A Crowded Coffin (18 page)

John shrugged. ‘He was a cantankerous old devil, and when he didn’t die after all, he took to avoiding me, though he needn’t have worried; I couldn’t have cared less about his badger-killing exploits. I was just wondering what to do about this new bit of information, when I fell foul of Brendan Whittaker.’

The pleasant expression vanished for a moment and Harriet shivered. A glance across the room showed that Rory was still lying doggo; at least, she hoped that was it. Brendan, on the other hand….

‘He found out something, guessed rather, about my private life. Something I really didn’t want anyone to know.’ The light, pleasant voice had an edge to it now. ‘So, to get him off my back, and at the same time to make use of him for manual labour, I told him I was trying to locate the Attlin treasure. Spun him some rigmarole of a letter found in the vicarage, not the archives, and filled him with tales of golden guineas, Saxon torcs, Civil War silver and so forth. He wasn’t very bright and he quite enjoyed a break from his job with Gordon Dean – all this oil business, which Brendan knew a lot more about than he ever let on. Gordon, on the other hand, had no idea about Brendan’s treasure-hunting activities; no way he’d let his boss in on the act. Then, would you believe it? Mike Goldstein blundered in on us
one night last week.’ He shook his head. ‘Mike saw Brendan drive at old Attlin, so he had to be brought in on it, of course. Bloody stupid thing to do, but that was Brendan all over.’

‘I think the family always knew there was a hiding place,’ Harriet ventured, pale at the casual mention of the attack on Walter, but too scared to react. ‘The present-day family, I mean; it was just that the location was lost somehow. I remember my father telling me about it; his mother was some kind of cousin on Walter’s father’s side. If it was written down, there must have been a reason: perhaps the heir was too young to be told? But whatever happened, the secret was lost.’ She hesitated, unwilling to trigger his anger. ‘Have you considered that the same thing might have happened with this jewel? That Aelfryth’s Tears might have been lost hundreds of years ago? Maybe spirited away, either by the family or by some other agency?’

‘Of course I have,’ he nodded impatiently. ‘If I can’t find it, obviously I’ll have to give up on it. I’d expected to have a lot more time to search the ruins anyway, and if nothing turned up there I had in mind a back-up plan involving Edith.’ He glanced over as Rory grunted. ‘Back in the land of the living, are we? Oh yes, marrying Edith was to be my last-ditch solution, but that’s not an option now, not after tonight’s little performance. Still.’ He looked pleased with himself.

‘I’ve systematically transferred money into several overseas accounts, as well as setting up a few more around this country, under a variety of aliases and, of course, Colin had no idea I knew his account number and PIN. What with that and the Attlin plate….’ At Harriet’s gasp he nodded smugly and reached out a foot to the large holdall beside him. ‘Oh yes, that really was down in the Roman ruin in a rotten leather bag. Mike found it this evening. I couldn’t let him go free, knowing that little secret; this isn’t just silver, you know, some of it is
silver-gilt
.
Collectors all over the world and no questions asked. I’d have liked more time to explore down there, but there it is.’

His audience sat spellbound, not daring to move. Harriet slid a sidelong glance at Rory and shook her head very slightly. No point trying to rush John, not in their present state of physical exhaustion, and not with that gun, still held lightly in his hand.

‘You’re a rare kind of woman, Miss Quigley, or may I call you Harriet?’ John suddenly broke out. ‘They talk about you in the village you know, a mixture of respect and awe:
“A good, strong woman, that Harriet, a sharp tongue on her but kind as kind if you need a helping hand. But certainly she’d have been drowned as a witch in times gone by,”
that’s what they say.’ He looked at her, a puzzled expression in his light-brown eyes. ‘Tough as old boots, is another one and by God, after today, I can believe it. I know you’re the sort that believes in a stiff upper lip, but to go on as though nothing had happened….’ He turned to look at Rory, ‘She does know, doesn’t she? About her cousin? You did tell her?’

Harriet stared at him, fear beginning to dawn in her eyes.

‘They did tell you Canon Hathaway died yesterday
afternoon
, didn’t they?’

‘
S-S-Sam
?’ His name hung in the air as Harriet’s world trembled on the brink of destruction. Pain; she hunched over, feeling the pain, like a burning in her stomach, rising to her throat, as a scream of denial gathered. Then Rory, ignoring the gun,
staggered
over and put his arms round her.

‘Shh, Harriet, it’s not true.’ He held her tightly, whispering urgently in her ear. ‘He means Dr Sutherland – he thinks it was Sam.’ She was shuddering now and he whispered again, ‘Sam rang me last night, about half past ten. He’s safe, Harriet, he’s safe. Believe me.’

John Forrester had delivered his bombshell, and was now strolling along the gallery, peering at the portraits. He seemed unconcerned that Rory was no longer semi-conscious or that Harriet, though still grey with shock, had subsided quivering in her chair. ‘You’re sure?’ she breathed and sighed with relief at Rory’s surreptitious nod.

She was too shaken at first, the imagined loss of Sam, dearest friend, most beloved companion, making her weak and hollow. Out of John’s eyeline, Rory gave an infinitesimal nod and held his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t let him know,’ he breathed, then, as John sauntered back towards them, Rory slumped on the floor beside Harriet, apparently close to collapse.

‘I was sorry about Canon Hathaway.’ Speaking in a
conversational
tone, John nodded towards Harriet. ‘I hardly knew him but he didn’t like me much, which did rather make him stand
out.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I’m used to people thinking I’m a pretty straight kind of guy. Didn’t bother me too much, though, his not taking to me, but when he started asking questions recently, I had to take notice. He was such a dogged old devil too, and clever with it, asking the right questions of the right people. Very inconvenient for me.’

He shrugged as he looked over at Harriet. ‘And then when I realized he’d got you at it as well, playing detectives, that was the last straw. Meant I had to take steps to stop him.’

For a moment Harriet felt indignant at the assumption that Sam had been encouraging her, when it had been all her own idea, then the sinister implications of what John had said struck her. She shivered and sat back quietly, not daring to meet his eyes.

‘What, what did you do?’ That was Rory, half whispering.

‘Mmm? Oh, it was simple enough and quite painless, I do assure you, Harriet. I got Mike Goldstein to keep an eye on your cousin for me. We had a little transaction to carry out so I’d chosen the cathedral as our meeting place, nice and anonymous, you see. The other two, Mike and Brendan, knew I was getting irritated by Sam Hathaway, so when Mike spotted him on the High Street, he texted me and followed him at a discreet distance. I kept a lookout and spotted him, fast asleep, dozing under that ridiculous panama hat that all the locals know by sight. He didn’t notice me when I sat down beside him and neither did anyone else. We were just two of several devout worshippers.’

He let out a short, mirthless laugh.

‘An injection of potassium solution brings about a quick death with all the appearance of a heart attack and of course it has the advantage of being undetectable at a post mortem, or so I understand. He’d even got a couple of scratches on his wrist and I injected into one of them so there’d be no puncture mark.
I had the hypodermic ready in my pocket – it was left over from when Gillian…. I had to be incredibly quick, in and out of the chapel in less than three minutes. I assure you, Harriet, he didn’t feel a thing, barely stirred when I did it because he was so sound asleep.’

Harriet gritted her teeth and raised a hand to her eyes. Let him think this was grief, anything but the incandescent rage that was bubbling up inside her at his casual dismissal of a valuable life. She kept her cool, though; the vicar’s mental balance seemed less stable somehow, now he believed he was on the brink of finding the fabled jewel. Rory clearly felt the same, because he spoke nervously but calmly.

‘What had Canon Hathaway discovered that was so
important
to you that you had to – to silence him?’

John’s brow furrowed and he looked increasingly irritated. ‘He’d been poking about in the archives, asking questions about Colin Price, and I couldn’t have that. Besides that, he’d been asking questions about Gillian, about her health. And her death.’

‘Why did that matter?’ Harriet was very impressed by Rory. His quiet voice and calm, non-threatening manner, were just right. He was trying to keep things evenly balanced and not give a loaded significance to any question. Poor lad, she thought, he learned diplomacy in a hard school in that prison.

The vicar’s assurance that he didn’t want to hurt them began increasingly to ring hollow, she realized with a shiver, in view of the confidences that were beginning to spill out.

‘Did it matter what Sam found out?’ Rory repeated the
question
evenly. ‘You don’t mean Gillian really did kill herself, do you? That she jumped?’

John Forrester stared at him in astonishment then threw back his head and laughed out loud in what appeared to be genuine amusement.

‘Jump? Gillian? Of course she didn’t jump. I pushed her!’

‘You – you
pushed
her?’ Harriet’s head came up with a jerk as she choked out the question. John gazed at her, looking mildly surprised.

‘Of course, didn’t you realize? Oh dear, you disappoint me, Harriet. I thought you were clever. Oh yes, all that distraught husband business, I did do it well, didn’t I? I was a distraught husband all right, but that was before she died, when she decided to stop my allowance and started threatening to alter her will. Plus, she found out about my handy little arrangement with Colin Price, among other things. Besides….’

He paused, staring at the wall, a frown furrowing his brow.

‘She was viciously possessive. She bought me with the promise of keeping me in decent comfort and ultimately leaving me her money and she never let me forget it. But as I said, when she started talking about changing her will, I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t hard to get drugs and I took it steadily at first, so that her behaviour became erratic, particularly when we were out, at dinners or public events. Just enough for people to start to wonder. Was she menopausal? A drunk? Was it drugs?

‘I played the anxious, supportive husband to the hilt, in denial when anyone broached the difficult subject, but soon it was common knowledge: Gillian Forrester was an addict and her poor husband such a kind, patient man.’

Harriet was still sitting quietly, Rory the same, she noticed, anxious not to disturb John’s train of thought or provoke any violent reaction. Memory surfaced as she recalled a teacher at her previous school, whose short-lived appointment had made life extremely difficult for the staff. At first sight the woman had been charming, an inspirational teacher, warm and friendly, but gradually it was borne in on Harriet and her senior staff that Miss Crawford was a liar of a high order.

Avril, Sam’s wife, had been alive then, head of the English
department. Harriet recalled her bursting into the staffroom one morning.
‘I’ve been doing some research,’
she’d exulted.
‘There’s something called a charismatic psychopath, just listen to the
symptoms
: charming, attractive liars, usually gifted and manipulative. Often leaders of religious cults, they can be irresistible and surrounded by friends, talking their way out of difficulties and taking as their due the praise of others.’

Harriet’s eyes widened and she slid a speculative glance at the vicar, remembering how struck she and the rest of the staff had been by this. Avril had continued reading from her notes:
‘There’s no empathy, they don’t feel sorry for anyone or anything and when they’ve got what they want, they move on to another victim.’

Was this John? It certainly sounded like him and it had fitted that long-ago member of staff. In that case though, the woman had moved on after only two terms, blithely accepting a more enticing offer and not caring twopence for the inconvenience this might have caused. As it was they heaved a collective sigh of relief and Harriet made a note to take more care in future. Now, today, at this moment, things were a good deal more complicated.

Oblivious to Harriet’s train of thought, the vicar was
reminiscing
, looking very pleased with himself and, Harriet noted with a nod to the memory she’d dredged up, with not a trace of remorse or sorrow.

‘It was simple,’ he said, with a complacent smile. ‘New Year’s Eve, lots going on, plenty of to-ing and fro-ing around the village. I’d been invited to join the bell-ringers for the last hour, to bless the bells and so forth, as they rang in the New Year, and to join them at the end for a celebratory pint.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dear God, I should have got an Oscar for that night’s performance. In turns I was the solemn parish priest on duty, the good bloke sharing a joke and a drink, but all the time letting the anxious, harassed husband peek out from behind the mask.
I tell you, I had them in the palm of my hand and I even managed a tear, or at least the impression of one, when I rang home to check on Gillian. There was no answer, of course, but I sighed and smiled and said, with a slight choke in my voice, that she must be asleep and I wouldn’t disturb her. There wasn’t one person in the belfry who didn’t understand that I meant she was stoned out of her mind and that I was covering up for her – as always.

‘Anyway, I rang again and when there was no reply, I did my saintly husband thing and told them I’d better go and check. It was quite difficult stopping one or two of them who wanted to go with me, but I choked them off. I couldn’t have timed it better.’ His brown eyes gleamed. ‘Gill was just staggering out of the bathroom when I got in, so I nipped upstairs, twirled her round and gave her a very gentle shove.’

Harriet schooled herself to receive this remarkable
information
without a blink, noting with approval that Rory too was absolutely deadpan. She had to grip her hands tightly, however, to hide the trembling.

‘Enough of ancient history,’ John said, almost gaily, as he started to circle the gallery once more. ‘Time to have a go at this panelling again. I’m convinced there’s some kind of hiding place behind it, somewhere near the portrait of Dame Margery. That has to be what the piece of paper refers to, the one Brendan dropped. I checked out her tomb in the church but it would take a block and tackle to shift, not to mention the attention it would attract. I just hope the portrait’s not another blind alley, but in it Dame Margery’s definitely wearing a jewel, which may be a reliquary, and I’m sure there’s no other mention of Aelfryth’s Tears. It would be considered a national treasure, from the scraps of information I’ve come across, and it’s inconceivable that if it had been found it would have remained in obscurity. The Attlins would probably have done something noble but
stupid, like donating it to the British Museum. At the very least they’d have lent it to some prestigious institution.’

Evidently tiring of conversation, the vicar went back to tapping industriously at the panelling, centring his attentions on the area round the Tudor portrait of Dame Margery. Rory caught Harriet’s eye and indicated the gun but it was clear that any attempt to jump John Forrester would end in disaster, so they let it alone.

To Harriet’s astonishment, John suddenly let out a yelp of delight. ‘I’ve got it!’ After tapping and banging all over the ancient carving he had somehow managed to slide his penknife into an almost invisible crack. A moment or two later he had the catch undone and with a protesting creak of rusty hinges, the panel swung outwards, showing another small door three feet away through the thickness of the wall. It must lead to the roof, Harriet supposed, keeping a wary eye on their captor.

Into her mind slid a dangerous thought: Would John begin to wonder, as she was herself, how the occupants of such an old house had missed this particular door? For instance, Walter had told her once that much of the roof had been replaced back in the 1920s and it was beyond belief that then, even if not before, the little outer door should not have been discovered. Time enough to consider this when they were out of this pickle, she decided, directing a ferocious frown at Rory who responded with an almost invisible nod.

‘Oh
yes
.’ It was a cry of triumph. John had reached into the gap where a tiny hatch was let into the brickwork. Almost sobbing with delight, he managed to wrench it open and reach into the cavity for a box of blackened and tarnished metal, measuring about four inches long by three deep and only about two inches to the top of its domed lid.

He drew it carefully out into the open, sighing with pleasure. ‘This looks like silver,’ he remarked in a conversational tone,
huffing on the metal and rubbing it with his sleeve. ‘Yes, see how it’s polishing up?’

Delicately, infinitely slowly, savouring the moment, he
negotiated
the catch on the front of the little coffer. There was no key and he lifted the tiny latch. Inside, wrapped in faded silk, lay a small, jewelled object, the gold untarnished by the centuries.