Murder Fortissimo (12 page)

She took a sip of her own whisky and thought about it for a moment. ‘Your most valid objection to my theory is that it put other people at risk. Well, I agree, but perhaps you didn’t realize that during the interval Matron insisted that Christiane Marchant had to be parked away over to one side. The excuse given was that the tyres on the wheelchair were damaging the parquet floor but I think myself that was just quick thinking on Matron’s part. She must have noticed how uneasy Mrs Marchant was making some of the others. But it means the wretched woman was there all alone, tucked in a corner beside the table, and it seemed to me then – and I don’t believe this is purely hindsight, that they had all rejected her somehow, pushed her away from them with Matron’s help. They had sent her to Coventry in a way.’

She looked backwards at the events of the previous evening, trying to summon up an accurate image. ‘I’m right, you know, Sam. She was really out in the cold. They were all there, the people she had dancing and twitching as she pulled their strings: Ellen Ransom and Doreen Buchan. Tim Armstrong and old Fred Buchan with Alice Marchant and young Gemma in the doorway. Even Pauline Winslow was close enough to tug at an invisible thread, bearing in mind just how dark it was then, with the candle bulbs dimmed.’

‘Haven’t you shot yourself in the foot, rather, if you suspect Alice?’ he enquired, making no comment on the theory so far.

‘You mean by talking about the threads of cotton? Just now in the pub?’ She shrugged. ‘Could be, I suppose, but equally one could argue that I’d merely fired a warning shot across her bows. To let her know that she couldn’t get away with it.’

He nodded and waited patiently.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Sam. I think she was getting a bit worried
until I babbled on about the tinsel on the musical instruments but I’m pretty certain my explanation satisfied her. I don’t really think she had anything to do with it but the trouble is, I don’t
want
it to be Alice and once you start having favourites you might as well give up.’

She put her glass down, glad of the opportunity to turn away from Sam’s scrutiny. She knew she was looking her age, and more, tonight and that Sam was remembering that she was, after all, recovering from a fairly major operation.

‘Look, Harriet,’ he ventured, making no comment on her weariness. ‘I’m not so sure I was right to dismiss the whole idea straight away, but I do see that as a plan for a murder it’s about as foolproof as a leaky sieve. I’ll take your word for it about Mrs Marchant being set apart – I was talking and didn’t take much notice of her; and I’ll concede that it could have happened that way. But to my mind the black thread is the weak link, literally.’

‘But it was
button
thread,’ she interrupted him eagerly. ‘I certainly wasn’t the only person Mrs Turner mentioned it to – that it was the extra strong thread, I mean, rather than the usual weight and thickness. You’re right, ordinary cotton would have been useless.’ She clenched her fists for a moment and turned to him. ‘I think Christiane Marchant said something more than usually dreadful to somebody just before the concert began and that this was a spur of the moment, opportunistic effort, using whatever came to hand.’

‘Mmm.’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘Could be, I suppose, but that’s a two-edged argument. I mean, yes, if you like, it would probably ensure that the thread was strong enough to take the weight of that huge instrument for a short time, but equally, unless it was arranged somehow over a fulcrum – a fixed point like the keys, perhaps, or even twisted round one of them – you couldn’t be sure it would break after the event, which would leave a long trailing pointer to the cotton reel in your guilty hand.’

‘Unless you had a pair of nail scissors in your handbag or a pen knife in your pocket, all ready for a quick snip at the incriminating thread, under cover of the inevitable hysteria and confusion that such an accident would bring about.’

He let out a tuneless whistle and stared at her, obviously intrigued against his better judgement. ‘They were all underfoot as soon as it happened, even Tim Armstrong,’ he admitted slowly as he thought back to the horror, the noise and the mess of the aftermath. ‘Both the Buchans, Fred and Doreen, and Vic too, were there as far as I recall. They were on the spot at once and Mrs Ransom was hovering around there too, I remember thinking what a ghoul she was and scolding myself for lack of charity.’

She nodded encouragement. Just so had she regarded a particularly bright pupil in her teaching days, when a knotty problem was being untangled by use of logic and applied intelligence.

‘Did they all go up to the gallery?’ He answered his own question with a nod. ‘I remember Ellen Ransom’s face,’ he went on, speaking slowly, thoughtfully. ‘It really did look like a case of “if looks could kill”.’ He looked at her. ‘I remember something else. Tim Armstrong, did you hear what he said? He said: “That woman deserves to die.” I remember his very words.’

Harriet gave him a startled look. ‘But that’s exactly what Doreen Buchan said, her very words too, I’m quite sure of it.’

They stared at each other, not knowing what to think.

‘I don’t think Alice moved.’ He was squinting back in time again and she nodded.

‘No, you’re right, she didn’t,’ Harriet admitted. ‘I was about to go to her but Neil was there. She certainly didn’t move towards her mother’s body but it’s possible, remotely I agree, that she could have done it and left it to chance about the thread.’

He gave her another of his old-fashioned looks and she conceded defeat. ‘Oh all right, it’s far-fetched in the extreme and highly unlikely. That’s why, besides partiality, that I don’t really believe Alice killed her own mother, though I must admit that property development business this morning gave me a bit of a jolt.’

She frowned then remembered the snatched five minutes earlier on when he had managed to fill her in on his unexpected trip to Winchester on Matron’s errand. ‘What was all that business with Fred Buchan, do you think, Sam? I mean, why the Cathedral? I could understand if he’d gone there to pray but from what you say, all he did was stand and look at the statue in the crypt.’

‘Oh no,’ Sam corrected her gently but firmly. ‘I’m pretty certain that Fred was praying while he stood there. In his own way. For some reason he’d decided that the Cathedral was the place he had to be, though I soon realized he didn’t know what to do when he got there. He had no coherent plan, I think it was just some blind instinct that took him there, but the crypt attracted him and when he saw the statue he was transfixed. He’d picked me for the job because I’m a priest – though he didn’t seem confused about that, as I’d initially suspected. He seemed to know the difference between Roman Catholic and Anglican priests, all right. However, even after asking for my help, he wouldn’t open up to me however gently I probed, so God only knows what he was looking for – or what he found. But it was certainly some kind of prayer, Harriet.’

Saying nothing, she shot him a smile that mingled deep affection with considerable respect, then she looked at her watch and stood up, brushing biscuit crumbs off her plaid woollen skirt and tut-tutting as a drop of whisky spilt on her lambswool sweater as she drained her mug.

‘Lick it off, Old Hat,’ suggested Sam absently then raised his head in surprise at her sudden giggle. ‘
What
? What did I say? What are you laughing at?’

‘You,’ she grinned as they emerged from her room and set off downstairs. ‘Is that what you do, you old soak, reduced to sucking drips off your jumper? Thank God I’m not so dependent on alcohol, you old villain.’

He gave her one of his rueful schoolboy grins, looking a little abashed. ‘Can’t keep anything a secret from you, can I? Still, the price of whisky nowadays, you have to take it where you can get it.’

She saw him to the door, their problem unresolved, but as he said goodnight he frowned suddenly. ‘Be careful, love,’ he urged, with an anxious look round the entrance hall. ‘I don’t know that I like the idea of you trapped here with a you-
know-what
on the loose. If you’re right, that is.’

‘A what?’ Startled at first by his unaccustomed endearment, she suddenly interpreted his cautious euphemism and swept a comprehensive glance round the hall. There were still a few visitors, Saturday being the only day when relatives and friends were welcome after dinner. Not everyone was allowed to entertain guests in their rooms but Matron had been happy to make an exception of Sam, who traded shamelessly on his cloth when it was politic. Before Avril’s death he had pandered happily to his legion of adoring female parishioners, keeping them all from squabbling by the exercise of his charm, but nowadays he tended to steer clear of women who could be described as fancy free and might be suspected of having designs on him.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She gave him a kiss and a little push to send him on his way. ‘I’ll be all right, don’t worry.’

His words haunted her however, as she made her way towards the drawing-room, passing the Buchans as she did so
and encountering Fred Buchan’s pale, frozen stare. Doreen Buchan started to rise from her nervous perch on the edge of her seat when she saw Harriet but just at that moment the Colonel made a beeline for them.

‘Ah, there you are, Miss Quigley. How about a game of Scrabble, eh? Just a quick one, I’ve wiped the floor with the girls over there.’ He pointed to a smiling quartet of women clustered round a small table. ‘I’m thirsting for new blood.’

Doreen Buchan subsided unnoticed as Harriet smiled and accepted, glad of a challenge to use her brain in a mental exercise not connected with death or disaster. Thank goodness he didn’t suggest we play Cluedo, she thought, that might be a bit too close to home.

There was a hand over Harriet’s mouth, holding her down, stopping her breathing.

‘Urgghh!’ She struggled to free herself, her arms flailing wildly as she struck at her attacker. As the grip on her jaw slackened a little Harriet managed to sink her teeth into the other’s flesh.

There was a shocked, half-smothered scream and the other person fell back with a whimper. Even at such a time Harriet had a fleeting moment of complacency that she had all her own teeth. Gums, in such a situation, she reflected, would hardly have been so effective.

Shaking with fright and with a righteous indignation Harriet reached out and snapped on the bedside light.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ she demanded, glaring ferociously at Ellen Ransom, an incongruous assailant in her pink, brushed-nylon dressing gown and her hair screwed into curlers and tied up in a chiffon scarf. She was nursing her injured hand and examining the marks of Harriet’s teeth, clearly visible in the fleshy mound at the base of her thumb.

‘What did you do that for?’ she asked, sounding unreasonably aggrieved.

The affronted tone penetrated Harriet’s red mist of anger and shock and she hauled herself up to a sitting position. She scrabbled for her glasses then reached out for her watch.

Midnight.

‘How did you get into my room?’ Harriet demanded and saw that the other woman looked suddenly shifty.

‘There’s a spare key to each room,’ she shrugged, not meeting Harriet’s angry stare. ‘I just borrowed it for a while. I’ll put it back tomorrow morning. Nobody will notice.’

‘So – you stole the key. But why were you trying to kill me?’ Harriet snapped, still shaking. She was savagely glad, though startled, to see the colour drain from the other woman’s sunken cheeks as she recoiled as though Harriet had smacked her. Then the colour rushed back until she was scarlet-faced with indignation.

‘Kill you? Don’t talk such nonsense. What on earth are you talking about? I just wanted to talk to you in private. All I did was put my hand over your mouth so you wouldn’t scream and wake up the whole house. There’s no harm in that, is there? And you didn’t have to bite me like that, it was a stupid thing to do, it really hurts.’

She managed a flounce even though she was actually standing still, rather too close to the bedside, and she examined her injured hand with a sulky ill grace.

‘So get a tetanus jab,’ Harriet had no sympathy for her. ‘Why on earth couldn’t you have told me earlier that you wanted to talk to me? We could have got together downstairs some time, at a civilized hour. No need for all this ridiculous cloak and dagger stuff.’ She was speaking in a reasoned tone now as she began to calm down, feeling her thumping heart slow to a more acceptable rate.

She got a sniff and a sneer in reply.

‘What? And let that load of busybodies get an earful? No thank you, I haven’t discovered a single spot in this place where you can be completely private, not during the day.’

Harriet’s experience of Firstone Grange differed
considerably
from Ellen’s in that respect. The house had plenty of semi-private corners where the chairs were arranged into comfortable conversation spots, but she let it pass. After all, Ellen Ransom had spent most of her time here in the toils of Christiane Marchant, never knowing when that hateful presence would manifest itself over her shoulder. She might well have had difficulty finding a place of private sanctuary.

‘Oh all right,’ Harriet heaved a grudging sigh. ‘You’re here now.’ She indicated the light but comfortable armchair by the window. ‘Pull that up if you want to and then you’d better get it off your chest if you must. Are you warm enough? Want a blanket or something?’

Ellen shook her head and pulled the chair up close beside the bed. Harriet retreated a little. It was no good: try as she might she really could
not
like Ellen Ransom, no matter how distressed the woman might be; no matter what it was she was about to confide to her.

‘Are you comfortable?’ Harriet sat up in bed feeling quite magisterial, wrapped in her own warm red dressing gown, bought from John Lewis in Southampton expressly for the period in hospital and the subsequent convalescence. ‘Well, Ellen, get on with it.’ She took a deep breath and plunged in. ‘Tell me what it was that Christiane Marchant was holding over your head? What it was that made you want to kill her?’