Read Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) Online
Authors: Rodney Hobson
Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) (17 page)
The closing hymn at the compact parish church lacked something of its usual fervour that Sunday evening. Sarah Miles, the organist, normally picked the hymns. It was one job fewer for the vicar to do so he was happy to delegate the task.
The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is ended was Ray Jones’s favourite hymn but Miles could see, in the little mirror giving her a view of the congregation, the empty space that he usually occupied religiously.
She glanced several times into her mirror during the service as if to contradict what her eyes had already seen over and over again. It was rare, indeed, for Jones to miss Sunday evensong. Not even business prevented his ritual appearance.
Miles had seen Jones on Friday morning in town and he had remarked casually as they parted: “See you on Sunday.”
Miles pulled out the oboe stop instead of the cor anglais. Flustered, she selected a 32ft pipe instead of a 16ft, giving the tune a deeper tone. She always played the hymn as Jones wanted it, as a celebration of the day; now it sounded like a requiem for the ending of it.
“Don’t worry so,” the Rev John Thornley told her after the service. “I’m sure Mr Jones was held up on some unexpected business. You did tell me he was going to Nottingham earlier today, as I recall.”
He did not wish to be rude to Miles – her services as an organist were too valuable to him – but she did fuss over nothing. She was 50, and if anything looked older. Had she been in her teens people would have thought her anorexic.
Thornley was not anxious to get involved in a conversation appertaining to Raymond Jones. Miles could blow hot and cold on any topic, particularly so where Jones was concerned.
Miles had already virtually cleared the church by the simple expedient of playing the Hallelujah Chorus on full organ as the closing voluntary. It was her time honoured method, on the odd occasions when she wanted to get away quickly, of discouraging the little knots of people who gathered in the aisle after evensong and expected a musical accompaniment to their gossip.
Finding no sympathy with the vicar, she bustled off to her home just 100 yards away from the gate. Miles rang Jones breathlessly as soon as she was through the door, without even removing her hat. The rather flat voice belonging to the object of her concern answered on the fourth ring.
“This is Ray Jones. Please leave a message stating your name, your number and when you rang. This computer occasionally crashes, wiping out voice messages, so if I don’t respond please ring again tomorrow.”
“Ray, it’s Sarah. Where on earth are you? It’s not like you to miss evensong. I’m worried sick about you. Ring me whatever time you get back.”
But Jones did not ring back that evening. Miles tried again at 9 pm and again at 2 am, when she woke from her fitful sleep. Each time she left a similar but increasingly frantic message in vain.
She awoke with a start. It was 9.30 am. She would normally have been awake for the past two hours. She rang Jones’s office. No, he had not been in yet but that was nothing unusual. He would call in during the day and they would let him know that she had rung.
Miles left another message on the answering machine installed in the computer in Jones’s flat. Perhaps the wretched machine had crashed and he had not got her messages. That afternoon there was still no sign of Jones.
Finally Miles rang Jones’s housekeeper.
“I’m due in tomorrow morning,” she responded. “I’ll be there at ten o’clock.” No, she wasn’t prepared to go round that evening.
Miles begged, pleaded, cajoled. Frantically she began to threaten the unyielding housekeeper, who finally realised there was to be no reasoning with the infatuated women and put down the phone.
Miles rang the police. No, they were not going to break in. Their method of discouraging persistent callers was to leave the phone lying on the desk while they got on with their paperwork until the sound of the voice at the other end abruptly ceased.
That was why the body of Raymond Jones, businessman, entrepreneur, finger-in-every-pie man and staunch churchgoer, was not found until Tuesday morning.
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Unlikely Graves
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Why not read Book Three in the
Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery
series next?
