The Will To Live (10 page)

“And then you killed James, right there, in the middle of the party?” I asked. “How did you manage it?”

The vicar was delighted with his own cunning. “Well, he only needed to live until after you had discovered the body. I had no more use for him after that. And God forbid that he should wake up and reveal who he really was. You know, I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to manage it, but that Frenchman was a godsend! I couldn’t have achieved such a perfect diversion if I’d planned it myself. I held a cushion over James’s face while Toulouse and Lancelot were arguing. He was so frail that it didn’t take more than a few seconds.”

“Why did you swap the bodies back?” I demanded.

This time Graham answered me. “Dental records.”

“Absolutely right. There was always the possibility that someone would check them. I had to make sure all bases were covered, so to speak. So I borrowed the wheelbarrow from the shed and switched them back over in the wee small hours of this morning.”

“And Joe saw you,” I said flatly. “That’s why he died.” I looked at Graham. “When we spoke in the kitchen first thing, he said, ‘Another early riser.’ I thought he was talking about himself but he wasn’t.” I glared at Jeremy Bristow. “He’d seen you.”

“Yes, he had. Not with a body, I hasten to add. I was out covering up the wheelbarrow tracks by then, just in case. Had to think on my feet. So I told him I’d nipped out for some fresh air. I just happened to mention in passing that the blueberries in the wood had ripened. It was a stroke of genius!”

“It was murder.”

“Hardly.” The vicar shrugged it off. “I didn’t murder him and I didn’t murder Toulouse. It’s not my fault that the manor’s wiring is faulty. I just helped them on their way to paradise. Like I’m about to help you. It’s a clergyman’s job to assist a soul’s journey to the afterlife. Come on, kiddiewinks, off to the font.”

He was still pointing the gun at us. We didn’t have any choice.

We got up and walked through the vestry door, Jeremy Bristow following close behind. Our footsteps echoed in the empty church. My eyes darted from side to side, looking desperately for something – anything – that we could use against him. There were heavy silver candlesticks on the altar but they were too far away – we’d have been dead before either of us reached them.

We passed the pulpit. The Bible at the top looked big enough to do him an injury but there were too many steps – I’d never get to it in time.

However, there was a very attractive flower arrangement that someone had carefully placed in a recess just coming up on my right. An arrangement consisting of a dozen or so multicoloured dahlias, a few fern fronds and a couple of stems of euphorbia. My mum is for ever telling me to be careful around euphorbia plants. They’re beautiful, but their sap is an irritant. If you get it on your skin it causes very nasty blisters.

I sniffed and Graham’s eyes flicked across to meet mine. I raised an eyebrow and looked across at the flowers. As we passed the recess I struck out with my elbow and caught the head of a scarlet dahlia. The vase wobbled and then toppled, splashing water all over the vicar.

He reacted instinctively, tutting angrily and brushing off his surplice. For a brief moment his gun was pointing at the floor, and I seized the opportunity to grab a length of euphorbia and snap it in two. There wasn’t much sap inside – just a few drops, really – but I thrust the broken ends into his face.

The vase had clattered to the ground and come to rest at Graham’s feet. He picked it up and, while I was attacking the vicar with a pair of plant cuttings, Graham swung the hefty object at his head. There was a satisfying
thwack!
and he dropped the gun as his hands went first to his bloodied forehead and then to his eyes. His fingers brushed the milky sap that I’d daubed on his lashes, and he accidentally rubbed it right in. A fraction of a second later, he screamed. I grabbed his gun off the floor and Graham and I fled down the aisle.

We hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps when the vicar bellowed and came after us like a raging bull. He stumbled, crashing into a pew, and I realized that half-blinding him had only made him more dangerous. He was an arm’s length away when we reached the door. Graham grabbed the handle. It turned but the door didn’t open.

The vicar gave a triumphant “Ha!” In a flash I knew he’d locked us in – he’d done it the second the Strudwicks had left. Even if we hadn’t smelt the aftershave, he would have killed us anyway. We’d been dead the second we’d mentioned the James–Lawrence body swap.

The vicar grabbed my arm, but Graham kicked him in the shin and he yelped and let go. We darted up the side aisle.

If we’d had time to plan anything we might have split up to give each other more of a chance. But I doubt it. Graham and I like to stick together in a crisis. There was another door at the far end. Graham pointed and ran towards it with me hot on his heels. Joy of joys – it was open!

Graham slammed the door behind us and hurriedly bolted it. Then we turned, ready to run through the woods to Coldean Manor and help.

But this door didn’t lead outside. We were in a tower. A square one, with no windows and no door other than the one we’d just bolted behind us.

THE
door was riddled with woodworm, its heavy iron hinges weakened by rust. It gave a sad, weary creak when the vicar crashed something into it. Chair? Pew? I had no idea. I just knew that the door wouldn’t keep him out for much longer.

The walls were bare stone and the room was virtually empty – there were no shelves, no ledges, no cupboards. In fact, there was nothing in there but a load of old ropes dangling from the ceiling. Perhaps if we climbed them we could stay out of reach for a bit… I stuffed the gun in my back pocket.

“We’ve got to climb!”

“But…!”

“Come on, Graham! There’s a gap up at the top. If we can reach that, maybe we can call for help.”

There was no time to argue. With a pained groan the door gave way. I launched myself at the nearest rope and grabbed it with both hands.

I was planning on shinning up it like a monkey but things didn’t work out that way. I jumped and curled my legs around it, but the second my feet were off the floor, the rope moved. First I plunged downwards, whacking my bottom on the hard stone. Then, to my astonishment, I was whipped up into the air. Overhead there was an almighty noise, so loud I thought my brain had exploded – that the sky was falling in or a plane had crashed into the church. It was dizzying, terrifying. I neared the top of the tower and then plunged back down.

As I hurtled to the floor, Graham rocketed past me, going the other way. I just caught a glimpse of his big, scared eyes, his white-knuckled hands clinging to the rope. And then I was back at ground level, face to face with an insane vicar. He lunged for me, but he couldn’t see clearly and missed. Before I could let go of the rope I was jerked back up so hard it felt like my arms might come out of their sockets.

Graham and I weren’t the only ones who’d lost control. When Jeremy Bristow tried to grab the descending Graham, he got caught in the end of my rope. It was quite lucky – the sound of all that clanging completely drowned out the sound of him choking to death beneath me.

There’s not much to add, really. The cacophony in the tower, so loud up close, was, of course, the sound of church bells. For centuries they had chimed across the countryside, calling people to services, ringing out in celebration of weddings or holy days, tolling for funerals, and – very occasionally – pealing to give a warning of impending disaster. The very odd sounds they’d been making when Graham and I – and then the vicar – were being jerked up and down on the end of their ropes had attracted attention. Everyone in Coldean Manor had rushed through the woods to the church to find out what was happening.

Graham and I had an awful lot of explaining to do. Not only had we offended the Strudwicks, but now we’d strangled the local vicar in his own bell tower. Not bad for a pair of part-time waiters. Major Huwes-Guffing was all in favour of putting us in front of a ​firing squad then and there.

But, as the vicar had said, that aftershave really was the clincher. Once everyone had stopped shouting long enough to actually listen to what we had to say, all the Strudwick cousins went and gave the old tramp a thoroughly good sniff. The scent was hideously expensive – a special blend that Lawrence had had made for himself – and it proved beyond doubt that the tramp had been in the house. Later on, forensics proved we’d been right the whole time.

We were allowed back in the manor until the floods subsided enough to let the emergency services in later that day. Once we’d given our statements to the police, Sally called the RAC and we got towed home in the van.

When the police started looking into it, they found more and more information about Jeremy Bristow, and none of it was pleasant. As he’d admitted to me and Graham in the church, he hadn’t been a real vicar at all – just a very clever criminal. The Strudwicks weren’t the only family he had conned but they were the last, so I suppose there was some justice in the end. Although Lydia never thanked me and Graham for it, we reckoned she’d had a narrow escape. We couldn’t prove it but we were pretty sure he’d have disposed of her too when it suited him. They’d have maybe got married according to his plan, but once he’d got his hands on the estate it was doubtful that Lydia would have lived long enough to enjoy even her first wedding anniversary.

Because Lawrence had died before his older brother, the estate passed on to Jennifer. She’d married a miner’s son, and although according to her grandfather’s terms (and those of Lancelot and Lydia) Gethin’s family didn’t count as “good”, the lawyers didn’t agree. They argued that the Thomases’ history was every bit as long as the Strudwicks’ (and considerably less dodgy), and the judge agreed with them.

But Jennifer had been telling the truth about never wanting to see the place again. She wasn’t allowed to sell Coldean Manor – another codicil in the will prohibited that – but she put it to better use than her grandfather could ever have imagined. To her cousins’ disgust, Jennifer loaned it on a permanent basis to a charity that helped people from all over the world fleeing from war-torn countries and political or religious persecution. Lancelot Strudwick was quoted in
Hi!
magazine as saying that his grandfather would be “spinning in his grave to have foreigners living in his ancestral home”.

I do hope so.

Tanya Landman is the author of many books for children, including
Waking Merlin
and
Merlin’s Apprentice
,
The World’s Bellybutton
and
The Kraken Snores
, and three stories featuring the characters Flotsam and Jetsam. Of
The Will to Live
, the tenth title in her award-winning Poppy Fields series, Tanya says, “A crumbling mansion, a family fortune and some cousins fighting over their inheritance: they seemed to me to be the perfect ingredients for a classic murder mystery.”

Tanya is also the author of two novels for teenagers:
Apache
, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize, and
The Goldsmith’s Daughter
, which was nominated for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Since 1992, Tanya has also been part of Storybox Theatre. She lives with her family in Devon.

You can find out more about Tanya Landman
and her books by visiting her website at
www.tanyalandman.com

Poppy Fields is on the case!

Mondays are Murder
Dead Funny
Dying to be Famous
The Head is Dead
The Scent of Blood
Certain Death
Poison Pen
Love Him to Death
Blood Hound
The Will to Live

Also by Tanya Landman

Waking Merlin
Merlin’s Apprentice
The World’s Bellybutton
The Kraken Snores

For younger readers

Flotsam and Jetsam
Flotsam and Jetsam and the Stormy Surprise
Flotsam and Jetsam and the Grooof
Mary’s Penny

For older readers

Apache
The Goldsmith’s Daughter