Day of Vengeance: Dorothy Martin investigates murder in the cathedral (A Dorothy Martin Mystery) (28 page)

‘Here. Give it back to me.’ She took the envelope back, took a pen from her purse, and on the front of the envelope wrote three names in block capitals. ‘The rest of what I wrote is just explanation,’ she said as she handed it back to me.

The name that headed the list was Archibald Pringle.

Why didn’t that surprise me?

She told me a little about the other two on the list, speaking quietly. ‘This one, Sarah Cunningham, leads the sacristans.’ To my puzzled look she said, impatiently, ‘You Americans call them the Altar Guild, I’ve heard. Silly name. They’re not a guild. Anyway, at this point she is virtually the only sacristan. She’s a bossy woman and very High Church. Hated him with a passion because he had most of the plate locked away. Built like a lorry, and works out regularly.’

‘So she could, physically, have done it.’

‘Easy as breathing. The only problem is, I don’t think she’d have done it in the church. She’s very devout.’

‘A difference of opinion about churchmanship hardly seems a motive for murder.’

‘You don’t know Sarah.’

I let it go. ‘And the other?’ I looked down at the last name she’d copied for me. David Worthman.

She picked up her teaspoon. Stirred tea that must by now be stone cold. Replaced the spoon on the saucer. Picked up the cup, sipped, made a face, and put it down. ‘The fact is,’ she said at last, ‘I didn’t want to give you his name at all. I had a struggle with my conscience.’

I looked hard at her. ‘You think he’s the one, don’t you?’

‘He has the best motive, but I’m one of the few who know about it. Oh, hell.’ She paused, got her voice back under control, and started again. ‘I’ve gone this far, I’ll have to tell you. That bloody priest killed his wife and child.’

I
bit back the startled response that came to my lips. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said unceremoniously, pushing my chair back and putting some money on the table.

‘My car,’ I said urgently. ‘Where we can be completely private.’ It wasn’t far away. When we had got in and closed the doors, I said, ‘Now. My first question is this. If what you say is true, why didn’t it show up in Brading’s background check? The commission is very thorough.’

It was a warm day, and the car was hot and stuffy. I asked Mrs White if she’d like some air conditioning. She shook her head and began her story.

‘It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t criminally responsible, only morally.
Only!
’ Again she had to pause. ‘They were a young couple, expecting their first baby. Both of them had been attending the cathedral for years; they were married there. By the old dean. She was having a hard time with her pregnancy so the doctor put her on bed rest. She was about six months along. The dean came to call.’

Mrs White rolled her window down a bit and wiped her face. She pointed to the envelope I still clutched in my hand. ‘He asked the dean to anoint Lisa. That was her name – Lisa. She wasn’t exactly ill, but she was very tired and discouraged and depressed. The dean refused. He said that was a papist practice, and all that was needed was good strong prayer. David pleaded with him, said he believed in the power of the Holy Spirit through ritual. I don’t know all that was said, but it ended in a flaming row, the two men shouting at each other, and Lisa crying and sobbing. The dean stalked out, and Lisa got out of bed to call after him and try to get him to come back. David thinks she wanted to try to patch things up, but she tripped on her nightie and fell down the stairs.’

‘Oh, dear God.’

‘They got her to hospital right away, but she lost the baby and bled to death in the process. And the dean never once apologized, never once came to visit David, never mentioned anything about it.’

There was nothing to say.

‘And if,’ said Mrs White, ‘if what I’ve told you leads to David’s arrest for murder, I’ll move heaven and earth for a verdict of justifiable homicide. I’m off.’

After a while, I turned on the ignition and sat while chilled air washed over me, trying not to think about anything in particular.

My cell phone rang. It was Martha Rudge, giving me directions to her house for lunch. I wrote them down with some trepidation. I can still get lost in Sherebury, let alone a strange town, and I was feeling too wrung out to think clearly. But I set out and made only two wrong turns. In the end, it would have been quicker to walk, but I was so shaky from the awful story Mrs White had told me that walking might have been iffy, too.

Martha greeted me at the door of a neat, modern terrace house. It was tiny and in the sort of perfect order that I despair of ever achieving. Martha saw the admiration in my eyes and beamed. ‘It’s only a council house, but I like to keep it spick and span. Easier when a place is new, isn’t it?’

I thought of my own house, four hundred odd years old, and said, ‘Indeed.’

There was a pocket garden at the back of the house, just big enough for a tiny bed of cottage-garden flowers about to burst into bloom, a small cherry tree, and a patch of grass with a wicker table and two chairs. The table was laid with colourful mats.

‘It’s such a lovely day, I thought we’d eat out here,’ said Martha, ‘if that suits you.’

I helped carry out the plates and so on, and we settled down to our salads. It was a lovely meal, prawns and salmon and snow peas on a bed of greens that looked fresh from the garden. I picked up a forkful of salad and found I couldn’t bear the sight of it.

Martha looked at me anxiously. ‘If you don’t care for salmon, I can easily get you something else. There’s cold chicken—’

‘I love salmon. It’s just … I guess I’m not very hungry.’

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there, dear?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I just heard the most horrible story, and I let it upset me more than I should have. I’m sorry.’

‘A story about the cathedral?’

‘About the dean, and some of the congregation.’ I shuddered involuntarily, and felt a tear trying to force its way out of one eye.

‘Is this something Ruth Stevens told you?’

‘No, I talked to another woman this morning. Mrs White. I forget her first name.’

‘Oh, dear. And she told you about the Worthman family.’

‘Yes.’ I couldn’t seem to stop the tears. I picked up my pretty paper napkin and dabbed at my eyes.

‘You sit still. I’ll be right back.’

I sniffed, blew my nose, and tried to pull myself together. Martha was back in less than a minute with a juice glass containing a puddle of amber liquid. ‘Brandy. Drink it down.’

I obeyed. It was pretty terrible stuff, raw and biting, but it did the trick. I made myself finish what was in the glass and took a deep, shuddery breath. ‘Thank you. I did actually need that.’

‘You’re thinking it was frightful brandy, and you’re right. It’s what I keep for the Christmas pudding, all I had in the house. Are you feeling better?’

‘Much.’

‘Here’s a tissue. Have a good blow, then eat what you can of your lunch, or you’ll find yourself staggering out of here too drunk to drive, what with strong drink on an empty stomach!’

I ate a forkful and found I was hungry. So we ate and talked only in snatches, about inconsequential matters, until we had finished our salad. Then Martha brought out coffee. ‘We can have our sweet later. I’d like to know what Caroline White told you.’

‘She gave me names of three people she thought capable of … of killing Dean Brading.’

‘And those names were Captain Pringle, David Worthman, and perhaps Sarah Cunningham.’

‘Exactly. She’d written it all out on the back of an envelope, but the writing was too tiny to read, so she told me the important parts.’

‘May I see?’

She studied it in silence and then handed it back to me. ‘I told you I wanted to air some dirty church linen. The Worthman story is the worst, but there are so many more nasty little stories. I hate to have to say it of a priest, but the fact is that Dean Brading was a fanatic, and, like all fanatics, he saw only one side of any issue. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. He was a devout Christian who practiced exactly what he preached. The trouble is, his preaching was very narrow. If someone didn’t believe
exactly
what he did, didn’t worship
exactly
as he prescribed
,
then they were cast into the outer darkness. That was what happened to Lisa Worthman. She asked the dean for something he saw as anathema, positively Satanic. In his eyes, her death was justice. She had turned away from the truth. If David had asked that the dean conduct her funeral, he would have refused. David didn’t ask, of course. He turned away from the church completely and had her cremated, with no service at all.’

‘What’s happened to him?’

‘I’ve tried to reach him, tried to help, but he’s drinking a lot these days. Almost all the time, if truth were told. He’s trying to kill the pain, but …’ She spread her hands.

‘Is he … I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Is he capable of murder?’

‘If he were ever sober, yes, I think he would be. But he’s never sober. He makes sure of that. Most days he can’t even walk properly, and he won’t consider a substance-abuse program.’

I shook my head. ‘Sad. Worse than sad. Tragic. But you were going to tell me about some other … scandals, I guess is the word.’

‘No. Not scandals, or not the way people usually use the word. There was never the slightest hint of sexual immorality about the dean.’

‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but he sounds as though he wasn’t human enough for that. No wonder he never had any children.’

‘Mrs Brading is rather … withdrawn, as well. I think perhaps they suited each other quite well. What I really wanted to tell you, Dorothy, is that whilst there may have been any number of people who would have had the dean sacked if they could have found a way, and a good few who were ready to slap him in the face, or worse, should the occasion arise, I can think of only the one who hated him enough to murder him. And David Worthman scarcely exists anymore.’

‘You mentioned Colonel Pringle.’

‘I don’t care a great deal about the Colonel, as you may have gathered, but he thinks far too much of his own image ever to do anything so undignified as bashing someone on the head, or pushing him into something that would have the same effect. Words are his weapons. As I said before, he’s not a wicked man, only pompous and narrow-minded. He’s a staunch supporter of the cathedral, emotionally and financially. That was why, finally, he quarrelled with the dean. He agreed with his churchmanship and his morality and theology, but he saw that the cathedral was dying from the dean’s attitudes.’

‘He would not have killed to keep the cathedral alive?’

‘No. He was a soldier, Dorothy. He has killed, and has issued orders to kill, but only in war. He doesn’t hold with murder, as my old granny would have said.’

I sighed. ‘Someone killed Dean Brading. So far, all I’ve done here is apparently rule out everyone who wanted to.’

‘You don’t have to take my word for it. In fact, I know you and your husband won’t. But check alibis as you will, I’ll lay any odds you like you won’t find a murderer at Chelton Cathedral.’

‘Is there no one who hated the idea of him maybe becoming bishop, hated it badly enough to stop it?’

‘Hated the idea! My dear, haven’t you been listening to me? There wasn’t a man or woman in the congregation who wasn’t praying daily for him to be bishop!’

‘But … oh.’ I rummaged in my mind for a memory. ‘I think I understand,’ I said slowly. ‘Years ago, back when I lived in America, my town had a mayor I very much disliked. He ran for governor of the state. I voted for him. I would have voted twice, three times, if I could have. And he did win, and it got him out of Hillsburg, for a while anyway.’

‘Exactly!’

Back at Lynncroft, I stretched out on the bed and called Alan. He answered on the first ring. ‘I’m fine, love. No axe murderers have assaulted me, I’ve had no notes inviting me to midnight trysts in dungeons, nobody’s even laced my tea with arsenic.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. And somewhat surprised. You’ve plainly been frittering away your time.’

‘Actually, I’ve managed very usefully to prove, at least to my own satisfaction, that nobody in Chelton murdered the dean. Martha Rudge convinced me that everyone desperately wanted him to win the bishopric, to get him out of Chelton. He had a few loyal followers, apparently, but most of the congregation hated him heartily.’

‘But not enough to murder him.’

‘Not when a much simpler way of getting rid of him loomed. It seems there was only one man who probably would have murdered Brading if he could. I won’t tell you the story now; it’s very sad and I only want to tell it once, to everyone. But the man has become a hopeless drunk, trying his best, I suspect, to drink himself to death. Martha says, and Ruth Stevens confirms, that the poor guy can hardly stand up straight, let alone assault someone.’

‘That should be checked.’

‘Of course, and I’ll give you the name when I get home. You can set the cops on it. But I trust Martha and Ruth to know. How about you? Have you come up with anything interesting at St Whoever’s-it-is?’

‘Much the same sort of thing. I haven’t your gift of gossiping over teacups, and it’s apparent I still come across as a policeman, no matter how hard I try to look harmless.’

‘You’re about as harmless as an irritated adder when you need to act. Most of the time you’re a pussycat, of course, but it’s true you look like a policeman. Of the very nicest kind, that is.’

‘Adder, eh? I shall have to remember that. Anyway, I did manage to talk to quite a few people connected with St John’s. They were a bit cautious, but one thing I can do well is read between the lines, and I got the distinct impression that the parishioners were mightily relieved when their vicar was elevated to dean of Chelton.’

‘Any active hatred?’

‘Not that I could detect. Nor did I learn of any particular scandal about him, to my regret. I begin to think we’re barking up the wrong tree, looking into his past.’

‘I’m sure we’re not. We just haven’t hit the right branch yet. Have you heard from the others?’

‘Not a word. When are you coming home?’