by Alan Beechey
“Would this be a good time to ask you some questions?” Oliver said, drawing Dock gently away and brandishing his notebook. He tried to mask his newborn distaste for the deacon’s potential dark side. “You did say I could drop by.”
“What? Oh yes, of course,” he answered distractedly. “For your article. Fire away.”
“Who killed Nigel Tapster?”
The blunt question gained Dock’s full attention. His small eyes became wary behind the thick spectacles.
“You’re going to deal with that in your article?” he asked with suspicion.
“Certainly,” Oliver answered, with what he hoped was the gruff tones of a seasoned crime reporter. “The murder happened while I was doing the research. I met all the suspects. Why shouldn’t I switch gears? This could be the true crime story of the decade!” He leaned toward Dock. “And I’d imagine everyone involved will become quite well known in the district, if you get my drift.”
Dock smirked and stroked his blue chin. “Well, I like to think of myself as something of a celebrity already,” he purred nasally. “I lecture on local history occasionally. Then there’s my work with the Victory Vanguard and the Sunday School. And once a week, I’m a deejay on hospital radio, you know.”
“Dougie, you clearly play a central role in this mystery. Why, you were sitting right next to Tapster when he died. You saw everything!”
“Yes, that’s true, isn’t it?” Dock reflected. “Then I can see why you’d want to interview me.”
The group behind them laughed as if on cue, but it was a reaction to something Cissie was reading to them involving Dock and three sailors in a nudist colony. Oliver licked the end of his pencil.
“So let’s test that photographic memory of yours, D.D. Take yourself back to Sunday morning. You’re in the middle of the Communion service. The wine has been served to the congregation. And now Paul Piltdown serves the deacons. Got it?”
“I think…”
“Good. Now, which tray of wineglasses did Paul use? The one carried by Nigel Taster or by Patience Coppersmith?”
Dock adopted a pose that was so ludicrously like Rodin’s The Thinker that it had to be intentional. The paper hat was an odd touch.
“It was Nigel’s,” he said decisively.
“You willing to swear to that in a court of law, Doug?”
“Oh. Well, yes, if it comes to that.”
“Why do you think he picked that one, D-man?” Geoffrey butted in. Oliver scribbled an obscenity in his notebook and showed it to his friend.
“I suppose it was because it was the last one to be passed back to him by the server,” Dock offered. “Paul just held on to it.”
“Now think carefully,” said Oliver. “Did Paul deliberately take the tray from Patience first and Nigel second? Or could Nigel have held back, forcing Paul to receive them in that order?”
“It’s hard to say…wait, yes, now that you mention it, Nigel may have held back just a little.”
“And then in what order did Paul serve the deacons?”
“He started on our side. He went to Nigel Tapster first, then me, then Cedric. Then he walked around the table and worked from the outside in on the other side—Patience, then Sam.”
“Interesting,” said Geoffrey. “So Nigel Tapster was the last to touch the tray before Paul took it and the first to select a glass. The fatal glass, as it turned out.”
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” said Oliver conspiratorially.
“It certainly does,” Geoffrey said, matching the tone of Oliver’s remark and entirely overdoing the effect. If they had been alone, Oliver would have poked him somewhere sensitive.
“Thank you, Dougie,” Oliver said hastily, shoving his notebook into his satchel and scooping up his raincoat before Dock could ask any questions.
“Yes, thank you, Double-Dee,” Geoffrey added, before Oliver could stop him. “I’ll make sure we spell your name right. Now we have to fly. Deadlines, you know.”
“Well, I’m glad to be of service,” Dock answered, executing a flamboyant courtly bow while looking around to see if any of his colleagues were watching him, intrigued and envious. They weren’t. In fact, they were all putting on coats and gathering bags of gifts that they had surreptitiously exchanged while he was occupied with Oliver and Geoffrey.
“Where are you going?” he asked, with exaggerated amazement.
“Home time,” Clovis rasped, wrapping a long scarf several times around his neck.
“But the party’s not over,” Dock protested. “I have lots of other games for you, conundrums to guess. And we haven’t played charades.”
“We’re sorry, but it’s time to go,” Marge declared as she buttoned her coat. She and Cissie headed determinedly for the door, arm in arm, while the laggards were forced to sidestep Dock’s attempts to waylay them.
“Okay, then what’s significant about the information he just gave us?” Geoffrey whispered.
Oliver smiled. “I have absolutely no bloody idea whatsoever,” he replied serenely.
***
“Come in, Mr. Swithin. Come in, Mr…er…Angelwine,” said Barry Foison graciously. “I’ve just got in from work, so I’d appreciate a chance to slip into some casual clothes. Do you mind waiting?”
He pointed them into the living room of his small apartment, above an off-license not far from the church.
“What is it about me?” Geoffrey griped, throwing himself onto a sofa. “Why is there always that hesitation?”
Oliver gazed at him critically. “Well, right now, I’d say it’s because you’re wearing a green paper crown. Very festive.”
Geoffrey snatched the crown from his scalp and crumpled it into a ball. Oliver yawned and gazed around the room. Foison had managed to cram a large amount of furniture into the small space, including an upright piano and an electronic keyboard, without making the room seem like an obstacle course. Oliver envied that skill.
“Listen, Geoff,” he said, with a wary glance toward the kitchen door, “while we have a second, can you remember a biblical verse about taking poison?”
Geoffrey linked his fingers and cracked his knuckles. He thought for a second. “‘And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.’ Mark, chapter sixteen, verses seventeen and eighteen.”
“Well done. That’s the one Tapster himself quoted to me.”
“Do you think Tapster was giving himself some public test of his faith, to see if he could live up to these predictions? Like the snake-handling sects in America?”
“I don’t know. The more I think about the wineglasses, the more it seems that the only man who could have poisoned Tapster’s glass with no possibility of error was Tapster himself. But I don’t think this was a suicide—not with such a terrible, agonizing method of self-destruction.”
“Could he have over-estimated the dosage? Maybe he wanted to produce some of the effects of strychnine poisoning without taking a fatal amount?”
“Effie told me strychnine is all or nothing. In small doses, it doesn’t have any effect. And why would Tapster try to poison himself partly? If he wanted to produce some weird religious seizure, I’m sure he could have faked it. No, I think it more likely that if Tapster himself poisoned the glass, he meant it for someone else. But then how did he pick it up again by mistake?”
They broke off the conversation when Foison reappeared, having changed from a double-breasted business suit into a loose sweatshirt and jeans. Oliver explained again that he wanted to change the focus of his article, and he let Foison describe what he had seen of the Communion service from his place in the third row of the congregation. The young man’s account matched the briefing Oliver had received from Effie, and confirmed Dock’s repo
rt of the order in which the deacons had been served by Paul Piltdown. Foison had not noticed any unusual handling of the wineglasses that could adequately explain how the strychnine ended up in Tapster’s glass.
“Is there any way the glasses could have been tampered with earlier?” Oliver asked. “Before the Communion service began, I mean, while they were in the side room.” He hoped Foison wouldn’t interpret the question as an accusation.
“Absolutely not,” Foison answered swiftly. “You see, I thought there was an open bottle of Communion wine left over from last time, which would have been enough for all the communicants that morning. But I must have been mistaken or somebody must have taken it, as I discovered when I went out during the third hymn. And I didn’t have a corkscrew with me for the new bottle. So when the sermon ended, I nipped outside to get my Swiss Army knife, which I’d left in my car, and then I went back and opened the fresh bottle.”
“Perhaps you have a secret lush among the deacons?”
Foison giggled, covering his mouth with his fingertips. “Perhaps, although half a bottle of old Communion wine wouldn’t do much for them.”
“Too stale?”
“Communion wine is nonalcoholic in the nonconformist church. More like grape juice.”
“Interesting,” Oliver commented. “And so you were with the wine all the time while it was in the side room.”
“Well, I left it for half a minute while I carried out the bread to the Communion table.”
“Was anyone in the room at that time?”
Foison placed his index finger over his lips. “Not that I remember,” he said eventually. “Oh wait, yes. There was one person. Nigel Tapster himself. But he wouldn’t have poisoned the wine, unless he was planning on killing himself. And that wasn’t our Mr. Tapster’s style. He was way too fond of life.”
“Nobody else was back there?”
“Dougie Dock was teaching Sunday School in one of the rear rooms, but he always uses the door on the other side of the church. And he was with the children all the time.”
“So why do you think Tapster was behind the scenes at that time?”
“As I told the police, I assumed he had just gone to use the toilet.”
Effie had forgotten to mention Tapster’s appearance in the side room, and for some reason, it struck Oliver as important. He would need to think this through later.
“That reminds me, may I use your bathroom?” Geoffrey asked suddenly. Foison pointed him in the right direction, and Geoffrey left the room, giving Oliver an elaborate wink behind their host’s back.
“What did you mean when you said Tapster was too fond of life?” Oliver inquired.
Foison grimaced. “I think Nigel Tapster was an opportunist. And I think he was about to take a few opportunities in Plumley. He should never have won that diaconal seat, and I have no idea how he wangled it.”
“So, in a way, his murder came at a fortunate time.”
“I would never condone the breaking of a commandment, Mr. Swithin. Well, not that particular one, anyway. But I don’t think his demise at this time was a coincidence.”
“You think he was killed by someone who feared his growing influence?”
“I do.”
Foison tugged at his sweatshirt, pulling it forward in loose bunches, as if he couldn’t bear for the fabric to touch his chest.
“When we met the first time,” Oliver remarked, “you were about to tell me something in Tapster’s past. At a previous church?”
“Oh yes, at Thripstone Central Diaconalist. This all started more than two years ago, before Heather arrived on the scene, you understand. Nigel began to get up to the same tricks there—attracting a group of young people around him, meeting in his home, claiming a new spiritual rebirth, performing exorcisms on confused adolescents. It all got rather cultlike, and the deacons and church members became very nervous. And then Nigel got a little too close to one of his female followers.”
“Underage?”
“Borderline. Fortunately, no harm was done, and it sounds as if the little minx flung herself at him in a fit of hero worship—if you can see Tapster as a hero—but he showed less-than-perfect discretion. The church used the incident as an excuse to send him packing.”
“And then Heather came back from Brazil, and Nigel switched his affection to someone closer to his own age?”
Foison gave a bray of high-pitched laughter. “Hardly, my dear. They’d already paired up before this dalliance took place.”
“Then why did she marry him?”
“I think dear Heather saw her marriage as a business merger rather than two hearts beating as one. She wants to be the mother of a cult as much as he wanted to be the father, for largely the same reason, minus the sex. Oh, I have little doubt that she read him the riot act about keeping his hands off the youthful merchandise in Plumley—at least in the early stages of their master plan—but it was as much for their credibility as it was for marital harmony.”
A cynic might speculate that Heather Tapster’s convulsive outpouring of grief, witnessed by Patience Coppersmith and Tish Belfry, was not so much for the loss of a beloved husband as for the frustration of her hopes for personal power and glory. Would she have reacted differently, Oliver wondered, if she had known about Nigel’s impregnation of Tina? And could the Two Witnesses now operate as One? That reminded Oliver of a question he needed to ask Foison.
“Barry, you live near the church. Have you ever seen a young woman with long red hair either at the church or in this area?”
Foison started a little. “Is this some witness you’re looking for?” he asked slowly.
“Possibly. Does it sound like someone you know? Maybe someone who was part of Nigel’s cult at Thripstone, if you can remember that far back.”
A sudden wave of anger swept across Foison’s delicate features. “Oh, I can remember, Oliver,” he said emphatically. “Do you want to know why? Two years ago, I was part of Nigel’s cult too, singing ‘Hallelujah’ with the rest of them and listening to the gospel according to Tapster, until Nigel’s concupiscence and Heather’s manipulative ambitiousness could no longer be ignored. That was quite a fall from grace, I can tell you. If it weren’t for Paul Piltdown, I think I would have lost my faith entirely.”
He subsided in the chair. Geoffrey reappeared, a broad grin on his birdlike face.
“Barry,” he crowed. “I know your secret.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know your secret. It wasn’t hard to guess, when you’ve had a little experience as a detective.”
Oliver groaned and covered his face with his hands. Foison hesitated, flitting back and forth between experimental expressions of bewilderment and umbrage. Then he seemed to deflate slightly.
“What gave it away?” he asked ruefully. “I thought I’d been so damn careful about hiding things, knowing I was going to have visitors this afternoon.”
Oliver looked up sharply. Geoffrey walked over to Foison, holding something almost invisible between his finger and thumb. “Here’s one of the clues, found on the bathroom floor. The razor in the bathtub was another.”
Foison reached out and took the object. “Very clever,” he said. “Quite ingenious, in fact. You’ve certainly done better than the police, Mr. Angelwine, although as soon as they arrested Paul Piltdown, their interest in me diminished.”
“Well, you did a good job of covering your tracks, I must say, you sly old dog,” Geoffrey said, punching Foison gently in the back.
“Look, I hate to interrupt this lovefest, but will someone kindly tell me what’s going on?” Oliver demanded. Foison and Geoffrey looked at each other with polite good humor, and then Foison passed the object to Oliver.
It was a long red hair.
“What your perceptive friend has discovered, Oliver,” Foison began, while Geoffrey sat down behind him a
nd beamed sickeningly at Oliver, “is that I am a preoperative transsexual.”
For some reason, the smirk vanished from Geoffrey’s face and was replaced with an expression of pure mystification. Not noticing, Foison continued his story.
“Strangely enough, it all follows from what I was just telling you. My unhappy experiences at Thripstone caused me to take a good, long look at myself, and with help from a psychiatric counselor and spiritual guidance from Paul Piltdown, I determined what I had unconsciously known all my life, that I am really a woman trapped in a man’s body. This acceptance of my sexual identity has been the truly transformative experience of my life.”
Geoffrey, who had been shaking his head and mouthing the word “no,” now looked as if he were about to interrupt the tale.
“Er, where are you now in the…sex change?” Oliver asked quickly.
“I prefer the term ‘gender reassignment,’” Foison said. “It’s a little less Myra Breckinridge. I’m taking estrogen and I have started electrolysis on my face, although I still need to shave my legs before putting on a pair of pantyhose. That’s why there’s a razor in the bath, as Geoffrey so cleverly spotted. And for the moment, my glorious hair is merely a wig.”
“So you’re already living as a woman for part of the time.”
“Life experience is essential to the process, before I go under the knife.”
Oliver and Geoffrey crossed their legs.
“And I already have boobs,” Foison continued, “thanks to the hormones. I have to be careful what I wear when I’m still dressed as a man. Loose clothes only. Yes, I’m rather proud of my pert little knockers. Do you want to see them?”
He sat up and gathered his sweatshirt at the waist.
“That won’t be necessary!” Oliver said hurriedly. Geoffrey looked disappointed.
“Fair enough,” said Foison, leaning back in his chair. “Just don’t change your mind when Oona has them. She would slap your face.”
“Oona is your alter ego, I take it.”
