A Crowded Coffin(28)

‘Why would they?’ Lara shrugged. ‘Nobody round here would say anything about it in case it upset your grandparents. Besides, the programme Dad recorded was on very late on one of the cable channels, I checked with him. I imagine the thing about your father was a repeat that followed on even later.’ She rose to her feet and smiled even more sweetly as she glanced across to where Rory was talking to Sam Hathaway.

‘It’s a good job you two aren’t an item, isn’t it? For that kind of resemblance you’d have to be very closely related, I should think.’

‘Well? Don’t think I didn’t spot you, Harriet, when you had young Edith pinned to the wall for interrogation at the party.’ Sam was looking sternly at her as they relaxed later that afternoon over a cup of tea in her garden.

Harriet banged her cup back in the saucer, too annoyed to care if it cracked. Sam had always been an expert at winkling things out of her. ‘Stop exaggerating. I did not interrogate her. She grabbed me because she’s worried sick and she thought I might be able to help.’

Sam, who was playing truant from church, scarcely noticed his cousin’s pettish behaviour. He was trying to decide whether to go back to his flat now or stay at Harriet’s for another night. His place was just a place to lay his head, he mused, not a home, though nothing had been a home since Avril died. Maybe, perhaps, living next door to Harriet, his oldest and dearest friend, might go some way towards filling the aching gap. And perhaps something might turn up, something he could do to help the people here, or was that just arrogance? He made a face into his cup and shrugged; the Lord will provide, I suppose.

‘Edith’s been thinking along the same lines as I have,’ Harriet was saying. ‘In other words, she’s making mental notes about strangers who were around the village last Wednesday and who could – and you needn’t pounce on me, I said could – have been involved in her grandfather’s accident.’ Sam growled his disapproval and she ignored him. ‘Yes, well there are several new faces around at the moment. There’s Brendan Whittaker, and there’s young Rory, plus Mike, the dishy Texan. And Elveece found him, of course. I just don’t know what to think about any of it.’ She slid a sidelong glance at his unresponsive features as she added, ‘There’s the vicar too.’

‘What?’ Sam sat up, ready for a fight. ‘That’s utter nonsense, Harriet. I don’t know the man but he’s got a perfectly good reputation. You need to watch your tongue, and warn Edith to do the same or you’ll both find yourselves in trouble.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ she said, irritably. ‘It’s only you and I’m just thinking aloud but I can’t help wondering if Walter’s experience might be connected with the missing man. Rory wasn’t here then, poor lad. I told you about what happened to him, didn’t I? And even though this American friend of the Deans was in the UK, the local grapevine would have picked up on it at once if he’d been loitering round the village in January. But that still leaves Brendan and John Forrester and Elveece who were all here in January.’

‘Hang on.’ Sam had remembered something. ‘Forrester’s wife died around Christmas. You’re surely not suggesting that a grieving widower had time to go bumping off your missing man, are you? Because it’s indefensible, if that’s what you’re saying.’

‘Calm down, Sam.’ She got up and went into the kitchen for more tea and a couple of slices of lemon drizzle cake. ‘I’m not suggesting anything, just wondering. I’ll tell you one thing about the vicar that I don’t like, though,’ she added vigorously. ‘He was definitely flirting with Edith at the party today and I don’t want her mixed up with him. I know he’s good-looking and I’m sorry about his wife, but the poor creature’s only been dead six months so it’s a bit soon for him to be taking up with another woman.’

‘What did she die of?’ Sam ignored Harriet’s hint about Edith who, he clearly recalled, had been flirting happily away with all the young men in the room, including the vicar. He lounged back in the sunshine, munching on his piece of cake and thought about what he had heard. ‘I gather she had some kind of breakdown, as far as I can recall, so I imagine it was mental health problems, poor soul, and that’s why he took this living. He hoped the pace of life and the countryside would have a beneficial effect on her.’

‘She was stoned,’ said Harriet baldly. ‘We weren’t here then, we were on that New Year break in Italy, but I asked around. I wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything tactless and upset him. Seems she was a fair bit older than he was and prone to hysterical jealousy, though the word is that nobody’s ever heard anything against him, other women, I mean, but she was always turning up at meetings and embarrassing him. Her drug problem, which everyone suspected anyway, showed up at the inquest. I went to that, the whole village turned out in support, and it was felt John came out of it very well. Everyone was sorry for him and the general consensus, though never openly expressed, of course, was that he was well out of it.’ She didn’t look at her cousin. ‘His wife left him an awful lot of money, they say.’