The Case of the Curious Curate ar-13

by M C Beaton

  “Oho. He’s a fast worker. How did that come about?”

  “He just turned up on the doorstep and asked me, just like that.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I’ve already gone over and over it with the police.” She started to describe her evening again.

  “Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “Mrs. Feathers supplied a dinner of pâté de foie gras, tournedos Rossini, and baked Alaska. She can’t be rich and she’s a widow. Didn’t you think it was a bit much of him?”

  “I did a bit,” said Agatha ruefully.

  “Sounds a bit of a taker to me. Did he try to get money out of you?”

  “You do underrate my charms, don’t you? Oh, Lord. I’ve just remembered something. He said something about being a whiz at playing the stock exchange and that he could invest money for me. I said I’d a very good stockbroker but that I’d let him know.”

  “So that was why he asked you for dinner.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Agatha huffily.

  “Look at it this way. He’d conned old Mrs. Feathers into supplying an expensive meal. Who knows? He may have got his hands on her savings. You know what the gossip in this village is like. He’d have heard you’re rich. You’ve got a bit of a reputation when it comes to men.”

  “Undeserved,” snapped Agatha.

  “And you’re a divorcée. You should tell the police.”

  “Must I?” asked Agatha bleakly.

  “Yes, of course. And just think. They’re probably still up at the vicarage and it’ll be an excuse for us to get in there.”

  The policeman on guard at the door of the vicarage listened to Agatha’s request to see Wilkes because she had something to tell him relevant to the murder. He disappeared indoors and reappeared a few minutes later. “Follow me,” he said. “They’re in the garden.” The vicar’s study door was standing open. Men in white overalls were swarming all over the place.

  They followed the policeman out through the French windows and into the garden where Wilkes, a policewoman, the vicar and Mrs. Bloxby sat round a garden table. There was no sign of Bill Wong.

  Mrs. Bloxby was holding her husband’s hand. Both looked strained.

  “What is it?” asked Wilkes.

  Agatha drew up a chair and sat down. She told him about the expensive dinner and about the offer to invest money for her.

  “This might give us an angle,” said Wilkes slowly. “He may have been successful with some of the other women. We’ll be checking his bank account. Now Mrs. Feathers says you were the only one he invited home for dinner and he told her to make a special effort and you were very rich and probably used to the best.”

  Agatha felt herself grow red yet again with mortification.

  Wilkes turned to Mrs. Bloxby. “Was he particularly friendly with any other women in the village?”

  “It’s hard to say,” she said wearily. “I think they mostly invited him for meals. Miss Jellop was one. Then there was Peggy Slither over in Ancombe. Oh dear, let me think. Old Colonel Tremp’s widow, Mrs. Tremp, she lives up the hill out of the village in that converted barn. So many were smitten with him. He was very handsome.”

  “And what about the both of you? Did he offer to invest any money?”

  “No, he said he had a little money from a family trust. He didn’t ask us for any.”

  “How come you got him as a curate?” asked Agatha.

  “I was told he’d had a nervous breakdown,” said the vicar. “I was glad of help in the parish work.”

  “And did you find him helpful?” asked Wilkes.

  “The first week was fine. But then he became – selective.”

  “What do you mean – selective?”

  “I found he had not been calling on any of the elderly or sick, unless – I now realize – they were wealthy. I took him to task for neglect of duty and he simply smiled and said of course he would attend to it. Then I fell ill and he took over the services in the church. I felt it churlish of me to dislike him – for I was beginning to dislike him – and I feared I was envious of the way he could pack the church.”

  “It looks as if he might have surprised a burglar,” said Wilkes.

  “Or,” interrupted Agatha suddenly, “been robbing the cash box himself.”

  “If he had a private income and if, as we fear, he had been taking money from gullible women, why would he want a few hundred pounds?”

  “He was very vain,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “It was because of his sermon that there was such a large donation. I think he probably saw that money as rightly his.”

  “And he had a key to the vicarage,” said Wilkes, who had already established that fact. “Those long windows into the study, do you keep them locked?”

  Mrs. Bloxby looked guilty. “We do try to remember to lock them, but sometimes we forget. Up until recently, we never bothered to lock up at night, but with the police station having been closed down along with all the other local stations, there have been a lot of burglaries recently.”

  “So far, we can’t find any sign of a break-in and no fingerprints at all, not even the vicar’s,” said Wilkes. “Excuse me, I’ll see how they’re getting on. Come with me, Reverend, and check again to see if there is anything else missing.”

  The vicar, the policewoman, and Wilkes went indoors. “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Agatha, taking Mrs. Bloxby’s hand in hers. “You’ve helped me so much in the past when horrible things have happened to me.”

  “You can find out who did it,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “Because they suspect Alf. You see, a lot of the women were smitten by Mr. Delon, and before he died, there was a lot of talk about how Alf should step down and leave the sermons to Mr. Delon. My husband,” she sighed, “can be, well, not very tactful and when Miss Jellop suggested such an arrangement to him, he told her not to be such a silly woman. The police are already beginning to think that Alf was jealous of Mr. Delon. He was in bed with me when the murder took place and so I told them, but they look at me in that way which seems to say, ‘You would say that.’ ”

  “We’ll do our best,” said John. Agatha looked at him in surprise. She had forgotten he was there. A man as good-looking as John had no right to be so forgettable.

  “I think,” pursued John, “that we should start off with whichever church he was at in New Cross in London before he came down here.”

  “But the police will dig all that up,” protested Agatha.

  “I still think we might be able to find out things the police don’t know. They’ll be sticking to facts. We can find out if he conned any of the women in New Cross out of money. One of them could have been watching Mrs. Feathers’s cottage and seen him slip out. She may have entered the study by the French windows. There’s no flower-bed in front of the windows to leave footprints, only grass.”

  “It all sounds far-fetched to me,” said Agatha crossly, cross because she expected everyone at all times to play Dr. Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. “I mean, what sort of person would watch the cottage all night?”

  “A jealous, furious woman,” said John. “Come on, Agatha, don’t knock it down just because it wasn’t your idea. We’ll hang around another day to be available for the police and then we’ll go off.”

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” said Mrs. Bloxby quietly.

  “All right,” said Agatha sulkily. Mrs. Bloxby, despite her fear for her husband and her shock at the murder, could not help but feel amused. There was something childlike about Agatha Raisin with her bear like eyes under a heavy fringe of glossy brown hair registering a pouting disappointment that someone else was getting in on the act.

  “Now, have you eaten?” asked Agatha. “I’ve got some microwave meals at home I could bring along.”

  “No, thank you,” said the vicar’s wife. “Neither of us feels like eating.” She privately thought that even if she and her husband had been starving, they could not have faced one of Agatha’s shop-bought frozen meals.

  Agatha l
it a cigarette. “Agatha!” exclaimed Mrs. Bloxby, startled into the use of Agatha’s first name. “You’re smoking again!”

  “Tastes all right now,” mumbled Agatha.

  John produced a small notebook. “I’ll just make a note of these women who were close to Tristan. Let me see – there was a Miss Jellop, and then there were two others.”

  “Peggy Slither and Mrs. Tremp,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

  “You call her Peggy?” asked Agatha. “First name?”

  “She is not a member of the ladies’ society.”

  “What’s she like and where does she live?” asked John.

  “In Ancombe. A cottage called Shangri-la.”

  “That’s a bit twee.”

  “I think she means it to be a sort of joke. She finds it fashionable to adopt the unfashionable. She has gnomes in her garden. That sort of thing. Rather loud and busty. About fifty. Her money comes from fish and chips. She never married. Her father had a profitable chain of fish and chip shops and she sold them when her father died.”

  “I know Miss Jellop,” snapped Agatha, who did not like John’s taking over the investigation.

  Mrs. Bloxby leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “We’d better go,” said John.

  “Phone me if there is anything I can do,” said Agatha.

  Mrs. Bloxby opened her eyes. “Just find out who did it.”

  When John and Agatha arrived back at Agatha’s cottage it was to find Bill Wong waiting outside for them. “Thought I’d drop in for a chat. Trust you to land in trouble again, Agatha.”

  Agatha unlocked the door. “Come in and we’ll have coffee in the garden.”

  Bill Wong was Agatha’s first friend, a young police detective, half Chinese and half English. When they were seated in the garden, he surveyed Agatha with his brown slanting eyes. “I know you’ve already made a statement, but I’d like to know a bit more about your evening with Tristan. Did he come on to you?”

  “Well, he kissed me.”

  “And didn’t that let you know there was something funny about him?” demanded John sharply. “I mean, the difference in ages and all that.”

  “I have attracted younger men before,” said Agatha waspishly.

  “So he kissed you. When?” asked Bill.

  “When I was leaving.”

  “What sort of kiss? Social peck?”

  “No, a warm one, on the lips. What’s all this about?”

  “It’s this money business. He was after money, we think. I wondered how far he was prepared to go. If he’d had a full-blown affair with any of them, that might have been a reason for murder.”

  “He didn’t have an affair with me,” said Agatha. “I’d have soused him out sooner or later. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “Women can become very stupid faced with such beauty. I saw him preach. My girl-friend heard all about him and dragged me along to church.”

  “Girl-friend?” Agatha was momentarily distracted.

  “Alice. Alice Bryan. She works as a teller in Lloyds bank in Mircester.”

  “Serious?”

  “It always is,” said Bill sadly.

  And it’ll be over like a shot when she meets your parents, thought Agatha. Bill’s parents could repel any girl-friend.

  “Anyway,” said Bill briskly, “what did you talk about?”

  “Me, mostly,” said Agatha ruefully. “When I realized it was all about me and nothing about him, I asked him about himself. He told me about working in New Cross and forming a boys’ club and how the gang leaders thought they were losing members because of him. Five of them had attacked him one night and injured him and then he had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Which church in New Cross was it?” asked John.

  “Saint Edmund’s. Here! I don’t want you pair poking your nose in and interfering with police work.”

  “As if we would,” said Agatha, flashing John a warning look.

  “What did you think of Tristan when you heard him preach?” John asked Bill.

  “I thought him stupid and vain and the sermon was a load of nothing. On the other hand, I could have been jealous. Alice was gazing at him as if an angel had come to earth. So, Agatha, he didn’t try to persuade you in any determined way to let him have money?”

  “No, apart from suggesting he could invest some for me, he let the subject drop.”

  “Strikes me as odd from the little I know of him. Any suggestion of a future dinner date?”

  “No!” Agatha flushed angrily. Bill eyed her shrewdly.

  “He got Mrs. Feathers to go to a lot of trouble producing an expensive dinner and nothing came of it. I’ll bet he thought you were a waste of space.”

  “If he thought so, he didn’t tell me.”

  “We’ll find out more when we study his bank account and find out who’s been giving him money, and if he invested any of it, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “It still seems odd, this idea of someone watching the cottage during the night and then following Tristan to the vicarage,” said John. “If he’d cheated old Mrs. Feathers and she’d just found out about it, she could have heard him going out and followed him. The old sleep lightly.”

  “I can’t see old Mrs. Feathers at her age going to tackle a young man like that.”

  “She could simply have meant to berate him if she found him taking the church money,” pursued John, “and seized that letter opener and stabbed him. I mean, how many people would know that letter opener was so sharp? Did you, Agatha?”

  “I was there one day talking to Mrs. Bloxby when he came in carrying the post. He was slicing open the letters and I remember thinking then that the letter opener must have been sharp. It was a silver one in the shape of a dagger. Not a real dagger.”

  “And what about the vicar himself?” asked John quietly. “I mean, he could have caught him at it. Was there any sign of a struggle?”

  “No, Tristan was stabbed with one blow to the back of the neck.”

  “Yes, that would take a lot of force,” said Agatha.

  “Not necessarily,” said Bill. “As the knife was sharp, once the skin was penetrated then the blade would sink in easily and it was sunk in up to the haft. Rather like stabbing a melon. But we’ll know more after the post-mortem.”

  “I read somewhere,” said John, “that victims of stab wounds don’t often die immediately. Say the vicar did it, not in his study but at Tristan’s. Wonder if he has a key to that cottage? Anyway, some people stabbed with a sharp thin blade can walk around for a couple of hours afterwards. Say the vicar stabbed Tristan and Tristan doesn’t know how bad he’s hurt. So he decides to clear off, but first of all, he’s going to get that money out of the cash box and take it with him and he collapses in the vicar’s study.”

  Agatha gave him an impatient look. “With the knife still in his neck?”

  “Maybe he knew it was safer to leave it in until he got to a hospital.”

  “Oh, really? And some doctor looks at the knife in the back of his neck and promptly calls the police.”

  “Oh, shut up, you two,” said Bill. “That’s where amateurs are such a menace. Stick to the facts, to what you know.”

  But John, undeterred, volunteered, “Maybe Alf Bloxby summoned him and made it look as if Tristan was robbing the church box.”

  “You’re forgetting Mrs. Bloxby,” said Agatha. “She would never cover up for her husband if he’d committed a murder.”

  “But she might not have known. They both probably claim to have slept through the whole business, but maybe she was heavily asleep.”

  “I’ve had enough,” said Bill. “I’m off. Agatha, report to police headquarters tomorrow morning and sign a statement.”

  Agatha was driving the next morning. “Look out for that child on a bicycle!” shouted John at one point and at another, “You’re going too fast.”

  Agatha sighed. “This is like a marriage without the nookie.”

  “May I point out that no sex was your choice?” />
  Agatha stared at him.

  “Look at the road, Agatha, for God’s sake!”

  “What is up with you, John? You’re usually so…so placid. Now you’re bitching and whining like an old grump.”

  “I made some reasonable suggestions to Bill Wong yesterday and all you did was sneer.”

  “I thought they were a bit far-fetched. I’m entitled to my opinion.”

  “You could have told me afterwards. Look, Agatha. We are both amateurs at this game. There is no need to go on as if I am some sort of office boy.”

  “I never…Oh, let’s drop the whole thing. I don’t want to quarrel.”

  They continued in an uneasy silence.

  After Agatha had made her statement, John said, “We should start off by going straight to New Cross.”

  “What? Right away?”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, all right. But I don’t like driving up to London.”

  “Then I’ll drive, if your insurance covers me. Unless, of course, you have to be in the driver’s seat all the time, both literally and metaphorically.”

  “Drive if you like,” said Agatha huffily. “My insurance does cover you driving.”

  What had come over him? wondered Agatha, as they drove towards London. She was used to a rather colourless John. He had been going on as if he thought she was bossy. Like most high-powered people with a soft, shivering interior, Agatha considered herself a gentle lady, sensitive and sympathetic.

  But by the time they reached New Cross, the driving seemed to have soothed John and he appeared to have reverted to his usual equable self. Probably his bad mood was nothing to do with me, thought Agatha. I don’t upset people. Must have been someone or something else and he took it out on me.

  John stopped the car and asked directions to St. Edmund’s until he found a man who actually knew where the church was.

  St. Edmund’s was in a leafy backstreet. It was a Victorian building, still black from the soot of former coal-burning decades. White streaks of pigeon droppings cut through the soot up at the roof. It had four crenellated spires with weather vanes of gold pennants. Beside the church was a Victorian villa, also black with soot, which, they guessed, must be the vicarage.