Murdering Ministers (29 page)

Geoffrey sighed again—a deeper, love struck sigh this time, which seemed to have magical powers, since Tish Belfry suddenly walked in through the front door, arguing with a tall, balding man. Given a forced-choice test, Oliver would have categorized him as a detective rather than a stick insect, but it was a close-run thing.

“He's under arrest and bail was denied,” Tish declared as they passed. “Let the courts deal with him.”

“All I'm saying, Tish,” Detective Constable Paddock replied condescendingly, “is that DI Welkin could have got a confession out of him if he'd tried.”

Tish stopped, eager to end the discussion before they reached the incident room. “Welkin did try, Graham. I was there,” she stated, glaring up at Paddock. “He gave the vicar every opportunity to admit to the murder.”

“Oh yeah? Well, all I can say is that he didn't try hard enough.
Hard
enough, get it?” Paddock slammed a gloved fist into his other hand. Then he feigned a look of profound puzzlement. “Or perhaps you don't?” he added with an unpleasant smirk.

Tish flinched with sudden humiliation. She became aware of Oliver and Geoffrey watching them, and lowered her voice as she continued the conversation.

“Quick, introduce me!” Geoffrey hissed.

“What?”

“That nasty scarecrow just insulted Tish Belfry. I must defend her honor. Introduce me to her, and then I can tell him to stop talking to my beloved like that.”

“I'm not going to interrupt Tish while she's talking to a colleague. Wait until she's finished.”

“That'll be too late,” Geoffrey muttered, standing up and approaching the two detectives.

“…don't appreciate that kind of humor,” Tish was saying, staring intently at her colleague. “I never have.”

“Oh, lighten up,” Paddock countered contemptuously. “Bloody policewomen, can never take a joke.”

“Police
officer
, Graham, just like you.”

Paddock stood back and looked pointedly at her chest. “Now, now, Tishy, I can think of couple of ways you're not a bit like me.”

He was about to look up at her face again, a twisted leer on his own, when Geoffrey slid in between them.

“Detective Constable Belfry,” he began, “my name's…”

Geoffrey stopped, intercepting the full force of Tish's carefully prepared expression. Behind him, Paddock gasped as he too made eye contact with Tish, and an initial flash of abject shame gave way to a host of memories parading through his mind—mainly incidents of disreputable behavior toward the opposite sex, which he now deeply regretted. Geoffrey's mind went blank. Having experienced very few non-imaginary incidents involving the opposite sex, disreputable or otherwise, he simply reeled as if he'd been slapped in the face with a large haddock, and staggered back to the seat beside Oliver.

“Double-barreled,” murmured Oliver approvingly, with a nod toward Tish.

“You know, Ollie, you're probably right,” Geoffrey panted, trying to recover his breath. “It
is
impolite to speak to a lady before you've been properly introduced.”

***

The hallway telephone was ringing when Oliver and Geoffrey arrived home that evening. Geoffrey ignored it and headed straight to the kitchen cabinet, where he kept a small bottle of cooking sherry. Oliver picked up the phone.

“Battersea Dog's Home,” he announced.

“Ah, good, it is you, Ollie.” Mallard's voice, jovial for once. “I'm calling from the Yard.”

“What are you doing in the backyard?” Oliver asked. “And shouldn't you be backstage in Theydon Bois, preparing your rebuttal?”

Mallard was clearly so happy to be back in his spiritual home that he was prepared to overlook the jokes. “I gave my final, farewell performance as Bottom last night,” he declared. “I thought I'd see how your day went, before I set off for home.”

“Why are you at work? Oh yes, you said something about helping your archnemesis, Assistant Commissioner Weed. I thought he was the one who was trying to keep you away from the place. What's that all about?”

Mallard paused, and Oliver could hear his breathing down the line. “Look, Ollie, this is strictly confidential, of course. It seems that Weed is developing a little…personal problem. It all began Saturday night, when he started to notice an odd smell in his office. He got the cleaners to go in on Sunday, but the smell was still there yesterday morning. So during the day, Weed had the maintenance people go through the duct-work and the heating system to see if they could find a dead mouse or bird, because that's what it smelled like, frankly. They didn't find a thing. But the pong is still there and, oddly, it's only noticeable in his office. Well, naturally, some of Weed's less-than-charitable colleagues are beginning to hint that it's not the office but the incumbent who might be the source of the aroma. So yesterday, just before I met you and Effie, I called to offer Weed some confidential diagnostics, based on that special project I did on the relationship between bodily odors and nutritional imbalance.”

“You never did any project like that!”

“Maybe, but Weed doesn't know that. I popped in this afternoon to do my assessment.”

“And the pong?”

“Strong. And getting stronger, according to DS Moldwarp, who's been monitoring the situation with great glee, although you'd never think it to look at him. So I left out a few petri dishes filled with chemicals overnight, and tomorrow I shall give the assistant commissioner my analysis. He is most grateful for my discretion, as you can imagine.”

“How grateful, exactly?”

“Not as grateful as I intend him to be. So how was the day of detection?”

Oliver told his uncle what he had learned from the suspects, repeating his conviction that they had all been telling him the truth, perhaps not the whole truth, but certainly nothing but the truth.

“Ah, what is truth?” Mallard intoned. “But did you come across anything that might exonerate young Paul?”

“I feel there's a two and a two somewhere in my notes that are screaming to be made into a four, but I can't put my finger on it. I need to give it some thought.”

“Good idea,” said his uncle. “Sleep on it.”

Chapter Eight

Unto Us a Child Is Given

Wednesday, December 24 (Christmas Eve)

Although Oliver occasionally deplored Susie's morals, he admired their consistency. It was a matter of honor that, no matter where she spent the rest of the night after she closed up her restaurant, she always came home for breakfast. “I may be a slut,” she would declare happily, “but I'm not a trollop,” a distinction that was crystal-clear to the three men who shared the house.

When Oliver stumbled into the kitchen, Susie was standing at one of the counters, staring at a packet of cornflakes and apparently looking for instructions.

“You're up early!” he said huskily.

“I haven't been to bed,” she trilled. “Or rather, I haven't been to sleep. I just got home. Want some of my special coffee?”

“No thank you,” Oliver answered very quickly. “I'll make myself some tea.”

“I'll put the kettle on for you,” she offered. Oliver watched her dubiously. It was just possible that Susie could burn water.

“You're early, too,” she said, abandoning the cereal box and filling the kettle.

“I woke up cross. I was dreaming, I think.”

“Ooh, goody. Something juicy to start your Auntie Susie's day with a bang, although you're already too late for that? It's not that dream where you and Geoffrey Angelwine are climbing Cleopatra's Needle, is it?”

Oliver overlooked the comment and sat down at the kitchen table. “‘I have had a dream…past the wit of man to say what dream it was.'”

“What?”

“Shakespeare.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. It's Bottom's speech, when he wakes up after losing his ass's head. Uncle Tim did it rather well last week.”

Susie glared around the room, in search of the coffeemaker. It may have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to Oliver that the machine was trying to shrink back out of sight between the biscuit tin and Susie's broken food processor.

“Well, midsummer's day is traditionally June 24,” she said. “Today is Christmas Eve, exactly six months later, so perhaps this was your Midwinter Night's Dream. Was is bleak?”

Oliver rubbed sleep from his eyes. “It's already fading. I think it had a lot to do with this murder and all the people I was talking to yesterday.”

Susie spun around and pointed at him with a spatula. “Quick, what's the one thing that was on your mind when you woke up?”

“Breakfast.”

She sighed. “All right, I'll make you breakfast,” she said dejectedly. “But I meant what one thing did you remember from the dream?”

“That's was it—breakfast,” Oliver maintained, now fearful that Susie's misunderstanding might sabotage his digestive health for the entire Christmas holiday. “Breakfast was somehow in my dream. And I woke up asking how did the strychnine get into the glass.”

“Yes, but you probably went to sleep asking that one. It's been on your mind since Sunday. But you know what they say: When you have eliminated six impossible things before breakfast, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now you just sit there, and I'll whip you up a cooked breakfast. Do you want some orange juice? I'll leave out the strychnine.”

Oliver sat, nursing his glass of juice, and repeating the question to himself, while Susie foraged in the refrigerator.

How did the strychnine get into the glass?

He had asked them all the day before—all the people on the platform who had the opportunity to lace the wineglass with the deadly poison. They had all denied it, and all denied seeing Piltdown tamper with the glasses, and it had sounded like the truth. But what is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. At least Pilate washed his hands. And who wrote that crack about jesting Pilate?

“Bacon,” he murmured, remembering.

“We don't have any,” Susie answered. “I'm frying some tofu sausages instead.”

How did the strychnine get into the glass? Tapster's reaction was more or less instantaneous, yet strychnine took time to work—ten minutes at least, usually longer. Yes, you could cut the time to the bare minimum by delivering it dissolved in something, especially something that would disguise its bitterness, such as alcohol. But wait—the Communion wine didn't contain any alcohol, that wouldn't work. The more Oliver thought about it, the more it seemed an impossible crime. And yet, when you have eliminated the impossible…

How did the strychnine get into the glass?

Did
the strychnine get into the glass?

Well, yes. The police scientists had found it there, with Tapster's dying spit. But was it the only source? What if Tapster had ingested the poison earlier, within the fatal ten to twenty minutes needed for it to take effect, which meant it had to be after he had walked into the church that morning? What else could he have eaten? Maybe he chewed a breath mint or munched on a stale Jaffa Cake while he was taking a piss—no, when the pathologist sliced open the dead man's stomach, he found only his breakfast. Then maybe that trace of breakfast honey he licked from his fingers was big enough to hold the fatal dose of strychnine, or maybe…

“Breakfast!” he exclaimed.

“It's coming, sweetie, don't get your undies in an uproar,” called Susie, attempting to beat a large cast-iron frying pan into submission.

“Thank you, Susie, but I have to pass. I need to go somewhere.”

“Really?” she said in a disappointed voice, as he jumped up from the table and headed for the hallway telephone before the smoke caused his eyes to water. “Then did I solve the mystery again?”

“Naturally.”

“Oh, good,” she chuckled, reaching for the kitchen fire extinguisher as a precaution.

***

An hour later, Oliver was sitting in another kitchen, waiting for Effie. He was hungry, but he had already guessed that the pantry had been emptied of anything readily edible, and an inspection proved him right.

He had last been in the manse only two days earlier, but a tour of the upstairs today revealed a marked deterioration in tidiness, even though the house's only regular occupant was still in prison. The disorder had to be the result of a thorough search by Detective Inspector Welkin's minions, no doubt sanctioned by a warrant issued after Piltdown was formally arrested, on suspicion of being the murderer of Nigel Tapster.

Whoever had searched downstairs had been less disruptive, perhaps conscious that the reception rooms and kitchen were often in the service of the church. Or perhaps somebody else had come in and tidied up afterwards. Oliver knew the church could not afford to provide its minister with a housekeeper, but it was possible that a benevolent churchgoer knew about the unlocked side door, which he had used himself a few minutes earlier.

The doorbell rang. He walked through the house and pulled Effie inside as quickly as possible, out of the morning's freezing rain. She kissed him once—deep and crisp and even was the description that sprang to his mind—then pushed him away.

“We're alone, but I'm on duty,” she explained as he led her back to the kitchen. “So that was my compromise.” She glanced at the room. “I see the lads have been through here.”

“How can you tell?”

Effie ran a hand along the front edge of the sink. “It's been dusted,” she said, holding up a powdery finger.

Oliver sat down on a kitchen chair and gestured for her to take another seat at the table. She draped her coat over the chair, but began to wander around the room.

“I took Uncle Tim's advice,” he began. “I slept on it. And I woke up this morning with an idea or two that I'd like to bounce off you. If I'm right, this may get us closer to wrapping up more than one case.”

Wrapping up. Blast, would he still have time to think of, purchase, and wrap a gift for Effie before the end of the day? She had paused behind him.

“Dearest Oliver,” she said thoughtfully. “One of those cases must be Tapster's murder. Would I be right in thinking that Tina Quarterboy's disappearance is the other one?”

“Yes.”

“Aha. Take off your glasses,” she said, strolling enticingly around him.

“What?”

“Take off your glasses,” she repeated seductively. He removed his cheap spectacles, a precaution he often followed before he and Effie indulged in some serious mutual lip manipulation. Perhaps, out of advance gratitude for his help with Tina, she had reconsidered her earlier compromise?

Puzzled, he watched Effie's dim outline dart across the room and grab something from the kitchen sink. He only just had time to fling his arms over his head before she began to flog him across his shoulders with a tea towel.

“Oliver…Chrysostom…Swithin!” she fumed, punctuating each name with a highly accurate thrash of the cloth. “If you know where Tina Quarterboy is and you've been holding out on me, I swear I'll stuff the turkey with you! Or vice versa!”

She switched her target area and swatted his unprotected kneecaps several times. Then she paused, out of breath, glaring at him.

“Can I answer now?” he whimpered, lowering his arms cautiously. Effie thought for a second, then nodded.

“I didn't figure it out until I woke up, I promise. And the very first thing I did was call you and get you to meet me here.”

“Why here?” she demanded.

“Because Tina has been here.”

“I know she's been here—Tish Belfry told me her fingerprints were all over the sitting room piano. Piltdown was the local vicar. He had a lot of his parishioners in for tea.”

“No, no, I mean Tina's been here since she ran away,” Oliver answered swiftly, choosing not to correct Effie's religious terminology. “In this house. In this kitchen. That's what I wanted to tell you, in private, so you wouldn't have to let Welkin know that I've been helping.”

A well-aimed flick of the tea towel cracked uncomfortably close to his left ear. “Oliver,” she said in a cold, low voice, “I don't give an aerial knee-trembler
who
gets the fornicating credit for this, just as long as we deliver this frightened, pregnant teenager to a doctor sooner than is humanly possible, and I get to go home and spend some quality Yuletide with whatever's left of my boyfriend. Now talk.”

“Fair enough. You see, I woke up thinking about breakfast.”

“What?” she asked, with a flawless balance of menace and astonishment.

“Breakfast,” he repeated. “Even though I still haven't had any, incidentally. And it was appropriate to both cases, but I'll start with Tina—Nigel Tapster's already dead, he won't mind waiting.”

“Will you please get to the point!” Effie was wrapping the tea towel around her hand, testing her grip.

“Well, when I came here last Thursday, after visiting Tapster, I spent a merry half-hour with Paul doing the washing up at that very sink, possibly employing that very tea towel. He hadn't touched the dishes since the previous Sunday. But on Monday afternoon, when I was getting Paul a change of clothes, I noticed that his breakfast things from the previous day were already washed up.”

“Perhaps you shamed him into turning over a new leaf?”

Oliver snorted scornfully. “Not Paul. He only had a short time between finishing his breakfast and starting the morning service in the church. I can guarantee that he wouldn't have used that time to do the washing up. And nobody was supposed to have been in the house since Sunday morning, including Paul, who's been under arrest. Also, his bed was made—trust me, no single man living alone would stop on a Sunday morning to make his bed. Certainly not one whose drawers are as untidy as Paul's. I'm referring to his chest of drawers, of course.”

Even at a less tense moment, Effie would have ignored the joke. “So you think Tina Quarterboy is Paul's phantom housekeeper?” she asked.

“Yes. The one time I saw her, she couldn't do enough to help him in the kitchen.”

“And she's been hiding out here in the manse all the time?”

Oliver shook his head. “I don't think she's been spending her nights here, and she's certainly not here now—I checked all through the house before you arrived. But I do think she's been raiding the larder when she got hungry. She must have known about the unlocked side door. Remember Paul's apologies on Saturday for being unexpectedly out of Jaffa Cakes and other foodstuffs that he thought he had? And I'm sure I heard someone moving about downstairs when I was here on Monday. That must mean Tina's somewhere in this area, and if she's stealing food she's probably not staying in somebody's home.”

“That would tie in with the complaints I was getting yesterday about milk and other groceries disappearing from doorsteps in the neighborhood,” Effie speculated. “If you're right, I bet Tina herself is responsible for the thefts.”

She dropped the tea towel on the table. “You can put your glasses on,” she said, resuming her catlike prowling of the kitchen. “I've decided to like you again.”

“So did I help?” Oliver asked her eagerly.

“Well, I'd say a more intensive search of this neighborhood is warranted,” she conceded. “I'll have to see who Welkin can spare this morning. We'll need to check sheds and garages, empty houses, old warehouses, that sort of thing.”

“How about the church next door? The side door to the building and the side door to the manse are practically in line. Tina could easily get from one to the other by climbing over the fence, and she wouldn't have to show her face on the street.”

“Yes, but the church is kept locked, isn't it? And I don't know where she could hide in there. She disappeared Friday morning. The building was in use Saturday—we were there, remember?—and it's been a crime scene since Sunday afternoon. Even the Plumley plod would have noticed signs of an illegal occupant.”

Oliver stood up and produced a key, which he dangled in front of her face. “Want to check?” he asked.