was there anyone who came forward to support his claim of going to the bar for a drink when he left the lounge.”
“But a priest? Not only to do it in the fi rst place but then to manage carrying on with his ministry afterwards?”
“He didn’t carry on, exactly. He left his position in Truro directly she died. He took up a different sort of ministry as well. And he took it up in places where he wasn’t known to the congregation.”
“So if he had something to hide from them, they wouldn’t necessarily recognise that fact from a changed behaviour since they didn’t know him in the fi rst place?”
“Possibly.”
“But why kill her? What would have been his motive? Jealousy? Anger? Revenge? An inheritance?”
Lynley reached for the telephone. “There seem to be three possibilities. They’d lost their only child six months before.”
“But you said it was a cot death.”
“He may have held her responsible. Or he may have been involved with another woman and knew as a priest he couldn’t divorce and expect his career to go anywhere.”
“Or she may have been involved with another man and he found out about it and acted in rage?”
“Or the final alternative: The truth is what it appears to be, a suicide combined with an honest mistake made by a grieving widower in misidentifying bodies. But no conjecture satisfactorily explains why he went to see Susanna’s sister in October. And where in the maze does Juliet Spence fit?” He picked up the phone. “You know where the fax is, don’t you, Helen? Would you see if Havers sent the newspaper articles?”
She left to do so, and he phoned Crofters Inn.
“I left a message with Denton,” St. James told him when Dora Wragg rang through to their room. “He said he hadn’t seen a hair of you all day and hadn’t expected to. I imagine about now he’s phoning every hospital between London and Manchester, thinking you’ve had a crash somewhere.”
“I’ll check in. How was Aspatria?”
St. James gave him the facts they’d managed to gather during their day in Cumbria, where, he informed Lynley, the snow had begun falling at noon and followed them all the way back to Lancashire.
Prior to moving to Winslough, Juliet Spence had been employed as a caretaker at Sewart House, a large estate some four miles outside of Aspatria. Like Cotes Hall, it was in an isolated location and, at the time, inhabited only during August when the son of the owner came up from London with his family for an extended holiday.
“Was she sacked for some reason?” Lynley asked.
Not at all, St. James told him. The house was deeded over to the National Trust when the owner died. The Trust asked Juliet Spence to stay on once they’d opened the grounds and the buildings for public viewing. She moved on to Winslough instead.
“Any problems while she was in Aspatria?”
“None. I spoke to the owner’s son, and he had nothing but unqualified praise for her and great affection for Maggie.”
“So there’s nothing,” Lynley mused.
“Not quite. Deborah and I have been working the phones for you most of the day.”
Before Aspatria, St. James said, she’d worked in Northumberland, outside the small village of Holystone. There, she’d been a combination of housekeeper and companion to an elderly invalid called Mrs. Soames-West, who lived alone in a small Georgian mansion to the north of the village.
“Mrs. Soames-West had no family in England,” St. James said. “And she didn’t sound as if she’d had a visitor in years. But she thought a great deal of Juliet Spence, hated to lose her, and wanted to be remembered to her.”
“Why did the Spence woman leave?”
“She gave no reason. Just that she’d found another job and she thought it was time.”
“How long had she been there?”
“Two years there. Two years in Aspatria.”
“And before that?” Lynley glanced up as Helen returned with at least a metre’s worth of fax hanging over her arm. She handed it to him. He laid it on the desk.
“Two years on Tiree.”
“The Hebrides?”
“Yes. And before that Benbecula. You’re seeing the pattern, I take it?”
He was. Each location was more remote than the last. At this rate, he expected her fi rst place of employment to be Iceland.
“That’s where the trail went cold,” St. James said. “She worked in a small guesthouse on Benbecula, but no one there could tell me where she’d been employed before that.”
“Curious.”
“Considering how long ago it was, I can’t say there’s great cause for suspicion in the fact. On the other hand, her life-style itself sounds rather suspect to me, but I suppose I’m more tied to home and hearth than most.”
Helen sat down in the chair facing Lynley’s desk. He’d turned on the desk lamp rather than the fluorescent lights overhead, so she was partially in shadow with a streak of brightness falling mostly across her hands. She was wearing, he noted, a pearl ring he’d given her for her twentieth birthday. Odd that he’d not noticed before now.
St. James was saying, “So despite their wanderlust, at least they won’t be going anywhere for the moment.”
“Who?”
“Juliet Spence and Maggie. She wasn’t at school today, according to Josie, which made us think at first that they’d heard you’d gone to London and done a bunk as a result.”
“You’re sure they’re still in Winslough?”
“They’re here. Josie told us at considerable length over dinner that she’d spoken with Maggie for nearly an hour on the phone round five o’clock. Maggie claims to have fl u, which may or may not be the case since she also appears to have had a falling out with her boyfriend and according to Josie, she may have been skipping out on school for that reason. But even if she isn’t ill and they’re getting ready to run, the snow’s been coming down for more than six hours and the roads are hell. They’re not going anywhere unless they plan to do it on skis.” Deborah said something quietly in the background after which St. James added, “Right. Deborah says you might want to hire a Range Rover rather than drive the Bentley back up here. If the snow keeps up, you won’t be able to get in any more than anyone else will be able to get out.”
Lynley rang off with a promise to think about it.
“Anything?” Helen asked as he picked up the fax and spread it across the desk.
“It’s curiouser and curiouser,” he replied. He pulled out his spectacles and began to read. The amalgamation of facts were out of order — the first article was about the funeral— and he realised that, with an inattention to detail unusual in her, his sergeant had fed the copies of the newspaper articles into the facsimile machine haphazardly. Irritated, he took a pair of scissors, cut the articles, and was reassembling them by date, when the telephone rang.
“Denton thinks you’re dead,” Sergeant Havers said.
“Havers, why in God’s name did you fax me this mess out of order?”
“Did I? I must have got distracted by the bloke using the copy machine next to me. He looked just like Ken Branagh. Although what Ken Branagh would be doing making copies of a handout for an antiques fair is well beyond me. He says you drive too fast, by the way.”
“Kenneth Branagh?”
“Denton, Inspector. And since you haven’t phoned him, he assumes you’re squashed bug-like somewhere on the M1 or M6. If you’d move in with Helen or she’d move in with you, you’d be making things a hell of a lot easier on all of us.”
“I’m working on it, Sergeant.”
“Good. Give the poor bloke a call, will you? I told him you were alive at one o’clock, but he wasn’t buying that since I hadn’t actually seen your face. What’s a voice on the phone, after all? Someone could have been
