The Advent of Murder (A Faith Morgan Mystery) Read online

  “When was this?”

  “June – early June, I think.” Faith paused. June. There was something connected with this case, another reference to June – what was it? She almost caught the tail end of something and then it slipped away.

  “Anything else?” Ben prompted.

  “Well, I suppose there was the fight in the chancel this week – Vernon and another member of the choir got into it because the other lad accused V of knocking Lucas off over rivalry for Anna’s affections. I think that really is nothing – just a sign of tension…”

  “Tension can arise from guilt,” Ben began, then his expression shifted and he leaned a fraction toward her, examining her face. “So when did your choirmaster tell you this?”

  She overlooked the contempt in his voice. “On Wednesday afternoon, when he came to check the layout of the church,” she answered. They could be grown-ups about this.

  “Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening… You two are being very social.” Apparently only one of them in the car was a grown-up. “Don’t be silly!” she snapped.

  “You planning to see him again?” He’s interrogating me like a suspect, she thought.

  “Jim Postlethwaite is bringing his choir to sing at Midnight Mass at my church. Of course I am going to see him again!” She closed her eyes briefly and tried for reason. “The engagement was fixed long before Lucas Bagshaw’s body turned up and you got this case.”

  “Is there something between you?” He remained tight-lipped.

  In the confines of the car, she remembered the brief kiss the day before. “That’s none of your business.”

  He swung his head away from her. She imagined his expression as he glared out of the fogged side window.

  “So you’re not going to stay clear…”

  She gazed at him nonplussed. How had they flipped from discussing the case in the old familiar way, to this? It was ridiculous.

  Ben leaned over her and opened the passenger door. He picked her half-finished plastic cup of coffee from where she’d balanced it on the dashboard and handed it to her. “You can take that with you,” he dismissed her. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  She spent Saturday morning at her desk. By eleven o’clock, Sunday’s sermon was done. She went into the kitchen and made herself some tea, thinking that she really ought to get a head start on another of her Christmas sermons, but her mind was in turmoil. She pressed the tea bag against the inside of the mug with a teaspoon. This was all Ben’s fault. Why did he have to keep trampling through her life? She’d run out of milk, and crossed the hall and opened the front door. At least the milkman had been. It was one thing she and Pat had in common – supporting the local dairy farm, even though it was nearly twice as expensive as buying from the supermarket.

  She’d had another delivery too. A small square cardboard box stood beside her pint of skimmed milk, with a note attached written in Fred’s round hand. Faith remembered her churchwarden had promised to drop off the orders of service – good old Fred; as good as his word. She hugged the box to her chest with one arm, clutching the milk in the other hand and shutting the door with her rear.

  She ought to be writing about the power of God’s love and instead her curiosity was leading her to poke holes in strangers’ lives, trying to satisfy her need to know what had happened to Lucas Bagshaw. She should be focusing on her vocation; on teaching the faith and caring for people who were sick or struggling. She still hadn’t had a moment to talk quietly to Pat, to find out how the churchwarden was coping with the issues of her estranged family and newly discovered nephew.

  Talking of estranged families, she still needed to get in touch with her sister. She picked up the phone and dialled Ruth’s number. Her nephew, Sean, took the call.

  “Aunt Faith! How’s the God business?”

  “I am very well, thank you, my philistine nephew. So you’re back for Christmas already?”

  “I can do my reading here as easily as at uni. Besides, Mum’s food is better.”

  “Is your mother in?”

  “No. She went into town early, Christmas shopping. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “How’s she doing?” Faith cradled the receiver between her ear and neck, freeing her hands to open the box.

  “We-ell… Has she told you about Dad?” The box was sealed with resilient brown packing tape. She picked at an edge with her fingernail.

  “What about dad?” Sean’s dad, Brian, had left Ruth when he decided to upgrade from the suburbs to a younger wife and a townhouse. Ruth had never really regained her balance and Faith found it hard to forgive Brian for it, although he remained in touch with Sean. He loved his son. The end of the tape loosened and she pulled it free with a satisfying ripping sound.

  “Susie left him.” Susie was the stepmother.

  “Really?” She stopped pulling the tape, focusing on Sean’s voice.

  “Dad’s a bit of a mess. I think he’s been crying on Mum’s shoulder.”

  Well, that was another disaster in the making. “How do you feel about that?” she asked cautiously.

  “I’m good, but I feel a bit worried about Mum. I know you have loads of stuff to do, but it’d be really cool if you could check her out at some point – just, like, when you can. She doesn’t really talk to me.”

  She ended the call feeling ashamed at her neglect. She resolved to make it a priority to get Ruth on the phone in person. She could do with more hours in the day. She took a deep breath.

  She left the box half-opened on the kitchen table while she washed her mug up and wiped down the surfaces. If she could just put a solid hour in on her next sermon then she could go into town and do some Christmas shopping. She was beginning to think she should be planning to entertain her family at the vicarage on Christmas Day.

  She sat down at the kitchen table and spread her papers out before her. Isaiah 52, verse 9:

  Break forth together into singing,

  you ruins of Jerusalem;

  for the Lord has comforted his people,

  he has redeemed Jerusalem.

  The ruins of Jerusalem – when expectations crumble, you have the opportunity to rebuild on sounder foundations… Guiltily her thoughts slipped sideways to the distance between her and Jim after the revelations of the Thursday night dinner. She wondered about the sweet kiss. She wanted to see Jim again, to talk to him, to clear the air before he brought the choir to sing at St James’s. She hated the idea that he could think she had deliberately deceived him. Idly, she opened the top flap of the box revealing sheaves of orders of service for the Midnight Mass on the 24th. She took out the top copy and checked through. No immediate typos jumped out. That was a relief.

  She turned the pamphlet over in her hands. The choirmaster should see the order of service. It would only be a small detour if she was shopping in town. And if Jim didn’t happen to be in, she could always drop it off with a note.

  She wouldn’t be making the trip for personal reasons. She had legitimate parish business.

  And besides, a little unwelcome voice said, perhaps Jim could shed more light on the dynamic between Vernon and Lucas.

  She took the short cut through the cathedral Close. As she turned out of the King’s Gate, she spotted Jim standing outside his lodgings a bit further down the street. He had been running. He wore sweat pants and a dark grey hoody, his door keys in his hand. He wasn’t alone. A shorter man, a lean man with a pointed nose and sunken cheeks, confronted him. Faith’s heart skipped a beat.

  It was Keepie.

  She took a step toward them but something stopped her. Where could Jim Postlethwaite have run across Sebastian Keep?

  You met him at the Lion’s Heart.

  When Rick Williams told her Lucas and his friends sometimes drank with an older man, she had assumed it was Adam Bagshaw, but what had the landlord actually said?

  “Oh no, not him. Another guy.”

  She dropped back into the shado
w of the King’s Gate, staring at the two men arguing in the street. She couldn’t hear their words, but Keepie’s posture was angry and Jim’s defensive. Keepie backed away, stretching out an arm pointing back at Jim. His words carried across to her hiding place, but indistinctly.

  “Don’t forget, I know all about you.”

  Jim was turned three-quarters toward her, his face clearly visible. Her phone was in her hand. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she took a picture of the pair of them and then framed Jim’s head in close-up and clicked.

  Blood buzzed in her ears. She felt cold and isolated from the street around her. What had she just done? Guiltily she dropped the phone into the depths of her bag.

  “I know all about you” – what could a man like Sebastian Keep know about Jim Postlethwaite? Jim was a stranger to Winchester; he had only arrived in the summer – hadn’t he? Then again, had he ever told her that?

  Jim had unlocked the door. He walked back into his lodgings. The door closed behind him. She didn’t know what to do.

  She had acted like a police investigator; capturing evidence of a potentially incriminating nature. She didn’t want to face the implications of that. She told herself she had acted on autopilot. She could delete the pictures from her phone.

  But her phone stayed in her bag.

  This was so silly! She should just go in and ask Jim what his connection was with Sebastian Keep. She took a couple of firm strides into the street. Except – if she asked him, she didn’t know where his answer might lead. This wasn’t just about her and her world. She was trespassing into an active murder investigation. Both Sebastian Keep and Jim Postlethwaite intersected with the life of a murder victim. The caution of her police training asserted itself. Lucas Bagshaw, who would now never make his seventeenth birthday, was the priority here – not her petty curiosity or her emotional “need to know”.

  Jim appeared in the tall window of his lodgings on the second floor, looking away from her, down the street. She hesitated. She was out in plain view. Jim turned his head and saw her. He waved and she waved back.

  “This is a surprise,” he said, as opened the door.

  “Bad timing?”

  “Well…” He looked down at his sweats with rueful charm. “I’ve just been for a run; I should have a shower.”

  “I don’t want to disturb you.”

  “No – come on in.”

  The tiny apartment was a mess. Was it only Monday when they had sat here before? It seemed an age ago. The room was not as she remembered it. Now there were clothes and a used towel draped over the anonymous, ugly geometric furniture with the Scotchgarded covers. A half-filled duffel bag protruded from behind the sofa. She looked at Jim, with the sweat on his skin, framed against the vast window. What did she really know about him? She prided herself on her estimation of character. He had seemed so controlled, with a gift for apparent honesty. Now, in that room, she felt as if she was intruding on something that was unravelling. You’re projecting, she scolded herself. She had merely called unexpectedly on a rare day off and had caught an undomesticated bachelor coming back from his run before he had time to pick up.

  “I was in town – tackling the dreaded Christmas shopping,” she heard herself chattering. “I thought I’d leave you this.” She held out two copies of the order of service. “You might like to see it before you bring the choir on the 24th.”

  “Thanks.” He took them from her. “That’s useful.”

  Her nerves were jangling. Her phone was radiating guilt like a red-hot coal from her bag.

  “How are the rehearsals going?” she asked, just to be saying something.

  “Not too bad. We’ve had a couple drop out, but the rest are in good voice.” He paused. “Have you heard how the investigation is going?”

  She felt a thump in her chest. Suddenly a kaleidoscope of fragments resolved into a pattern. In each of their encounters, the subtle pressure of interest about what she knew of the investigation… No! She pushed the suspicion away. Jim had every reason to be curious about that. Someone he knew had been killed. He had said it himself – murder was an extraordinary intrusion in “ordinary” life. It would be odd if he hadn’t shown interest. She analysed his expression. He was distracted. His eyes seemed to meet hers through glass.

  “I think they’ve got a few more pieces of the puzzle… maybe.”

  Rick Williams had implied the “older guy” had been seen drinking with the trio more than once.

  When they had first met in this room and when they had talked in the choir loft at St James’s, Jim had spoken as if he barely knew Lucas and his friends; as if they were just three faces among many; the relationship you’d expect between a choirmaster and the young members of his occasional choir. Suspicion pumped out its toxic fumes once more.

  “What do you know of Vernon Granger’s family?” she asked.

  Jim pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt impatiently. His forearms were well-muscled with prominent veins.

  “His mother, Mavis, came to a rehearsal once. V wasn’t keen to have her there. I don’t know her, but she struck me as a pushy mother and not a particularly understanding one. His father’s still around, but absent a lot – at least that’s my impression.”

  He lifted his arm and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. The inner skin of his arm just below the crook of his elbow was flecked with little white scars, like random dashes. Faith tried to keep her composure.

  He pulled down his sleeves. “I should go have a shower…”

  “And I need to tackle my shopping. I only wanted to drop off the service sheets.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So I’ll see you at Midnight Mass.”

  He bid her goodbye with little emotion.

  She was outside on the street again. She should report what she had seen to Ben, but… She needed to be honest with herself. She couldn’t trust her judgment right now. Her feelings were all mixed up. She had started this day with such different thoughts. Now she felt betrayed by that short, sweet kiss.

  She took out the phone, and looked at the photos, then pressed “Delete”.

  Are you sure you want to delete this item?

  Faith couldn’t. This was a potential part of a murder investigation. And even without the photographic evidence, she couldn’t forget what she’d seen and heard.

  She slipped the phone away.

  She did her shopping on autopilot. She put too many figs and boxes of mince pies in her trolley at the supermarket and was startled by the bill. She thought of Detective Inspector Shorter’s antagonism toward the choirmaster over the dinner table Thursday night. Ben certainly wouldn’t be inclined to give Jim the benefit of the doubt. She felt responsible for that. If there was an innocent explanation, she should find it and use the evidence to convince Ben.

  The road out of Winchester was clogged with Christmas shoppers, harried by the clock counting down to the Big Day. As soon as she could, she turned off on to the back roads. She found herself approaching the Lion’s Heart pub.

  The piles of dirty snow in the car park had resolved into mounds of hard ice. The bar door was closed but there were lights on. She pressed her face to the glass. Rick Williams stood alone behind the bar. He saw her. He wore an irritated expression as he came to open the door.

  “We’re not open until six.”

  “I know. I won’t keep you long.” Standing there, looking at him, her purpose almost failed. But she had come this far. She had to know. She got out her phone. “I was just wondering… When we talked, you said that Lucas – the boy they found down at the river – that he and his friends used to meet up here sometimes with an older man?” She flicked up the headshot of Jim. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Rick leaned over the phone in her hand, peering shortsightedly at the screen. He wore Brut aftershave – a flashback to her childhood.

  “That’s him,” he nodded. “Started coming in this summer. Now I think of it, he came in with the three of them. He’s
been in a few times since then. I think he works in town.”

  “Did they ever drink with Sebastian Keep?”

  Rick stared blankly at her as if he was trying to calculate her purpose and its implications. She kept still, holding his gaze, willing him to answer her. He backed away from her, retreating into the shelter of his pub.

  “Might have.” Her face must have fallen or he saw something that made him reconsider. “The older guy knew what Keepie was. He didn’t encourage him,” he said roughly, and closed the door on her.

  She got back into the car and sat there in the frozen car park. What did all this mean?

  Jim Postlethwaite had lied to her – or at least he had been economical with the truth. All he had said – at his rooms, when they first met, in her own church and afterwards – only suggested the normal interaction of a choirmaster with his choir. He had even emphasized his distance – “They talk to me about non-choir stuff only if and when they want to”… But he had got involved to the extent of socializing with choir members; and not just any members, but the crucial three. Jim had been seen drinking with Lucas and V and the Dot, and not in some pub across from the cathedral but at the Lion’s Heart, way out of town.

  Jim Postlethwaite and a drug dealer?

  “Don’t forget, I know all about you.”

  What could Keepie know about Jim? Something that had happened at the Lion’s Heart pub?

  She could imagine where Ben’s line of reasoning would lead him. Jim was acquainted with Sebastian Keep, a known local drug dealer and he, Jim, was running a youth choir with vulnerable kids. Talk about being in a prime position to distribute. Put that together with the white flecks on Jim’s arms. She knew needle scars when she saw them. Jim had been a heroin user. At the very least, he must have lied on his application form.

  A group of memories coalesced. Jim’s sudden coldness at the cathedral interviews when he had observed her familiarity with Ben and Peter. His distance after she had led him into that Thursday night dinner: “We seem to be surrounded by law enforcement.”