The Priest at Puddle's End

by Jason Blacker

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said.

  “That’s not what Peter Bolton told us,” said Noble.

  “What, that bastard. What’s he lying about now?”

  “He said he saw you at the pub last night and that the two of you got into it again.”

  “We had a few words, yeah. So what?”

  “Well, he seemed to think that you threatened him. You told him that Mrs. Walmsley was just the first, that there’d be others, and that you threatened he’d be next.”

  Lewis tried to smile, he put out his cigarette and stretched his hands out towards Noble.

  “Listen, that’s just two mates arguing. I wasn’t really meaning to threaten him. I mean nothing’s happened to him has it?”

  “It’s not him you need to be worried about it’s the priest. He’s dead.”

  “I’m not surprised and I’m not upset about it.”

  “We can see that,” said Noble, “which makes me think you did it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What time did you leave the pub last night?”

  “I dunno, sometime between nine and ten.”

  “How does nine thirty sound?”

  “Could’ve been.”

  “And where did you go when you left?”

  “I went home.”

  “Straight home?”

  Lewis nodded.

  “So what time would you have arrived home then?”

  “I wasn’t paying attention. Likely fifteen or twenty minutes later.”

  “And did anyone see you come home?”

  “Yeah, my mother was listening to the wireless when I got home.”

  “Now listen to me, Colin, listen very carefully. We’re going to check out your alibi. And if you’re just a few minutes off I’m going to charge you with the murder of Father Fannon. Do you understand?”

  Lewis nodded.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “You don’t look upset about it.”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because a pillar of the community was murdered, a man of the cloth. That’s unconscionable.”

  Lewis looked at Noble for a while before speaking.

  “He might have been a man of the cloth but he was more like the devil in priest’s clothing.”

  “We’ve been hearing a lot about that lately, Colin,” said Frances. “And this is your turn to tell us what that exactly means.”

  “He got what was coming to him. That’s what that means.”

  “What could he have possibly done that deserved death as punishment?”

  Lewis didn’t say anything. He looked at the table between the four of them and fiddled with this hands.

  “Turnbull’s coming in to town this afternoon,” said Frances. “Scotland Yard’s brining him in.”

  Lewis looked up at her.

  “Do you still think he did it?” she asked.

  “Did what?”

  “Killed the Deacon.”

  “He’s as good as anyone.”

  “What if I told you Galen Teel did it,” she said.

  That made him look at her harder and he raised an eyebrow. Noble looked up at her from his chair.

  “Do you have evidence for that?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Nothing would surprise me,” said Lewis, “but like I said he didn’t seem worked up about it when I saw him those years ago. I always thought Turnbull did it.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason whoever killed Matilda Walmsley and the priest.”

  “And that reason is?”

  Lewis sat silently like a petulant child.

  “I can have you charged now, Colin,” said Noble, “for Father Fannon’s death. There’s enough evidence for it, and the way things have been in this town lately, it might take a few days before you get in front of a magistrate. Do you think your mother can handle the dairy by herself? Especially now it’s calving season.”

  Lewis gave Noble a pointed look with a scowled face.

  “You leave my mother out of it.”

  “Wasn’t intending to bring her into it. But if you want us to do our due diligence. To go and talk to your mother about your whereabouts to verify your alibi, you’ll be forthcoming with us.”

  Lewis looked down at the table for some time before looking back up at them and speaking.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ve got something for you. You should go speak with Holme Teel about his whereabouts.”

  “We already did that,” said Frances.

  “Yeah, and what did he say?”

  “He said he couldn’t find the filleting knife so he had to go home and fetch that one to use at the pub.”

  “And why did he need it?” asked Lewis. “It wasn’t that busy at the pub last night. It was Monday night right, and it seems strange to me that at ten at night he’s got to be filleting more fish. I hadn’t seen anyone else come into the pub since I’d got there around nine, and nobody that I saw was ordering fish. It was only drinking then.”

  “And were you specifically concerned about that?” asked Frances.

  “Well no, but that’s what it looked like to me. And what’s the filleting knife got to do with it… unless that’s what was used to kill the priest?”

  “It was, and I’ve had similar thoughts, Colin, about why he needed the knife at that time” said Frances, “but all that is, is speculation. It doesn’t help us.”

  “Yeah, well maybe this will. Just after me and Bolton had finished arguing, I heard Holme on the telephone.”

  “You saw him, or heard him?”

  “I saw him and heard him. I was up at the bar, yeah? And there’s a telephone on the back wall just by the entrance from the bar as it goes into the back kitchen.”

  “And?”

  “I heard him speaking to someone. I couldn’t make it all out, but he said something about ‘ten o’clock’ and he used the word ‘father’. I thought maybe he was speaking to Galen, as Galen wasn’t at the bar at the time and I thought he might have been in the kitchen, but I didn’t see him in there. And now that I think about it, it seems strange. I’ve never heard him address his father like that. He’s always used the word ‘dad’.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Frances. “Anything else?”

  “Well, that’s all I heard. Not much, he was speaking quietly and I couldn’t make out most of it. Didn’t think nothing of it until now that you mention Father Fannon’s been murdered. Not that he didn’t get what he deserved.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Frances. “What does it mean?”

  “I’m getting to that,” said Lewis. “But there’s one other thing I saw.”

  “Go on then,” said Noble.

  “Well, I was in my van for a bit before I left, and maybe five or so minutes after I left the pub, I saw Holme leave. He got into his mother’s car, and he was wearing black gloves. I thought that was odd, because it wasn’t that cold out last night, especially if you were just walking to your car.”

  “I see,” said Noble.

  “And before he drove off he put something on the dashboard.”

  “What was it?” asked Frances.

  “I couldn’t see it, I was too far away.”

  “Did it glint? Was it shiny?” she asked again.

  Lewis shrugged.

  “Like I said, I was too far away. I couldn’t see it and he wasn’t under any lights so I can’t tell if it was shiny or not.”

  Frances turned towards Noble.

  “All very interesting and informing, but all very circumstantial,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Just like I mentioned to Sergeant Noble, Colin, that’s all very interesting, but doesn’t help us with concrete evidence. I want to know what everyone’s talking about when they mention the devil being at work in the church.”

  Lewis looked up at her with furrowed brow.

  “I’m going to tell you, but then you’ve got to let me go.”

  H
e looked at her questioningly.

  “Well, that depends,” she said. “On what you have to say and whether Sergeant Noble and I believe it.”

  “Alright,” he said. “All these years the reason me and Peter have been at it is because of what happened to him as a young boy. What happened to a lot of us as young children.”

  He looked away towards the door as if worried someone might be spying on them.

  “You’re probably not going to believe it anyway. My mum and dad never did.”

  “Well, you’ve got to trust us, Colin, we just might,” said Frances.

  He looked at her steadily. She held his gaze.

  “They were doing things to the kids that wasn’t appropriate.”

  “Who was?”

  “The priest, Father Fannon, since before I was small, and the Deacon when he got here too.”

  “And what sort of things did they do?” asked Noble.

  “Sexual things. Things that shouldn’t be done with little kids.”

  And Lady Marmalade encouraged him to tell them specifically what horrendous things they did. The raping and abuse was widespread and affected many of the Catholic children. It had affected Isabel Slaughter and Peter Bolton and to a very lesser extent Colin Lewis. For he had complained to his parents, but even though they didn’t believe him they had pulled him out of Sunday School and church service to work on the farm, thus sparing him the worst of it.

  “I don’t feel well,” said Florence, after he’d said his piece. “I think I need some fresh air.”

  And it was vile what he’d said they’d done. Any decent person would have been sick at it.

  “I’m very sorry this happened to you, Colin, to all the children,” said Frances, “but why didn’t you say anything to the police?”

  “Ha!” said Colin, tossing his head back. “Have you even been listening to me. I told my parents. They didn’t bloody well believe me so why would anyone else?”

  “Why say anything now?” asked Frances.

  “Because you’re pinching me for his murder, and I didn’t do it. Besides, it’s about time this town’s filthy underbelly was exposed. Those that have done it, they’re dead, might as well come clean now. And with Turnbull coming, it seemed right. Rumor had it he was one of the Deacon’s first victims and he’d come here to shake him down.”

  “Then why kill him?” asked Frances, aloud, thinking to herself.

  “‘Cos he didn’t,” said Lewis.

  Frances looked up at him.

  “Didn’t you just say you thought Turnbull was the likely culprit? Didn’t you say the very same thing to us on Friday?” asked Frances.

  “You know I could have you up on obstruction,” said Noble, “if you carry on with this sort of nonsense.”

  “I don’t mean to be obstructing nothing,” he said. “It’s just that you hear something for long enough you start to believe it. The police never asked me what I saw in twenty-nine and everyone said Turnbull’d done it so I started to disbelieve what I saw.”

  “And what did you see?” asked Noble.

  “Like I told Lady Marmalade on Friday, I saw two men arguing down by the cemetery behind the church.”

  “And you told me you couldn’t see either of them very well?”

  “I said I could tell it was the Deacon but I couldn’t tell who the other man was. Well, that wasn’t true.”

  “For God’s sake, man,” said Noble getting flushed in the face and hot under the collar. “We might have prevented these murders if you’d just said something.”

  “This town likes to keep its secrets,” he said, “and I’ve had a history of people disbelieving me. That’s why I kept arguing with Peter. I wanted to see if I could get him to do something about it. I mean this abuse is still going on, I’m sure of it.”

  “Do you have any evidence of that?” asked Noble.

  “No, but you ask any of the kids, I bet if they’re not being abused they know about it. If you ask them gently, I bet one of them will tell the truth.”

  “What did you see?” asked Frances, gently.

  “I heard and saw two men arguing. The Deacon and…”

  “And who,” demanded Noble, “stop playing games with me, Colin.”

  “It was Galen Teel,” he said, looking down at the table.

  “You should have come clean sooner,” Noble, “a man’s life might have been saved.”

  Lewis looked up at the Sergeant.

  “I don’t particularly care about that. He got what he deserved. I’m not sorry for not saying something earlier. Potts didn’t care did he? He just wanted to put it on someone. So they put it on Turnbull and he went missing. But still the devil kept working away in the church. Now the devil’s been killed. As it should’ve been a long time ago.”

  Noble was still upset. He was about to say something that Frances was certain would not help elicit further information from Lewis, so she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “You said you saw and heard the two of them. What were they arguing about?”

  He looked up at her.

  “I didn’t hear all of it. Some parts were louder than others. What I did hear was about Galen Teel’s children. He told Deacon Millar to lay off his kids. To lay off all the children. That if he didn’t, he’d be sorry. Deacon Millar told him that the children wouldn’t be believed anyway. Not when he was a man of the cloth with God on his side. And he said the children were lying anyway. Full of the devil’s blood. He turned away then from Galen and that’s when Galen picked up a piece of that headstone and hit him on the back of the head.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “Well, Galen started to walk back up towards the back of the church. I think he saw me ‘cos Rover barked, but I ducked up out the alley with my dog. I didn’t see him for a while. He must have been in the church or something, and then a little while later he came up the side by the rectory like I told you.”

  “And did he say anything to you when he saw you?”

  Lewis shook his head.

  “No, he just put his finger to his lips and looked at me a long time and said shhh. He wasn’t menacing though. I didn’t feel like he was threatening me. There’s one other thing I remember.”

  “What’s that?”

  “His backpack was more bulky as he walked away from me. I couldn’t tell if it was before, like when he was arguing with the Deacon, but it had something bulky in it when he left then.”

  Frances nodded.

  “We have him, Charles,” said Frances.

  “Have who?”

  “Galen Teel. We have Lewis, the eyewitness and we have the votive candle donation box which puts him at the church.”

  “Where is it?”

  “On his front lawn masquerading as a birdhouse.”

  Frances turned towards Lewis.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand that perhaps you can help me with.”

  Lewis looked up at her.

  “What’s Matilda Walmsley got to do with any of this?”

  “She knew, didn’t she?” said Lewis. “She’d help with Sunday School sometimes and she’d help encourage the children to go with Fannon to the rectory. She was complicit. A vile woman, an evil woman like I’ve never known. Not surprised she was offed too. Not sad about that either.”

  FIFTEEN

  Missing Pieces

  IT was two in the afternoon, and it had been quite the day. Frances and Florence were back home at Florence’s cottage. The day was warm. For an early spring day. The sun was out and the breeze was barely a whisper, not sharing it’s secrets today. And that was all well and good for Frances had found the motive and that was the key to it all. The remaining piece, why Holme had murdered the priest and Harmonie the secretary, was yet to be determined. But she was sure she’d find out.

  Frances was sitting in Florence’s small back garden admiring her friend’s yard and the tentatively blooming flowers. She was at a cast iron table with a glass top, sitting in an ornate ca
st iron chair that was painted white, upon which were floral patterned cushions. Florence came out from the living room carrying a tray for tea. On it were sandwiches. Cucumber and fish paste and a big pot of tea with a milk jug, teacups and a bowl of sugar. She set it down on the small table and took a seat.

  “This should lift our flagging spirits,” she said.

  Frances looked at her friend and smiled at her.

  “Thanks, Flo.”

  “Just give it a minute to brew,” said Florence. “I can’t believe the day we’ve had.”

  After speaking with Lewis at the police station, Frances and Florence had called upon Dr. Toft, Dr. Langdon, and Dr. Cooney. Frances had wanted their help in trying to identify and help any victims. Cooney was reluctant at first, not willing to believe what Frances had told him. Though when faced with the facts and pressured on pain of a police investigation into aiding the abuse, he quickly found it within his heart to get behind her.

  Frances felt that speaking with the children about their abuse was not helpful. For the abuser was now dead and their testimony would not be needed for court. Furthermore, their healing was more important than clarifying the abuse heaped upon them. Frances would seek the professionals to help heal these wounds that might never heal. But it was all she could do, and she would solicit Chief Inspector Pearce in that regard.

  In her hands, Frances was going through the notebook they’d collected from the locked drawer in Father Fannon’s bedroom in the rectory. Frances was starting to make sense of it, figuring out some of the codes as names, though many of the names she couldn’t make out. Florence poured tea for them and Frances added her own cream and sugar.

  “Have you figured out that book?” asked Florence. “And do I want to know?”

  Frances nodded. She took a sip of tea and put her teacup back down on the saucer which was on the table in front of her.

  “As much as I can, Flo,” she said.

  Frances scooted her chair over to be closer to her friend. She opened up the notebook and started on the first page.

  “I don’t think this is the only one,” she said.

  “Good God, what are you suggesting, Fran?”

  “I’m suggesting that this might be the second one or even the third. I don’t think we’ll find the others, or perhaps Fannon only started a notebook late in his years of abusing children.”