‘You might be right.’ Harriet sounded drowsy. ‘Be careful, love. I just don’t like any of them, but I’m too doped-up to remember why at the moment.’ She roused herself reluctantly to add, ‘I never actually said thank you, Edith, for nipping back to feed my cat. I expect he was glad to see you.’
Edith nodded and left the room, thinking hard. Now was not the time, she frowned, to tell Harriet that she’d felt something different about the cottage when she had nipped in to check on Harriet’s cat an hour ago. There was no sign of forced entry but she thought papers could have been moved and some of Harriet’s bits and pieces were out of place. A cursory look round the house reinforced the sense of intrusion – a bedroom door now open when Edith knew she had shut it herself – but there was no concrete evidence and nothing seemed to be missing. Time enough to tell Harriet tomorrow morning or perhaps it would be better to tell Sam instead.
As she approached the galleried landing in the oldest part of the house, Edith jumped out of her skin as Rory loomed out of the shadows. He reached out instinctively to steady her and then somehow she was in his arms and he was kissing her. For a moment she responded, then all her uncertainties and confusion about him reasserted themselves.
‘No …’ she whispered as she pulled herself away, leaving him to stare as she headed for the top of the stairs. Before he could speak she had halted abruptly.
‘Oh my God.’ Her horrified whisper reached him and he looked over the balustrade to see what had shocked her.
‘He looked like Sam,’ she said, gripping the carved wooden banister. ‘In the cathedral, I’ve just remembered. Dr Sutherland looked a lot like Sam from where I was looking down at him.’
‘So? I wouldn’t have said there was much resemblance between them.’ Rory peered down into the Great Hall but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Twenty-or-so assorted neighbours were standing about, chatting and drinking, as a convivial hum rose up to them. ‘What are you talking about, Edith? What the hell’s the matter?’
‘When we were in the cathedral,’ she told him, ‘you and Sam were already on the move and I looked down from the gallery. There was a crowd, a bit like this one, and Dr Sutherland spotted me and waved. I waved back to him and he pointed to the chapel, to show he was going in there.’ She faltered, her difficulties with Rory forgotten. ‘But when I looked down again, on the way down, I felt odd, unsettled I suppose. I’ve only just realized why. I couldn’t see Dr Sutherland’s face, just his silver hair and cream jacket. And Sam’s panama hat stuck over his face, I suppose to help him snooze.’ She stared at Rory. ‘And Sam’s blue hanky; he was using it to fan himself.’
‘But why has that got you in such a state?’ He was puzzled and took another look over the railing. ‘It’d be more to the point if you’d seen this tall, dark man Dr Sutherland reckoned he’d seen following him and Sam. I’d forgotten about that till now.’ As he gazed downwards, Brendan Whittaker sauntered across the room, nodding in passing to the American, Mike Goldstein. ‘Have you checked if either of those two just happened to be visiting the cathedral today?’
Edith was still lost in thought, still looking shaken, and Rory continued, trying to work out what her problem was. ‘Sam thought it was nonsense, this tall stranger, we all did; an old man being mischievous, teasing his friend. But,’ he stared at her, ‘what are we saying, Edith? That someone somehow harmed the old boy? It was a heart attack, the doctor said so. How could it be anything else? And what’s this about Sam and Dr Sutherland?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shivered, looking so forlorn that he put a tentative arm round her shoulders, tightening his grasp when she didn’t recoil. ‘I just thought … what if someone did kill him? But what if it was a mistake?’
She turned to him, wide-eyed. ‘Why would anyone want to harm an old man? Nobody, as far as we know. But what if….’ She faltered, fumbling for words. ‘Suppose it was a mistake. Suppose it was Sam who was supposed to die. He’s been asking an awful lot of questions; maybe he asked one too many, the wrong one.’ She shivered and didn’t move away when he reached for her hand. ‘What can we do?’ she went on. ‘The police would laugh at us or more likely charge us with wasting their time. They’re stretched and you saw how high on their list they put my call about the other night – nobody’s been to check it out yet. You can’t blame them; they believe a drunk driver pushed Harriet off the road. Harriet says it was deliberate and she believes it was someone local. An old man dies peacefully in a cathedral and another old man trips and breaks his collarbone. And what about the missing man, last seen in this village?’ She shivered. ‘Plus, I think someone has been in Harriet’s house, poking about in her desk and among her things.’