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“Mrs W-Walcott,” Clementine whispered, her heart skipping a beat before seemingly settling in the pit of her stomach where it began to churn worriedly. She stared at the vicar in disbelief. “Sally Walcott. Are you sure?”
Reverend Ormstone nodded. “I have just come from her house this morning. The neighbour called me, you see. She went around to see Sally about the arrangements for the Autumn Fair first thing this morning but couldn’t get Sally to answer the door.” The vicar coughed as if to punctuate an end to his rambling. “Anyway, Mrs Saunders let herself in with a key Sally had given her the last time she went to see her sister, Dorothy, and found poor Sally far beyond help.”
The vicar allowed stunned disbelief to settle between Clementine and Cameron, who looked at each other for a few moments before they both refocused on the bearer of bad tidings.
“What did she die of?” Cameron asked sadly, his voice low and hushed in reverence to the deceased.
“It looks to have been some sort of seizure. Of course, I have blessed her soul and sent her on God’s most divine pathway,” the vicar informed them pompously.
Clementine lifted a hand to halt the vicar’s clerical discourse. “I am sorry, but has the doctor been called?”
Reverend Ormstone nodded jerkily again. He lifted the goblet of wine and downed it in one gulp before he unceremoniously swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. He then refocused on Clementine.
“Yes. He says it looks like she had some sort of fit or seizure sometime yesterday evening. She had been gone most of the night. Anyway, she has gone, God rest her soul.” He lifted a sympathetic gaze at Clementine. “Seeing as you were working with her to organise the Autumn Fair, I thought you might need to know that our good Lord has seen fit to call her back to his fold.”
Be
fore he began a makeshift sermon, Clementine blinked at her father and repeated numbly: “Mrs W-Walcott, Sally, dead?”
“How? I mean, what did she die of again?” her father asked in astonishment. It was clear he was struggling to absorb the impact of the reverend’s news too. “Are you sure it is Sally?”
The vicar looked quite nonplussed at being questioned about his accuracy and nodded emphatically. “I am quite sure. I have just come from there now. It is Sally, I am afraid. Of course, the villagers will only just be hearing the news by now, so it is going to be the subject of a lot of discussion. She was so vibrant and full of life.”
“She was perfectly hale and hearty.” Clementine’s voice was harsh with the ferocity of her statement.
Sally had indeed been one of the healthiest people Clementine had ever known. Consequently, it made it considerably harder to think of her now dead and taken so unexpectedly swiftly as well.
“It looks like some sort of seizure,” the vicar repeated.
“But she was fine when I saw her yesterday evening. In fact, she was in fine fettle. She was looking forward to the fair. I was going to go over this morning to begin to draw up lists of last-minute things we need to do. It was all arranged.” Clementine knew that the more she spoke the shriller her voice was getting. She paused when her father placed a calming hand on her forearm, bringing her attention to the vicar who was waiting patiently for her to stop babbling.
“Has anybody notified her sister yet?” Clementine gasped, thinking of Sally’s somewhat eccentric elder sister, Dotty, who was, quite literally a little, well, dotty.
Maybe thinking about practical things will help. Yes, that’s what I shall try to do. Think of practical things, Clementine.
But the practicalities all led to the same source of her distress: Sally Walcott was dead.
“Not yet. I was just passing and, well, am aware you were acquainted with Sally, so I thought you should know. It is a sad loss for us all. Sally worked so diligently for the church and was such a fine, upstanding member of our community. She will be sadly missed,” the reverend continued, his tone turning increasingly melancholic.
“I know,” Clementine finished weakly.
“You were there yesterday evening, did you say?” Reverend Ormstone suddenly asked, piercing Clementine with a suspicious look.
Clementine nodded. She threw a somewhat panicked glance at her father. “But she was fine when I left her. She never once mentioned me that she was feeling under the weather. In fact, I cannot remember Sally ever being ill. This is most odd. Most unusual.”
In fact, the more Clementine thought about it the more she began to suspect that something unusual had happened. From that suspicion grew a deep-rooted gut feeling that she had to do something to find out what had really caused Sally’s death.
I owe it to Sally, Clementine thought firmly when faint tendrils of doubt began to seep into her determination and threatened to undermine her new and wholly unexpected drive for facts.
“Well, these things can happen to us all unexpectedly. There is nothing we can do about it,” the vicar sighed. “We are all the good Lord’s children and have to leave this earthly realm when the good Lord tells us.”
“Good Lord,” Cameron sighed because he was about the least religious person the vicar could ever have in his reluctant congregation.
“Indeed,” the vicar murmured having heard Cameron’s barely smothered snort. He nodded sagely and stared absently into the fire for a moment, and blessedly missed the rolling of Cameron’s eyes.
“Thank you for calling by to tell us,” Cameron offered with an appreciative, if brief, smile when it seemed that the vicar was going to remain there for some time yet.
“Oh, yes. Yes, well, like I said, and Mrs Saunders said this morning, Sally was meeting various people today about the fair and, well, seeing as your daughter knows her quite well I just thought I would pop by on my way back to the church, to impart the bad news. Of course, there will be the funeral arrangements to get underway now, and then I shall have to mention the sad loss of one of our own to the parishioners at church on Sunday. There is so much to do,” the reverend sighed, his shoulders now stooped with the heavy weight of his burden.
