This Private Plot (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Wednesday evening

The Reverend Gibeon Edwards met them at the door of the vicarage, an ugly late-Victorian pile charitably screened from St. Edmund and St. Crispin across the lane by a high wall and two stubborn sycamore trees. They were late for the writers' group meeting, largely because Oliver had spent the previous hour loitering outside the Weguelins' small cottage, pretending to exploit a stray hotspot for his iPod.

The vicar was still wearing his long black cassock, but with bare feet showing beneath the hem—a mark of humility, Oliver wondered? He deflected their apologies in his usual manner. “You're by no means the last, and we come and go at will, as the mood takes us, and if we can't celebrate our individuality in this venue, where else can we? Punctuality is surely one of the most overrated virtues, I always…”

He trailed off. A middle-aged man had slipped into the entrance hall. The man stopped when he caught sight of Oliver and Effie, but Edwards drew him forward.

“This is Hartley Vavasoeur, one of our founder members, if you'll pardon the pun.” (“What pun?” thought Oliver.)

“This is a little irregular,” said Vavasoeur directly to Edwards, although he was gazing at Effie.

“It's quite all right, Hartley,” soothed Edwards. “Oliver and Effie are of our persuasion and are most anxious to contribute.”

“Actually, this kind of event is new to me, Mr. Vavasoeur,” said Effie. “But don't worry, I don't plan to hold back.”

Vavasoeur broke into a broad smile. “Then why are we standing here talking?”

“Perhaps you can show our guests the drill,” said Edwards, turning to a side table and bringing over a tray. “Do take a glass of wine. Rather a different situation from when I usually present wine to my parishioners.”

They each accepted a glass, and Vavasoeur led them into a small drawing room, furnished with closed curtains and low lighting. Upholstered benches stood against the walls, some of them occupied by piles of neatly folded clothes, which Oliver assumed were donations for a jumble sale.

“Is this where we meet?” asked Effie, puzzled that they were the only occupants of the room.

“Oh, no, this is where we get ready for our grand entrance,” said Vavasoeur, sitting in a clear space on one of the benches. He indicated a pair of double doors. Faint music could be heard and the odd muffled grunt of appreciation, no doubt for a fellow member's way with words. Vavasoeur began to untie his shoelaces. Oliver and Effie, knowing that the removal of shoes was a gesture of respect in many households, sat down and followed suit.

“So what are you writing, Mr. Vavasoeur?” Oliver asked.

“Writing?” the older man replied, bent over as he took off his shoes followed by his socks. Were bare feet also a requirement? Edwards had been barefoot beneath his cassock.

“Yes. The book you're going to discuss tonight.”

Vavasoeur sat up and stared at Oliver. Then a smile crept across his face.

“Oh, you mean my cover. Nice one.”

Well, thought Oliver, many would-be authors do plan a long way ahead, but a cover design is a little premature if you haven't yet put a single word on paper.

“Confusables,” Vavasoeur stated, removing his jacket. The vicar certainly did have the heat cranked up, Oliver noted, taking a sip of wine. He slipped off his own corduroy sports jacket, somewhat reluctantly, because he felt it bolstered his self-image as the wildly successful yet still humble storyteller. This had the minor advantage of being utterly true; legal action over the illustrations for the Railway Mice series meant his interim royalties were still only a tiny percentage of the books' enormous sales. Effie put her thin cotton cardigan to the side.

“Confusables?” Oliver repeated.

“Yeah. A book for children. Explaining the crucial differences between commonly confused things. Such as an alligator and a crocodile. Or a seal and a sea lion.” He undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie.

“Oh, I see. That's quite good.” Time for Oliver to switch on his role as the established author, generous with ideas. “You could include some very basic things. Such as a bowl versus a dish. A pond and a lake.”

“Yeah, that'd do.” Vavasoeur took off the tie and unbuttoned the rest of his shirt. He laid them on the bench beside him.

“Or a horse and donkey,” Oliver continued.

“S'pose.”

“A frog and a toad,” added Effie, trying to ignore the obvious fact that Vavasoeur was unzipping his flies and beginning to take off his trousers. She took a large gulp of wine.

“A boat and a ship. A kangaroo and a wallaby,” Oliver offered, with increasing apprehension. “A cashew and a penis. A peanut, I mean.”

Vavasoeur had removed his underpants and was standing stark naked in front of them.

“Yeah, all good stuff, Chiefy,” he said. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I can't wait all night for you two to get stripped for action. Don't be too long, Effie.”

He winked at her, picked up his glass, and headed for the double doors. As they opened, the noise level rose briefly, including the sighs of satisfaction with what Oliver was beginning to suspect was not a well-rounded phrase.

He and Effie sat together in uncomfortable silence.

“Oliver,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Is it me, or is there something funny going on?”

“Oh, you spotted that too?”

“When you've been on the force as long I have…” She finished her glass of wine.

“Do you think I should find out what's happening?”

“If it's not too much trouble.” She reached for Oliver's wineglass.

He stepped over to the doors, took in a deep breath, and opened one slightly. Across the adjacent room, the sweating face of Maudie Purifoy, mother of Hugowhoisgifted, stared back at him. It was clear that one of the piles of discarded clothes he'd noticed earlier belonged to her. A cautious flicker of his eyes confirmed that the other piles were all represented by their former occupants, spaced around the room. He closed the door again slowly and rested his forehead against it.
Well, that explains the pun.

“Effie?”

“Still here, my love.” She hiccupped.

“Effie, I think we've stumbled across a potential blackmail victim.”

Chapter Fourteen

Thursday morning

As we've already noted, Synne's isolation—indeed its very pointlessness—makes it look like the perfect destination for disenchanted corporate types longing to escape the pettiness of company culture and the
Loaded
lads, new ladettes, lager louts, looters, and luvvies who haunt their urban streets. But when these burned-out television producers, advertising copywriters, and human resources managers arrive in the middle of nowhere, what can they do with the rest of their lives?

If you're childless, forty-eight-year-old, laid-off widower Hartley Vavasoeur, former brand manager for Toothaker Teas' range of decaffeinated tropical fruit-flavored infusions, and you've blown all your retirement savings on a drafty eighteenth-century cottage facing the Square, you fall back on what you know best. You open a tea shop in your front room.

“Pineapple oolong?” he offered Oliver sheepishly, when the young man turned up on Thursday morning. “Banana Darjeeling? Orange pekoe?”

“Ah, orange pekoe…”

“Not what you think. There's no tea in it. Just orange. Well, orange flavoring.” He sighed. “You want a cup of builder's?”

“I think so.”

Vavasoeur slunk off and returned a couple of minutes later with a steaming teapot and a plate of chocolate biscuits. “On the house, squire,” he said. “With my apologies to you and your good lady for the mix-up.”

“Forget about it, Hartley,” said Oliver with a forced smile, even though he hadn't been able to forget about it, to the point of letting his brief scan of the vicar's sitting room stifle his sex drive for another evening. Fortunately, the Reverend Mr. Edwards hadn't been in the room at the time, so Oliver could manage to look him in the face when he arrived at the tearoom ten minutes later.

“I can't tell you how sorry I am about last night,” Edwards began, after Vavasoeur had disappeared into a sufficiently remote kitchen. He and Oliver were the only customers that morning.

“I don't blame you for that. Crossed wires. I was the more deceived.” Oh my God—he'd told the vicar that he might have trouble shutting Effie up!
Mother, you have a lot to answer for.

Edwards looked at him intently. “You don't think it a sin?”

“If it is, it's hardly original. More honored in the breach than the observance.”

The vicar laughed. “Others in the community may disagree, which is why we operate under a cloak of the utmost secrecy. I trust I can rely on your continued discretion?”

“Yes, of course. But in turn, I hope you'll satisfy my curiosity.”

“I see.” Edwards leaned back in the wicker chair and placing his clasped hands over his stomach. “These are lonely people, Oliver, myself included, I'm not ashamed to say. They gain a little extra spiritual comfort from sharing certain natural, uh, intimacies they would undoubtedly be according themselves privately. I find it brings us closer together—not bodily, of course, we have our protocols—but as part of the Church's greater family. I have often felt that accommodations to one's sensual instincts, far from being frowned on by the Church, should be encouraged as part of our ministry to the community of souls. ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,' as the Good Book says, which, let us not forget, includes the Song of Solomon, and even Ezekiel gets a bit racy. Alas, I fear such an opinion would fall on stony ground at the episcopal level, and there is no gain in preaching to stones. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the Bishop, but—”

“You misunderstand me,” Oliver interrupted. Dear Lord, was there nothing Edwards the Concessor couldn't justify, if it suited him? Maudie Purifoy's “spiritual comfort” involved a black-leather teddy.

“I just need some information,” he continued. “Did Dennis Breedlove know about your group?”

The complacent smile disappeared from the vicar's face. He almost lost his balance in the chair.

“I know where this is going,” Edwards said slowly. He turned to look out of the window. “About three years ago—this time of year, in fact—a blackmail letter turned up, pushed through the vicarage letterbox in the middle of the night. Anonymous. Nebulous. Not making any specific accusations or demands. But unmistakable in its meaning.”

Three years ago. That made Edwards the “Jack and Jill” victim. Oliver ran through the verse in his head, but failed to make any connection between fetching pails of water or falling down hills and the writers' group's true
raison d'être
.

“Did the letter come in an envelope?”

“I think so.” Edwards helped himself to one of Oliver's chocolate biscuits. “And do you know the irony? It was Dennis whose advice I sought. Naturally, he said I should take it seriously, with that regretful smile of his. I did. A second letter arrived, with specific payment information. I sent the money. A hundred pounds. You can imagine my disgust when I discovered that my antagonist was none other than my affable confidant. One may smile and smile and be a villain.”

“How did he find out the truth about the group?”

Edwards sat forward, his face in his hands. “I told him, damn it,” he answered. “During one of those lovely, long, meandering, intimate conversations we used to have, before he revealed his true colors. He had a silver tongue, that one, a candied tongue. How could I know it would turn out to be forked as well?”

“A hundred pounds a month isn't too great a financial burden, when shared out among all the members.”

“Good heavens, the others don't know about the blackmail!” exclaimed Edwards, looking to make sure Vavasoeur couldn't hear their conversation. “I have carried the burden alone, spiritual and financial. It is my duty.”

And had your little troupe of exhibitionists found out that their peccadilloes were, to some extent, common knowledge, it would have spelled the instant end of your group, thought Oliver. Not what greedy Breedlove wanted. Not what you wanted either.

“So where did the money come from? Church funds?” Oliver asked, wondering if Dennis might have missed a second opportunity to blackmail the vicar. Edwards looked offended.

“Trust funds,” he corrected. “I can afford this extra subsidy out of my own pocket.” He wiped his fingers on a small napkin. “Are we done, dear boy? This is all frightfully embarrassing.”

“Just one more thing. The Weguelins aren't part of your group, are they?”

“Our gathering is strictly for singles.”

“But since they both work for you, you must spend some time with them, as a couple.”

“Well, with one or the other. Lesbia and I handle all the church business between us. I see far less of Sidney—he simply turns up on Sundays and other occasions when music is required and plays the organ flawlessly.”

“And Lesbia's there, to hear him play?”

“Actually, she gives the services a miss. Lesbia's a bit of a heathen, you see, but then faith is not a job requirement for a verger. I think we Christians often err in thinking we can learn nothing from our atheist brethren. How dare we insist on mute respect for our beliefs, claiming that any challenge to them is an offense against good manners, when we exploit that privilege to tell the unbeliever he's going to roast in hell? That's just as offensive, if you ask me. Take this Dawkins fellow…”

***

Half an hour later, Oliver was gazing at the Weguelins' house with renewed suspicion. He wondered if he should follow Dr. McCaw's advice and march up to their front door, announcing “I know everything!” when it was opened by Sidney or Lesbia, whichever persona was currently inhabiting the cottage or indeed the body. But fearing he would be mistaken for an over-enthusiastic encyclopedia salesman, he chose instead to walk around the property, and was pleased to find a footpath that ran behind the high rear wall of their garden. He pulled himself up by his lean arms, scrabbling his feet on the brickwork, and managed to see over the coping, to be rewarded with the sight of Sidney hoeing in a flowerbed. There was no sign of Lesbia—nor did he expect to see “her”—before his trembling fingertips let go and he fell noisily into the nettles below. He limped back to his parents' house, planning to return under cover of darkness.

Chloe and Phoebe were sitting at the kitchen table looking at some old photographs. It was the first time he'd seen his mother that morning.

“You knew, didn't you?” said Oliver immediately.

“Knew what, dear?”

“About Edwards the Concessor's writers' group.”

“Oh, that.” Chloe laughed. “Of course, I knew. Everyone in the village knows what goes on there.”

“So why did you suggest that I get myself invited?” He jabbed a finger into the air. “You told me specifically to say I knew what it was all about. Insist, you urged.”

“Yes, it all worked rather well, didn't it? Effie told us all about it.”

“I wish I'd been there to see your face,” chuckled Phoebe.

Oliver chose to ignore his aunt. “I repeat, why?” he asked Chloe.

“You were bored, darling. The clouds still hang on you. I just wanted to put a little color into your life.”

“But then why do that to Effie?”

“Hey, I told you to go on your own. You're the one who got Effie involved.”

“Effie's a big girl,” offered his aunt. “She sees worse things than Hartley Vavasoeur's dong in the course of a single day's work with Tim.” She nudged her sister. “I say, that didn't come out very well, did it?”

“Everyone knows about it?” Oliver asked, doggedly returning to his theme. “So why has nobody confronted Edwards? He's the vicar, for God's sake. He and his circle of jerks are convinced that it's still a big secret. Are you just laughing at them behind their backs?”

Chloe looked at him intently. “No, Oliver. While they're minding their own business—so to speak—we're minding ours.”

“You swore blind that you weren't going to help me in the search for Breedlove's victims. You know right well you did. But Edwards's group is an obvious candidate for blackmail. It's the stuff of the Sunday scandal sheets: ‘Vicar of Synne shamed in sex romp outrage.' Why did you lead me down that particular path, then?”

“You may recall, dear Ollie,” Chloe said with maternal patience, “that I played my little trick on you before you found out that Dennis Breedlove was a blackmailer.” She turned to the pile of photographs and held up a glossy black-and-white picture. It featured a mustachioed stage magician in tails, posed between two skimpily clad young women. “Here, take a look at us when we were your age,” she invited.

Oliver studied the photograph, not knowing whether to be more embarrassed at seeing the expanse of his mother's or his aunt's fishnet-stockinged thighs. “Which is which?” he asked.

Chloe took the picture from him and frowned at it. “I have no idea,” she concluded, showing it to Phoebe, who shook her head.

Oliver found Effie in their shared bedroom, hunting for a clean shirt. Her blue denim jeans, still unbuttoned at the waist, were the only clothes she was visibly wearing. She looked up and smiled, unselfconscious, caught in a sideways shaft of bright sunlight from the window, which accented the gold in her hair and cast sculptural shadows across her small breasts and muscular belly. Ben Motley would have complained that it was the least flattering lighting for a body shot, raking across every blemish and scar; but Ben wasn't in love with the model, nor therefore with every mark of individuality etched on her flesh.

“Now?” he asked.

“Sorry, not now,” she said, reaching for her bra. “I have an interview with the vampire.”

“Huh?”

“My contribution to the investigation. This Vampire of Synne chap sounds remarkably mysterious, so I called the manor house and arranged a visit.”

Oliver nodded glumly, adding this fleeting chiaroscuro of her body to his list of the ten most erotic sights of his life. It meant demoting one of the few remaining images that predated Effie, but it was worth it. He briefed her on his conversation with Edwards while she continued to get dressed.

“But there's something wrong,” he concluded. “Based on the timing, the vicar is the Jack and Jill victim. But that doesn't make sense—I can't get the rhyme to work, not with the situation, the location, the names of the principal players. On the other hand ‘Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors and see all the people' is tailor-made for a group of onanists in a vicarage.”

Effie stood in front of a cheval glass, borrowed from Eve's room, and tried to pacify her curls with a stiff-bristled brush. “Breedlove started to record the vicar's payments three years ago,” she said. “He could have used ‘Here's the Church' then, but he didn't. So unless he chose the page at random, there must be a reason why ‘Jack and Jill' works better.”

“And if that reason depends on some association of ideas, known only to Breedlove, as Uncle Tim said?”

“Then you'd better arrange a séance,” she concluded, tying the hair behind her neck with a large blue ribbon. She checked her face in the mirror and decided makeup wasn't necessary to meet a man who lived in the dark. She gave Oliver a kiss on the lips, perfectly timed to express devotion without raising expectation, and headed out of the door.

“Don't forget the garlic,” he called after her.