Chapter Thirty-Three
Ten minutes later, they were installed in the café nearest the church. The manager of the Sidmouth Museum had been at the press conference with his whistle, and now he was back on duty, he was making the most of the precious extra footfall by keeping the coffee shop open.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Mr Temmis.’
‘Edward. How could I be?’
‘I hijacked your broadcast.’
‘It was over. You had every right to.’
Through the window, he saw people walking quickly, like figures in a speeded-up film, as if the news conference itself had been a kind of radiation spill.
Poor Wendy Wrigley. Evidently she believed Edward had the solution.
And he was sure he did; he had just wanted to check the location with Jordan Callintree, but Callintree was drowning in his pizza mess.
The Toppings crash – already Edward’s mind had edited the word ‘attack’ from the description – had got in the way of him helping Wendy promptly.
A waitress brought tea. He picked up the teaspoon and saw a fairground-mirror reflection of his guilty face.
He had asked for just one further, small delay. Kim would join them before he explained what he had discovered.
‘You know I mentioned five thousand pounds?’ Wendy prompted.
‘I don’t feel good about taking that, even for my listeners.’
‘Edward, it’s there if you want it.’
‘Thank you, Wendy,’ he said.
He glanced casually out of the window again at the thinning crowd around the church. He could just make out gold letters on a wooden board:
SACRED PARISH OF
SAINT GILES AND SAINT NICHOLAS.
HERE WE WORSHIP CHRIST,
THOUGH CHRIST IS EVERYWHERE.
His eye was caught by a couple moving with difficulty through the wrought-iron gate beside the sign.
It was sheltered from the rain by a small thatched roof, propped up by four warped beams. Through the narrow lychgate, huge feet first, came a very large woman, tipped back on a wheelchair, being moved by a similarly enormous man.
The woman’s feet were so big they might both have been in clip-on hospital casts.
They were in their sixties, and the man pushing the wheelchair was also gigantic in height and width.
The wheelchair got stuck in the lychgate and, to Edward’s surprise, the woman heaved herself out of it and hobbled sideways to draw a long, knobbled walking stick from the side of the chair.
As the man pushed the back of the chair, she jammed the stick between the wheel and the side of the lychgate.
She pushed and pulled it like the lever on railway points.
The chair came free and she dropped back into it.
It could almost have been a comic scene. Except that Edward recognized the walking stick.
His mind took him with a whipcrack back to the violence he had suffered in his garden. He felt his sight blur and a wave of nausea. What was going on?
‘What have you seen? You’ve gone pale,’ Wendy said, her voice sounding as though it came from a great distance, but he had stood up instinctively and darted to the door of the café, where he nearly knocked Kim flat.
‘Trying to escape me? You’re sweating.’
‘No, I—’
Looking over her shoulder, he lost sight of the couple within seconds. What was his mind doing to him?
He shook his head, like a dog shaking off water. Wendy Wrigley had been endlessly patient. Now was not the time to charge out of the café without a word of explanation. He led Kim back to the table.
With real tenderness she said, ‘Nice to see you again, Wendy.’
‘Edward was very keen that you should be here. You’ve found out something, I gather?’
‘Kim worked it out,’ Edward said, trying to regain his composure.
‘Hardly,’ said Kim.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘It was a thought I had,’ Kim started. ‘It was something Edward said about the height of the hole in the tree’ – she held her hand up at chest height – ‘then the smell of the gunpowder that he found in the hole. It made me think, well …’ She reached over and took Wendy’s hand.
‘Wendy, it made me wonder if he could have done it himself.’
Wendy gave a choked sob. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’m so sorry. We got a friend to help test the theory.’ Kim described the experiment they had done with David Marner. They had shown how a person could pack gunpowder into the hole, heat the bolt and have it fire with explosive force – without a crossbow.
Wendy cried as she listened.
‘That must be it, that must be it,’ she said, ‘but why, why?’
Edward took up the story. ‘Do you remember I asked you about whether his father had Motor Neurone Disease? You looked upset and said no.’
‘It was a shock to be asked that.’
‘I’m sorry I sprang it on you.’
‘Full disclosure,’ said Wendy. ‘His mum had a thing called Huntington’s.’
‘Ah,’ said Edward, ‘I was sure of it.’
Kim said, ‘Sure of what?’
‘Wait,’ said Wendy, ‘you think Jonathan had Huntington’s? He can’t have, he took a test!’
‘And did you see the results yourself?’ Edward asked gently. Turning to Kim, he explained, ‘Huntington’s is always inherited, always deadly, but only goes to fifty per cent of the offspring. If you watched the Bob Dylan movie, it’s what Woody Guthrie has from the first minute to the last.’
‘That’s what my Jonathan dreaded,’ Wendy said, tears running down her face again. ‘Going from sewing, fireworks and Airfix models to … well, I don’t need to spell it out. You lose control of all movement, even your lungs. Oh God.’
‘Wendy had mentioned so many things we should have picked up on,’ said Edward. ‘Jonathan had bad fatigue, a sense that he was stumbling a bit, messing things up. Fine motor skills – couldn’t sew at the surgery. Memory getting worse. He was only in his fifties.’
‘You told me half of that, Wendy, and I didn’t realize,’ said Kim. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘But I didn’t either,’ said Wendy, trying to stem her tears with a crumpled tissue.
‘That’s the tragedy of it. And it makes such sense.
’ Her eyes welled again. ‘Of course I knew how his mother had died. But he told me he had had a gene test and was clear. It was a lie, I see that now, but it made our lives so much simpler. No explanations to the children, nothing to tell insurers. He carried that lie and he must always have been on the lookout for any change in his body. He must have felt that, if symptoms hit, he needed to be gone before they went full-blown. He would have lied on so many official forms.’ She blew her nose.
‘He must have known, poor man, and he didn’t tell me. My poor Jonathan.’
She tugged absent-mindedly at an earring as she mopped away her tears, a diamond glinting with the movement. Edward had been led astray by her money to start with, thinking she had every reason to be a killer. But insurers would not pay out on a suspicious death, would they?
‘The first thing that happened was when he made a firework. Just a little Catherine wheel for a friend with small kids. There was a bang in the garage and he’d lost a fingernail and taken the skin off his knuckles.
That was the very first sign. So, as for blowing a bolt out of a tree with a charge, he would know exactly how to do that. Poor, poor Jon. Poor Jon.’
‘Ah, so that’s how he had the powder,’ said Edward.
‘How was she to know it meant anything? “He used to make homemade fireworks but then stopped”. It doesn’t exactly sound like a clue,’ said Kim in Wendy’s defence.
‘But it’s all in that sentence. He realized he had Huntington’s disease—’
‘Huntington’s Chorea is the official name,’ Wendy put in vaguely.
Edward thought how different she was from the composed woman he had met at Harpford Hall.
She said, ‘Now you describe it like this, I understand.’ She blew her nose loudly.
‘He didn’t want the crossbow there so no one would say “The man who killed himself”.
He dropped it in the river days earlier, I guess.
He left a suspicious scene and he wanted the mystery.
The mystery would hide the sad truth. He had to protect me, so he bought the cinema ticket.
But because I had never seen a Marvel film before, everyone took it as a sign of guilt.
’ She shook her head with a sardonic laugh.
‘Ridiculous. He was a Catholic. He’d rather be remembered as a murder victim than a suicide. ’
‘I wonder why he wore a white suit.’
‘And took his life by an airfield like that,’ Edward added. ‘He must have wanted to be found quickly. That way, Wendy was protected.’
‘He probably waited until he heard the plane,’ said Kim, reaching over to touch Wendy’s narrow hand. ‘Oh God, Wendy, I’m sorry.’
‘This will sound nuts,’ said Wendy, ‘but insurers pay out less on suicide. I think that might have been a factor. Unfortunately, they also don’t pay out if the surviving spouse is a suspect. The money doesn’t matter to me anyway.’
Edward sipped at his tea.
‘Where does it leave you?’ asked Kim.
‘I can apply for the inquest to be reopened,’ said Wendy, holding a finger below each eye and looking up, blinking.
‘And when it is, I can hold my head up. I only need one or two friends with me, and I can let everyone else keep their hating and their vicious tongues.’ She smiled weakly.
‘Will you be my friends after all this?’
‘I’ll even ask you out for lunch,’ quipped Kim, and Wendy wordlessly reached across the table and grasped her hand.
After a beat, Wendy straightened her back, folded her handkerchief and pushed it into the sleeve of her jumper. ‘By the way, what did you make of the police press conference? The scientist was pretty cool, I thought.’
‘I never understood it being a terrorist attack on a pizza parlour,’ said Edward. ‘What about you, Kim?’
‘I just feel so sorry for the parents of that poor girl,’ she said. ‘I’ve no idea what the motorbike rider was doing.’
‘Perhaps he just slipped,’ said Wendy. ‘A terrible accident.’
‘The Nina Lopez funeral is on Saturday,’ said Edward. ‘I guess the police might even release the body now. The parents sent a message to the radio station saying they had been helped by my radio show and would like me to be at the church.’
‘Oh Edward,’ Kim said, ‘you can’t though. You’re not free.’
Kim was not able to explain, because at that moment a tall man with a shock of white hair arrived at the table. Edward, recognizing one of the Hurst twins, could not immediately remember if this was Hubert or Charlie.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hube!’ Wendy said, lurching to her feet to embrace him. ‘Hubert is – was – a friend of Jonathan’s. Hubert, this is Kim and you’ve met Edward of course, and they’ve been incredible. They’ve worked out exactly what happened—’
As if the enormity of the revelation had descended on her like a swarm of bees, Wendy swished her hand left and right in front of her reddening face and her eyes welled with tears.
‘My dear,’ said Hubert Hurst, ‘are you okay?’
As she cried, Edward said to Kim: ‘Mr Hurst was a friend of Wendy’s husband. He had a lot of doctor friends.’
‘Oh, you have a brother,’ said Kim, who had been told about the Hursts when she met Wendy at the Clock Tower Café.
Hubert didn’t hear her. He had drawn closer to Wendy Wrigley.
As he squatted beside her, she clutched his upper arm.
‘They’ve explained what happened. No one killed Jonathan. But it’s just so sad.’
‘How did they work it out? You must tell me everything,’ said Hubert, his face shining with compassion.
‘I will,’ said Wendy.
‘Not now,’ Hubert reassured. ‘Not if it’s too much.’
It was a tender moment. But Edward’s mind was elsewhere. Almost as soon as Wendy was gone, head down, leaving the place quietly with Hubert, he said to Kim, ‘This is nuts.’
She was still worrying about his double commitment on Saturday. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Talk to the church.’
‘How will that help?’
‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? I saw them. I’m sure I saw them.’
‘Who?’
‘Those two beasts who beat me up in my garden. He just wheeled her past me. Then she was up out of her chair and I saw the stick. They both look like the Honey Monster. It was them.’
‘Wait, I thought it was two men. You said “her” – so one of them’s a woman, and in a wheelchair?’
‘Yes.’
‘How could that be?’
‘When they beat me up, one of them kept screaming. Maybe she was in pain herself.’
Kim looked doubtful, almost amused.
‘It’s not funny, Kim.’
‘It just sounds unlikely.’
‘They were wearing latex masks and they were both six foot six. That’s got to narrow it down. Come on, I want to ask inside the church if anyone knows them.’
The church was empty when they walked back into it, except for two or three helpers who were buzzing around with lengths of cable and chairs.
The long trestle table used for the press conference under the nave had been split into two pieces and the legs folded below it.
The halves were leaning against the narrow spiral steps that led up to the pulpit.
‘Is the vicar in?’ asked Edward when a volunteer approached. He was a young man with a thin polo-neck jumper.
‘I think he left straight after the press conference. How can I help?’
Kim said, ‘We saw a couple leave earlier and we think they dropped something.’ She pulled a fountain pen from her handbag.
The volunteer looked. ‘That’s nice. Do you want me to take it?’
‘I’d be happy to drop it off if you know them,’ said Edward.
An older woman arrived, dressed as if she had just left a tennis court, with a sleeveless yellow jumper, white shirt and jogging bottoms. ‘Who are we talking about?’
‘Two people, one in a wheelchair.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘We saw them emerge from the church,’ said Edward, suddenly feeling the pain of his lie, all the more serious for being in a house of God, ‘and the man was helping the lady manoeuvre her wheelchair and he didn’t see the pen drop.’
‘Was this … quite a large couple?’
‘Yes,’ said Edward.
‘I think I saw them,’ said the young man. ‘But I don’t know who they were.’
‘Shall we keep the pen?’ asked the woman, unaware that Edward and Kim had already declined.
‘We said we’d return it. But we don’t know where they live.’
‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘my name is Beatrice. We obviously don’t do data protection here in Sidmouth, so it wouldn’t be a problem to tell you if we knew. But I’m not sure. Give me your number, one of you, and I’ll ask around.’
Edward handed Melody’s number over to Beatrice, less and less convinced that he was right about what he had seen. They had been dressed in badly fitting police uniforms and had worn masks. Surely he could not swear they were the same pair who’d attacked him?
But he could.
They were.
He knew it.
Kim and Edward left the church silently, the job undone.