poor love.' He didn't care what Gabriel thought; he didn't care what Ruth thought. Lucy was all that mattered.