The Chorister at the Abbey (23 page)

‘Oh, Jenny.’ He was weak with relief. He moved towards her and hugged her awkwardly as she unstrapped the now smelly baby from the buggy. This time she didn’t wince or squirm away from her husband.

‘He needs changing,’ she laughed. ‘I guess having Joseph has taught me that some of my ideas about equality are a bit impractical. This is the role I’ve chosen, after all. I’m going to try harder at being your wife, Paul. You deserve it.’

‘That’s a lovely thing to say,’ her husband breathed back at her. He felt almost tearful.

‘Go and get on with your work. I’ll look after Joseph and then make us a cup of tea,’ Jenny said softly.

A few minutes later, as he bent over his keyboard, she came into his office with a mug of hot tea and a biscuit. ‘There you are,’ she said, smiling.

Paul had a moment of uncertainty. This wasn’t the feisty, argumentative Jenny he had fallen in love with. But it made for a more peaceful life. Whatever had made the change in her, it was wonderful. She actually looked really pretty again, he thought.

And he even liked the little headscarf she was wearing!

37

For a man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.
Psalm 39:7

Two days later, Alex Gibson was on the phone to Suzy Spencer. ‘Pat Johnstone’s back from her trip down to Croydon to see her son. She’s phoned my sister and asked us round for drinks and nibbles this evening. It’s not just social, believe me. Pat may well be a friend of Chris’s but she’s not a friend of mine. I wonder what she’s after?’

‘Well, you must go. The Johnstones are deeply into this business, don’t you think?’

‘It depends what you mean by “this business”.’

‘Good point. I don’t really know myself. But it’ll be interesting. Are you and Edwin coming over after the Chorus practice again next week?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Alex’s voice drifted away a little. She had no idea what would happen with Edwin. He had dropped her off at home on Shrove Tuesday night without mentioning meeting again, and this time there had been no kiss. They had chatted animatedly about the evening, and about what they hoped to discover about the murder, but Alex felt as if Marilyn Frost was somehow sitting in the back of the car. She wasn’t going to mention her again, but Edwin seemed to be self-consciously avoiding saying Marilyn’s name.

On Ash Wednesday Alex had gone to the Fellside Fellowship Bible study course. Suzy hadn’t been there. But as if in compensation, Mark Wilson had come over to chat to Alex, saying how much better she looked.

‘I’m getting over it now. I had flu really badly over New Year.’

‘No wonder, after everything that happened! You must have been run down. I didn’t realize it was you who found poor Morris Little,’ Mark had said sympathetically. ‘If I’d known, I’d have come to see you. It must have been awful. Paul never told me. I can’t understand why he didn’t visit you.’

‘Perhaps it’s because he thought Neil Clifford was my vicar?’ Alex suggested.

‘Seems a bit odd to me. But there again, Paul has been a bit touchy on the subject of Morris’s death. He’s had a lot of worries since Christmas.’

‘Well, he seems happier now.’

‘Yes, thank goodness.’ Mark smiled.

Alex had looked across at where Paul and Jenny were talking to each other, in the centre of an admiring group which included Lynn and Chloe Clifford and Pat Johnstone. Jenny was listening to her husband with an air of near reverence and Paul was basking in it. Jenny had had her hair cropped, making her look elfin and pretty.

Chloe’s putting on weight, Alex had thought. She looked lumpy now, in a heavy skirt and the inevitable headscarf, tied back so her ears stuck out. There seemed something wrong with her, but Alex thought it would be cruel to say so to Lynn who seemed so pathetically grateful that her daughter was there at all.

The next evening, after her telephone conversation with Suzy, Alex was picked up by Christine Prout to go for the drinks and nibbles at Pat Johnstone’s imposing house.

‘I’m not sure what this is about,’ Christine said nervously, her plump chins wobbling. ‘I do like Pat, but she’s a bit of a cold fish. Look at the way she left David after he fell into that hole up at the convent.’

‘Well, there’s no harm in discovering what she wants,’ Alex said.

Pat Johnstone opened the door to them wearing an expensive-looking silky top and tight black trousers, with a lot of very bright jewellery. Christine was wearing a dark tweedy skirt and a lambswool sweater, while Alex had managed to get into jeans for the first time in years. She was glad she’d put her latest designer shirt on top because Pat looked as if she was about to give a party.

‘Come in! It’s lovely to see you.’ Pat had the air of the hostess-with-the-mostest, and Alex wondered if she’d already been at the vodka tonics. ‘Do sit down. Drinkies?’

‘Oh yes,’ Chris breathed gratefully, ‘but I’m driving, so just a little one.’

‘And I’m on the wagon,’ Alex said.

‘Are you? That’s probably why you’ve lost so much weight. D’you smoke? Oh, well, I hope you don’t mind if I do. It is my house after all.’ She cackled as if the thought was a novelty. ‘I’m taking advantage of David being in hospital to spoil myself a bit. Have one of these . . .’

She pushed a lavish pile of superior supermarket party food at them and then sashayed in and out of the kitchen with ice, bottles, different types of fruit juice and a cut glass dish of lemon. She’s certainly pushing the boat out, Alex thought, enjoying her freedom.

‘How is David?’ she asked.

‘In a bad way, really. He’s a bit of a funny colour and he vomited blood yesterday. Yuk.They say his liver isn’t in very good nick. Well, I could have told them that, the way he used to drink.’

Then all of a sudden, with a new intensity, Pat turned to Alex and said, ‘Look, there’s no point beating about the bush. I bet Christine told you that David’s accident really happened up at the convent . . .’ Christine started to protest, but Pat waved at her imperiously. ‘I knew you would talk to your sister, Chris, when I thought about it. You leak like a bucket, but your heart’s in the right place. It doesn’t matter. It helps, actually.’ She patted Chris’s hand to reassure her that she wasn’t too angry. ‘And that made me decide,’ Pat went on emphatically. ‘All this cloak and dagger stuff that Dave went in for, it’s bollocks.’ She cackled again. ‘We’re all girls together, aren’t we? Follow me into his den.’

Pat walked across the parquet hallway and flung open the door to David’s office. ‘He’d go ballistic if he could see us!’ She picked up a pile of papers from David’s desk and walked back to the living room where she dumped them on the coffee table.

‘Get a load of this,’ she said. ‘Here’s masses of stuff including –’ she looked triumphantly at Alex – ‘an estimate for buying your bungalow!’

‘I can see that,’ Alex said. She was momentarily staggered by the size of the offer.

‘Yes!’ Pat cackled. ‘So listen. Now David is in hospital and can’t get on with this, I want to do it myself. So that when he gets better I’m in on the act. Or if he doesn’t get better – well, I can follow on with whatever he was planning. Once I’ve worked out what it was!’ She beamed at them.

‘That’s a bit, well, calculating isn’t it?’ Christine said nervously.

‘Exactly!’ said Pat proudly. ‘And how about it, Alex? Can we do a deal on that dump of yours? I’ll give you a really high price. I’ve just discovered from the bank that David put loads of money in my name in case he went bankrupt. It changes everything. For a start, I don’t have to give a toss about his other woman. My lawyer says that even if David left the house to his slapper, they couldn’t throw me out of my own home. And there’s all this cash now. I’m going to forget about tracing her through her tatty scarf,’ she said to Chris.

‘So you’re not interested?’ Alex asked.

‘That tart? Nah, I’m going to pretend she doesn’t exist. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.’ She cackled. ‘You see, if David dies, I don’t know what’s in his will. But this money in the bank account is mine. David can’t take the money back while he’s ill –’ then her face clouded – ‘but if he gets better he’ll get it back off me somehow.’

She was still scared of David while he was alive; Alex could see that. But dead, he was an asset. What a couple! She and her husband were as bad as each other, Alex thought. Pat was still explaining . . .

‘If I buy the bungalow I’m covered, even if he gets better. I’ll tell him you suddenly decided to sell and I had to act fast. But I’ll make sure the property is in my name. It would be the only thing I’ve got of my own. It’ll be much harder to get a house off me than a bank account. Crafty, eh? I’ve got the bugger!’

Alex swallowed the urge to say: I’m not sure about that. And anyway this sick man is your husband, the father of your kids – but she reckoned Pat was well beyond that sort of appeal. She was unsure what to answer.

‘Well, I’ll certainly think about selling up,’ she said. She looked down at David’s papers. A photocopy of something which seemed rather familiar peeped out at her from under the lists, property details and plans. ‘What’s this, Pat?’ Alex thought back to that drunken conversation with Pat at the Workhaven Motel. ‘Is this the photocopy from the old book you talked about?’

‘Oh, that? With the big Q on it? God knows. David collected all sorts of stuff.’

‘Could I borrow it?’ Pat’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s just because I’m interested in calligraphy,’ Alex lied. ‘You know, old writing. It’s only a photocopy, after all. I’ll let you have it back at the Chorus on Tuesday.’

Pat was clearly working out whether a refusal would discourage Alex from selling the bungalow to her. And she was finding it hard to work out where an old page of a book might come into it. David did sometimes just pick up a load of junk – and she needed Alex on side.

‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘Take it. I’m having another drink.’ She tottered towards the kitchen to get more ice from the fridge. She said over her shoulder, ‘I can’t see what it’s got to do with anything anyway!’

But I can, Alex thought, feeling cold in Pat’s overheated lounge. Suddenly she was absolutely sure it was at the very core of things, because she was convinced it was a photocopy of the front page of Morris Little’s psalter.

When Alex reached home a few hours later, having been dropped off by a rather shocked and quiet Christine Prout, she put the photocopy on her kitchen table before even taking off her red coat. Why was she so sure?

But she was absolutely certain. The photocopy was exactly the same dimensions as the book she had seen in Morris’s hand. The print typeface seemed familiar, too. It wasn’t a brilliant facsimile because some of the ink was smudged and she guessed it had been copied on an old fax machine – odd, because surely David would have had access to a really good copier at his office. But it was the wording which fascinated her.

The Psalms of Lament
, it said in beautiful illuminated Latin script. And underneath,
Chants by Cecil Quaile Woods
. And under that, in a smaller but equally beautiful typeface, she read,
Dedicated to my friend John Stainer
. And there was something else. In inked handwriting was added
and to my
son Henry Whinfell
, with a flourishing signature alongside. Fascinating. Hadn’t Edwin said that Quaile Woods was the local Victorian hero? A churchman who lived for his flock? Yet he had signed a copy of his psalter for his son. So much for the saintly celibate priest!

And from Edwin’s perspective, as Morris Little had indicated, there really was a strong connection between the famous Victorian composer Sir John Stainer and the Cumbrian clergyman. Here was the evidence of their friendship.

But who was this Henry Whinfell whom the priest acknowledged in handwriting as his child? And why wasn’t he called Henry Quaile Woods if he was the man’s son? On a whim, she sat down at her computer and went into Google. And there he was – Henry Whinfell, the biographer of Cecil Quaile Woods as listed just in passing by the Norbridge Local History Society of which Morris Little had been a leading light. Had the son written the biography of the famous but secret father?

I must tell Edwin about this, she thought. Never mind Marilyn Frost and her mysterious hold over him, and his famous reticence. They would have to talk again – soon. This was just too good to keep to herself.

She rang Edwin’s number and was elated to sense the delight in his voice in response. But you ain’t heard nothing yet, she thought!

38

Teach me thy way, O Lord, and I will walk in thy truth; O knit my heart unto thee, that I may fear thy name.
Psalm 86:11

‘Chloe!’

Edwin nearly walked passed his niece in Norbridge town centre, but caught sight of her just as she was turning a corner. He had been thinking about Alex and her amazing find: the dedication to Quaile Woods’ book of psalm settings! Even a photocopy was amazing. He could hardly wait to see it. As a result he had almost missed Chloe. He had gone into Norbridge to collect some cleaning on Saturday morning and suddenly realized that it was Chloe coming out of Tesco’s. She looked so different these days. And his head was spinning.

On top of everything else, he’d finally managed to speak to Freddie Fabrikant, who had sounded very cagey but had eventually admitted that his leg plaster wasn’t coming off until Easter Week. Could the Stainer concert be postponed? It was a big decision, but Freddie was the only possible bass soloist at this stage. It was a huge nuisance. And Freddie had sounded peculiarly tetchy, as if he was on the verge of saying something else but felt uncharacteristically inhibited. It was odd. Edwin thought about Freddie’s missing hour on the day Morris had died, but put it out of his mind because there was something else more urgent to think about.

When would he meet Alex? He desperately wanted to see the missing psalter page, but whatever he did next would set the tone for their whole relationship, and it was another big decision. But here he was to pick up a clean jacket. Funny how the practical things were the real deciders: if he wasn’t thinking about taking her out to dinner, why was he rushing into town for the dry cleaning?

‘Hi!’ he said to his niece, after she had turned round in surprise. He saw that she had a heavy bag of groceries. That was odd, too, he thought. Lynn was into Fair Trade and fresh vegetables, but Chloe’s bag was bulging with packet food.

‘Oh, hello,’ Chloe said in a dull sort of way.

‘How are you?’

‘How are ‘Fine.’

‘Would you like a lift?’

‘No thanks, Uncle Edwin. I’m getting the bus.’ She stood awkwardly looking at him, saying nothing more, as if waiting for his permission to go.

‘We haven’t had a chat for ages,’ he said. ‘Not since Christmas.’

‘No, well, you were too busy solving murders then, weren’t you? All of you,’ she said with a sudden flash of her old spirit.

‘Actually, if we were doing that I think we made a mistake.’ Edwin laughed ruefully.

‘What d’you mean?’ Chloe looked suddenly curious. It was the first spark of interest he had seen in her in months.

‘Oh, just that a few of us think that Morris Little’s murder isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Why don’t you come to Figaro’s with me and I’ll tell you all about it?’

That might give me a chance to talk to her and to find out what’s wrong, he thought. There was a sort of griminess about Chloe he couldn’t pin down. He thought that maybe everything about her was just a little bit less than squeaky clean. Her hair was cut short and stuck out of the inevitable scarf in an unkempt way; her clothes looked dusty. He felt a moment of unease about using the murder to keep her interested – after all, hadn’t he told Tom Firth not to mention the psalter to anyone? But what harm could there be in talking to Chloe?

Most importantly, she was his niece, and looking at her standing in the car park, a caricature of her old self, he realized how much he loved her. He had known her since before she was born. This wasn’t how Chloe was supposed to be. He suddenly thought that he should try anything to rebuild their old bond.

Chloe certainly looked more engaged. ‘All right,’ she said.

She trundled ahead of him to Figaro’s, which was less crowded than usual. It was the first time he had seen tables outside, even though the shopping precinct was sheltered and covered. But it was still too cold for them to sit out. Inside the steamy coffee shop, he and Chloe found a squashy sofa and she sank into it.

‘What would you like?’ he asked.

‘Peppermint tea, please.’

‘Are you sure? You used to like hot chocolate?’ He could see that Chloe was fatter but she didn’t look particularly healthy. He was surprised that Lynn was letting her eat ready meals. Typical of the young, he thought – prepackaged dinners and detox tea drinking! Totally inconsistent.

‘No, just the tea,’ she said firmly.

He picked an espresso for himself and a mug of tea for Chloe, and rejoined her on the sofa.

‘So what d’you mean, you were wrong about Morris Little and the Frosts?’ she asked bluntly. Her face was more alert than it had been for ages. He had seen her once a week at the Abbey Chorus practices when she drifted in and out, and he had tried to talk to her once at Lynn’s, where she had been on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. He’d received no response other than a dutiful grunt.

But this time she even gave him eye contact as he told her about how he and Alex, with Robert and Suzy, had banded together to discuss what had happened. He kept it light and made it sound as if they were four cheerful chums driven by curiosity.

‘It was Suzy and Alex who got us going on this,’ he said.

Chloe nodded sagely. ‘Female intuition,’ she said.

Six months earlier, such a remark would have been said with rolling eyes and an air of taking the mickey, but now Chloe was deadpan and deadly serious. He glanced at her. She was thinking hard, he could tell. He went on to tell her about the psalter and the way the accidents seemed to have a link to the Psalms, without breaking any confidences about David Johnstone and his fall. Even without that, it was the sort of colourful rendition he thought she’d enjoy.

‘Well, there you go,’ he said. ‘One thing’s for sure. A psalter in Morris’s hand went missing. And Freddie Fabrikant was attacked by the bulls of Basan. You can’t square that with the Frosts. We think someone else was lurking in the college that night. Interesting, isn’t it?’

Chloe nodded and put her nose into her cup. He seemed to have caught her attention. And it’s even more interesting now, Edwin thought to himself, if Alex really has found a photocopy of the psalter’s front page. When Alex had called him late the previous evening, excitement in her voice, he had loved the warm sound of her, no longer tense and defensive. But he was careful not to suggest to his niece that his relationship with Alex was anything other than friendly, and, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he said nothing about the photocopy of the psalter which Alex had found. Perhaps that was her territory, until he saw it for himself.

Chloe had said nothing, and he suddenly knew he had lost her. He tried to regain her attention. ‘And what about you, Chloe? Are you thinking about going back to university?’

She looked at him as if he had started to speak a foreign language. ‘What? Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous.’ She laughed in a rather harsh way. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘My work is here.’

The pompous phrase sounded rather ridiculous. He reminded himself that Chloe was only eighteen and had always been young for her age, despite being noisy and self-opinionated. Eighteen is nothing, he thought . . . she’s a child.

Yet Marilyn had only been eighteen when they met and twenty-two when they parted, and she had been totally in command of herself. How different two people could be.

And what the hell was he going to do about Marilyn?

While he was distracted, Chloe had stood up, clutching her groceries. ‘Thanks for the tea, Uncle Edwin. I’ve got to go.’

‘Really?’

She was already on her way. He watched her traipse out of the coffee shop, and his heart sank. His attempts to reach her had been useless.

Robert and Suzy were having soup for lunch in the kitchen at The Briars. Jake had gone to Newcastle for the day with Ollie to buy some musical stuff and Molly was at her new best friend’s.

‘I’ve been wondering,’ Robert said. ‘With all this talk about property – you know, Johnstone and Alex’s bungalow and so on – what do you think The Briars would be worth?’

‘I’ve no idea. More than I got for my house in Tarn Acres, certainly.’

‘And you’ve still got your half of that money in the bank, haven’t you?’

‘Robert, if this about me living here rent free . . .’

‘Of course it isn’t! And you more than pay your way with the bills and the groceries. Anyway, we all knew this was a short-term emergency thing. No, I was thinking more about whether we should consider buying something else. Together.’

Suzy’s minestrone slipped off the spoon and splashed back in the dish.

The Briars had once belonged to Mary’s family, but they had sold it years before and Robert had struggled to buy it back for her. He and Mary had lived in it for twenty-five years, but they hadn’t been able to afford to do much with it and now the strain was beginning to show. The Briars wasn’t just untidy these days, it was becoming a bit dilapidated.

‘Well, Robert, somewhere in the far distant future I supposed something like that might happen. But to be honest . . .’

‘Just getting life for the children back on an even keel has taken up all your energy, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s only since I talked to Rachel that I realized it. But I also realize we do have to think about the practical side of things. Whatever happens,’ Suzy took a deep breath, ‘I need to get a divorce. Nigel doesn’t really want me. I’m just a handy stopgap until the next supermodel comes along. Or to be realistic, the next available bit of totty. He isn’t going to change.’

‘And the children?’

‘They love their dad, but he was never really a family man. Children were accessories for him, the sort of thing you acquired at a certain life stage, a justification for the detached four-bedroomed house and 4x4 car. He’ll be wonderful when they’re older and want to go Christmas shopping in Rome or New York. As long as Molly stays pretty of course.’

‘She will, if she’s like you!’

‘Smarmy!’

‘But seriously, Suzy, we should think about getting somewhere new, together.’

She stood up to put the dishes in the sink. ‘It’s a thought. Thank you, Robert.’ She crept up behind him and kissed him.

The phone rang in Alex’s bungalow. She dropped the property section of the local paper, which she had been reading with new interest, and grabbed the phone. She was desperate for it to be Edwin.

‘Hi!’ he said with a sort of strained nonchalance. ‘Sorry I didn’t ring earlier. I met Chloe in Norbridge.’

‘How is she?’

‘Awful. I tried hard to get her to talk. I even told her about our discussion on the murder and about Morris holding a psalter, to try and generate some interest. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind? It was you who wanted us to be discreet.’

‘True. And talking of the psalter, I really want to see the page you found last night.’

‘You didn’t mind me ringing you so late?’

‘No. Not at all. It’s exciting. Would you like to meet for supper? Should I pick you up? Sevenish?’

‘Oh yes!’ Alex could not keep the relief and excitement out of her voice. ‘That would be lovely.’ And it would give her the afternoon to do some research. She had been too excited the night before to concentrate, and this morning she had found herself waiting for Edwin to call, but now her mind could engage.

Whinfell was a most unusual name. So, Quaile Woods had a son called Whinfell, acknowledged in his own handwriting on the dedication of his psalter. And the current vicar of Fellside, nearly a hundred and fifty years later, was also a Whinfell – Paul Whinfell. Alex quickly Googled Paul and found all his details on the Uplands Team Ministry website. Paul Whinfell had been born in Bristol, hundreds of miles away from Cumbria. But there were so few Whinfells, that it was quite possible to believe that Rev Paul had Cumbrian antecedents. And who could say what homing instinct, or even half-remembered family chatter and buried memories, had led him to want to come back up north? There had to be a connection.

When you knew your stuff it wasn’t too hard, and Alex had retained her subscription to several genealogy web-sites. She logged into ancestry.co.uk and clicked on the 1861 census. The Reverend Cecil Quaile Woods came up as resident in Cumbria. Of course. He had started his ministry here in 1860 – hadn’t Edwin told her that? But there was no Henry Whinfell. Nor was Henry there in 1871. There were a smattering of other Whinfells though – a dock worker in Workhaven and his wife, and their daughter, a child called Harriet. But as Alex tapped on, she found that in the census of 1881 a Henry Whinfell was listed in the parish of Uplands, the only person with that name.

Alex took a deep breath. Going into the records, she found that Henry Whinfell had been a baby in 1881, and was listed as son to the woman named Harriet Whinfell. He had been living at Uplands Rectory and his mother Harriet was named as a spinster and servant, unmarried. So he was definitely an illegitimate child. Her fingers skipped over the keyboard. By the 1891 census the Whinfells had gone from the rectory, but Henry was living with an elderly couple in Workhaven and was named in his relationship to the head of the household as grandson. His mother, Harriet Whinfell, had disappeared. Presumably she had married and was listed somewhere under another name, leaving her illegitimate child with her -parents.

What about the census of 1901? Alex clicked on it, keyed the name Whinfell into the search and clicked again. Up came the answer. The old couple must have been dead by then because there was only one Whinfell listed in the whole of England. He was twenty years old, and now using his full name of Henry Quaile Whinfell. He was listed as living in Bristol with a couple called Fortune, Harriet and Fred. His relationship to Fred Fortune was listed as stepson. So quite clearly, Henry had left Cumbria to live with his natural mother when his grandparents died. And if there was only one Whinfell in Bristol in 1901 it was highly probable that he was the ancestor of Paul Whinfell, also from Bristol.

Alex sat back, drained. There was no need to carry on clicking, though there would be lots more work to do to take the lineage further forward. It had taken a few hours and it was in no way conclusive, but it looked at the very least as if Paul Whinfell of Fellside Fellowship had a long-term family connection with Cecil Quaile Woods, whose book of psalm chants dedicated by hand to his bastard son had been in Morris Little’s possession the night he died.