Never Laugh as a Hearse Goes By: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (15 page)

She set her tray down and then sank into the chair beside him.

“Warden … Warden Fletcher,” she began, “are you ill?”

He shook his head. “Oh, it’s you again. I’m sorry, forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“It’s Penny Brannigan. I was here at the conference as a guest speaker. I’m the one who found Reverend Shipton’s body. And we met again a few hours ago. You were kind enough to show me to my room.”

“Yes, I do remember that you were at the conference, although some details are fuzzy to me. It’s just with all this upset I haven’t been sleeping.” He made an airy, vague gesture, then a wringing motion with his hands. “First, the terrible things that happened, and then all the police activity, roaming about and asking endless questions, although thankfully that seems to be winding down now.” He took a sip of water. Penny lifted her plate from the tray and propped the tray between her chair and the table leg. “I heard earlier today that the funeral for Miss Russell is going ahead,” the warden said. “I haven’t heard what’s happening with Shipton. At least Miss Russell has family. Poor old Shipton just has a, well, companion, I guess you’d call him, and apparently he’s disappeared. But really, what would anyone expect? The fellow may not even have been in the country legally, for all we know. Came from Nigeria, I believe.”

“Warden, I’d like to ask you a question about that if you don’t mind. At the opening night party, Miss Russell was instructed to tell Shipton that his companion had to leave. Do you know if he did leave or did he stay here?”

The warden shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t know what happened to him, but I didn’t see him again. So if he was here, he made himself scarce.”

“Bronwyn Evans told me that the three of you used to be great friends at university—you and Thomas and Bronwyn. They had so been looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Yes, we’d lost touch, rather, over the past few years, and I had just e-mailed Thomas to let them know that I had been awarded this living,” the warden said. “Sorry, that’s old-fashioned church talk … I had just been offered and accepted this position.” He sighed. “I had such high hopes, and then these terrible things had to happen.”

“But surely once everything is sorted and things get back to normal you’ll be able to carry on,” Penny said. “After all, nobody’s blaming you.”

“Aren’t they?” asked the warden. “Two deaths happened on my watch and I hear the bishop’s not best pleased.”

“Has he contacted you?” Penny asked. “Has he said anything to you?”

The warden did not reply and a few moments later excused himself.

Twenty-four

After dinner, Penny wrote a long e-mail to Davies describing the warden’s changed and alarming appearance. His remark about the bishop bothered her. No doubt Davies had been speaking to the bishop and she wondered what, if anything, he’d turned up.

Half an hour later, she received a reply from him. The investigation was ongoing and he had nothing he could share with her and hoped she’d understand. She knew what that meant and she did understand. The investigation might very well have turned up something interesting, but as the senior investigating officer, he meant what he said. He could not share anything with her. She had come to accept that this was not a reflection on her or his trust in her, it was just how police worked.

She browsed the bookshelves in the Gladstone Room, found a novel that appealed to her, and decided to take it to her room. There was definitely something to be said about leaving worldly materialism behind and spending a few quiet days enjoying the simple pleasures of a slower-paced life: walking, reading, napping, and thinking. Simple, delicious meals featuring old-fashioned British favourites were prepared from scratch and served at regular times without fuss and bother. I could get used to this, she thought. This must be what it’s like to live in a monastery or another closed community.

She returned to her room, settled in for the night, read a few pages, and then turned out the light.

A few hours later she was awakened by a loud banging, vibrating sound coming from the pipes in the en suite bathroom. After a moment, the juddering stopped. The joys of elderly plumbing, she thought. The room was dark, and she had no idea what time it was. She switched on the bedside lamp and checked her watch. Just gone half past two. She was wide awake and knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep for some time. This happened to her occasionally and she found that the best use of her time was to do something productive so she got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and slippers, and picked up her laptop.

She opened the door. Her room was at the end of one corridor, with the warden’s office at the opposite end and another corridor running east and west past her door. The corridor was dimly lit and deathly quiet. She stepped out into the hall and, making sure she had her room key in her dressing gown pocket, closed the door quietly behind her.

She was about halfway down the hall on her way to the Robinson Room when a small noise behind her made her turn. In the muted light she caught a glimpse of a figure she thought was a man. A moment later it disappeared from view down the corridor that led past her door. She was sure it was the warden, but what was he doing roaming the corridors so late at night?

She opened the door to the Robinson Room, the same room where she had presented her talk just a few days ago on the work of architect Owen Jones to the women attending the conference. Sitting at the end of the table she logged into the Wi-Fi and began to check her e-mails. After deleting the ones that didn’t interest her, she opened a rather long one from Davies and two short ones from Victoria. In the first one, Victoria confirmed that she had been able to get tickets for
Macbeth
and in the second one, she said there was still no sign of Dilys, so the licensing rights for the new hand cream hadn’t been sorted. Penny pondered that for a moment, not sure how to respond. What on earth was going on there?

She looked up from her computer and her eyes roamed the room. Across from her were floor to ceiling bookshelves that stretched the length of the room. She wondered if the bookshelves contained overflow books from the Library’s main collection, and stood up to browse the titles. They were catalogued and part of the Library collection, and appeared to be a comprehensive collection of biblical philosophy texts, with titles such as
Mission in the New Testament
and
The Origin of Christology
. On closer examination, she realized these shelves held the archives, correspondence, and library of Dr. John Robinson, who had been Bishop of Woolwich and Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge.

On one end of the shelves, behind the door, were small storage boxes that held his personal papers. Alongside these were books he had written and even a bound edition of his Ph.D. thesis.

She ran her hands along the boxes at eye level noting the contents listed. Box 26 intrigued her. The contents on the spine were listed as Clare College Chapel Letters, Trinity College Chapel Letters, Sex. She opened it to find a series of stiff pamphlets from Clare College and Trinity College, dating from 1951 to 1983. The only thing relating to sex was a yellow booklet entitled
The Place of Law in the Field of Sex,
written by The Rt. Rev. John A. T. Robinson. She reached for Box 28, labeled Miscellaneous and Unknown Correspondence, Cancer, and The John Robinson Memorial Fund. As she pulled the box from the shelf a piece of paper that had been wedged between it and Box 29 fluttered to the floor. She picked it up and, with her heart beginning to beat faster, unfolded it.

It was lined, with a vertical orientation and at the top were jagged edges where it had been ripped from a coil-bound notebook.

Written in pencil were three initials and numbers with pound signs in front of them and question marks after them.

PB £80?

GF £40?

S £100?

It’s got to be one of the missing pages from Minty Russell’s steno book, she thought. And then she remembered that on the morning of her presentation, Minty had paused for a moment behind the door before coming out into the corridor. Had she spent that moment tucking this piece of paper between the storage boxes intending to retrieve it later? It looks like the same kind of paper in her shorthand notebook, but what does it mean? Penny turned the paper over. There was nothing written on the back. Sitting at the table, she mulled over the numbers. Were they amounts owed her? But if so, she would know how much she was owed and wouldn’t be questioning the number. Two of the initials seemed obvious—PB stood for Pamela Blaine and GF for Graham Fletcher. But the S puzzled her. Shipton? Stephens? Somebody else?

She refolded the paper and tucked it in the pocket of her dressing gown. After a moment, she returned to her laptop and began to type a message to Davies. She hoped she’d hear back from him before morning. An hour later she was awakened by the ping of a text message on her phone.

This is what I’d like you do, his message began. It ended with him saying he and PC Chris Jones would be with her just after breakfast.

Twenty-five

Davies’s instructions had been very clear—she must find a way to speak to Warden Graham Fletcher in his office. So at just past nine, Penny knocked on the half-open door.

He looked even worse than he had yesterday, the cumulative effect of another sleepless night. As he rubbed his hands together in a scrubbing motion, she detected a faint trembling. As if sensing her watching him, he then locked his hands together and placed them in his lap.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. His eyes flicked in her direction and then focused on the papers in front of him.

“Well, I just wanted to offer to give a lecture or talk at some time in the future,” Penny began. “I know you encourage writers to come here and speak, but I wondered if you’ve thought about having an artist? The presentation I did at the conference on the work of Owen Jones was rather well received, I thought. There are so many statues of William Gladstone dotted about—including the magnificent one out front of the Library, so I thought a presentation on Gladstone statues might make for an interesting evening.”

The warden brightened a little. “Indeed it might. Perhaps if you could let me have a written proposal, a brief outline of what your talk might include and when you think you might be able to do this? We’re booked into the summer now, but possibly late summer or early autumn?”

“That would be wonderful,” Penny said. “I’ll do that.” She rose a little from her chair and then sank down again.

“Oh, I wondered if you’d heard. Apparently there’s been a major development in the Minty Russell case.”

Fletcher peered at her through cloudy brown eyes and leaned slightly forward as he fingered the knot on his tie.

“Oh, no, I hadn’t heard. What’s happened?”

“Well, it seems they’ve found Miss Russell’s EpiPen. You know, the medical device she needed to inject herself with that they couldn’t find when she was having the allergic reaction.” As Davies told her to do, Penny watched the warden’s eyes intently. There was an almost imperceptible widening, the tiniest of frowns, and his eyes looked down and slightly to the right. A microsecond later, he raised them to meet hers.

“Yes, they found one in her office, so it may be that she didn’t have one with her after all.”

“Then would that mean…?”

“Well, it could mean that her death was a tragic accident. Her plate could have got contaminated somehow. It’s easy enough to understand how that could have happened, despite all the precautions in place. A busy server would just have had to use the wrong utensil, one that had been in contact with seafood, because there was fish on the menu that day, and then used that same utensil to put something on Miss Russell’s plate.”

“So the police think it was an accident, then?” he asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know, really. You’d have to ask them that.” As a silence settled over them, Penny’s eyes swept the warden’s office. The bookshelves were almost empty except for a few books lying on their sides that looked as if they had been carelessly set down. On her left was a thick metal double door painted bright orange. It was propped open slightly. Both sides were fitted with heavy locks with large oval hand pulls that disengaged the bolting mechanism.

“That door, warden,” she started to ask.

“Yes,” he interrupted, “I know what you’re about to say. That door looks so out of keeping with the rest of the place. And you’d be right. It’s a fire door. It’s solid metal, but it’s been disguised on the other side to fit in with the overall look of the Library. It’s supposed to be kept shut at all times because if the building ever caught fire we would want to do everything we could to prevent it spreading into the Library. But I like to keep the door open just a little so I can breathe the Library air. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a little behind in my preparations for an important meeting with the trustees this afternoon.” He checked his watch and then stood up.

“Yes, sorry, terribly sorry but I’ve just remembered something I’ve got to do.” Penny opened the door that led to the corridor, and then sprinted down the hall to her room where Davies was waiting for her. Together, they walked to the window and looked out.

“You were right,” Penny said. “As soon as I mentioned it, his behaviour changed.”

“We shouldn’t have long to wait,” Davies said. He picked up his cell phone and pressed a button. “Everybody in position and stand by.”

A few moments later, the warden appeared below their window. “He’s come out of the kitchen,” Penny said. “The kitchen door is right below this window.” The warden looked around him and then, in a few quick strides, reached the rubbish bin parked against the stone wall that separated the kitchen area from the churchyard next door. He opened the lid and dropped something in just as a figure emerged from the right. The warden looked startled and then relaxed and smiled as the council bin man, dressed in a navy blue uniform with a high-visibility jacket, reached out for the bin.