The Case of the Curious Curate ar-13

by M C Beaton

  I’ll bet you could, thought Agatha, sour with jealousy.

  “And the pain had gone, just like that!”

  There was a clatter as Agatha’s cleaner, Doris Simpson, came down the stairs carrying the vacuum cleaner. “Just going to do the sitting room and then I’ll be off,” she said, putting her head round the kitchen door.

  “We was just talking about the new curate,” said Miss Simms.

  “Oh, him,” snorted Doris. “Slimy bastard.”

  “Come back here,” shouted Agatha as Doris retreated.

  “What?” Doris stood in the doorway, her arms folded over her apron, Agatha’s cats purring and winding their way around her legs.

  “Why did you call Tristan a slimy bastard?” asked Agatha.

  “I dunno.” Doris scratched her grey hair. “There’s something about him that gives me the creeps.”

  “But you don’t know him, surely,” complained Agatha.

  “No, just an impression. Now I must get on.”

  “What does she know about anything?” grumbled Miss Simms. “She’s only a cleaner,” she added, forgetting that she herself was sometimes reduced to cleaning houses when she was between what she euphemistically called “gentlemen friends.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Agatha. “What’s his place like?”

  “Well, Mrs. Feathers’s cottage is ever so dark, but he’s brightened up the room with pictures and throw rugs and that. He doesn’t have his own kitchen, but old Mrs. Feathers, she cooks for him.”

  “Lucky Mrs. Feathers,” said Agatha.

  “I was wondering if there was any chance of a date.”

  Agatha stiffened. “He’s a man of the cloth,” she said severely.

  “But he ain’t Catholic. He can go out with girls same as anybody.”

  “What about your gentleman friend in bathroom fittings?”

  Miss Simms giggled. “He wouldn’t have to know. Anyway, he’s married.”

  The normally pushy Agatha was beginning to feel out classed. Besides, Tristan was young – well, maybe thirty-something, and Miss Simms was in her late twenties.

  When Miss Simms had left, Agatha nervously paced up and down. She jerked open a kitchen drawer and found herself looking down at a packet of cigarettes. She took it out, opened it and lit one. Glory be! It tasted marvellous. The hypnotist’s curse had gone. She hung on to the kitchen table until the first wave of dizziness had passed. Think what you’re doing to your health, your lungs, screamed the governess in her head. “Shove off,” muttered Agatha to the inner voice.

  There was another ring at the doorbell. Probably some other woman come to gloat about a laying-on of hands by the curate, thought Agatha sourly.

  She jerked open the door.

  Tristan stood there, smiling at her.

  Agatha blinked at the vision in blue shirt and blue chinos. “Oh, Mr. Delon,” she said weakly. “How nice.”

  “Call me Tristan,” he said. “I noticed you at church on Sunday. And I heard that you used to live in London. I’m still a city boy and still out of my depth in the country. This is very last minute, but I wondered whether you would be free to have dinner with me tonight?”

  “Yes, that would be lovely,” said Agatha, wishing she had put on a thicker layer of make-up. “Where?”

  “Oh, just at my place, if that’s all right.”

  “Lovely. What time?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Fine. Won’t you come in?”

  “Not now. On my rounds. See you this evening.” He gave her a sunny smile and waved and walked off down the lane.

  Agatha retreated to the kitchen. Her knees were trembling. Remember your age, snarled the voice in her head. Agatha ignored it and lit another cigarette while she planned what to wear. No more sensible clothes. She did not stop to consider what gossip the curate had heard that had prompted him to ask her to dinner. Agatha considered herself a very important person, which was her way of lacquering-over her feelings of inferiority.

  By the time she stepped out into the balmy summer evening some hours later in a gold silk dress, the bedroom behind her in the cottage was a wreck of discarded clothes. The dress was a plain shirt-waister, Agatha having decided that full evening rig would not be suitable for dinner in a village cottage.

  She kept her face averted as she passed the vicarage and knocked at Mrs. Feathers’s door. She had not told Mrs. Bloxby about the invitation, feeling that lady would not approve.

  Old Mrs. Feathers answered the door. She was grey-haired and stooped and had a mild, innocent face. “Just go on upstairs,” she said.

  Agatha mounted the narrow cottage stairs. Tristan opened a door at the top. “Welcome,” he said. “How nice and cool you look.”

  He ushered Agatha into a small room where a table had been laid with a white cloth for dinner.

  “We’ll start right away,” he said. He opened the door and shouted down the stairs, “You can start serving now, Mrs. Feathers.”

  “Doesn’t she need some help?” asked Agatha anxiously.

  “Oh, no. Don’t spoil her fun. She likes looking after me.”

  But Agatha felt awkward as Mrs. Feathers subsequently appeared carrying a heavy tray. She laid out two plates of pâté de foie gras, toast melba, a chilled bottle of wine and two glasses. “Just call when you’re ready for your next course,” she said.

  Agatha sat down. Mrs. Feathers spread a large white napkin on Agatha’s lap before creaking off.

  Tristan poured wine and sat down opposite her. “Now,” he said, “tell me what brings a sophisticated lady like yourself to a Cotswold village?”

  Agatha told him that she had always had a dream of living in a Cotswold village. She left out the bit about taking early retirement because she did not want to refer to her age. And all the time she talked and ate, she admired the beauty of the curate opposite. He had the face of an angel come to earth with his cherubic, almost androgynous face framed by his gold curls, but his athletic, well-formed body was all masculine.

  Tristan rose and called for the second course. Mrs. Feathers appeared bearing tournedos Rossini, new potatoes and salad.

  “Isn’t Mrs. Feathers an excellent cook?” said Tristan when they were alone again.

  “Very,” said Agatha. “This steak is excellent. Where did you buy it?”

  “I leave all the shopping to Mrs. Feathers. I told her to make a special effort.”

  “She didn’t pay for all this, I hope?”

  “Mrs. Feathers insists on paying for my food.”

  Agatha looked at him uneasily. Surely an old widow like Mrs. Feathers could not afford all this expensive food and wine. But Tristan seemed to take it as his due and he continued to question her about her life until the steak was finished and Mrs. Feathers brought in baked Alaska.

  “I’ve talked about nothing but myself,” said Agatha ruefully. “I don’t know a thing about you.”

  “Nothing much to know,” said Tristan.

  “Where were you before you came down here?”

  “At a church in New Cross in London. I ran a boys’ club there, you know, get them off the streets. It was going well until I was attacked.”

  “What on earth happened?”

  “One of the gang leaders felt I was taking his members away. Five of them jumped me one night when I was walking home. I was badly beaten up, cracked ribs, all that. To tell the truth, I had a minor nervous breakdown and I felt a spell in the country would be just what I needed.”

  “How awful for you,” said Agatha.

  “I’m over it now. These things happen.”

  “What made you want to join the church?”

  “I felt I could help people.”

  “And are you happy here?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Bloxby likes me. I think he’s a bit jealous.”

  “He’s a difficult man. I’m afraid he doesn’t like me either.” Both of them laughed, drawn together by the vicar’s dislike of both of them.

  “Yo
u were saying you had been involved in some detection. Tell me about that?”

  So Agatha bragged away happily over dessert, over coffee, until, noticing it was nearly midnight, she reluctantly said she should leave.

  “Before you go,” he said, “I have a talent for playing the stock exchange. I make fortunes for others. Want me to help you?”

  “I’ve got a very good stockbroker,” said Agatha. “But I’ll let you know.”

  Somehow, she expected him to offer to walk her home, but he led the way downstairs and then stood facing her at the bottom. “My turn next time,” said Agatha.

  “I’ll keep you to that.” He bent and kissed her gently on the mouth. She stared up at him, dazed. He opened the door. “Good night, Agatha.”

  “Good night, Tristan,” she said faintly.

  The door shut behind her. Over at the vicarage, Mrs. Bloxby’s face appeared briefly at an upstairs window and then disappeared.

  Agatha walked home sedately although she felt like running and jumping and cheering.

  It was only when she reached her cottage that she realized she had not set a date for another dinner. She did not even know his phone number. She searched the phone book until she found a listing for Mrs. Feathers. He would not be asleep already. She dialled. Mrs. Feathers answered the phone. Agatha asked to speak to Tristan and waited anxiously.

  Then she heard his voice. “Yes?”

  “This is Agatha. We forgot to set a date for dinner.”

  There was a silence. Then he gave a mocking little laugh and said, “Keen, aren’t you? I’ll let you know.”

  “Good night,” said Agatha quickly and dropped the receiver like a hot potato.

  She walked slowly into her kitchen and sat down at the table, her face flaming with mortification.

  “You silly old fool,” said the voice in her head, and for once Agatha sadly agreed.

  Her first feeling when she awoke the next day was that she never wanted to see the curate again. She felt he had led her on to make a fool of herself. A wind had got up and rattled through the dry thatch on the roof overhead and sent small dust devils dancing down Lilac Lane outside. She forced herself to get out of bed and face the day ahead. What if Tristan was joking with Mrs. Bloxby about her? She made herself her customary breakfast of black coffee and decided to fill up the watering cans and water the garden as the radio had announced a hose-pipe ban. She was half-way down the garden when she heard sirens rending the quiet of the village. She slowly put down the watering can and stood, listening. The sirens swept past the end of Lilac Lane and up in the direction of the church and stopped.

  Agatha dropped the watering can and fled through the house and out into the lane. Her flat sandals sending up spirals of dust; she ran on in the direction of the vicarage. Please God, she prayed, let it not be Mrs. Bloxby.

  There were three police cars and an ambulance. A crowd was gathering. Agatha saw John Fletcher, the landlord from the Red Lion and asked him, “Is someone hurt? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  They waited a long time. Hazy clouds covered the hot sun overhead. The wind had died and all was still. Rumour buzzed through the crowd. It was the vicar, it was Mrs. Bloxby, it was the curate.

  A stone-faced policeman was on duty outside the vicarage. He refused to answer questions, simply saying, “Move along there. Nothing to see.”

  A white-coated forensic unit arrived. People began to drift off. “I’d better open up,” said the publican. “We’ll find out sooner or later.”

  Agatha was joined by John Armitage. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Agatha. “I’m terrified something’s happened to Mrs. Bloxby.”

  Then Agatha’s friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, came out of the vicarage accompanied by a policewoman.

  “Bill!” called Agatha.

  “Later,” he said. He and the policewoman went to Mrs. Feathers’s small cottage and knocked at the door. The old lady opened the door to them. They said something. She put a trembling hand up to her mouth and they disappeared inside and shut the door.

  “There’s your answer,” said John Armitage.

  “It’s the curate and he’s dead because that ambulance hasn’t moved!”

  ∨ The Case of the Curious Curate ∧

  2

  John and Agatha decided to go back to Agatha’s cottage and then return to the vicarage later.

  “Who would want to kill the curate – if it was the curate,” asked John.

  Me, thought Agatha. I could have killed him last night.

  Aloud, she said, “I hate this waiting.” Then she thought, they’ll have questioned Mrs. Feathers and she’ll tell them about that dinner last night. I don’t want John to know about it. I’ve got to get rid of him.

  “I’m restless,” she said, getting to her feet. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Alone.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  They walked together to the door. Agatha opened it. Detective Inspector Wilkes of the Mircester CID stood there, accompanied by Bill Wong and a policewoman.

  “May we come in?” asked Wilkes.

  “Yes,” said Agatha, flustered. “See you later, John.”

  He was urged on his way by a push in the back from Agatha.

  Agatha led the police into her living-room and sat down feeling, irrationally, like a guilty schoolgirl.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  “Mr. Delon, the curate, was found this morning in the vicar’s study. He had been stabbed.”

  Agatha felt hysterical. “Was he stabbed with a rare oriental dagger?” She stifled a giggle.

  Wilkes glared at her. “He was stabbed with a paper-knife on the vicar’s desk.”

  Agatha fought down the hysteria. “You can’t kill someone with a paper-knife.”

  “You can with this one. It’s very sharp. Mr. Bloxby said he kept it sharp. The church box, the one people put donations in for the upkeep of the church, was lying open. The money had gone.”

  “I know the vicar took it from the church from time to time to record what had been donated,” said Agatha. “But Mr. Delon couldn’t have surprised a burglar. I don’t think there were ever any donations in there worth bothering about.”

  “Evidently, according to the vicar, there were this time. The curate had delivered a sermon the Sunday before last about the importance of donating to the upkeep of the church. There were several hundred pounds in there. The vicar hadn’t got around to counting it. He says he just checked inside and planned to get down to counting the takings today.”

  “But what was Mr. Delon doing in the vicar’s study?” asked Agatha.

  “If we can stop the speculation and get to your movements, Mrs. Raisin. You had dinner with Mr. Delon in his flat last night. You left around midnight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you intimate with him?”

  Agatha’s face flamed. “Of course not! I barely knew the man.”

  “And yet he asked you for dinner.”

  “Oh, I thought it was a parish thing. I assume it was his way of getting to know everybody.”

  “So what did you talk about?”

  “He was a good listener,” said Agatha. “I’m afraid I talked mostly about myself. I asked him about himself and he said he had been at a church in New Cross in London and that he had formed a boys’ club and that one of the gang leaders had become angry, thinking he was taking the youth of the area away and had had him beaten up. He said he’d had a nervous breakdown.”

  “And you left at midnight and that was that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know of any other women in the village he was particularly friendly with?”

  “No. I mean, I’d been away and then I was up in London, working. The first time I met him was on Sunday, outside the church. Then he turned up on my doorstep yesterday and invited me to dinner.”
<
br />   “Let’s go over it again,” said Wilkes.

  Agatha went through the whole business again and then felt her face going red. They would check phone calls to Mrs. Feathers’s phone and would know she had phoned him when she got home.

  “What is it?” demanded Wilkes, studying her red face.

  “When I got home, I realized I had asked him for dinner but hadn’t fixed a date, so I phoned him and he said he would let me know.”

  “Those were his only words?”

  “Exactly,” said Agatha with all the firmness of one used to lying.

  “That will be all for the moment. We would like you to come down to headquarters and sign a statement, say, tomorrow morning, and to hold yourself in readiness for further questioning.”

  As they rose to leave, Agatha’s friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, gave her the ghost of a wink.

  “Call me later,” mouthed Agatha silently.

  As Wilkes was leaving, Agatha called, “When was Mr. Delon killed?”

  He turned. “We don’t know. Mrs. Bloxby rose at six-thirty this morning. She went out into the garden and noticed the French windows to the study were wide open. She could see papers were blowing about. She went in to close the window and found the curate dead.”

  Agatha felt a great wave of relief. She realized she had been afraid the vicar might have lost his temper and struck out at Tristan.

  “So someone came in from outside?”

  “Or someone made it look that way.”

  Agatha sat down shakily when they had left. Then she rose and phoned the vicarage. A policeman answered and said curtly that neither the vicar nor his wife were free to come to the phone.

  The doorbell rang and she rushed to answer it. For once John Armitage got a warm welcome. “Oh, John,” cried Agatha, grabbing his arm and dragging him indoors. “Isn’t this too awful? Do you think Alf did it and made it look like a burglary?”

  “I cannot believe our vicar would harm a fly,” said John, shutting the door behind them. “Let’s sit down calmly and think about it. Why did the police want to see you?”

  “As far as they know, I was the last one to see Tristan alive. I went to his place for dinner and left around midnight.”