The Vicarage Murder by Faith Martin

Author:Faith Martin [Martin, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime, thriller and mystery
Published: 2019-08-29T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Clem Jarvis hung up the telephone, and turned, grave-faced, to his anxiously hovering wife.

‘Well, Clem?’ she asked quickly, although after listening in to his side of the telephone conversation she already had a pretty fair idea of what he was going to say.

‘Bill says he ain’t got it,’ Clem said flatly. ‘And that’s the last of ’em.’

They were in the hall of their old farmhouse, and Clem sighed heavily, sinking down in the chair beside the small occasional table.

‘It’s no use, Bess. It’s gone. I’d best take a walk on down to the vicarage and see somebody about it, I reckon. Not that I’m looking forward to it. I feel a right idiot. And I don’t know if they might not charge me with something, even. Carelessness like, or failing to do something or other.’

Bess bit her lip nervously. Nothing in her hard-working, honest, and rather sheltered life had prepared her for this.

‘Clem, it’s not your fault. And I really can’t believe it’s been stolen,’ she wailed. ‘You’ve had it years,’ she added, as if this made any difference.

The farmer shook his head. ‘Well, old girl, I ’ad it when I went into the pub with the others after the pigeon shoot that time, and it were gone when we left. And if none of the others borrowed it, then it’s been stolen.’ He delivered this piece of logical reasoning in a calm, fatalistic voice, but inside his stomach was churning. Would he have to go to court?

He walked outside, looking the epitome of misery, and cast a glance down into the valley, his eyes easily picking out the church tower and the big vicarage next to it.

‘The coppers ain’t gonna be any too happy with me, I reckon,’ he murmured, in massive understatement.

Then, sighing heavily, he set off towards the village where he’d lived all his life, deciding to walk instead of taking the old Land Rover. It would give him more time to get it clear in his head just what he was going to say. But one thing was for certain — if it did turn out that his gun had been used to kill that woman, well, he’d never pick up a shotgun again.

Let the pigeons eat his crops.

* * *

Carol-Ann stormed into the living room.

‘Right, that’s it!’ she hissed, slinging herself with teenage fury onto the nearest armchair. ‘This afternoon I’m going into Cheltenham and I’m going to get a job in a shop.’

Monica blinked. Her daughter, volunteering to work! She must be coming down with something that made you delirious. Fighting the urge to go over and lay the back of her hand on her daughter’s forehead to check for a temperature, she smiled instead.

‘Why’s that, honeybunch?’ she asked mildly, looking up from the email she was writing to her old boss.

Sue Phelps, a forty-something, unmarried, dedicated career woman, was also one of her best friends. And after Monica had totally flummoxed Sue by resigning to marry her lovely vicar, they’d made a determined effort to keep in touch and not let their friendship lapse.

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