13. Talking to the Reverend

THE SANDS OF TIME Part 13

The Reverend Rollo Bandweasel looked suddenly shocked when the DS mentioned his presence at the Plaice and Chips when the elderly Gavin Pottle became the subject.

“He asked me,” he said, nervously, “the old man found me, wrote to me at the church and asked me to see him. Said it was important, though I didn’t know him from Adam. He even told me where to find him, and so I booked a few days holiday and came to the seaside to see him. I’m in a Bed and Breakfast in Oceaneye. Very comfortable it is, too.”

“You say that you didn’t know him from Adam, except he didn’t have a damned big fig leaf,” smiled Lucy.

“There is that, and thank goodness!”

“So what did he want?”

“Look, I’ll give you chapter and verse because in the long run it’ll save you time. I got a letter from him, awful handwriting as if a child had written it, pretending to be old with wiggling it across the page! Anyway, in the letter he said he was an old parishioner of mine and he had something he wanted to discuss with me before he died. He said he was ninety-something and knew he didn’t have long on this Earth and didn’t want to waste a minute of any time that he had left.”

“So what did he want?” asked Lucy

“Well, as you will have gathered I came here to see him. He’d told me where he’d be, in that oddly named pub. I mean, I thought it would be a chip shop but it hardly does any food anyway! I went there at a time that he suggested he’d be there, and when I got there I saw that he was the only character in the lounge bar. I knew it was him at once because he looked little more than a skeleton than a living being, and when he saw my collar he waved sort of nervously.”

“So he was pleased to see you?”

“Sort of, I suppose. Probably pleased that I’d gone to the bother of coming at his request. I don’t very often find myself touring across the country because an old man wants me to!”

“What was special about him, then?”

“It was his name. Gavin Pottle. I’d researched what happened to a predecessor of mine in the church, the one that died in a weird accident, and the name Gavin Pottle appeared in the reports that I read.”

“You remembered that?” frowned Lucy.

He grinned and shook his head regretfully. “I’ve got what they call a photographic memory,” he said shyly, “If I see something written down, even something as trivial as the name of someone I’ve never met, it’s there in my head for ages.” He tapped his head and smiled. “It can come in useful sometimes.”

“I wish I could do that. My memory’s indecently full of holes, I’m afraid.”

“Anyway, I went up to him. I didn’t want a drink even though his looked delicious, all foaming and dripping down the side of his glass! But I don’t imbibe alcohol and anyway I didn’t intend to give him much of my time. You see, I like the coast, the sea, the sand, the waves lapping around me. It’s calming, and I wanted to take a walk along, back to Oceaneye before it got too dark.”

“Sometimes it might be calming, if you’re not drowning!”

He laughed at that. He’s not the bloke I thought he’d be, thought Lucy, he’s not likely to have wanted to poison an old man he’d never met!

“He told me of our relationship. That the dead vicar from years ago was David Hobson and it hadn’t even struck me that his surname was the same as my own birth surname, one that I changed so long ago I barely remember it. You see, I was once an enthusiastic campaigner on the environment front, and I spent a couple of years burrowing in a patch of beautiful old woodland, making a den for myself and a few fellow protesters. They wanted to take those trees down. Developers, that is, not we protesters! They wanted to build on land that had been virgin perfection since Britain became an island, and I wasn’t going to have it!”

“I’ve seen notes on you from back then,” Lucy told him. I would have, wouldn’t I, seeing as you’re either a suspect or a witness in an attempted murder case.”

“You can cross me off as a suspect. I didn’t try to kill him! I wouldn’t. I believe in peace.”

“Anyway, carry on. There you are, sitting in the Plaice and Chips talking to him. What did he have to tell you?”

“That he was sorry about the Reverend David Hobson who had died in the church, and he wanted to confess something important to me.”

“Why to you? Doesn’t one usually make that sort of confession to the police?”

“What sort of confession, sergeant? There are many who seek forgiveness from God. It’s best not to prejudge.”

“Sorry. Then carry on please,” she said, smiling in a chastened sort of way.

“He said that the Reverend David Hobson had been the loveliest person he had ever known and even almost eighty years later he hadn;t met his equal, that he had loved him with all his heart and wanted to stay with him for ever, but in those days it was plainly impossible. And when the Reverend told him he was interested in getting to know a local contestant in a beauty pageant he, the old man, had seen red and somehow knocked the bronze statue of our Christ until it fell onto his head and smashed his brains into soup!”

“Gracious! I read in the notes that the coroner agreed that a passing lorry had caused the building to vibrate, and that statue had been badly positioned in a dangerous place.”

“That’s what was reported in the press.”

“So the retired schoolmaster had inadvertently caused the statue to kill the one he loved? Why didn’t he tell the truth?”

“Shame, I suppose, and probably because that wasn’t the whole truth. Oh no, I’m pretty sure that the Reverend David Robson was actually murdered by his lover boy who had misinterpreted their relationship from the start. Whereas Mr Pottle had felt a deep love for the fellow, David had looked upon it as no more than friendship, and when an attractive young lady entered his eyeline he did what any blue-blooded lad would do and made for her. He was young, you know, was David, and being of the faith doesn’t mean you lose your instincts. It was his first church.”

“But wasn’t Mr Pottle married at the time? To a woman?”

“That’s what I want to check on. There’s one thing I need to know before I can tell the old man to beg the Lord for true forgiveness. I want to know the truth about his wife.”

© Peter Rogerson 21.03.22

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