A Death in the Parish

For Martin ContentsDedicationTitle PageMapsEpigraphChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12AcknowledgementsExtract from Murder Before EvensongAlso by The Reverend Richard ColesCopyright Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.Ephesians 6: 1–3 1Audrey Clement did not flinch when half a bread roll, thrown with force from one side of Lord de Floures’ dining table to the other, just missed her.In the silence that followed she pretended to study the monogram on her dining plate – a ‘de F’ entwined by a circlet of flowers; whether the eyebrow she slowly raised was the result of that study or a silent comment on the interruption was uncertain.Sunday lunch at Champton House was not going as everyone had hoped. At the head of the table the host, Lord de Floures, looked up as Audrey looked down, his fork – laden with a thick slice of pink venison – paused between plate and mouth. His eyes narrowed.The missile had landed harmlessly on the parquet floor and skidded like a duck landing badly on a frozen pond. Imperfectly smothered sniggers rose on both sides of the table as it came to a halt.‘Joshua, please. Lydia, don’t encourage him …’ said Sally Biddle to her teenaged son and daughter, but that only made them snigger more. She gave a look to her husband, Chris.‘You can’t take them anywhere!’ he said in a jocular tone of voice (Audrey winced at that) and got up from the table to retrieve the roll. He was tall and coltish, like a distance runner, with hips that were too far forward and skinny shoulders that his blond curly hair almost touched. He was older than he looked from his dress and manner, like a primary school teacher in a progressive London borough.‘Do leave it,’ snapped Lord de Floures. ‘The mice will have it if the housekeeper doesn’t.’‘All right for some!’ said Chris, looking around the table for signs of comradeliness, or even an indulgent smile. ‘The housekeeper!’His lordship blinked, then returned wordlessly to his meat, its juices by now dripping onto his regimental tie, as bloodstained and frayed as a battle standard. Daniel Clement, Rector of Champton, Audrey’s son and cohabitee at the lovely Queen Anne rectory at the edge of the park, coughed gently and attempted to change the subject.‘The venison is excellent, Bernard.’‘Bit tough, don’t you think?’ said his lordship. ‘Don’t know if that’s down to the cook or the keeper.’‘I remember once,’ said Audrey, ‘your father and I were having Sunday lunch in a restaurant … I think it was Norfolk, yes, Brancaster … and it was not very busy, quite quiet, when suddenly a lady started to choke. The dining room fell silent – aghast – and, without thinking really, I got up, grabbed her round the waist from behind and heaved and heaved. And then this piece of beef simply flew out of her mouth and hit the opposite wall with a thwack like a squash ball. That was tough. This venison is really very good.’ She turned to the bread-throwing boy. ‘You would have enjoyed it, I think, dear. Ballistically speaking.’Joshua Biddle did not know what to make of that and looked back at her blankly.Then his sister said, ‘Sorry, I keep thinking of Bambi,’ and pushed her plate away.‘We’re vegetarians,’ mumbled her brother.Bernard’s eyes narrowed again, then with a little shrug he went back to eating his lunch.Daniel exchanged a look with his mother. This was not good. The new associate vicar the bishop had forced Bernard to accept, by adding the parishes of Lower and Upper Badsaddle to Champton St Mary, had not passed the Sunday-luncheon test. His children were uncivil, his meat was declined, his welcome curtailed.Around them, hung on the walls of the Rudnam Room, where smaller family lunches were served, were two dozen paintings of magnificent shorthorns, as unlike real cattle as apostles in mannerist art. Their virtues – of pedigree, bulk and potency – distorted their appearance, so they looked as unlikely as minotaurs standing in the park with the house in the background, tended by cattlemen who seemed as subservient to them as to the then Lord de Floures. Farmer Hugh, as he was known, also larger than life in the paintings, looked over them proprietorially, protectively, like a football chairman his new foreign signings.‘Have the deer been here … long?’ asked Sally, a little desperately.‘Long?’ Bernard thought about it. ‘There has been a deer park here for centuries, probably since my Norman ancestors settled here, but most of what you see now’ – he waved his unfreighted fork at the window – ‘are descended from sires and hinds we were given by the Duke of Bedford in my great-grandfather’s day. I think he gave us a pair of everything – sika, muntjac, Père David’s – after we gave them some of our girls.’‘Does?’‘Daughters. For their sons to marry.’‘It’s all about pedigree, then?’ said Chris, a comment in which Audrey detected a note of challenge.‘Yes,’ said Bernard, ‘in a way. Bloodline. So you have some idea about what you’re going to get.’Silence.‘Sounds a bit feudal,’ said Chris.‘Well, it would.’Audrey changed the subject.‘Mrs Biddle, or is it—’‘Sal, please.’‘… or is it the Reverend Mrs Biddle?’‘Oh, I suppose it is. But I’m a deacon.’‘Deaconess?’‘I think we say deacon now, Audrey. And I’m not stipendiary, like Chris. I volunteer.’‘Not quite two for the price of one, then?’ said Bernard, whose interest had been stirred by a possible economy of scale.‘Well, of course I’ll help out,’ said Sally, ‘but I’m not a priest, so it’s limited.’‘Not yet,’ said Audrey. ‘Don’t you think it will come?’‘I suppose so …’ Sally looked a little uncomfortable at being invited into a conversation she did not want to have. Daniel wondered if there was dissent in their clerical ranks.Audrey, in her musing-aloud voice,