The Snares of Death (33 page)

Becca turned to her. ‘Yes,' she whispered. ‘And then . . . then when Daddy . . . died – I didn't know what to do.'

‘Even when Stephen was arrested . . .'

‘It was too late then,' Becca cried, anguished. ‘It would have only looked worse for him if I'd told the police what I'd told Daddy!'

‘Yes, but if you'd told them the truth . . .'

‘I couldn't have told them the truth!' she sobbed. ‘What if Mark . . . ?'

‘You thought that Mark might be involved in your father's death,' Lucy surmised; her voice was compassionate.

The girl nodded miserably. ‘But he couldn't have been,' she said after a moment. ‘I know that now. Daddy didn't know that we . . . were lovers. And I found out something else when I was going through Daddy's files last week. Daddy was trying to help Mark find a new job, in London – Pimlico, I think. He'd written some letters on Mark's behalf, using his London contacts. Daddy liked Mark, was trying to help him. There was no reason . . . why Mark . . .' At the thought of the young man, so beloved but no longer hers, Becca dissolved in tears again.

Later, of course, back in Wymondham, Lucy told David all about it. Although it was in many ways a breakthrough in the case, she was very subdued, displaying none of the excitement that she'd shown the day before, and seemed withdrawn into her own thoughts.

David put his arms around her. ‘You really feel sorry for her, don't you?' he said gently. He felt her resistance.

‘Yes. I can't believe the way he treated her. Seducing her, and then . . . It happens all the time, I know, but . . . ' Lucy's voice was bitter; she pulled away from David. ‘The bastard!'

‘Steady on, Lucy! It's not my fault! I'm not Mark Judd!'

‘No, but you're a man,' she said flatly.

He looked at her, feeling absolutely helpless in the face of such logic. ‘I'm sorry.'

With a rush of tenderness, she realised how unfair she was being, and flung herself into his arms. ‘Hold me, David,' she demanded fiercely, urgently. ‘Make love to me.
Now!
'

CHAPTER 42

    
Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted: who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me.

Psalm 41.9

It was as well, thought David, that he had arranged to see his client at Norwich Prison on Wednesday. He had a few matters to discuss with him.

He found Stephen looking even more wan and colourless than the week before. Prison life was no picnic, David knew, but the conditions for a prisoner on remand were luxurious in comparison with what would be in store for the young man if he were actually convicted of murder.

‘What's new?' Stephen greeted him with a peaky smile.

David sat down; he wasn't really in the mood for smiling, or for small talk. ‘Quite a lot, actually.' He folded his hands on the table in front of him. ‘Are you ready to start telling me the truth for a change?'

‘What about?' Stephen frowned defensively.

‘Well, for one thing, about how the hell your fingerprints got on the murder weapon! A little detail that you hadn't bothered to mention to me!'

Stephen squirmed in his chair. ‘Oh, that.'

‘Yes, that.' David glowered furiously.

‘Well . . .' Stephen hesitated, then in a rush the story came out. ‘I told you that we'd quarrelled about Becca. I went to the church to try to get him to change his mind about destroying the statue – I'd managed to get some money together by passing the hat round among the priests at Walsingham, and I wanted to offer it to him. When he saw me, he went mad – I've never seen anyone so angry. He said that I . . . that I'd dishonoured his daughter. He said that he'd kill me for what I'd done to her. He came down off the ladder, swinging that iron bar at me.' He looked earnestly at David. ‘I believe he would have killed me, too. But I grabbed the end of the bar, and pulled it out of his hands. It caught him off balance, and he fell. I threw the bar away, to the side, and then I left. And that is the truth,' he concluded emphatically.

David met his eyes. ‘And you didn't get any help for him?'

‘He wasn't badly hurt – I'm convinced of that. Just a bit stunned – had the breath knocked out of him, that's all. At that point I just wanted to get away. He would have killed me,' he repeated, his grey eyes troubled. ‘Of course I feel badly about it. You don't have to reproach me. I've reproached myself every hour of every day since it happened. I should have gone for help. Perhaps he'd be alive today if I had. I'll always have that on my conscience.'

For a moment David was silent. It spoke well for the young priest that he was more concerned about his spiritual culpability than he was about the incriminating nature of the evidence against him. ‘The police thought that the fingerprints, and the fact that you wouldn't tell them how they'd got on the murder weapon, were rather damning evidence against you,' he said at last. ‘I must tell you, though, that I don't think it will stand up in court.' Stephen raised his head, and David went on, ‘You see, I've had a copy of the forensic report. And it shows that your prints are on the same end of the iron bar as Dexter's blood.'

Stephen was quick to grasp the implication. ‘I see. Are there any prints on the other end, then?' For a moment he was almost animated.

David regarded him shrewdly. ‘That's the other interesting thing about it. There aren't any other prints, except a few smudgy ones of Dexter's on the same end as yours. That means that . . . whoever . . . hit him with that bar wiped it clean afterwards – at least the end that they'd held.'

‘I see,' repeated Stephen, thoughtfully.

‘The other thing that I have to tell you is that Lucy has been talking to Becca Dexter. She's learned a few things that I find extremely interesting.'

‘Oh?' Stephen's face was a picture: wariness at betraying too much struggled with a strong desire to hear something – anything – about his beloved. The wariness prevailed; he said no more.

‘You and Becca were never lovers,' David stated quietly.

The young man looked resolutely at his folded hands; his knuckles were white. ‘No.'

David slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Then why the bloody hell did you tell me that you were?'

Stephen sighed. ‘I didn't . . . exactly . . . tell you that we were. I only let you think it. I only said that Dexter thought . . . that that was why . . .'

‘But why? Why not tell me the truth?' he demanded with controlled fury. ‘As I keep saying, I'm trying to help you! And you continue to lie to me, to conceal the truth!'

‘Because I love her!' the priest said with quiet passion. ‘Don't you understand? I love her! If she'd told him that . . . that we were lovers, she must have had a good reason. Don't you see? I didn't tell him that it wasn't true, and I didn't tell you, because she wouldn't have wanted me to!' He fixed David with his grey eyes, pleading for understanding. ‘Of course it wasn't true. I never laid a finger on Becca. I've scarcely ever even spoken to her – I've worshipped her from afar. I've adored her since the moment I laid eyes on her. Don't you see?'

‘So you were protecting her,' David said. ‘From what, I wonder? Did you know – or suspect – that she was involved somehow in her father's death?'

‘Of course not!' Stephen rapped out too quickly.

‘Or was it her real lover, your friend Mark Judd, that you were protecting?'

Stephen gasped; in an instant all the residual colour drained from his face. When he tried to speak, his voice came out in a nearly soundless croak. ‘What?'

He didn't know, realised David with a real stirring of compassion. Stephen didn't know about Becca and Mark. Poor chap. He softened his voice. ‘Becca told Lucy everything. She and Mark had . . . made love . . . at Monkey Puzzle Cottage, while the ladies were away. But they found out, and told Bob Dexter. She told her father that it was you, just to buy herself a little time, and to protect Mark.' He added, ‘She felt very badly that you'd been implicated. But at first she was too frightened to speak out, and when you were arrested she thought it was too late to tell the truth – that it would have looked even worse for you if she had.'

David wasn't sure whether Stephen had even heard him. The young man blinked rapidly behind his spectacles, as though he were fighting back tears, and his tongue moistened lips that had gone suddenly dry. ‘Mark,' he said.

‘You didn't know.' It was more a statement than a question.

Slowly, Stephen shook his head. ‘No, I didn't know.' His voice came out in an anguished whisper. ‘Of course I didn't know.' He clenched his fists. ‘I should have, I suppose. He hinted about it, but I ignored him – I didn't want to know. Couldn't have borne it.' He closed his eyes. ‘Once or twice – there were long blonde hairs on his cassock. They could only have been Becca's. But . . . oh, Becca!' he lamented. David said nothing; after a moment he sensed a glint of anger joining the shock and sorrow in the young priest's demeanour. ‘Why?' Stephen demanded. ‘Why did Mark do it? When he knew how much I loved her? He was my friend . . .' Stephen Thorncroft buried his head in his hands.

‘But did you just leave it at that?' Lucy queried a few hours later. ‘Didn't you tell him that Mark had . . . dumped her?'

David put an arm around her and drew her head on to his shoulder. ‘I wasn't sure what to do,' he admitted. ‘Whether he'd be happier – or at least less miserable – to think that Becca was happy. After all, he's gone to great lengths to protect her, to safeguard her happiness. I thought that perhaps he'd feel even worse if he knew that it was all for nothing, that
her
heart was broken as well.'

‘So what did you do?'

‘In the end I told him. Of course it hurt him to think of Becca suffering. But, Lucy, I think – I think that it gave him a bit of hope. Something to hold on to. A reason to fight. I think it was the right thing to do.'

‘I think so, too.' He stroked her hair, and for a moment they were both silent, thinking of the wretched young man in Norwich Prison that night. ‘So,' said Lucy after a while, ‘where do we go from here?'

‘I'm not sure,' David admitted.

‘Stephen didn't kill Bob Dexter,' Lucy stated.

‘No.'

‘But someone did.'

‘Yes . . .'

‘Who could have done it, darling?'

David spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. ‘It's not up to you to find that out, Lucy. It's not even up to me. My job ends with demonstrating Stephen Thorncroft's innocence. I think that at the next remand hearing, or at least by the committal, I'll be able to present enough evidence to have him released. The police . . .'

‘I suppose you think your dim friend Sergeant Spring is going to find out!'

She had a point, thought David. His energies did seem to be directed largely elsewhere. ‘Well . . .'

She pulled away from him in excitement. ‘Get me some paper, David, and a pencil!'

He located his briefcase and complied quizzically. In a moment Lucy had settled down at the table, wielding the pencil with an artist's competence. ‘We're going to reconstruct what happened that day,' she explained. ‘First of all, Dexter had a series of rows. Stephen was first?'

‘Must have been,' David confirmed. ‘He was at the vicarage just after breakfast.'

Lucy made some notes, writing Stephen's name at the top of the page. ‘And then?'

He considered. ‘As far as we know, it was a quiet morning after that. BARC must have been next, in the afternoon.'

‘Right. BARC. Maggie, Rhys, and Bleddyn. From there Dexter went straight to the church, where he quarrelled with Elayne?'

‘Yes, that's right. Then he drove around, and ended up at Monkey Puzzle Cottage. That must have been about tea-time.'

She scribbled away. ‘And he wouldn't have wasted any time after that getting back to the vicarage, to confront Becca.'

‘I should have thought it was a wonder he didn't run down someone on the road in his haste,' David agreed.

‘Then what?' she asked, lifting the pencil.

‘I'm not sure,' he said slowly.

‘Well, when did he go to the church? To take the statue down?'

David frowned. ‘It must have been right after that.'

Lucy looked pensive. ‘Well, let's think about who went to the church, and when. Perhaps that will clarify things. Do we know what time Bob Dexter died?'

David consulted his papers. ‘Some time between seven and ten, the autopsy said. He'd had a cup of tea at Monkey Puzzle Cottage, and the stomach contents . . .'

She wrinkled her nose. ‘That's not very helpful. That doesn't exclude anyone, does it?'

‘No, and it doesn't help that everyone is so indefinite about times.'

‘Well, what
do
we know?' Lucy chewed on the pencil rubber. ‘We know that Stephen left Bob Dexter alive some time after seven.' She turned over the page and made some notes. ‘And that Maggie Harrison and the other BARC members saw Stephen leave the church.'

‘We know that Karen saw Miss Barnes and Miss Vernon leaving the church, earlier than that,' David contributed. ‘And that Elayne had been there even earlier.'

Lucy scribbled quickly, then regarded her notes. ‘So, the chronology looks like this: Elayne was there first, followed shortly by Miss Barnes and Miss Vernon.'

‘And then Stephen.'

‘And then . . .' Lucy lifted her eyes and regarded him gravely. ‘And then, someone else.'

‘But who?'

Abstractedly she gnawed on the pencil. ‘Everyone agrees that Becca didn't go to the church that night,' she offered.

‘But can we be sure of that?' David wanted to know.