7. A Lottery Win

Wolf and Fox, Bramble ad Gamble...

WORDS MEAN DEATH

Detective Inspector Dorothy Bramble rapped on the door of the house she was told just might be where the Reverend Paul Wolf might have made his way to, asif it was his second home. The young woman who told her also suggested that he sometimes spent long periods, including nights, at the house, leaving his own deserted because he lived alone. And it was of interest to the DI because the house concerned was close enough to the murder scene, and the Reverend Wolf had vanished from the face of that corner of the Earth even though she knew he had been there when the two alarmed and shaken school girls had first noticed that a man had been killed and was lying, blood-stained, in the corner of his own garden.
She waited the briefest of moments before an inner sense told her that in response to her firm DI knock it sounded as though someone had open and closed a back door quietly. She had long been sensitive to such sounds, a quality that had already helped her solve at least two murders.
Instinctively, she found herself edging towards the corner of the house where the path turned right and disappeared out of sight, and she knew that she could hear the slow scraping sound of nervous shoes encasing what were probably equally nervous feet almost sliding towards her.
She knew when he was there, just round the corner, so she stepped out from where she had been waiting and faced him with a carefully constructed triumphant smile on her face. If she was quite right it would be the same clergyman she had seen momentarily at the murder scene.
“Well, well, well,”n she began, not looking at him properly.,, “Reverend Wolf I presume… just the man I wanted to speak to. How fortuitous.”
“No. I’m no clergyman, woman, as you know full well!” replied Mike Copperly, scowling, “and if you’ll pardon me, I have a meeting…”
Making that sort of mistake was unusual for DI Bramble, and she blushed. “I’m sorry, sir, I really am,” she said with a degree of humiliation in her voice, “I’m afraid I just assumed… after all I saw you only minutes ago outside the murder scene and rather expected you to be racing off to an important meeting like you suggested you might…”
“Well, I needed to call in here,” he said, annoyed but pleased that it was the DI who had intercepted him and not the clergyman he had expected.
“May I make a suggestion before I race off?” he asked, aware that maybe her knew a thing of two this police officerlought to know.
“Please do.”
“Well, as you know I’m an author’s agent and I get to read quite a lot of manuscripts, many of which need considerable editing before they go anywhere near a printer, if they ever do. Well, what brought me up here to Brumpton from my lair down south was a really quite compelling manuscript by the man whose murder you are apparently investigating. It is a novel and it concerns the misdoings of a clergyman called Paul Fox. The Reverend Paul Fox. And I called in to see the excellent lady who lives here because I was told a clergyman with a similar name was a frequent visitor.”
Shr stared at him. “You mean, the Reverend Wolf?” she asked, “Paul Wolf? Well I do see the similarity. What is the nature of the manuscript, or is that a secret?”
“Now the man’s dead I don’t see that it matters,” replied Mike Copperly, “His book, with the working title of The Killing Prayers concerns an elderly priest who attaches himself to elderly ladies and persuades them to include him in their wills. A nasty piece of work who is transpires also helps them off the planet when he needs their cash. And the man who created the Reverend Paul Fox has been murdered this very day and happens to live very close to a real clergyman with a very similar name? If you join the dots…”
“I see. Yes, I really do see…” said Dorothy thoughtfully, “and if what you say is true I’ll need to see that manuscript.”
“The author’s dead and if it helps catch his killer that’s more important than publication of a novel,” mused Mike thoughtfully, “yes, I’ll send you a file when I get home. To your police station?”
“That’s fine,” she acknowledged. “Here’s my card with email address es and so on on it.” She handed him a card and he glanced at it.
“Dorothy Gamble,” he said with a smile, “a name I won’t forget. My late mother was a Dorothy and for her last few years she lived to gamble on the lottery!”
“I hope she won something. I never do,” grinned the DI, “but it’s a mis=print. My name is Bramble and my cards are due to be reprinted.when somebody canm get reound to it
“She did win,” sighed Mike. “on a Saturday draw., But it might have been the excitement, but a small win was too much for her. She died during the night after knowing she was seven thousand pounds richer!”
Dorothy’s face became suddenly serious. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, “Maybe I won’t do it myself then, but keep my money in my purse..
Throughout that conversation Sylvia Standish had been standing by the open door that the DI had knocked, and was listening intently. So it was that she learned the a clergyman with a name very like her frequent visitor’s name was the subject of a story in which he leeched off elderly ladies and maybe even murdered some of them. And, being elderly herself, she needed to put that story rifght.
“So that’s what they’re thinking,” she mused, “Poor Paul! I’d better warn him before they take their fancy ideas too far! There’s too many rumours round her, far too many. But he’ll be along soon, I’m sure of that.”
© Peter Rogerson 13.01.24