Chapter Twenty-One #3
From nowhere, he recalled Everett’s words about Percy’s bad behavior. “I told him off several times. He laughed at me. He laughed at the vicar when he tried.”
Something prickled down Solomon’s spine. “The vicar… Percy laughed at the vicar.”
And there was the vicar’s own mild criticism of the dead man: “Percy had a young man’s faults… And perhaps too large an allowance with which to indulge them… He was not often at church.” Distancing himself…
And of Adelaide: “Mrs. Jenkins attends church and donates generously. In my hearing, she has several times brushed aside Percy’s overtures.
I believe her to be a virtuous woman.” Those words had been firm by contrast, definite, and surely with a spark of genuine indignation in those shortsighted eyes.
And after that conversation, Constance had said, “There is something he’s not telling us. Either that or he downright lied.”
“The vicar,” she repeated now, staring at him. “Oh no.”
“He told us,” Solomon said, “that on that Thursday he was at the other side of Channing, visiting the poor and the sick. What if Owens didn’t see him because Thomas wasn’t there?”
Constance’s eyes widened. “I prayed by a deathbed for some time…” she quoted.
She always remembered the precise words.
“He prayed for Percy? In his watery grave?” She shook her head violently.
“No, Solomon, surely not. He went out of his way to exonerate the others. He told us, Neither the Wests nor Percy had any reason to be in such an area, meaning the seamy side of town.”
“A basically decent man who knew West had not committed this murder. Nor any of the poor, desperate folk of the town. Why have we never considered him? Just because he is the vicar? Because our minds have been elsewhere?”
“It’s just another wild theory, Solomon,” she said quickly. “We have no proof.”
“We have not looked,” he said grimly. Even the gentlest of men had limits…
“Mr. Thomas,” Constance said, “will be at Channing House now for the funeral luncheon.”
Solomon turned through the churchyard gate. “We never asked if anyone had seen the vicar near Larchford Wood. They would be used to seeing him around the neighborhood.”
Constance didn’t reply. He knew she was rethinking things much as he just had.
They could be completely wrong. That would surely be proved in the next few minutes. He needed to be convinced one way or the other, for the theory, once formed, stuck stubbornly in his mind.
Marching past the church, he took the path that led to the modest vicarage, and the stables behind.
The vicar kept a gentle old horse in a small paddock beside a somewhat ramshackle stable and carriage house.
The door to the building was not locked.
Inside, the gig, not unlike the doctor’s, was somewhat the worse for wear.
It sat in a shaft of sunlight through a grubby window.
Solomon marched up to it, while Constance went to inspect the reins and the bridle hanging from hooks in the wall.
It didn’t take Solomon long to find the darker stain against the back of the worn leather seat. “Constance.”
She came at once. He licked his handkerchief and swiped at the stain. The cotton came away tinged with reddish brown.
“It could be dye off the leather,” she pointed out. “It could be years old, from any minor injury over the life of the leather.”
She was right, of course. Alone, the stain meant nothing.
And yet he was suddenly sure. The gears of his mind were turning and fitting into place.
He left the stable, ignoring the hopeful whinny of the horse in its paddock, and strode around to the front of the house, where he rapped peremptorily on the door.
The middle-aged housekeeper answered.
“The vicar isn’t here,” she said in clear surprise. “He’s up at Channing House with poor Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. Such a terrible day for them.”
“Indeed it is,” Solomon agreed. “I’m sure you know we’ve been asking questions to discover who is responsible for Percy’s death. Is it possible that anyone could have seen the vicar at the poorer end of town the Thursday afternoon that Percy died?”
“Bless you, no,” the housekeeper said comfortably.
“He was out and about, mind you. Takes his duties seriously, does Mr. Thomas. But no, that afternoon, he went in the opposite direction. I saw him from the front door and he climbed into the gig turned up the hill toward Channing House. He generally visits the farm people on a Thursday, and Mr. Jacks had just lost his wife…”
It meant nothing, Solomon assured himself, except that the vicar probably wasn’t where he’d said he was. Hardly proof of murder.
“Perhaps,” Constance said, “we might leave a note for Mr. Thomas?”
“Aren’t you going up to Channing House yourselves?” the housekeeper asked in surprise.
“Perhaps,” Constance said solemnly, “but this is a matter of utmost discretion.”
The housekeeper looked impressed and let them in. She showed them into Ellis’s study, and Constance closed the door behind her.
They didn’t have long. As one, they focused on the vicar’s desk, Solomon hastily going through correspondence, sermon notes, and an appointment diary, while Constance found a locked drawer and began hastily to pick it.
The appointment diary had two names in it for the Thursday Percy had died.
Buntings and Jacks. Solomon recognized them both.
The former were tenants of the Dare Farm on Adelaide’s land.
The latter were a laborer’s family, living in cottages on the squire’s land.
Jacks was the man who had lost his wife.
Still, the vicar could have changed his mind. He could have found no one at home and driven into town to visit the town’s poor, as he’d said.
“Sol.”
Constance’s urgent voice made him glance down. She had opened the locked drawer. Inside it, presumably under the papers and the rolled-up handkerchief now in her hands, lay a pistol.