“Good evening, Kenneth,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve just had a nice royalty statement on my third book. How are things with you?”
“Chaotic, as usual. I wanted to know if you’re going to be using your boat this week. I have to go to London to meet with those maniacs at the film studio-”
“And you infinitely prefer my hospitality to paying hotel rates?”
“I particularly enjoy your hospitality when you’re not there to dispense it in person, Rowan.”
“Well, as long as you’ve called, I have one or two questions for you.”
“I take it that this means I get the boat?”
“Yes, but if you put any more cigarette burns in the seat cushions, I’ll be using you for an anchor in future. Now-first question: do you know where Constance Kent lived?”
“Rode,” said Kenneth O’Connor without a moment’s pause. “Do I win a prize?”
“A box of chocolates from Christiana Edmunds,” snapped Rowan. A laugh from the other end of the phone told him that Kenneth recognized the name of nineteenth-century Brighton’s lovelorn lady poisoner. “Everybody knows Constance Kent lived near Rode, Kenneth. We want to know if the house is still standing. Can it be seen from the road? One of my tourists wants to go there.”
“I’ll see if I can find out for you. When will you be home again?”
“Monday night. There’s one other matter.”
“Yes?”
“One of the group fancies she’s a mystery novelist,” he lied. “Can you recommend a good poison?”
The next morning dawned sunny and warm, a fact observed by the mystery tour members at varying times between six and nine o’clock, when they either stumbled groggily or sprinted happily into the hotel dining room for breakfast. By ten o’clock everyone was fed and armed with sweaters, comfortable walking shoes, and credit cards, ready for an enlightening tour of Exeter.
Alice MacKenzie observed that for the first time on the tour, Elizabeth MacPherson was also carrying a pen and notebook. “Are you especially interested in Exeter?” she asked.
“It is Saturday morning,” said Elizabeth cryptically. “And Rowan is not within a hundred miles of here.”
A tiny and earnest-looking woman wearing a red blazer met them in the hotel foyer and introduced herself as Mrs. Lacey, their city guide. She captured Elizabeth’s attention at once by explaining that the hotel parking lot had been built on top of an old city plague pit. Elizabeth was still staring down wistfully at an immovable expanse of asphalt when the less ghoulish members of the party moved along toward the remains of the old city wall, just behind the hotel. As yet, she had written nothing in her notebook.
As they walked down the narrow lane that ended beside the cathedral green, Mrs. Lacey pointed out the well-preserved medieval houses, still in use, and began her recital of city history, beginning with the Roman occupation in 55 A.D.
“We will end our tour with the cathedral,” she explained as she led them past the West Front, with its beautiful carved Image Screen of saints. “It is within sight of your hotel and I am sure that you can all find your way back from there. Just now we will go to another quaint old street, where the BBC filmed some scenes in one of its Dickens dramatizations.”
This television reference set Susan off on a litany of her favorite British imports, and it took them another block and a half to shut her up.
As they walked through the bustling streets, Mrs. Lacey pointed out historic buildings, mentioning that the city was home to Sir Walter Raleigh, and that Queen Henrietta, wife of Charles I, had been sent here for safety during the Civil War. (Susan’s response in kind left the guide silently wondering who Hubert Humphrey was.)
“There was once a statue of Henry VII, but it was destroyed in the bombing in World War II. The statue was in honor of Henry’s entry into Exeter in 1497, after the city had withstood a siege by the pretender Perkin Warbeck.”
“The statue was never restored?” asked Martha Tabram, who probably chaired similar civic committees in Vancouver.
“Well, there is another statue of Henry,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I wouldn’t call it a restoration.” With some misgivings she pointed to a fiberglass image of a knight in armor on the façade of a department store.
Susan Cohen spoke up. “In Minneapolis we have an outdoor sculpture garden that has an enormous red cherry poised on the end of a giant spoon. It’s called the Spoonbridge, and it’s about twenty feet tall!”
Gravely the guide looked up at the fiberglass likeness of the first Tudor monarch. “Well,” she conceded, “I suppose it could be worse at that.”
They continued their walk through the crowded streets past the ruins of a church destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing and into a newer-looking part of the city, all built on the sites of the historic ones lost in the war. Finally they came to Princess Elizabeth Square, an open promenade lined with shops, newly constructed after World War II to replace the buildings destroyed by enemy bombing. “The present queen-Princess Elizabeth she was then-came down and dedicated the square as the first step toward the rebuilding of Exeter.”
During this part of the tour, Susan Cohen had little to contribute by way of comparison with her hometown, since Minneapolis had never been bombed by enemy forces. (Though certain members of the party were beginning to wish that it had.)
Elizabeth was scribbling furiously in her notebook, adding diagrams and arrows to her text. Alice leaned over to catch a glimpse of the writing, but she was unable to decipher it. The tour proceeded at a brisk pace, without shopping breaks, and without backtracking. Mrs. Lacey was a wealth of information on historic buildings, medieval celebrities, and dates. She said very little about the mercantile aspects of the city, past or present.
Nearly an hour later the group stood once again at the west front of Exeter Cathedral, arriving there by a circular route that did not involve the retracing of their previous paths. Elizabeth’s note-taking had been steady throughout the latter part of the excursion, although Alice had been unable to determine any correlation between the guide’s remarks and the fervor of Elizabeth’s note-taking.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Tell you later,” muttered Elizabeth.
Compared to Winchester, the only other cathedral they had seen, Exeter looked rather wide and squat. It lacked the tall spires and the sprawling length of Winchester, but the exterior decoration was much more ornate. The entire west front of the cathedral was decorated with a pantheon of life-sized figures. Jesus and his apostles had pride of place above the central doorway, above more figures of kings, confessors, and prophets. The lowest row of statues depicted angels.
“Why are the statues damaged?” asked Frances Coles, pointing to a crowned figure who was missing several facial parts.
“Not the Blitz?” asked Alice. She had about decided that the Germans and the French deserved each other.
“No,” said Mrs. Lacey sadly. “The damage goes back to medieval times, I’m afraid. In those days people were very superstitious about the miraculous healing powers of saints. People used to chip off bits of the statues in hopes that the blessed stone would effect a cure for themselves or a loved one. Some of the statues have been replaced over the years. That king on the right is a new one. Now let’s go inside.”
Susan Cohen whispered to Elizabeth, “Since the statues are already so damaged, they probably wouldn’t notice if I broke off another little piece as a souvenir.”
“Try it and I’ll break your arm,” Elizabeth whispered back.
Elizabeth took no notes at all during the cathedral tour. She followed along in an abstracted way, while the rest of the party admired the rib vaulting of the ceiling (“finest decorated Gothic vault in existence”), and she came out of her reverie briefly to examine the carvings beneath the choir seats. The undersides of the seats were fashioned with a small shelf so that weary choir members might slump against these supports and still remain in a standing position. Mrs. Lacey explained that because the choir members were going to rest their posteriors on the misereres, the builders considered it inappropriate to decorate them with images of saints or other divine symbols around them. Instead, they carved a variety of secular items in the choir seats, so that the wood could be decorated without impropriety.