A Crowded Coffin(58)

Not Edith, though. Harriet dismissed the idea immediately. If anything happened, if there was an accident of some kind, it would kill the old people. Sam was too far away so it would have to be Rory; she certainly couldn’t handle this on her own, even though Edith would be furious when she found she had been sidelined. Harriet scrambled into jeans and a sweatshirt, thrusting her feet into canvas shoes. Grabbing her phone and her car keys, with their built-in torch, she stumbled out into the corridor and made her way to Rory’s room.

‘Rory, wake up.’ She shook him with increasing urgency. ‘Somebody’s digging in the Burial Field again. Oh, for goodness’ sake, Rory, wake up, will you?’

When he peered groggily at her, yawning and protesting, she gave him a brief outline of the situation. ‘We’ve got to call the police.’

‘I think you’re right.’ He was still yawning and rubbing his eyes as he stared out of his window. ‘Blimey, I saw movement too, something glinting in the moonlight. But what do we tell the cops? Wouldn’t they just think it’s poachers? Is that going to be high on their list of priorities? I don’t know anything about what goes on in the countryside.’

‘Even if it is just poachers,’ she said firmly, ‘they’ve no right to be there and that’s reason enough to tell the police. Look, can you see to get dressed? I don’t want to put the light on, it might make them suspicious.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he grumbled. ‘Go away for a minute, Harriet. I sleep in the nude. I’m sure you’ve seen it all before but I’m shy, so push off.’

He heard a stifled, surprisingly youthful giggle as she wandered over towards the window while he struggled into his clothes. A shaft of moonlight caught something sparkling on the polished mahogany of the tallboy and Harriet took a closer look.

‘Rory?’ There was an odd note in her voice and he raised his head. ‘Where – where did you get this?’ He zipped up his jeans and crossed the room to examine the tiny thing in the centre of her palm, the light glinting off the intricate twists and loops of silver wire.

‘That? It’s a bit of one of Edith’s earrings, isn’t it? I spotted in nestling in the weave of your precious vicar’s jacket this evening, on one of the sleeves. I nicked it without mentioning it to him, I’ve no wish to talk to him anyway. I meant to hand it over to Edith but we all went to bed fairly early and I completely forgot about it.’

She looked at the delicate little object and then met his eye, looking very sober. ‘But this isn’t an earring, Rory. It belongs to me. It’s a miniature silver toast rack from my doll’s house collection.’

They stared at each other, Harriet looking bewildered and increasingly disturbed. She frowned and looked out of the window again at the distant figure, then back at the miniature. ‘This is new,’ she said slowly. ‘It arrived by registered post the day before yesterday and I’d only set it on the side table with my other most recent treasures just before Edith came in for coffee with me.’

Rory slipped on his trainers as Harriet added, ‘The only time the vicar can have got this tangled up in his jacket is when he gave Edith a lift to the village to pick up the things I asked her to fetch; in other words it had to be yesterday afternoon.’

‘But that’s not …’ Rory stood up, still frowning. ‘I overheard him at the party telling Edith he only bought that jacket in Winchester at lunchtime today, I mean yesterday. He said he bought it especially for the party and was boasting about it not being too trendy to upset all the old fogeys in the village.’

‘You’re sure it was on his jacket? It couldn’t have brushed off someone else’s clothes?’

‘No chance. I had to give it quite a tug to free it up from the tweed. I’m surprised he didn’t notice me but he was too busy hitting on Edith. I was sure it was an earring; I assumed she lost it when she went out to dinner with him the other night.’ He peered closely at the tiny silver bauble. ‘A toast rack, really?’

Harriet sat down hastily. ‘No, I’m all right, don’t fuss. It’s just the pills I’m taking, and I have to admit it’s come as a shock. If that jacket was new at lunchtime yesterday that means he must have broken into my cottage sometime the same afternoon, not on his visit with Edith the day before. At any rate it can only have been just before he turned up at the party. But why?’

‘Edith said he was looking at some notes you’d made,’ Rory remembered. ‘When he was there with her, I mean. He blamed the cat because the papers were on the floor, but when Edith took them off him, to replace them on your desk, she said the name Colin Price jumped out at her. Maybe that’s what he spotted. But why would that bother him?’