Feted to Die: An Inspector Constable Murder Mystery (14 page)

“I imagine that would be something of an embarrassment to the Church, reverend, having a pagan shrine on church premises,” commented Andy Constable.

“Oh, not at all, inspector,” replied the vicar. “Quite the reverse, in fact. The early Christians were always re-using pagan religious sites when they built their first churches, you know. It meant they came with a ready-made congregation. Of course, there’s no activity of that kind going on these days – although sometimes when the local girls get married, they like to leave their bridal bouquets at the well after they’ve done the photographs in the churchyard.”

“And they do that because …” Dave Copper’s pencil was poised.

The vicar grew slightly pink. “As I say, sergeant, it was a fertility shrine, so you must draw your own conclusions. I try not to think too hard about their reasons. Particularly as half of them seem to have their own children acting as attendants during the wedding.” Reverend Pugh cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I’m rather old-fashioned in some ways – I really would prefer to have the weddings come before the christenings, but we all have to move with the times, I suppose. I’m grateful that the young people want to come to church at all.”

“Ah, so none of the certainties of the good old days, then?”

“Oh, sergeant, you couldn’t be more wrong,” smiled the vicar. “There was nothing ‘good’ about the old days. We have accounts of witches and black masses in medieval times, and one poor woman was even hanged from the old yew tree in the churchyard.” His face grew solemn. “Yes, I’m afraid there are some really quite nasty things tucked away in the church records. Which reminds me, you wanted to ask me about Mr. Cope, didn’t you?”

“Now that’s interesting, Mr. Pugh,” said Andy Constable. “Why should mention of the church records put you in mind of Horace Cope?”

“Because, inspector, the records are actually what brought Horace into the church more often than not. Including yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh yes, sir?” The inspector raised his eyebrows.

“Why – do you think it may be important?”

“That all depends on what he was doing, doesn’t it, sir,” replied the inspector evenly.

“Well, he said he’d come to spend some time at the Well – he called it ‘communing with the spirits’, which I don’t believe for a moment. I think he said these things simply to annoy me and see what my reaction would be. As I say, inspector, he did not have a particularly pleasant character sometimes, although I would not wish to speak ill of him, God rest his soul. But then he wanted to look at the records – again – and as I couldn’t very well stop him, I left him to it.”

“You say ‘again’. Did Mr. Cope come to the church often?”

“Oh goodness, yes,” said the vicar. “He wasn’t what you’d call a regular worshipper – in fact, I’m not sure that he was any sort of worshipper, but I tend to follow Queen Elizabeth in that respect.”

Dave Copper looked up from his notebook, puzzled. “Sorry, sir? Where on earth does the Queen come into this?”

“The first Queen Elizabeth, sergeant,” explained the vicar. And as Dave Copper continued to look utterly baffled, “At the time of the Anglican settlement. She commented that as long as people behaved outwardly as she wished, she would not make ‘windows into men’s souls’.”

“Hmmm,” muttered Copper. “A few windows into men’s souls would make my job a lot easier.”

“You were telling us about Horace in church, vicar,” said Andy Constable in an effort to get the investigation back on track.

“Of course, inspector. Yes, well, Mr. Cope did seem to spend an awful lot of time going through old records and registers. ‘Historical research’, he called it, but I really can’t see how some of the recent registers could possibly be relevant to that, so I suspect that some of it may not have been all that historical. Certainly I can’t see any relevance to his foretelling the future, or whatever it was he was claiming. And of course, that other so-called clairvoyant Seymour Cummings spends a lot of time in the village, but I believe that’s because he’s a very old friend of Sandra’s – sorry, I mean Lady Lawdown.”

“And would you say that Mr. Cummings and Her Ladyship are …?” Dave Copper tailed off delicately.

“Oh, goodness me, nothing like that, I’m sure,” said the vicar hastily. “No, they’re simply old friends, and he visits her a great deal. Now, where was I?”

“Horace in church, sir?” repeated Constable a little wearily.

“I do beg your pardon, inspector. I’m afraid I do have something of a tendency to get sidetracked. But yes, Horace and Seymour in church! That’s the point!”

“And the point would be …?”

“It was only a few days ago. Tuesday, would it be? I’d seen Mr. Cope coming up through the churchyard, and I know it’s probably most un-Christian, but I really didn’t want to get involved in a conversation with him, so I tucked myself away in Sunday School corner. There’s always a little task I can be getting on with, and on that particular day it was the choir hymn-books. I dare say you’ll be shocked, inspector, but I have quite a regular job going through the books and rubbing out the rude remarks the choirboys write in them. Sometimes I don’t know whether I should be horrified at some of the words the boys know, or impressed at the breadth of the education they’re receiving at the village school. And some of the drawings, too – quite surprisingly anatomically correct. I think perhaps I shall have to make my sermons a little shorter in future. I confess I can be a bit long-winded at times, and the boys probably get bored, and as we all know, the devil will always find work for idle hands.”

“And you were mentioning Mr. Cope and Mr. Cummings …”

“Yes! Mr. Cope was … well, I’m really not sure what exactly he was doing, because I was trying to avoid being noticed, and suddenly the door crashed open, which made me jump out of my skin, and Seymour Cummings came in and strode up to Mr. Cope and said ‘Why are you trying to cause trouble for me?’ And in an extremely belligerent tone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Seymour so hot under the collar, so he was obviously thoroughly upset.”

“And what was Mr. Cope’s reaction to this?”

“Well, inspector, he smiled blandly, and said to Seymour that he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.”

“Did Mr. Cummings explain?”

“Seymour said he knew perfectly well that Horace had been on to the editor of the Daily Stir – that’s the newspaper Seymour writes for, inspector; I don’t know if you knew that – accusing Seymour of getting all his predictions off the internet. It sounded to me very much as if Horace was accusing Seymour of being a fraud.”

“And do you reckon he is, sir?” put in Dave Copper.

“I really wouldn’t like to say what Mr. Cummings’s real beliefs are, sergeant,” replied the vicar a little primly. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. That’s what we are taught. But I don’t think that was what had made Seymour so worked up.”

“So what do you think it was, sir?”

“Well, sergeant, the Daily Stir is owned by that Canadian who also owns the television station, and of course it’s supposed to be a great secret, but everybody knows that there’s a new show being planned which Seymour and Horace both wanted to be on. But of course, they couldn’t both do it, so they were great rivals.”

“Deadly rivals, as you might say,” murmured Dave Copper.

“So then Seymour said that he wasn’t going to be the victim of a smear campaign to keep him off the new show,” continued the vicar, “and if Horace thought that he was going to stand in his way, he’d soon find out he was wrong.”

“So in fact,” interposed Andy Constable, “it sounds very much as if Mr. Cummings was threatening Mr. Cope?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to draw your own conclusions, inspector,” replied the vicar. “I can only tell you what I heard. But then Horace replied ‘I don’t think there’s a damned thing you can do about it, dear boy’, in the most patronising tones imaginable, which seemed to make Seymour’s blood boil even more, and he just blurted out ‘Balls!’ and stormed out. Very unholy language.”

“But there was no actual violence, sir? Nothing physical?” Dave Copper sounded disappointed.

“Certainly not, sergeant. I really can’t imagine anything of that sort happening.”

“Well, it has now, hasn’t it, sir?” commented Copper bluntly.

“Oh dear.” Reverend Pugh sounded troubled. “Inspector, you don’t suppose … oh dear. Perhaps I should have said something. You know – blessed are the peacemakers, and so forth. Oh dear.”

“Now I really don’t think you should feel responsible, Mr. Pugh,” remarked Andy Constable in a reassuring tone. “We are talking about something that happened several days ago. Plenty of time for tempers to have cooled. So we shan’t be jumping to any conclusions. Let’s just stick to gathering as much information as we can. Have there been any other incidents involving Mr. Cope that might be helpful?”

“Well …” The vicar hesitated. “Not really, no. Well, not actually an incident … I’m beginning to sound like a gossip, and I can’t see that it can possibly be important.”

“Suppose you tell us about whatever it was, sir, and then we shall know, shan’t we? When did this non-incident occur?”

“Oh, it was the same afternoon – I suppose it must have been about half an hour after Seymour left. I was out in the church porch giving my hassocks a good beating …”

An explosive snort burst forth from Dave Copper. In response to the inspector’s glare, he swiftly buried his face back in his notebook.

“It’s not funny at all, sergeant,” rebuked the vicar. “They do get so very dusty, and it’s an extremely dirty job, but there’s nobody else to do it.”

“Be that as it may, sir …” Andy Constable tried once again to steer Mr. Pugh back to his narrative.

“Yes, inspector. As I say, I was in the porch, and Mr. Cope was coming out of the church just as Lady Lawdown arrived for bell-ringing practice.”

“Her ladyship’s one of your bell-ringers?”

“Oh yes, inspector. She’s really a very enthusiastic campanologist. I suppose you wouldn’t expect it from the Lady of the Manor, but we can always rely on her to give a good strong pull on Little Jim.”

Both detectives gazed at the vicar in total bewilderment.

“Sorry, sir … little who?” Dave Copper’s pencil was poised over his notebook.

“I do beg your pardon, sergeant. It’s just one of our little parish jokes,” explained Reverend Pugh. “Her ladyship always rings the largest of our bells, which is named for St. James the Less, so of course we all call it Little Jim. Or I should say, ‘her’. Bells are female, you know. Most people probably aren’t aware of that.” He smiled brightly.

“So Lady Lawdown arrived at the church …?” Andy Constable made yet another effort to bring the vicar back to the point.

“Yes, inspector. As a matter of fact, she was a little early, or I don’t suppose she and Mr. Cope would have met at all. Anyway, as it was, she was coming in as he was going out, and she just nodded to him, and he said, ‘Hello, Alex. Off to do your bit for the serfs and peasants? I’ve been having a lovely time this afternoon.”

“And what was her response to that?”

“She just said ‘What?’, just like that. Abrupt. Frankly, and I really don’t like to sound as if I’m criticising, but I thought she was rather short with him, which isn’t like her at all. I’ve always found her to be extremely gracious. Anyway, she tried to carry on past Mr. Cope, but then he actually took hold of her by the arm to stop her and said ‘I’ve been going through the parish records again. Great fun.’ I can’t explain why, but I got the impression that he was almost … well, taunting her.”

“Taunting her. But why would he do that? I was under the impression that they were friends.”

“That’s as may be, inspector. I’m just telling you what I heard. So then she just said ‘Really?’, and then Mr. Cope said, ‘It’s all so very interesting. Almost as interesting as the Family Records Office at Kew – you know, all the old Somerset House Births, Marriages and Deaths. Fascinating what turns up there sometimes. And even better, what
doesn’t
turn up. Well, must go. I’ll talk to you soon.’ And then off he went, looking smug. Although now I think of it, he looked smug most of the time.”

“And how did her ladyship look?” asked Constable.

“Ah, now that I’m afraid I can’t tell you, inspector, because I was watching Mr. Cope go off down the path, and by the time I turned back, her ladyship had gone into the church, so I never had a chance to speak to her. And then all my other bell-ringers arrived, so of course we all went up into the tower, and I forgot all about it.”

Chapter 9

“So what next, guv?”

The two detectives stood on the steps at the front door of the Hall, gazing out over the grounds towards the lake. Andy Constable seemed pre-occupied.

“Thinking time, sergeant. I’m
going for a stroll.”

“Do you want me to come with you, sir? We could go through my notes.”

“No. You go and sit yourself down somewhere and look through them. See if you can find any gaps in any of the information people have given us. I swear someone’s not telling us everything.”

As he took the path which followed the reed-fringed shore of the lake, Inspector Constable cast his mind over the individuals in the case. It seemed a highly unlikely list of suspects, and yet each of them appeared to have a reason to dislike Horace Cope.