All Things Undying (15 page)

‘You're barmy.'

I shrugged. ‘How about that sign you were carrying the other night.
Suffer not a witch to live.
'

Color drained from her face. ‘Is that what it said? Bloody hell!'

‘You didn't know?'

Olivia grimaced, produced an exasperated click of her tongue. ‘I don't make the bloody signs, do I? I just carry the signs my uncle tells me to.'

‘Your uncle?'

‘Yeah. Alf. He's my mother's brother. Took me in an' raised me after me mum died.'

‘I take it you're not completely on board with your uncle's mission, then.'

‘WTL? Course I am! But look here. Nobody in WTL would have anything to do with running that medium down. That would be
murder
!'

‘Well, exactly.'

‘And another thing . . . what did you say your name was, again?'

‘Hannah.'

‘Look, Hannah. It's like this. We don't kill animals, not even for food.' She stuck out a foot. ‘See these sandals?'

I nodded. The soles appeared to have been cut out of spare tires and were attached to her feet by six criss-cross straps, a style that had been popular back in my peace-now, flower-power youth.

‘They're plastic,' she pointed out. ‘You have to kill a cow to get leather.'

I was reminded of Alf, leathery and cadaverous, his white hair streaked with yellow or vice versa. I thought of the description of the driver given to the BBC reporter by the woman in the pink jogging suit. It could fit Alf, or . . . I sighed. It could fit millions of people – my father's girlfriend, Cornelia, for instance.

‘Where were you yesterday morning?' I asked, hoping to catch Olivia off-guard.

Next to me, I felt Olivia stiffen. ‘Why should I tell you?'

‘I don't know, Olivia. Practicing for what you'll say when the police turn up and ask you the same question?'

She took a deep breath, exhaled through her mouth. ‘Glastonbury High Street. We want the town to pull down the wi-fi masts. Everybody knows that EMFs are dangerous.'

‘EMFs?'

She gave me one of those how-can-you-be-so-stupid looks. ‘Electro-magnetic fields. Headaches, dizziness, rashes, respiratory problems.' She took another deep breath. ‘Ever wonder why there's so many cases of autism these days?' She nodded sagely. ‘EMFs.'

Childhood vaccinations, mercury, paracetamol, frigid moms . . . what
didn't
cause autism? I wondered. As much as I wanted to pin Susan's death on creepy Alf or one of his minions, if the WTL Guardians had been picketing in Glastonbury the previous morning, there was no way one of its members could have been driving a – Ford? Vauxhall? Fiat? – recklessly in Dartmouth.

While Olivia rattled on about the effects of EMFs on the fertility of women in their middle years, I pulled a notebook out of my handbag, tore out a sheet of paper, scribbled down my name and cell phone number and handed it to her. ‘Susan Parker was my friend,' I told her. ‘If you think of anything, Olivia, please, just call this number.'

Leaving Olivia to perch on the planter like a pigeon with something to think about – or so I hoped – I power-walked my way to the Castle and back, but instead of defogging my brain, the exercise only made me hungry. By the time I reached The Apprentice, the tea I'd had at the Castle had long worn off, so I popped into the restaurant – formerly St Barnabas Church – climbed the stairs to the second level, and sat down by myself at one of the ultra-modern tables next to a stained glass window. At a table nearby, a man had a laptop open and was checking his email. My server – one of a dozen or so apprentices who lived and worked at the converted church, preparing themselves for jobs in the hospitality industry – materialized out of nowhere on little cat feet, took my order for panna cotta and coffee, and disappeared just as quietly.

The best of all worlds, I thought. Christ on His Throne of Glory on my one hand, the Internet on the other, and a cappuccino – the finest Dartmouth has to offer – on the way.

Too bad Susan Parker wasn't there to share it with me.

ELEVEN

‘Looking now at the two brass monuments set in the floor, the one nearer to the altar is considered to be the largest and finest church brass in the whole of Devon, being that of John Hawley II and his two wives, the first on his right Joanna, by whom he had a son. Joanna died in 1394 and was buried in the chancel. Later he married Alicia of the famous, very rich, Cornish family of Tresilian, who died in 1403. John Hawley II died on the 30 December 1408 and all are now buried together under the brass. John Hawley II is considered by some to be the model for the ‘Shipman' of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales.'

St Saviour's Church: an Illustrated Historical Guide
, pp.14, 16

A
ccording to the morning news, the police were still appealing to the public for information about the hit-and-run driver who had killed Susan, but otherwise, over the past several days, the airwaves had been strangely quiet on the matter.

I was stretched out on a lounge chair in Janet's garden enjoying the sun and the latest Andrew Taylor novel when the bells of St Saviour's Church began chiming the hour. I checked my watch. It was noon on Tuesday. If I hurried, I could just make the Christian Aid luncheon. Some of the volunteers, I remembered, had been members of St Anthony's Church before it was made redundant, repurposed by a prominent architect, and Susan Parker moved in.

It might be interesting to hear what they had to say.

St Saviour's Church is nestled in the center of town at the crook of the lane where Anzac Street meets Smith Street. The faithful had been praising God on that spot since the early fourteenth century, and for almost all of those years, the first thing worshippers saw upon entering the sanctuary was a magnificent iron door, decorated with two leopards of the Plantagenets, their rear legs forming the hinges, superimposed over the Tree of Life. It was one of the finest church doors in all England, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and who was I to argue with that?

According to the clock in St Saviour's gray stone tower, it was only five minutes past noon when I breezed through the south door with a nod of greeting to the two splendid leopards, then climbed the wooden staircase on my left that led up to the gallery.

People were already eating lunch, seated in small groups at folding tables covered with clean, crisp tablecloths in a patchwork of patterns and colors. I was alone, feeling at loose ends. I surveyed the gallery, but didn't see anybody I knew, so I headed straight for the buffet table which was set up on the north end of the gallery under a rose window commissioned in Victorian times by a former governor of Dartmouth in honor of himself.

I selected a variety of crustless sandwiches, a dab of cabbage and carrot slaw, four carrot sticks, a lemon bar and half a slice of chocolate cake, then took my plate to a chest-high window. In the room beyond – a combination parish office and makeshift kitchen – the church ladies were busily keeping the tea coming. I paid for my lunch, chucking an extra pound in the jar for the poor, as was customary, then went in search of a place to sit.

Most of the tables were already occupied by groups of two or three engaged in animated conversation, but one Old Dear seemed to be lunching alone, so I homed in on her. ‘Do you mind if I join you?'

She looked up from a bit of bread and cheese held daintily between thumb and forefinger, smiled invitingly and said, ‘Please, do.'

‘I'm Hannah Ives, visiting from America,' I said as I sat down in the folding chair across the table from her.

‘And I'm Liz Talbot. Didn't I see you here last week?' She polished off the sandwich and considered me with serene gray eyes.

‘You did. I was with my friend Alison Hamilton. She couldn't come today.'

In point of fact, Alison had taken to her bed, still so distraught over Susan Parker's death, she'd sobbed over the telephone, that she'd rummaged through her medicine cabinet, found two tablets remaining in a five-year-old prescription bottle of Valium, and – while I was talking to her – took them both. ‘She was friends with Susan Parker,' I explained, ‘the woman who was killed on the Embankment the other morning. She's taking it a bit hard.'

Liz tut-tutted. ‘I heard about the accident on the telly. Terrible business, that. Sometimes I wonder what this old world is coming to.' She picked up a fairy cake, slathered with thick, pink frosting, and pinched off a small piece. ‘I chatted with Susan a couple of times when she helped out with the lunches here. She seemed like such a nice,
normal
person, in spite of what
some
said about her.'

‘I understand she lived in old St Anthony's Church,' I said, polishing off a carrot stick. ‘I gather not everyone at St Anthony's was happy about that.'

Liz shrugged. ‘Making flats out of the church was better than pulling it down, I suppose. Not that I'd want to live there, you understand, not with that graveyard in my back garden!'

‘Yes, but St Anthony's is a spiritual sort of place, isn't it? I can see why a church, graveyard and all, might appeal to someone like Susan Parker. After all, people have been praying there for over a century.'

Liz had finished her cupcake and leaned back in her chair. In spite of the summer weather, she was dressed in a brown wool suit and an old-fashioned white blouse with a flounce at the neck. If I peeked under the tablecloth, I was sure I'd find stocking feet laced into sensible, brown shoes. ‘There's a difference between being spiritual, as in religious or devout, and spiritual, as in ghostly,' she chuckled.

After a moment, I said, ‘I read somewhere that around thirty churches close each year in this country. Makes me wonder if England is losing its faith.'

Liz's eyes grew wide. ‘Dear me, no. Stay here long enough and you'll learn one simple truth: the Victorians have a lot to answer for. They simply built too many churches! Even in Victorian times, the churches were only half-full, but money was pouring into Britain at the time, and a regular building frenzy was going on.

‘St Anthony's came very close to being preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust,' she continued, ‘but after a buyer was found – Susan Parker, as it turned out – well, you know what happened after that.'

I swallowed hard, thinking how much I'd looked forward to seeing Susan's flat, particularly the beautiful Byrne-Jones windows Janet Brelsford had told me about. That would never happen now. ‘I've walked past St Anthony House,' I told Liz Talbot, ‘but I've never been inside. From the outside, you'd hardly know it'd been broken up into flats.'

‘There are strict rules about renovating the exteriors, Hannah, but the insides? I heard of one church, St Ann's in Warrington. They converted it to an inside climbing gym.' She clucked her tongue in disapproval.

‘Shocking!' a new voice said. It belonged to a woman seated at the adjoining table. She'd finished her lunch and had taken out her knitting, but had clearly been following our conversation.

‘Lilith, this is Hannah Ives, visiting from America. Hannah, Lilith Price. We've just been discussing poor Susan Parker.'

I thought I'd heard Lilith's name before, but I seemed to be suffering from noun-deficiency anemia, so I simply nodded and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, Lilith,' and continued eating my sandwich.

Lilith adjusted the yarn around her finger and took another stitch. ‘Very sad, but I don't believe in any of that talking to the dead nonsense.'

Earlier, I'd gotten such a rise out of Olivia that I thought I might try similar scare tactics on Lilith. Keeping my voice neutral, I said, ‘Some are saying that the police think Susan Parker's death might not have been an accident. There were people who were mightily unhappy when she moved into St Anthony's Church, for one thing.'

Lilith had finished a row. Using her free knitting needle, she rapped the table three times, emphasizing each word. ‘Stop right there! I don't know who you've been talking to, Hannah, but I won't stand for anyone making it sound like we had picketers pacing the pavement outside St Anthony's carrying signs with “Yankee Go Home” written all over them. Only a handful of us were left at St Anthony's. We objected to the church being made redundant, that's true, but once the PCC decided that selling St Anthony's was the best course of action, and the bish made his decision, there wasn't much any of us could do.'

Lilith stuck the needle back into her project and began working another row. ‘Besides,' she said, knitting furiously. ‘St Saviour's is a wonderful church home.'

Liz, on the other hand, seemed more inclined to play along with my darker scenario. ‘How about that woman who was furious about her husband's memorial, Lilith?'

Lilith squinted at her work, took out a stitch and re-knit it. ‘What woman?'

‘It was comical.' Liz turned her attention to me. ‘One of the construction lorries backed into his tombstone, toppling it like a tree. A preposterous thing, if you ask me, which you aren't, but I'll tell you anyway. It was an obelisk, this high.' She held a hand over her head, which I took to mean about five feet. ‘Wreaths and anchors all over, with trumpeting cherubs and suppliant angels running rampant, and a Greek cross on the top.'

Next to me, Lilith snorted. ‘I'll have to agree with you there. Very O.T.T. When my time comes, plant me in a plain pine box wearing one of those nametags that says, “Hello. My name was Lilith” written in felt-tipped pen.

Remembering all the adhesive nametags I'd slapped to my chest at social functions, I had to laugh. I hadn't figured Lilith for a sense of humor. ‘So, what happened with the tombstone?' I asked Liz.