The Woman In Blue: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 8 (19 page)

Chapter 24

17
^th
April 2014, Maundy Thursday

The arrest of Stanley Greenway for the murder of Chloe Jenkins takes some off the pressure off Nelson and his team. The press jump eagerly onto the idea of a defrocked vicar as a killer, helped, Nelson thinks cynically, by the fact that Stanley Greenway looks like everyone’s idea of a sinister predator. ‘Police Arrest Paedo Priest,’ screams the
Sun
. The only problem is that there is still nothing to link Stanley to Paula Moncrieff’s murder. There were no traces of his DNA on her clothes and, though his clothes (retrieved from the Sanctuary laundry) were stained with mud and grass, that could easily have come from lying in the field looking up at the stars. Nelson is also slightly worried by Stanley’s confession. Apart from saying constantly that he loved Chloe, Stanley can’t come up with any other motive. His statement, transcribed verbatim by the police stenographer reads:

‘And I was just lying there in the grass the birds blackbird thrush robin looking at her so pretty then she was dead I loved her but she was dead I prayed at the chapel mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa . . .’

Nirupa Khan is talking about entering a plea of insanity.

Nelson hasn’t forgotten the Doreen Westmondham link, but that too has proved to be a dead end. He has looked into the background of everyone involved in the case and none of them were in care. Larry Westmondham seems infuriatingly vague about his mother’s foster children. ‘Daisy probably knows more than me. She’s been going through all the old pictures.’ Nelson went to see Daisy, cunningly timing his visit for tea-time. Over Victoria sponge (‘Named after me,’ said the youngest girl), Daisy laid out the pictures on the kitchen table. Doreen smiled into the camera, accompanied by a variety of children, of all ages and ethnic groups, one in a wheelchair. That must be Eddie, for whom the camper van had been adapted. In some of the photographs, she was in the company of a mild-faced man who looked some years older than her. ‘Larry’s father,’ said Daisy, ‘he only died a few years ago. He was a sweet man, but somehow he doesn’t come into the family stories much.’ There was only one picture of Doreen and her three sons: Steven, Kevin and Larry. The three boys had stared sullenly into the camera, much less beguiling than the foster children. But, then again, maybe they had less to smile about.

There was no way of knowing if any of the pictures featured Chloe or Paula. Was Chloe the little blonde girl holding on to Doreen’s skirt on Cromer beach? Was Paula the awkward-looking teenager pictured building a tent in the garden? So many children, so many lives. Nelson showed Daisy a picture of Stanley Greenway and she examined it closely. ‘I think I might have seen him at Sunday services. At St Simeon’s.’ ‘Do you think you’ve seen a younger version in any of the old photographs?’ asked Nelson. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Daisy. ‘But people change so much, don’t they?’

Nelson had interviewed Steven and Kevin Westmondham, but they too were less than enlightening. Steven, an older version of Larry, said that he didn’t really remember any of his mother’s foster children. ‘There were so many, they all merged into one really.’ ‘Do you recognise this man?’ Nelson showed him the photograph. ‘No,’ said Steven. ‘Oh, wait. I’ve seen him on the news. Isn’t he the vicar who killed those two girls?’ ‘Looks like a pervert to me,’ said Kevin, the other brother. ‘No, I’ve never seen him before.’

So, more than a month after Stanley’s arrest, Nelson is still trying to firm up the case. He’s in Walsingham to meet the woman who claimed to see a lurking figure near the church on the night of Paula’s murder. The witness, Bella Hendred, has not been terribly helpful so far. She failed to pick out Greenway in an identity parade and the description in her witness statement is vague in the extreme. But maybe he’ll be able to get something better out of her.

Nelson has rather lost count of the days, so he’s surprised when he arrives in Walsingham to see the village so full of people. When he cuts through the abbey grounds to have another look at the murder site, he sees that two men are erecting a huge wooden structure in front of the ruined arch. There are other such structures spaced at intervals around the park. One looks like the dock in a magistrate’s court, another like a cave. The largest edifice, in front of the arch, looks disconcertingly like a gibbet with an upright and a crossbar being hammered into place.

‘What’s going on?’ Nelson asks a passing workman.

‘It’s for the play tomorrow,’ says the man. Then, seeing Nelson’s blank look he adds, ‘The Good Friday Passion Play. They act out Jesus being killed and all that.’

Nelson looks back up at the gibbet. He sees now that it’s a massive cross, silhouetted against the pale-blue sky. He shivers, thinking, not for the first time, that it’s a weird thing to be celebrating torture and death. Religious people might as well wear little electric chairs around their necks. Only a few yards away is the spot where Paula Moncrieff had the life choked out of her. Nelson hurries on, head down against the wind which is rattling the instruments of torture. Today must be Maundy Thursday then. A more convivial feast, the meal in the upper room, the sharing of bread and wine. But then, the agony in the garden, betrayal and death. It’s a wonder they tell children these stories, though Nelson remembers taking part in a Passion Play at his primary school. He had played Judas because, as Sister Anthony kindly explained, he was good at looking angry. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Joseph O’Malley had played Jesus.

Bella Hendred lives in a cottage off the high street. The walls are pale pink and the front door is green, the knocker in the shape of a hand. Nelson fears the worst.

And he’s proved right. The room contains wind chimes, statues of Buddha and the Virgin Mary and, on every surface, crystals, scented candles and tiny carved objects. The air smells of incense and over the fireplace is a sampler informing Nelson that ‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart’. Want a bet? thinks Nelson. He takes his seat on the blue-draped armchair and says no thank you to a glass of cranberry juice. A small fluffy dog stares at him stonily from the adjacent chair.

He has only seen Bella once before, at the identity parade, and he supposes that she had made an effort to look conventional on that occasion. Today she is wearing an orange kaftan emblazoned with silver suns and moons. Enough, in Nelson’s mind, to make her lose credibility with any jury in the land.

‘I’d like to ask you again about the man you saw on the night of the 19th February,’ he says. ‘I know it’s a long time after the event, but sometimes things do occur to us when some time has passed.’

‘That’s so true,’ says Bella. ‘I think it’s because those events have been in the universal subconscious for longer and so we gain greater understanding.’

‘That’s an interesting viewpoint,’ says Nelson. ‘Could I just take you through your witness statement from that night?’

‘Of course.’ Bella sits opposite him, and the dog gets out of its chair to sit on her lap. Two pairs of eyes stare at Nelson expectantly.

‘You were walking your dog by the church at approximately ten past midnight on the 19th February . . .’

‘Yes.’ Bella pats the animal in question. ‘I always take Francis out then. There’s less chance of meeting other dogs.’

‘Doesn’t he like other dogs?’

‘He doesn’t seem to,’ says Bella sadly. ‘I think he must have had a trauma in a former life.’

Nelson decides to skate over this. ‘So you were walking beside the church, past St Simeon’s Cottage, and you saw a man. What was he doing?’

‘That was it,’ says Bella, ‘he wasn’t doing anything. He was standing in the graveyard looking up at the church. I’m the last one to stop people communing with the spirits, but it seemed an odd thing to be doing in the middle of the night. Francis barked. He could tell something wasn’t right.’

Nelson suspects that Francis barks quite a lot. Though he’s a fraction of the size of Jan’s dog, Barney, he seems far more aggressive.

‘You described the man as being “quite tall, wearing dark clothes”. Is there anything else you can add now, thinking back?’

Bella shuts her eyes, Francis, though, continues to stare at him. Eventually Bella says, ‘He was wearing a hat. A black hat. Like the one that Pat O’Brien wore in
Angels with Dirty Faces
. People don’t seem to wear hats so much these days. My dear father . . .’

Nelson interrupts. ‘Did he look at you? Respond to your presence?’

‘No. He didn’t even look round when Francis barked. He seemed lost in his own thoughts.’

Larry Westmondham was wearing a hat on the night that Michelle was attacked, Nelson remembers. He has a clear picture of the vicar wearing a heavy coat and black woolly hat. Then another picture comes into his head. Catholic youth club, a black-and-white film, Jimmy Cagney on the way to the electric chair.

‘Pat O’Brien in that film you mentioned. He played a priest, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ sighs Bella Hendred. ‘It was so affecting that last scene, where he convinces James Cagney to pretend to be afraid so as not to be a role model for those tearaways.’

And Nelson thinks of Father Hennessey sitting in his office, drinking coffee and talking about his illegitimate daughter, his black trilby hat on the floor beside him. Father Hennessey had been in Walsingham that evening. He had gone to the church to pray and found it locked. Nelson had watched Larry lock it only a few hours earlier.

‘And you’d never seen this man before?’ he says. ‘Around the village, for example?’

‘I don’t think so. He was an unfamiliar presence.’

So the mysterious lurking man may have been Father Patrick Hennessey. Nelson thanks Bella and stands up to leave. On the way out she tells him that she’s not a churchgoer, but she likes the spiritual energies of Walsingham. She gets strength from the Buddha as well as her guardian angel and various Christian saints.

Nelson thinks to ask who Francis is named after.

‘St Francis of Assisi, of course. Patron saint of animals.’

Francis barks shrilly.

*

On his way back to the car Nelson makes a detour to look at St Simeon’s Church and the place where Bella saw her mysterious man. On that occasion the lane had been deserted, but today it is rather more crowded than Nelson would like. Standing by the door of Justin’s cottage are the house owner himself (resplendent in embroidered waistcoat), Cathbad (in cloak), Ruth, Hilary Smithson, Robin Rainsford and another of the woman priests. What’s her name? Something outlandish. Freya something.

Nelson stops and considers backing away, but Cathbad has seen him.

‘Talk of the devil,’ he says brightly.

There’s been far too much talk of angels and devils already for Nelson’s liking. Also, he doesn’t relish the idea that the group have been discussing him. He has seen Ruth a few times since their argument at the cottage, mostly when he has dropped off or collected Katie. On those occasions Ruth has been polite and coolly friendly. Nelson wants to apologise for losing his temper, but he doesn’t know how to. Perhaps because he’s still angry.

Now Ruth shoots him a distinctly hostile glance. Cathbad says, ‘We were just saying that we’re sure that poor vicar is innocent.’

‘Really?’ says Nelson. ‘Well it’s always nice to hear an informed viewpoint, but the CPS are happy that we’ve got sufficient evidence against him.’ He doesn’t add that this evidence is mostly in the form of a rambling, often incoherent, confession.

‘There’s nothing to tie him to the murder of the other woman, though, is there?’ says Justin. ‘What was her name?’

‘Paula,’ says Freya tightly. ‘Her name was Paula.’

‘Does this Greenway man have any links to Paula?’ asks Hilary.

‘That’s not something that I can share with the general public,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m surprised to see you here, Reverend Smithson. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to come back to Walsingham.’

Hilary Smithson’s face doesn’t change, but she can’t stop herself turning a particularly bright shade of pink, like vestments on a feast day.

‘Freya and I came for the Good Friday Passion Play,’ she says. ‘I won’t let Paula’s death stop me practising my faith.’

But there’s nothing to stop you practising it at home, thinks Nelson. The woman’s manner strikes him as furtive.

‘I’ll be at the Passion Play too,’ says Cathbad. ‘I love a good Passion. What about you, Justin?’

‘Oh, I’ll be there,’ says Justin. ‘I’m playing Pontius Pilate.’

*

Ruth had been very surprised to get an email from Hilary at the beginning of April. Despite their promises to keep in touch, the two women hadn’t been in contact since Paula’s murder. Ruth had sent flowers to Paula’s funeral, but honestly thought that would be the last she would hear from any of the women priests. But two weeks ago there had been this email:

Hi, Ruth,

Hope you’re well. I’ve been having a peaceful and fulfilling Lent, despite everything. Paula’s funeral was beautiful. Sydney led the service and all the women from the course came. Robin read the lesson and little Jack read out a prayer he had written. He was so brave. Giles was too upset to speak. Anyway, Ruth, I’m coming to Walsingham for the Good Friday Passion Play. Could we possibly meet at the Blue Lady at 11 o’clock on Maundy Thursday? There’s something I want to show you.

Love and prayers,

Hilary

Ruth had turned up at the Blue Lady to find the place deserted and a sign on the door saying ‘Spring Cleaning for Easter’. She had walked back through the village, following the Abbey wall, and found Hilary, Freya and a large man in glasses chatting with Cathbad outside a cottage attached to the church. A man in a waistcoat was standing in the doorway, also deep in conversation with them.

‘Here’s Ruth now,’ said Cathbad as she approached.