The New Rector (Tales from Turnham Malpas) Read online

  ‘That’s funny – there’s a light on in the school. You two stay here and don’t move. I’ll just go and see everything’s all right. Do as I say, now.’

  Pat dug around in her bag for the school keys. There they were right at the bottom with her fags. ‘Have to clean this bag out some time,’ she muttered. She put the huge key in the lock of the main door and to her surprise found it was already undone. The rows of pegs in the narrow corridor leading to the main hall were free of the children’s coats and they looked quite forlorn. She pushed open the door into the hall. Only the lights at the far end were on. She walked forward to the bank of light switches and kicked against something on the floor.

  She looked down to see what she had kicked. She was so distraught she didn’t know she was screaming at the top of her voice. Her hand clamped to her mouth, she ran from the hall and out into the playground. The fireworks were still exploding with massive bangs and no one could hear her screaming above the explosions. She ran to the edge of the crowd and found Willie Biggs.

  For once in her life she couldn’t speak. She grasped his arm and, still screaming, pulled him towards the school.

  ‘’Ere, Pat, what’s up? Now then, now then, go steady.’

  Pat Duckett pushed him through the main door of the school and then stood outside sobbing and gasping for breath. She couldn’t bear going inside again.

  Willie pushed open the door into the hall and saw what had frightened Pat Duckett. Lying on the floor at his feet was Toria Clark, so badly beaten about the head that she must have died instantly. She still wore the bright red shirt and the close-fitting black trousers she’d put on for going to the fair. Her dark hair was blood-soaked and her face almost unrecognisable from the beating she had taken. By her hand lay the keys which Willie recognised as belonging to the school. He ran outside, turned Pat Duckett’s key in the lock, thrust it into her hand for safe keeping and set off for help.

  He knew the police sergeant was on fairground duty and he ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He found him at the entrance talking to some boys from the next village.

  ‘Sergeant, you’ll have to come to the school. There’s been a … well, a tragedy. Come quick!’

  It was the same sergeant who had come when Suzy Meadows’ Patrick had been found dead. The news of Toria Clark’s death flashed round the crowd in a moment. The babble of sympathy and curiosity grew in volume as the sergeant arrived. A crowd had gravitated from the finale of the fireworks to watching the activity around the school.

  Pat Duckett was being revived with a timely nip from Sir Ronald’s hip-flask.

  ‘Terrible sight it is. I shall have to have another nip, my nerves is all shot to pieces. She’s laid there dead as a doornail. Can’t believe it, always such a nice person she was, nothing too much trouble. There’s all that blood. Oh dear, I’m going to faint.’

  She slid sideways off the school wall where Sir Ronald had sat her down and fell with a resounding thud onto the pavement.

  The sergeant hastened up to the front of the crowd. ‘Evening, Rector. Sounds nasty. Thank you for keeping the school locked, Mr Biggs. Can’t have everyone tramping on the evidence. You have the keys, sir? Thank you. Stand aside, please.’

  Caroline arrived on the scene. ‘Sergeant, it’s Dr Harris here. Can I help?’

  ‘Would you come in with me, Doctor, please? By the sound of it we’re much too late but I should be glad of your opinion.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They entered together. Caroline left Toria Clark lying just as she was. She felt for a pulse and listened for any signs of breathing but there were none.

  ‘She’s definitely dead, Sergeant. I don’t think anyone could survive such a savage beating. I should like to cover her up but we’d better wait for your forensic people, I suppose. Don’t want to confuse the evidence.’

  ‘Certainly not, Doctor. Come here and have a look at this.’

  The sergeant was standing in the light at the far end of the hall. Laid out on a table was a huge poster made up of two sheets of the paper Michael Palmer used for artwork. They had been joined together by Sellotape with a partly finished message in large letters scrawled on, saying: Ask Mr P. he knows she was a Lesbian, that’s why she died.

  ‘Very embarrassing this, Dr Harris. Not quite the kind of thing a village like Turnham Malpas is used to. In your opinion, do you think she was – well, you know – what the poster says?’

  ‘We’ve only been here a few months, as you know, Sergeant, but I’ve seen Miss Clark on several occasions and she’s been to the Rectory for coffee a couple of times and I have never, not for one moment, thought on those lines. Not even for one moment. Whoever wrote this is quite mistaken. But why did she have to die? I can’t understand that.’

  ‘Whoever attacked her certainly didn’t intend her to live.’

  ‘What did they kill her with, Sergeant? It must have been something fairly thick and heavy like a rounders bat or a cricket bat.’

  They were interrupted by a hammering on the outside door.

  ‘That’ll be the inspector now, Dr Harris. Would you stay and have a quick work with him, please?’

  ‘Yes of course, though I can’t contribute much.’

  After Caroline had said what she had found, the inspector asked her to find Mr Palmer and tell him to come into the school and look for anything missing which might have been used as the murder weapon. She found the headmaster patiently waiting in the playground. Caroline explained why the police needed to see him immediately.

  ‘Murder weapon? She really is dead, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s no doubt about that. Who on earth would want to murder Toria? She was such a lovely person and so well liked. Whoever did it is accusing her of being a lesbian. They’ve written a big poster saying that’s why she died.’

  ‘Lesbian? Toria Clark? She most certainly wasn’t.’

  ‘Exactly my sentiments, Michael. You’d better go in, the police are waiting for you.’

  Pat Duckett had been revived and was sitting surrounded by eager busybodies wanting to hear again her vivid description of the body.

  ‘Now, Mrs Duckett, is there anything I could do for you?’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Dr Harris, but I’m feeling much better now. It was a terrible sight, wasn’t it? Oh dearie me. I shall never forget it, never. Where’s them kids o’ mine? Back on the fairground, I expect.’

  ‘Well no, the fairground has been closed by the police. Here they are, look.’ Dean and Michelle appeared, surrounded by children from the school all wishing to bathe in their reflected glory. ‘I think it would be a good idea if you had a word with the police, told them what happened and then took these two children home.’

  ‘Shall I have to be questioned, then?’

  ‘Well, it was you who found her, wasn’t it? You were the first on the scene after all.’

  The sergeant came out at this moment and asked to speak to Mrs Duckett. ‘Here I am, Sergeant.’

  Much to the disappointment of the crowd he took her inside.

  Michael Palmer was questioned for much longer than Pat Duckett. He answered every question with genuine truthfulness and was unable to throw any light on the murder at all. He denied all suspicion of his colleague being a lesbian and could furnish no reason why anyone should want to kill her, nor indeed why his name should be mentioned on the poster. They asked if he and Toria had had a relationship.

  ‘Only that of a headmaster and an assistant teacher and no more. We were simply teaching colleagues, that was all. Ask anyone in the village. Her social life and mine were something quite separate.’

  Every person in the village was interrogated by the police. Toria’s house was thoroughly searched from top to bottom in an effort to uncover some clues as to her death. The television news crews came and went, the newspaper people came too, but the police were no nearer finding a solution to her death nor even a motive than they had been the day it happened. They’d endeavoured to trace ever
yone who had been at the fair that night and question them all, with no success. The file was kept open but despite all their efforts her murder remained unsolved.

  The speculation in the bar at The Royal Oak kept the regulars fully occupied. Pat Duckett’s story was repeated time and again.

  ‘I’m ’aving nightmares about it, Vera. Every time I go into that dratted hall I can see her lying there. It’s all right them carting off the body, but who is it who’s left with the memories? Me. I ’ave the floor to clean and when I see them dear children sitting there calm as you please eating their dinners or doing that dancing they do with Miss Hipkin playing away on that pianna all I can think about is Miss Clark and all that blood. I think there was something in it, what was said on that poster. Otherwise why would anyone want to murder ’er? They say there’s a lot of it about.’

  ‘A lot of what about?’

  ‘You know, that funny stuff with women.’

  ‘She wasn’t a lesbian, Pat. I seed her out with a chap only a few weeks before she died. Nice young man he was.’

  ‘Did you tell the police that when they questioned you?’

  ‘Yes I did, and they found him and questioned him but he’d been away on business when it happened so that ruled him out.’

  ‘I think it’s disgusting, people like that teaching our children.’

  ‘I don’t think you should talk like that,’ Vera bridled. ‘She was nice was Miss Clark and you hadn’t a word to say against her before she was murdered, Pat, so don’t start now. She was lovely when our Rhett couldn’t settle down at school and kept running home every playtime. Lovely, she was. She soon got him sorted.’

  ‘It’s funny there should be two deaths in that school hall. First Mrs Palmer and then Miss Clark. Course, I know the circumstances were different but we never got to the bottom of Mrs Palmer killing herself, did we, Vera? And what’s more, each time it comes back to Mr Palmer, don’t it? “Mr P.” it said on that poster.’

  Jimmy joined in. ‘I can think of lots of people called Mr P. What about old Mr Pratt at Bolton’s Farm or Mr Planchard what has that cobbler’s shop in Culworth?’

  ‘It’s hardly likely to be one of them. Can’t see Mr Pratt at his age having anything to do with someone as young as Miss Clark!’

  Jimmy wiped the beer froth from his mouth before adding his bit to the conversation. ‘You never know; he was seventy-one when his Gerald was born, remember. Married a girl of thirty when he was seventy, and bob’s yer uncle – next news they had a baby.’

  ‘So they say, but was it his?’ Vera queried sagely.

  ‘Anyways, I reckons Mr Palmer knows more than he’s admitting to.’

  ‘That’s enough of that, that’s not nice, Pat. That’s casting a slur. He could have you for libel and then where would you be?’

  ‘There is one thing, the murder certainly put Stocks Day in Turnham Malpas on the map. Nobody will forget us in a hurry.’

  But a couple of weeks after Stocks Day, the village had something else entirely to gossip about.

  Chapter 13

  Several people had had their suspicions but it was Muriel who first voiced hers in public. ‘Harriet,’ she said one day when she was the only customer in the shop. ‘You know much more about these things than I do, but have you thought that Suzy Meadows, the poor dear, might be expecting another baby?’

  ‘It’s funny you should have said that, Muriel. I was thinking on those lines myself, but I hoped I was wrong.’

  ‘Poor dear girl if she is. A posthumous baby – how very sad for her.’

  ‘Well, I’m fairly sure we’re right. She’s not simply putting on weight. He died at the end of March so the very latest the baby could be born would be the end of December. But judging by the looks of her it will be earlier than that.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s a boy. It would be a comfort to her, having lost Patrick.’

  ‘I suppose it would, but a new baby costs money. I don’t see how she could afford it.’

  ‘The Lord will provide, I’m sure.’

  Peter, busy about his parish duties, having initiated more schemes than he had time to comfortably oversee, was one of the last to hear the news about Suzy. Also, Caroline had given him food for thought with her decision to resign from her pathology post.

  ‘But why, Caroline? You’ve always loved working at the hospital!’

  ‘I know, but I feel you need me at home more. Just lately you’ve looked very much like a little boy lost and have been giving me some searching looks as if you don’t know who I am any more. So I’ve decided to have some time to ourselves. I can always go back to hospital work if I get bored with housekeeping. I’ve worked all the time we’ve been married and it’s time for a while anyway that I spent more time looking after your needs. The money’s not important, with your private income as well as your stipend. So I shall be the dutiful wife sitting at your feet admiring your efforts. I might even manage to finish decorating this place, you never know.’

  ‘My darling, I don’t deserve your sacrifice.’

  ‘It isn’t a sacrifice, Peter, it’s a joy and a pleasure. I’d do anything for you if it made you happy, you know that.’

  ‘What I’ve just said is true, I don’t deserve your love. It’s absolutely true. One has to earn love like yours, and I haven’t earned it. I’ve tried to throw it away.’

  Peter stood up at this point, turned abruptly away and strode off into his study, leaving Caroline puzzled by his reaction. She’d known for some time that Peter was deeply troubled but she couldn’t discover what it was. There was definitely something he was keeping from her. She hoped it wasn’t that he was going through that period most clergymen had to confront at some time or another – that deeply disturbing time when they questioned whether their faith was real or imaginary, and doubted if they should have taken up the Church. Whatever it was, whatever his decision, she would stand by him. Nothing and nobody would separate her from him. That was, if he still wanted her. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  Michael Palmer asked Peter if he could have a private word after morning service the following Sunday.

  As soon as he had closed the vestry door, Michael dropped his bombshell.

  ‘Suzy Meadows has told me this week that she won’t be able to continue with the playgroup for much longer.’

  ‘Why ever not? She’s doing such a good job.’

  ‘For the very good reason that she is expecting a baby. In fact not just one, but two.’

  ‘Two! Oh, good Lord!’ Peter turned away and looked out of the window.

  Michael, full of his news and plans for coping with the emergency, didn’t notice the effect his words had had. Peter stood looking out onto the churchyard but seeing absolutely nothing. What he had most dreaded had come about. Dear God, not one but two. He was blinded mentally and physically. He heard Michael saying, ‘What do you think, Peter?’ and hadn’t the faintest idea what he had said. Still apparently studying the churchyard Peter said, ‘I’m sorry, Michael, I didn’t catch what you said.’

  ‘I said that the education committee had decided to confirm the appointment of the temporary teacher they sent to replace Miss Clark, and that Liz Neal has said she would like to take charge of the playgroup while Suzy has the twins. Do you think that will be satisfactory? I told Liz I would have to consult you first before I could confirm it, but I was sure you would agree.’

  ‘Yes, of course I agree. You decide what is best. We’re lucky to have people who can step in.’

  ‘The other thing is that I am thinking of giving in my notice. Toria Clark dying like she did has set a lot of rumours going and I feel it’s time I should move on. I always intended to move after a few years but somehow Turnham Malpas has the effect of getting you in its clutches and you can’t get away. However, I’ve decided that now is the time. I’ll go at the end of the school year in July. Mind you, I’ve said this several times before and then changed my mind.’

  Peter turned to loo
k at him. ‘I shall be sorry to see you go but we all have to move on some time. In fact, I shall be very sorry to see you go. Thank you for coming to tell me.’

  Michael left, puzzled by the rector’s awkwardness. Peter went back into the church and knelt in torment in the seat Caroline always occupied. He found her prayer book, opened it and read on the flyleaf the words ‘To my dearest Caroline on our wedding day. Together from this day unto eternity. Peter.’

  Caroline had his dinner ready and when he didn’t come she eventually set off to find him. And there he was, knelt in prayer where she usually sat. He had her own prayerbook in his hand. She sat beside him and took his hand in silence, not wishing to interrupt. He gripped her hand until it hurt. When she tried to release his grip he turned towards her, laid his head on her knee, put his arms around her and wept.

  ‘My dear, dear Peter, what on earth is the matter? My darling, for heaven’s sake tell me.’ She stroked his hair as she would have stroked the hair of a child of hers. ‘Whatever is the matter? There isn’t anything that you can’t tell me, you know.’

  Caroline waited patiently for Peter to speak. His voice came out jerkily.

  ‘Suzy Meadows is having a baby.’

  ‘I know.’

  There was a long pause before Peter spoke. ‘How long have you known? Did she tell you?’

  ‘No. I saw her at the ante-natal clinic several weeks ago.’

  ‘So you don’t know anything really?’

  ‘I would have thought that giving birth to a baby after your husband has died was sufficient to be going on with. What else is there to know?’

  ‘Caroline, you remember you said the other day that you thought I seemed strange and needed looking after? I don’t need looking after, I need hanging.’