The Judgement of Strangers Read online

  I remembered Joanna. I swung round. She was still staring at the obscenity in the porch. I put my arm over her shoulder and she pushed her head into my chest. She was shaking. I tightened my grip around her. She was trying to say something.

  ‘What?’

  She lifted her head and said, ‘Why would someone do a thing like that?’

  She pushed her head into my chest again. Absently, I lowered my head to smell her hair. Dear God, I even felt, on some level, a stirring of sexual excitement. It was too long since Vanessa and I had made love.

  Joanna’s question remained unanswered, and terrible in its implications. Why would anyone want to slaughter Lord Peter and display his body at the door of my church?

  17

  It seemed to me that the younger of the two policemen was looking at Vanessa with an interest that went some way beyond the purely professional. His name was Franklyn. He was a thin, sallow-skinned constable with thick eyebrows; he seemed barely old enough to have left school. I guessed that Vanessa was aware of his gaze because she turned slightly in her chair and crossed her legs, impeding his view.

  ‘So,’ Sergeant Clough said wearily to Audrey. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.’

  We were in the living room amid the debris of our little party. The two policemen had arrived in their patrol car forty-five minutes after Vanessa had first dialled 999. Sergeant Clough had a tanned, knobbly skull which made me think of an unwashed potato. He asked most of the questions while Franklyn took notes. Audrey was sitting opposite Clough in the big armchair by the fireplace, hunched like a frightened child over her second glass of brandy. Her face was sheet-white and her hair was still awry; she had resisted Vanessa’s suggestion that she have a rest upstairs.

  ‘The last time you saw your cat was yesterday evening?’ the sergeant went on.

  Audrey’s face crumpled. ‘I do try to keep him in at night, but it’s so difficult, especially in summer.’

  Clough cleared his throat. ‘No need to blame yourself, miss. Now, when exactly did you last see him?’

  ‘He had his supper, a nice bit of fish, about seven-thirty. I saw him dozing in the chair at about half past eight. He must have slipped out of the kitchen window downstairs. It could have been any time after then. You could ask Mr and Mrs Malik, of course, and see if they –’

  ‘Yes, Miss Oliphant, and you realized he was missing this morning, when he didn’t come back for breakfast?’

  ‘I wasn’t worried at first, or not that worried. He often went off on his own. He was such an adventurous cat. It was such a worry because of the road. There’s always a lot of cars on it, and vans and lorries, even at night. I started looking seriously for him at about five o’clock. I went all over the village, calling him. I was just about to come over to the Vicarage – Mr and Mrs Byfield had asked me over – when I had a brainwave. The bus shelter.’

  She looked triumphantly at the sergeant, who stared back.

  ‘I should have thought of it at once,’ she went on. ‘Don’t you see? It’s obvious. They blamed me for calling out the police the other week.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The vandals. They even threw that stone through my window. I phoned the police station and told you all about it. Surely you remember?’

  Clough said, ‘I think one of my colleagues handled the case. So you looked in the bus shelter, because the kids go there, and you thought they might have taken your cat out of revenge. Is that it?’

  ‘The bus shelter was empty,’ Audrey said, ignoring his question. ‘They were all guzzling beer in the pub. And on the floor, under the bench, I found that.’ With a dramatic gesture, she pointed at the thin, green leather strap on the coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘Proof positive, Sergeant.’

  Franklyn scribbled briefly in his notebook and glanced at Vanessa. Clough scratched his left kneecap.

  ‘How could they?’ Audrey burst out. ‘Lord Peter never harmed a soul.’

  Clough blinked. ‘Who, miss?’

  ‘My cat,’ she snapped. A flush rose in her cheeks. ‘It makes me feel quite ill.’

  Vanessa leant forward and put her hand on the arm of Audrey’s chair. ‘He may have died in a road accident. Perhaps someone found the body.’

  ‘The postmortem will tell us,’ Audrey said. ‘I hope that’s what happened. He wouldn’t have felt as much pain. And he wouldn’t have been so upset – he always trusted people, you see.’ She stared at Clough. ‘How soon will you hold the postmortem?’

  ‘Ah – we don’t usually hold postmortems on animals, Miss Oliphant. I tell you what, though. We’ll take him down for you. Then you can bury him, nice and decent – in your back garden, perhaps.’

  ‘But I want to find out how he died.’

  The sergeant gently rubbed a finger over his knee, as if caressing an itch. ‘I suppose you could ask a vet to have a look at him.’

  ‘But it’s evidence, Sergeant. It may well be important to your investigation to know how Lord Peter died.’

  ‘I think if you want a postmortem, miss, a vet is your best bet.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Look, if we’re going to get him down, I suggest we do it now, rather than later. I mean, anyone might see him. Could give some old lady a nasty shock, eh?’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Mr Byfield – would you happen to have a cardboard box or something of that sort we could use?’

  I went into the kitchen. Rosemary was sitting at the table eating a strawberry yoghurt and apparently absorbed in Sartre’s Nausea, in a French edition. She looked up as I came in.

  ‘How’s it going in there?’

  ‘Audrey’s still in quite a state. Understandably enough. They want a cardboard box to put the cat in.’

  Rosemary pushed back her chair. ‘There are some in the garage.’

  She went through the utility room and opened the connecting door to the garage. As she was rummaging in there, Vanessa came into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on. We could all do with a cup of tea.’

  ‘Have you got something we could wrap the body in?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To use as a shroud.’

  Vanessa blinked. ‘There’s an old pillow case under the sink. I was going to cut it up for dusters.’ She filled the kettle and plugged it in. ‘You make it sound as if Lord Peter’s going to have a state funeral.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘Is there a section in the Prayer Book to meet the contingency? “The Order for the Burial of Murdered Pets”?’

  I put my arm round her. She leant against me, only to pull sharply away when Rosemary returned with a box that had once contained tins of cocoa.

  ‘The coffin,’ Rosemary announced.

  I found the pillow case under the sink and took it and the box into the sitting room. Audrey and the two policemen seemed not to have moved since I left.

  Clough stood up quickly. ‘Right. We’ll go and sort it out. Frankie, you can carry the box.’

  Franklyn scrambled up and took the box and pillow case from me.

  Clough turned to Audrey. ‘I’d be inclined to go home now, if I were you. Maybe Mrs Byfield will take you over.’

  ‘I can’t do that. Not until Lord Peter –’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do now. The best thing is to go home, have a nice sweet cup of tea, get into bed and have a nice sleep. Have you got any sleeping tablets or something like that?’

  Audrey shook her head violently.

  ‘Maybe you should ring your GP. Or perhaps Mrs Byfield could do it for you. You’ve had a shock, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want a doctor.’ Audrey scowled at him and then remembered her manners. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘I want the culprits caught.’

  ‘Culprits? So there’s more than one, you think.’

  ‘Those louts always go round in gangs.’

  Clough sighed. ‘We don’t know it was them.’

  ‘Who else could it have been?’

 
He shrugged and said nothing. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. Franklyn cast a longing glance at the door. Vanessa came back into the room.

  ‘How many for tea?’

  Franklyn and Clough declined. Audrey said she wouldn’t mind another glass of brandy, but was persuaded to try tea instead. Clough asked if he could have a word with me on the way out. We went into the drive, where Franklyn collected a torch and a pair of rubber gloves from the car. While we were walking round to the gate to the churchyard, Clough stuck a briar pipe in his mouth and lit it with a gas lighter whose flame was like a flare.

  ‘Has anything like this happened before, sir?’

  ‘Mutilated cats?’

  ‘Not just that. Every now and then we get someone who’s been reading too many Dennis Wheatley novels.’

  ‘Satanism?’

  ‘Whatever you want to call it. Witchcraft. Mumbo jumbo. Raising the devil. Usually it’s just an excuse for naughty sex in fancy dress. Sometimes it gets nasty, though.’

  ‘No. To the best of my knowledge, there’s been nothing like this before. Not here.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. I think I would have noticed.’

  ‘Did you have a good look at the cat?’

  ‘No.’ I had not wanted to. ‘Enough to see it had been cut open.’

  ‘More than that. Its head’s missing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let me know if you come across it, eh?’ Clough clicked his lighter and a tongue of flame licked the bowl of his pipe. ‘Do you lock the church?’

  ‘Only at night.’

  ‘It might be wise to consider locking it during the day as well. There’s some sick people around these days.’

  ‘There always have been.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ he went on. ‘Probably any old church would have done.’ He tapped his head. ‘Just another passing nutter, eh? Oh – by the way: who was the young lady you were with when you found the cat?’

  ‘Her name’s Joanna Clifford. Do you need to talk to her? She lives near here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She and her brother have just moved into Roth Park. You know it? The big house behind the church. They had been having a drink with us and I had been showing her a short cut home through the churchyard.’

  ‘Her brother? Would that be Toby Clifford?’

  ‘That’s right. Do you know him?’

  Clough paused to relight his pipe. ‘Oh – someone mentioned there were new people up at Roth Park.’

  We walked on to the south porch. The light was fading fast. The bricks in the porch glowed palely in the dusk.

  ‘You get it down, Frankie,’ Clough said. ‘I’ll hold the torch.’

  ‘Oh, Sarge.’

  ‘Get on with it, lad.’ In a stage whisper, he added to me, ‘Privilege of rank, eh?’

  Franklyn gave Clough the torch and pulled on the gloves. The beam leapt into the porch, a stripe of light across the stone floor, and slid up to the notice board on the left of the door. Lord Peter was no longer there. Clough puffed smoke into the evening air.

  ‘We’ve only been gone half an hour,’ Franklyn said, his voice aggrieved, as if Lord Peter’s absence were a personal insult.

  Clough let the torch beam drop to the floor. He gave a whistle of relief. There was a huddle of black fur in the corner, partly concealed by a cast-iron umbrella stand.

  ‘Thought we’d lost him for a moment,’ he said. ‘That would have been a turn-up for the books.’

  ‘The case of the vanishing pussy,’ Franklyn suggested, as he stepped forward with the box and the pillow case. ‘Whoops.’

  ‘How did he fall?’ I said.

  Clough stepped into the porch. The beam zigzagged across the notice board, then down to the cat. Franklyn bent down and lifted the tail. A piece of string was still attached to it.

  ‘Simple enough.’ Clough let the torch slide up the wall to the hook from which the notice board hung. ‘One end of the string was tied to the hook, and the other to the cat. Obviously they weren’t very good at knots.’

  ‘Probably not a boy scout, then?’ Franklyn said.

  ‘Aren’t you going to photograph it?’ I asked. ‘Or at least examine it?’

  ‘We’ve seen all we need to see, sir,’ Clough said. ‘There’s a limit to what we can do in cases like this. It’s a question of resources.’

  I shrugged, knowing from his tone of voice that I had irritated him. We watched Franklyn stuffing the body into the pillow case and dropping shroud and corpse into the box. He closed the flaps with a flourish.

  ‘You’d better have a look here in the morning, sir,’ he said to me. ‘There may be a bit of blood or something. I dare say you’ll want to clean up.’

  The police drove away soon afterwards. Vanessa and I took Audrey back to Tudor Cottage. The brandy and the shock were having their effect: we had to support her, one on each side. She would not let Vanessa help her into bed, but she accepted one of my sleeping tablets.

  ‘What have you done with Lord Peter?’ she asked me.

  ‘He’s in the garage.’

  ‘I shall bury him in the garden. After the postmortem.’

  ‘I’m not sure the police –’

  ‘I’ll pay to have it done. Then they’ll see I’m right. Why are the police so stupid?’ She put her hand to her temple. ‘My head hurts.’

  Vanessa and I walked back to the Vicarage. Laughter and music poured through the open doors of the Queen’s Head, and the river of traffic still flowed on the main road.

  ‘Do you think she’s serious about the postmortem idea?’ Vanessa asked.

  ‘Audrey’s always serious.’

  A light shone in the window of the spare bedroom. Michael was still awake. We found Rosemary in the sitting room, still reading Nausea.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Audrey?’ Vanessa said. ‘Still in a state. Understandably.’

  ‘It’s horrible.’ Rosemary looked at me. ‘I just don’t understand why people do things like that.’

  I touched her shoulder. ‘None of us does. Not really.’

  While Vanessa was making tea, I went up to see Michael. He was already in bed, sitting in blue-and-white striped pyjamas, with his hair neatly brushed, reading a book. He glanced up at me but said nothing. I thought he looked worried.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  He held up the book, a paperback in the green-and-white Penguin crime livery. ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was in the bookcase.’

  ‘You must be finding it rather dull here.’

  Michael smiled at me and shook his head.

  ‘And I’m afraid this evening can’t have been much fun. Did you manage to get something to eat?’

  ‘Aunt Vanessa made me a sandwich.’

  ‘Good. This business with the cat – you mustn’t let it upset you.’

  ‘It’s not upsetting,’ Michael said. ‘It’s interesting.’

  Vanessa and I did not get a chance to talk privately until we were in bed.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Vanessa whispered. ‘Is it personal?’

  ‘The police seem to think it’s most likely someone mentally unbalanced. Probably any church would have done. St Mary Magdalene just happened to be the first they noticed.’

  ‘And any cat? It’s perfectly possible that Audrey’s right. She’s really upset some of those kids from the council estate.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

  She snorted in exasperation. ‘You have to at least consider the possibility that I’m not. And there’s two other things you ought to think about. The first one is Francis Youlgreave.’

  I picked a feather out of the eiderdown. ‘Surely what he did isn’t common knowledge?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. It’s the sort of thing that people remember if they remember nothing else about a person. After all, you remembered it.’

  ‘But it doesn’t really narrow the field much,’ I pointed out. ‘An
d I don’t think it’s enough to establish a connection.’

  ‘And then there’s the other thing. Do you remember I told you about the crows pecking something on Lady Youlgreave’s bird table?’

  I stared at her. ‘Surely not. You’re not implying –?’

  ‘Why not? The cat’s head had to go somewhere. What if someone put it on the bird table? It would be one way of ramming home a connection with Francis Youlgreave.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Vanessa picked up her book. ‘Isn’t that more your province than mine?’

  I glanced at her, trying to tell if she was being serious. Her sense of humour could be so very dry. She settled her glasses on her nose and opened the book, her own copy of Youlgreave’s The Four Last Things. It struck me that I was only beginning to discover the real Vanessa. I was like one of those nineteenth-century explorers travelling up a river into the heart of an unknown continent and glimpsing a vast, uncharted interior, more mysterious with every passing mile.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ I said at last. ‘What’s my province?’

  ‘Evil, of course, what did you think I meant?’

  18

  The next problem came from an unexpected direction. I was working in the study the following afternoon when the telephone rang.

  ‘David, it’s Ronald Trask.’ The voice was abrupt to the point of rudeness. ‘What’s this Cynthia tells me about an outbreak of Satanism at St Mary Magdalene?’

  He used the word Satanism like a cudgel. I took a deep breath and tried to persuade myself that Ronald was only doing his duty. An archdeacon used to be known as the bishop’s eye. Such matters came within his province.

  ‘We don’t know it’s Satanism. I think it’s unwise to jump to conclusions. It may just have been a teenage prank which got out of hand.’

  ‘A prank? A cat beheaded in your own parish church?’

  ‘It wasn’t beheaded in the church. We found the body hanging from a hook in the porch.’

  ‘That’s not the point, in any case.’

  ‘Then what is?’

  ‘That this could be a public relations disaster.’ Ronald lowered his voice, as if he were afraid of being overheard. ‘Not just for the church. For you personally.’