Appointed to Die (8 page)

Evelyn Marsden, temporarily displaced from her flower arranging in the chapel, was at the service, along with a few stray tourists. Near Lucy was another woman whose assured manner suggested that she belonged at the cathedral. After the blessing, the dismissal and a moment of private prayer, the woman turned to Lucy. ‘Hello,' she said, in a clipped, upper-class voice. ‘You must be Canon Kingsley's daughter.' Lucy nodded in acknowledgement. ‘I'm Olivia Ashleigh. The Bishop's secretary,' she added.

Lucy tried not to betray her surprise. ‘How nice to meet you, Miss Ashleigh. I've heard Bishop George speak of you.' Indeed she had: the Bishop always talked of his secretary with something approaching awe. Lucy had had a mental picture of her as a formidable old battle-axe, middle-aged or older, with gimlet eyes and grey hair in a bun. But this was a young woman – not even thirty – and an extremely attractive one; she was statuesquely tall and her face had a rare classical beauty, with a profile that looked as though it had been carved from marble. Miss Ashleigh was nonetheless formidable: she exuded an aura of no-nonsense efficiency, and she seemed to have done everything possible to disguise her physical charms, almost as if she were deliberately trying to look unattractive. Her blond hair was cropped quite short, she wore large disfiguring spectacles with heavy dark rims, and her figure-concealing clothing would have better suited a woman twice her age. ‘Are you arranging flowers today?' Lucy asked.

Behind her spectacles, Miss Ashleigh's blue eyes were intelligent. ‘Not a chance,' she replied with a short laugh. ‘I wish that I could. Or rather, I wish that I had the time.'

‘The music festival's keeping you busy, then?'

‘Not the music festival.' She laughed again, but without humour. ‘It's the new Dean's installation. At the end of September. The invitations have to go out this week, you see. The whole thing's a nightmare.'

‘How is that?'

Miss Ashleigh rolled her eyes expressively. ‘Everyone and his grandfather are being invited. The full works. Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff, Mayor, all the County. And all the new Dean's political friends – his father-in-law is an MP, you know. The guest list looks like the membership roster of the Conservative Party. I just don't know where we're going to put everyone. This cathedral isn't that big. And then there's the garden party after . . .' She shuddered.

It was Lucy's turn to laugh. ‘Sounds like quite a do. It almost makes me wish I were coming.'

‘Oh, you are. Or at least you're being invited.' Miss Ashleigh paused, consulting her prodigious memory. ‘You and . . . Mr Middleton-something, isn't it? At the Bishop's request.'

‘Oh, well. I shall look forward to it.'

John Kingsley, divested now of his chasuble, came up beside Lucy. ‘I see that you've met Miss Ashleigh, my dear. She's the one who keeps everything ticking over around here. The cathedral would come to a grinding halt without her.'

The young woman made a dismissive noise, but she smiled. ‘Enough chit-chat. I must get back to my invitations. The new Dean insists that they must all be addressed by hand, of course.' She regarded her fingers ruefully, and moved away with a purposeful stride.

‘Breakfast?' suggested Lucy to her father.

‘Not yet, my dear. I'd like to spend a bit of time chatting with the flower arrangers. To let them know their work is appreciated, you see.'

Evelyn Marsden was already back at work, in front of the Comper statue of the Virgin and Child which stood to the side of the altar, near the Mothers' Union banner. Her arrangement of spiky blue irises and rosemary seemed to be nearly completed; she was too absorbed to take much notice of her audience. ‘Lovely, Miss Marsden,' Canon Kingsley murmured. She nodded abstractedly.

The Perpendicular retro-choir, at the far east end of the cathedral, was by far the most attractive part of the building, with its elaborate fan vaulting and its black and white marble floor. It contained three chapels, all re-furnished by Comper in the 1920s; to the north of the Lady Chapel was a small Reserved Sacrament chapel, and to the south was a regimental chapel. John Kingsley stopped there next, where, under the frayed and faded standards of the county regiment, an elderly colonel's widow worked on a handsome pedestal arrangement in the regimental colours. Then, through the south choir aisle, Lucy followed her father into the Quire – as Canon Brydges-ffrench had always insisted on spelling it.

The Quire as it now stood was an entirely Victorian refurnishing job, with elaborately carved wooden choir stalls. As befitted the Precentor's wife, Judith Greenwood was in the Quire, half-heartedly draping posy chains along the stalls. Dressed in a faded sundress that was too snug on the top and too baggy on the bottom, in an unbecoming shade of green, and her mouse-coloured hair clearly unwashed in recent days, she was instantly recognisable.

She looked up. ‘Oh, hello.'

‘This is looking very nice,' said Canon Kingsley.

‘No, it's not.' She shook her head and frowned. ‘I know that it's not right. But it's the best I can do, I'm afraid. I'm just not cut out to be a flower arranger. I can't get out of it, though – Rupert says that I must do my bit . . .'

Lucy studied the problem with her artist's eye. ‘Perhaps if you just attached the ends like this instead . . .' she suggested tactfully, demonstrating what she meant. ‘It would give it a bit more shape, I think.'

‘Oh, yes.' Judith Greenwood raised her head and smiled at her saviour; her plain, sallow face was transformed to something approaching beauty by the warmth of her smile. And, Lucy realised for the first time, the woman had the most astonishingly beautiful eyes, pure deep violet in colour with velvety black pupils. But they were not happy eyes; they seemed to Lucy to be brimming with deep, hidden pain. Perhaps Jeremy was right about there being more to Judith Greenwood than was immediately evident, she thought. ‘Aren't you clever? That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Thank you so much.'

The Bishop's wife, up near the high altar in the area beyond the altar rails, heard the voices and looked up from her labours. ‘Well, hello there!' she hailed them. ‘You're out and about early. Have you come for an advance peek?'

‘I took the eight o'clock service,' Canon Kingsley explained. ‘And Lucy wanted to come along.'

‘Then you're even more virtuous than the rest of us,' Pat Willoughby laughed. ‘It's a real pain, having to do everything this morning. It's much too nice a day to be indoors – I'd far rather be in my garden.' She had nearly finished with the first of two large pedestals, one on either side of the sanctuary, composed entirely of white flowers.

‘It looks stunning,' Lucy said truthfully. ‘Are the flowers from your garden?'

Pat stopped for a minute and tucked a stray wisp of grey hair back into its knot, giving her arrangement a critical look. ‘That's right. The garden has been good this year, and I've been able to keep the white roses going until now. Luckily.'

‘Are everyone's flowers home-grown, then?' John Kingsley wanted to know.

‘Hardly,' Pat said, raising her eyebrows dryly. ‘Far be it from me to judge, but . . . well, everyone's taste is different, I suppose. I would suggest,' she added, ‘that if you want to see something completely unique
and
home-grown, you have a look at what Claire Fairbrother is doing in the south transept.'

They took her advice. The south transept, scene of the previous evening's performance, could have been part of a completely different building, so dissimilar was it architecturally to other parts of the cathedral. After a fire in the twelfth century, it had been rebuilt in Early English style, with shafted columns and exaggerated stiff-leaf capitals. Its tall lancet south window was exquisite: the famous Becket window. Somehow, miraculously, this window had survived the depredations of the Reformation and the Civil War completely intact; all the other original glass had been destroyed, to be replaced in the nineteenth century at the time of the church's elevation to cathedral status. The mediocrity of the rest of the cathedral's glass, muddy in colour and indifferent in design – Jeremy had dismissively described it to Lucy as ‘bought in by the yard' – only served to emphasise the unique beauty of the Becket window, with its rich jewel-like colours and its minutely detailed scenes from the life of St Thomas of Canterbury.

Now, beneath the Becket window, Claire Fairbrother was indeed engaged in creating something unlike any of the other arrangements the Kingsleys had seen that morning. It seemed to be made up entirely of weeds, bits of sticks, and other assorted desiccated vegetable matter, without a flower in sight. She straightened up, revealing more fully her voluminous gauze harem pants and brightly printed cotton top, and gestured at her handiwork proudly as they approached. ‘Rather splendid, wouldn't you say?'

John Kingsley, ever tactful, nodded. ‘A most original creation.'

‘Not like all the rest.' Her voice was scornful. ‘It's such a waste, growing flowers just so you can cut them! I mean, really! How can they possibly justify it? And the money that some people spend on florists' flowers – it's absolutely obscene. You could feed a whole village in Africa for a year with the money that's been wasted on flowers in this place today. Those two out in front of the screen . . .' she added cryptically, then shuddered.

‘I suppose you're right,' Canon Kingsley conceded. ‘But surely this flower festival will raise enough money to cover . . .'

‘That's not the point,' she interrupted. ‘The point is the waste. All that money for flowers, and tomorrow or the next day they'll be dead. Like it says in the Scriptures, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth”.'

‘Yes . . .'

A man carrying a pail of water had approached them unnoticed. ‘It looks like your grass has already done all the withering it's going to do,' he laughed. ‘I don't think you'll need any of this water.'

Claire glared at him and turned back to her task, determined to ignore him.

‘Oh, hello, Inspector Drewitt,' John Kingsley greeted the newcomer. ‘Have you met my daughter Lucy?'

‘No, I haven't had the pleasure.' He gave her a discreetly appraising look, and, liking what he saw, put down his pail of water. ‘Mike Drewitt,' he said, extending his hand.

Lucy returned his smile. The man was in his late forties, she judged. His open-necked shirt revealed a powerful chest; he was stocky – almost burly – yet muscular, with a physique that was obviously maintained very carefully through regular work-outs. His somewhat grizzled dark hair was worn short, and he had a trim greying moustache. It was a physical type that had never appealed to Lucy at all, yet there was something attractive in Mike Drewitt's smile.

‘Inspector Drewitt is one of the bell-ringers here at the cathedral,' her father explained. ‘And a member of our local police force.'

‘Why the water?' Lucy asked. ‘Are you filling in as a fireman in your spare time?'

Drewitt grinned appreciatively. ‘Just helping out, that's all. I asked Mrs Hunt if there was anything I could do, and she said that I could make sure that everyone had enough water for their flowers. Just a humble water-boy, that's me.'

‘Very noble.'

Retrieving his pail, Drewitt bowed to Lucy with a droll twinkle, and nodded at her father. ‘I'll see you again,' he said.

The Victorians, in their enthusiasm, had built a solid stone screen behind the crossing, completely blocking off the Quire from the nave of the cathedral. It had been an ill-judged move, according to Mr Pevsner's
Buildings of England: Shropshire
, for though the glass in the east window was as murky and undistinguished as the rest, it was a well-proportioned Perpendicular window, rich with stone tracery, and it would have let a bit more light into the nave. As it was, even on the brightest summer day, the nave of Malbury Cathedral was as dark as the ship interior which gave that part of the building its name.

The two men who were arranging the flowers in front of the stone screen, however, seemed oblivious to the chill emanating from the ancient stones in the gloom of the nave. They were both dressed in shorts of the briefest kind, shorts which cruelly exposed two pairs of hairy legs and barely covered the essentials. The younger of the men, the one with the blond hairy legs, had matching wavy blond hair on his head and a rather apologetic moustache of the same hue; his plump torso was encased in a T-shirt that did nothing to flatter his figure. His companion, a few years older, was smaller, sharp-featured, dark and wiry, and wore a shirt unbuttoned to such an extent that his multiple gold chains, nestling in his stiff dark chest-hairs, were clearly evident. Their flowers were undeniably beautiful, showy, and arranged with great cleverness, but they encompassed a whole range of colours never seen in nature.

Lucy's father introduced them to her as Victor and Bert, who ran the cathedral gift shop. ‘Utterly charmed, my dear,' said Victor, the blond one.

‘And how nice for your dear papa to have you here to brighten his lonely life,' Bert added. ‘If only for a brief time.'

‘And lovely for the rest of us to have such a celebrity in our midst, as well. You did the painting of the Becket window for the festival programme, I understand?' probed Victor. Lucy nodded in assent. ‘It's absolutely stunning, my dear. Just too much. We've had sweatshirts printed with your design – a thousand of them. For the Cathedral shop, you know. I do hope that you're not going to charge us royalties or anything?' Victor laughed, a gurgling laugh like a drain. ‘We're expecting to do great business this weekend.'

Lucy looked at her watch. ‘What time do you open? Will you be finished here in time?'

‘Oh, not to worry, dear. We have heaps of time,' Bert assured her. ‘And we've laid on extra help today, to cope with the rush.'