Among the Darkness Stirs

“Yes.”

Bruce pondered that for a moment. “They must have written the wrong church name down. During the year you mentioned, I was on a sabbatical in Rome. So, whenever the service was given, it wasn’t by me on that date in this church.”

Henry frowned, not expecting that answer. “A sabbatical?”

“That’s right.”

Henry eyed the vicar. “Would anyone else have performed the service in your absence?”

“No. As I said, it must have been a different church.”

Henry looked across at Audrey and then back to the vicar. “You must be correct. The office had the wrong church. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“No inconvenience at all, my son. God be with you, my children,” he said.

Henry took Audrey by the elbow and helped her as she walked along the pebbled path that led back to the front of the church. She glanced back at the vicar, who had already gone back to his tombstones.

“What’s going on, Henry?” she asked him in a whispered voice.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Henry looked across the table at Audrey. They had stopped at a tea house for refreshments. The proprietress came and poured two cups of tea for them, placed the scones and cakes on the table, and left them alone.

“What now?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “We need to take all of this apart. We’re missing something. Something is right in front of us, and we’re missing it.”

Audrey stared at him. “What are we missing? Everything that we’ve come across, we’ve dissected. We’ve gone after everything we could. The diary, the names. I don’t know what else we could have missed.”

“I’m not altogether certain either, but it’s true. We’ve missed something.”

Audrey was silent and then looked up at him. “I didn’t want to say anything to you, I didn’t want you to be worried—” she began.

“What? What is it?” he asked.

“The chaplain was in my cottage this morning.”

He frowned. “He paid you a call?”

Audrey’s lips tightened. “If you can call it that, yes. He was in the drawing room when I came downstairs. He was sitting there, waiting for me.”

He stared at her, sure he’d heard incorrectly. “He came into the cottage without your knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“That’s unacceptable.” Henry couldn’t believe the audacity.

“I think he’s a little odd in the head, Henry. He’s in his own little world.”

“His own world?” Henry repeated. “He could be behind this, Audrey. Whatever this is.”

She frowned. “He’s a man of God, Henry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier??

?

She hesitated. “I didn’t want to worry you. I don’t want to make a big deal of it. But the more I thought about it, the more it unnerved me. It was the reason I decided finally to ask your mother to take Frances. She’s safe there.”