Last Act of All (19 page)

‘
Well, sir, she’s heavily sedated.’ Frances was ready to defend her, but for once it transpired that fortune favoured Helena. From the time she had left Lilian (alive, as the waitress who had taken in the aspirin could testify) to the moment, half-an-hour later, when Stephanie’s screams summoned her from the house, she had been in the presence of one or more of the catering team, and guests as well.

Marshalling
the evidence, Frances tried not to sound triumphant. ‘It does tend to suggest she might be in the clear for her husband’s murder too — unless you think there are two homicidal maniacs at large?’

‘
Say “sir” when you’re being insubordinate.’ Deflated, Coppins groaned. ‘It’s not evidence, but you could be right, I’ll give you that, and if you are it’ll be an expensive business for Her Majesty’s Government. And we won’t come up smelling of roses, whatever we do.’

*

By Sunday morning an incident room had been set up in a portakabin in the forecourt of the Four Feathers, and representatives from most of the larger newspapers were encamped around the square. Coppins, a veteran of Press skirmishes, had opened the campaign with a warning that he was prepared to act on any complaint about harassment or trespass, and they were, for the moment at least, being fairly circumspect.

At
the church, there was once more an unnaturally swollen congregation. Leaving after the service, the groups of worshippers, mainly women, found cause to cross the street and hold murmured discussions near the cabin, where they could watch the Press and the police who came and went, and ensure that their fellow-villagers could not so far forget themselves as to gossip to foreigners.

From
inside, the low buzz of conversation had the threatening note of wasps disturbed in their nest, and a WPC looked up unhappily from her keyboard.

‘
There’s a nasty atmosphere here, have you noticed? And we’ve been here all morning without a soul coming in. It’s not natural, that. Usually you have to beat them off with a stick.’

‘
Got the Thought Police out, haven’t they?’ One of the uniformed sergeants jerked his head significantly towards the women. ‘We’re all going to have to get out there and knock on doors. Cosy up to them, a bit.’

The
woman shuddered. ‘Well, all I can say is, I want someone with me when I do.’

‘
Ready when you are, darling!’ The youngest PC was grinning cheekily, but she did not smile back, and he wandered across to the window. ‘That’s Fancy Fanny now,’ he said, and returned hastily to writing up his notes.

Frances
parked her car, grabbed shoulder-bag and notebook and climbed out, directing a death-stare at a nearby journalist, who suddenly changed his mind about trying to chat her up.

Her
eyes were gritty after only four hours’ sleep, and she was bad-tempered after an early-morning exchange with Poppy, who could not decide whether outraged respectability or morbid fascination were her uppermost emotion. It was going to be a hard day.

The
church doors, Frances noticed, still stood open. The vicar was probably in the vestry, disrobing. This might be a good moment to speak to him; in her experience, the vicar was often the person most sensitive to the emotional temperature in a small community.

She
pushed open the inside door and went in, pausing for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside.

The
interior was small, very old and very plain, with Norman arches and panes of clear glass. The flagstones were worn in a pathway from the door down the central aisle; small, overhead radiators still bravely burning did little to dispel the airless chill.

It
should have been peaceful, but Frances sensed disharmony, even before she identified the sound — a whispered, sobbing gabbling which came from the figure in a white robe kneeling at the altar rail, clutching at it and swaying, the head flung back as if the eyes were raised in frantic supplication to the ornate silver cross on the altar.

She
checked, unwilling to intrude. She had no business here, where a man in agony reached out so desperately to his God. He seemed oblivious, but she retreated as silently as she could. She had almost reached the door when the thready, half-heard words began to take a remembered pattern.

‘
Lord... thy people... most precious blood... be not angry with us for ever.’

Her
own lips soundlessly shaped the response, ‘Spare us, good Lord.’ She had heard the words a hundred times, in the years before the ancient litany with its uncomfortable spiritual power had fallen to modern embarrassment. As the frenzied muttering continued, she found herself supplying those words she could not hear.

‘
From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil; from Thy wrath and from everlasting damnation — Good Lord, deliver us!’

A
fit of shivering took her, and forgetting caution, she plunged out. It was familiar, yes, but never before had she heard it spoken by a man who sounded in mortal fear that the devil he named stood at his very shoulder.

Reaching
daylight and fresh air, she gasped, bracing herself and clenching her chattering teeth.

The
journalist, still lingering like a jackal circling the lion’s kill, noticed her rub her hands together.

‘
Cold in there, is it?’ he called cheerfully.

‘
Cold,’ Frances agreed, tersely, as she side-stepped his approach, but she was talking about a chill more ancient than that of old grey stones.

*

Ten minutes later, juggling a file of statements, Frances let herself into Radley’s office at the Red House where Joe Coppins had established himself, as was his custom, at the scene of the crime. It was a habit which Frances found invariably embarrassing and frequently macabre. She had to force herself not to show her distaste as she entered.

The
corpse, of course, had gone, but the dent in the cushion into which the head had been forced, was still there, along with a few blonde hairs. The travelling rug lay in a tangle, half-on, half-off the chesterfield, and the windows, the door-handles and the table beside the sofa displayed the greasy traces of aluminium powder.

For
a second, he was unaware of her presence, and she thought he looked discouraged and depressed, seated slumped in Radley’s old wooden revolving chair. He was always hard on his own mistakes, and this one was serious.

But
noticing her, he sat up at once, shooting her a shrewd look from under furrowed brows.

‘
Shrinking violet today, are we, sergeant? Wishing it was time to take the Lower Third for music instead?’

She
had told him, in an unguarded moment, of her mother’s determined fantasy, and had since regretted the confidence. He used it like a blunt instrument whenever he felt her reaction was feminine, or middle-class, or over-educated, or in any other sense undesirable.

She
said coolly, ‘No, sir,’ and went to sit on a library stool.

‘
Right,’ he said crisply, ‘let’s face it and get it over with. We made a total balls-up. Somebody died because we didn’t get it right. You figured out we were wrong before I did, but it’s still something we’re both going to have to live with. Then there’s wrongful arrest, the lot. God knows what they’ll have in store for us. But that’s for later.

‘
This is now. New day, new problem, and the best we can hope for is to get this wrapped up as quickly as the last one. Only this time — just for variety — we end up with the right person behind bars. OK? So — tell me a story, Frances.’

This
was how she earned her keep: the neat, rapid pulling together of strands. Once or twice she had been able to pluck them out of the air, like floating spider threads, and had woven them into a noose strong enough to snare a villain. But she was too close to this one. She needed an objective overview, but here she was down groping in the mud.

His
flair, however, was for taking out of her synopsis more than she knew she had put in, so she began, hesitantly.

‘
The first problem, as I see it, is the confusion of identity. Helena’s jacket, same haircut, face buried in the pillow. So did he think he was killing Helena, or Lilian? Lilian had just upset a large number of people, but then, I was worried about Helena because she knew she wasn’t guilty.

‘In practical terms, given the darkness inside and the element of risk in every second it took — it could easily be mistaken identity. On the other hand, wouldn’t you check, before you actually killed someone?’

He
pounced. ‘An opportunist, you think? No plan of any kind?’

‘
Could be. Or else, someone knew Lilian was going to lie down — overheard Helena and Lilian talking in the hall—’

‘
Proof?’

She
riffled through her files to Helena’s statement, pulled a face.

‘
Possible, even probable, but hopeless to substantiate. People were going to and fro in the hall all the time. We can question them specifically on that point, but even if they all remembered who was behind them, they won’t know for sure what they heard, or if they noticed Helena taking Lilian through.’

‘
So — it’s Lilian he wants to kill. Who is he? Quick, off the top of your head, Frances.’

‘
Jack Daley.’

She
surprised a laugh out of him with the promptness of her reply. ‘Got the handcuffs ready, have you? Are you going to pamper me with some proof, or is this just more woman’s intuition?’

She
bristled. ‘If I were a man, you’d call it subconscious logic. He’s the obvious candidate — impulsive nature, blistering row with her beforehand. And just for the sake of argument, if he did kill Fielding, he’s got the same motive this time round. Public humiliation is nasty enough, but when it’s sexual as well... He was implicated in that weird business the night before Fielding’s death, wasn’t he?’

‘
The burning in effigy? Barely credible, that, in the twentieth century. I seem to remember they questioned him, but I’m not sure they got a lot of joy. We let it go at the time, but maybe we shouldn’t have. Though I daresay we have to keep in mind the wide range of Fielding’s unpopular activities.’

‘
In any case, I would suggest that Daley has a high profile on all counts.’

‘
OK, OK, we’ll put your inspiration down a triumph of subliminal analysis — isn’t that what they like to call it these days? Right. Now it’s Helena — do it again.’

‘
That’s much harder. Since Lilian was my hot tip as murderer until yesterday, nothing comes to mind. It could be someone like Dyer — clever enough to calculate that the best time to dispose of Helena would be when all the other suspects were around.’

‘
But of course, you’re looking for the same person in either case.’

‘
Sorry?’ She was puzzled; there were, in her mind, two conflicting perceptions of what had taken place, with separate solutions, depending on whether the murder had been done to preserve the status quo, or change it.

‘
Doesn’t actually matter, does it? Come on, Frances! Unless you’re suggesting a second “homicidal maniac” — and you were a bit sharp about that yesterday — Neville Fielding’s killer has killed again, and who he thought the lady was is one of your fancy academic points.’

He
was looking smug. She recognized the force of his argument, only adding carpingly, ‘Or she. Sir.’

‘
Fine, we can be feminist about this. Or she. Only snag about this brilliant piece of deduction is, we’ve already investigated Fielding’s murder and come up with the wrong answer.’

Frances
muttered something about processes of elimination, but lapsed into silence at a glare from her chief.

‘
This one’s fresher, at least. So let’s go through the practicalities. Alibis?’

Frances
laughed shortly. ‘That’s a joke, at a drinks party — groups forming and breaking up all the time, nobody in one place for more than ten minutes.’

‘
And no forensic wizardry to get us off the hook. Fingerprints a mass of smudges, and we know the rest of what they can tell us already. Time of death: only half an hour between the waitress leaving her asleep and the kid finding her dead. Now you see her, now you don’t. Means of death: a cushion left helpfully in place in case we weren’t bright enough to figure it out.’

‘
Every contact leaves a trace. That’s what they always said at forensic lectures.’

‘
I could generalize too, if someone paid me a fat bloody salary to sit in a lab all day. I’ll show you how many traces you need to leave. On to the sofa, Frances.’

‘
Oh, you’re not really going to do this, sir—’ He had gone to a talk on empathy, once, which in her opinion had done considerably more harm than good, putting into his head the idea that if he played murderer and she victim he could get inside the villain’s head. She hadn’t liked it before, and she wasn’t going to like it now.