Requiem Mass (14 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Corley
From painstaking observation he knew that her departure would be signalled by the lights going off on the top floor. Even approaching summer, the small windows and overhanging trees, which clustered thickly to the back and sides of the hall, made electric light essential for reading music.
Waiting deep within the trees he had heard her clump down the steep wooden stairs in her fashionable but impractical heeled court shoes, and then pause as she checked the rooms downstairs before locking the door. She always stooped to lock the door, peering into the shadowy darkness around the lock. On the threshold, she would pause, slip out of her heels and put on sensible shoes for the fifteen-minute walk home, placing the other pair in a school shoe bag.
Miss Johnstone then walked down a narrow, overhung path between bushes until she reached the side of the school car park. Cutting across the deserted square of tarmac, she would leave the school by the main entrance, placed directly to the rear of the school grounds. It was in this short walk across school grounds that she occasionally encountered the caretaker, though they rarely exchanged more than a few words before both going separate ways.
Miss Johnstone then turned left along the London Road,
crossed at the first set of lights opposite the White Lion public house and made her way due north along Elm Drive, continuing straight on when it became Copse Lane. The only variation in her otherwise predictable routine occurred at the local mini-market, the Handishopper. Sometimes she would pop in and emerge ten minutes later with a thin plastic bag containing several square-shaped tins. There was no pattern to her visits to the Handishopper and this element of her routine remained a mystery to her silent watcher.
He had followed her at a careful distance along Copse Lane. As one walked further north the buzz from the bypass increased until it detached itself from the middle distance and assumed a constant, full-throttled whine. The noise stopped just short of oppressive for visitors, and residents became inured within days of arrival. A close-boarded fence and an unbroken line of sturdy conifers screened the view of the road and cut down most of the fumes.
Copse Lane stopped abruptly in a T-junction 150 yards from the bypass. To the right lay Hedgefield and the house of Miss Johnstone, spinster of this parish, mathematics mistress of Downside Comprehensive School and intended murder victim.
Few places along her route presented opportunities for an unnoticed murder, and the assassin concluded that only her house or place of work were realistic options. This was unfortunate as he would have to work hard to establish a randomness for the killing with no suggestion of premeditation.
Now he removed a hand-drawn sketch from a buff folder, prepared during one of his early visits to the school’s music rooms, pacing out internal and external distances whilst the choir and orchestra practised above. He knew every foot of the school grounds and could, if necessary, have manoeuvred his way through the shambles of tracks and concrete paths in total darkness. Perfect planning: the essential habits didn’t leave him even though he felt isolated without the usual company of team support. He had found operating as a single-man unit over the past three months irksome and inefficient. To his great surprise he was also lonely; he missed the teamwork. Years of training
and an inner self-sufficiency sustained him but he had started to look forward to the completion of his self-imposed task and to this artificial isolation.
He now knew the names of his intended targets. One had been dealt with, perhaps the least guilty of the quartet. He had found it difficult at the end to complete the job, an unexpected compassion confusing his hands. But her confession had confirmed the guilt of the other three; he couldn’t yet be sure which of them held
ultimate
responsibility but his instinct told him his next victim was not the main one – had perhaps only performed a minor role. Nevertheless, she owed him a life and he was about to call in the debt.
After studying his plan of the school, he concluded that the music room offered neutral territory, the best prospect for a murder which could remain undiscovered for many hours. It was private, he knew it better than her home and there would be more opportunity to make it appear a random killing. The location decided, he finally sat down to complete the detail of his plan.
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us.
Kate was generally content with her life. At thirty-four, she had a responsible and still enjoyable job which allowed her to indulge in her three great passions – music, gardening and cats. She cared for four of the latter, all rescued from miserable past lives by the Cat Protection League, of which she was a dedicated supporter. The tabby tom was the oldest and, had she admitted to such inequality, her favourite. Blind in one eye, with virtually all his right ear missing, he was the man about her house and acted with proprietorial interest in the unfolding of all its affairs. Next in age was a blue Siamese cross, intelligent, suspicious, affectionate; and then there were the twins – brother and sister tortoiseshells with identical markings.
All had a fierce attachment to their mistress and an ingrained mistrust in the rest of humanity. They were allowed free rein of the house but instinctively obeyed the expected rules of behaviour in the garden, much to the annoyance of Miss Johnstone’s neighbours. Her garden was special and the cats sensed that should they set paws in its deep, immaculate, herbaceous borders, they could jeopardise their comfortable shelter.
Although Kate could see the flow of constant traffic from her upstairs windows, there were compensations in being the end house with a good stout fence to screen the street and a large triangular garden, which in the early summer was her particular delight.
She shared a stout party wall with her neighbours at number
3, a newly married couple. Friendly and generally perfect neighbours they would have been distressed, not to say embarrassed, to know that shortly after they had moved in, Miss Johnstone had changed bedrooms, switching to the smaller one at the back of the house to escape the nocturnal (and occasionally diurnal) groans, sighs and laughs of passion that penetrated her house, threatening to spoil her carefully secured state of contentment. Miss Johnstone considered their activities rather excessive but as a member of a relatively rare species – an unmarried virgin in her thirties – she was acutely aware of her ignorance of the mysteries on the other side of the wall.
On June 7th, Kate was up shortly after dawn, eager to spend at least an hour in the garden before school. She had chosen to work among a massed drift of lupins and delphiniums that ranged against the west-facing fence – dead-heading, staking and squeezing to death the greenfly that were infesting the lupins this year. The dew washed her long bare calves and soaked her canvas shoes as she stepped delicately among Butterball delphiniums, planted randomly between old favourites of Mullion and Pink Sensation. The rich creaminess of the Butterball was working well among the blues, mauves and pinks. Along the front of the border she had let candytuft and cornflowers self-set, beside the gently fading blues and pinks of the forget-me-nots. She stepped among them carefully, avoiding the mists of flowers and the tight green shoots of sweet william and physostegia, that promised a continuing show for the summer.
The weather was beautiful, the sun already glaringly hot on the south-facing beds, leaving her working space to the west of the house in cooler dewy shade. She was dressed in her normal summer gardening clothes – cut-off jeans, an old cotton shirt and professional, thorn-resistant gardening gloves. Her open, round face was free of make-up and short golden-red waves of hair were pushed back out of her eyes with an Alice band. Her pupils would have been unlikely to recognise their orderly, prim maths teacher in the nimble and youthful woman who stooped and bent with a graceful monotony among her flowers.
Kate was moving fast to stake the growing stems firmly in an attempt to beat a threatening change of weather, forecast for later in the week. The promised rains and strong winds could ruin her display – snapping the heavy, flower-rich stems, some over six foot, and breaking the tender plants beneath. She took off her glove and bent to crush a glistening new leaf of bee balm, rubbing her stained fingers to release the heady scent that would drench this corner of the garden in months to come.
It was time for breakfast. Today, she decided, it was warm enough to eat outside, sitting on the south-facing cast-iron bench she had tucked into a small paved area amid the borders, next to a green-painted ornate iron table. The cats were already stretched on the warming metal and, for only the third time that year, she felt she could join them in shirt sleeves with no risk of a chill.
The breakfast tea was strong and refreshing, the sun hot on her face. Bees were already hurrying among the promiscuous blossom, one cat lay curled up against her, snoring gently. The others had found sun or shade according to their taste around her now naked feet. In the distance, the hum from the bypass provided a gentle counterpoint to the purring and the buzzing. As one of the twins toyed with a spring of unripe green-grey lavender in a terracotta pot by Kate’s side, the spicy scent wafted up and over her. She was, she reflected, incredibly fortunate. She may be single and childless – the last hurt more than the first – but she had so much, and whilst contentment rather than happiness could best be used to describe her normal state of mind there were moments, such as that early morning, when she would change nothing. She was healthy, comfortably established, had loving parents and a sister who was also one of her best friends. She had interests that absorbed her, hobbies that thrilled her and faithful companions. She could not, all things considered, complain.
Katherine offered up her normal morning prayers and thanked God for all he had given to her and, most of all, for her recent renewal of faith. She viewed all of life’s pleasures and good fortunes as God’s gift and knew herself to be well blessed.
As she worked mentally through her daily prayers – the Lord’s prayer, prayers of thanks, requests for the protection of her family and friends and the hope for guidance during the day – she came finally to her prayer for forgiveness.
‘Dear Lord,’ she prayed, her heart contracting painfully in her chest, ‘please forgive me. Do not let me forget what I have done, let remembrance serve as my penance and a constant warning of my capacity for sin.’ Her eyes as she opened them were wet, the view of her glorious garden blurred as she looked around. It was always worst in June, this sense of guilt, of not deserving any of her happiness when others – one in particular – had nothing.
In an outward demonstration of contrition she fell to her knees and rested her head on her hands against the edge of the table. ‘Please, God. Please forgive me for what I have done. Please let there be no retribution. I do earnestly repent what I have done and I know I do not deserve my current happiness. But please, dear God, do not take it away from me. Do not punish me.’
In the fragrant semi-silence, as the sun fell on the back of her bowed neck and a cat’s tail caressed her calves, Katherine gradually felt the love of God surround her once again, and His compassion enter her bruised heart. After long moments the cold of the flags penetrated her bones, making her alert to the passing time. Laughing rather self-consciously at herself she walked, refreshed and reassured into the house, ready to start the week.
By Tuesday evening, Katherine’s pangs of conscience had retreated in the face of glorious news. That day, in the teachers’ common room, she had received the call she had been waiting for. Octavia Anderson, an old school friend, had telephoned to confirm that she would be prepared to take the soprano lead in the County Youth Choir’s performance of Verdi’s
Requiem
. As one of the organisers of the autumn performance, Miss Johnstone had mentioned to the committee that she might just be able to secure Octavia’s services as they were old friends but
until the call came she hadn’t allowed herself to believe it could be true.
Octavia Anderson was, belatedly, becoming a well-known opera singer, working her way slowly but consistently into the centre of attention as a potential new star. Strangely beautiful, and with a powerful soprano voice that was maturing as she aged, she was the local celebrity who had attended Downside School. As a pupil she had been awarded the De Weir scholarship which took her, via the Royal Academy, into the chorus first of the Welsh National Opera and then on to some junior roles. But her appearance and voice were suited to the heavier classics and she had to bide her time, waiting for the right opportunity to use the advantage of experience. About four years previously she had surprised audiences and critics alike when she had stepped in, as understudy, to perform Tosca when the performer slipped and broke her wrist during the battlements scene on the first night. Octavia had taken on the role with assurance and skill, and although not yet thirty, her voice had been sufficiently developed to prompt several of the critics to mark her as ‘someone to watch.’
Since her Tosca understudy days, she had been given more prominent roles in her own right, working hard, touring the world receiving consistently improving reviews. For her to agree to perform in a county programme was a real coup for Kate and she couldn’t believe her good fortune.
As luck would have it, Judith Chase, the Head of Music, had been in the common room after the call came through and the two of them had disappeared for a celebratory drink at the White Lion at lunchtime. This had proved a difficult moment for sixth former Melanie White, who was standing in the saloon bar with her biker boyfriend, Ron, as Miss Johnstone and Mrs Chase ordered their drinks in the lounge bar. She had to spend the next forty minutes standing out of sight round the corner, perilously close to the dart board.
