OPHELIA PYKE AND A MURDER

After a period of seeing things through the eyes of our good Reverend Pyke we now borrow those of his good wife Ophelia.

The officer looked confident as he knocked the Vicarage door. Proud to be an officer, if only a detective constable Constable, he had the feeling that he was treading into the very portals of a really juicy case. It was late afternoon, a body had been discovered next to the barely sensible vicar who everyone said was the best they’d had in years, and he needed to interview the Vicar’s wife because the man had clearly gone potty and killed the pretty young mother of three who lay bleeding next to him on the river bank.

Even vicars, he thought as he waited for the door to open, even vicars can be homicidal maniacs given half a chance, and I’d give a penny to a pound that this one is …

He thought that because he knew deep in his soul that he himself might commit murder one day, if her indoors didn’t see more sense over her need for a fortnight in Greece because a fortnight in Greece was out of the question and she couldn’t see it. And he wouldn’t be able to afford such a luxury while he was still only a humble D.C.

He knocked the door again, found a bell push and pressed that as well. He could hear the ringing of a bell somewhere inside the building and nodded his head to himself. The woman inside must surely have heard that, he thought, unless, of course, she had stuffed cotton-wool into her ears and was hiding from the strong arm of the law. But nobody came to open the door. Nobody came to attend to his very urgent questions, and it was already time for him to call it a day.

“Are you wanting me?” asked a woman, the prettiest woman he’d seen all day, as she climbed out of a small car that had somehow managed to find its way into the drive at the side of the house without him noticing.

“Are you Mrs Pyke?” he asked, and the woman smiled and nodded. He produced his warrant card and flashed it at her.

“Wife of the Reverend Pyke?” continued the officer.

She nodded again. Occasionally there were calls from policemen for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with the church, her husband or herself but because the vicar was sometimes the only figure that might help if someone had wandered too far from home whilst in a senile state and didn’t know who he or she was or where they belonged he was turned to just in case. It happened, but not so often as to call it habitual. So Ophelia wasn’t troubled by the appearance of this officer.

“I wonder if you’d mind accompanying me to the station,” he asked.

“What? The police station in Brumpton? I think not, what with my husband due back any moment...” she told him, using an almost fierce expression in order to underline her point.

“He won’t be coming back tonight, ma’am,” sniffed the officer. It was Detective Constable James James, known for obvious reasons as Jimmy, and he was fond of sniffing, especially when he was addressing those he regarded as beneath contempt. And this woman, this very pretty woman, was married to a killer, he was positive of that, and such a relationship made her beneath contempt.

He contemplated for a moment whether he should make a play for her after the divorce, which was bound to come seeing as her husband was going to spend a very long time behind bars, and then decided that her indoors might make an expensive fuss and said instead, “there are questions to be asked concerning a murder...”

“What? Has someone died? Has someone been murdered? In Henstooth?” she asked, shocked, and still wondering what it had to do with Josiah.

“If you’ll come along with me, then everything will be made plain as day,” Detective Constable James said, smirking at her apparent confusion.

But Ophelia was a law abiding citizen and if the law wanted her to accompany it even as far as Brumpton then she thought she better had, though what a murder could possibly have to do with either herself or Josiah she couldn’t fathom.

“Who’s been murdered?” she asked, still wondering what any murder could possibly have anything to do with either herself or her husband.

“We’ll explain it all at the station,” muttered Detective Constable James with a frown.

And that was all she could discover. The officer was saying no more as he opened the door of his car, one not equipped with the garish décor of your average police car, and helped her in.

“This is all very strange,” she murmured, to no reply.

They arrived in Brumpton just as the radio in the car was becoming agitated with crackling voices that Ophelia could barely interpret. But Officer James apparently could. Possibly he had become accustomed to understanding distortion. Anyway, he frowned and glanced behind him at where she sat on the back seat, and frowned again.

“It seems there might have been developments,” he grunted.

He only grunted when he wasn’t exactly sure what he might have to say. He even grunted when he was unsure as to what he actually thought. But part of his automatic system by which he conveyed uncertainty was always the grunt, and in order to underline any doubts he may have inherited from his crackling radio he grunted again.

“It might be good news,” he muttered as he opened the door of the car for her.

“You mean, the murdered soul has come back to life?” asked Ophelia sarcastically. She felt that sarcasm might well be due as a reward for a situation she found herself in that she still had absolutely no knowledge about.

“They’ve brought the killer in,” replied D.C James. “They’ve caught him up the Bottoms, near Fletch’s pond.”

“Who’s Fletch?” asked Ophelia, feeling the need to be querulous, “and why does he have bottoms?” she added.

“Come on in, ma’am,” replied the D.C, who had no idea who Fletch had been and why the fields that ran towards the river were known as Bottoms, “and all will become clear.”

“I hope it does,” almost hissed Ophelia, “I really, really do.”

There was chaos inside the entrance room to the police station. Two or three leery lads were swaggering in a queue by a desk labelled enquiries and exhaling fumes that must have had their birth in a cider bottle, but their leering was as nothing compared to the noisy protestations of a man, possibly in his forties, clad in dirty jeans and a black t-shirt proclaiming him to be a follower of AC/DC and sporting a filthy baseball cap perched back-to-front on his head as he struggled in the grip of a police officer who musyt have been twice his weight.

“Get yer hands off me!” he shouted at the officer who clearly had his meaty hands on him.

“Come this way, sir,” insisted the officer, and when no obedience was apparently in the offing he was helped by a second officer to propel the dirty man through a door and out of sight.

Ophelia sighed her relief at the sudden outbreak of relative peace, but she had noticed, as had the leering lads, that the man in custody had a frightening quantity of what could only be blood stains adding to the general filth of his condition.

“Was that blood?” she couldn’t help asking.

“Looked like it,” grunted D.C. James, “come this way if you will, for a moment...”

“And if I won’t?” asked Ophelia, angry at what she perceived quite rightly to be an unnecessary intrusion into her lovely life.

“Ha! As if I haven’t heard that before,” grunted the Officer, “we’ll get you sorted and off home before you can say Jack Robinson,” he added with a false smile.

“Jack Robinson,” muttered Ophelia.

© Peter Rogerson 05.04.18