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

  A mixture of denial and anger blossomed in her chest at her own stupidity. Ben had tried to warn her. She had refused to listen because Ben was some sort of electrical disturbance to her; his proximity breached her composure and scrambled her wits. She had been feeling vulnerable and she had allowed herself to be deluded, to fall for illusory charm and a gift for apparent honesty. In her self-indulgence she had blamed Ben for interfering with her personal life, when his concerns had been professional and valid. Now Jim’s secrets had exposed her.

  Jim had been a user.

  Had been. Those scars were old and well-healed. He’d got off the stuff.

  Do you believe in redemption? The voice rose unbidden, as it always did.

  Of course she did. But she wasn’t a fool.

  Sometimes love demands you risk being a fool.

  From what Rick, the landlord, had just told her, Jim could just as well have been protecting the teenagers, warning Keepie off.

  The choir had been working together through the summer. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that the trio might have invited their choirmaster to a pub by the river on a hot summer’s day.

  But then, why hadn’t Jim been open about his relationship with them? She recalled the cynical look on his face the day of the cathedral interviews when he had thought she had deliberately concealed her relationship with the police from him: “I appreciate the value of discretion.”

  That night she found it hard to sleep. She kept seeing Jim in vignette, his head on his arms, in the choir loft. She felt again his stillness.

  “I am a sinner; I am no saint.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  She shifted about in her big bed, pummelling the pillows in futile efforts to find a comfortable position. The clock passed midnight, and then one o’clock. She awoke from a fitful doze. There had been a sharp sound. It was near – almost in the room. She sat up, her heart beating rapidly.

  A scatter of hard substance hit the windowpane. A human voice hallooed from down below. She got out of bed and pulled on her thick cord dressing gown, slipping moccasins on her feet. The outer coverings made her feel a little more defended. In an afterthought, she picked up her phone from the nightstand and put it in the pocket of the dressing down. She opened the window and peered out.

  There was a figure down below. A man – a drunken man. He lifted his head toward her then staggered, as if the movement had made his head swim. A vagrant. She called down to him to go and sleep it off.

  “Vicar?” She recognized the voice. She leaned out to get a better look. Adam Bagshaw was leaning against her wall looking up at her, his head tilted to one side.

  “What time do you call this?” she asked irritably. He wrinkled his forehead and looked about him as if there might be a clock in the bushes.

  “Dunno.”

  “I’ll come down. Go round to the kitchen door – that way…” she instructed, making an exaggerated gesture around the house toward the back garden. She didn’t want him traipsing mud and slush over the carpets. If Ben could see her now, he’d be screaming, she thought. She touched the phone. If anything happened, she didn’t think she’d have much trouble locking a door and dialling 999.

  On second thoughts, she brought up Ben’s number on-screen, her finger poised over the call button. On Saturday night, she’d probably get a quicker response from him.

  She found Bagshaw sitting half on her flower bed, humming. The tune was familiar – “Away in a Manger”.

  Any tension went out of her and she let the phone drop into her pocket. “Come on,” she said, inserting an arm under his and heaving. “Ups-a-daisy, I think you need some coffee.”

  “‘Away in a manger, no place for his head,’” he sang out, then stopped. “Used to like carols,” he confided. “Cheery.” He looked at her owlishly. At this proximity his breath was toxic. “I’ve come for a visit.”

  “So I see.” She tried to sound like a disapproving schoolmistress.

  “You visited me,” he said anxiously. His cartoon-like expression made her smile.

  “That I did,” she admitted.

  She got him into the kitchen and sat him safely at the table. His skin was freezing cold. Adam heaved a gusty sigh.

  “He died a week ago. You know?” She could only look back at him, witnessing his sorrow. She nodded slowly.

  “Many a time he’s dragged me home. Luke never gave up on you. Just like his mother.” He looked into middle distance as if he saw something there. “So I got drunk.” He smiled humourlessly at himself.

  “When did you last eat?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll make you something. How about some toast?” Adam Bagshaw began a nod, then thought better of it. He held his head in his hands.

  “I don’t know what to do! Trish, she always knew what to do – what I am going to do? I can’t be without her or him. What’s the point?” His eyes were full of tears.

  She put some of Ben’s strong coffee in a mug, sweetened it liberally and placed it in front of him. “Drink this – it’ll warm you up.”

  She set about toasting some bread. She heard rustling, and turned around to see Adam fumbling in his coat. It took her a moment to realize that he was looking for something. After a couple of tries he pulled out a piece of paper. It slipped from his grasp and floated to the floor between them. She bent down and picked it up.

  “Read it,” he said. “I’m homeless. No place for his head,” he sang mournfully. “I miss her. I miss him. I hate Christmas.”

  The header read Whittier, Panner and Trusk Solicitors. The letter was short but to the point. It invited Mr Bagshaw to an appointment to discuss the winding up of the trust fund set up for the benefit of Trisha and Lucas Bagshaw and alternative arrangements for paying the mortgage at 5, Benson’s Close, The Hollies. She looked up and met Adam’s eyes.

  “Can’t pay the mortgage. Don’t have a job,” he explained. “Trish, she did all that. She said I would lose my own head if it wasn’t tied on. She did,” he waved a clumsy arm and hit the tabletop, “all that.”

  Faith brought him a piece of buttered toast, sitting down to watch him eat.

  “There was a trust fund paying the bills?”

  “And some,” Adam replied, with his mouth full.

  So that was where the money came from; not drugs or crime…

  Adam had stopped eating. He stared at the slice of toast, his hands resting on the table.

  “I loved the boy. I loved them both. I should be homeless. I was never worth anything – they just thought I was. And now they’re gone.” He wasn’t crying any more. He just looked at her with such empty despair it brought tears to her own eyes. She leaned toward him.

  “You are made in God’s image,” she said passionately. “You are not worthless! You loved them, and Trisha and Lucas loved you; and God loves them and you too. There is hope and I will help you find it.” She blinked away the tears and sat back. “But first, you need to eat.”

  He did what she told him, messily.

  As she washed his plate in the sink, Adam rambled on about how he loved his lost family. Despite her wish to be a kind ear, sleeplessness kicked in; she began to tune in and out.

  “I knew it upset him,” Adam was saying. “Perhaps I could have done something more – but I couldn’t, you know?” She put down the tea towel, focusing her wits.

  “Why couldn’t you, if Lucas was upset?” What were they talking about, precisely?

  “I promised her,” he said solemnly.

  “Trisha?”

  He stared at her, his eyes wide and sincere. “She made me promise I would never tell.”

  About what? The trust fund had been set up by someone with money who cared about Trisha and her son but was keen to remain anonymous. The biggest missing component in this scenario was Lucas’s father. Faith made a guess.

  “About Lucas’s father, the source of the trust fund?”

  Adam looked surprised that she had to say it out loud, as
if she should know that already. “I kept my promise to Trish,” he said.

  Her sleep-starved brain tried to review what Adam had said in the last hour. It sounded as if Lucas had discovered something that led him toward the identity of his father.

  “Did Lucas know who his father was?”

  Adam frowned as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “No.”

  “But he found something out before he died?” Adam nodded slowly. “When?”

  “Sometime during the summer, I think. He started asking more questions.”

  “And you know who Lucas’s father is?” Adam blinked. He yawned a tremendous yawn. His eyes were unfocused. “Do you?” she insisted, but she was no longer sure he heard her. With a soft grunt, Adam’s head dropped onto his folded arms on the table. He started to snore.

  He was too big for her to move. She fetched a duvet and wrapped it round him. She left a glass of water and a bucket beside him in case of emergencies, and left him sleeping against her kitchen table. She needed to get some sleep herself. She had to be ready for the Sunday services in less than three hours.

  When she woke again it was barely light. Outside promised a day of fog and ice. She had made it to the third Sunday in Advent – sermons on love and readings on John the Baptist. She came down to the kitchen. Adam had gone, leaving the duvet neatly piled on the chair he had occupied. The Beast, her visiting cat, had ensconced himself in its soft centre. Adam must have assumed he was hers and let the creature wander in.

  “I am not running a B&B here,” she scolded him severely. “This is a vicarage and I have to conduct services.” The Beast didn’t take her seriously. He watched her fetch food and his bowl from the cupboard. She rubbed his head as she passed. It was nice to have his company. Lack of sleep had sapped her energy and powers of speculation. She found her sermon notes, donned her cassock and set out down the path to her church.

  It felt as if daylight never turned on properly that day. The fog refused to move. After lunch, her services done, she felt too restless to stay still; but if she walked about the village, people would talk to her, and she wanted time to think. She got in the car and drove.

  Lucas’s absent father had been contributing to his upkeep all these years. Her mind roamed around the dramatis personae of this case. Was he local? It seemed likely, in so far as Trisha Bagshaw had been a local woman who had lived here all her life. The insistence on anonymity suggested a married man; Trisha’s swearing Adam to secrecy suggested she cared for Lucas’s father; and the trust fund suggested he was a man of means – sufficient means to support two families and disguise the fact. But speculation could take her no further.

  The fog got denser down by the river. Fortunately, not many people ventured out on these country lanes on a cold, dark Sunday afternoon. She drove slowly. The fog wrapped itself around, cosseting her in the private world of her car. It felt peaceful. She drew up at the old wooden bridge where Lucas had met his end.

  Something just off the side of the road caught her attention – a dead animal, she thought at first; for an irrational second she thought it might even be the Beast.

  She got out of the car. She heard only matt silence, and water dripping off leaves, flowing in the river below. The fog had closed in with the failing light. She felt uneasy. It was isolated here.

  She approached slowly. Misty trails drifted over the walkway, resolving into a dense bank of fog sealing off the sight of the river and the world beyond it. The tarred surface flexed and cracked under her boots as she walked out to the middle of the bridge. Not roadkill, she saw as she moved closer. A bunch of flowers. A bouquet wrapped in plain white paper. Twisted willow radiated in a frame around paper-white narcissus, pussy willow and sprigs of purple heather and, at the centre, like a bleeding heart, an open flower of red amaryllis a handspan wide. A card rested amid the stalks. She leaned over, being careful not to touch or disturb anything. The message was short and written in block capitals.

  SORRY I WAS NEVER THERE FOR YOU.

  She flipped on the lights. Her church welcomed her with its peaceful familiarity and a lingering smell of the coffee on offer after morning service. Fred had kindly returned the box of Spicer decorations to the loft. She was going to take advantage of the Sunday afternoon lull to check out the pageant costumes.

  Sorry I was never there for you.

  The words were such that almost anyone could utter them at some point in their lives. But in the context of Lucas Bagshaw’s death, what did they mean? Faith’s first thought had been Anna Hope, the unrequited crush who, perhaps, in keeping her distance, hadn’t been the shoulder to cry on that Lucas needed. But never was such a strong word; so weighty. She could imagine Anna writing “Sorry I wasn’t there for you”, but “never” didn’t quite make sense. And hadn’t Anna insisted that there were no romantic feelings on either side?

  She climbed the ladder into the loft and turned on the light. The afternoon was so dark, the bulb seemed to burn brighter than before. She crawled toward the tobacco-yellow trunk. A large board rested against the lid, wedging it shut. She tugged at it, cramped in the confined space. It was heavy and she could feel her cheeks flushing with the effort. All at once, it came free, jamming a sharp edge into the flesh of her thigh. Ouch! She subdued the childish temptation to fling the board over the edge and resign it to the dump. She tilted the surface to the light, ruefully rubbing her bruised leg.

  She opened the trunk. Her fingers touched the heavy weave of robes and cloaks. It was too cramped up there and hardly any light penetrated the gloom. She found the trunk too heavy for her to move by herself, so she threw the costumes down to the foot of the ladder – robes for the three Wise Men, followed by two turbans and a Persian fez, then Mary’s blue gown and headdress, a couple of cloaks… But there didn’t seem to be anything for Joseph. She heard footsteps below.

  “Hi!” She leaned over the ledge. Ben stood looking up at her, his arms full of costumes. “Having a clear-out?”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She turned off the light and climbed down. He waited rather close to the foot of the ladder. She wondered if he intended to step back and give her space. He grinned at her over his armful of fabric.

  “Only passing. I’ve just been to the attack site.”

  “You have?” She was startled into openness. “Me too. Did you see the flowers?” He quickly disguised his surprise, and his eyes crinkled in acknowledgment of her enthusiasm.

  “They’re bagged up in the car.”

  His voice contained a hint of challenge, but in this case, she knew he really had no other option.

  “I didn’t know the site was common knowledge.”

  “If the local vicar knows, I guess everyone does,” said Ben.

  She felt a flush of outrage. “I certainly didn’t tell anyone!”

  “Relax,” said Ben, grinning. “A local pap showed up on Friday evening. We shooed him away, but it was on the local radio an hour later.”

  Faith’s cheeks cooled, and she cursed herself for falling prey to his teasing. Ben seemed to sense her shame and offered a neutral question. “Don’t suppose you saw who left them?”

  She took the costumes from him, laying them out one by one over the back of a nearby pew, so she could sort through them. “No, but I have my theories.”

  “The father?”

  “Possibly. Or Adam.”

  Though it hardly rang true for Adam, either. She couldn’t imagine him holding it together long enough to carry out such a gesture.

  Maybe she had miscounted. Joseph had to have a robe somewhere.

  Ben’s mouth turned down in a sceptical frown. “What are these things?” He picked up a purple turban shaped like a giant onion with blue inserts and silver trim.

  “Pageant costumes. Adam paid me a visit last night. He was very drunk – I thought he was a vagrant. He woke me up.”

  “What?” Ben’s bark made her start. “Do you get many vagrants calling in the middle of the night?” he asked.


  “Vicarages attract them,” she said soothingly. “Especially around Christmas. It’s the reputation for charity.”

  “You must have an alarm?” His frown had deepened.

  “Yes, but I don’t use it. You see, I sort of have a cat…”

  Ben rested his palm against his forehead. “Fay, come on,” he said. “You know better than that.”

  She shrugged, deliberately casual. “They’re just hungry for food and human company.”

  Ben’s jaw set stubbornly. He would come back to the alarm system, she was sure, but right now he decided to return to the case in hand.

  “What did Bagshaw want?”

  “He was grieving – the first week anniversary of Lucas’s death. And he had some bad news.” She took a breath. This was important news. It could alter the course of the case. “Apparently Trish and Lucas benefited from a trust fund that paid the mortgage and more on that house in The Hollies. Now they are dead, the trust is to be wound up and Adam is likely to be homeless.”

  She had to admit to a flicker of disappointment. Ben didn’t seem surprised. He was just watching her with his usual acuity, as if aware of every breath and eyelash. “You knew about the trust fund,” she said.

  “I only found out a few hours ago,” he gave her the consolation prize.

  “Do you know who’s behind it? I am presuming it’s from the absent father?”

  “Best guess – but he’s keen not to be identified. Legal are negotiating their way through various roadblocks. We haven’t identified who it is yet, but we will. Meanwhile, we know the money was purely for the benefit of Trish and Lucas and ends with their deaths.”

  “So it was clearly not in Adam’s interests to do away with Lucas,” she pointed out, glad for the opportunity to emphasize Adam Bagshaw’s status as a victim, not a suspect.

  “If he knew about the trust.” Ben never gave in without a fight. She held his gaze.