Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

It was kind of a pale beige. It was not the same one he had died on. I could see in my mind the crime scene photographs, the spot where he had lain, with his briefcase by his hand, so important to him in life, yet oddly irrelevant in death. Death has a way of radically altering essential values.

I became aware of their silhouettes framing the mop in the kitchen portal, watching me. I followed after them.

She had a kitchen of the sort that was known in the 1980s as ‘stripped pine pajamas.’ There was a big pine table in the middle of the floor and a large, no nonsense AGA near a window that overlooked her back garden. Dehan sat at the table while Sylvie put on the coffee and I looked out the window. I could see the roof and fat tower of the church over the tops of the fruit trees and the hedge that separated her place from the plot where they had held the fête the day before.

I turned toward her. She was getting down a tin of brownies from a cupboard. “It must be very convenient, having the church right at the back of your property like that.”

She smiled. “It is.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t put a gate in the hedge.”

She glanced at me. “I have thought about it, but it might be presuming a little too much.”

I sat as she put the tin on the table and poured the coffee. “We have just come from visiting Elizabeth Cavendish.”

“Gosh! I haven’t seen Elizabeth for years. She used to visit quite regularly. She was a friend of Paul’s. What has she got to do with your investigation?”

I gave my head a little ‘gee-gosh’ sideways twitch and reached for a brownie. “In cold cases, we have to cast our nets wide.” I watched her face carefully as I added, “Reverend Truelove was visiting them on the night of the crime.”

She frowned. “Was he? My memory of that day is so hazy. I know he had been here earlier…”

Dehan dunked her brownie and bit into it. “Why’s that?”

“We’d been talking about Ahmed, what days he would be at the church and what days with us. It wasn’t difficult. He only had to come through…”

She faltered.

I prompted, “Yes? He only had to come through the hedge?”

She smiled. “It was easier in those days. It hadn’t grown so thick.”

Dehan frowned. “Forgive me, Sylvie, but it seems like a kind of odd thing to remember for almost twenty years.”

Her eyes became abstracted. She looked unhappy. “It’s an odd thing. The essential details are completely obliterated, yet small, trivial details seem to stand out so vividly. I can’t explain it.”

“It is very common, Sylvie,” I said. “Trauma can play havoc with our memories. Have you seen a therapist?”

“I have the best therapist of all, Detective Stone. God is my therapist.”

“Of course.”

Dehan raised an eyebrow at her brownie, like she didn’t believe something it had just whispered to her. “Sylvie, there is something we have been wanting to ask you. Please don’t take this the wrong way. These are questions we are required to ask.”

Her smile was oddly kind when she answered. “I do understand, Detective. And I can see how I would be a suspect. Please ask everything you need to. The truth is always our best defense.”

“If only all witnesses took that view. Were you aware of the insurance policies that Simon had taken out in your favor, before he was killed?”

She shook her head. “No, he never discussed that kind of thing with me. He was real old-fashioned about the family finances and what not.” She gave a small, pretty laugh. “He saw himself as a patriarch in the style of Abraham. We depended on him, and he provided.” The smile faded. “Even in death, he faithfully provided.”

Dehan nodded. “Sure, I get that. Would he have discussed matters like that with Reverend Truelove?”

“Oh, Lord no!” She laughed again. “Simon did not approve of Paul, at all. He accepted him because it was God’s will. But he did not approve of him.”

I sipped my coffee. “What caused his disapproval, Sylvie?”

There was no mistaking the look in her eyes as she gazed out the window toward the church. Whatever Simon may have thought, she definitely approved of the reverend.

“Paul doesn’t always go by the book. He goes more by the spirit of the scriptures than by the letter. I guess he has faith in the guidance of the Lord, and that gives him courage to act on impulse. Simon went much more by the letter of the scriptures. I sometimes felt that he was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of transgressing against the Word. He never did. And yet…” She turned and stared at me. “Do you think that evil can grow in a repressed heart, Detective?”

“What do you mean?”

She heaved a big sigh. “Is it possible that Paul’s heart, though less tied to the letter of God’s law, was also less repressed, and so had more room for kindness and humanity? While Simon’s, through being so vigilant, so dogmatic, had become a repressed, dark place, with no room for forgiveness or compassion. And in the end he was struck down, like the Tower of Babel, for trying to get too close to God…”

I made a thinking noise, wondering at what point it had stopped being a question and become a statement. “I am not sure if you are asking me or telling me, Sylvie. Either way, I think it’s a question I am not qualified to answer. What I am pretty sure of, though, is that Simon was not struck down by God, but by a human being. And I aim to find out who that is. As far as I can see, there are only two people who