Chapter Forty-Two
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“It’s time to visit the vicar,” Amity says. “He’s bound to know something useful.”
Walking to St. Anne’s Church, she and Wyatt debate which archetype they expect to encounter: a young dreamboat like Sidney Chambers in Grantchester , an unassuming priest with extraordinary insight like Father Brown, or a suspicious clergyman whose manner hints at a nefarious past. I’m hoping that Dev is still in his garden and not in town. I am not ready to see him.
At the entrance to the churchyard, we meet a tall woman, even taller than me, probably in her fifties and with bright blue eyes and straight gray hair cut at a slanted angle by her chin.
She’s wearing the obligatory white collar over a black button-down shirt and black slacks.
But on her feet, she’s wearing electric-blue rubber-toe shoes, the kind that runners wear because they think they’ll ward off plantar fasciitis.
“Good morning! I’m Sally, the vicar here,” she says, opening the gate. Her handshake is firm. “Shall we walk?” She sets out into the churchyard without waiting for a response. Her strides are longer than Wyatt’s.
“I didn’t know there were female vicars.” Amity is nearly skipping to keep up.
“The ordination of women as priests goes back to 1994.” The vicar speaks to us over her shoulder.
“My path to the clergy started ten years after that, upon the occasion of a midlife awakening. In my past life, I was an accountant. One day, I found myself contemplating a ledger of numbers and yearning for them to tell me something more important than whether the company that employed me was in the red or the black. I could have tried kabbalah, I suppose, but I was raised in the church. And to the church I returned.”
We have reached the stone wall that separates the churchyard from the surrounding fields. She turns around to face us and leans back against the wall.
“Tell me, are you ordinary tourists come to see a medieval church or pilgrims in search of spiritual succor? Or are you hot on the trail of an imaginary crime?”
“The latter, I’m afraid,” Wyatt says.
“Delightful,” she says, and resumes walking.
It seems we’re making laps around the graveyard.
“In full disclosure, I’m neither a real or pretend murderer or a real or pretend gossip.
I never lie, but I don’t always tell the whole truth, as a matter of ethics.
I do my best to be available to my parishioners twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week.
because I leave one half hour a day for running.
” She stops, lifts a foot, and wiggles her toes.
“And a half hour for silent meditation. I put on my oxygen first, so to speak.”
She turns her attention to me with a look of concern. “You’ve lost someone recently? Someone dear to you?”
“How can you tell?” I say.
“It’s the way you’re not looking at the headstones.”
I don’t know what to say. It feels intrusive how she’s guessed at something so personal. Amity and Wyatt take a step away, suddenly interested in reading the inscriptions on the old graves. Arms folded, the vicar waits, like she has all the time in the world.
“My mother died,” I say, with an unfamiliar pang of sadness.
“Yes.” Sally takes my hands. Hers are cold. Did Germaine tell her about my situation too? “Anything I can do, I am here. I will not say that suffering brings great enlightenment, but it often does. May the Lord comfort you.”
Even more unexpected than a blessing from a vicar is the lump in my throat. I don’t know what to say, so I turn away.
The gravestones are old, many with moss covering their inscriptions.
When I was in middle school, I used to ride my bicycle to the cemetery where my father was buried.
His grave was on the edge, near a grove of birch trees.
I’d sit there and try to talk to him, like people do in movies.
But I had never known him. Was I supposed to introduce myself?
Tell him I was good at spelling and volleyball?
Or should I confess something, like the time I took my mother’s favorite earrings because I thought she might come back for them?
I had so many questions, and I wanted answers.
To know what he was like, what my mother had been like when he was alive.
If he hadn’t died, would she have stayed?
“You can ask me anything,” the vicar says, as if she’s been reading my mind. “Anything else you’d like to know about death?”
Of course. She’s reminding us that we’re there not to inquire about a real tragedy but a fake one.
“Amity, Wyatt, any questions?” I say.
“What can you tell us about Tracy,” Amity says. “Did you know her well? Was she a churchgoer?”
“As I said, I will not pass along idle talk, but I can share observations of existing facts. It’s conveyance of information, not gossip. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” we say in unison.
“Tracy came to Sunday services regularly. It was impossible to miss her because every week she’d have a new elaborate hairdo.
They were spectacular, often high up enough on her head to cause a stir.
She loved them, but my parishioners did not.
More than once, I had to ask her to sit in the back, on the far outside edge of the pews, so as not to block anyone’s view.
But wherever Tracy sat, she would gaze attentively in one direction. ”
“At the pulpit?” Amity asks.
Sally lets out a big laugh.
“Of course not. She would stare at Stanley Grange.”
“Who’s Stanley Grange?” Wyatt asks.
“Why was she staring at him?” Amity says.
“Who wouldn’t? He’s a beautiful man. Chiseled features, bold jawline, always glowing like he was freshly exfoliated.
Tall, with a head of lustrous dark hair.
That would have appealed to Tracy, as a hair professional, don’t you think?
He’s a successful businessman and very well-dressed.
Posh clothes to go with his expensive car.
A red Tesla in Willowthrop. Fancy that!”
“Let me get this straight,” Wyatt says. “Tracy came to church alone every Sunday, all dolled up, and stared at handsome Stanley Grange, who also came to church alone every Sunday in his red Tesla?”
“Who said Stanley came alone? Au contraire. He was always with his beautiful wife, Pippa.”
“Pippa?” Amity says.
“Yes, Pippa Grange,” Vicar Sally says. “Do you know her?”
I open my phone and find the photos of Tracy’s flat. The wilted flowers, the legal notice, and finally her to-do list on the calendar in the Filofax. And there it is, a note to herself to “TELL PIPPA!” I show it to Amity and Wyatt.
“What was Tracy going to tell Pippa?” I say.
“That she was having an affair with Stanley Grange,” Wyatt says. “It was his red Tesla that Bert saw parked behind the salon at night. And he’s tall with thick dark hair. Just like the man Edwina saw visiting Tracy on Mondays when the salon was closed.”
“And Edwina said the man leaving Tracy’s salon the night she was killed was tall,” Amity says.
“Are you saying that Stanley killed Tracy to stop her from telling his wife about their affair?” I say.
Wyatt looks bug-eyed, like we’re on to something big.
“I’m saying it gives him a very good motive.”