Evil Angels Among Them (23 page)

‘Yes, I see.' Becca was silent for a moment, deep in thought.

‘It's someone who knows when you're alone,' Lucy prompted. ‘That much is obvious.'

‘But the Rectory is fairly isolated – it isn't really overlooked by any other houses,' Becca pointed out. ‘Unless someone is using a telescope, I suppose.' She paused, and when she resumed, her voice was quiet. ‘When Stephen goes out, even to the church, he has to pass Harry Gaze's cottage. I thought – at first – it might be Harry. But Harry's voice is so . . . Norfolk. I think I would have recognised him if it had been Harry.'

‘You said that the voice was muffled,' Lucy reminded her. ‘And you don't know how much of Harry's broad Norfolk accent is put on. I've noticed that it gets stronger when he's talking to outsiders like us, almost as if he's making a point.'

Becca nodded thoughtfully. ‘That's true.' She gave a sudden shudder. ‘Oh, Lucy. I just wish it was all over. It's better now that Stephen knows. But I wish it was over and we could just get on with our lives.'

David and Lucy agreed that it was just as well that they were going to Foxglove Cottage for supper that night: it seemed a good thing to leave Stephen and Becca to have an evening alone together, without any necessity for polite conversation or hospitable behaviour. But the backlit face of Enid, peering avidly from her front window as she observed their arrival, cast a pall on the evening from the outset. In addition, Lou seemed unusually subdued, and Bryony's presence during the meal added an air of constraint and meant that nothing of significance could be discussed.

Gill, though, made an effort at cheerfulness. ‘I've remembered that you're vegetarian, Lucy,' she said as she served the pasta. ‘It's mushroom sauce. And lest you fear that I'm trying to poison you, I can assure you that I didn't pick the mushrooms myself – they came from the supermarket.'

Lou's voice was sharp. ‘That's not very funny, angelface.'

‘No, I don't suppose it is.' Gill sat down and unfurled her napkin. ‘Flora was vegetarian as well, I think,' she said in a conversational tone. ‘When we went to dinner at the Rectory, Becca made stuffed aubergines. Very nice they were, too.'

‘Yes, she's made them for us as well,' Lucy recalled. ‘I feel sorry for people who have to cater for vegetarians when they're not used to it.'

‘I want to be a vegetarian,' Bryony announced, looking for approval to Lucy, who had made a great hit with her by reading endless stories that afternoon. ‘Eating dead animals is horrible, Mummy.'

‘Oh, don't be so silly,' snapped Lou. ‘You've been eating meat all your life.'

Gill raised her eyebrows at Lou, then smiled patiently at her daughter. ‘We'll talk about it later, darling.'

Bryony, usually a fairly docile child, seemed out-of-sorts and stroppy that evening; it wasn't surprising that she resisted going to bed when the time came. ‘But I don't
want
to go to bed,' she whined, clinging to Lucy. ‘I want Lucy to read me a story.'

‘Go upstairs and clean your teeth and get into your nightie,' her mother said in a mild but firm voice. ‘And if you do it double-quick, perhaps Lucy will tuck you into bed and read you a story.' She looked at Lucy, who nodded.

‘Coffee?' Gill offered, drawing the curtains, as they settled down in the sitting room after supper.

‘As far as I'm concerned, you can keep the bloody coffee till later,' Lou said bluntly. ‘I'm not finished with the wine yet.' Throughout the meal a good quantity of cheap and cheerful red wine had been consumed, but there was still some in the bottle, and another bottle of a rather better wine which David had brought was still on the sideboard.

‘Wine sounds good to me,' David agreed, retrieving his empty glass and refilling it. ‘As I said this afternoon, the time has come to talk. We can't put it off any longer, I'm afraid.'

‘Yes.' Gill sat down on the sofa next to Lou. ‘You're right, of course. Though it seems we've already done rather a lot of talking today.'

‘A hell of a lot of talking,' Lou echoed truculently. ‘And I don't know what else there is to be said.'

David took a seat across from them and leaned forward; his voice was mild. ‘Well, in case you haven't realised it, there's the little matter of a murderer loose in Walston. I believe you, Gill, when you say that you didn't poison Flora Newall. But that means that someone else did.'

‘Oh.' Lou looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.'

‘It couldn't have been an accident,' Gill stated, hoping to be contradicted.

David shook his head. ‘I don't see how.'

‘But Gill didn't bloody do it,' Lou said insistently. ‘So what does it have to do with us?'

‘You and I may know that Gill didn't do it, but I don't think that the police are at all convinced.' He leaned back. ‘They don't have any other suspects, and the time of death is pretty damning. And now that they think they've got a motive . . .'

‘But what can
we
do?' Gill interjected. ‘I can't prove that I didn't do it, can I?'

‘Trust David.' Lucy, her task upstairs completed, came into the room and paused behind David's chair for a moment, smoothing his hair with a gently intimate gesture as she spoke in a matter-of-fact, unemphatic tone. ‘He won't let you down. He's done this sort of thing before, you know.'

Embarrassed, yet touched by her faith in him, David cleared his throat. ‘With Lucy's help, of course.'

Lucy curled up in the remaining chair and reached for the wine. ‘We've got to find out who killed her,' she said. ‘The police aren't going to do it – it's up to us.'

For a moment no one said anything as they pondered the truth – and the implications – of Lucy's statement.

‘All right,' Gill said at last, with a nod of resignation. ‘But where do we start? I mean, who could have had a reason to poison poor old Flora? – apart from me, of course,' she added, smiling wryly.

Lou scowled. ‘That's not funny.'

‘Sorry.'

‘It seems to me that we should start with the phone calls – Becca's obscene caller,' Lucy suggested. ‘When we've found him, we might have an answer.'

‘You think there's a connection?' Lou turned to her eagerly. ‘You think that the ratbag who's been calling Becca is the murderer?'

‘It would make sense.' Lucy twisted a curl round her finger, working through it in her mind as she spoke. ‘Becca's the one who suggested it. What if Flora found out who was making the calls somehow – say, caught him in the act? Wouldn't that be a good motive for murder? To keep her from telling anyone?'

‘But that's just supposition,' Gill pointed out.

‘Not entirely,' David put in. ‘Lucy had a phone call herself, from Flora.' He explained about the mysterious call. ‘Of course we'll never know if that was the deep dark secret that Flora had managed to find out about someone,' he added. ‘But it's a good guess. And it gives us a place to start looking.'

‘Did she ever talk to Stephen, I wonder?' Gill asked. ‘As Lucy suggested? That would make things easier.'

David shook his head. ‘I asked Stephen about it this afternoon while Becca and Lucy were out. The last time he saw Flora alive was at a meeting the night before she died. And she didn't say anything about it then or any other time.'

‘Too bad.' Lou tipped the rest of the wine into her glass, emptied it, then got up to fetch the other bottle. ‘So how do we catch the obscene caller, then?'

‘I suspect that the police will have a few ideas about that,' cautioned David. ‘We'd better leave it to them.'

Lou poked the tip of the corkscrew into the cork and gave it a vicious twist. ‘Then we're back to square one: what you're saying is there is nothing we can do. So why don't we just drink up this wine and call it a night?'

Thoughtfully, David put the tips of his fingers together and contemplated them. ‘I'd like to hear your story, Gill,' he said. ‘From the beginning. About the day that Flora died.'

‘She's told you already. More than once.' Lou glared at him, putting a protective hand on Gill's knee. ‘Can't you just leave her alone? You're as bad as the bloody police.'

‘It's all right,' Gill said.

‘I just want to hear it all again, in order, the way it happened. There's something about it that's bothering me,' he admitted. ‘Something that doesn't quite add up.'

Gill rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘I've told you the truth. All of it.'

‘I'm not suggesting you haven't,' he assured her. ‘I'm just afraid that I'm missing something important.'

‘All right, then.' They all listened carefully as Gill related her story in meticulous detail, beginning with Flora's arrival and continuing through the row to Flora's ejection from the house. ‘And the next thing I knew of it was when Enid banged on the door and said that she was dead,' she finished.

‘Ah.' David smiled in satisfaction. ‘I've got it – now I know what was bothering me.' He leaned back in his chair. ‘You offered her tea as soon as she arrived.'

‘That's right,' Gill confirmed, puzzled.

‘And she drank it.'

‘Yes . . . ?'

‘And she didn't tell you why she'd come until after she'd drunk both cups of tea?' he probed. ‘You're sure about that?'

Gill nodded as Lucy clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, I see! Darling, that's brilliant!' She turned to Gill and Lou and explained. ‘She drank the tea
before
she told you why she'd come. So that means that you didn't have a motive when you're supposed to have poisoned her! When you gave her the tea, you had no reason to think that it was anything but a social call!'

‘He's right, angelface!' Lou suddenly became animated. ‘Those bloody police haven't got a leg to stand on!'

‘
If
they believe me,' Gill cautioned. ‘Which they haven't shown much inclination to do up till now.'

‘They'll
have
to believe you,' Lou asserted. ‘It's true!'

CHAPTER 18

    
Their soul abhorred all manner of meat: and they were even hard at death's door.

Psalm 107.18

Lucy woke before David the next morning with that momentary disorientation, almost subliminal, which often comes when waking in a strange bed. Before she opened her eyes she was aware that she was neither in her own bed nor at David's house. Then it came to her: the Rectory.

She feared she'd drunk rather too much wine the night before, and the coffee had come too late to be of much help. Gingerly she stretched her toes to the end of the bed and opened one eye, attempting to judge from the amount of light just how early it might be. Very early, she reckoned: there were no sounds that betrayed life in the house and very few that indicated life outside. Deep in sleep, David stirred and turned towards her, putting an arm around her and drawing her closer.

She snuggled into the curve of his body and gave herself up to the sleepy enjoyment of what she had always felt was one of the nicest – and most underrated – pleasures that life had to offer: waking up next to the person she loved, sharing the warmth of his body and knowing she didn't have to get up at any time in the immediate future. Drowsing in contentment on the edge of sleep, David's regular deep breathing lulling her back towards slumber, she found herself suddenly jolted into wakefulness by an unwelcome, intrusive thought as she realised that something was nagging at the back of her mind.

The night before. The great relief and celebration when they'd all realised that David had stumbled on something important: the timing of Flora's death. Gill couldn't have poisoned Flora, or perhaps more accurately wouldn't have poisoned Flora, because she'd had no reason to do so until after she'd had the opportunity. Surely the police would see that, would recognise the truth of it.

But something about it still wasn't quite right. Something niggled at the edge of her consciousness. Timing. It had something to do with timing. With a sick jolt in the pit of her stomach she knew what it was: the timing of Flora's death in relation to the poison. David had said he'd been told the toxicology report indicated that the digitalis must have been ingested during the time she was at Foxglove Cottage. How much margin for error could there be? And how could they all have ignored it last night when they were so jubilant?

They'd ignored it because it didn't fit, because it wasn't convenient. But the police wouldn't ignore it, and the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn't ignore it. The CPS would use it to put Gillian English behind bars for a very long time.

Lucy turned over and David grunted in protest. ‘Darling,' she whispered urgently.

He groaned and turned his back to her, still asleep.

‘David, darling,' she repeated, giving his arm a gentle shake. ‘Wake up. It's important.'

‘Hm?' He wasn't awake yet, but Lucy could tell he was beginning to surface.

She leaned over him. ‘Darling, it's about Gill. About Flora's murder.'

David opened his eyes. ‘What on earth are you going on about?' he grumbled. ‘And what ungodly hour is it anyway?'

‘About the timing,' she said.

‘Time? What time is it?'

‘No, not time – timing!'

He covered his face with his hands, groaning in mock horror. ‘Woman, why are you waking me up with this nonsense?' he muttered. ‘In case you don't remember, we didn't get to bed until quite late. And it now appears to be quite early. I love you to distraction, but there are limits.'

Lucy giggled. ‘All right, darling, you've made your point. Now wake up and listen to me.'