An All-Consuming Fire Page 23

Felicity certainly wasn’t going to prolong the interview with speculation, but when the police left she let her breath out in a long sigh and turned to Antony, “It must have been something about those notes Melissa found.”

  “Yes, that’s very possible. I wonder what happened to them. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.” Antony’s voice was heavy with regret. “Her killer probably has the notes now.”

  “Ah!” Felicity jumped to her feet. “Wait here.” She rushed to her room and returned in a moment, brandishing a handful of papers. “Surprise! I suppose I should have given these to the police, although I couldn’t see anything in them.” She held them out. “Maybe you can spot something.”

  Antony’s mouth fell open. “You mean you have them? Father Paulinus’s notes? What a sly thing you are. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Because you would have insisted on handing them over to the police. She gave them to me and I wanted a chance to look at them first. Not that it did me any good. Maybe you can see something in them.”

  Antony examined the papers. “Photocopies.”

  “Oh yes, Melissa had the original, but she intended to return them to Ampleforth. I suppose her killer has them now. Doesn’t that prove there has to be something in them? But I can’t spot what it is.”

  Antony read the first few pages slowly, Felicity peeking over his shoulder at Father Paulinus’s precise, old-fashioned handwriting. Antony lowered the pages and nodded. “I can see why Melissa was so excited. It looks like Paulinus was doing research along the lines of her articles.”

  “I thought these were supposed to be his notes for the film?” Felicity frowned.

  “They are. I think. The Richard Rolle material is pretty straightforward.”

  “You told it better.” Felicity’s fierce loyalty was rewarded with a grin. She pulled a sheet from the stack Antony hadn’t read yet and held it up. “But this about the Rievaulx lands, I just don’t see how it fits in at all.”

  Antony scrutinized that page and the following sheets. “This is interesting. A family tree. And then all this detail about the Duncombe family. Looks like Paulinus got sidetracked. It doesn’t seem like anything he would have used as narrative for the film.”

  Felicity studied the family tree carefully. “Look, there’s Corin’s family.”

  “Corin Alnderby? Our Corin? What’s he doing there?”

  “His great, great grandmother was a Duncombe. He told me that day at Rievaulx Terrace when Joy was interviewing his dad.” She ran her finger over the branch Father Paulinus had drawn in beside the chart printed in the Rievaulx Terrace guide book. “It looks like all the men for four generations of that line have been named Stanton. I didn’t realize that was Corin’s middle name.” She pointed. “But the thing is, that must be why Stanton Alnderby is so avid about Corin carrying on with the land.”

  Antony scrutinized the chart, frowning. “That can’t be right.”

  “What?”

  “Look. There.” He pointed. “The first Stanton was born in 1900.”

  Felicity nodded. “Corin’s great, great grandfather. So?”

  Antony pointed to the line above. “Anabella Duncombe, wife of George Alnderby, died in 1899.”

  “Oh,” Felicity felt her eyes widen. “That’s why Father Paulinus had those photocopies from the General Register Office. I think that’s about the point where I fell asleep last night.” She took the papers from Antony and pulled two from the stack. “Death certificates for Anabella Alnderby, age twenty-five, and George Alnderby, age two years, both from poliomyelitis on the last day of December, 1899.”

  She pulled out the birth certificate below it. “Stanton Alnderby born 1 January 1900. Is that possible? Could a baby have been delivered post-mortem? On New Year’s Eve?”

  Antony shook his head. “Look again. I think that number looks more like a 7 than a 1. What do you think?”

  Felicity took the document from his hand and scrutinized it, then went to her desk and pulled a magnifying glass from the top drawer. “You’re right.” She handed it to Antony for another look.

  “So Stanton was born a week after his mother supposedly died?” Then Felicity looked over Antony’s shoulder at the scrawl of the mother’s signature. “The first name could be Ana, short for Anabella, but the last doesn’t look like Alnderby. And the father is listed as unknown.”

  The room almost hummed with the intensity of their thoughts. Felicity was the first to speak. “So George Alnderby’s wife and heir die…”

  “And the wife is the Duncombe—the one with a share of the estate. And if she was pregnant at the time of her death—almost ready to deliver…”

  “George could take an infant of close to the right age—”

  “Most likely one he fathered on a servant girl,” Antony added.

  “And keep the land for himself in the name of Anabella Duncombe’s supposedly second son.” They finished together.

  “Which has passed on in the line to this day,” Felicity added. Then she paused. “But why would Father Paulinus have cared?”

  “He cared about the truth. He probably just stumbled across the confusion in dates when mugging up background for the film. It must have piqued his interest, so he followed up.”

  “Do you think it’s important?” Felicity asked.

  “It could be. I definitely think you should ring the good Sergeant Simenson and make a full confession about ‘forgetting’ to tell him about the notes. And you can tell him what we suspect.”

  Felicity gulped. The sergeant wouldn’t be happy with her. But delaying wouldn’t make him any happier. She picked up the card he had left with them with his telephone number on it.

  When she finished her call Antony glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Time to get back up the hill. Sylvia’s determined to finish the series, Harry or no Harry. Thank goodness, she offered to come here.”

  “Might as well. They wouldn’t be able to get back into the Thurgarton church until the police are done there.”

  Antony shook his head. “I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to have this over with. It’s been a disaster from day one.”

  Felicity shivered, thinking of the trail of bodies the mini-series seemed to have produced. And on such an innocent topic. It didn’t seem possible.

  Antony moved toward the front door and Felicity pulled her coat off the peg. “I’ll come along and then we can go over to the church together.” She was as anxious as Antony to have the film project behind them so they could concentrate on nothing but their wedding. After the pageant, of course, she amended. They had set their wedding rehearsal a day early because of the pageant tomorrow.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” Antony mused as they approached the community gate, “We had pretty much settled on Harry as our prime suspect for those murders and the police obviously agree. But he couldn’t be responsible for Melissa’s death. He was in full sight of the whole crew all morning. I don’t think he even took a loo break. We were all pushing to get it wrapped up.

  “Besides, it has to have happened while we were all standing around the catering caravan because I had just unlocked the church door. The unlocking was staged, of course, because everyone was in there earlier setting up the sound and lights: Lenny, Simon, Pete…” He shrugged. “I don’t know who all, but Melissa was alive then because she was with you.”

  “And you left the door unlocked when you broke for lunch?”

  Antony nodded “Yes. We didn’t take more than half an hour off.”

  Felicity was still thinking about it all, struggling, without success, to make sense of it, as she took a seat in the corner of the library to observe Antony’s final time on camera.

  Sylvia pointed to Fred, and Ginger’s red eye blinked.

  Antony pulled a popular edition of The Ladder of Perfection off the shelf beside him and held it out to the camera. “As Hilton sees it, scaling the ladder can never be a quick process, but rather, a ‘gradual, cumulative process of receiving and
responding to God’s grace’ one rung at a time. Hilton’s great subject is to consider how the soul, once formed in the image of God but now both defaced and debased by sin, can be re-formed to God’s image.”

  Antony smiled. “Perhaps a beanstalk would have been a better image for Hilton than a ladder, because he sees progress in the spiritual life as organic—a matter of growth. The soul grows into an ever-deepening union of love with God so that its entire will is surrendered and united to the Holy will and desires nothing outside Him who is its Life and Joy.”

  Here Antony stole a quick sideways glance toward Felicity. “Rather like a perfect marriage.”

  Joy Wilkins came on camera, standing beside Antony. “A lovely analogy, Father, but you said earlier Hilton was considered practical and concrete, can you make that a little clearer for us?”

  Antony smiled. “Well, we’re talking about being concrete for a mystic, you understand. Essentially Hilton’s practicality rests in the fact that he stresses doing rather than feeling, in contrast to Richard Rolle who was all feeling.

  “There are just three rungs to Hilton’s ladder and scaling them is, he says, ‘the practical business of cooperating with grace.’ There is a simple-sounding three-step progression: first, reforming in faith where one becomes disciplined and dutiful with a love for God as Brother and Father; second is reforming in feeling, whereby the emotions are illuminated so that one can truly worship; and then we are ready for the third stage—contemplative union with Christ, truly being at one with Him in our meditations.”

  Antony walked over to a small table where he had arranged a simple prop for his conclusion. He pulled a fat white candle toward him, struck a match and the wick flared. “Perhaps we could see faith, the first step on the ladder, as lighting the flame. Hilton says the second rung could be called ‘love on fire with devotion.’ the third ‘love on fire with contemplation’.”

  The camera zoomed in on the flame as Joy picked up Antony’s cue, “Which brings us full circle back to Richard Rolle, whose central image was the fire of love.”

  “Cut! That’s a wrap.” The words were met by unanimous cheers and applause from everyone in the room.

  “Oh!” Felicity interrupted her clapping with a cry. She was among the first to realize that the decree had been issued, not by Sylvia, but by Harry.

  The director was instantly surrounded by a cacophony of questions and greetings. Harry waved them all away and reached out to put an arm around his wife. “I told you not to worry.”

  Sylvia pulled away only fractionally from his grasp, but the questions persisted. “All right, all right.” He held up a hand. “I told you there was nothing illegal about my little sideline—you’d better all be glad of it. It pays your salaries.” Sylvia’s frown said she was more worried about the morality of her husband’s actions than about the letter of the law.

  “And they have no evidence at all involving me in the murders.” Harry all but puffed out his chest. “Naturally, because I didn’t do it.”

  Felicity noticed he didn’t say anything about the drugs charges. And surely that meant he was responsible for at least Alfred’s death. His lawyer might have got him out on bail, but she felt certain the police weren’t through with Harry Forslund.

  Never mind. All that could wait, Felicity determined, as Antony, finished with his farewells to the film crew, came to her with open arms and engulfed her in a hug. “Let’s go practice getting married.”

  Chapter 26

  Felicity came to with a gasp and bounded out of bed the next morning. Life was so unfair. This was the day before her wedding and she didn’t even have time to think about it. Why in the world had she ever agreed to help with that pestilential pageant? It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. And she supposed it had been good for the youth. And Gwena had certainly flourished as she took over Felicity’s directing responsibilities, subtly enrolling Jeff to help her the last couple of days, Felicity had noticed. But Felicity was in no mood for distractions from what she considered the main event.

  At least the wedding rehearsal had gone more or less all right yesterday evening. Father Anselm, as Master of Ceremonies, told everyone where to stand. And Bishop John, who had ordained Antony and would be marrying them, went through the highlights of the ceremony. Sweet and simple. Just like she wanted their wedding to be. Straight from the prayer book. Their only extravagance had been hiring a small choir to sing Palestrina’s Missa Brevis for the mass.

  Thank goodness weddings in the Church of England were considered worship services, not the production that some of her friends’ at home had been. Certainly this one, in a monastery, would keep to the essentials. The community had been so charming about making their church available to “one of their own.” After all, it wasn’t every day that someone as nearly a member of a monastic community as Antony was got married.

  She smiled again thinking about the fact that when they met he was planning to become a monk. And then there had been her brief, but enthusiastic period of considering joining a convent. She shook her head at the memory. A special touch of irony because the dinner after the rehearsal last night had been at a pub called The Three Nuns.

  Gwena had been astonished when she first heard the plans. “What? No hen party?”

  “Absolutely not.” Felicity was adamant.

  “What’s a hen party?” Judy’s innocent question had touched off a major discussion that just avoided becoming a row.

  “Something like a bachelorette party,” Felicity explained. “The bride and her friends dress up and make the round of local pubs the night before their wedding. Lovely for the bride to have a splitting head on her wedding day.” She grimace. “I think a male stripper is part of the tradition, too.”

  “It can be good fun,” Gwena insisted. “And the men have a stag do at the same time.”

  Of course, Cynthia had joined in, “Darling, I realize that wouldn’t quite suit, but couldn’t we do something? A tea party! Wouldn’t that be sweet?”

  Judy patted her pregnant tummy and smiled. “I remember my bridesmaids’ party. It was lovely. We made strawberry daiquiris and watched ‘Pride and Prejudice’.”

  Felicity smiled. “Yes, that was fun, Judy—Colin Firth in a wet shirt. But absolutely not. We rehearse for the wedding, then dinner. Then everyone goes home to bed.” And that was what they had done.

  But she couldn’t avoid the complication of the pageant so easily. It had to be gotten through.

  Felicity and Gwendolyn spent most of the day at the quarry, making sure costumes and props were in the right places and that the stage was marked with masking tape so their young thespians would know where to stand without getting the scene hopelessly out of balance. Kendra set up her borrowed sound system and checked it repeatedly, making sure the narrative and music would reverberate from the quarry walls.

  And Nick and Corin seemed to be everywhere at once seeing to the animals. “The camel and his handler will be here at three o’clock. I just put another bale of hay in his pen,” Nick said, on his way to fill the animal troughs with buckets of water which had to be carried from a hosepipe in the community garden. “I read camels eat three and a half kilos of hay a day and he’ll share his pen with the llamas.” He looked around. They haven’t arrived yet, have they? They should be here soon.”

  Felicity observed the sheer drop at the far end of the quarry behind the stage. “Be sure you keep the gates secure, Nick. We don’t want any of our animals going over that precipice.”

  “No worries,” Corin said, coming up behind Nick with more water. “The sheep are secure.” At that moment there was a lull in the activity and Felicity could hear the soft baa of the band of ewes Corin had secured from a local farmer. “And I brought Shep.”

  “Shep?” Felicity asked.

  “Our sheep dog from home.” Felicity saw the black and white collie at Corin’s heels. “Sheep won’t be led, they have to be herded. Shep can take care of that for us.”

  Felici
ty wished she had his confidence. And what if Mary’s donkey balked, she wondered? She had visions of Shep nipping the donkey’s heels and their chubby, gentle Flora, as Mary, being dumped on the ground. Why had they ever undertaken this? It was guaranteed to be a disaster. Maybe no one would come. That seemed to be the most comforting thought she could come up with.

  Antony, Jeff and two of the youth who had been installing the tiki torches around the rim of the quarry joined them. “I think I saw the llama trailer pulling off the road, Corin. You might want to go show them where to put the beasts.”

  Felicity just shook her head. Antony continued his directions, “Drue and Joaquin, if you want to help us fill those braziers with charcoal I think we can take a break and go get something to eat then.”

  Gwen and Kendra said they would stay there to help any early arrivals get into costume, but Felicity was more than happy to take an extended tea break.

  It was starting to get dark when Felicity and Antony returned to the quarry, having sent the others on ahead to get into costume. Some of the youth were in place to direct visitors across the community grounds and Father Sylvester sat at a small table at the top of the quarry steps, selling tickets to guests who had already begun to arrive. When Felicity saw everyone’s enthusiasm and the enormous effort that had gone into organizing every detail she felt ashamed of her earlier desire for it all just to go away.

  And when, halfway down the stairs, she emerged from under the bare, but still thick, tree branches, she stopped with a gasp of delight. “Antony, it’s amazing!” Torches flared, turning the rim of the quarry into a circle of fire, braziers glowed among the seats, and the ebullience of the audience supplied warmth and energy as members of the well-bundled assembly set up their folding chairs, then pulled flasks of steaming tea, coffee or mulled wine from picnic baskets, sharing leftover mince pies or slabs of Christmas cake with their neighbors. The sense of community and feeling of good will was far beyond what any of them could have imagined.

  And then the disparate band began its opening number “Tomorrow Will Be My Dancing Day.” Little matter that the drums and trumpet nearly drowned out the keyboard and guitar, Felicity could have danced the rest of the way down the stairs. “Let’s put our chairs there.” Felicity pointed to an empty space halfway down the quarry slope. Before they had their chairs set up they were joined by Cynthia, Andrew, Jeff, Charlie and Judy, as Felicity had expected, but to her surprise Cynthia instructed them to save seating space for Harry and Sylvia.