To Sleep, Perchance to Kill (The Lilbury Murders #2)

Chapter 1

There once was a small church that sat on a small hill in a small village.

Except, the small church that sat upon the small hill in the small village was actually not that small.

The hill – a rise, really – was also a decent height, and the village was actually average-sized.

Right, let us start again. The church, which, to be fair, was larger than several others in a ten-mile radius, was on a slight (yes, let’s go with that) rise in a village of indeterminate size.

Its vicar, however, we can describe with much more precision.

He was around his early-to-mid-forties, which made him a baby compared to the usual ages of Church of England vicars – and was not unattractive.

He had curly strawberry-blond hair that he wore a little too long and had a face that was a little too unevenly textured to be classically handsome.

His body was strong from years of half marathons for charity and abstemious avoidance of Mildred from the Women’s Institute’s ever-present scones at parish council meetings.

This aforementioned vicar made his way out of the rectory on a sunny spring morning, whistled as he walked down the path, stopped at the gate, and in a flight of fancy (making sure no one saw him), vaulted the gate instead of opening it, landing gracefully on the other side.

“Still got it,” he whispered to himself while also running a hand along the arse of his trousers to make sure he hadn’t ripped his second-best chinos in the process.

The walk to the church was about fifty yards, and the vicar continued to whistle tunelessly as he made his way across the grass.

He stopped at the door to the nave, next to where the glass-fronted bulletin board for parish announcements was catching the sun, and checked his own reflection.

He fastidiously manoeuvred his hair into place.

The vicar was a vain man, something vicars were not supposed to be, what with the being all up in God’s business thing and vows to do good and the like.

But no vicar was perfect; even members of the clergy had to delete ‘’ from their web browser histories occasionally.

Our vicar, who was christened Jethro, went by Jed, and was nicknamed JedRev by the local village, was one such man.

He had cultivated an air about himself – he could be seen in the organic shop in Sittingston ruminating over which type of quinoa was less harmful to Bolivian peasants or completing one of his aforementioned half marathons to raise money for dyslexic Azerbaijani orphans.

He was also occasionally seen in Davey’s – a less than salubrious drinking establishment in Sittingston (across the road from the organic shop, to be precise) where he had downed four vodkas.

He’d have his hand on a fellow customer’s knee, slurring that they should come back to his place, and he’d help them see God.

But back to today. He opened the door, ceased his out-of-tune whistling finally, and instead turned on the little radio that sat on the windowsill.

Out came the tunes of 98.1 FM, Dorset’s easy listening station with Jonny T and Marla in the mornings.

JedRev had once been given a medal by Marla after coming third in a half marathon. She’d eyed his muscular thighs.

JedRev wandered through the back of the church, noticing where Mrs Crocker, the cleaning lady, had not poked her hoover and cloth into, so he could inform her she needed to do a bit better.

He had inherited Mrs Crocker from the previous vicar, and frankly, much like his selection of brandy in the drawer of his desk, Jed wouldn’t mind her being poured out.

With these thoughts occupying his rather small brain, he didn’t hear the door open again.

He didn’t hear the soft footsteps on the stone floor, nor the sound of a candleholder being picked up off a table in the back room.

And, as the person holding it was good at silences, he didn’t hear them turning it over in their hands to check its weight and give a few whacks to the air to see if it had good aerodynamics before they decided they were satisfied with it.

He did, however, hear a tiny creak as whoever it was stepped off the stone flooring and onto a wooden step.

“Mrs Crocker, is that you? You’re early today! ”

There was a dull thud and then a groan. The sound of footsteps, and then JedRev sank to the floor, a pool of blood emanating from the wound on his head.

The attacker looked at the body lying on the floor, and then down to their glove-clad hand, where they still held the candleholder.

They gave a small shrug and decided to give him a few more whacks for good measure.