Body in the Transept (14 page)

“No reason, really.” She shrugged and lifted her eyebrows. “They said something about an ancient right-of-way there to the east, but we weren’t going to close it off, only narrow it by about a meter. Sheer bloody-mindedness, that’s all it was.” She sipped her coffee and wiggled her toes in contentment. “Oh, that’s good. Of course, Dad’s going to try again. He thinks things may be different now.”

A tiny alarm bell started ringing somewhere deep in my consciousness. “Uh . . . why should they be different now?”

But Inga’s face was smooth and unworried. “Well, you see, we don’t know for certain, but Dad got the impression most of the Dean and Chapter were in favor of his application. It really is an improvement to the property, and—well, we’re good tenants, respectable and all that, and the dean’s been really super to us. We think the one who put the spanner in the works was Canon Billings, and now that he’s gone . . . oh, it’s horrid, of course, but it does look like being good luck for us, doesn’t it? How about a cognac before you go home? On the house.”

Anything to keep her talking a little longer. “Only if you’ll let me pay, and have one with me. Can your parents join us, do you suppose?”

“Dad’s still busy in the bar, but Mum might be nearly ready to collapse. I’ll ask her.”

Sure enough, Greta was finished for the night with her reservations and accounts and the thousand details that make for a successful hotel business, and more than ready for a friendly drink. I felt a spasm of guilt as she sat down and Inga brought in three snifters with a bottle whose label promised liquid gold. These people were my friends. What did I think I was doing, asking awkward questions and taking advantage of their kindness?

Jane’s voice echoed in my mind. “Everyone’ll think Nigel did it. Convenient . . . no waves . . .” I sighed, mentally, and pursued my questions as gingerly as though I were walking along the edge of a precipice I couldn’t see. . . .

“Greta, I understand Canon Billings’s death may make your life a little easier.”

“What a way to put it!” she said, with her tiny silvery laugh, so like Inga’s. “It’s true enough, though. And we’re not the only ones, I was thinking only today. Now the canon has gone to his reward, Mr. Pettifer will probably get to build his houses, and make a mint of money.”

“What houses? Why is it I never know anything about what’s going on in this town?”

“Oh, this all happened in the spring before you arrived, Dorothy. You do know him, don’t you? Archibald Pettifer?”

“I know of him. Only that he’s on the Borough Council, really. Is there any more coffee?”

There was. Inga poured it for us, and Greta went on.

“Mr. Pettifer is a builder by trade, you see. He’s been agitating the council to pull down those frightful Victorian slums up near the university and build some council houses. There are so many married students at the university now, and they can’t afford anything elaborate, but they need proper housing, and those places don’t even have indoor plumbing. Can you imagine, in this day and age!”

“They’re run-down, I know,” I said a bit wistfully, “but they look solid, and they could really be made very attractive with a little modernization. Wouldn’t that be cheaper than tearing them down and starting over?”

“That,” said Inga, “is exactly what Billings said.”

“Billings again! All right, what did he have to do with
this
one?”

“He sits on the council, too,” Greta explained. “And he’s always against change—was, I mean. I think, myself, that’s why he opposed our application. Not that it was bad, just that it meant change.”

“But the two cases are entirely different!” I said warmly. “Yours doesn’t destroy anything, but the other—goodness, I do hate to find myself agreeing with Billings about anything, but . . .”

“He also said,” related Inga with relish, “that Mr. Pettifer wasn’t as interested in clearing slums or providing decent housing as in making a huge profit for himself by putting up cheap, ugly buildings that would fall down in a decade or two. We went to the council meeting that night, and the two of them nearly came to blows.”

“So was he the only one opposed?”

“The only one who really cared, but he’s—he was—so high-handed he forced a nay vote. Of course Pettifer won’t let it alone, and now he’ll talk the rest of them round, I should imagine.”

So there’s someone
else
with good reason to be glad he’s dead. I hoped very much I hadn’t spoken the thought aloud, but Greta suddenly had a peculiar look on her face. It was time to change the subject.

Inga came up with the new one, after a moment or two of awkward silence. “By the way, Dorothy,” she said, fiddling with the clasp on her watch, “have you seen Nigel lately? Since he’s staying next door, I mean?” She didn’t look at her mother.

“Why, yes, I saw him this morning.” Was it really only this morning? “I met him for the first time, in fact.”

“How was he?” Inga was still toying with her watch.

“All right, I think. It’s hard to tell, when you don’t know what a person is usually like. Perhaps a trifle subdued. I
wish
to goodness he’d tell someone what that famous quarrel with Billings was all about! At least, maybe he’s told the police, but he won’t tell me. Or Jane.”

Greta sighed and looked at Inga, a tiny frown between her eyes.

“Oh, I can tell you that.” Inga finally looked up at me; she sounded irritated. “It was about me. Or us, really. Mum and Dad and me, I mean—what we’ve just been talking about. I’d told him that afternoon about the denial of reconstruction permission—we’d just heard—and he got furious. That frightful temper of his came up, and he wanted to have it out with Billings right then. I told him not to be an ass, that it wouldn’t do any good, but he wouldn’t listen, he never listens, he just stormed off. He came back later to say I was right, he hadn’t got anywhere. I can’t imagine why he’s gone mysterious about it.”

Another silence fell. Greta looked at me, her eyes widening, and Inga, looking from her mother to me, drew in her breath sharply. “No. Oh, no. No, you’re wrong, you’re both wrong. He couldn’t have . . . you don’t know him, he . . .”

“Inga. I’m on his side. He must have some other reason for keeping it to himself. He’s very stubborn, I know that much about him.” I tried to defuse the situation. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to admit failure.”

There was bright color in Inga’s pale cheeks, and she started to speak, but Greta put a hand over hers with a warning pressure.

“Perhaps,” she agreed, and a trace of long-forgotten German accent crept into her speech. “Or perhaps he thinks he is protecting someone else. He is a fool, but I think perhaps a gallant fool.” She reached over and smoothed her daughter’s hair back from her cheek in a motherly gesture of love and sympathy that brought a lump to my throat. “Darling, tomorrow we had better call the police and tell them exactly what all three of us were doing on Christmas Eve.”

I cleared my throat, pushed back my chair, and stood up.

“I think it’s time I went home. I—I’m sorry I brought all this up and caused . . .” Frustrated and embarrassed, I pushed my fingers through my hair and, as I did so, dislodged Inga’s sugar rose.

It fell to the polished wood floor and shattered.

I
OVERSLEPT WEDNESDAY
morning, waking at last with a head full of marbles that rolled around dizzyingly and every now and then crashed into one another with a dull thud. My bed was a welter of sheets and blankets from hours of thrashing about; my pillow was damp with sweat. It’s a common enough dream: You’re trying to run away from some unknown but horrible thing, but your legs are too heavy and draggy to move. I got up to feed my demanding companion, feeling like crawling into a hole.

Once she was fed I took three aspirin, made some strong coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table to have a talk with myself. If I was having nightmares about running away from something, it was time I faced up to my situation.

Which was, I realized as I stared into my coffee cup, that I had to fish or cut bait. To put it baldly, I had to decide whether to get into a murder investigation with both feet, or to get out of it entirely and leave it to the police. This business of asking leading questions and making everyone extremely uncomfortable had to stop, unless I was prepared to admit that I was vitally interested and intended to pursue, vigorously, an unknown criminal.

I reached for a pad and pen and began slowly to make another set of lists, considering each point with great care.

Why Should I Get Involved?

I’m involved already. I found him; he’ll lie there in my memory forever, terrifying me.

No argument there.

Some of my friends, and friends offriends, are suspects. I’d like to do what I can to help them.

Shaky. What makes you think the police can’t find the real criminal without your help?

I need something to do.

Oh, come on, now! Why not join a rock band, while you’re at it? Act your age!

In response to that mental jeering, I defiantly wrote:

I have many of the qualifications needed by a detective. Years of teaching school have taught me when someone is lying. I’m a good observer, especially here in a foreign setting where so much is unfamiliar. Finally, I’m invisible. Except for a few people who really know me, I’m a foreigner who doesn’t count. If I play my cards right, people will talk to me the way they do to strangers on board ship. They’ll never see me again, and I know no one who knows them, so it doesn’t matter what they say.

I considered that dubiously for a while and then began the second list.

Why Shouldn’t I Get Involved?

It’s dangerous.

Goodness knows the chief constable’s tried to make that clear. But do I believe him? Do I care?

It’s unnecessary; the police . . .

Beside the point. Let the police do their thing. Why shouldn’t we both be pursuing the truth in our own way? Besides, it’s six days now since the murder and they haven’t done anything but arrest Nigel and let him go again.

I could hurt people. The Endicotts . . .

That one hit home. I sat biting my pen, considering. I could not only hurt people, I could lose friends, and I needed all I could get in Sherebury.

And yet, was silence about a trouble the way to keep a friend? Should we all pretend nothing had happened, and go about being polite? Wouldn’t that, in the end, kill friendship in a more terrible way, by trivializing it?

I took a sip of coffee and put the cup down again. It was stone cold, but no matter. I realized I’d answered my basic question. Whether the chief constable liked it or not—and he wouldn’t—I was in this thing. For better, as the marriage service says, or for worse.

Very well, then, how should I attack the problem?

Another list.

Under the heading “Suspects,” I set down five names: Mr. Wallingford, the verger; Mr. what’s-his-name—Pettifer, that was it—the councilman; Mr. Sayers, the choirmaster; Peter Endicott; Nigel Evans.

That gave me five people I knew, out of all the people in Sherebury who hated him, who had definite reasons for resenting the canon. I studied the piece of paper for a few miserable moments and then decisively struck out the last two names. Motive be damned. I’d known and respected Peter for years, and I was not going to make myself wretched by considering the possibility that he might have murdered anyone. Ridiculous! He was not a violent man. Look at that performance in the bar yesterday. All he’d had to do was look at those two rowdies and they melted away.

Billings wouldn’t have melted
, said the mean-spirited inner voice.

Shut up. Don’t be silly.

He’s a big man, Peter. He could easily have . . .

Nonsense!

Peter worked extremely hard to build up his business, and it
looks as though he’s a little short of money or he wouldn’t have his wife and daughter running their legs off He wouldn’t take kindly to . . .

SHUT UP! He stays off the list, and that’s that! As for Nigel, he stays off, too, no matter how bad things look. I won’t let him be a murderer. He’s so young, and so . . . and anyway he’d never work off his temper in quite that way. Shouting, a punch or two maybe—not deliberate murder.

Actually it could have been an accident. From the way Billings’s head looked, he could have been shoved against something, or something could have been thrown . . .

I put on a tape of the King’s College choir singing some intricate Bach motets. I’d have trouble thinking at all over that; a two-way conversation inside my head would be impossible.

The accident idea had its points, though. Anybody could have gotten into a fight with the man. Jane was obviously right (of course); he had enemies all over Sherebury. I wondered if the police knew who any more of them were. I wondered if they had thought of the accident possibility. I looked at the phone.

And shook my head. No, Alan had told me off pretty decisively yesterday. I didn’t intend to pester him with any more questions. Nor was I (here my chin lifted an inch or two) going to volunteer any bright ideas. If he wanted to be official, fine; I’d keep my discoveries to myself and he could do the same, and we’d see who got there first.

At that point my headache began to subside and common sense reasserted itself.
Don’t be an idiot, old girl
. This time the inner voice was friendly; Bach had at least achieved that much.
Alan Nesbitt is an intelligent, conscientious police officer who’s trying to do his job. And, incidentally, he’s a very pleasant man who has been kind to you. So don’t go around cutting off your nose to spite your face. You tell him anything he ought to know, and stop pretending to be Nancy Drew
.

Did I in fact know anything he didn’t? Probably not. There were a number of things I still wanted to find out, though, several of them concentrated at the cathedral.

I had reached that point in my muddled thinking when Emmy went to the back door and crossly mewed to be let out. I opened the door. The weather was even worse than yesterday, rain and a sort of sleet that managed to be both extremely wet and solid at the same time. Emmy put out one paw, shook it, swore briefly in eloquent Cat, and stalked back into the kitchen.