The Reaper

Twenty-two

The finding of Cynthia's body devastated Rachel. You can tell yourself a thousand times that a missing person must be gone for ever, but no amount of reasoning can spare you from cold certainty. The thought of poor Cyn being washed up on the tide with the driftwood was horrible. She kept picturing her, mauled by the sea, lying at the water's edge with seaweed clinging to her and little white crabs crawling over her dead flesh. She couldn't understand how such a tragedy had happened. Cyn never mentioned the sea. And she wasn't suicidal; there were few people Rachel knew with a stronger grip on life. She was always positive, always planning her next project. She'd even convinced herself she stood a chance with Otis.

An accident, then? It had to be, but how? Surely she hadn't fallen off a boat. She had no connection with boats that Rachel knew of. Anyway, why would anyone except a deep sea fisherman want to go on a boat in freezing December?

People were saying the inquest would provide some answers. Maybe clues had been found. Maybe someone remembered seeing Cynthia at Milford on Sea. It was a long way from home, so she may have been staying at a guesthouse, wanting some quiet days alone (though that didn't sound like Cynthia). And it would have been a swift turn-about from her promise to be at the carol-singing.

These thoughts were still tormenting her when PC George Mitchell opened her garden gate and marched up to her front door in businesslike fashion. He wants me as a witness for the inquest, she thought.

"I don't know how best to say this, Rachel," he began when he had lowered himself, far from relaxed, deep into the cushions of her vast settee. "There's no way I can put it without giving you a shock."

"If it's about Cynthia, I know already."

"Cynthia?"

"Mrs. Haydenhall."

"Er, no. I've not come about that." He flattened his palms against the upholstery as if he felt it might swallow him altogether.

"What is it, then?"

"You probably know I have another job on top of my police duties. I'm the coroner's officer, and that's why I'm here."

"Something to do with the coroner?"

"A problem-a complication, let's say-has come up. New information. The possibility that things may not have been so straightforward as they appeared at the time."

She tensed. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"We've applied for an exhumation order for Gary. When I say 'we,' I mean the police."

Her worst nightmare. "You're going to dig him up?"

"Believe me, Rachel, we don't disturb the dead without good reason. A thing like this is new in my own experience. But I'll make sure it's all carried out with proper respect. They fetch out the coffin at first light, when village people aren't about. Then he'll be taken to a mortuary and examined. When it's all done, he'll be reburied. Are you all right? Shall I get you some water?"

She shook her head. He'd plunged her into molten terror and now he was offering a glass of water.

"Why? Why are they doing this?"

"Suspicions that a mistake may have been made by the doctor-in good faith, I'm sure."

She heard herself saying things she'd rehearsed in her head for this worst of all scenarios. "Gary died of a heart attack. He was being treated for heart disease."

"No question of that. It's all on record. But we have to be certain of the diagnosis, and this is the only way."

"I don't follow this at all." Torn between fear and denial, she was trying to recover some poise. "Suspicions, you said. What do you mean-suspicions!"

"It's part of a larger inquiry into a number of recent deaths."

"What?" Horrified, she played the words over to herself.

"Sorry, but I can't go into detail."

She took short, shallow breaths, her brain racing. What did they think-that she'd killed others, as well as Gary? "And what if I don't give permission?"

"It's out of your hands, Rachel. The coroner has jurisdiction here. If he's satisfied that a mistake may have been made, he can authorise it."

Her head throbbed and she wondered if she was going to faint. "When?"

"All the evidence is on his desk now. You can take it he won't turn down the application. Things could happen quite soon. We'll have a top man for the post mortem. If it was just heart failure, he'll know."

It seemed to Rachel that George expected her to break down and confess. She had enough self-control, just, to deny him that triumph.

Long after the wretched man had extricated himself from the sofa and gone, she stood with her arms tightly across her chest, trying to stop the convulsive shaking. The image in her brain was no longer of Cynthia's beached body, but herself handcuffed and with a blanket over her head being led to a police car. Neighbours shouting abuse. The hand on her head guiding her into the back seat. Questions at the police station. The charge. The cell. The magistrates' court. God, what a fool she'd been. If only Gary had been cremated, this couldn't have happened. If only she hadn't killed him at all…

Panicky thoughts continued to stream through her brain. In the dock at the Central Criminal Court, being sentenced to life imprisonment and taken down by the warders.

There was no way out of this now. It was naive to hope that they wouldn't find traces of aconitine. It may have been the undetectable poison in Victorian times but you could bet modern science had ways of testing for it. A top pathologist was going to find traces in Gary's organs. She could hear him giving evidence for the prosecution. Hear the neighbours saying a huge clump of monkshood grew in her garden before she dug it up.

Black despair gripped her. She'd tried to get away with it and failed. Would she get a lighter sentence if she confessed before they did the exhumation? Or was it already too late to make any difference?

Mentally she put herself in the dock again and tried pleading diminished;responsibility. She'd been desperately unhappy with Gary. He'do neglected her, taken separate Holidays. Beaten her; yes, she'd need to say he was a wife-beater, and so he had been … almost. He had come close to hitting her more than once and she could play up the violence without fear of contradiction. He'd accused her falsely of being unfaithful. Caused her acute embarrassment by going up to the rectory to brand Otis as an adulterer.

Otis.

He was a major player in this tragedy.

Would he vouch for her in court? Could she depend on him to say there wasn't an iota of truth in Gary's wild imaginings?

If she couldn't bank on Otis, there was no hope left in the world.

She needed him to speak up for her with all the dignity and authority of his position as parish priest. That, she told herself, would massively strengthen her case and win sympathy. If he was firm in denying that anything happened between them, then Gary's charge of immorality would be seen as manifestly unfair. Was one fumbled clinch on the sofa going to trouble his Christian conscience? He'd ruin his own reputation if he said anything about it.

The court would accept that she had been provoked beyond endurance. She'd heard of several cases of battered wives being treated leniently by the courts after confessing to killing their brutal husbands under extreme provocation. "It is the view of this court that you have already suffered enough, Mrs. Jansen. You are no danger to the public, and a long term of detention would serve no purpose. In view of the extreme provocation you were under, and taking into account your full and frank confession to unlawful killing I am directing the jury not to convict on the charge of murder. They will instead decide whether you are guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, for which the law allows me to exercise discretion over sentencing."

Would that it were true!

Impulsively she snatched up the phone and called Otis, praying she wouldn't hear an answerphone message.

"Joy."

He was there, thank God.

"Otis, it's Rachel. I'm in the most awful trouble. Can I see you urgently?"

"What's up?"

"I'd rather not say on the phone."

"Can you come to the rectory?"

"Now?"

"Give me twenty minutes."

She gave him ten. On the way up there she saw two people she wished she hadn't, Owen Cumberbatch and his sister. Miss Cumberbatch waved in a friendly way. Owen-the village snoop-just stared, curious to see where she was heading. She didn't turn round after passing them, but she was sure he watched every pace she took towards the rectory.

Otis opened the door before she needed to knock and she hurried inside and blurted out the news that the police were going to exhume Gary.

He looked surprised and genuinely concerned. "Whatever for?"

"They think I poisoned him, and, God forgive me, I did." Without any more warning than that, she threw herself on his mercy. She had to be totally open with him.

His hand went to the strip of white across his throat as if to check that it was there. "Rachel, this can't be true."

"I dug up some roots from the garden and added them to his curry. That's what killed him. The doctor said it was heart failure, but he didn't arrive until Gary was too far gone to speak."

He shaped his mouth to respond and nothing came out. This silver-tongued man was totally at a loss.

"I used aconite."

He stared, frowning.

"From a plant called monkshood."

Miraculously, his expression softened. "Aconite?" he repeated in a tone she'd never heard from him before. It sounded oddly like reverence. He might have been chanting the name of one of the Old Testament prophets.

"It's extremely poisonous," she said.

"Deadly," he agreed in the same awed tone.

Weird. She felt no disapproval from him; almost the reverse. "It's supposed to have been undetectable once, but I'm sure it isn't these days. Otis, I don't expect anyone to forgive me, but I'm telling you because you're the only person I want to confide in. My marriage was hell. You could see that, couldn't you?"

"What?" His thoughts hadn't moved on from the mention of aconite.

"Gary and I. A disaster area."

"You told me you weren't very close, but-"

"He was out to humiliate me-and you as well. He thought you and I had … had made love while he was in America."

He said evenly, "I know that."

"Yes, and you told me he came here-ready to start a fight or something-and you defused it."

"I told him it was untrue, which it was."

She made a little moaning sound. "How I wish I'd known you would handle him so well. I should have had the sense to see, but I couldn't think straight, I was in such a state. With me the same day he was full of threats. He frightened me, pushed me around. I can't take violence, Otis."

"So you poisoned his food?" he said without even a hint of censure. She must have been deluded, but once more she thought she heard admiration in his tone.

"He'd already complained of chest pains and called the doctor."

"Wasn't that the poison?"

"No! I'm talking about earlier in the week, just after he got back from America. The pain was angina, Dr. Perkins said. He gave him a tablet and it worked. He slept well. The next day, on the Wednesday, he was better, back to his old self, running me down, running everything down. America was marvellous and everything about Britain was third-rate. It wasn't until later in the week he noticed the wine stain on the carpet and wanted to know how it got there."

"And you told him?"

"Not everything. I just said you came with the account books, but he assumed it was … much more than it was. Well, he was like that, practically paranoid about anything I do. He called me horrible names. Pushed me against a wall and threatened me. And he was hell-bent on making trouble with you. Said he'd beat the truth out of you. Then almost in the same breath said he wanted a curry. I know I was wicked to do it, but all I could see ahead of me was misery and humiliation. The curry gave me a chance to do something about it. I'm like that. Giddy Girl, my mother used to call me. Ninety-nine per cent of the time I act normally and then something triggers me to do a crazy thing that gets me into terrible trouble."

He nodded. "I've noticed."

"I'm desperate."

"And you think I can help?"

Her voice faltered. She sobbed, and said in a rush, "Otis, I'm scared out of my skin and you're the only person in this world I trust. The police think I killed other people as well."

He said tight-lipped, offended. "That isn't true." He had turned quite pink at the suggestion, a development that Rachel took as support. "They can't fit you up with all their unsolved crimes just because you're under suspicion of killing your husband."

"They're trying to scare me into confessing, I suppose."

"You could be right about that. Who else do they say you killed?"

"George didn't say. I've been trying to work it out and I think they must mean Stanley, for one. I suppose they think I gave that poison to Stanley-whatever it was he took…"

"Amytabarbitone."

"… because I was after his job as treasurer, just to be able to cosy up to you."

"They're way off beam there," he said firmly, too firmly for Rachel's bruised emotions, but she didn't let it show.

"You know what village gossip is like."

"Gossip is one thing. The police are supposed to deal in facts."

"They can get things wrong. I'm the village Jezebel according to some people. They could believe I'm responsible for Cynthia's death as well."

"Cynthia? Why?"

"Because she was a rival. She was always telling people she fancied you."

He shook his head. "Silly woman. I'm a clergyman, not a sex object. What exactly did George Mitchell say? What were his precise words?"

"Something like 'it's just part of a larger inquiry into a number of deaths.' He must have meant Stanley and Cynthia. Who else is there?"

"God knows," said Otis, and the mild blasphemy slipped casually from his tongue as though he were operating at another level.

She was praying that he was, that he would come up with some brilliant suggestion that would save her. If anyone could work miracles, Otis was the one. But for the moment he was locked in thoughts of his own.

The entire dialogue had taken place in the hall. Now he pushed open his office door and gestured to her to go in. It was warmer in there and smelt reassuringly of him. She sat down in the chair in front of the desk. "What am I going to do, Otis? I'm terrified."

He perched himself on the edge of the desk and asked, "How much have you admitted to George Mitchell?"

"Nothing. You're the only one I told."

"You're certain?"

"I swear."

"Then say nothing."

"You don't think 1 should confess?"

He pulled a face at the suggestion, then thought better of it. "To God, yes."

"But not to the police?"

Firmly he told her, "Not to anyone else. We don't know what they'll find when they exhume Gary. You're assuming they'll find traces of aconite, but it may not be so simple. I know a little about-em-chemistry, and I can tell you that you picked a beauty."

She looked at him in amazement.

He said quickly, "I'm speaking scientifically now. Alkaloid poisons like aconite are not easy to detect, even with spectrometry and so on, particularly so long after death as this. Unless you tell the police yourself, they won't know what they're looking for. He died of cardiac failure, and that will be confirmed, but the cause is far less obvious. It's not so simple as looking for arsenic."

"I thought if I confessed I might get a lighter sentence."

He shook his head. "Rachel, you're making all kinds of assumptions. Can you be sure you poisoned Gary?"

"Positive. I wouldn't lie about it."

"You cut up monkshood root and added it to the curry?"

"Yes."

"But you can't be totally sure it killed him."

"Oh, but I can."

His eyes closed and he raised his palm to cut off her flow of self-recrimination. "Listen, Rachel. I'm trying to help you; In the week before your husband died, he saw the doctor because of a heart problem, is that right?"

"Angina."

"That's what old Dr. Perkins believed, but he may have misread the symptoms. Gary had a chest pain, you say?"

"Yes."

"That could have been more serious, a mild heart attack. And he had a second attack, the one that killed him, on the night he died. Was it caused by what he ate, or was it always going to happen? You don't know for sure."

Without fully believing, she stared ahead) at the unexpected escape route he was showing her. "I'd never thought of that."

"It's time you did. Do you know the fatal dose for aconite?"

"No. I just chopped some up and put it in the pot."

"Well, then."

"Quite a lot, actually," she admitted.

"But did he eat it all?"

"Most of it. I threw some away."

"And he had a history of heart problems?"

"Yes!" The exit opened wider. Only Otis could have thought of it. The man was a genius. She stood up and embraced him.

He allowed her to hold him without returning the embrace. He was deep in his own thoughts again. In a moment he said, "It would be sensible if you got away from the village while this is going on. People are going to comment on it. You know how sensitive you are to village opinion. You don't want to be goaded into saying anything the police could use against you."

"Won't that look suspicious?"

"It's understandable to want to be somewhere else when they're digging up your husband."

She had to make a mental effort to grasp her new role as the innocent widow. He was right. She was in such emotional turmoil that she could easily give herself away with an unguarded remark. And she didn't want more questions from the police, either. "But I don't know where to go."

"I do. Can you be ready to leave early tomorrow, say around six:?"

"With you?" Her eyes moistened. She was emotional.

"I'll drive you there. It's my day off. Pack for a holiday. Clothes, money, cards, chequebook. Have you got anything in a building society?"

"A bit."

"Bring your passbook, then. Don't leave anything of value in the house. You'd better bring the parish books as well."

"Where are we going?"

"A secret. If you're going into retreat, it's better nobody knows."

She trusted him totally.

They were at sea by nine next morning. A green, choppy sea with flecks of foam catching the light under a white January sky. Amazed that Otis owned a boat, and at a loss to account for the size and luxury of the Revelation, Rachel sat beside him in the cockpit waiting to see what other surprises this wonderman had in store. "It's my indulgence," he said as if that explained everything.

"Isn't that a religious word?"

He laughed. "I hadn't thought of that."

"What exactly is an indulgence?"

"Remission of punishment for our sins. It's Roman Catholic doctrine. You confess to the good father and he acts as God's spokesman and decides if the offence can be pardoned."

"Nothing to do with expensive boats, then?"

"No, bribing the priest with a motor-cruiser is definitely discouraged. Anyway, we Protestants are dead against indulgences. It was the sale of them that led to the Reformation."

"So you bought this yourself?"

He nodded and looked ahead, tacitly inviting her to drop the subject.

She didn't. "How do you answer someone who says a priest shouldn't live like this?"

"With Ecclesiast.es, Seven, Fourteen: 'In the day of prosperity, be joyful.' Tuesday is my day of prosperity."

"I'm not going to get a serious answer, then."

"All right. I'll try and explain. There's this restless part of me that needs to break out sometimes."

"Snap," said Rachel. "I'm like that, except I do the most appalling things in moments of madness. Well, you know."

"Giddy Girl."

"Exactly."

"So do I."

"Do wicked things?"

He turned and their eyes met briefly and for the first time since that evening he had brought the account books to her cottage she basked in his warmth. She knew he was over the awkwardness that had blighted their friendship. He told her, "You shared your secret with me. I appreciate that."

"Unloaded my fear, you mean."

"It took courage to do what you did."

"Poisoning my husband? Nine parts fear to one part courage."

He laughed. "You improve with practice."

"I hope not." She smiled back.

"You do. I've got better at it."

She heard him, failed to understand, played his words over in her brain, looked ahead for some time, and finally said, "Got better at what?"

"Murder." He gazed out at the ocean while her thoughts went through a series of convulsions. "We're two of a kind, Rachel."

The hackneyed phrase did nothing to lessen the shock.

He went on, "You were honest with me, so I'll come clean with you. The stories doing the rounds are slightly exaggerated. I didn't murder my wife. She died by a tragic accident, from a bee-sting. But I own up to four others."

Inside, she was rigid. "Please say you made that up."

"Wish I could."

Their dialogue stopped as suddenly as if someone had switched off a radio.

She thought she was going to pass out.

Finally, after searching his face for a vestige of amusement and finding none, she asked, "How could you?"

"But you know. Desperation drives us to it. Each of them threatened my living. I could have been found out."

She hesitated. "What was there to find out?"

"That I misuse parish funds. You suspected as much, didn't you, but you kept quiet?"

"The contingency fund?"

"Right." He patted the steering wheel with something between pride and affection. "This is the contingency."

"And you killed people for this? You-a priest?"

"People who found out."

"I can't believe this."

"It isn't just the boat. It's my whole existence."

She waited. They were down to the wire now.

"Underneath it all, I'm a coward," he said, "frightened to face the world. I think I do a good job as a priest. It's the only job I can do. I was raised in religion, force-fed it morning, noon and night when I was a kid."

"In the children's home?"

"Yes. From the nuns, and later, at school, the Jesuits. I'm very well grounded in the Bible. Through it I've achieved the outward signs of self-respect, status, confidence. The church is the obvious life for me. Second nature. But deep inside there's a stunted creature who couldn't cope with any other way of life."

"Never. You're so confident. You inspire people. You speak with such sincerity."

"Echoing the stuff I've heard a million times. In this game, Rachel, you're lost if you admit to anyone that you have doubts, or committed a sin. I learned about survival the hard way. Stealing from the kitchen in the orphanage when I was hungry and being naive enough to own up. The so-called Sisters of Mercy had me on my knees in the chapel for three hours asking God to punish me and then bared my butt in front of everyone at supper-time and answered my prayers. And no supper. I was eight years old. It didn't stop me stealing, only I got smart and avoided the canings-except when I was stupid enough to boast to other kids about it and they grassed me up. Another hard lesson. Another beating. And Sister Carmel had a strong right arm. Good preparation for my secondary education with the Jesuits except they used the strap and had even stronger arms. Taught me the Bible, I must say-and turned me right off the Roman Church."

In spite of the shock he'd given her, she was moved by the story. "It would have put me off religion altogether."

"No, at the end of my schooling when they threw me overboard I clung to it-as the only thing I was any good at. Too scared to let go. The bravest thing I could manage was a sideways move, to the Church of England. Joining them was a huge act of rebellion for me-revenge on the Pope and his minions. I knew my Bible so well that I swanned through theological college. Did three years' training in one. I love it, being a priest, doing everything a priest does and doing it with energy and imagination."

"But not behaving like one."

He sighed.

"I understand what you've told me about your childhood," Rachel said. "Anyone would sympathise, but it can't excuse what you told me a moment ago."

"About the killings? I wasn't justifying them. I'm simply saying it's the way I am, Rachel. I act as I always have. I steal from the church, and I cover my tracks."

"But you stole from the orphanage because you were hungry."

"Fair point," he admitted with a faint smile. "Once a thief…" He stopped himself. "No, that's too flip by half. It runs deep, this need to have an escape route. As a kid, I couldn't run away. I tried, more than once, and got dragged back and punished. If I'd had the boat then …"

"Four, you said." Her voice shook as she spoke.

"A man you wouldn't know called Fred Skidmore, the sexton at my last parish, a full-time snoop who threatened me with blackmail. He's down a mineshaft on Exmoor now. Then Marcus Glastonbury."

"The bishop!"

"Left me no option. Told me I had to resign the living."

"But he jumped off-"

"Was dropped," he corrected her gently. "I killed him in my study, cracked him over the head with a glass paperweight and disposed of him later in the quarry." Some seconds elapsed while he concentrated on steering a true course through a choppy stretch. "You want to know who else, but don't like to ask? Stanley Burrows, of course. Nice man, but a stubborn old cuss. He was going to hand over anyway, only he wanted to do it on his terms, showing everything to the new treasurer, including my building society accounts. He wouldn't be budged. I couldn't allow that. Slipped him a powder with his whisky."

She hesitated. It seemed only fitting to allow a moment's silence out of respect for Stanley before asking the question she could scarcely bring herself to speak. "Who was …?"

"The fourth?" He pointed out of the window. "Do you see the headland with Hurst Castle out there? The beach further round to port is Milford on Sea, where she was washed up."

She could only whisper, "Cynthia?"

"She ambushed me. Caught me right off guard. She turned up at the marirta one morning having trailed me all the way from Foxford. You know what Cynthia was like. There was no way she would keep a secret."

After another long silence, Rachel said, "Cynthia was very good to me."

"I know. I could have told you she slipped over the side by accident, but I want to be as honest with you as you were with me.

"She was on this boat?"

"I think she enjoyed her last hour alive. She was terrific company, as you know."

A defining moment had come in Rachel's dealings with Otis. Outraged for poor Cyn, she said, "How you can be so unfeeling?"

"Haven't you been listening?"

"But Cynthia-of all people."

He assessed her with a look. Something new crept into his voice, a tone he had not used before. "She expected me to have sex with her."

She dismissed it as mischievous, a blatant attempt to turn her against her friend. "That was Cynthia. All bluster. She'd have run a mile."

"In this cabin? She wasn't fooling, Rachel, believe me."

With a casual air that didn't hide her true concern, she asked, "So did you?"

"What?"

"Do it with her?"

"Come on! We had nothing in common except a laugh or two."

"But that isn't why you killed her? Because she made a pass, and you weren't interested?"

"I told you the reason she had to go. I couldn't trust her to keep her mouth shut. If she'd lived, it would have been all over Wiltshire and all over for me."

She stared ahead at the sea. "I didn't know you were so cold-blooded."

"Of course you didn't. Nobody knows until it's too late."

If that was a veiled threat, it passed Rachel by. The grief she felt for Cynthia blotted out everything. She could picture her sitting beside him in this cockpit flirting in her cheerful, outrageous way without dreaming what was on his mind. How could he live with the knowledge of what he had done?

As if he was reading her thoughts, he said, "You won't know this, but she had a kink about beating men. She wanted me to go along with it. She couldn't have asked me anything more certain to make me flip."

It rang true. Poor, misguided Cynthia.

He said, "There's a line in Macbeth when he says he's stepped in blood so far that there's no return."

"At least Macbeth had a conscience."

"At least I've told you the truth."

She felt sick to the stomach. "Would you take me back now?"

"Weren't you listening, Rachel? There's no going back once you've stepped in blood. Let's go up to the flybridge and get some air."