Murdering Ministers

by Alan Beechey

  “Oona is my future,” he purred. “She’s a gorgeous, lithe young redhead who takes no shit from anyone. Quite a contrast to squeaky, effeminate Barry. I have to become Oona several times a week. I often visit Paul Piltdown as Oona, after dark. I was on my way there last Thursday when I saw you and Paul coming along the street and decided it would be better for his reputation if I made myself scarce.”

  “I trust my old friend Paul has always behaved toward Oona like a perfect gentleman?”

  Foison laughed again behind his hand. “My dear, I can assure you Paul has no interest in Oona whatsoever. And vice versa. Although why bring vice into this?”

  “And Oona is going to play the organ at tomorrow night’s service?”

  “Yes indeed. She’s a much better musician than I am. The fluency of touch that Oona liberated at the keyboard, despite her false fingernails, confirmed that I was better off in every way as a woman. I couldn’t be the regular Plumley organist as Barry, you see, because the preparation for the transformation kept me away from church too much.”

  “You hope the Diaconalists of Plumley will be overcome with the Christmas spirit and welcome Oona with open arms?”

  “I hope my fellow congregants won’t realize it’s me. Not this time. I really want them to judge my organ playing on its merits. There’ll be time to see how they react to the transgendering later. With Christian love and tolerance, I trust.”

  Oliver nodded and idly wrapped the stray hair from Oona’s wig around his forefinger. “Barry, I really appreciate your assistance and your candor. Please be assured that Geoffrey and I will respect your confidence. Before we leave you, however, I have one last question.” He closed his notebook sharply and leaned forward. “Why did Oona paint a biblical quotation on the church door last Sunday?”

  On reflection, Oliver had to admit to himself that the question didn’t quite have the impact of “Where were you on the night of the twenty-fourth?” or “When did you last see your father?” In fact, it sounded like the sort of ludicrous phrase dished out for one of Dougie Dock’s party games, in which one team had to conclude a story with that sentence, while the other was striving to get to “And with a gurgle, Colonel Milkthistle unplugged his toaster and jumped into the millpond.” But the effect on Foison was as electrifying as if Oliver had grabbed the stylish Italian desklamp and shone it into the young man’s face. He jumped to his feet.

  “How did you know it was her…him…me?” he cried, pacing nervously.

  “You were seen,” Oliver told him, remembering his conversation with the retiring Mr. Tooth.

  “That’s impossible, I looked all around!” He wiped a hand across his face. “Oh damn it, I just confessed didn’t I?” he added.

  “We’re not the police,” Geoffrey reminded him.

  “I know, I know,” Foison replied distractedly. “But I shouldn’t have done it. Doesn’t it come under the heading of obstruction of justice?”

  “That depends on why you painted it,” Oliver observed, remembering the analysis of the prophecy. “Was it meant as a threat against Heather?”

  “Good heavens, no! Is that what the police thought?”

  “Either that or the opposite—a defiant prediction of Nigel’s resurrection.”

  Foison stopped, aghast.

  “I never thought of that either,” he stammered.

  “Then what was it supposed to mean?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to mean anything,” Foison said with exasperation. “It didn’t really matter what it said. What mattered was that it was there. I thought the police would assume the murderer had painted it, as a crazy reference to the notions that Nigel and Heather had about themselves.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Foison frowned, as if the explanation should have been unnecessary. “Because if you thought the murderer was still loose, you’d know that Paul wasn’t guilty. I did it to help him. I know Paul. He didn’t kill Tapster.”

  But did you? thought Oliver. Although at the end of his day of detection, he was still too polite to ask. And too confused to know the answer.

  ***

  They arrived back at the police station at six o’clock and took their former seats in the waiting area. Effie came out to meet them, and Oliver went over the additional information he had gleaned that afternoon, although he confessed that none of it had brought him closer to identifying the murderer.

  “Look, Ollie,” Effie was saying, “if Paul is innocent, then one of the people you interviewed is lying to you. Which one?”

  “I have no idea,” Oliver admitted. “If pressed, I’d say they were all telling the truth. Even if we had to prod a bit to get it. Congratulations on that, Geoff, by the way.”

  Geoffrey acknowledged Oliver’s compliment with a distracted grunt. His attention was riveted on the door that led to the CID section in the hope that Tish Belfry would make an entrance.

  “What happened?” asked Effie.

  “Oh, after my warning Geoff to stay away from the amateur detective stuff, he defies me completely and discovers the elusive Oona lurking in Barry Foison’s bathroom. It was utterly brilliant.”

  “Well done, young Angelwine,” Effie said generously.

  Geoffrey grunted again, but seemed unwilling to pursue the conversation.

  “Any progress on the Tina Quarterboy front?” Oliver asked.

  Effie’s face fell. “Nothing came out of this morning’s house-to-house around the church. I’ve circulated Tina’s description to the doctors and hospitals in the area, in case her pregnancy drives her to seek medical treatment. But I’m beginning to think we won’t see that young lady until she decides to come home of her own accord. I just hope, wherever she it, that she’s getting the right nutrition for herself and for her baby.”

  “Are you working tonight?” Oliver asked quietly. “I could ditch the Angelwine and we could have a nice romantic supper.”

  Effie leaned closer to him. “I can’t get away just yet,” she answered, “but I’m off tomorrow afternoon until the day after Boxing Day. I know you’re going down to your parents for Christmas. Will I see you before then?”

  “I thought I’d go to tomorrow evening’s carol service at the church. Will you join me?”

  “It’s a date,” she said, kissing him swiftly on the nose. Oliver watched her walk away, appreciating the rare opportunity to view her from this angle.

  “Ollie,” said Geoffrey softly.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I confess something?”

  “You mean that you had no idea Barry Foison was a transsexual?”

  “That would be it, yes.” He smiled weakly. Oliver patted him on the arm.

  “Well, what did you think when you came bounding out of the bathroom, brandishing a hair and shouting ‘Eureka!’?” he asked.

  Geoffrey sighed. “I thought his big secret was that he was secretly living with a woman out of wedlock. I imagined the hair was hers. And what would a man want with a razor in the bathtub?”

  “Lots of men shave in the bath or the shower. The water softens their bristles. Someday, when you start shaving, you’ll appreciate that. No, if you want to check on the number of people in a household, count the toothbrushes.”

  He checked his watch. Too late now to go shopping for Effie’s Christmas present. He would have to purchase it tomorrow and give it to her at the carol service. There would be time now that his day as a detective was officially over—unless he hit upon the solution to the baffling crime in the meantime. “Shall we go home?” he asked wearily.

  Geoffrey sighed again—a deeper, love struck sigh this time, which seemed to have magical powers, since Tish Belfry suddenly walked in through the front door, arguing with a tall, balding man. Given a forced-choice test, Oliver would have categorized him as a detective rather than a stick insect, but it was a close-run thing.

&
nbsp; “He’s under arrest and bail was denied,” Tish declared as they passed. “Let the courts deal with him.”

  “All I’m saying, Tish,” Detective Constable Paddock replied condescendingly, “is that DI Welkin could have got a confession out of him if he’d tried.”

  Tish stopped, eager to end the discussion before they reached the incident room. “Welkin did try, Graham. I was there,” she stated, glaring up at Paddock. “He gave the vicar every opportunity to admit to the murder.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, all I can say is that he didn’t try hard enough. Hard enough, get it?” Paddock slammed a gloved fist into his other hand. Then he feigned a look of profound puzzlement. “Or perhaps you don’t?” he added with an unpleasant smirk.

  Tish flinched with sudden humiliation. She became aware of Oliver and Geoffrey watching them, and lowered her voice as she continued the conversation.

  “Quick, introduce me!” Geoffrey hissed.

  “What?”

  “That nasty scarecrow just insulted Tish Belfry. I must defend her honor. Introduce me to her, and then I can tell him to stop talking to my beloved like that.”

  “I’m not going to interrupt Tish while she’s talking to a colleague. Wait until she’s finished.”

  “That’ll be too late,” Geoffrey muttered, standing up and approaching the two detectives.

  “…don’t appreciate that kind of humor,” Tish was saying, staring intently at her colleague. “I never have.”

  “Oh, lighten up,” Paddock countered contemptuously. “Bloody policewomen, can never take a joke.”

  “Police officer, Graham, just like you.”

  Paddock stood back and looked pointedly at her chest. “Now, now, Tishy, I can think of couple of ways you’re not a bit like me.”

  He was about to look up at her face again, a twisted leer on his own, when Geoffrey slid in between them.

  “Detective Constable Belfry,” he began, “my name’s…”

  Geoffrey stopped, intercepting the full force of Tish’s carefully prepared expression. Behind him, Paddock gasped as he too made eye contact with Tish, and an initial flash of abject shame gave way to a host of memories parading through his mind—mainly incidents of disreputable behavior toward the opposite sex, which he now deeply regretted. Geoffrey’s mind went blank. Having experienced very few non-imaginary incidents involving the opposite sex, disreputable or otherwise, he simply reeled as if he’d been slapped in the face with a large haddock, and staggered back to the seat beside Oliver.

  “Double-barreled,” murmured Oliver approvingly, with a nod toward Tish.

  “You know, Ollie, you’re probably right,” Geoffrey panted, trying to recover his breath. “It is impolite to speak to a lady before you’ve been properly introduced.”

  ***

  The hallway telephone was ringing when Oliver and Geoffrey arrived home that evening. Geoffrey ignored it and headed straight to the kitchen cabinet, where he kept a small bottle of cooking sherry. Oliver picked up the phone.

  “Battersea Dog’s Home,” he announced.

  “Ah, good, it is you, Ollie.” Mallard’s voice, jovial for once. “I’m calling from the Yard.”

  “What are you doing in the backyard?” Oliver asked. “And shouldn’t you be backstage in Theydon Bois, preparing your rebuttal?”

  Mallard was clearly so happy to be back in his spiritual home that he was prepared to overlook the jokes. “I gave my final, farewell performance as Bottom last night,” he declared. “I thought I’d see how your day went, before I set off for home.”

  “Why are you at work? Oh yes, you said something about helping your archnemesis, Assistant Commissioner Weed. I thought he was the one who was trying to keep you away from the place. What’s that all about?”

  Mallard paused, and Oliver could hear his breathing down the line. “Look, Ollie, this is strictly confidential, of course. It seems that Weed is developing a little…personal problem. It all began Saturday night, when he started to notice an odd smell in his office. He got the cleaners to go in on Sunday, but the smell was still there yesterday morning. So during the day, Weed had the maintenance people go through the duct-work and the heating system to see if they could find a dead mouse or bird, because that’s what it smelled like, frankly. They didn’t find a thing. But the pong is still there and, oddly, it’s only noticeable in his office. Well, naturally, some of Weed’s less-than-charitable colleagues are beginning to hint that it’s not the office but the incumbent who might be the source of the aroma. So yesterday, just before I met you and Effie, I called to offer Weed some confidential diagnostics, based on that special project I did on the relationship between bodily odors and nutritional imbalance.”

  “You never did any project like that!”

  “Maybe, but Weed doesn’t know that. I popped in this afternoon to do my assessment.”

  “And the pong?”

  “Strong. And getting stronger, according to DS Moldwarp, who’s been monitoring the situation with great glee, although you’d never think it to look at him. So I left out a few petri dishes filled with chemicals overnight, and tomorrow I shall give the assistant commissioner my analysis. He is most grateful for my discretion, as you can imagine.”

  “How grateful, exactly?”

  “Not as grateful as I intend him to be. So how was the day of detection?”

  Oliver told his uncle what he had learned from the suspects, repeating his conviction that they had all been telling him the truth, perhaps not the whole truth, but certainly nothing but the truth.

  “Ah, what is truth?” Mallard intoned. “But did you come across anything that might exonerate young Paul?”

  “I feel there’s a two and a two somewhere in my notes that are screaming to be made into a four, but I can’t put my finger on it. I need to give it some thought.”

  “Good idea,” said his uncle. “Sleep on it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Unto Us a Child Is Given

  Wednesday, December 24 (Christmas Eve)

  Although Oliver occasionally deplored Susie’s morals, he admired their consistency. It was a matter of honor that, no matter where she spent the rest of the night after she closed up her restaurant, she always came home for breakfast. “I may be a slut,” she would declare happily, “but I’m not a trollop,” a distinction that was crystal-clear to the three men who shared the house.

  When Oliver stumbled into the kitchen, Susie was standing at one of the counters, staring at a packet of cornflakes and apparently looking for instructions.

  “You’re up early!” he said huskily.

  “I haven’t been to bed,” she trilled. “Or rather, I haven’t been to sleep. I just got home. Want some of my special coffee?”

  “No thank you,” Oliver answered very quickly. “I’ll make myself some tea.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on for you,” she offered. Oliver watched her dubiously. It was just possible that Susie could burn water.

  “You’re early, too,” she said, abandoning the cereal box and filling the kettle.

  “I woke up cross. I was dreaming, I think.”

  “Ooh, goody. Something juicy to start your Auntie Susie’s day with a bang, although you’re already too late for that? It’s not that dream where you and Geoffrey Angelwine are climbing Cleopatra’s Needle, is it?”

  Oliver overlooked the comment and sat down at the kitchen table. “‘I have had a dream…past the wit of man to say what dream it was.’”

  “What?”

  “Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s Bottom’s speech, when he wakes up after losing his ass’s head. Uncle Tim did it rather well last week.”

  Susie glared around the room, in search of the coffeemaker. It may have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to Oliver that the machine was trying to shrink back out of sight between the biscuit ti
n and Susie’s broken food processor.

  “Well, midsummer’s day is traditionally June 24,” she said. “Today is Christmas Eve, exactly six months later, so perhaps this was your Midwinter Night’s Dream. Was is bleak?”

  Oliver rubbed sleep from his eyes. “It’s already fading. I think it had a lot to do with this murder and all the people I was talking to yesterday.”

  Susie spun around and pointed at him with a spatula. “Quick, what’s the one thing that was on your mind when you woke up?”

  “Breakfast.”

  She sighed. “All right, I’ll make you breakfast,” she said dejectedly. “But I meant what one thing did you remember from the dream?”

  “That’s was it—breakfast,” Oliver maintained, now fearful that Susie’s misunderstanding might sabotage his digestive health for the entire Christmas holiday. “Breakfast was somehow in my dream. And I woke up asking how did the strychnine get into the glass.”

  “Yes, but you probably went to sleep asking that one. It’s been on your mind since Sunday. But you know what they say: When you have eliminated six impossible things before breakfast, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now you just sit there, and I’ll whip you up a cooked breakfast. Do you want some orange juice? I’ll leave out the strychnine.”

  Oliver sat, nursing his glass of juice, and repeating the question to himself, while Susie foraged in the refrigerator.

  How did the strychnine get into the glass?

  He had asked them all the day before—all the people on the platform who had the opportunity to lace the wineglass with the deadly poison. They had all denied it, and all denied seeing Piltdown tamper with the glasses, and it had sounded like the truth. But what is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. At least Pilate washed his hands. And who wrote that crack about jesting Pilate?

  “Bacon,” he murmured, remembering.

  “We don’t have any,” Susie answered. “I’m frying some tofu sausages instead.”

  How did the strychnine get into the glass? Tapster’s reaction was more or less instantaneous, yet strychnine took time to work—ten minutes at least, usually longer. Yes, you could cut the time to the bare minimum by delivering it dissolved in something, especially something that would disguise its bitterness, such as alcohol. But wait—the Communion wine didn’t contain any alcohol, that wouldn’t work. The more Oliver thought about it, the more it seemed an impossible crime. And yet, when you have eliminated the impossible…