Late of This Parish Read online

  At the foot of the chancel steps, facing the altar, stood a wheelchair, and here Dr Hameed paused. The ruby light of a sanctuary lamp glowed richly on flowers, white linen and lace, on an elaborately-painted reredos behind the altar and on the four highly-polished silver candlesticks and the brass lectern. But it was barely sufficient to light the area around the body in the chair and, peering into the dimness, Mayo called for more lights.

  His voice, though not unduly raised, sounded shockingly loud in the silence, irritating him by making him feel the weight of some mysterious guilt, as though he’d committed some undisclosed indiscretion or was showing disrespect in a hallowed place. He could almost feel the child’s conviction that here in church was where God lived and was sure to find out your sins and punish you if you were not unnaturally good as he looked at the prospect of the gloomy body of the church before him, inhospitable and intimidating by contrast with the resplendent altar. And the stained glass windows, which would be rich with colour against the light of day but were now, with the coming night pressing behind them, blank black voids, like dead eyes which had seen and condemned.

  More lights suddenly sprang up as Wainwright pressed switches he had found at the back of the church. 'Good man,’ Mayo said. Grunting, he turned abruptly away, dismissive of his fancies, and gave his full attention to the man in the wheelchair.

  The body was that of a very old man. There was a rug across his knees and he wore a tweed jacket and a clerical collar. A tweed hat with a narrow brim lay some distance away as if it had rolled there. He had slumped backwards and his head was resting against the back of the chair, revealing a scrawny neck above the dog-collar. His sparse hair was in disarray and his face was blue. His skeletal hands hung loosely. Mayo gently lifted one of them and found it icy cold, but slack.

  He stood looking down intently at the dead man. ‘Was this exactly as you found him?’ he asked Dr Hameed.

  ‘His head had fallen forward. I had to lift it to examine him. I haven’t moved him otherwise.’

  ‘When did you get here?’

  ‘Just before seven, about twenty minutes after I got the Rector’s call. I believe he was the one who found him.’

  ‘So Mr Willard here wasn’t the incumbent?’ The doctor frowned and raised her eyebrows and Mayo waved a hand in apology. ‘Sorry, my mistake, I assumed he was Rector here. Where is the Rector now?’

  ‘He took Miss Willard away. She insisted on coming here to see her father when they told her. I estimated he had died about half an hour before I got here, possibly just before he was found. He was Dr Dickerman’s patient and I was aware from his notes that he’d suffered a stroke some time since. I presumed he’d had another but as I’d never seen him before, I couldn’t of course sign the death certificate.’

  ‘Would you like to hazard a guess as to the cause of death?’

  ‘I examined him carefully and I noticed the petechae: – the minute haemorrhages in the mucous membrane of the eyes and around the mouth, and I diagnosed,’ she corrected him coolly, ‘that he had been asphyxiated in some way. A pillow or something soft over the face, perhaps ... It’s easy enough, when someone is old and can’t struggle.’

  By nature Mayo was obsessively observant, and by training had learned to take note of every detail, however apparently insignificant, to be one step ahead of witnesses. After one glance at the cyanosed face, and noticing the apparent absence of marks on the neck, and the pinhead spots, he had anticipated what Dr Hameed might say and his eye had already searched the immediate vicinty for a possible means of asphyxiation, finding nothing, however. No squab cushions on the bench pews, and the kneelers were stiffly padded needlepoint ones, probably worked by women of the parish. If the old man’s life had been smothered out, the means had been removed. Yet her words echoed in his mind as he looked around: ‘A pillow, or something soft ...’

  ‘Just a minute, Doctor.’

  A step or two took him to the foot of the deep-blue carpeted chancel steps, beyond which he was careful not to go, wary of unnecessarily contaminating the scene. Behind the Communion rail stood the raised altar, its green silk-damask frontal embroidered in gold. On the right side of the altar, between the central silver Cross and one of the tall symmetrically-placed white candles in their silver candlesticks, sat a small blue velvet cushion, corded and tasselled at each corner. On it was placed the Altar Service Book, a dark blue morocco-bound volume tooled in gold.

  Not all that soft, the cushion, but probably still a viable means. And if it had been used to smother out the old man’s life, there would be traces – fibres from the attacker’s clothing, or saliva stains the lab could match up with the victim’s. In order to get hold of the cushion, someone would have had to walk up the chancel steps and cross the carpet, remove the missal and pick up the cushion, then reverse the procedure after using it. He would have left something of himself behind, something of the traces we all leave of ourselves as we move through the days: dead hair, dead skin ...

  ‘There’s your means, Martin,’ he said to Kite, who had followed him to the chancel steps. ‘Your probable means,’ he added with due caution, because he might be jumping to conclusions in a way he was always warning Kite about, though he didn’t think so. Policemen didn’t rely on hunches, they relied on feelings based on what experience of rogues and villains and the means they used had taught them, and his gut feeling this time told him he was right. Sure enough at least to be satisfied in his own mind that there would almost certainly be sufficient grounds to set up further inquiries.

  ‘Make sure the SOCOs give this bit the works,’ he said to Kite. ‘Particularly the cushion.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Dr Hameed was still standing by the wheelchair, mute and now seeming suddenly awkward and ill at ease. Her head was bowed as she looked at the body, and her hair with its black sheen, knotted into a bun at the back, her brown face and undeniably exotic appearance seemed strangely alien in the cold, grey English church. He wondered what she was making of it all. She murmured, as he approached, ‘It’s the first time I’ve come across anything like this. Not since medical school. I couldn’t be sure ... I hope ...’

  She raised liquid brown eyes and put a hand on the pew as if to steady herself and he thought for a startled moment he’d overestimated her self-possession, and that she might even be about to pass out on him. He was sorry if he’d been too sharp in his judgement of her. ‘Don’t worry, the police doctor’s on his way.’

  ‘Of course.’ Her chin lifted and she immediately became aloof again. ‘But I hope he won’t be long. I’d like to be on my way. I still have to make another call.’

  ‘On Miss Willard, that’s right. You did mention. Where is she? At the Rectory?’

  Wainwright coughed. ‘Rector was going to take her to his neighbour’s, next door. Mrs Thorne’s by way of being a friend of Miss Willard’s, sir.’

  ‘I hope you don’t intend questioning her tonight, she’ll be in no state for that.’ The doctor’s voice was sharp, but Mayo made non-committal noises, knowing that he would, as always, play it by ear.

  ‘She’s been out all day and only got back just before the Rector found her father,’ Wainwright said.

  At that moment the door at the back of the church opened and Mayo saw Doc Ison walking towards him. Wiry and indestructible, the police surgeon walked quickly down the nave, a raincoat over his evening clothes, evidently in a hurry to get things over and back to the function he’d left. But a man to rely on, not one to skimp doing whatever was necessary. A tentative sort of friendship had developed between the detective and the doctor during their time of working together and he greeted Mayo cordially, but without wasting time on preliminaries. Within minutes he had his coat off and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, his notebook out, and was deep in consultation with Dr Hameed.

  Mayo left them to it for the moment. Kite went out to the car to prepare for wheels to be set in motion, to have the necessary officers and the Scenes of Crime te
am alerted, and Mayo sent Wainwright to ask the Rector if he could spare time to speak to him. Left alone, he prowled around with his hands in his pockets, idly read the notices at the back of the church and flicked through the guide while his mind turned over and considered which line his inquiries were going to take. The church had that peculiarly indefinable air of great antiquity, tangible evidence of which was in the dusty hammer-beam roof and pale, barely discernible frescoes on the crumbling plaster of the south wall. The building was otherwise well maintained and kept in a spotless condition, no doubt by a band of those willing helpers who can invariably be found, even in this Godless age, to dust and polish and arrange flowers. The monumental brasses shone and the pews were well beeswaxed.

  It had overtones to it, this old man’s death, something he couldn’t pin down but felt in the pricking of his thumbs. Murder, yes. Which without in any way condoning, he could understand. For human nature being what it was, deaths of this sort did happen from time to time. The old could all too easily become an insupportable burden, particularly on unmarried daughters who were expected to devote their lives to looking after them. Situations specifically designed, it seemed to Mayo, to lead to nothing but trouble, and it continually surprised him that anyone could show amazement when trouble happened, when years of resentment surfaced and the burden was not to be borne any longer: a momentary aberration when everything added up to just too much, a second’s temptation, a pillow over the face, all over in a minute. When the victim was alone and in a helpless condition, preferably subdued with sleeping pills, conveniently in bed.

  He sat down and thought yes, why here and not at home? Well, why not? A stroke or heart attack, which was presumably what the killer had hoped it would be taken for, could happen anywhere, and the obvious suspicion of a domestic murder would hopefully be averted. Then time and circumstance must have been propitious for the killer.

  The clock in the tower was exact to the minute. It had just tolled eight and been checked by Mayo’s pedantically-correct wristwatch when the door opened and an elegantly tall, silver-haired man in a long black cassock, came through the screen, genuflected towards the altar and then approached him.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘Lionel Oliver,’ the clergyman introduced himself, advancing towards Mayo with a springing step and outstretched hand. ‘I am the Rector here.’ He announced the fact in a mellow and resonant voice pitched to reach the back of the church and holding more than a hint of a Celtic lilt, as though reading a first verse from Hymns Ancient and Modern. Lowering his tone, he added, ‘This is a very terrible thing. I shall of course be happy to help in any way I can.’

  ‘Thank you. If you could spare me a moment to tell me what happened when you found Mr Willard, sir.’ Mayo indicated a pew and sat down with the Rector beside him.

  ‘Certainly.’ Oliver complied and collected his thoughts for a moment. ‘He was already here when I arrived to say Evensong at six-twenty. He invariably joined me, when he was up to it.’

  ‘Which door did you use?’

  ‘Which door? Oh, I came in through the vestry, as I always do if I have to robe. I thought at first when I saw him that he was at prayer. His head was bowed but then when I got nearer, I discovered he was dead, poor fellow.’

  ‘How did you know he was dead? Did you touch him?’

  ‘I felt his pulse, certainly, though there was no need. I am not, as you’ll appreciate, unfamiliar with death.’ Oliver paused. ‘It wasn’t entirely unexpected, you know, he’d been ill for some time. I never dreamed, however ... Surely it cannot be true that he didn’t die naturally? As I said, he wasn’t a well man and there were no signs of violence that I could see.’ His glance strayed, with a sort of appalled fascination, to where the two medicos were bending over the wheelchair, their murmuring voices only just audible. He added, ‘The doctor didn’t say how he’d died.’

  One up to Dr Hameed.

  ‘I’d rather not say anything yet either. We shan’t know for certain until after the post-mortem, but meantime there would appear to be reasonable grounds for treating it as a suspicious death. So it'll be necessary for the time being to lock up the church, at least until the Scenes of Crime people have finished.’ A dismayed look passed momentarily over the Reverend Mr Oliver’s face, but was quickly erased. ‘After that, we’ll let you have it back as soon as possible. Also, as soon as it’s practicable, I’d like you to check that there’s nothing missing from the church, sir. I see the altar silver’s still there. Presumably there’s more – communion plate and so on?’

  ‘Yes, and some very valuable old books, but I can tell you now there’s nothing missing. When the doctor told me of her suspicions I immediately checked both the Rector’s safe and the churchwardens’. I could think of no other possible reason why the poor old fellow should have been killed, unless he’d interrupted a thief – though like everyone else we have unfortunately to keep the doors locked nowadays. Mr Willard himself had a key. I didn’t like the idea of him waiting outside if he happened to arrive before I did, which was normally the case. And if 1 wasn’t able to be here, he could come along and say Evensong himself, without any bother.’

  Mayo could have wished that the Rector had been slightly less swift in his reactions. He hoped by what he’d done that he hadn’t queered the pitch for the SOCOs. 'Who else besides yourself and Mr Willard had keys to the church?’

  ‘Only the churchwardens, Brigadier Finlay and George Washburn. Anyone else who needs to get in is handed a key by one or other of us. There’s a notice by the gate advising anyone who wishes to look round the church where to apply. We do have a few visitors, especially in summer. The brasses, you know, the memorials ...’

  ‘Do you keep the belfry locked?’

  ‘The belfry?’ The Rector looked puzzled. ‘Oh yes indeed, always. The stone steps are worn and most dangerous. I have the only key.’

  ‘A good many people would know it was a regular habit of Mr Willard’s to come to Evensong?’

  ‘Everyone who knew him.’ Appalled, he stopped and stared at Mayo. ‘What am I saying? Surely, no one who knew him would even contemplate such a thing!’

  ‘I can assume from that he was popular and got on well with everyone?’

  The Rector fell silent, tracing the grain of wood along the pew rest with a long, well-manicured finger. Mayo waited patiently, gazing at the two fourteenth-century marble effigies of a knight and his lady, which the church guide had told him were of Sir William de Wyveringe and Eleanor his wife. Their hands reverently placed together in prayer, his feet resting upon his dog, they lay side by side eternally asleep on raised table tombs, their eleven children depicted along the sides. His crest had been a wyvern – a heraldic winged beast with a serpent’s tail and the body and head of a dragon – in punning reference to his name. According to the pamphlet, even to this day the local pronunciation made the village ‘Wyvern’.

  ‘To be strictly truthful,’ Oliver said at last, choosing his words with some care, ‘Cecil Willard was never a man who was universally loved, I think, but good gracious me, which among us can claim that? I must confess I’ve had one or two small differences with him myself from time to time. He was a little querulous and short-tempered, especially since his stroke, but that doesn’t constitute a right for anyone to take his life!’

  Mayo didn’t doubt the Rector’s sincerity, though couldn’t help feeling there was something vaguely theatrical about him, as if he were playing a part, just a little too much Welsh grandiloquence about his pronouncements. Mayo suspected that he dearly loved the sound of his own voice, and nothing better than a sermon.

  He was also, Mayo felt, hedging his bets, getting his oar in first in case someone else felt inclined to inform the police that he and the old reverend hadn’t been the best of friends. Putting the best construction on it by admitting to a little peccadillo in case some greater one might be suspected. A perfectly natural reaction. But the question had rattled him, Mayo was sure, and he wondered why.
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  ‘Let’s begin by getting a general idea of the set-up here. Was Mr Willard your predecessor?’

  ‘No. He was Headmaster at Uplands House School until his retirement about seven or eight years ago, when he bought one of the houses just around the corner in St Kenelm's Walk for himself and his daughter. A very scholarly man, a historian. Working on a book. He was of course a regular worshipper and communicant here.’ He paused. ‘I think you should know that my wife saw him coming into the church tonight, at about six. That was the time he almost invariably arrived, in order to spend some time in prayer before the service. I came in myself at six-twenty and found him dead, so I dare say she was the last person to see him alive. Except, of course ... Yes, well ...’ The pause lengthened as he hesitated to say what he was thinking. Or had he just realized that any person who found a murdered body might naturally be the first suspect? Probably not.

  ‘That should make it possible to establish the time of his death fairly precisely, then. I take it she saw no one else?’

  ‘She was in the bedroom at the time, getting ready to go out, and happened to see him through the window – the Rectory is just opposite – but she’d no reason to stand there watching. Mr Willard going into the church was hardly an occasion for surprise. I still feel he must have disturbed or interrupted someone ...’

  ‘Possibly.’ It was something that would be borne in mind, though as a theory it had its drawbacks, the chief being the method used to silence Willard. Far more likely, from the sort of yobs who set out to steal church silver, would have been a hefty bash on the head. ‘Is the church ever left unlocked accidentally?’