Читать книгу The Killer in the Choir - Simon Brett - Страница 10

Carole left the wake without having a drink, either coffee or champagne. After making her astonishing statement, the bereaved – and very drunk – stepdaughter had moved away, with her fiancé fussing at her side, trying to get her to behave more appropriately. Carole had another quick look around to see if there was anyone she wanted to talk to, and finding with no great surprise that there wasn’t, slipped unobtrusively out of the hall and returned to High Tor.

As she entered the kitchen, her Labrador Gulliver looked up from his station in front of the Aga. His expression was, as ever, hopeful, though he knew he had already had his morning outing on Fethering Beach, and no other walks would be on offer until early evening.

Carole was in a dilemma. She desperately wanted to share what Alice Mallett had said with her neighbour, Jude, but she never went the easy way around any social interaction. Had she lived in the North of England – or indeed had she been a less uptight Southerner – she would have gone straight next door to Woodside Cottage to see if her friend was in. But Carole, being Carole, phoned instead.

Jude was in. ‘How did the funeral go?’ she asked.

‘Very interesting.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d love to talk to you about it.’

‘Talk away. I am in listening mode.’

‘Well, I wondered if we could meet …?’

Jude couldn’t entirely keep a giggle out of her voice as she said, ‘Given our proximity, I’d say that was quite possible.’

‘Yes. Well … you wouldn’t fancy joining me for lunch at the Crown & Anchor, would you?’ This was unusual. It was rare for Carole to suggest a pub visit in the middle of the day.

Jude’s response was unusual too. She said, ‘No.’

‘Oh?’

‘Sorry, I’ve got a client booked in at two.’

‘Ah.’ The monosyllable managed to convey all of Carole’s reservations about her neighbour’s work as a healer.

‘Trouble is, it seems a bit pointless going to the pub and not having a drink, but I do need my concentration to be …’

‘Of course. Well, how about you coming round here? I could assemble a salad …’

‘Hmm,’ said Jude, when Carole had finished her report on the wake. She pushed aside her empty plate and shook her bird’s nest of blonde hair. ‘Emotions tend to run high at that kind of occasion.’

‘Of course.’

‘And if, as you say, there was already a legacy of bad blood between stepdaughter and stepmother …’

‘So Fethering gossip has it.’

‘Never underestimate Fethering gossip, Carole. It’s almost always hopelessly wrong on detail, but it often gets the main outlines right.’

‘Yes.’

‘The daughter … Alice did you say?’

‘Mm.’

‘She doesn’t live down here?’

‘No. London, I think.’

‘I’ve never met her. Nor the mother … Heather … I don’t think I’d even recognize her.’

‘She’s very rarely seen around the village.’

‘Oh?’

‘Just church on Sundays and church choir rehearsals on Fridays.’

‘Ah. Where do they – well, where does she – live?’

‘Shorelands Estate.’

‘Say no more. That lot are always a bit up themselves, aren’t they?’

It was true. Shorelands was one of those private estates, not quite gated, but with controlled access. The houses were overlarge, trumpeting their owners’ wealth, and each one built in a different architectural style. The Shorelands Estate was the kind of place where there were regulations about which days you could put your washing out. And where you could walk your dogs. And when you could mow your lawns.

‘Of course, “killing” …’ Carole began.

‘Hm?’

‘Well, I was just going to say … “killing” could mean a lot of things.’

‘As in Heather Mallett’s having “killed” her husband?’

‘Exactly. From an aggrieved – and bereaved – stepdaughter … it could be kind of metaphorical.’

‘“You killed my father by making his life a misery” … that kind of thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘“You killed my father by feeding him lots of fatty food” … or by “stopping him from going to the doctor when he felt ill” …?’

‘Mm.’

‘Infinite possibilities.’

‘It could also, of course mean …’ began Carole cautiously, ‘that Alice was actually accusing Heather of murdering her stepfather …?’

Jude grinned wryly. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get there.’

‘Well, it’s possible.’

‘Undoubtedly. Unlikely, but possible. And do we know how Leonard Mallett was supposed to have died?’

‘No.’

‘Because information about that might help us to establish the viability of the murder hypothesis.’

‘Yes.’ Carole looked at her neighbour suspiciously. Lacking a robust sense of humour, she was never quite sure when she was being sent up.

‘Well, Carole,’ said Jude with a grin, ‘if you hear any more about the murder of Leonard Mallett, you will keep me up to speed about it, won’t you?’

‘Of course. And you’ll do the same?’

‘I will share every last piece of incriminating evidence with you,’ promised Jude. She looked at her watch. It had a large round face and was tied to her wrist with a kind of ribbon. This idiosyncrasy always irked Carole. She thought watches ought to be discreetly small, with proper straps. ‘Better be going,’ said Jude. ‘As I said, client coming at two.’

‘Oh yes. Of course,’ said Carole, her scepticism once again evident about the whole business of healing.

It was not the first time Jude had treated Jonny Virgo. She hadn’t mentioned the name of her two o’clock booking to her neighbour. She had strict rules about client confidentiality.

She knew about Jonny’s past career as Head of Music at a school called Ravenhall, but he’d never before mentioned that he played the organ at All Saints. As soon as he said he’d just come from post-funeral drinks, though, she made the connection.

‘I went to the Seaview Café to get some lunch,’ he confided. ‘There were only nibbles in the church hall after the ceremony. And, you know, I have to have regular meals. Because of my blood sugar.’

Jonny Virgo’s ‘blood sugar’ was a much-discussed topic. From an early age, his mother had made him aware of the importance of keeping up the right level of blood sugar in his body, and from this he had developed a paranoia about the dangers of missing meals. He had a good few other paranoias about his health, mostly related to digestion. The easy diagnosis of Jonny Virgo’s condition would be hypochondria.

But Jude looked deeper than that. She knew, from what he had said to her, that Jonny had tried all kinds of conventional medicines and alternative therapies for his many ailments before he had approached her. She found him a challenge, and one that she wanted to prove equal to. Yes, a lot of the symptoms he described were psychosomatic, but there was some genuine malaise at the centre of it all. Jude did not believe in separating physical and mental illness. She knew how inextricably intertwined they were, and her aim was always to heal the whole person.

The one unarguably genuine ailment that Jonny Virgo suffered from was a bad back. Her practice had taught Jude that a lot of bad backs were more in the head than in the muscles, but Jonny’s was the real thing. It had been caused, he admitted, by a lifetime of piano playing, both practising by himself and teaching. All those long hours of sitting on a stool with no back support had taken their toll. Jude could tell from the tightness of his muscles, particularly in the lower back area, how much concentration he put into his work at the keyboard, channelling the works of the world’s great composers. She knew that the only prospect of a cure for his pain was for him to give up playing, but she also knew that that was the one solution she could not suggest. Playing the piano was what defined Jonny Virgo to himself. It was not only the work that had always been at the centre of his life; it was also his favoured means of release. Playing piano relaxed him.

And he needed some form of relaxation. Jude had gathered, in previous sessions, that caring for his elderly mother was very stressful. Though he didn’t mention the word, the old lady was clearly on the slide towards dementia. ‘She can’t remember what she said two minutes ago, but she still loves hearing me play the piano,’ he kept saying. ‘She says hearing me play makes her very peaceful. I can’t stop playing because of Mother, apart from anything else. It wouldn’t be fair on her.’

So, Jude recognized that she could never cure his pain, only offer him ways to manage it.

Jonny knew the routine. He took off his jacket and shoes, removed the cravat from around his neck and lay face down on the treatment bed which Jude had put up in her sitting room. On first moving into Woodside Cottage, she had contemplated having a dedicated area for her healing work, but decided – rightly, as it turned out – that her clients would be more relaxed in the charming disorder of her living space. Jude’s style of décor reflected the clothes she wore. Just as a variety of floaty garments blurred the exact outline of her plumpness, so a range of rugs, throws and floppy cushions disguised the contours of her furniture. Carole had never actually vocalized her views on the organized chaos in which her neighbour lived, but Jude knew full well what she thought. She gloried in the contrast between the soft confusion of Woodside Cottage and the sharp edges of High Tor’s immaculate interior.

The interest in crime-solving that she and Carole shared had occasionally presented Jude with ethical dilemmas in relation to her work. More than once it had happened that a client had been deeply involved in an investigation, either as a research source, a witness or, on occasion, a perpetrator. Jude tried not to use her confidential healer role as a means of eliciting information, but sometimes the strain told. And, after what Carole had reported from Leonard Mallett’s wake, the temptation to pick Jonny Virgo’s brains was strong.

She needn’t have worried, though. As she moved her hands slowly up and down, a few inches above his body, focusing her concentration on its messages, with absolutely no prompting the organist went straight to the subject that interested her.

‘Very strange,’ he confided. ‘Obviously I’ve done a lot of funerals in my time, and I’m not sure that they’re occasions when you necessarily see the best of human behaviour, particularly after everyone’s had a few drinks, but what happened today was completely unprecedented.’

‘Oh?’ said Jude, as if just making conversation.

‘The deceased was a Fethering resident called Leonard Mallett … don’t know if you knew him?’

‘I’ve heard the name,’ she replied with complete honesty.

‘Lived in one of those big houses over on the Shorelands Estate.’

‘Ah. Did you know him?’

‘Not really. His wife – widow I have to say now – sings in the church choir. I’d seen him once or twice coming to pick her up, that’s all. She’s a soprano,’ he added randomly.

‘Oh.’

‘And one strange thing that happened today was that, during the service, rather than sitting with the congregation, she sat in the choir stalls and sang along with the rest of them.’

‘Well, I suppose that was her choice,’ said Jude, wondering if there was going to come a point when Jonny added more to the narrative than she’d already heard from Carole.

‘Oh yes, yes. And I was very happy about it. Quite honestly, we’re so pushed for numbers in the choir that I worry about anyone’s absence – even if they’ve got the excuse of it being their husband’s funeral. Some of the more traditional members of the All Saints congregation might have seen it as a little lacking in respect, but as you say, it was her choice. And she’s got a strong voice, so she bolsters the choir’s volume.

‘Not sure how the vicar felt, though. From the little I’ve seen of him, I’d say Bob’s a traditionalist, but he’s very worried about keeping up numbers – so many churches are having to give up their choirs from lack of support. Perhaps he’d have welcomed Heather’s decision. I’m not sure what he felt about the cremation, though.’

‘What about the cremation?’

‘Well, it happened straight after the service. The hearse took the coffin straight to the crematorium.’

‘That’s not unusual, is it?’

‘I’d have thought it was unusual for the widow not to attend the cremation.’

‘Happens quite often, I think,’ said Jude. She had a friend who worked as a funeral celebrant and they had discussed such matters. ‘You know, if she feels her duty is to be at the wake, to greet and talk to the guests, some of whom may have come a very long way to the funeral.’

‘Maybe. Not sure how Bob would have felt about that. Maybe he would have welcomed it too. I don’t know him well enough to be sure of his views. But I’m certain he didn’t welcome the scene at the wake, though.’

‘“Scene”?’

‘There was a terrible set-to between Heather and her daughter.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I say “daughter”. Stepdaughter, actually. Alice. You haven’t … er …?’

‘As I said, I haven’t met any of them.’

‘Anyway, the girl must have been drinking heavily. I can’t understand how young people manage to drink so much. How anyone does, come to that. With me, alcohol wreaks absolute havoc with my IBS.’

Jude was reminded that, along with worries about his blood-sugar levels, Jonny Virgo was also troubled by Irritable Bowel Syndrome. And a few other Syndromes, too. In fact, she sometimes suspected that he only had to read the name of a Syndrome to develop it.

‘But, apart from that,’ he went on, ‘I can never understand why people enjoy drinking too much. I’ve been on foreign trips with a choir I used to play for, and some of them … the amount they put away … it was frankly disgusting. The basses were always the worst, they were constantly having to be pulled out of bars. And other behaviour was pretty appalling too. You know, extramarital affairs going on. And none of them seemed to feel any guilt about it. They’d just giggle and say: “What happens on tour stays on tour.” Which I don’t think is a very responsible attitude.’ There was quite a prudish side to Jonny Virgo.

‘Could you just turn over?’ asked Jude.

Jonny did as instructed and allowed her to start her ministrations to the front of his body. Still her hands didn’t touch, just outlining his contours, feeling the tensions, easing the knots. He continued his narrative. ‘So far as I could gather, there weren’t meant to be any speeches in the church hall. Everything appropriate had been said in the church. But if that was the intention … well, Alice Mallett clearly hadn’t got the message.’

‘Oh?’

‘It was most embarrassing. She was carrying an empty champagne bottle … and from the way she behaved, she might well have drunk all its contents … Anyway, she banged it on the table and announced that she wanted to say a few words. And dear oh dear, the “few words” she said were entirely inappropriate to the occasion.’

‘In what way?’

‘What she said was, basically, that her stepmother, Heather, had ruined her father’s life. She implied that Heather had seduced him away from his first wife, which was totally untrue.’

‘How do you know that, Jonny?’

‘Because Heather and Leonard actually got married at All Saints, and I played the organ at their wedding. I remember it well, because I woke up that morning with a particularly bad migraine, and my mother said I should call in sick, but I said I couldn’t let them down. So, I did play for them, though I was feeling pretty terrible throughout the whole ceremony. And I’d discussed with both Heather and Leonard what hymns they would have, and so I got to know the pair of them a bit. And Leonard told me that his first wife had died some ten years before, and he’d only known Heather for eight months.’

‘So, Alice was lying?’

‘Well … obviously.’

‘Yes.’ Jude was thoughtful. ‘Of course, it is possible that they’d had a secret relationship before, which nobody else knew about, and Alice found out and—’

‘No, Jude. Out of the question.’

‘Oh?’

‘You don’t know Heather, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, she’s the most prim and proper person you could ever meet. The idea of her having a secret relationship with a married man … it just wouldn’t have happened.’

‘If you say so. Which means that Alice was lying.’

‘Must have been. But that wasn’t all she said in the church hall this morning.’ Jude didn’t need to prompt Jonny further; he was caught up in the momentum of his narrative. ‘She said that Heather had made her father’s life a complete misery. Alice said she had only married him for his money – he was quite high up in the insurance world, you know. And Heather had made him change his will, so that she – Alice – was completely cut out of it. Then, as soon as the will had been changed, Heather had no further use for Leonard.’

‘And what sort of state was Alice in while she said all this?’

‘Drunk, like I said. And totally hysterical.’

‘If she’d lied about her father having a relationship with Heather before her mother did, then the rest might all have been lies as well.’

‘Oh, I agree. Alice is a most unreliable witness.’

‘And do we know how Leonard Mallett actually died?’

‘He had a fall, apparently. Fell downstairs.’

‘And he was how old?’

‘Late seventies, I’d say. Maybe early eighties.’

‘So not an unlikely age for him to have had a fall.’

‘No, certainly not. I do worry about something like that happening to me. It’s an issue of balance, I think my internal gyroscope is not working quite as it should. I do sometimes feel very unsteady when I’ve been sitting somewhere for a long time, you know, at the piano or—’

Jude cut through the hypochondria. ‘Do you know if the fall killed him, or if he died in hospital?’

‘Oh, the fall did it. Apparently, Heather came back to the house, from wherever she’d been – shopping, I think – and found his body at the foot of the stairs.’

Jude didn’t think it was the moment to comment that in most crime novels – and many real-life crime scenarios – the person who discovers the body is always the first suspect. Instead, she asked, ‘What did Alice say this afternoon, about the actual death?’

‘She said it wasn’t an accident.’

‘That he was pushed?’

‘Yes.’

‘The oldest question in crime – and in crime fiction, too: “Did he fall or was he pushed?”’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And the pusher was presumably said to be Heather?’

‘Oh yes. Alice said there was no doubt about it. Heather killed her husband for his money. It was definitely murder.’