Body in the Transept (15 page)

I shivered, standing beside the door indecisively. I was not eager to walk even as far as the cathedral in that weather. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to stay home and tend to domestic affairs until the weather improved?

No, it wouldn’t
, the inner voice retorted.
It isn’t a big house, and you cleaned it properly for Christmas. You’re copping out. If you don’t want to go a whole hundred yards to the cathedral, go next door and talk to Jane. She’s always good for some information, and probably some good advice as well. You could use some of that, old girl.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I put on a slicker and rain hat and ran next door.

My luck was out. Jane wasn’t home. Nigel was.

“She’ll be back soon, I think. She’s just taken some soup to old—to Mr. Swansworthy. He’s down with a bad tummy again. Um—would you like a cup of tea or something?”

“I’d be delighted, thank you,” I lied. My acceptance was as reluctant as his invitation, but I’d been given the chance to talk to him. I had to take it.

It seemed, however, that I had misinterpreted his hesitation. He was eager to talk, just uncertain how to introduce the subject.

“You’ve been talking to Inga,” he said as he set a steaming cup of tea before me at the kitchen table.

“My goodness, you do get an early start on the day, don’t you?” I said lightly to cover my tightened nerves.

“She rang up,” he said. The pause that ensued was what used to be called “pregnant.”

“You think I killed him, don’t you?”

I didn’t spill my tea—quite. “Of course not!” I began, but the intense blue eyes forced me to be honest.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You had good reasons to hate him. I
hope
you didn’t kill the man, and I don’t think your temper works that way, but I can’t honestly say I’m sure either way. If Inga—”

“Inga didn’t do it!” he exploded, standing up with an angry scrape of his chair that jarred the teacups.

“Nigel, sit down!” All the schoolteacher in me came to the top. “We won’t get anywhere if you can’t discuss this like a reasonable adult!”

He sat. With all the relaxed languor of a panther ready to spring, true, but he sat.

“That’s better. Now, what makes you think Inga had anything to do with the canon’s murder?”

He would have liked to murder me just then; the eyes flashed blue fire. “I
said
—”

“I heard what you said, or rather shouted. I should think Emmy heard it, next door. You wouldn’t have said anything of the kind if you hadn’t thought it a possibility, you know. Either you’re sure she’ll be unjustly suspected, because of her family’s quarrel with Canon Billings, or you’re sure she did it and can’t get the horror of it out of your mind. Which?”

He looked at the floor, sullenly, his arms clasped tightly in the attitude I remembered from Christmas Eve.

“Nigel,” I said more gently, “I’m involved in this, too. I’m very fond of Inga, and for some utterly incomprehensible reason I’m growing fond of you, too. Won’t you help me?”

He wasn’t quite ready to surrender. “Why did you bring up her name, just now? You started to say, ‘If Inga murdered him,’ or something like that.”

I had to think for a moment. “Oh. When you nearly upset the table, you mean. What I started to say was, ‘If Inga told you I think you’re a murderer, she’s wrong.’ Or something like
that
. I seem to remember that you speak first and think later, right?”

He unclasped his arms and leaned back in his chair with the first hint of a smile. “Right. Sorry. But I thought . . . oh, well. I may as well tell you, I suppose. Rehearsal for talking to Old Bill.”

“Old Bill? Who’s he?”

He actually laughed. “The fuzz, I think you used to call them. The coppers. The police. I have been very politely asked to come down to headquarters this afternoon to answer a few more questions.”

My mouth felt dry; I took a sip of cold tea. “Questions about what?”

“I won’t know that till they ask, will I? I suppose more about where I was that night. I wouldn’t tell them much, before, but when Inga rang up she said the police were on their way to the Rose and Crown to talk about it, and she was going to have to tell the truth.”

The laughter was gone from his face and his voice. My mouth went drier still. “The truth being?”

“That she was there that night. We both were. At Billings’s house.”

Now that he had made up his mind to tell me, the story came easily enough.

“I went round to talk to him, after the children’s service. I thought he might be in a better mood, full of goodwill toward men, you know. Or at any rate I hoped he would. I need that job badly, and Inga had told me what a fool I was to get on the wrong side of him. After I left the Rose and Crown—”

“For the first time, or the second? You were there twice on Christmas Eve, weren’t you?”

“The second time. I went back to lick my wounds after Billings gave me his tongue-lashing, but I got no sympathy, I can tell you. She got me to admit exactly what happened and told me I’d got what I blood—what I deserved, that they’d fight their own battles, thank you. Her parents gave me a bite and a nip of Christmas cheer, in the spirit of the season, but they were all put out with me, and too busy to bother, in any case. So I left.”

“When was this?”

“About five, I think. It was before the rain started, I know, because I walked for a while, round the Close and back again, trying to cool off. Then it started to rain, and my jacket got soaked through in about five minutes. I was just outside the south porch, so I went in thinking I could dry out a bit. That was when I decided to talk to him again, do all the groveling necessary to get my job back.”

“And you followed him to his house? Was that wise, dogging his footsteps that way when he was already seriously annoyed with you?”

“Aha!
Now
who’s leaping to conclusions? I didn’t follow him anywhere, because he wasn’t there.”

“Wasn’t where? At the cathedral or at his house?”

“Wasn’t anywhere. I couldn’t find him in the church, so I went to his house—”

I interrupted again, leaning across the table. “Nigel, I’m sorry, but this could be terribly important! When was this, exactly?”

“I walked into the church at exactly a quarter to six. I don’t have a watch, but the clock struck three quarters just as I was going through the door. The children’s service had only been over a little while, but the kids were gone. There were people all over the place, though, getting ready for the late service. So it took me a little while to decide Billings wasn’t there.”

“And you left through which door?”

“The cloister door, of course. It was the nearest to—oh.”

I leaned back again and looked at him grimly. “Exactly. Were there any lights on?”

“Not in that transept, because the electricity is off there. But they still had lights in the rest of the church, and there was quite enough light to see. He wasn’t there.”

“The police will have to know that,” I said firmly.

Nigel squirmed. “Ye-es. But. You see—when I got outside it was raining harder than ever, so I was nearly at his front door, across the Close, before I saw . . .”

He ran down, and I finished for him. “You saw Inga.”

He nodded. “The thing was, Mrs. Martin, she was coming out of his door!”

W
HAT IT BOILED
down to, after we had hashed it out thoroughly, was that he had seen Inga just closing Billings’s door behind her. He hadn’t particularly wanted to talk to her right then, so he’d turned away, but not, apparently, before she’d seen him and ignored him for the same reason. Later, when the murder was discovered, they’d both brooded about a different interpretation of their actions and gotten scared.

Of course, I thought as I squelched home, not waiting for Jane after all, if they were both telling the truth they each half-suspected the other. That proved the innocence of both. Didn’t it?

As soon as the sleet let up a little I headed for the cathedral. I had some questions that needed answering. First of all, I wanted to find out where Wallingford and Sayers were during the relevant period—whatever that was. I had worked out, though, that the children’s service was over about five-thirty and people had started coming to the late service about ten-thirty. Surely no one would have dared put the body where it was found after that, so I had five hours to think about.

Second, I wanted to verify my two suspects’ motives. I had no idea how I was going to do that; a bridge to cross when necessary. Third, I was going to try to find out something about the murder weapon, and finally, I intended to figure out where he was murdered.

Sure, you and who else, Sherlock
, one of the voices jeered as my sodden shoes slapped against the paving stones of the Close. The sleet had stopped, but not the rain. I ignored the voice, however; I had just thought of another intriguing problem: Why was the body moved to where I found it? Of course it was moved
from
the scene of the crime for obvious reasons—but why
to
a cathedral chapel on Christmas Eve? If you’re going to go around moving a body, surely it would be just as easy to take it to some place where there would
not
shortly be thousands of people—Billings’s house, for instance. Unless he was killed there, of course.

The cathedral seemed deserted this gloomy afternoon, and very quiet. My wet shoes splooshed loudly on the paving stones; I wasn’t surprised when a verger materialized and bore down on me.

“May I help you, madam? Oh, Mrs. Martin, how are you? Dear, dear, dear, how wet you are! Come to the office and let me take that coat, and dry your shoes.”

It was one of the vergers I knew by sight, but not by name, a fussy little man with a round little bald head and round little rimless spectacles. He bustled me away like someone shooing hens. I thought he cared more about the unseemly noise and mess I was making than my comfort, but his turning up was providential, all the same.

“Mr. Wallingford seems to be busy these days,” I commented casually once I was ensconced in the stuffy little den the vergers used for their office. An electric heater put the temperature somewhere up around August, and I wasn’t sorry to shed my coat and shoes for Fusspot to look after. “I suppose Mr. Swansworthy must still be ill?” I sat down casually on the chair with the frayed cane back.

“Humph!” snorted Fusspot (I
must
learn his name, I thought). “There are
some
who come to work whether they’re ill or not. And then there are some who make a great show of working, but we’d all be better off without them, if the truth were told.”

Oh, my! The little man was obviously bursting with grievances. Pure gold, if I could mine it properly.

“Really?” I said mildly, crossing my fingers and hoping I’d gotten it right. “I thought I saw Mr. Wallingford running about working very hard indeed on Christmas Eve. Around seven, it was.” I tried to think of some excuse for my fictitious presence in the cathedral at that hour, but the verger didn’t even notice.

“Well, I must say, if you saw him, it’s more than anyone else did. We were run off our feet, getting ready for midnight Mass. It’s always the same, too much to do and too little time to do it in, and no one to take charge and see it’s done properly. And where was our fine Robert when we could have used him? I looked high
and
low for him myself when the others whined they couldn’t find him. I want you to know I ended by putting up every one of those candles in the nave myself. Sixteen dozen of them!” He gave a vicious swipe to my left shoe.

I seriously doubted that. Sixteen dozen candles is a good many. However, I didn’t want to dry up the flow. “Oh, dear, what a pity. I must have been mistaken, then. I wasn’t paying much attention, really, I was actually looking for Mr. Sayers.”

He looked at me pityingly as he finished the other shoe. “My dear lady, you really should have your ears checked, as well as your eyes. He was practicing the organ for hours, and I really had to complain to the dean later; it was so loud it gave me a terrible headache. I’m a martyr to migraine, you know, and what with all that extra work, I was nearly prostrated. Here are your shoes. Would you like to leave your things here while you—er—do whatever it is you came to do?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t impose.” Butter him up, keep him talking. “You know, I wonder—you do so much here, and you must hear talk now and again—I’d heard that Mr. Sayers might be taking another job.” Was that a sufficiently diplomatic way to put it?

It wasn’t. The little man sniffed. “I hope, madam, that you do not take me for a gossip. I
never
discuss cathedral business; I would consider it a breach of trust to do so. Now I really am quite busy, so if you will excuse me . . .”

I made my apologies and my escape. I’d blown that one, but I’d learned a good deal first. So Wallingford wasn’t around on Christmas Eve, and Sayers was, eh? It wasn’t
proof
. The verger could have been someplace out of the way, and the organ music could just conceivably have been on tape. But it was an indication, and one I was the more inclined to accept because I rather liked Jeremy Sayers and couldn’t stand Wallingford. I felt I was doing rather well.

I wandered, idly trying to make out the Latin on some of the old tombs in the north transept. Did I want to drop into the library? Would the place where Billings had worked offer any hints, clues perhaps to his last project? I went up to the chapter-house door, but it was locked. That made sense. No librarian, no assistant at least for the moment. The Dean and Chapter were going to have some staffing problems to consider when the holidays were over. I turned from the door and felt as if an icicle were going down my back.

There he was again, the monk, just gliding past in the shadows, making no sound, showing no face. I leaned against the thick, brass-studded chapter-house door, swallowed, and took several deep breaths. This would have to stop; I was too old for such shocks. If I was going to be seeing ghosts all the time, I’d better get used to it and teach my heart to behave.

All the same, I took a close look around before I left the security of that good solid door. I saw no one, dead or alive, but voices not too far away sounded blessedly normal. Looking down the transept, I saw Mrs. Allenby, with another woman I knew by sight, arranging flowers at the parish altar. I made for them like a frightened child.