Guilty Parties Read online

  I said, ‘I think we all agree that he was.’

  Michael said, ‘But at the time you told me to keep my suspicions to myself.’

  Now I understood what this was about: a blame session. I’d never felt comfortable with Michael, but I hadn’t taken him for a sneak. ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘It was the first time anyone had suggested such a thing and it was certain to cause friction and alarm in our community.’

  ‘Go on,’ Father Luke said to Michael. ‘Tell Jeffrey what you told me.’

  Michael seemed to be driving this and enjoying it, too. ‘When I took over as procurer, I gained access to the computer and this enabled me to confirm my theory about the orpiment. It is, indeed, a pigment made of sulphide of arsenic that was used by monks in medieval and Renaissance times to illuminate manuscripts.’

  I couldn’t resist saying, ‘Clever old you!’

  Father Luke raised his hand. ‘Listen to this, Jeffrey.’

  Michael went on, ‘However, when I searched the internet for information about the effects of acute arsenic poisoning, some of the symptoms Father Luke reported didn’t seem to fit. Typically, there’s burning in the mouth and severe gastroenteritis, vomiting and diarrhoea – all of which were present – but the second phase of symptoms, the prickling of the skin and visual impairment, the signs of paralysis in the face and body, aren’t associated with arsenic.’

  Father Luke said, ‘Symptoms very evident in Ambrose and Alfred.’

  Michael said, ‘It made me ask myself if some other poison had been used, something that induces paralysis. I made another search and was directed away from mineral poisons to poisonous plants.’

  I was silent. Already I could see where this was going.

  ‘And eventually,’ Michael continued in his self-congratulatory way, ‘I settled on a tall, elegant, purple plant known, rather unkindly, as monkshood, the source of the poison aconite. Every part from leaf to root is deadly. After the first violent effects of gastroenteritis, a numbing effect spreads through the body producing a feeling of extreme cold and paralysis sets in. The breathing quickens and then slows dramatically and all the time the victim is in severe pain, but conscious to the end.’

  ‘Precisely what I observed,’ Luke said, ‘and twice over.’

  ‘This proved nothing without the presence of aconite in the monastery,’ Michael said. ‘There are photos and diagrams of the monkshood plant on the internet, so I knew what to look for and where best to search. It prefers shady, moist places. I spent several afternoons while you were taking your nap and checked along the edges of the meadow where the water drains, close to the wall. Of course you hacked the tall stems down, so the plants weren’t easy to locate, but eventually I found your little crop. The spiky, hand-shaped leaves are very distinctive. Some of the ripe follicles still contained seeds. Are you going to admit to using it, adding it to the curry?’

  Father Luke said, ‘The Lord is listening, Jeffrey.’

  I didn’t hesitate long. I’m not a good liar. I hope I’m not a liar at all. If you read this account of what happened, you’ll see that I always spoke the truth, even if I didn’t always volunteer it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I used some root, chopped small. I made sure I was sitting beside our Father Superior when he spoke the grace. Then I sprinkled the bits over the curry. I couldn’t face life without my beautiful meadow.’

  ‘So you took the lives of two good men,’ Michael said to shame me.

  Our Father Superior shook his head sadly. ‘Now I’ll have to notify the police.’

  I said, ‘I’ll save you the trouble.’ I walked to the window, unfastened it and started to climb out.

  ‘No, Jeffrey!’ Father Luke shouted to me. ‘That’s a mortal sin.’

  But he was too slow to stop me.

  I was indifferent to his plea. I’d already committed one of the mortal sins twice over. Here on the roof I was at least fifty feet above ground. Below me was a paved area. When I jumped, I was unlikely to survive. If I had the courage to dive, I would surely succeed in killing myself.

  With my feet on the steep-pitched tiles, I edged around the dormer to a place where no one could lean out and grab me. Then I climbed higher, intending to launch myself off the gable end.

  Father Luke was at the open window, shouting that this wasn’t the way, but I begged to differ.

  Up there under an azure sky, on the highest point of the roof, I was treated to a bird’s-eye view of my meadow and if it was the last thing I ever saw I would be content. Glittering from the overnight frost, the patterns of my August cut were clearly visible like fish scales, revealing a beauty I hadn’t ever observed from ground level. This, I thought, is worth dying for.

  I reached the gable end and sat astride the ridge without much dignity, collecting my breath and getting up courage. A controlled dive would definitely be best. I needed to stand with my arms above my head and pitch forward.

  I grasped the lightning conductor at the end and raised myself to a standing position.

  And then I heard a voice saying, ‘Jeffrey, don’t do it.’

  For a moment, teetering there on the rooftop, I thought the Lord had spoken to me. Then I realised the voice had not come from above. It was from way below, on the ground. Brother Barry was standing in the vegetable patch with his hands cupped to his mouth.

  I called back to him. ‘I’m a wicked sinner, a double murderer.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ he called back, ‘but killing yourself will only make things worse.’

  I told Barry, ‘I don’t want to live. The police are coming and I can’t bear to be parted from my meadow.’

  He shouted, ‘You’ll get a life sentence. It’s not as bad as you think, believe me. You’ll share a cell with someone, but what’s different about that? The food is better, even if I say it myself. And with good behaviour you’ll be sent to a Category C prison where they’ll be really glad of your gardening experience.’

  I was wavering. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I know it.’

  What a brother he was to me. I’d never considered the prison option, but Barry had personal experience of it. And he was right. I could pay my debt to society and make myself useful as well. Persuaded, I bent my knees, felt for the lightning conductor and began to climb down.

  In the prison where I have been writing this account of my experiences, I am proud of my ‘trusty’ status. Barry was right. I can still lead the spiritual life and I always remember him in my prayers. The governor has put me in charge of the vegetable garden and I have persuaded him to allow me a wildflower section. No monkshood or other poisonous plants, of course. But by May we’ll have an explosion of colour. And I built my own tool-shed. Every afternoon I go in for an hour or so. Even the governor knows better than to disturb me when I’m contemplating.

  THE LAST GUILTY PARTY

  Phil Lovesey

  Phil Lovesey was born in 1963, and is the son of Peter Lovesey. He studied art and took a degree in film and television studies, later working as a freelance advertising copywriter. He is the author of four crime novels and is a past winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger.

  Looking back, Eric Trimble couldn’t remember exactly when, or how, the first Guilty Party ever happened. Save to say, it was probably sometime during their second year at university, far too many years ago. And, of course, it was also certain to have been Geoff’s idea. What idea wasn’t, in those days …?

  Eric looked in the mirror, pulling gently on his Windsor knot, noticing how his neck seemed to sag ever more grotesquely on to the top of his stiff shirt collar these days. Age the great leveller; mortality the inescapable sentence.

  ‘Guilty,’ he muttered, trying not to take in the lines in his face too much. Instead, he distracted himself picking idle threads from his tweed jacket, and inspecting his shoes – both having seen better days, too.

  He wondered how many of the others would be there. How many were still alive, even. Each year, the annual meeting of the Guilty Party pl
ayed wearisome host to fewer and fewer members. Last year, it had been just five of them, and he knew for sure that Bob had passed on in October, and he hadn’t had a Christmas card from Stan either – Death’s dark warning for folk his age.

  Which would leave just himself, Tim and, of course, Geoff. The three of them, the last three, all of them guilty …

  Not that all had died, of course. Some members had drifted in and out over the years, or simply quit what they considered to be little more than an annual university reunion that merely offered the chance to impress the others with exaggerated tales of their successful lives, careers and families whilst drinking far too heavily in a cheap seaside hotel.

  All activities which Eric knew far too well he was guilty of himself. But wasn’t it precisely what folk did at these reunion dos? Sugar the old pill a bit, tell a few whiskied whoppers to anyone still sober enough to listen? It was form, Eric suspected, and certainly almost de rigeur in the Guilty Party.

  As he drove to the Welsh coast, he was glad of the finality of this last occasion. Geoff had written to him in the spring as always, informing him that, due to dwindling membership and increasing infirmity, this September’s meeting would be ‘the last Guilty Party’. Something Eric was secretly (guiltily?) more than pleased about. For it wasn’t simply the driving, the cost of all the drink and staying in the hotel …

  It was Geoff.

  And how had it started, all those many years ago? Quite simply, with the words, ‘Ah, here comes the guilty party,’ muttered by an irate lecturer as a bunch of them had stumbled late into a morning seminar nursing obvious hangovers from a heavy night on the sauce the previous evening. The phrase had stuck, taken instantly by Geoff as some sort of badge of boozy student courage.

  That night, they’d all gone out again, celebrating the first-ever official meeting of the Guilty Party, an elite group of heavy-drinking boisterous students, whose sole intention was to say (or scream, depending on the time of night) the word ‘Guilty!’ as often as possible during the evening’s raucous pub crawl.

  For some, of course, the ‘fun’ lasted only the one night, finding it too exuberant, too high-spirited, too damned expensive. Stalwart members (of whom Eric and Geoff were legend in the university campus) were frequently warned about their ‘high jinks’ by the exasperated dean in his office. At which time, the only approach was to hang heads, snigger and then yell ‘Guilty!’ right in his face.

  They weren’t ever sent down, because Geoff’s family had ‘connections’. He’d been to the right school, had bundles of loot, and his father (glad to be rid of his tearaway son for a few precious years) paid for the upkeep of the university library. All of which, it has to be said, suited Eric handsomely. For as long as he was in tow with Geoff, he was just as impervious to any disciplinary issues.

  ‘Bloody good times!’ Geoff would always say at annual Guilty Party reunions. ‘Best goddamned years of my life!’ And then he’d elbow Eric in the ribs. ‘We did some things, eh, didn’t we?’

  And Eric would have to force some sort of laugh, and return with the club call of ‘Guilty!’ while others managed to force a few laughs, too; perhaps making a mental note that this was to be the last time they’d attend a Guilty Party reunion. Eric knew for sure that one member had got his wife to write back to Geoff explaining that her husband wouldn’t be attending that year, as he’d unfortunately passed away. A fact that Geoff was able to dispute, after he’d driven three hundred miles overnight to the member’s house, then waited outside most of the morning, eventually to catch him about to go shopping with his wife.

  Geoff was like that … unshakeable.

  Eric checked into the flaking sea-front hotel with an hour to spare before lunch. Guilty Party tradition dictated that all members meet in the lounge bar at midday, wearing suits, shirts and their club ties – Windsor-knotted, green silk with judge’s gavel and pint-glass emblem embroidered onto the front – and ready to indulge in the afternoon and evening of alcoholic debauchery.

  Mindful of this, and far too old now for this caper, Eric had taken to spending an hour in his room, eating corned beef sandwiches and trying to ready himself for the forthcoming ‘celebrations’. It had become a dispiriting hour of almost morbid examination, as he followed the fortunes of his life that had ended in that precise moment – alone, eating corned beef sandwiches in a shabby hotel room he couldn’t afford, wondering at the inanity of it all.

  But, of course, this would thankfully be the last Guilty Party.

  Taking a deep breath, and one last look at the rumbling grey sea from his window, he made his way slowly downstairs.

  ‘You must be Eric Trimble!’ boomed a familiar voice in the far corner of the deserted lounge bar.

  ‘Guilty as charged!’ Eric replied, trying to muster some enthusiasm as he made his way over to the table. ‘And you’re Geoff St John!’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Trimble!’ the large, balding figure replied. ‘Guilty, and awaiting sentencing!’

  Eric went through the rest of the required motions. ‘Then I sentence you to attempted death by alcohol, Mr St John! Whisky, your weapon of choice?’

  ‘Guilty!’ Geoff drained his glass and offered it to Eric. ‘Double’s fine, Mr Trimble. Your round, I believe?’

  ‘Guilty,’ Eric replied, a little less enthusiastically now, wondering just how much of his widower’s pension would be left by the evening. He ordered drinks from a colossally bored foreign barman, before returning to the table. ‘No Tim then, this year?’ he asked.

  Geoff shook his large head. ‘Chap couldn’t make it. Passed away to the great bar in the sky five weeks ago. I know, I checked. Went to the ruddy funeral, didn’t I? Wasn’t invited, so caused a tad of a stink.’ He winked and raised his glass. ‘Guilty again, eh, Eric? Always bloody guilty, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’m sad about Tim,’ Eric said, simply because he felt he ought to.

  ‘Don’t be. Funeral was all right. Lousy do afterwards, though. Don’t know why I bothered, really. I tell you, when my turn comes, I’m having a proper send-off. Got myself booked into the cathedral, haven’t I? Bishop, choirboys, bell, all the trimmings.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘What’s the point of strings, if you can’t pull them?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You sorted your bash, then?’

  Eric nodded. ‘Co-op’s doing it for me.’

  Geoff frowned. ‘Oh dear. Oh dearie, dearie me. Dreadful.’

  Eric took a careful sip of his whisky. ‘It’s budgeting, really.’

  Geoff muttered something, then said, ‘Another drink, old man?’

  ‘Guilty,’ Eric managed, noticing how it ached to hold his cheeks in a false smile as he tried to resign himself to the rest of the day in just Geoff’s company.

  ‘Course,’ Geoff said when he returned with more drinks and eased himself back behind the table, ‘there are one or two guilty pleasures to be gained from the aftermath of funerals.’ He was looking at Eric in a way that demanded further questioning.

  ‘Such as?’ Eric obliged.

  Geoff lowered his voice, which Eric felt was almost absurd in such an empty room. ‘Comforting the grieving widow,’ he whispered salaciously. ‘And if that makes me one of these so-called sexual opportunists, then guilty as charged, Your Honour.’

  Eric took a moment to take it in. He hadn’t known Tim that well, but he’d seen pictures of his wife that the most recently deceased member of the Guilty Party had once proudly displayed many years previously. ‘You’re … with …?’ He couldn’t even begin to place the name.

  ‘Helen,’ Geoff replied. ‘Indeed, yes. Well, not exactly “with” … just sort of … you know … from time to time.’

  Eric pressed back in his chair and found himself grinding his remaining few teeth. ‘When it suits you, presumably?’

  ‘Guilty!’ Geoff guffawed in that overtly loud way that always signalled the double whiskies had found their mark.

  ‘And Cecily?’ Eric asked.
‘Doesn’t she suspect anything?’

  ‘Oh, I hardly think so,’ Geoff replied. ‘My dear battle-axe wife finally saw fit to shuffle off the old mortal coil a few weeks ago.’

  Which came as a bombshell to Eric. Cecily – dead? He’d last seen her only four months ago when Geoff was away on another of his golfing trips to Florida.

  ‘Stroke,’ Geoff confirmed. ‘Initially.’ The booming voice dropped back down. ‘Whole left side paralysed, completely wonky. Had to push the bloody woman around in a damn chair.’

  Eric was still reeling. Cecily couldn’t be dead. She’d seemed so full of life, so full of love …

  Geoff was watching him carefully. ‘You always had a thing for her, didn’t you?’

  Eric was stung by the words. ‘Thing?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Eric!’ Geoff insisted, slurring slightly, and wafting his tie towards him. ‘This is the last ever meeting of this bloody-shambles Guilty Party. The last time that thankfully we’ll ever have to see each other’s faces again. At least be honest and plead guilty, man!’

  ‘To what?’ Eric was beginning to panic.

  ‘Good God!’ Geoff sighed. ‘To fancying my Cecily, of course!’

  Confused, ambushed, Eric sought temporary solace behind a whisky glass before draining it in one go.

  ‘Right back at university, you always had a thing for her. You couldn’t stand the fact that I got her, could you? Could you?’

  ‘You’re talking horseshit, Geoff.’

  ‘Just say you’re guilty.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Can’t?’ Geoff sneered. ‘Or won’t?’

  Eric was silent.

  Geoff reached into his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper, unfolded it and pushed it across the table between them. ‘When she was in hospital,’ he said, his eyes fixed on Eric, ‘she thought she was going to die. So she dictated this letter to one of the nurses to give to me.’