Late of This Parish (28 page)

‘This is ridiculous! Especially since I've already told you I could have had no possible interest in wanting him dead.'

‘Yes, that's what you've said, but it's not so, is it? You'd a very good reason. It matters very much to you, becoming the next Head of Uplands House. And Mr Willard supported you in that – until he learned something about your past so unacceptable that he felt he must withdraw his support. Something that would give you no chance of being considered if it was generally known. In fact he wanted to talk to you about Halsingbury, the school where you both used to teach.'

‘That's going back a few years.'

‘I'm not talking about the time you and he taught there together but later, after he'd left. When Sebastian Oliver was a pupil there.'

Silence.

‘On Sunday morning when we spoke to you, you said you and Mr Willard had taught together – at Halsingbury as it turned out. I had been told earlier that was the school Sebastian had been expelled from, and this enabled us to establish a connection between yourself and him. I must tell you that the Rector has told me of the incident which concerned you both and which resulted in Sebastian being asked to leave, and in you yourself subsequently resigning.'

From the corner of his eye Mayo saw Philly, perched on the edge of a sofa, open her mouth to speak, then close it.

Reece's silence lengthened. At last he withdrew his unwavering blue stare from Mayo's face and fixed it on the Rector's. ‘Have you known who I was all this time – and said nothing?'

Lionel Oliver replied slowly, ‘When you took up the appointment at the school, there was no reason why I should have connected John Reece, as I heard it, with Jonathan Talbot-Reece, the master concerned with Sebastian being asked to leave Halsingbury. In fact, I didn't realize who you were until I picked up a manual you had left beside the church organ and saw your name written inside the cover, J. C. R. Talbot-Reece.'

Kite gave a sentient nod over his notes. He'd made a similar mistake himself between John and Jon. For Sara hear Sarah.

‘I knew immediately who you were then, of course, and that you'd simply dropped the Talbot. It was a shock.'

But nothing to what Reece's shock must have been on discovering that Lionel Oliver was the incumbent at Castle Wyvering, Mayo thought.

‘I'm astonished that you didn't see fit to confront me with it,' Reece said coolly.

The Rector's patrician face showed his anger and distaste. ‘Do you think I don't bitterly regret now that I didn't? It was my first impulse. I imagined I might after all now be able to discover what had happened and perhaps clear my son's name. However, on mature reflection I decided to leave well alone, that nothing would be gained but my own satisfaction. Sebastian had put the incident – whatever it was – behind him and if it was anything to your discredit I saw no point in raking it up, simply for the sake of it.'

Reece remained unimpressed by the Rector's charity and consideration, but Lionel Oliver hadn't been looking for thanks. ‘As far was possible, I tried to forget it – until I heard there was a strong possibility you might become the new Head at Uplands, since when I've been much exercised in my mind.'

Mayo said, ‘I have to tell you, Mr Reece, that I've spoken to Mr Micklejohn, the Head of Halsingbury, and in the light of present circumstances he's been more forthcoming than he was with Mr Oliver. I understand now that the incident concerned examination papers – that you had in fact offered to let Sebastian see them before the exam. He was apparently insulted at the suggestion that he couldn't have passed without cheating if he'd been so minded, an argument developed and there was a scuffle – though I believe it wasn't altogether because of the offer to give him a preview of the papers but rather for the implication of what you expected to follow.'

Reece said thickly, ‘I wondered when that was coming!'

‘Come off it, Jon!' Philly was unable to keep silent any longer. ‘Don't use that as an excuse. Nobody cares nowadays what anybody's sexual preferences are. It was offering to let him see the exam papers that cost you your job at Halsingbury.'

‘According to Mr Micklejohn, that was so, but let me finish, please, Miss Thorne,' Mayo said. ‘Since it was in Micklejohn's interests not to have a scandal, he agreed, if you would leave the school quietly, Mr Reece, to recommend you to whatever school you moved to, and to say nothing.'

‘A highly questionable attitude, if I may say so,' commented the Rector severely.

Reece spun round on him. ‘Why should it be questionable? I swear Micklejohn knew nothing whatever about my personal life! I'd never before let it interfere with my job and haven't since. And I don't mess around with young boys, either. Sebastian was different – he was seventeen and I thought ... Well, I was mistaken, wasn't I? One mistake. But it would've ruined me here. It had obviously suited his corner to leave Halsingbury, so he let people believe what they wanted but it seems he's never forgiven the way it happened, all the same – nor the insult to his precious macho image! When he heard I might be made Head at Uplands he wasn't slow to talk, was he?'

‘That wasn't it at all,' Philly said. ‘You know what Seb's like. He'd never miss passing on a bit of spicy gossip. He'd already told me.'

‘He'd told
you
?' Reece stared at her incredulously for several moments, then said, ‘And you really believe he didn't realize where this bit of spicy gossip might lead?'

‘Well, he certainly could never have dreamt – nobody in his right mind would – that you'd actually go so far as to kill the old man to stop him using what he'd been told!'

‘Just a moment, though,' said the Rector, ‘if what you've said is correct, Philly, then when Cecil Willard was killed both you and Sebastian must have known that Reece here, of all people, had a prime motive. Why did you not tell the police?'

Phyllida hesitated, then she said, ‘This is where you all came in. I was just about to tell Jon where I'd been these last two days. I expect he can't wait. Well, I've been to London to see Peter Falk.'

Reece did not move but Mayo was aware of his every muscle tensing, every nerve end vibrating. ‘Who is Peter Falk?' he asked.

‘The man he goes to London to be with every other weekend.'

Reece's colour had mounted and there was a glitter in his eyes, but he said nothing.

‘And?' Mayo prompted.

‘And Peter confirmed what I'd thought, that ...' She stopped. ‘It's rather complicated.'

‘Take your time. There's nothing to rush for, that I can see.'

‘Well, as Mr Oliver said, we knew' who had a motive for killing Mr Willard but Seb, for some reason, wouldn't go to you – the police. I couldn't understand why, unless he was involved in some way himself, in which case it wasn't up to me to press him. Anyway,' she added with a touch of her old bravado, ‘I thought, well, the police are so bloody clever they're bound to find out anyway so what does it matter whether we tell them what we know or not?'

Mayo chose not to comment on this, but waited stolidly for her to go on.

‘But then, on Sunday afternoon, I overheard Seb quarrelling with Jon in the garden. I'd gone into the house to answer the telephone and when I came back they were obviously having a big argument. Jon left as soon as I came back and Seb wouldn't tell me what it was about, even though I kind of gathered it concerned me, and that made me so furious,' she admitted, slightly subdued, ‘I'm afraid we were scarcely on speaking terms after that.'

‘Sunday afternoon,' Mayo repeated. It had been as he thought: Reece's voice had been the one he had heard in the Thornes' garden and later, by the river at Stapley, recalled to whom it belonged. Starting suspicions in his mind which had temporarily been eclipsed by other events, sufacing only after the attack on Sebastian, an act of carelessness which would cost Jon Reece his freedom. Sheer luck had carried Reece through the first crime, where a more carefully premeditated plan might have failed him, the element of luck that was present in all successful crimes, but it had been unrealistic to think it would continue. ‘Let's talk about this attack –'

‘It was after that I really started to think,' she cut in. ‘I remembered that a few weeks back, in London, I was with Seb when he and Jon came face to face with each other for the first time since Halsingbury. It was at a party given by Peter Falk who, incidentally, is a member of – of SARA.' Reece drew in his breath sharply and audibly but she went on, pointedly avoiding looking in his direction and speaking tensely to Mayo, hesitating before uttering the name but nevertheless looking him straight in the eye. No dissembling, prepared to face the music. She wasn't short on courage, whatever else; but then, they none of them were, these blinkered fanatics. What they lacked, among a lot of other things, was a proper sense of proportion.

‘Later, we'll go more fully into the matter of SARA,' he said. ‘For the moment, let's concentrate on what we were talking about. This Peter Falk, presumably, had passed on the information to Mr Reece here that you were involved in the organization?'

She nodded. ‘He tells Jon everything, they've no secrets from each other – or that's what he said when I saw him in London this morning.' Reece gave a barely suppressed groan. ‘Though I don't suppose he'd have admitted it if he'd known why I was asking.'

‘And presumably,' Mayo pressed on, ‘Sebastian wasn't at first aware that Falk was a member of SARA, or that he'd passed on to Reece that
you
were, otherwise I suppose he might have thought twice about gossiping to Willard.'

‘Well, of course he'd have thought twice,' Pyllida said, ‘I guess he'd no idea that Jon knew anything about me until after Mr Willard was killed, probably not until last Sunday. When Jon came and threatened him with telling what he knew about me if he didn't keep his mouth shut. He must've been torn between dropping me in it and keeping to himself who the murderer was.'

He said to her, ‘All right, but if Sebastian didn't know that Reece was aware of your connections with the organization, why mention SARA at all to Mr Willard?'

She went suddenly scarlet. Whether from annoyance or some other emotion, a deep, painful red spread from her neck upwards. ‘I've told you, he didn't go to see Mr Willard primarily about Reece.'

‘Well, why then?'

‘For advice about me, if you must know! Seb's like a lot more men, he only pays lip-service to women's freedom and he said it worried him, if you please, that I was a member of SARA! That's the only reason he agreed to go to that meeting with me on Saturday, I'm sure, to see how much I was involved. Bloody cheek, as if I'm not perfectly capable of taking care of myself, which is more than he is,' she declared, the hurt in her eyes denying her anger. It had obviously come as a shock that what Sebastian thought and felt about her should mean such a lot to her, and she was mortified that it did. ‘So now you know everything.'

Mayo said, assuming his thick-headed copper role, ‘Well, no, maybe not everything. You see, maybe we're not as clever as you think we are, Miss Thorne. It puzzles me what Sebastian was doing, arranging, or agreeing, to meet you, Mr Reece, by the castle.'

How the hell, he thought, could anyone be such a fool? Meeting someone you knew to be a murderer on a dark night in a lonely place?

But you could if you were Sebastian Oliver, irrepressibly self-confident, believing you could manipulate the situation to your own advantage because you had the whip hand.

At that moment Mayo felt it was more of an inspired guess than a conscious process of logical deduction which gave him the answer he'd been looking for. Later he was to see that it followed inevitably from what he'd learnt during the conversation. ‘He was putting pressure on you, wasn't he?' he said to Reece.

With an angry, sweeping gesture that almost knocked over the bottle on the table next to him, Reece violently denied any such thing. But for the first time, there was a glint of fear in his eyes.

‘I think he was. Over Peter Falk – who's no ordinary, run-of-the-mill member of SARA, is he? I think he was the one who masterminded the bombing at the Fricker Institute that killed the security guard.'

‘I never told Seb that,' Philly's small voice said into the silence.

But Sebastian was clever. Intuitive enough to put two and two together and make half a dozen. He'd have picked up a hint here, a nuance there, and drawn the inevitable conclusion.

Mayo stood up. ‘Mr Reece, I must tell you that there is forensic evidence which will connect you directly with both crimes. For one, there are fibres from a black tracksuit which you sometimes wear for running, but we also have a witness who will testify that he saw you in the church, and –'

‘That's impossible!' He was still blustering, but the last revelations had done more than any of the previous accusations to sap his confidence. And now, looking from one to the other, he seemed to sense it was all over, that there was no escape, and his defences suddenly collapsed. ‘It's no use trying to explain, none of you will understand.' Sagging almost visibly with the weight of the chip in his shoulder, the schoolboy cowlick looking limp and defeated, he said in a slurred voice loaded with self-pity, ‘It's dangerous to be as I am in my profession. There's no room for guys like me. My whole life has been spent denying myself and how I feel and it's so bloody unfair! At least Peter's been free to be himself and work for what he believes in.'

And then with disconcerting suddenness, he jumped up and stood looking from one to the other with a wild look in his eye. ‘No! Why the hell should I make excuses? I did what I did. I didn't want to have to kill Willard, I didn't go with that intention, I swear. He wanted me to withdraw my application and I went to the church to plead with him to think again. All I wanted was for him to keep quiet, which shouldn't have been too much to ask. But he wouldn't even listen. And in the end it was so easy. So quick. No more hassle.' He rubbed his hand across his eyes. ‘But I'd forgotten Sebastian. It was only afterwards that I remembered what he knew.'