‘She was away from home on the night of the fire, wasn’t she?’ Josephine said, remembering what Ronnie had told her on the journey from Penzance.
‘Yes – she was working at the poorhouse in Helston.’ He watched as she put a mountain of butter in a saucepan to melt. ‘Why? You’re not reading anything into that, are you?’
‘No, not really. It’s just that she doesn’t strike me as the philanthropic type.’
‘Based on the two minutes you’ve spent with her?’ he asked, but the sarcasm was tame, with no hint of the defensiveness that had touched their earlier conversations about Morwenna. ‘You may well be right, but it was a job, not an act of generosity. There aren’t that many career options here, you know.’
‘I suppose you’ve got to look at that as a serious motive for Nathaniel’s murder,’ Josephine continued thoughtfully. ‘Protecting Harry’s reputation, I mean.’
‘Yes, although I’m inclined now to think that Harry’s death was suspicious, too.’
‘Why more so than before?’
‘Well, if I hadn’t seen someone force Nathaniel over the edge, I’d have been convinced that he either slipped or – after the conversation I’d just had with him – threw himself off. The circumstances are different, but the deaths could be interpreted in the same way by an outsider – an accident seems the most obvious explanation, suicide’s a possibility, but murder seems unlikely. The sightlines are marginal on that stage – if I’d been standing a foot or two forward or to my right, I wouldn’t have seen a thing – in the same way that no one saw the actual moment that Harry went into the water. Apart from Christopher, perhaps – and he’s vanished.’
‘It’s very risky to rely on where you might choose to stand, though,’ Josephine argued, turning the bacon in the pan. ‘It’s either audacious or desperate, and it backfired completely. And surely there are easier ways of killing Harry and making it look like suicide than a riding accident? Horses are so unpredictable, and you say he was a good rider – it would be very hard to be sure of the outcome.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘I admit that, as patterns go, it’s tenuous to say the least. I suppose I’m just trying to justify my instincts. Even though I know for a fact how many people have drowned in the Loe Pool – strong swimmers as well as idiots – I was surprised when I heard about Harry’s accident, and downright disbelieving when Morwenna mentioned suicide – and I haven’t changed my mind on either count. Harry did seem to have upset a few people of late.’
‘But what Loveday said about the fire shows that he
‘I know, and I’m probably being too blinkered, but I simply don’t believe it.’
‘It seems unlikely that the same person would kill Harry
‘Exactly. That just doesn’t make sense. So either I’m wrong altogether about Harry’s death, or there are two murders and two murderers, or the fire and Harry’s reputation had nothing to do with Nathaniel’s killing.’
‘What if Nathaniel had something to do with Harry’s death? I’m assuming his love was unrequited?’
Archie nodded. ‘As far as I know, yes.’
‘Perhaps he just couldn’t take it any more. Maybe Harry tried to blackmail him or threatened to expose his homosexuality. It would be the end of Nathaniel’s life here if that happened, and the scandal would be terrible. That’s a powerful motive for murder, and if someone found out, perhaps they took it upon themselves to avenge Harry’s death. An eye for an eye, and all that.’
They sat down to eat, and Archie considered Josephine’s suggestion. ‘I really can’t see Nathaniel as a killer,’ he said. ‘His reaction to Harry’s death was genuine, I’m sure, and anyway – if someone found out that Nathaniel had killed Harry, surely they’d just go to the police.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Josephine wryly. ‘I was forgetting how law-abiding you all seem down here. I don’t suppose for a moment that anyone would take the law into their own hands.’
He laughed. ‘How quickly you’ve settled in.’
‘I haven’t asked you what you actually saw last night,’ Josephine said. ‘How did it happen?’
Archie went through the whole incident, from the moment he suspected something was wrong to his finding of Nathaniel’s body. ‘And I don’t need to tell you how many suspects there are. Most of the cast were wearing brown habits and, if that weren’t bad enough, an identical one – Nathaniel’s original costume – went missing from the vestry a few days ago. The only people we can really rule out are the audience and the handful of actors with more individual costumes.’ He rubbed his hands wearily over his eyes. ‘If only I’d reacted more quickly. I doubt I could have saved Nathaniel, but I might at least have caught his killer.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said bluntly. ‘Even from where we were sitting, everything happened so quickly, so God knows what it must have been like for you.’
‘What do
‘Well, Morwenna and Loveday were there early on, but they’d disappeared by the time the play started – I didn’t see them again, but they left their things behind. Morveth picked them up, I think. You know that the vicar stormed out, and his wife went after him as soon as the play was stopped. I noticed Kestrel Jacks in the audience around then, as well – he was standing at the back until William fetched him.’
‘That doesn’t rule him out – he could have gone up the actors’ steps like you did to get to the back of the theatre.’
‘Yes, and the same goes for the undertaker. I didn’t see him leave, but he came back down from the cliff-top quite a while later. The audience had gone by then, and the rest of us were gathered on the stage. He seemed flustered about something – other than the accident, I mean.’
‘Yes. He says his van was stolen last night.’
‘You sound like you don’t believe him,’ she said cautiously, at a loss to know how she could question Jago’s capacity for violence without betraying the Snipe’s confidence.
‘To be honest, Josephine, I’m not sure what I believe,’ Archie said, his frustration getting the better of him. ‘You were spot-on just now – everyone’s a law unto themselves, and they’ve been palming me off with half-stories and veiled threats ever since I got here. I thought Jago was as straight as they come – but he’s the worst of the lot. He asks me to help him find Christopher, but he won’t tell me anything that might allow me to do that – he just mutters some obscure reference to his being punished by Christopher’s disappearance. What’s that all about, for Christ’s sake?’
‘You mean Christopher’s punishing his father by staying away?’
‘No – the implication was definitely that someone might hurt Christopher to get back at him, but I couldn’t get anything more out of him.’
‘Did Jago have any reason to want Nathaniel out of the way?’
‘Not to my knowledge, but what does that prove? So no, I don’t know whether to believe Jago about the van – it could have been taken by the killer, or it could be that he knows exactly what happened to it and just won’t tell me. Perhaps he suspects Christopher of having something to do with Nathaniel’s death and stealing the van to get away quickly. Or perhaps he had a reason to get rid of it himself.’
Josephine could easily understand how Archie felt. Absolute ignorance was one thing but there was nothing worse than being taunted with something that was never fully revealed. His anger mirrored her own irritation with Morveth last night, and it made her even more uneasy about carrying so many secrets which had not been shared with him. Could it really be that he had no idea what his mother had suffered? ‘Tell me about your uncle,’ she said, trying to sound casual about it. ‘He must be in the frame after that impromptu scene.’
‘Jasper? He’s greedy, hypocritical and thoroughly vile – and despite all that, completely unsuited to a career in the Church.’ Josephine laughed, and wondered if Archie got the scepticism which she had often heard him express from his mother. ‘There are rumours that he has his hand in the church till – they’ve been going around for as long as I can remember – but no one’s ever proved it. Needless to say, there was a collective sigh of relief when he announced his retirement, and I think William’s more relieved than most, but even that’s not straightforward now.’
‘But nothing else?’
‘Not that I know of. Why do you ask?’
‘Because of something Loveday said. She told me about the pilfering – that’s old news, as you said, and not at all interesting, apparently – but she also said that Nathaniel had discovered a more serious misdemeanour and was trying to find out more about it.’
