• FOURTEEN •
I COULD HARDLY find the breath to speak.
“Surely not,” I managed.
Another eternity passed before the vicar spoke again.
“Seven years ago, Christmas week. I had taken her with me to the railway station in Doddingsley to pick up the holly for the church, as I always do. Hannah loved Christmas … always wanted to be a part of everything.
“Someone stopped me on the platform—a former parishioner—hadn’t seen her for years—wanted to wish me compliments of the season, you see, and I let go of Hannah’s hand—only for a moment, you understand—but— “The train … the train—”
Suddenly tears were rolling down his cheeks.
I watched my hand reaching for his.
“I shouted at her—tried to call her back—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware even as I spoke, what useless things, really, words of sympathy are, even though they’re sometimes all we have.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“Had she lived,” the vicar said, his eyes swimming, “she would have been your age. Cynthia and I often think how much you—” He stopped abruptly. “Cynthia and your mother were great friends, you know, Flavia. They were to become mothers at the same time.”
Another part of the puzzle that was Harriet fell into place.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” the vicar asked. “The good people of Bishop’s Lacey have conspired to silence. Hannah’s death is not to be spoken of. They think we don’t know, you see—but we do.”
“But you mustn’t blame yourself,” I blurted, filled with a rising anger. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
The vicar gave me a sad smile which signaled that my words changed nothing.
“Where is she buried?” I asked with sudden boldness. I would take flowers and place them with great ceremony on the little girl’s grave. I would put an end to this pathetic silence.
“Here,” the vicar said simply. “In the churchyard. Close by the Cottlestone tomb. We couldn’t, at first, afford a stone, you see. A country vicar’s purse does not—and later … well, later was too late. Still, Cynthia goes there often to visit, but I’m afraid I—”
I shivered as the full horror of his words crept upon me.
Their child was buried at the very spot from which Cynthia had seen me burst forth from the earth. And later, in the church— How could I ever make amends?
“She thought I was Hannah,” I said, taking the first step. “I was looking round inside the organ casing for clues. I must have seemed to her to have come through the wall.”
As I spoke, Cynthia gave a soft moan and rolled her head from side to side.
“I’m glad you were in the church,” I said. “I wasn’t quite sure what to do.”
“I followed her there,” the vicar said softly. “I often do. To ensure that she comes to no harm, you see.”
Cynthia stirred.
Gently, he lifted my disgusting coat from her shoulders and handed it to me, replacing it with the afghan that was folded at the end of the sofa.
“I’d best be going,” I said, taking the hint.
As I shrugged into my coat, small clods of clay fell to the carpet.
I was already at the door when the vicar spoke: “Flavia—” he said.
I turned back. “Yes?”
His eyes, still wet, met mine. “Be careful,” he said.
That’s another one of the things I love about Denwyn Richardson.
Buckshaw by moonlight was a scene from a dream. As I rode toward it along the avenue of chestnut trees, the house was half illuminated by a pale silvery light, the other half in darkness, its long black shadow crawling away across the Trafalgar Lawn toward the east, as if trying to reach the safety of the distant trees.
I parked Gladys against the brick wall of the kitchen garden and glanced at the upstairs windows. There were no lights and no white faces staring down at me.
Perfect, I thought. I needed time to concoct a chemical cleaning solvent. I would mix something in a coal scuttle—something involving ammonia and one of the chlorine-based oxydizing agents. Or perhaps petrol: I could easily siphon a gallon from Harriet’s Phantom II. I would ball up my filthy coat, immerse it for half an hour, then hang it out the window of my laboratory to dry in the wind. It would be as spotless and fresh-smelling as if it had been dry-cleaned by Armfields, in Belgravia.
As I opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, I realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten for ages and my stomach was hanging against my spine like an empty saddlebag. I would cut some bread from the pantry and take it upstairs to toast over the open flame of a Bunsen burner.
I was halfway across the kitchen when a solemn voice, like the tolling of a passing-bell, said: “Flavia.”
It was Father.
At first I hardly recognized him. He was seated at the table in dressing gown and slippers. I had never before seen him dressed in anything other than his usual outfit of shirt, tie, vest, jacket, trousers, and mirror-polished boots.
“I was at the church,” I began, hoping to gain some advantage, even though I couldn’t imagine what it was. “Talking to the vicar,” I added lamely.
“I’m quite aware of that,” he said.
Aware? Had the vicar turned rat on me?
“The chancellor telephoned.”
I could hardly believe it! Father forbade use of “The Instrument” as he called it, except in the most dire emergency. He felt about the telephone the way a condemned man feels about the scaffold.
“He advised me to stop your messing round the church during these excavations. Thinks you’re liable to do yourself an injury.”
And how did he know I was messing round the church? I wanted to ask.
The answer was obvious: His toady, Marmaduke Parr, had told him.
“It’s not only that,” Father went on. “As you very well know, a murder has been committed in the crypt.”
I offered up a small prayer of thanks. At least it hadn’t been Inspector Hewitt who had rung up, ordering me to keep away.
“Did he mention poor Mr. Collicutt? The chancellor, I mean?”
“As it happens,” Father answered, “he did not. But nevertheless, I want you to stay—”
“Mrs. Richardson fainted at the altar,” I put in before he could say another word. “She mistook me for her daughter, Hannah.”
Father looked up at me, his face harshly lined in the cold moonlight. He had not shaved, and the stubble of his whiskers glittered cruelly. Never had he looked so old.
“The vicar told me about her,” I said. “I didn’t ask.”
The kitchen clock ticked. Father let out a long sigh.
“I can’t see you,” he said, after a while. “My eyes are not what they once were. Bring a candle from the pantry. Don’t put on the electric light.”
I fetched a pewter candlestick and a box of wooden matches, and a minute later, by the flickering light of a wax candle, we were facing each other across the kitchen table.
“Denwyn and Cynthia have not had the easiest of lives,” Father said.
“No,” I replied. I was learning that the best conversations consisted of keeping quiet and listening, and speaking, when one spoke at all, in words of a single syllable.
“He blames himself,” we both said at the same time.
It was incredible! Father and I had spoken the same three words at the same instant—as if we were reciting in unison.
I did not dare smile.
“Yes,” we both said.
It was downright eerie.
Father had only talked to me—really talked, I mean—on one other occasion, which was the time he was incarcerated in a jail cell in Hinley, charged with the murder of Horace Bonepenny. On that day, he had talked and I had listened.
Now both of us were speaking at the same time.