Sins Out of School (23 page)

“Go. The publican is a man called Bell, if you believe it. Samuel Bell. Sam and his wife are Scots, and they joined the chapel when they moved down south because they thought it sounded like good old John Knox's brand of religion. By the time they found out what it really was, they were involved, but they don't like it. They'll give you an earful if you go at a time when they're not too busy. Not lunchtime. They do you a good lunch, but they're run off their feet then.” She looked at the mantel clock, a Victorian horror of black marble and gilt cupids. “Now would be as good a time as any, if you think you can drink another beer at this hour without ruining your reputation.”

“Right.” With some difficulty I wriggled out of the chair and stood up. “Would you like to come with me? I'll stand you a Guinness.”

“Lord save you, I've been drinking milk. That's why I put it in the pewter pot, so you wouldn't see. Just having you on, m'dear. This old stomach can't take the good stuff anymore. Have to drink milk. Pah!”

“Well, I must say! You are an unprincipled old woman, and the Baptists are welcome to you. May I come and see you again sometime? In summer, perhaps,” I added hastily, “when we can sit outside?”

“You and that handsome husband of yours can take me rowing on the river. I'll criticize his rowing technique and eat all the picnic lunch.”

“It's a deal. I'll see myself out.”

“Not that far to the door, is it? Mind you come, after you've found out all about it, and tell me.”

“I'll even bring you all the malicious gossip I can dig up.”

“You be careful, young woman, or you'll be just as wicked as I am one day!”

I had, I thought as I walked down the front path to the gate, been told that the true English eccentric was dying out. If it was so, I'd surely had a rare privilege that morning in meeting one of the best of the breed.

S
AMUEL
Bell was a man in his fifties, at a guess. He didn't look at all like my idea of a publican. He was pale and lean, rather than round and rubicund, and looked very much like someone who would approve of John Knox's austere precepts. The perfect dour Scotsman, one would have thought. I wondered how he had ended up in the beer business, until his wife entered carrying a tray of glasses.

“I've polished them, Sam. That machine has got to be repaired. It leaves them all streaky.” She spoke with a lovely burr. It matched her face, for Mrs. Bell was a bonnie lass indeed. Younger than her husband, she had roses in her cheeks that would have sent Robert Burns into ecstasies of comparison. Her hair was still black and lustrous, her figure buxom without being in the least blowsy.

Samuel's face lighted up when he saw her. They had been married—how long, I wondered?—and he looked like a honeymooner.

I had just come in and was the only customer in the pub. Appetizing smells hinted that lunch was being prepared, but the only edibles on display at the moment were packets of crisps and a tray of Scotch eggs in a glass-fronted cooler.

“Now, then, what can I get you, dear?”

“Some mineral water, please, and a Scotch egg. I've just come from a visit to a friend of yours, and she plied me with beer at nine-thirty in the morning. I need something to absorb it.”

“Ah, that'll be Miss Simmons. She will have her little joke with visitors. Fizzy or plain?”

“Fizzy, with ice and lime, please.”

“How do you know Miss Simmons?” asked Mrs. Bell as she uncapped a bottle of water and poured it into a glass, adding a wedge of lime and the single small ice cube that is standard issue in England. She put a Scotch egg on a small saucer and put saucer and glass on the bar in front of me.

“I don't know her, not really. I met her just this morning, sent by Mrs. Allenby. Are you acquainted with her? Her husband's dean of the Cathedral.”

“Aye, we know her.” Samuel sounded unexpectedly pleasant. “A good woman. As is Miss Simmons, if a wee bit unconventional.”

Mrs. Bell laughed, the rich, full-bodied laugh of a woman who enjoys life. “A shocking old sinner, she is, but we love her. She's well, I hope? You said Mrs. Allenby ‘sent' you.”

“Miss Simmons is in roaring good health and spirits and will probably outlive us all. I went there, not to look after her, but to seek some information. And she sent me to you two. My name is Dorothy Martin, by the way, and I'm a friend of Amanda Doyle.” That was stretching a point, but I thought of myself as her friend, even if she might not agree.

“I see.” Samuel looked thoughtful. “I'm Samuel Bell, as you doubtless know, and this is my wife, Jean.”

“Bonnie Jean,” I said. “Or do you know
Brigadoon
?”

“That song I know,” he said, and gave his wife another of those adoring looks before turning back to me. “You're helping Mrs. Doyle, then? I think I saw you in chapel on Sunday, and you looked—um—a mite out of place, with the hat and all.” He eyed today's hat, but unlike Miss Simmons, forbore to comment. “Was that why you were there, on Mrs. Doyle's behalf? It's a shocking thing has happened to her.”

“It is, and I'm trying to help all I can. I'm helping the police, in fact.”

“Oh, aye. You'd be the chief constable's new wife, would you no'?”

“I would.” I fought to keep the accent and lilt out of my own speech. It's contagious. “The former chief constable, that is. At any rate, I've looked into one or two matters for the police in the past, and I'm involved in this one because I feel very sorry for Mrs. Doyle, and worried as well.”

“I've heard they've no suspects for the murder,” said Jean, giving the
r
's their full due. “And in that case …”

“Yes, well, there you have it. I don't think Amanda Doyle is any more capable of murder than my cats. Less, in fact. The cats dispatch small rodents with great enjoyment, but I can't imagine Amanda killing even a mouse. I fear for her, all the same, and for her little girl. So I'm trying to find out what her husband did the week he was killed. He told Amanda he was at a church meeting that Wednesday night. Would you know anything about that?”

“Prayer meeting,” both the Bells said in unison. Jean made a face and added, “I went, but it's the last time. The business is enough of an excuse, and I hate the meeting anyway. Sheer hypocrisy, the greater part of it. They stand and pray aloud, you know, and ask the Lord to forgive others for their terrible sins. Naming the people and listing the sins, you understand.”

“I know about the prayer meetings, and though I didn't know exactly what went on, I can't say I'm surprised. This meeting was after that. Mr. Doyle hadn't come home by midnight.”

“But that's not possible, Mrs. Martin.” Jean shook her head decisively. “The prayer meeting was over before eight, and the Rookwoods always lock up the chapel afterward. I remember Mrs. Rookwood standing there, jingling the keys, hustling us out.”

“Hmm. Maybe Mr. Doyle stayed on in the church and let himself and whoever he was meeting with out when they were finished.”

“The doors lock with a key, and the Rookwoods have the only set. And besides, he wasn't there.”

I blinked, confused.

“John Doyle wasn't there,” Jean repeated patiently. “I noticed particularly because he always came to prayer meeting. Everyone commented about it. Later, when we heard about the murder, I thought he must have been dead already.”

This was news with a vengeance. “He wasn't, though,” I said slowly. “Amanda didn't go to bed till after midnight, and he wasn't home by then. I suppose he could have been killed somewhere else—but that doesn't make sense—and the police—” I shut up abruptly. I had been thinking about the official time of death, but the autopsy report was not public information, and I had no business spreading it around, no matter how befuddled I was.

If John Doyle hadn't been at the chapel at all that night, where had he been, and what had he been doing? Was Sam Johnson going to be right, after all? Had John Doyle been having an affair?

I shook my head. “I can't make any sense out of it at all, but it's very useful information. I'll think about it, and maybe I can come up with something coherent. Now, the other thing is, he—Mr. Doyle—went to London on the Monday before. Took a day off from work and went to the city. He told Amanda it was business, but no one sees how it could have been banking business. Do you have any ideas about that?”

Samuel shook his head in bewilderment. “He never said anything about it on the Sunday.”

“He did, though, Sam,” said Jean slowly. “I'd forgotten. I wasn't meant to hear, but I had to go to the office for some paper for the Sunday school class, and I heard him in Elder Rookwood's office. I think he was using the telephone, for I heard no other voices. I heard him say something about ‘legal advice' and then Victoria Station, eight at the latest.' I thought perhaps he was making an appointment for Elder Rookwood, though Mrs. Rookwood usually does that sort of thing. But I couldn't think why else he'd be using the church's phone.”

“Legal advice,” said Samuel, still confused. “He couldn't have been making an appointment with a solicitor, not on a Sunday.”

I could make nothing of any of it, but it was fascinating, all the same. I finished my Scotch egg and thought about all the contradictions while the Bells busied themselves with preparations for the brisk lunch trade. There must be some other things I needed to ask, but I couldn't think what. My mind was too busy trying to arrange what I'd learned into some kind of pattern.

When more customers came in, a group of men who seemed to be regulars, I gave up. “How much?” I asked Jean as she was drawing beers for the men.

“On the house, dear. You're a friend of Amanda's, and she needs a friend just now.”

“How on earth,” I said impulsively, “did nice people like you get mixed up with that awful chapel?”

She rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “The Lord alone knows. I'm weaning Samuel away. He likes his religion the way he likes his whiskey, good and strong, but it's got to be too much even for him. We'll find another chapel. Any place would be better than that one.”

“You're right about that, I think. Well, thanks for the refreshment and the information. I'm sorry I took up so much of your time.”

“Not to worry, dear. Come back, won't you?”

She smiled, a smile guaranteed to set male hearts thumping, and hurried away with six foaming glasses of beer.

I drove home, my mind so far removed from my driving that I got lost twice.

Had Amanda been lying all along about when John came home? But no, the police doctor had said he died after midnight. He could have been at home all that time, I supposed, but why would he have been? It would have taken something really important to keep him away from the prayer meeting. That nasty little exercise in innuendo and accusation veiled as piety sounded right up his alley.

How much of this, I wondered, did the police know? They would of course have been trying to trace John's movements that evening. Was I simply duplicating their efforts?

Well, even if I was, I was enjoying myself. I wouldn't have missed meeting Miss Simmons and the Bells for anything. And one good way to find out whether the police already knew everything I had learned was to go and talk to them.

This time, fortunately, Derek was in, and I was shown into his office right away.

“Derek, I've been asking nosy questions again. I hope you don't mind.”

He made a face. “Much good it would do if I did. I've got used to you and your ways, Dorothy, though I still pray every Sunday that you won't get yourself in serious trouble someday. Alan would have my guts for garters if you ever got hurt while messing about in a murder inquiry. All right, what do you have for me?”

“Two things that you may know already. One is that John Doyle was apparently seeing a solicitor in London that Monday, and the other is that he never went near the church Wednesday evening, the night he was killed.”

His startled expression told me all I needed to know. I sat back with some little satisfaction and gave him the details.

When I had finished he swore under his breath. “I'm sorry, Dorothy, but both the Rookwoods told me flat out that Doyle was there that evening. They said he left when everyone else did and they didn't see him again. And they never mentioned him making a phone call from the church.”

“They might not have known about that. But they certainly knew he wasn't at the prayer meeting. Unless the Bells are lying, and I don't know why they would.”

“They're responsible people,” Derek said with a sigh. “We keep a pretty close watch on pubs and publicans, you know, and there's never any trouble at the Bell. I have no reason to doubt them, but we'll get the names of some of the other chapel members and ask them, just to be sure.”