The Snares of Death (30 page)

‘Oh, Alice!' squeaked Gwen. ‘That's a sin!'

‘If it is, I shall confess it to Father Mark. He'll absolve me,' she stated.

‘You didn't get along with Father Dexter, then?' David asked innocently.

Alice snorted. ‘You can say that again.'

‘And he hated to be called “Father”,' Gwen added.

David had managed to convey, without actually saying it in so many words, that he was One of Them in the matter of churchmanship; unconsciously they had warmed to him. Now he shook his head. ‘I really don't know how you put up with it as well as you did,' he sympathised.

Alice nodded briskly. ‘It wasn't easy. But Christian charity, you know . . .'

‘How did he treat his family, do you know?'

‘He was foul to his wife,' Alice said without hesitation.

‘Poor, dear Elayne,' sighed Gwen.

‘If you ask me, Elayne Dexter was a saint to put up with that man the way she did,' added Alice.

David found it difficult to conceal his surprise; he hadn't expected to find even a remnant of sympathy for any member of the Dexter family in this household.

‘You . . . approve of Mrs Dexter, then?'

Improbably, Alice's face softened. ‘Elayne is a pet. She deserved better from life than that nasty, brutal man. Still, she's free of him now.'

‘Of course,
he
never knew that we were friends with Elayne,' Gwen confided, almost proudly. ‘He wouldn't have allowed it.'

‘And the daughter? Becca?'

Alice clamped her lips together and frowned; Gwen's face puckered. David rushed ahead to reassure them. ‘You don't have to be afraid of betraying a secret. I know that she and Stephen Thorncroft were . . . seeing each other.'

A startled glance passed quickly between the women. ‘Oh, you know that, do you?' said Alice.

‘Yes. Father Stephen told me himself.'

‘Oh, did he?' Alice paused. ‘More tea, Mr Middleton-Brown?'

David knew from Sergeant Spring that the two women had quarrelled with Bob Dexter on the day of his death, but it was only after considerable quantities of tea, cream cakes and reassuring small talk that he felt secure enough to ask them about it.

They'd already told their story to the police, so the re-telling of it was fairly painless, and quite polished. Alice did most of the talking.

‘He stormed in here and accused us of stealing!' she said with indignation. ‘He said we'd taken the monstrance, and were hiding it here! And he wouldn't even believe us when we denied it! He took Gwen outside and harassed her on her own! She was almost in tears, poor Gwen.' Gwen nodded in confirmation.

‘So the monstrance had gone missing from the church?' David asked.

‘That's right.'

‘Did you have any idea where it might have gone?'

They looked at each other uneasily. ‘Well . . .' Alice suddenly decided to come clean with this very nice young man who was, after all, trying to help poor innocent Father Thorncroft. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, we
did
know where it was, but it
wasn't
here.'

Relieved of the burden of lying, Gwen became voluble. ‘We
told
him it wasn't here, and that was the truth! But he wouldn't believe us! He just kept badgering us, asking us if we'd taken it, if we knew where it was.'

‘And where was it?' David asked with real curiosity.

Gwen smirked in remembrance at their cleverness. ‘It was right under his nose, at the vicarage! Dear Elayne was hiding it.'

When he got back to the church, Lucy wasn't there. Assuming that she must have gone off for a walk around the village, David spent a few minutes examining the scene of the murder. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it – in the darkness or semi-darkness, Dexter up on the ladder, working away with his improvised crowbar. Apparently quite a few people knew he'd be here that evening, engaged in that task. Had one of them been in the darkened church, waiting for their chance to shake the ladder, then to strike the stunned Dexter with the iron bar which had fallen with him? Or had he indeed fallen unaided, and someone later had taken the opportunity to render him permanently unconscious with the means that was to hand? There was something about the set-up here that wasn't quite right, but David couldn't pinpoint it.

Lucy came in with a poorly concealed smile. ‘Darling, you'll never guess where I've been!'

‘Surprise me.'

‘I've been having tea at the vicarage!'

‘The vicarage!'

She beamed. ‘Yes. I was sitting in here, doing what you're doing now – trying to picture the murder, and imagine how it happened. A woman came in – she didn't see me. She went up and put some flowers under the statue, and knelt down to pray.'

‘Elayne Dexter.'

‘How did you know?'

David grinned. ‘I've been busy, too. I've just found out that Elayne Dexter was a secret, if recent, Anglo-Catholic convert, with a particular love for that statue.'

She sighed. ‘You've stolen my thunder.'

‘Well, go on,' he urged.

‘I thought, naturally, that she was putting flowers on the spot where her husband had died, in his memory. But of course that wasn't the way of it at all. We started talking, and she invited me to have a cup of tea with her at the vicarage.' Lucy pushed her hair away from her face with a thoughtful look. ‘David, that poor woman. He must have been absolutely frightful to live with. Authoritarian, humourless . . .'

‘What is
she
like?' he wanted to know.

‘Oh, she's lovely. I don't mean to look at – she's rather washed-out, if you know what I mean. But she has such a sweet nature. Very shy, and downtrodden. But I think she's beginning to come out of it a bit, now that he's no longer around to tell her how hopeless she is.'

‘You liked her, then.'

‘Very much,' Lucy confirmed. ‘We really hit it off. She talked to me as if we were old friends.'

‘You always were a good listener. Tell me everything,' he urged, sitting down on the plinth below the statue.

She sat down beside David and turned to face him. ‘Well, she told me all about the row they had had that afternoon. I don't think they ever rowed much – it was one of those marriages where things go on under the surface, but not much is ever said. As I said, she was quite thoroughly under his thumb, and was never allowed to express her own opinions. I don't suppose it ever occurred to him that she had any, apart from those she shared with him.' Lucy didn't try to conceal her dislike of the late Bob Dexter.

‘Was the row about the statue, then? Like John Spring told me?'

She nodded, and went on to relate Elayne's story in all its pathos. ‘The thing that John Spring didn't tell you, because he didn't know,' she finished, ‘was that Elayne went back to the church later, in the evening, to talk to him.'

‘What?'

‘Yes. She wanted to make a last plea for the statue, and' – she paused for dramatic effect – ‘to tell him that she intended to leave him.'

‘Leave him!'

‘Apparently she'd spent much of the afternoon talking with Miss Barnes and Miss Vernon at Monkey Puzzle Cottage, and they'd convinced her that it was the only thing to do, for her own sanity. They said they'd support her, help her. So she decided to tell him while her courage was fresh.'

David shook his head. ‘They never told me that she'd been there that afternoon.'

‘No, I don't suppose they would have.' Lucy nodded sagely.

‘But when? Dexter was there in the afternoon, and she wasn't there then.'

‘It must have been after he left. At first, after their row, she walked around the countryside for a long time, then went to Monkey Puzzle Cottage. From there she went straight to the church, she says.'

‘And what happened? They quarrelled again, I assume?'

‘Well, not really. She said that he was very cold to her, very dismissive. He didn't believe that she'd leave him. He was up on the ladder and wouldn't even come down to talk to her. Just told her to go away and leave him alone.'

‘So she went?'

‘That's what she says,' Lucy confirmed. ‘She went back to the vicarage and spent the rest of the evening with Becca.'

David chewed on a nail abstractedly, then suddenly turned to her. ‘Becca! Did you talk to Becca?'

‘No,' said Lucy slowly. ‘She wasn't there. I wish I could have talked to her. There are a lot of things I'd like to ask Becca.' He looked at her, inquiring, but she merely shook her head. ‘There's something about this situation with Becca that still doesn't add up.'

‘You don't suspect Becca of killing her father, do you?'

‘No. Elayne confirmed that Becca was at home all evening, from the time she'd left Dexter alive in the church.'

‘And you don't think she'd lie to protect her daughter?'

Lucy twisted a lock of hair thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps. I don't know. I just wish I could talk to Becca.'

David took both Lucy's hands and looked at her earnestly. ‘Lucy love, I want to ask you something. Think carefully before you answer. I know that you like Elayne Dexter, that you find her sympathetic and believable. I know that you think her husband was an unmitigated schweppes. But do you think it's possible that she killed him?'

Lucy took her time considering his question. ‘No,' she said at last. ‘No, I don't think so.'

‘Why not?'

‘Well, she loved him. In spite of everything, she loved him.' Her nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘She could never have put up with him for nearly twenty-five years if she didn't. I know that I couldn't have put up with him for five minutes!'

David laughed. ‘That doesn't necessarily exclude her! Quite the reverse, I should have thought. Don't you know that “each man kills the thing he loves”?'

Lucy smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps.'

‘She had a motive – you must admit that. And she had the opportunity, and no alibi.'

Closing her eyes, Lucy spoke with deliberation. ‘But she told me that she'd been to the church. She hadn't told the police that, and no one saw her. If she'd killed him – why blow her own alibi? Why tell me she'd been to the church? Why not just say she'd gone straight home to the vicarage and spent the evening with her daughter? No, David,' she said. ‘I don't believe that Elayne Dexter murdered her husband.'

CHAPTER 40

    
Which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer: charm he never so wisely.

Psalm 58.5

David and Lucy took a day off on Sunday, attending Mass at Wymondham Abbey in the morning. After lunch at home they went off in the car, in the opposite direction from Walsingham and South Barsham. They ended up in Suffolk, at Southwold and Blytheburgh, on a church-crawl, as David began to impart his love for and knowledge of churches to Lucy.

On Monday morning it was back to work as usual, at least for David. Lucy was beginning to say that perhaps it was time for her to think about returning to London, that possibly she had done as much as she could to help him with the case, and of course he was protesting strenuously. That morning, however, she was still in Wymondham, and it was with great regret that he left her drowsing in bed, the tea that he had made for her cooling on the bedside table.

Nan had been relieved of her temporary receptionist duties, so it was mid-morning before David saw her, when she brought a cup of tea to his office. ‘Good morning, Nan,' he smiled. ‘Thanks.'

‘So,' she said, ‘how did you get on with Charlie's Auntie Alice and her friend? They're a funny old pair, aren't they?'

David shook his head bemusedly. ‘They were very sweet, but definitely eccentric. I can't say I've been to too many houses that provide a sofa outdoors!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Isn't that a regular feature? Under the monkey puzzle tree, the one by the drive. There's a very waterlogged pink sofa.'

Nan looked puzzled. ‘Not pink dralon, is it?'

‘Yes, I think so. It was really too wet to tell. But there were definitely two pink dralon chairs in the sitting room, so it probably matched them. An odd place to put your sofa, don't you think?' he asked flippantly.

‘I don't understand it,' she said slowly. ‘That sofa is their pride and joy. They bought it, along with the chairs and the new carpet, with the money that Auntie Alice was given when she retired a few years back. Why would they put it outside? Unless they've both really gone bonkers, that is?'

Why, indeed? thought David. ‘Anyway, Nan, thanks for arranging my visit. It was most helpful, and they couldn't have been nicer.'

‘I'm glad,' she confessed. ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Middleton-Brown, I wasn't sure how they'd take to you. They don't usually go much for men. Aside from my Charlie, who's family, and all those priests, that is. They do love their priests.' She left, shutting the door behind her. David sat still for a moment, his eyes staring ahead at nothing in particular but his brain in high gear. After a moment he picked up the phone, too excited to worry about his resistance to using the instrument, and dialled his number in Wymondham.

It rang quite a few times before Lucy answered. She responded tentatively with the number. ‘Lucy!' he said. ‘It's me.'

‘Oh, hello, darling. You sound agitated.'

‘I
am
agitated. I thought you weren't going to answer. Where were you?'

‘I was packing my case. I thought that perhaps I'd go back to London this evening, if you could take me to the train. I've got a few commissions that I should be getting on with, you know. I haven't had a brush in my hand for over a week!'

‘No!' he said urgently. ‘You can't go, Lucy! Something's come up. I need your help.'