16 THE INVITATIONS

Is Sophia actually falling under the spell of a Priest?

Sophia Stone couldn’t concentrate. She’d heard of writer’s block, but this wasn’t it. She knew perfectly well that she was suffering from a surfeit of peculiarities that had landed on her metaphoric doorstep over the past few days and which had turned her mind into a sort of maelstrom of confusion.

How can I create delicious and heart-warming romances with handsome men and beautiful women experiencing emotional turmoil before emerging into paradise when I can’t even sort out things in my own life, she thought.

Then,

Not that the things that need sorting really have anything to do with my own life. But I will take the anger I feel towards that Detective Inspector out on his likeness in my next book, and give him the deepest love for a woman who turns out to both hate him and, unknown to him, be a serial killer who tries to implicate him in the savage death of a priest…

She was working her thoughts into a grizzly scenario involving blood on a fictitious Easter Sunday when the front doorbell rang.

“Father!” she exclaimed when she saw who it was.

“Ah, so it was you,” said Father Peter Potter with what she took as a wicked grin. “I’ve been going through some of the rather erratic notes left by my predecessor...”

“So you’re the new Priest in Brumpton?” interrupted Sophia.

“I am, for my sins, and as I was saying I’ve been going through some of the notes left by Father Tinder and came upon a rather obscure reference to the good Samaritan.”

“Really?”

“Yes: really. And from what I could make out the good Father was struggling with the notion that a woman, with all the sins inherent in belonging to that sex (and that’s his opinion, not mine) could possibly do good works. Could, he continually asked himself, there be any such thing as a female good Samaritan, and scribbled all over it was the cryptic reference to a Mrs Bank Card. Anyway, I picked up the books he’d been researching, discovered that some of them were library books, and returned them. It seemed the right thing to do. And whilst discussing the ways of the world with the charming lady librarian I asked her who on earth Father Tinder might have meant by the name Mrs Bank Card, and she explained that a popular writer of romantic fiction who lives locally had told her all about helping the rather unworldly Father Tinder at an ATM, and rather eagerly gave me your address when I asked or it. And, well, here I am… And aren’t I glad to see you’re not under arrest or being incarcerated for the duration...”

“That stupid Inspector...” began Sophia, then she grinned a little mischievously at the Priest. “But he’ll get his comeuppance, you see if he doesn’t.”

“Why, is his body going to be discovered in a dark corner with your name in blood all over it?” asked the warmly smiling Priest. “Anyway, can I come in? I’m not used to gossiping on the street and I want to know all about female good Samaritans.”

“I suppose you might like a coffee?” she asked, “it’s about the time I often take one.”.

I’ve never knowingly refused a hot drink at any time of the morning,” he said. “I thought you might be sitting at your desk, quill in hand, scribbling away at the fortunes of some handsome stranger in the melting arms of a broken-hearted beauty.”

She led him through into the kitchen and prepared two cups for coffee, smiling at him.

“I might have been, if you substitute my laptop for a quill and my lap as my office,” she said, laughing.

“Oh, so you’re a modern writer?” he asked. “Tell me, where is your Mr Right today? After all, you seem to be on your own every time I see you...”

“Which is hardly ever, but there isn’t a Mr Right anyway. I’m afraid I’m that rare creature, a lover of romance without any first-hand experience of what the word romance really means.”

“Really,” he sighed, “then we have something in common. I’m a purveyor of good news about characters in an ancient book without any conviction that any of those characters ever existed.”

“You mean, you’re an atheist Priest?”

He shook his head. “Not quite,” he said, “I might dismiss the Adam and Eve stuff as so much fanciful theorising by bronze-age men when the only thing they could think of when they looked around them at the world and all its woes was a mighty creator, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in something, and anyway the work of a parish Priest is more that of a friend in times of need than a spreader of papal edicts. Don’t tell the Bishop I said that, though.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I respect honesty and truth.”

“Yet you gain your living from writing lies and untruths?”

“I never pretend my stories are true, which is why I insist they go in the fiction sections of book shops,” she replied tartly.

“Touché,” he grinned. “It might be better for the world if most of the stuff in the various holy books that can be found across the world shared their space on the fiction shelves, then,” he said.

“Don’t you want to be a Priest?” she asked, curious as to why she was being subjected to what amounted to a tirade of unchristian doubt.

“Oh, I do indeed. You see, my late mother died alone, friendless and bitter, and she would have been helped by a friendly Priest even though she had no beliefs of a religious nature and to the contrary detested any idea of deities. I was away at University and didn’t hear that she was ill until after her death, and I’ve had to live with that ever since. Anyway, when I go round to visit the sick and the dying I make sure there’s not a close relative far away and ignorant of the situation at home. It’s important to me. Much more important than ancient stories of events that probably never happened.”

“But a Priest?” she asked, “it seems to involve so much that isn’t exactly natural. Celibacy, for instance.”

“The Bishop has a remarkably pretty cleaning lady and a smile on his face some mornings of the week,” Father Potter told her, “and I’m a man with all the frailties that men are heir to. And I like a pretty face and can’t reconcile my knowledge of the fair sex with anything remotely sinful. So look out!”

“Are you making a pass at me, Father?”

“If only I dared,” he sighed, “if only I bloody dared!”

“Really, Father,” she said, smiling, “you are in a bad way, aren’t you?”

“There’s no need for sympathy. I’m my own fool,” he told her, “nobody forced me into the priesthood.”

Then she said the sort of thing she’d put into the mouths of the plastic heroines and heroes in half a dozen romantic novels but had never uttered in real life before.

“We could go out this evening and you could tell me all about it over a drink or two,” she said, and smiled in disbelief at her own cheek.

oo0oo

Jonathan O’Donnelly returned to the police station. It was his idea and he was under no orders to do so, but he felt there was one thing he should do in order to put things, as he saw it, right.

“I want to see Detective Inspector Craddock,” he said to the junior officer manning the enquiries desk.

“I’m afraid he’s out, sir, on a case,” came the instant reply.

“I thought I would discuss something before I decide whether or whether not to put in an official complaint about the man,” he said, careful to monitor his words, not wanting anything he said to be taken out of context in the future.

“Really sir?” said the officer, and he leaned forwards towards him. “You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last,” he said, adopting what amounted to an almost intimate confidential tone. “Would you like to see D.C Smythe?” he added, “she’s on his team and might be able to point you in the right direction.”

Detective Constable Smythe was only too happy to see him. She was not only an extremely attractive youngish woman but intelligent enough to be trusted by her Inspector to handle anything that came her way, especially if it resulted from him rubbing up members of the public the wrong way. He did it often, and when it worked it worked well and he had another collar to his name, but when it went wrong it could be disastrous. The incident of the dead Priest was a case in point.

She knew fully well that he’d made his mind up in too much haste that something was wrong, and had used his usual bull-in-a-china-shop tactics in order to get an early result. It had all gone wrong. He should have waited for the pathologist’s report, but he hadn’t. His attitude was so what? It would work next time, and his results were good enough for his brusque attitude to be overlooked. And anything that wasn’t overlooked would be smoothed away by Pamela Smythe.

Which is what happened this time.

Almost unnoticed, she manoeuvred the widower into inviting her out for drinks after work, and almost (but not quite) crossing her fingers she agreed.

© Peter Rogerson 22.01.19