Evil Angels Among Them (35 page)

‘Will it bother you if I talk to you, or would you prefer me to keep quiet?'

Lucy would have preferred him to go away and leave her in peace, but she couldn't very well say so; she decided to be polite rather than honest. ‘I don't mind. Talk to me if you like.'

Roger was silent for a few minutes, fascinated by her skill, then he spoke in a reflective voice. ‘Actually, I've been wanting to talk to you,' he admitted. ‘You're an outsider in Walston, but you know the people involved. And you're intelligent. I wanted your opinion about this murder business.'

Startled, Lucy turned and stared at him. ‘What do you mean?'

He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I've been thinking about it a great deal, you know. But there's no one to talk to about it. I've tried talking to Fergus McNair, but he just tells me to mind my own business. So I thought of you – you must have an opinion, Miss Kingsley.'

Lucy tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice. ‘Tell me your thoughts, then. And please do call me Lucy,' she added.

‘Well, then. You may think this is a bit far-fetched,' Roger said, sounding apologetic, ‘but I was wondering about Fred Purdy. Not because of the phone calls,' he added hastily. ‘It has nothing to do with that.'

‘Oh! Then why?'

‘Because Flora was churchwarden,' he explained, with more confidence. ‘And that's a position of considerable power. I don't know how much you've picked up about the politics at St Michael's, Miss . . . Lucy. But Fred has some very definite ideas about things. I wondered whether Flora might have crossed swords with him along the line during her brief time as warden.'

‘For instance?' Lucy queried, keeping an open mind.

Roger rocked back on his heels and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Well, for one thing, Fred has it in his mind that we shouldn't pay our Quota.'

‘Yes, Stephen did tell us about that.'

‘If Flora had opposed him, he might have been angry enough to . . . eliminate the opposition. I'm not saying that she
did
oppose him,' he added quickly. ‘I don't know that for sure. But she was a sensible woman, and she'd spoken to me about it. I explained to her how important it is for us to pay our Quota, and she seemed to take it on board.'

It seemed to Lucy a rather feeble motive for murder, but she nodded for him to continue.

‘And there's the business with Ingram's, of course.'

She frowned. ‘I don't know anything about that.'

‘Ingram's is an agricultural processing outfit on the edge of town. They're only small at the moment, but they've been bought by a multinational company and are looking to expand. It's a fairly complicated matter, involving the churchwardens as trustees of the almshouses. Ingram's need a right-of-way through the grounds of the almshouses or they can't expand. Fred is all in favour – it would be good for the shop, you see. I was dead set against it, of course, so we were at a bit of a stalemate.' He paused. ‘You see, don't you? Again, Flora undoubtedly would have taken the same line that I did. She was vegetarian, you know. All other considerations aside, she wouldn't have liked the idea of thousands of poultry carcasses rolling through the gardens of the almshouses. Stephen would know,' he added. ‘He's the third trustee.' Roger looked at her expectantly.

‘It's possible, I suppose,' she said at last, hating to disappoint him.

‘People thought that Flora was a bit of a pushover,' he said, almost as an aside. ‘Perhaps because she was relatively new and didn't really know the ropes. And because of her jolly-hockey-sticks manner. But she was intelligent, and a strong-minded woman underneath all that dither.'

Lucy seized upon that assessment; it fitted in very well with her own theory.

But Roger wasn't finished. ‘To tell you the truth,' he confided, ‘I had another idea about it. You might have heard that Enid Bletsoe was spreading rumours that Gillian English had poisoned
me
with digitalis and caused my heart attack as well as Flora's.'

‘I did hear that.'

‘Blatant nonsense, of course,' he said robustly. ‘Even if she
had
poisoned Flora, she couldn't possibly have poisoned
me
. Gillian English didn't move to Walston until the day of my heart attack! But if it were Fred . . .' Again he paused. ‘You see what I'm saying, don't you? All the possible reasons that Fred had to want to be rid of Flora – they all applied equally to me. I stood in the way of his plans until my heart attack put me out of action. Then Flora was in the same position.'

‘So you're suggesting that Fred
might
have poisoned you as well,' Lucy stated.

Roger gave a cautious nod. ‘It's possible.'

‘Well.' Lucy looked up at him, weighing his theory. It wasn't just because it had nothing in common with her own carefully constructed scenario that she was doubtful about it; there did seem to be one thing that he hadn't taken into account. ‘You've made some valid points,' she acknowledged. ‘But Flora was poisoned with digoxin tablets. Where would Fred Purdy have got them? Or known how to use them? Quite frankly, Mr Staines, Fred Purdy has never impressed me as being very bright. Certainly not clever enough to work out a way to substitute digoxin for artificial sweeteners.'

Frowning, pulling on his lower lip, Roger pondered her words. ‘Unless he just happened to come across the tablets somehow, and practised on me, then perfected it with Flora.' He shook his head ruefully. ‘No, you're right of course. Fred would never have had the brains to carry it off.' He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Forget everything I just said. I'm afraid that I let my imagination run away with me.'

‘I've been guilty of that myself,' Lucy sympathised, with a wry smile.

‘Then you
have
thought about it.'

‘Quite a lot,' she admitted.

‘And have you got any theories that are better than mine?' The irony in his tone was directed at himself rather than her.

Lucy thought briefly about the wisdom of spreading her ideas any further afield than David at this point, but decided that there was no harm in cautiously sounding out a man like Roger Staines. He wouldn't laugh at her, and if there were an obvious flaw in her reasoning he would point it out to her before she made a fool of herself. ‘Well, actually,' she said, ‘I think that the medical connection points to Enid Bletsoe. Since she worked for so many years at Dr McNair's surgery, she would have had access to digoxin.'

Rocking back and forth on his heels, Roger nodded thoughtfully. ‘You have a good point. I hadn't really thought about Enid, but she's certainly spiteful enough. If she had a good motive, I wouldn't put it past her at all. Any thoughts about a motive, then?'

‘Well, I never!'

Roger turned, startled, to see Doris Wrightman emerging from the chancel; she had come to the church looking for her husband, and the acoustics of the building meant that she had heard, perfectly, the last exchange.

‘How dare you say such things about my sister!' She glared at them accusingly, her hands on her hips and her voice quivering with indignation. ‘Calling my sister a murderer! Don't think I'm not going to go and tell Enid about this – right now!'

CHAPTER 25

    
Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour: him will I destroy.

Psalm 101.6

As David drove the roundabout roads to Nether Walston, his mind was not on his route; several times he took a wrong turning and had to retrace his way. Fragments of conversations, little things to which he'd paid scant attention at the time, floated around in his mind, their significance still tantalisingly out of reach. He wasn't even yet sure what questions he needed to ask, or of whom, but he was fairly certain that Cynth was his best bet as a starting point.

He had little hope of finding Cynth in the Crown and Mitre on a Sunday afternoon, and his pessimism was borne out. As licensing hours drew to a close, the lounge bar was inhabited only by a few elderly hardbitten drinkers and two younger men who were clearly escaping from the domestic bliss of a long Sunday afternoon in the bosoms of their families. The publican behind the bar looked at David as though he'd never seen him before. ‘Too late, mate,' he said in a lugubrious voice. ‘I've already called for last orders.'

‘That's all right,' said David. ‘I wasn't wanting a drink – I was looking for someone. A girl called Cynth,' he amplified. ‘I've met her in here before. Could you possibly tell me where she lives?'

The publican shook his head. ‘Can't help you there, mate. You don't expect me to know where all my customers live, do you?'

That was patently ridiculous in a village the size of Nether Walston. David turned to appeal to the other inhabitants of the bar, but they all ignored his existence, gazing steadfastly into their pints or engaging in sudden animated conversation with their fellow drinkers: the village closing ranks to protect its own against outsiders, he realised, giving it up as a bad job and leaving the pub.

Out in the road again, David stood for a moment in indecision. Without Cynth, where could he turn? There was only one answer to that, he knew, and one he'd hoped to be able to avoid. He didn't really want to talk to Lisa; he wasn't even sure that he could find her house again, even in tiny Nether Walston. But he would have to try. He frowned to himself, attempting to reconstruct the route they'd taken that night when he'd walked her home. On the other side of the village, it was, and it looked quite different in daylight. He set off tentatively, but there really was only one main road in Nether Walston, and before long he stood in front of the row of terraced modern cottages. Lisa had gone in at the door of the middle one, he remembered – the one with the clean lace curtains at the tiny window.

He hesitated in front of the door, unsure whether he was doing the proper thing, or indeed whether he had any right to intrude in a young girl's life this way. What business was it of his, really? But the instincts that made David a good lawyer reasserted themselves even as he turned to go: the truth, he told himself, was more important than the niceties. He raised his hand and rapped on the flimsy wooden door.

After a moment it opened a crack and Lisa peered out. She was as ethereally lovely as he remembered, and even paler, David thought, in the daylight than she'd been in the fuggy darkness of the Crown and Mitre. He could hear baby noises in the background, and the complex scent that wafted out told of Sunday lunch, overdone beef and cabbage, mingled with the acrid ammonia smell of nappies.

There was a momentary flicker of fear in her grey-blue eyes, replaced almost immediately by recognition. ‘The man from the pub,' she said. Her voice was not welcoming, but at least it wasn't hostile.

‘David,' he supplied. ‘David Middleton-Brown.' He smiled in what he hoped was a non-threatening way. ‘Would it be convenient for me to have a word with you, Lisa?'

She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Mum's not here,' she said uncertainly. ‘She's popped out to see Gran. I don't think Mum would like it, me entertaining gentlemen while she was out. Not ones that I met at the pub, anyway. Mum doesn't like me going to the pub.'

For a moment he thought about giving her his business card, to put it more on the footing of an official visit than entertaining a ‘man from the pub', but decided that might frighten her even more. He smiled at Lisa. ‘It won't take a minute,' he said, adding, as inspiration struck, ‘and I'd really like to see Janie. I've heard so much about her.'

It was the right thing to say; Lisa's face was transformed by a smile of maternal pride. ‘Oh, well then.' She opened the door wide to let him in.

The smell was stronger inside, but the house itself was relatively tidy, though extremely small. After passing through a postage-stamp-sized entry hall inhabited by a pushchair, Lisa showed him into a minute living room which was dominated by a playpen. She navigated expertly round the obstructions, though David stubbed his toe on the playpen as he headed for the Dralon sofa. ‘Can I get you some tea?' she offered. ‘Or would you like to see Janie first?'

David had no feeling at all for babies, having had almost no exposure to them, and could think of few things less appealing than the thought of being presented with one, but he knew he'd let himself in for it and had better get it over with. ‘Oh, I'd love to see Janie,' he enthused.

Lisa smiled again. ‘I've put her down for a nap, but she's not asleep. I'll get her.'

In the moment while she was gone, he nursed his throbbing toe and assessed his surroundings. The furniture was old and well-worn, though in reasonably good condition for a house with a baby, the carpet a revolting print with garish flowers battling it out for dominance with swirls of violent colour. But the overall impression was of care rather than neglect; the ornaments on the shelf over the electric fire were free of dust, the net curtains, as he had already observed, were clean, and the nauseating carpet showed evidence of recent hoovering. It was, though, a strange setting for a girl with Lisa's delicate beauty, a girl with the face of a Gainsborough portrait.

‘Here she is,' announced Lisa from the door, holding Janie in front of her like a treasured offering. She skirted the playpen and thrust the baby into his arms.

‘Oh, what a pretty girl!' David exclaimed, hiding his dismay. At least, he thought, she wasn't sticky or smelly. She was, in fact, as those sorts of creatures went, not at all unattractive: she had fat rosy cheeks and curly fair hair and sturdy little legs.

Lisa beamed. ‘Isn't she just!'

‘How old is she, then?' David asked; he held her gingerly, perched on the edge of the sofa, not sure whether his hands and arms were in the right place to keep her from falling or flopping about.