A Crowded Coffin (10 page)

At 7.30 that evening Edith was peering surreptitiously out of a window in the hall, watching the drive, when Rory’s footsteps behind her made her jump.

‘Blimey,’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter with you? You jumped right out of your skin.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to be creeping around.’ She was
flustered
and glared at him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Rory.’ She held out an olive branch. ‘It’s all this cloak-and-dagger stuff getting on my nerves, treasure hunters and Grandpa’s accident and Harriet suddenly turning into the local wise woman who’s seen
something
nasty in the woodshed.’

‘Maybe you ought to cancel your date with the vicar,’ he suggested, looking hopeful.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Have you been talking to Harriet?’ She carried on without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ll tell you what I told her. I’m not an idiot and I don’t propose to give the local mafia anything to gossip about. It’ll be a casual dinner in a public place, on a friendly basis and nothing else.’ He just looked at her and she shrugged. ‘Oh, all right, yes, I do want to sound him out about one or two things.’ She gave him a rapid rundown of her conversation with the vicar at the previous day’s party. ‘I’ll be tactful, but I’d like to see if he does have interests other than the late Roman period.’

Rory hesitated then clearly decided against saying anything but his concern was clearly apparent. He looked at his watch
and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder instead. ‘Have a good time,’ he said kindly, ‘but be careful. Locksley is starting to look like a village in
Midsomer Murders
, creepy characters all over the place.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she snapped as he turned to go. ‘I wish you and Harriet would stop treating me like a kid, so stop behaving like a big bro….’ Her mouth shut on a gasp and he stared back at her curiously, but the glare he received was forbidding enough to make him take the hint.

Why on earth did I say a thing like that? Edith was aghast. Not for a moment did she believe Lara Dean’s veiled slur about Rory and her own father, but the unsettling idea had
nevertheless
been planted in her head and she couldn’t leave it alone.

The sound of tyres on the gravel drive rescued her from her distracting thoughts and she opened the front door to see Rory going off in one direction in his elderly rattletrap, while a sleek Alfa Romeo drew up with a flourish and John Forrester, as polished and sexy as his car, jumped out and came over to greet her.

Sure that Rory could still see her she bestowed a glowing smile of welcome on the vicar and accepted a kiss on the cheek. ‘What a gorgeous car,’ she told him. ‘I’m so envious. I’m
planning
on buying some kind of transport myself, but it won’t be anything like this beauty.’ She was about to take the passenger seat he was offering when she spotted something. ‘That’s nasty,’ she said, with sympathy, ‘the dent on your wing. What was it? A traffic shunt or something?’

‘Nothing so glamorous.’ He looked rueful. ‘I miscalculated the tricky angle of the vicarage drive just now and had an
argument
with the gatepost. Didn’t you notice the brick dust embedded in the metal? I’m a fair driver, normally, so I can only plead a distracted mind. You look lovely, by the way.’

The smile that accompanied this remark made her feel slightly
uncomfortable. Was it possible John Forrester was actually
interested
in her for her own sake? If so, things could get a tad awkward. She shifted uneasily in the expensive leather seat,
sidetracked
for a moment as she wondered how a Church of England clergyman could rise to such a car. Oh well, she hunched her shoulders slightly, it’s only dinner and if he is harbouring ideas about me, it’s no big deal, I’ll just put him straight.

‘Where are we going?’ she enquired, putting her misgivings aside as they turned out of the village.

‘I thought we’d try Stockbridge. Plenty of good pubs there so I’ve booked a table,’ he told her. ‘I hope that’s okay with you?’

‘Perfect,’ she approved. And it was: great food, not too far from home and right on the wide main street so that even the most determined village gossip couldn’t make an assignation out of it.

He was a good driver so she relaxed and studied him under her lashes. Devastatingly good-looking in a craggy, lived-in kind of way – everyone was right about that – with
reddish-brown
hair and laughter lines at the corners of the eyes that almost matched his hair. Long and lean and tanned, he was casually dressed with no sign of a dog collar and she wondered just how old he was; late thirties, she decided.

‘Well?’ He had caught her studying him. ‘Do I pass muster? Have you been given instructions on how to handle a randy vicar?’

She was annoyed at her involuntary blush but she grinned anyway and shook her head. In spite of Rory and Harriet’s
strictures
the vicar turned out to be a charming companion with a dry, sardonic line in humour and they laughed over their meal like old friends. Harriet was right, in a way, she thought. He
was
pleased with himself but it was quite an endearing conceit salted with self-deprecation. It came as something of a surprise to her that John didn’t drink.

‘I used to drink too much,’ he confessed. ‘Then – oh, I don’t know, I realized one day that a talkative drunk doesn’t make an ideal clergyman, so I stopped.’

Edith was touched and wondered if there had been more to it; the shadow on his face suggested as much. She changed the subject and they swapped stories of student days, Edith filling him in on her experiences with the rich and famous in California, while he had her laughing helplessly at tales of some of the eccentrics he’d encountered in his first curacy.

‘I didn’t really want to enter the Church,’ he mused. ‘It was my grandmother’s idea and to be honest, she bribed me to do it.’

Edith sat and stared at him, round-eyed, so that he burst out laughing.

‘Don’t look so horrified. It was one of those cases where Granny knew best. She insisted that I’d be happy in the Church and she was right, though I refused even to consider it to begin with. I read English but when she suggested I go to theological college with a view to taking orders, the incentive of having her leave me her not inconsiderable fortune weighed pretty heavily.’

His eyes danced with cynical amusement. ‘Then she left the lot to the National Trust with a note to me, saying that, like cream and scum, I was the sort who would always bob up to the top, and that she knew I would prefer her to follow her conscience.’

As they lingered over their coffee John leaned back in his chair, looking at Edith with a considered expression. ‘I’m intrigued by your friend, Harriet Quigley,’ he said. ‘She’s a real character, isn’t she? What’s her story?’

A character? Edith had to hide a smile, picturing Harriet’s outrage at the description. ‘Harriet’s great,’ she said. ‘She was head at my school, but she’s also a distant cousin of my
grandfather
. What is it that intrigues you about her?’

‘She seems to know all about everyone,’ he shrugged. ‘Not
that anyone’s accused her of being a gossip, but there’s a feeling that Harriet is a power to be reckoned with. And what about Sam Hathaway? Do you know him well?’

‘Harriet’s definitely not a gossip.’ Edith sounded indignant but settled her ruffled feathers. ‘I don’t know Sam very well but his wife was head of English at my school, and Harriet’s best friend too. I was upset when she died about four years ago and I should think Harriet was devastated.’ She thought for a moment, John was still looking interested. ‘I believe Sam was a parish priest before Mrs Hathaway died, that’s how he became an honorary canon of the cathedral, but now he’s working in the Diocesan Office. I suppose he gave up his parish when his wife died, but I don’t really know. He’s nice, though.’ She glanced at John. ‘Do you like him?’

‘I’ve not had any dealings with him,’ was the answer. ‘But he’s well regarded and certainly seems very pleasant.’

That seemed to be the end of the conversation and Edith took a surreptitious look at her watch. Dinner had been delicious and John was good company, but she was finding it increasingly difficult to create an opening whereby she could find out about his interest in her home.

Oh well, she decided. It’s now or never, but as she opened her mouth to speak, John leaned forward.

‘I’d like to tell you about my wife.’ He spoke abruptly, looking down at his coffee cup, then back at her. ‘Do you mind? Or would it bother you?’

She was nonplussed; it began to seem as though he might be making a play for her, but there could only be one answer to such a question. ‘Of course, tell me whatever you want. I’m so sorry about your wife’s death. I didn’t meet her when I was home at Christmas but it was such a brief visit, only a few days, and then I went up to my mother’s in Scotland. I think your wife wasn’t well at the time.’

He looked away from her, then began. ‘Gillian was a few years older.’ He shrugged and said, ‘Well, to be honest, there was nearly ten years between our ages but it never made any difference. A high-flying career in the City had done two things for her: it made her very wealthy but eventually it burned her out, so she was looking for a complete change of lifestyle when we met. She was extremely beautiful and I fell for her like a ton of bricks; it was only a month or so after my grandmother died, just over five years ago, and I suppose I had some idea of replacing the family I’d lost. My parents were killed when I was twelve and Granny brought me up so we were very close, even long after I was ordained.

‘Anyway, it was pushing it, at her age, to think about babies, and she always said she didn’t want them, but all of a sudden it somehow became the most important thing in the world to her. She had various tests and it was when it became clear she couldn’t have children that she began to change. By then I’d found that Granny was right and that being in orders suited me down to the ground, so I was happy in my job. I tried to persuade Gill that I loved her for herself, that we could make a life without children, but she wouldn’t believe me.’

His face twisted and Edith broke in, anxious to deflect anything too heavy, ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she said. ‘I can see it’s painful.’

‘No, I’d like to tell you. I haven’t talked about her to anyone else in the village; it hasn’t seemed the right thing to do, but….’ He frowned and picked up the cafétière to pour more coffee. ‘It was after she had the test results that she started taking drugs. Nothing too serious at first and I, stupidly, thought she was getting over the disappointment and beginning to look forward to a future that could still be good, but it didn’t last long, that phase. Soon she was shooting up regularly. I never managed to find out how she got her supplies – addicts can be incredibly
cunning. It got worse after we moved here last autumn, but I could never catch her out.’

He sighed and brushed a hand over his face, then went on with his story. ‘The saddest thing of all was that she refused to accept that she was a drug user. She used to insist to me, to the doctor, to anyone she met, that she was violently anti-substance abuse, that she would never take drugs, it was against her
religious
convictions. Even with the needle marks on her arms she still wouldn’t admit it, even to herself.

‘In the end it killed her, of course. I expect you’ve heard the bare bones of the story: I was at the last bell-ringing practice before the great New Year performance and I joined the ringers for a pint in the pub before going home. You know the vicarage, I’m sure, and you’ll know that the staircase is rather grand
mid-Victorian
and the tiles rather special. She was lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs; she’d broken her neck on those damned encaustic tiles.’

‘Oh, John.’ Edith was overcome with sympathy. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’

‘I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about Gillian. You know what the gossip mill is in Locksley and there have been some rumours about her behaviour. But we were married for five years.’ His eyes pleaded with her to believe him. ‘And she was a wonderful woman – when her demon didn’t have her in its grasp.’ He shook his head. ‘I loved her but life hasn’t been easy these last few years and I want you to know that I’ve never looked at another woman – until now.’

She was grateful that he said no more but got up to pay the tab. It’s all getting a bit heavy, she thought, and I feel awful now. I’ll have to be careful what I say and not get into a situation where he and I are alone again, I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

There were no awkward silences during the journey home and Edith began to breathe easy again until John pulled over in
a leafy lane about half a mile from the village. A shiver of
excitement
seized her, and the promises she had made to Harriet and to Rory flew out of the window. There was something
irresistibly
naughty about the idea of being kissed by a vicar, she thought, and kissing was definitely what was on his mind.

Kissing was something he was well qualified to do, she decided, when she could draw breath. For a few moments she responded enthusiastically, then he drew back and smiled at her.

‘You’re the most delectable ex-governess I’ve ever kissed.’ His voice held a smile in the dark. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I set eyes on you at Gordon Dean’s party.’

Mention of the party brought her to her senses and in spite of her resolution to find out what she could, she couldn’t help
stiffening
. The memory of the midnight treasure-seekers intruded and with it the recollection that, charming and sexy though he might be, John Forrester was a new widower and that Harriet, whose opinion she valued, had misgivings about him.

‘There’s something I ought to tell you,’ he began slowly, his tone portentous.

She shifted away from him, back into her seat, seized with a sudden longing for the safety of home.

‘It’s about Brendan Whittaker; I know he’s a friend of yours.’

‘Huh?’ The anticlimax had her sitting up straight at once. ‘He’s not really a friend, just an occasional acquaintance. What about him?’