A Crowded Coffin(40)
His face twisted and Edith broke in, anxious to deflect anything too heavy, ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she said. ‘I can see it’s painful.’
‘No, I’d like to tell you. I haven’t talked about her to anyone else in the village; it hasn’t seemed the right thing to do, but….’ He frowned and picked up the cafétière to pour more coffee. ‘It was after she had the test results that she started taking drugs. Nothing too serious at first and I, stupidly, thought she was getting over the disappointment and beginning to look forward to a future that could still be good, but it didn’t last long, that phase. Soon she was shooting up regularly. I never managed to find out how she got her supplies – addicts can be incredibly cunning. It got worse after we moved here last autumn, but I could never catch her out.’
He sighed and brushed a hand over his face, then went on with his story. ‘The saddest thing of all was that she refused to accept that she was a drug user. She used to insist to me, to the doctor, to anyone she met, that she was violently anti-substance abuse, that she would never take drugs, it was against her religious convictions. Even with the needle marks on her arms she still wouldn’t admit it, even to herself.
‘In the end it killed her, of course. I expect you’ve heard the bare bones of the story: I was at the last bell-ringing practice before the great New Year performance and I joined the ringers for a pint in the pub before going home. You know the vicarage, I’m sure, and you’ll know that the staircase is rather grand mid-Victorian and the tiles rather special. She was lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs; she’d broken her neck on those damned encaustic tiles.’
‘Oh, John.’ Edith was overcome with sympathy. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’
‘I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about Gillian. You know what the gossip mill is in Locksley and there have been some rumours about her behaviour. But we were married for five years.’ His eyes pleaded with her to believe him. ‘And she was a wonderful woman – when her demon didn’t have her in its grasp.’ He shook his head. ‘I loved her but life hasn’t been easy these last few years and I want you to know that I’ve never looked at another woman – until now.’
She was grateful that he said no more but got up to pay the tab. It’s all getting a bit heavy, she thought, and I feel awful now. I’ll have to be careful what I say and not get into a situation where he and I are alone again, I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
There were no awkward silences during the journey home and Edith began to breathe easy again until John pulled over in a leafy lane about half a mile from the village. A shiver of excitement seized her, and the promises she had made to Harriet and to Rory flew out of the window. There was something irresistibly naughty about the idea of being kissed by a vicar, she thought, and kissing was definitely what was on his mind.
Kissing was something he was well qualified to do, she decided, when she could draw breath. For a few moments she responded enthusiastically, then he drew back and smiled at her.
‘You’re the most delectable ex-governess I’ve ever kissed.’ His voice held a smile in the dark. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I set eyes on you at Gordon Dean’s party.’
Mention of the party brought her to her senses and in spite of her resolution to find out what she could, she couldn’t help stiffening. The memory of the midnight treasure-seekers intruded and with it the recollection that, charming and sexy though he might be, John Forrester was a new widower and that Harriet, whose opinion she valued, had misgivings about him.
‘There’s something I ought to tell you,’ he began slowly, his tone portentous.
She shifted away from him, back into her seat, seized with a sudden longing for the safety of home.
‘It’s about Brendan Whittaker; I know he’s a friend of yours.’
‘Huh?’ The anticlimax had her sitting up straight at once. ‘He’s not really a friend, just an occasional acquaintance. What about him?’
‘Oh, nothing concrete. It’s just that I’ve been getting the impression he’s up to something that might be illegal. I can’t give away too much, but as you’ll imagine, I’m pretty hot on drugs and so forth, and one or two of the things he’s said to me suggest there’s something pretty dicey going on. It’s very recent; I bumped into him at the pub the other day and stayed for a pint. He and that American, Goldstein, were thick as thieves and Brendan let slip a couple of things that made me wonder.’