13 THE POLICE INSPECTOR

With Father Tinder dead, questions need to be asked

“That’s odd,” murmured Sophia when there was no reply after she had rung the doorbell of the Presbytery more than once. “I was expecting him to be in,” she added, “and he’s not the sort to be in bed still, not at this hour.”

“You know him quite well then?” suggested Father Potter, raising his eyebrows. But before waiting for a reply he added, “Hang on while I go and see if he’s round the back.”

He returned moments later. “There’s a locked gate,” he said, “as solid as this door by the look of it. So did you know him quite well?”

“No. Not at all really. Except by reputation,” replied Sophia, edging round the front porch so that she could get to the front room window and peep into the room. “Funny. The curtain hasn’t been drawn shut so he must be up. It’s exactly as it was last night and … oh! Good heavens!”

“What is it?” asked the new Priest.

“You’d better see for yourself, Father,” replied Sophia. “Look!”

Father Peter Potter did indeed look, and then he looked away.

“The few dead men I’ve seen in the course of my ministry looked exactly like that,” he muttered, reaching for his rather expensive mobile phone and dialling the emergency number.

oo0oo

It was an unexpected death and Detective Inspector Brian Craddock had to investigate, just in case. Not that he wanted to. There had been a spate of robberies on the Swanspottle road, and he wanted to get his teeth into solving those because he was pretty sure who was responsible, but needed proof. But death trumps robbery, and so he pulled up outside the Presbytery with his pretty constable Pamela Smythe by his side.

“There’s been a report about this priest,” murmured the Constable.

“There has? I forget. My head’s full of house-breaking. Remind me.” said the D.I., pushing the gate to the presbytery open. Two people were standing by the front door, a priest who looked to be somewhere in his forties and a woman of just about the same age.

“You found him?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t call looking through a window and spotting him where he lay exactly finding him,” replied the Priest, “but yes, we looked through the window when he didn’t answer the doorbell.”

“Details later,” grunted D.I. Craddock. “First, have you a key?”

Peter Potter shook his head, as did Sophia. “We’re visitors,” she said.

“I’m to take over from him,” added Father Potter, “the Bishop was concerned that he might have attracted unwanted attention recently, and was moving him to a quiet place for respite and time to think.”

“There was the funeral that wasn’t,” put in the pretty lady constable. If all policewomen in this neck of the woods look like you then I’m in the wrong trade, thought the Priest.

“Explain,” demanded her Inspector.

“It’s just that he heard unsavoury rumours about a woman he was due to wave through to the Heavenly Afterlife, and he decided he wasn’t going to do it. And he waited until the last moment. Sir.”

“I remember. The hit and run by a man half a dozen times over the limit and virtually incapable of standing let alone driving,” filled in the Inspector at uncharacteristically great length.

“The husband of the deceased was upset, sir,” added the Constable.

“That’s the account I was given by the Bishop,” put in the new Priest. “He was afraid that the poor man might want to exact some kind of revenge...”

“So you think it might be murder?” asked the Inspector, addressing the question, it seemed, at all of them.

“If it was there’s no sign of any kind of forced entry, and this door looks pretty solid,” contributed the Priest. “I couldn’t get round the back because of the gate,” he added.

“We’ll have to get this door open,” growled Inspector Craddock, reaching for his phone and barking an order for a locksmith.

“The aggrieved man?” he asked when he’d done that.

“You mean the husband of the woman who’s burial service was so cruelly cancelled at the last minute?” asked Sophia.

“That’s him. Know him?”

“He’s a school teacher and a good man with a lot of anger bubbling inside him, and his wife was my friend. You might even say she was my best friend,” replied Sophie frankly.

“Do you think…?” The Inspector was fond of leaving half of his sentences in silent mid-air, it seemed.

“Do I think he might find a way into a locked house and kill its unsuspecting occupant?” asked Sophia, “and the answer is certainly not! He teaches religion, for goodness’ sake, and yes, he might sink to lobbing a brick against the window … you can still see the mark … but it didn’t do any damage...”

“When?” demanded the Inspector.

“Yesterday early evening,” replied Sophia, “I was here with a friend, trying to reason with the man.”

“I see. So you were here last night? Best friend? Then we’ll chat at the station. You and me and maybe a brief,” almost crowed the Detective, and he led Sophia by one elbow towards the gate.

“Hang on!” demanded Father Potter.

“Hang nothing, sir, I have a suspicious death and a ripe suspect,” growled Potter. His constable shook her head in disbelief as it seemed that the Inspector believed he’d found a murdered man and arrested the murderer all in record time and without putting one foot anywhere near the scene of what was so far only a possible crime.

oo0oo

Jonathan O’Donnelly had woken up with a sore head. It wasn’t in his nature to do what he’d done last night, but after the brick throwing incident he’d called in at the Crab and Lobster for a quick half pint of ordinary beer, nothing likely to addle his brains, only to find himself in a group of sympathisers, all of whom thought it was their duty to help him to nirvana via the gift of alcohol.

How he got back home was lost to him, but he clearly had because he was in his own bed when he woke up, on his own and even partly clad in his pyjamas.

And he had the expected sore head, which was why he hardly ever had more than the half pint he’d intended to have. He didn’t like hangovers and had too much respect for his body to want one.

Fortunately it was the school summer holiday and was under no pressure to do anything but wash the fragrance of the pub from his skin in the shower and slowly make his way into the day. So he had a long, hot shower and dressed casually.

Coffee helped, though it brought tears to his eyes when he remembered how Mildred had laughingly enjoyed using the coffee machine because it made noises that sounded rather too like some of those he couldn’t help making when he climbed out of bed. She had always said he could fart for England, and when he sipped his coffee and remembered it the tears tried to force their way out again.

He would have loved to accost the driver who had stolen Mildred from him. He had a few fanciful schemes in his mind, all of which involved that drunken driver and all of which involved pain. Continued pain. Nothing short and salutary but pain that went on and on for ever in much the same way as he knew his grief would go on and on for ever.

Then there was that blasted Priest. What right had he to describe the lovely Mildred in the way he had? It was true, and one of the reasons why he really and truly loved her, that she had chosen him as her life’s partner rather than what he suspected was a veritable army of lovers before he had come along. He’d not been unpopular with the ladies himself so he couldn’t complain. Nor had he refused to accompany quite a few in their search for Heaven on Earth between the sheets, just like she had. But once he had married Mildred they had been so totally absorbed by each other that there was no way she would have carried on behind his back, and nor would he have carried on behind hers.

In short, they had a beautiful marriage.

Yet the Priest, damn him, had suggested that she was some sort of harlot and thus had no right to be ushered into the Afterlife by a man of God. She was a sinner and had not sought forgiveness before she had died, so she was never going to be a candidate for the Almighty’s Heaven.

He was building himself into quite a state, his hangover getting trapped by grief and anger, especially at the Priest, the whole combination rolling round in his head and never stopping, when the door was knocked.

When he answered it there was a plain clothed policeman whose icy stare bored into him, holding his warrant card for him to see as if it was a passport to righteousness.

“Sod off!” he growled.

© Peter Rogerson 19.01.19