Late of This Parish (16 page)

Ruth raised a ravaged face, changed almost beyond recognition. ‘You don't know what he's done.'

‘Ruth. What are you trying to say? What has he done?' Laura asked fearfully.

‘Don't ask me! How could I possibly tell anyone? Just don't ask me.'

‘Don't get into such a panic,' Philly said. ‘She's not due home for at least another ten minutes. There's plenty of time.'

‘Ten
minutes
?' Galvanized, Sebastian swung his legs off the bed and began to scramble into his clothes. ‘Jesus, Philly!'

‘What's the matter with you? You're never like this in London.'

But this wasn't London, and Philly's mother coming home from church and catching him in the sack with her daughter wasn't part of the scenario Philly had outlined. It occurred to Sebastian that she'd probably left that part out on purpose. She relished a spice of danger in whatever she did, even more, if possible, than he. Putting her head into the dragon's mouth positively turned her on.

‘Anyway, she never comes into my room.'

She lay naked on the bed, in ‘Grande Odalisque' pose, her skin tones as golden and tender as ever any Ingres painted, though her body lacked such voluptuous curves. She was slender and so light that when he held her in his arms he sometimes felt as though he might crush her with his passion, snap the delicate wrists and ankles if he held her too tight. She was in fact as tough as old boots. Violence roused her from a kitten to a tigress. The rougher he was, the more she wanted. Which was just as well, because he loved her to the point where all sense had left him.

‘You'd better get dressed,' he said.

Propped on her elbow, chin on her hand, she stayed where she was, watching through half-closed lids as he finished pulling on his jeans, a secret smile on her face, like a cat replete with cream. He could only guess her thoughts. She wouldn't tell him what they were, even if he asked her. It was all part of the secrecy that surrounded her movements, not always through necessity but because she liked it that way. She became prickly, surrounding herself with barbed wire defences if he wanted to know too much. She had never let him know, for instance, how deeply she was involved until she'd spoken up last night. Another of the no-go areas in her life which had been closed to him.

But then, he didn't tell her everything, either.

Yet suddenly, in the relaxation that came after making love, and sensing that she, too, was more soft and receptive than she normally was, he knew he must tell her. He had to share it with someone, get it all off his chest, confess to her about old Willers. It was dangerous, might turn her against him. But past experience told him that was unlikely.

He blinked and came from a long way back as the roar of an engine was heard from outside. Looking out of the window, he was in time to see a car emerge from St Kenelm's Walk and slow for the turn into Dobbs Lane. ‘Whose car's that?'

‘Which car?'

‘A red 1965 Super Minx, with Laura Willard in the passenger seat.'

‘It'll be David Illingworth, Laura's boyfriend.'

‘I saw it in Lavenstock on Saturday afternoon.'

‘You couldn't have. He's been down in Brighton since – oh, sod it! I've just remembered –'

‘I don't make mistakes about cars. Especially ones like that. It must be a collector's piece by now.'

‘Never mind about that. Mum's going to be furious with me. I was supposed to go and ask them to have lunch with us.'

Seb stayed by the window, watching until the car had gone, then turned back to Philly. ‘If your mother's going to be mad at you, you'd better get out of her way. Get dressed and we'll go out in the car,' he ordered. ‘Somewhere we won't be disturbed. I've something to tell you.'

She heard the dominating note in his voice and suddenly she looked guarded. ‘I'm not sure I want to know.'

He stared down at her. ‘Do you love me, Philly?'

It was a question he'd asked, phrased in various ways, dozens of times and it might have been better not asked now, but she only replied scornfully, as she always had before, ‘Oh,
love!
'

But this time, he thought he detected something subtly different about the way she spoke the words. Perhaps because she knew there was a finality in the question, perhaps she was tired of prevarication and procrastination, perhaps because she really had made her mind up at last. As the thought came to him, he found his breathing was becoming difficult. So far, she had insisted on keeping their relationship secret – which was fine with him, if it wasn't going to be permanent. He'd no wish to be the object of sympathy when it ended, either with his parents, or with hers for that matter. But if there was a chance it might be more than that ...

‘How far would you go for me, Philly?'

She uncurled herself from the bed and came towards him. ‘Now that, if ever I heard one, is a leading question.'

Driving down the hill towards Uplands House School, Mayo sat hunched in a deep silence which Kite knew better than to interrupt.

The interviews with Ruth Lampeter on the one hand and Laura Willard and Illingworth on the other hand had both, in their different ways, set up unsettling questions in Mayo's mind. He knew that Danny Lampeter's sister was hiding more than just knowing where her brother was, but then, a murder investigation which didn't turn up at least a few stones revealing nasty things beneath which had nothing to do with the inquiry was something he'd yet to encounter. He knew also that he must beware of allowing his dislike of the type of woman she was to colour his judgement. Likewise with Illingworth. As investigating officers, they weren't supposed to have private likes and dislikes, but contrary to opinion in some quarters, police officers were human beings and it was hard not to have them sometimes, especially in the case of someone like Illingworth.

Maybe the man hadn't meant to be boorish, but he didn't seem to have gone out of his way to contradict the impression that he was. On the other hand, it could be he was trying on a double bluff, on the premise that no one who was guilty would deliberately present himself in so objectionable a light to the police. He was a tricky enough customer, either way – and the only one so far to emerge with any sort of motive. Or alibi. His story would be checked, of course, but with a hundred and twenty miles between here and Brighton and any number of conference delegates to say he was there, it was unlikely to have been fudged.

And Laura Willard, jumpy as a cat, what was he to make of her?

Gina Holden looked longingly at the garden after she'd put the telephone down, glanced at her disgraceful jeans and grubby hands and decided they wouldn't pass muster, it wasn't what was expected of a headmaster's wife. Abandoning her precious Sunday morning with barely a sigh, she moved quickly and had changed and was just finishing making coffee when the doorbell rang. She crossed the hall with her usual swift stride, now tidily dressed in navy trousers and a cream silk shirt, showing no signs of her former dishevelment.

‘Hope we're not disturbing you, Mrs Holden,' Mayo said, ‘I thought we'd better ring before we came ... school timetable and so on.'

‘No problem.' Smiling, she took them through to the drawing-room, offered them coffee and then left them while she went to bring it in.

‘Nice room.' Kite looked around appreciatively. ‘Bit untidy, like,' he added, in case he should seem to be denying his Leftist tendencies by being too appreciative of a room containing a grand piano and a Chinese carpet.

Mayo, who was in no position to make judgements on anyone's tidiness, grunted an ambiguous reply. The sunlight showed a light film of dust and the less than well polished windows and emphasized the rumpled cushions and covers, but he, like Kite, found it attractive, a room for living in and not for show. Decorated in soft shades of apricot and buff, sparely furnished, an arrangement of copper-coloured leaves and cream flowers in the empty grate, plenty of books, the small grand piano. When Gina Holden came back she found Kite admiring the garden and Mayo bending a covetous eye on the brass timepiece standing on the mantel. She asked him whether he was specially interested in clocks.

‘Old ones, yes,' he told her. ‘It's a long time since I saw a lantern clock in as good nick as this. My dad used to have one, years ago. He sold it to buy an old second-hand car and regretted it ever after.'

She laughed, showing beautiful teeth and rather a lot of gum. ‘This one wouldn't buy a second-hand bike. It hasn't gone properly for months.'

Mayo could find nothing at all to say to this heresy. If the clock had been his, he'd have had it spread out on the table in bits and fiddled about with it until it did go. It hurt him physically to see a clock neglected or not correctly adjusted; a stopped clock was like a bereavement in the house. He almost toyed with the idea of offering to repair it for free but thought better of it.

Mrs Holden suggested that since the sun had at last emerged from the clouds they might like to go and sit in the garden while they talked. Nothing loath, Kite took the tray from her as she led the way through the open french window, across a flagged terrace to a sitting-out area outside an old thatched summerhouse. Chairs faced the lawn and a small pond, with a table between them.

‘Not too draughty for you here?' she inquired. ‘I like to take every opportunity to sit outside when there's some sun about.'

‘Don't blame you, when you've such a beautiful garden,' Kite said. It was no empty compliment. Unlike the house, the garden was immaculate. Kite enjoyed pottering in his own when he had the chance. He was reminded that he'd intended putting out his bedding plants today. He hoped Sheila would remember and make a start – and not mistake the petunias for the nemesia, or let the cat scratch them up, or accidentally water them with weedkiller, or anything else his dearly beloved but accident-prone wife was only too apt to do.

The terrace looked out over a long, quiet lawn flanked by a stone-flagged path and a wide herbaceous border, beyond which could be seen the playing fields and the main school buildings. ‘Very peaceful,' remarked Mayo, no gardener himself but knowing what he liked.

‘It is, isn't it? I do most of it myself and I can't bear the thought of leaving it to someone else's tender mercies when we go. My husband's retiring at the end of the school year.'

‘Perhaps the new head or his wife will enjoy gardening as much as you do.'

She smiled ruefully. ‘Depends on who gets the job – he hasn't been appointed yet. There was to have been a governors' meeting on Monday. We hoped it would've been decided then but of course it's been cancelled. We really can't make proper plans until we're sure. We're going to live near Antibes.' A shadow crossed her face but was quickly dispelled as she went on in her easy, talkative way, ‘Well, Richard loves it there, we'll make other friends, no doubt everything will turn out for the best. He had a slight heart attack, you see, and though he's fit enough now, it was a warning to take things more easily, they said. Running a school like this can be rather hectic at times.'

Gina Holden had been a surprise. An energetic woman with a bright, alert face, an engagingly tip-tilted nose and short curly hair, she was much younger than Mayo had expected, mid-thirties, but still younger than he'd assumed the wife of a man presently retiring would be. Perhaps, though, she wasn't, if he was retiring through illness.

They drank their coffee and ate some delicious crunchy biscuits which Mayo welcomed in view of having missed breakfast. There was a few minutes' pleasant chat about holidays in the south of France and the differences in climate and gardening out there, which brought him neatly round to the flower arrangements in the church. He complimented Mrs Holden on them, bringing a pleased look to her face, and asked what time she had arrived to do them.

She replied that it had been nearly five o'clock. ‘I was running late. We'd had a sort of open day for parents and prospective parents – really to show them what use we're making of modern technology, computers and so on, and a lot of the parents were so interested they just wouldn't go. I'd forgotten until yesterday morning that it was my turn to do the flowers – I've a memory like a sieve! I tried to swap turns with someone else but everyone seemed to have something they couldn't put off. Mrs Oliver would've done them, I suppose, but she always gets landed with things other people mess up, poor thing, so I didn't ask her.'

‘Was the church door locked when you arrived?' Mayo asked, when he could get a word in edgeways. She nodded. ‘And you locked it again when you left?'

‘Yes, I picked the key up from the Rectory and I'm sure I locked it because I was carrying some sheet music Jon Reece had left in church earlier and wanted for choir practice here – he stands in for the church organist occasionally – and it was difficult to stop it slipping while I locked the door.'

‘How long would you say you were in the church?'

‘Nearly an hour, including clearing up. Throwing out the old flowers on the altar – plus the ones from the windowsills and the ends of the pews from the wedding last week. Such a pity ... they were so pretty. But they don't last, of course.'

‘So no one could have been in the church without you being aware of it?'

‘Oh, absolutely not.' She stared at him. ‘Goodness, you don't mean you thought someone might have been – well, hiding?'

Mayo sighed. ‘No, Mrs Holden, it doesn't seem likely from what you've said.'

Whoever had killed Willard must have waited until he had unlocked the door and then followed him into church, though nobody so far had admitted to having seen who it was – and in view of the number of people in and around Parson's Place at six o'clock Mayo was beginning to think this nothing short of miraculous. He returned to something Mrs Holden had been saying earlier that had reminded him of one of the entries in Willard's diary. ‘You mentioned a school governors' meeting –'