Late of This Parish Read online

  She recognized it immediately and for a moment or two she was silent, reliving the pain of Friday night, when her father had spoken of finding himself faced with a moral problem. His words, she realized now, had practically been a paraphrase of that quotation. She felt again the coldness that had come over her as he spoke, knowing what it meant. David had said, when she’d told him later that night, that Quentin was a discreet and honourable man; if he had told her father what he knew about David it would have been because he assumed the same qualities in his friend. If so, they both knew he had miscalculated. Her father would never have hesitated to use anything in his vendetta against David.

  ‘It’s from Kant. Father was always quoting him,’ she said with an attempt to shrug it off. ‘It was his habit to jot down things that took his fancy as he was reading. It won’t mean anything.’

  He accepted this without further comment and asked, ‘Who do you know called Sara, or Sarah? Or rather, who did your father know of that name?’

  She hesitated a split second. ‘I’m not aware that he knew anyone called that – I certainly don’t.’

  As she spoke a car was heard to draw up outside, at the front of the house. Its door slammed. Shock and pleasure combined to give her a rush of blood to the head, render her momentarily immobile. ‘It’s David,’ she said, astonished and delighted that he should be here.

  He gave her no chance to get to the door, but pushed it open and walked straight into the house without ringing, indicative to her as nothing else could be of how different things were going to be from now on. Nevertheless, he paused in the doorway of the sitting-room before he came in – the room where he had been so unwelcome that he had seldom been invited to enter – as if her father might still speak and show his displeasure. There was tension, too, in his hunched shoulders, the way his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. He was a tall untidy man, thin and long-legged, like a heron, with a shock of un-disciplined dark hair, a beak of a nose and a fierce glance the heavy bar of his dark spectacles did nothing to mitigate.

  ‘Laura.’

  She forgot her own worries in the protective need to smooth away the defensive aggression never far from the surface. Regardless of the others in the room, she threw herself at him, and he held her for an all too brief moment in his awkward, brusque way. ‘Don’t grieve too much,’ he murmured against her hair, so quietly she wondered if she’d imagined it, especially when he released himself almost roughly from her clinging arms. She was conscious of her father’s last, hurtful words about her being led into marriage with David because she was afraid that life was passing her by. But no. She had known she was marrying a difficult man who found it hard to accept what had happened to him but she also knew that he needed her as much as she needed him, she knew his tenderness when they were alone – and his determination that her father should not be allowed to ruin her life.

  ‘How did you –?’ she began.

  ‘Miriam telephoned me, first thing. You should have let me know, Laura,’ he said shortly. Then: ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

  Her father’s death was for her a horror and an obscenity, the more so because she had, however subliminally, wished for it, but she could see that for David, there could only be insincerity in a pretence of sorrow: it had solved most of his problems at one stroke, there would be no unpleasantness over their marriage – and perhaps more importantly for him, without her father’s opposition he would believe that now nothing could stop him becoming Headmaster. She wouldn’t have expected him to utter platitudes which he patently didn’t believe in, about a man he had never liked. Always a reserved man, intensely private, in times of stress he tended to maintain a neutral silence – or worse, become uptight and sarcastic, either of which could so easily be misconstrued. She could see how the police might view his uncompromising attitudes and at this moment she passionately hoped he was going to make the effort to unbend a little. Total honesty at all times could be a disaster.

  She made the necessary introductions and he said, ‘Is there some coffee, by any chance? I left before breakfast, straight after Miriam rang.’

  ‘Breakfast, then?’

  ‘A sandwich will do.’

  She hesitated, reluctant to leave him alone with the police.

  ‘Carry on, Miss Willard, don’t mind us,’ said the Chief Inspector easily. ‘I’ve only a few questions to put to Mr Illingworth. We’ll be gone by the time you get back, so I’ll say good morning to you.’

  Mayo had watched the interchange between Laura Willard and her young man with interest. On the surface, he could see no compatibility between the two – Laura, who in normal circumstances he guessed would be a warm-hearted, sociable woman and Illingworth, cool and withdrawn, not a man to suffer fools gladly. His expression now clearly said that questioning him would be a waste of time. A sense of his own intellectual superiority emanated from him, an impatience with lesser mortals. As a prospective headmaster, which Miriam Thorne had indicated he might be, he would not have impressed Mayo. He said suddenly, ‘What do you want of me? I can see you have to know the whereabouts of everyone concerned, but how does that affect me? I was nowhere near Wyvering when Laura’s father died.’

  ‘That’s not my immediate concern either, sir. I’m more interested to start with in what you can tell me about Mr Willard – what sort of man he was, what your relations with him were, that sort of thing.’

  Illingworth smiled, not kindly. ‘Don’t expect me to whitewash him. If I pretended I was sorry he was dead I’d be a hypocrite. I’d no time for him and there’s plenty who’d be ready to tell you so. He disliked me and was doing his best to screw up Laura’s chances of being happy with me because of his outmoded principles. He’d done it to her once before and I wasn’t prepared to let her stand for it again.’

  ‘Hard words that might be better left unsaid in the circumstances, Mr Illingworth.’

  ‘I was far enough away at the time he was killed for that not to worry me.’

  ‘Near Brighton, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, it was a weekend conference. I skipped the first session on Friday night to help get ready a computer exhibition we were having at the school but I left here first thing yesterday morning.’

  ‘What exactly was the trouble between you and Mr Willard?’

  ‘My first marriage ended in divorce and there are certain sections of the established church who hold the time-honoured view that marriage is for life and re-marriage an unforgivable sin. He held rigidly to that. He’d never heard of compromise.’

  Mayo wondered what Illingworth – who was not giving the impression of being a person to give way on anything, any more than Willard apparently had been – meant by compromise in the circumstances. Did he mean living together? Marriage wasn’t regarded as a strict prerequisite for moving in with someone these days, though Mayo guessed with Laura Willard it might be. Her father’s influence had been strong, by all accounts. From Illingworth’s own point of view, living together without the benefit of clergy might not be such a good thing either: you could hardly expect a school, however progressive, to risk upsetting parents on that score – even if the parents were not always themselves like Caesar’s wife, beyond reproach. With the coveted Headship within his grasp, he wouldn’t want to put a foot wrong.

  ‘I believe Mr Willard also opposed your consideration for the position as Headmaster at Hillside?’

  ‘He supported Jonathan Reece, which isn’t quite the same thing, but he wasn’t the only governor. I’m confident that even with his vote, Reece wouldn’t have been appointed.’

  Too clever by half, Mayo summed up Illingworth. The man was, like himself, from north of the Wash: Derbyshire or South Yorkshire at a guess. Beneath the veneer of educated university-speak Mayo recognized the broad northern vowels and something of the bluntness, the bloody-minded determination that sometimes characterized his own actions. This might make him easier to deal with, or trickier – for how completely do we ever understand ourselves?r />
  ‘How did he strike you, Martin?’ he asked as they left. ‘Never been easy in my mind with his sort – he’s a type, isn’t he? Always ready to take a rise – but the first to back down if you stand up to ’em.’

  ‘Very perceptive of you – though I didn’t see any signs of Illingworth backing down. Not the sort to endear himself as a prospective son-in-law, was he? What would you have done if Sheila’s father had tried to stop you marrying her?’

  ‘What, him? Couldn’t get her off his hands fast enough – she was costing him too much in telephone calls!’ Kite grinned. ‘But if he had I’d have told him to take a running jump. We’ve come a long way since Queen Victoria.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say.’

  And similarly, Mayo didn’t see even Laura Willard knuckling under to her father’s domination for ever, nor Illingworth giving a damn what Willard felt about their marriage – though his career prospects might have been another matter. If, despite what he said, Illingworth had believed Willard had had the power to put a spoke in the wheel in that direction, could he have killed Willard? Was he a killer? It was a pointless question. Mayo believed anyone was capable of killing, given the right circumstances and motivation. Even a motive that might be so slight as to be non-existent in the minds of everyone except the murderer’s.

  ‘Anyway, if he was in Brighton he’s covered for the time of the murder. Have him checked all the same, Martin,’ he reminded Kite as they came to the mobile unit. ‘See what time he arrived. Meanwhile, let’s have a word with Danny Lampeter. He’s beginning to interest me. According to Wainwright, he lives at the post office with his sister.’

  ‘Want me to go and see him?’

  Mayo looked at his notes and considered. ‘We’ll both go –’

  ‘The sister should be free as well. The shop shuts at eleven-thirty.’

  George Atkins looked up from a plan of the village spread before him, squinting through the foul fog of his pipe smoke. One of these days, Mayo promised himself, he’d do something about getting rid of that damned pipe. Or George. On second thoughts, it would have to be the pipe, George was much too valuable, though he could be equally irritating. A dedicated workhorse, completely unflappable but a law unto himself, he knew inside out the division, the men working it and the criminal element therein. He jabbed with the pipe-stem at the plan of the village. On the plan had been superimposed a grid, with each square being allocated to one pair of officers. ‘They’re working along the main street now,’ he said, jabbing again. A globule of tobacco juice landed on the plan. Atkins rubbed it off with his coat sleeve.

  ‘It’ll save them a bit of time, then, if we take the post office,’ Mayo said, with difficulty restraining himself from making some caustic remark. ‘I want to see Danny boy myself.’

  ‘By the way,’ Atkins said, ‘know who we’ve got here? In Castle Wyvering? We’ve got Macey, haven’t we, our gyppo friend from Lavenstock.’

  ‘I know, I’ve seen her,’ Mayo said, and stealing his thunder, he added, ‘Tigger was around yesterday as well. Keep your eye on her, she’s up to something, I shouldn’t wonder. At any rate, she was mighty anxious I shouldn’t go poking around.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Ruth Lampeter was just closing the shop. She opened on Sunday mornings for a few hours, ostensibly for the sale of newspapers, sweets and tobacco. But since it was the only shop of any account in the village, she also did a useful trade in other goods that people had run out of or forgotten on their weekly shopping forays to the supermarkets in Lavenstock, with scant regard for any petty restrictions against Sunday trading. It was with obvious reluctance that she unlocked the door and let them in, and then only after Kite had shown his warrant card through the glass and stated their business.

  The sub-post office occupied a few glassed-in square feet in one corner of the available space. The rest of the shop was devoted, floor to ceiling, to the varying needs of a small community. She led them on safari into the back premises, through the crowded stacks of tinned and packet goods and the frozen food counter, skirting the piles of wire baskets and a roundabout containing paperbacks. Past brightly-coloured woolly hats and socks for children occupying part of a shelf, and one-size, one-colour tights and a selection of ladies’ underwear in peach or pale blue stacked on another, with wellingtons in all sizes lolling beneath the shelves.

  After the overflowing cornucopia of the shop, the living-room felt spacious, though it was small enough to be crowded by a beige moquette three-piece suite, a dining table, a sideboard and four upright chairs. It was obsessively clean. A fire smouldered in the grate, yet it felt cold and at the time stuffy and airless. It made you want to throw the windows wide to the spring breeze.

  ‘I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time, Miss Lampeter?’

  Her indifferent shrug implied there was no time which could conceivably be convenient, but she indicated where they might sit. Kite chose one armchair and Mayo settled his bulk in the other, and though the settee remained unoccupied Ruth Lampeter chose to perch herself on the edge of one of the hard, upright, leatherette-covered dining chairs, her back rigid and her feet and knees pressed tightly and virginally together.

  A small woman with a figure that was curiously asexual and a prim, narrow, buttoned-up face devoid of make-up, she might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty. Her dead-straight brown hair was parted at the side and held in place with a tortoiseshell slide. She wore a shapeless grey skirt that was much too long, and a neutral coloured jumper with a V-neck, apparently hand-knitted. The whole effect, Mayo realized after a moment or two, was of a bizarre throwback to the nineteen-thirties. It was dowdy and ageing, but he doubted if Ruth Lampeter was aware of that, or even cared.

  ‘We’re making inquiries into the death of the Reverend Mr Willard, which you’ve probably heard about, Miss Lampeter.’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard, they’ve been talking about nothing else all morning, but I don’t know why you’ve come to me. I never had anything to do with him, except sometimes to sell him a few stamps.’

  Mayo noticed how precisely she spoke, articulating the syllables in an old-maidish way, with no trace of the local accent. He sensed an obstinate nature that would defeat any attempts to get her to cooperate. She was like a blank slate that would resist all attempts to write upon it. He pitied her schoolteachers. And wished he’d brought Jenny Platt along with him – although on second thoughts, perhaps not. He didn’t think it was in Ruth Lampeter to be communicative with anyone, man or woman.

  ‘We’re not singling you out, Miss Lampeter,’ he said. ‘We’re talking to everyone in the village, asking them where they were yesterday.’

  ‘Well, I was here in the shop, as anyone in Wyvering could tell you.’

  ‘What time did you close?’ Kite asked.

  ‘Half past five, the same time I always close on Saturdays. After cashing up, we tidied the shop. I stayed in all evening and went to bed at ten.’

  ‘We, you said. You’ve an assistant?’

  ‘I meant my brother,’ she answered reluctantly.

  ‘Danny?’ She nodded. ‘Maybe we could speak to him as well?’

  Perhaps because of that inadvertent ‘we’ she became, if possible, even more close-lipped. ‘No, you can’t. He’s gone away for a few days.’

  ‘He has, has he? That’s interesting. When did he go? And where?’

  ‘He went as soon as we’d finished yesterday. Well before six, at any rate. He didn’t stay for supper.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Positive. And I don’t know where he’s gone. Why should I? He doesn’t have to tell me everything.’ Her words implied indifference but the cool precise voice had sharpened a semi-tone. ‘What do you want to see him for anyway? He’s done nothing, he was here with me all afternoon.’

  This woman, as unattractive as the claustrophobic little room where they sat, depressed Mayo. He tried to imagine her singing, or laughing, or in bed with a man
, and failed in every dimension. ‘If he’s done nothing, he’s nothing to worry about – which makes me wonder why he’s disappeared.’

  ‘I didn’t say he’d disappeared. He’ll be back.’ An ugly colour suddenly suffused her face and neck before receding and leaving her paler than ever. ‘You can’t leave him alone, can you? It was just the same over those badgers. It’s horrible to think of anyone killing them – horrible! And Danny wouldn’t have, I know he wouldn’t! He told Wainwright he didn’t have a gun but it made no difference. Now everyone in the village,’ she said bitterly, ‘is convinced he shot them, and they’ll think the same about old Willard.’

  There was more here than the hostility and uncertainty engendered in even the most law-abiding people when being questioned by the police. She was afraid, too, and yet he didn’t think she would easily be frightened – not for herself, that is. ‘You’ve no idea where he’s gone? What about a girlfriend?’

  ‘He doesn’t have any.’ Not that you know about, said Kite’s look as he wrote down ‘No known girlfriends’.

  ‘Does he often go away like this?’

  ‘He does as he pleases. I’m not his keeper.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t know where he’s gone? Think again.’

  ‘I’ve told you, no.’

  ‘In that case, we may have to put a call out for him.’ She drew in an almost imperceptible breath. Her hands were already tightly clenched, as they had been throughout the interview. ‘Please give the sergeant here the details he needs.’

  Kite flashed her his Robert Redford smile, intended to put her at her ease as he asked her questions about Danny’s motorbike. A waste of time, smiling, Mayo could have told him. Sexy or otherwise, it would cut no ice with Ruth Lampeter.

  ‘Did your brother enjoy working for Mr Willard?’ he asked when Kite had finished writing.

  She shrugged. ‘It was a job. He hadn’t been there long.’

  ‘How did he come to work for him?’