Body in the Transept (12 page)

Was going to. What chance of that was there now?

“He’s lucky he had you to come to when all this broke,” I said warmly. Jane shrugged.

“Would have done all right on his own. Not used to people looking after him.”

The casual words got under my guard, giving me a sudden sharp picture of what Nigel’s life must have been like. My heart twisted. I saw a struggle for survival in a world that didn’t much care, a brilliant, good-looking boy who loved music thrown into the twilight world of petty crime and drugs and sleeping on the streets. I shuddered. He’d had to live by his wits, which were considerable. Was it entirely impossible that he had killed in a moment of rage and despair? Things had seemed to be working out, and then suddenly every man’s hand was once more against him. That Welsh temper . . . and on the streets of Birmingham, he might well have learned to put a light value on human life.

No. No, it
was
impossible. Please, God, let it be impossible. . . .

“Jane, what did he quarrel about, with the canon? Do you know?”

“Hasn’t said anything; I haven’t asked. Never does to ask. He’ll tell me, in time. They always do.”

Well, yes, with Jane they always would.

“Had an idea it had to do with Inga,” she began, then broke off at the sound of the back door opening and boots being scraped clean.

In a way Nigel looked better than when I’d seen him in the cathedral. The jeans and summer shirt had been exchanged for decent gray slacks and a good warm yellow sweater—at Jane’s expense, I was willing to bet. The boy’s hair was neatly combed, and he didn’t look quite so pinched and thin. But the fire in his eye that had made him so noticeable was dimmed. Without the armor of his anger and intensity, the naked vulnerability showed.

When Jane introduced us he muttered something inaudible and thumped his package on the table. She and I both ignored his response, or lack of it. Jane filled three plates and handed him one. “Dorothy, can you get the knives and forks? You know where they are.”

A proper English breakfast is a thing of beauty and a joy, but not forever. I had no intention of letting Nigel’s uneasiness, or mine on his behalf, keep me from enjoying my food while it was hot. Nor, blast it all, to deflect me from the reason—all right, the
other
reason—I had come. I demolished an egg and two sausages before saying casually, “Nigel, I ran into someone you may know, yesterday in London.”

My pawn was not so much ignored as shoved off the board. “I don’t know anyone in London.”

He had no particular accent, Welsh or otherwise. His voice was pleasantly pitched, but sharply dismissive, if not downright rude. He applied himself with concentration to his plate, expertly knifing a bit of sausage onto a forkful of egg and adding a triangle of fried bread to hold the edifice together.

I persisted. “I think you may know him, though. Charles Lambert. He’s American, studying right now at the BM, but he was down in Sherebury a few months ago working at the cathedral library.”

Nigel put his knife and fork down and, for the first time, looked at me. “Oh. Him. How do you know him?”

“He teaches at Randolph University in America, where my late husband headed the biology department.” Something in Nigel’s scrutiny made me add, “I met him years ago when I was doing some research for my M.A., a paper on Chaucer. The period is a bit late for him, but he helped with some manuscript questions.” I blandly finished my toast while he absorbed that.

The young are often bad at hiding their thoughts, especially when their defenses are down, and Nigel’s expressive countenance in particular was not made for concealment. I watched, amused, while he processed the information and altered his opinion of me from Old Busybody Next Door to Educated Woman Who Might Be Interesting.

“So you see,” I added mildly, “you do know someone in London.”

He had the grace to blush. “Sorry. Talk in haste and repent at leisure. My worst sin. It’s the Welsh side coming out.” He gave a little sideways grin and flashed those incredible eyes at me in what looked like a practiced technique.

“Indeed,” I said austerely. I hoped I hadn’t let him see how effective his methods were, even with a woman my age. “Dr. Lambert said something rather interesting about your late employer.”

This time the flash might have been unintentional.

I related the conversation. “I did wonder, Nigel, if you had any idea what Mr. Billings was working on. His most recent project.”

“No. He kept himself to himself, you know. How well did you know him, Mrs. Martin?”

“Not at all, really, only to say hello to.”

“Well, he—they must have told you we’d had a bloody great row the day he died. The curious thing is—I don’t suppose you’ll believe me—but we usually got on well enough. He was an arrogant bastard—” the blue eyes checked out my reaction to that “—but so long as I did exactly as I was told there was no trouble. I didn’t like him, but I did respect him; he was good. And you don’t have to believe that, either.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes!” The fire was back.

“Then I believe you. ‘Good’ being, I presume, a description of academic worth, not moral. But if you got along with him, what was the fight about?”

If I had hoped to slip that one in I was disappointed. He couldn’t control the white knuckles or the blazing eyes, but he had no intention of answering the question.

“Nothing to do with his work. I never argued with him about that. He’d talk to me about it at times, lecture me, really. I listened; it was worth listening to. But when he got back from Greece in November he was different, closemouthed. I asked him once if he’d got anything worthwhile and he ignored the question completely, said I was to go shelve some books, just as if I hadn’t said a word. Made me wonder.”

“Did you see anything he was doing? Over his shoulder, as it were?”

He could have been angry at that, but he just shrugged. “Not that interested. I had my own work to do.”

So the sore point had to do with something else. Perhaps Jane was right and Inga was involved somehow, though I couldn’t imagine how. “Well, that’s a pity. Not that it probably matters, but I wish I knew; it nags at me. You haven’t heard any gossip, have you, Jane?”

“Not a word.”

If Jane didn’t know, no one knew, so I might as well give it up. For the moment. I finished my breakfast, trying to make up my mind that Nigel Evans’s temper was not sharp enough for murder. I didn’t succeed.

I
WALKED INTO
the cathedral that afternoon just as the bells stopped tolling. The crowd, unusually large, filled the choir; everyone in Sherebury who was idle on a Tuesday afternoon seemed to be there, along with the entire cathedral clergy and staff. Chairs had been set up in the space between the choir stalls and the chancel, and I found one in the back row, settling down unhappily just as the clergy entered and I had to stand up again.

A memorial service is unusual in the Church of England. Generally a funeral, with or without the Eucharist, serves as the last rite of passage. In this case the dean presumably didn’t want to delay some form of healing rite until the authorities finally released the body for burial. Reluctant as I was to take part, I thought he was right. The sooner we could exorcise the fears and ill will generated by this death, the better.

The service was modified from the one for the Burial of the Dead, and like the rest of the
Book of Common Prayer
, it was beautiful and dignified. In the prayers and Bible readings the dean had chosen there was no deliberate attempt to play on the emotions of the mourners. Which was probably just as well, I reflected, because I wasn’t certain there were any decently appropriate emotions floating around. I wondered just what other people in the room did feel. Mostly relief, I suspected.

Would anyone here miss the man? The dean, they said, had been unable to locate any family at all. I couldn’t pretend the cathedral staff would mourn him; his untimely departure already seemed to be improving morale. The dean was genuinely horrified about the manner of his death, certainly, but I couldn’t escape the chilling truth that little sorrow accompanied this death, while someone in the room might well be rejoicing at this moment that his enemy was gone, and he still unsuspected. “But he is in his grave, and oh, the difference to me.” I shuddered. Not quite the sort of difference Wordsworth had in mind.

My eyes went involuntarily to Wallingford, still pompously taking Mr. Swansworthy’s place; the principal emotion he displayed seemed to be conceit at his temporary elevation in status. I couldn’t see Mr. Sayers up in the organ loft; neither could I forget his catty remark about how much he planned to enjoy playing this service.

I spent most of the service determinedly looking at my lap, trying to think about the weather. There was no eulogy, for which I was profoundly grateful; the service leaflet contained a brief biography and a few words of gratitude for the canon’s hard work at the cathedral, apparently as much as the dean considered he could say in sincerity. Only a few of the psalms seeped through my barrier of deliberate inattention.
Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts
. . . if the murderer was present, that would give him something to think about, all right . . .
That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us
. . . that hadn’t happened for the canon, had it? Or perhaps, in a way, it had . . . he was safe from his enemies now, at any rate . . . and then it was over, thank God, and I walked quickly out of the choir, seeking the best way to escape. I did
not
feel like talking.

“Dorothy. Nice to see you again.”

I looked up angrily, ready to snarl, and saw the pleasant smile die on Alan Nesbitt’s face.

“Sorry—bad timing?”

His voice lost its brightness, and I felt even worse than before.

“No,
I’m
sorry. It’s just that I hate this sort of thing—funerals, or memorials, or . . .”

“I don’t care for them much, either. I keep thinking about my wife’s funeral, years ago now.”

That stripped my defenses bare. “For that long?” I stopped walking and turned to him. “I had hoped . . .” My voice tried to wobble; I bit my lip.

“Oh, it’s much better than it used to be. Not a sharp pain, just the dull reminder. I’m not sure I’d want to lose that, actually.”

“What did your wife die of?” It seemed odd to be talking to him this way, but his calm understanding was like gentle sunlight on this gloomy day.

“Cancer. She was fifty-two. She never saw our first grandchild.”

His voice was steady and matter-of-fact.

“We didn’t have any children,” I said. “I think that makes it worse.”

“I suspect that it does. My family has been a great comfort to me. Dorothy, may I buy you a cup of tea?”

I had thought I wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t let the sunlight go. Besides, I might be able to find out what the police were doing about the murder. “Bless you. A cup of tea is just what I’ve been wanting.”

Although the institution of afternoon tea is suffering in an England that grows more American every day, cathedral towns maintain the tradition better than most places. Alan chose the nearest of the available shops, Alderney’s. The Cathedral Close at Sherebury, like that of Exeter, is lined not only with housing for the clergy and cathedral offices, but, oddly enough, with a few businesses: a pub/hotel (the Rose and Crown), an extremely expensive jeweler, a bank, a small gift shop, and at the far end, near the west gate, Alderney’s, in a delightfully rickety Tudor structure with a second story that hangs over the first, exquisite diamond-paned windows, and Tudor roses all over the carved plaster ceiling upstairs in the big tea room.

It was early for tea, but we weren’t the only ones with the same idea; the place was crowded. Thinking about death is a thirsty business. We squeezed into chairs at a tiny table in a corner.

“Just tea for me,” I said, mindful of how amply I filled the Windsor chair. “Tell me, how are you coming with the investigation?” I had lowered my voice, but the babble around us made an effective screen.

“Slowly,” Alan sighed. “There’s plenty of evidence, but evidence has to be matched with something. Even in Sherlock Holmes’s day, the Trichinopoly cigar ash helped only if one of the suspects smoked Trichinopoly cigars. Do you happen, by the way, to know what they are? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Stop in at 22IB Baker Street, and you will undoubtedly be able to consult a monograph on the subject,” I suggested. “So you’re not able to do any matching?”

“I didn’t quite say that, did I? The trouble is, there were far too many people in the church that night. I can hardly give orders for every single soul in Sherebury to be fingerprinted and drop off a sample of hair or clothing or—oh, tea and biscuits, please.”

“Earl Grey or Darjeeling?” asked the bored waitress.

“Darjeeling for me,” I said.

“For me, too. Are you sure you don’t want anything else, Dorothy?”

“Sure. I don’t suppose,” I said when the waitress had left, “you can tell me why you arrested Nigel? Or let him go again?”

“You know why we arrested him,” he said a trifle impatiently. “Motive is our best lead at this point, and his motive is obvious. We had to talk to him. As he wasn’t very cooperative we had to bring him in. There wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, so we sent him home with a flea in his ear. We’re keeping an eye on him.”

I sat silent, wondering if I should tell him what I had learned about the verger and the choirmaster. Would it help Nigel? Was I betraying any confidences? Perhaps not if everyone knew about them already.

The waitress came back and plunked down the tea and a plate of assorted biscuits. I absently picked up a chocolate one and started to nibble on it.

“Then you couldn’t match up his fingerprints, et cetera, to whatever you have?”

“I can’t tell you that, you know.”

“No, of course not. Sony.” I finished the chocolate biscuit, picked up a petit beurre, and made up my mind. “You do know about the other good motives? Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Sayers?”