Appointed to Die (33 page)

‘Well,' said David, ‘they can't be discounted entirely. After all, if they thought he'd betrayed them to the Dean . . .'

‘So what is your next step?' Pat asked again.

‘I'm going this afternoon to pay a call on Miss Marsden.'

Pat looked at him sharply. ‘You suspect Evelyn?'

‘I didn't say that.' David raised his eyebrows. ‘But it was
her
mouse poison, after all. And she
did
buy a box of Turkish Delight. So I suppose that, to be completely honest, I'd have to put her at the top of my list.'

‘But she had no motive,' protested Pat. ‘She was very fond of Arthur.'

‘I shall go and pay a call on her,' David repeated.

‘Alone?' queried Lucy.

‘Yes, alone. I think that would be best, don't you? And in the meantime perhaps you can ring Todd – didn't you say that he knew something?'

Evelyn greeted David with every evidence of welcoming his visit, producing her silver teapot and a plate of home-made biscuits. But though she was polite, she seemed somewhat abstracted. She took a few sips of her tea, put the cup down, and picked up a skein of black wool. Within a moment her fingers were flying furiously, the needles clicking, though her eyes stayed fixed on David.

His fund of small talk nearly exhausted, and not yet ready to tackle the questions he'd really come to ask, David looked out of the window. ‘You have quite a nice view here.'

‘Yes, a wonderful view of the cathedral,' Evelyn agreed. The fingers never faltered as she gazed down into the Close. ‘I love having it just outside my window, you know. Most people think of it as just a building, but to those of us who have lived with it for years, it's so much more than that. It's more like a person in some ways, with different moods as the seasons change, in different weather, and at different times of the day. The way the light strikes the east end on a summer's morning – why, it's just magical. And on a foggy winter day, when you can scarcely see it . . .' She sighed. ‘It's a marvellous place to live.' But Evelyn Marsden's eyes were not on the cathedral, David noted; she was, instead, watching the movements of a tall figure who was striding purposefully through the Close, past her house and into the entrance to the Deanery: Pat, he recognised with a small shock. But before he'd had time to assimilate Pat's unexpected presence, he was struck with a singular realisation.

‘From here you can see who comes and goes at the Deanery,' he blurted out.

‘Yes.'

It was manifestly evident to David that she spent much of her time doing just that. There wasn't time to frame his next question carefully; he had to know the answer. ‘On Monday night – you were sitting here at the window?'

‘Yes.' She registered no curiosity at the question, just a small flicker of some emotion at the mention of Monday night.

‘Looking out?'

‘I was knitting, as I usually do in the evenings.' She paused. ‘Yes, I suppose you might say that I was looking out. Not spying, mind you,' she added, defensively. ‘I'm not nosy. I'm just interested in what goes on in the Close.'

‘And did anyone go to the Deanery?'

Again there was a flicker of emotion in her eyes. ‘Arthur Brydges-ffrench.' She swallowed hard.

David leaned forward, unable to suppress the urgency he felt. ‘
Only
Arthur Brydges-ffrench?'

‘Yes, just Arthur. And the Dean, of course. He went out for a time in the late afternoon – I supposed he was going to Evensong.'

‘No one else? Think carefully, Miss Marsden. It could be very important.'

But she had no need to think carefully. She remembered very well; Monday night was not something she was likely to forget. ‘There was no one else,' she affirmed. ‘I was at the window all afternoon and all evening, until . . . well, until the ambulance came.' Again she swallowed visibly, then went on, ‘Todd . . . well, he wasn't here, so there was no need for me to fix a meal. And I . . . well, I wasn't really hungry, so I just stayed here all evening knitting. No one but Arthur went to the Deanery that evening. I would swear to that. If someone had, I would have seen.'

With difficulty, David controlled his excitement: it had suddenly become a locked-room mystery. Unless, he thought. Unless Miss Marsden had done it. ‘Would you mind if I asked you one or two other questions?'

She had regained her composure. ‘Not at all.' The fingers continued to fly at a remarkable speed.

‘You bought a box of Turkish Delight on Saturday morning?'

Evelyn didn't seem to find the question odd; perhaps the police had already covered this ground. ‘That is correct. I always try . . . tried . . . to have a box on hand, just in case Arthur were to come by. He was here for supper on Friday night, and finished the last of the box that I had, so on Saturday I bought a new one.'

That was straightforward enough, thought David, and a plausible story as well.
Had
the police asked her? To probe about that might arouse her suspicions of his motives for asking, so he contented himself with another question; this one was fairly delicate. ‘The mouse poison that was in your garden shed. Had it been there a long while?'

She pressed her lips together, stretching them over her prominent teeth. ‘Yes.'

‘When was the last time you . . . noticed it?'

‘Oh, not for some months. I'd had a few mice in my kitchen last winter, or perhaps it was the winter before.'

‘Would it have been possible for someone else to get into your garden shed?'

‘Quite a simple matter. It wasn't locked, nor was the gate into the garden.'

He noted that the garden gate was not visible from her window, which meant that at any time on the previous day, while Evelyn was watching the entrance to the Deanery, someone could have entered her garden shed unobserved. David decided that he had learned enough; he stretched out his teacup with a conscious smile. ‘Could I trouble you for another cup?'

‘Yes, of course, Mr Middleton-Brown.' She dropped the knitting into her lap and reached for the teapot. ‘Would you mind if I asked
you
a question?'

‘No, not at all.'

‘What will happen to the Dean? If he's found guilty of murder, that is?'

David was taken slightly aback. ‘Why, he'll go to prison for a very long time.'

‘Good.' He caught a glint of satisfaction in her eyes before she lowered them quickly to her knitting. ‘Stuart Latimer is
not
a nice man, Mr Middleton-Brown,' she added with some heat.

CHAPTER 33

    
Yea, with thine eyes shalt thou behold: and see the reward of the ungodly.

Psalm 91.8

Lucy was alone in the kitchen when David returned; he found her concocting a sweet for their evening meal. ‘I thought I might as well make myself useful while Pat was out,' she explained. ‘Did you discover anything interesting?'

‘Oh, yes.' He kissed her as Cain and Abel padded over to greet him, swinging their tails; he leaned down and gave them each a pat. ‘Can I help?'

‘You could grate some lemon rind while you tell me what you've found out.'

‘Well,' he began, picking up a lemon, ‘what she told me about the mouse poison was pretty much the same as you learned from Inspector Drewitt – basically, that anyone could have got into her garden shed at just about any time, including yesterday.'

‘And she wouldn't have seen them?'

‘Well, no. That's just the point, in fact.' In his excitement, he tossed the lemon into the air and caught it again. ‘You see, Miss Marsden spent all afternoon and all evening at her window, knitting and spying on the Deanery. She would quibble at the word, of course – she claims that she's not nosy, just interested – but the fact is that if she's telling the truth, no one but Arthur Brydges-ffrench went to the Deanery in all that time.'

‘So your theory that someone else got into the Deanery somehow and swapped the Turkish Delight . . .'

‘Seems to be a nonstarter,' he admitted.

‘You said “
if
she's telling the truth”,' Lucy observed. ‘What did you mean by that?'

‘Don't you see, love? Evelyn Marsden might have done it herself!
She
might have been the one who popped into the Deanery, while the Dean was at Evensong. Don't they always say that poison is a woman's weapon?'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘If only I could see a motive. I can't really think why she would want to murder Arthur Brydges-ffrench. The Dean, yes – she seems to share everyone else's hatred of the Dean. But not Arthur Brydges-ffrench.'

‘There might be a motive,' Lucy said, reluctantly.

David dropped the lemon. ‘What? What have you found out?'

‘Well, I finally reached Todd on the phone. And he told me something . . . it's probably nothing,' she demurred. ‘He didn't want to tell me – he insisted that it had nothing to do with what happened. And he's probably right. But still . . .'

‘Tell me!' David demanded.

‘He said that they'd had a . . . well, he called it a scene. Evelyn Marsden and Arthur Brydges-ffrench. On the Monday morning. Todd happened to overhear it, and that's why he left Malbury, and was too embarrassed to return and face Miss Marsden.'

‘But what happened?'

‘She came to tell him that the Dean had been to see her, to inform her that her rent was being raised to an amount that she had no hope of being able to pay. So in effect she was being thrown out of her house.'

David whistled soundlessly. ‘Good Lord. No wonder she hates the Dean.'

‘Well, exactly.'

‘But Arthur Brydges-ffrench? What happened between them?'

‘Apparently she came to him for help. She thought he might be able to do something to block the rent increase, in Chapter. He said that he'd already done everything that he could.' Lucy hesitated, frowning. ‘Then she . . . well, Todd said that she more or less proposed to Canon Brydges-ffrench. Said that she'd always thought there was an understanding between them that they'd marry after his mother was gone.'

‘And what happened?' he asked, afraid that he knew the answer.

‘He turned her down flat – apologised for anything he'd done to mislead her, but said that it was out of the question.'

David was surprised at his instinctive feeling of empathy for the beleaguered old man. ‘Well, of course it would be impossible. He wasn't really . . . the marrying kind, was he?'

Lucy, for her part, was indignant on behalf of the rejected woman. ‘Oh, honestly, David! I don't see why not! They might have provided some companionship for each other, and it would have solved her housing problem. It really wouldn't have hurt him to say yes.'

He raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. ‘I can't believe my ears – Lucy Kingsley actually arguing in favour of marriage? There must be some mistake.'

‘I'm not talking about us.' She glared at him. ‘But don't you see? The poor woman – to be rejected like that. It must have wounded her terribly.'

David clutched at his heart melodramatically, rolling his eyes. ‘Just like you wound me to the quick, every time you reject my honourable proposals of marriage.'

The sight was so comical that Lucy couldn't help giggling, dissipating her irritation. ‘It's hardly a comparable situation, David darling!'

He sat down at the table, suddenly serious. ‘But you're right, of course. About the motive. The woman scorned – it's one of the oldest motives in the book, isn't it? Anger at being spurned, revenge for the hurt to her pride, or however you want to explain it. I'm afraid this really does make Evelyn Marsden a viable suspect.'

‘Surely not,' Lucy protested.

Absent-mindedly David picked up the lemon and tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other as he thought it through. ‘The woman scorned,' he repeated. ‘She decides to murder the man who rejected her, and at the same time to get her revenge on the other man whom she has reason to hate, by setting him up to take the blame. It could have happened that way, Lucy! She could have planned it so that it would look as if the Dean was the only one who could have done it.'

‘Do you really think she's that calculating?'

‘After seeing her today . . . I don't know, Lucy. It doesn't seem that hard to believe. She seemed so . . . well, so cold. Emotionless. She just sat there knitting away – like Madame Defarge, it seemed to me at the time. And it's a short step from picturing her beside the guillotine to being able to imagine her poisoning the man who humiliated her. As I said, poison is a woman's weapon. And it was her mouse poison, remember.'

Lucy sighed. ‘It's possible, I suppose, but you haven't convinced me. I'd like to talk to her myself – perhaps there's something you've missed.'

‘Be my guest,' he invited. ‘I'd be glad to have your opinion. And people do tend to talk to you – you might find out something she didn't tell me.'

‘I'll talk to her tomorrow,' Lucy decided. There were noises from the front of the house and the dogs, who had been sleeping in the corner, lumbered to their feet, wagging their tails in anticipation. She added quickly, ‘Promise me that you won't say anything about this to Pat, though. It would upset her to think that you really suspected Evelyn. Let me talk to Evelyn first.'

‘All right,' he agreed as Pat, laden down with several carrier bags, pushed open the kitchen door.

‘You've been to the Deanery.' David didn't mean it to sound accusing, but realised as he spoke that it had rather come out that way.

‘Yes,' said Pat mildly, raising her eyebrows at his tone. ‘Among other things, like shopping. I went to see Anne Latimer, to see if there was any way I could be of help.'