A Vicar, Crucified

by Simon Parke

  She pushed a transparent envelope towards Betty containing some paper with writing on it. Betty looked at it without moving.

  ‘Do you recognise that?’

  ‘Yes, it’s mine.’

  ‘And what is it exactly?’

  ‘They were the notes I took at the parish meeting. I like writing if I can’t knit. I won the writing prize at school for stories. I’ve read a lot of stories and written a few.’

  ‘They sound very exciting.’

  ‘Oh, they’re not exciting. Life isn’t exciting. Life is just hard.’

  Tamsin said: ‘So these are your notes from the meeting on the night that the vicar died.’ Betty nodded.

  ‘For the recording, Betty is nodding her head in agreement. So you lost these notes, Betty?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Do you know where we found them?’

  ‘In the parish room?’

  ‘No, in the vestry. Is that a surprise?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘The following morning this note of yours was found in the vestry where the vicar was killed. Did you go into the vestry after the meeting?’

  ‘No, I went for a walk.’

  ‘That’s right, you went for a long walk in the rain.’

  ‘I like walking.’

  ‘You must do but we still have the problem. How did your notes which you took in the parish room arrive on the floor of the vestry when you didn’t go there? If you didn’t put them there, who did?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could have been anyone. Things often get moved in church. It makes people very angry and then they blame me as the cleaner.’

  Betty was right; it could have been quite a few people and the note in itself proved nothing. Perhaps Tamsin had hoped she’d break down and confess all; but Betty wasn’t breaking down and confessing all so Tamsin decided to play her other ace. If at first you don’t succeed...

  ‘Something else we found in the vestry was your footprints on the table.’

  Betty looked straight ahead.

  ‘The table that the murderer used to bang in the nails. Do you know how your footprints might have got there on that table? It’s an odd place for footprints.’

  Betty was rummaging through her bag. Was she searching for a knife with which to stab her? It did cross Tamsin’s mind but instead of a knife, she drew out a handkerchief on which she firmly blew her nose.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ she said.

  ‘You can trust me,’ said Tamsin leaning forward.

  ‘I stand on the table to clean the ceiling.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘It’s the only way I can reach the cobwebs.’

  ‘They don’t give you a ladder?’

  ‘I can’t be doing with ladders.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I prefer the table, feel safer on it but I don’t tell anyone in case they make a fuss about health and safety. Roger Stills, the church warden, he’s always going on about health and safety.’

  ‘So you stand on the table to clean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when did you last stand on it?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘The day of the murder?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted everything looking ship-shape for the Bishop.’ It was at this point that Abbot Peter entered the room.

  ‘Abbot Peter has just entered the room at 2.55 p.m.’

  ‘Hello, Betty,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Abbot.’

  She didn’t seem glad to see him and made no attempt to suggest otherwise. The social skills of polite deception had passed her by entirely. Why pretend you were glad to see someone when you weren’t?

  ‘Do you have anything else you want to tell us, Betty?’ asked Tamsin.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, getting up. ‘I should probably be getting back now.’

  The interview was brought to an end and with Tamsin reluctant to move, almost paralysed in her seat, it was the Abbot who walked Betty to the door of the police station. Betty turned down the offer of a lift, opting to walk but not before speaking with Peter about her funeral.

  ‘You will bury me, won’t you, Abbot?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Peter was caught out by this particular line of enquiry. Such requests usually came with a preamble and context but not today.

  ‘I want you to take my funeral and bury me when I die.’

  ‘Are you thinking of dying, Betty?’

  ‘I’d like you to do it, Abbot.’

  ‘And what if you outlive me by many years which is highly possible?’

  ‘I just want to know that if I die, and I’m not young anymore, you’ll take my funeral. My affairs are in order.’

  ‘I’m not thinking about you dying, Betty.’

  Betty stood stock still, staring straight at him.

  ‘I’m thinking about you living!’ he continued, his words dying in the air. ‘But of course, should our lives work out that way, should death greet you before it greets me, then it would be an honour to take your funeral, Betty and to lower you into the ground of glory.’

  A quiet smile broke out across Betty’s face, like a weak and watery sun.

  ‘And you’ve chosen burial over cremation?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t want the flames, Abbot. I want to rot, slowly rotting is the best way for me.’

  And with that she started walking, hands clasped behind her back, strong determined progress, making towards the seafront as Peter returned inside.

  He found Tamsin looking blankly at her notes.

  ‘So do we have the killer?’ asked Abbot Peter.

  ‘Work in progress,’ she said without looking up.

  ‘I’ll take that as a “no”.’

  Fifty Three

  ‘I don’t know why Clare got out of the car.’

  The Bishop was insistent. Neither was he in the best of moods having been asked to ‘cancel whatever you’re doing’ and summoned to Stormhaven police station with pressing urgency. The Abbot had been right. Bishop Stephen would have been happier in his episcopal study with family photos and a theological bookcase for support. A Bishop in a police station was very much an away match, prompting an unspoken battle of the uniforms. In the corridors and foyer were the blue uniforms against which he deployed his purple shirt and large cross. One purple shirt with cross trumped a hundred blues in his opinion; he was the Holy Father here and far beyond the stupid reach of the Plod Brigade. But what irritated him the most was the discovery that Abbot Peter was part of the interview team.

  ‘So you did drive her home?’ said Tamsin.

  ‘I offered her a lift, yes.’

  ‘As was your common practice I believe?’

  ‘I may have been charitable in this manner on other occasions, if that’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘That is what I’m saying.’

  ‘As though it’s wrong to be kind! I thought we were meant to applaud the Good Samaritan?’

  ‘Loud applause,’ said Abbot Peter. ‘Always.’

  ‘I’m sure Clare appreciated this regular twosome greatly,’ said Tamsin.

  The Bishop’s face reddened a little; this was Peter’s perception as Tamsin continued.

  ‘It was Clare, after all, who was always the beneficiary of this charity.’

  ‘She’s on my way home!’

  ‘Sort of on your way home. A slight detour necessary.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t make it to her house on the night of the murder. Why was that?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘She wanted to get out,’ said the Bishop, quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

&nbs
p; ‘She decided that she wanted to get out.’

  ‘An odd decision on such a stormy night.’

  ‘I thought so myself. I thought, “What’s got into you, you poor girl?”’

  ‘And what had got into her?’

  ‘As I say, I have no idea.’

  ‘So how did the conversation go exactly? Become a reporter for a moment. You were driving along in the rain and you were still at least a mile from her home when she said what?’

  ‘Well, she just said she wanted to go back to the church.’

  ‘I see. Any reason given?’

  ‘No, she just said she must go back. Something was obviously on her mind.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. And you offered to drive her there, I presume.’

  ‘Back to church? No, I had to return home; I had other things to attend to. There are many issues which require my attention beyond the affairs of Stormhaven.’

  ‘So you stopped the car and then what?’

  ‘Well, she got out.’

  ‘Did she say goodbye?’

  ‘Oh yes, she said goodbye and thanked me for the lift and then got out. I didn’t see her again.’

  ‘Though you rang her on three occasions soon after.’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure she was all right.’

  ‘Do you ring everyone three times after they leave you?’

  ‘It was late, I was concerned.’

  ‘I’m sure you were but about what?’

  ‘About her safety of course! And with good reason as it turned out.’

  ‘Indeed. And you rang her three times because she didn’t answer any of your calls, which is odd given your charitable works toward her. I think I’d always the answer the calls of the Good Samaritan.’

  ‘I don’t pretend to know the answer to that.’

  ‘I’m certainly struggling.’

  ‘But then, Detective Inspector, sometimes we must live the mystery. I often have to say that to people.’

  ‘And that’s all very spiritual,’ said Tamsin, ‘but in police work, we have to get to the bottom of a mystery rather than “live it” as you say. And the mystery here is this: why did Clare get out of your car on a filthy night and, without explanation, return to the church?’

  ***

  ‘A pretty savage performance,’ said Abbot Peter after the Bishop had taken his leave. ‘Though we must, of course, beware of negative fixations. They aren’t always the path to enlightenment.’

  ‘Negative fixations?’

  ‘You become fixated by dislike. You lock onto someone in negative relationship. From there on, everything they do and everything they are, is wrong, despised, judged. They’re demonised, they become demons.

  ‘He’s a liar.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And you shouldn’t lie if you have a big cross round your neck.’

  Fifty Four

  Saturday, 20 December

  Council worker Christopher Thornton tidied his front room but a note seemed superfluous. Why give meaning to something that had no meaning? A note said his life mattered and his life had never mattered, had only ever been pretence. If he were a stick of Brighton rock, the words down the middle would be ‘I’m worth nothing.’ It was disturbing but he couldn’t remember any particular moment in his life when he could say, ‘This is me’. He could only remember saying, ‘Well, I got away with that quite well.’

  Some unspeakable shame, he felt it there, the sense that if anyone knew him as he was, then they wouldn’t like him, would see through the pretence to the emptiness behind. His mother had said how horrid he could be, so he’d sent his shadow out into the world and the shadow had done well until the beach hut incident. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d done - well he hadn’t done anything really, just another small lie in a very long list. But it was the money that had tipped the scales, the bribe he’d managed to call a thank you. This was the Rubicon he’d crossed and the reason he left home early this Saturday morning and walked the 300 yards to the sea front where he began the climb up the white cliffs.

  ‘Vive le weekend!’ said one jolly old lady coming the other way.

  ‘Vive le weekend,’ replied Christopher.

  Away to his left was the golf course, distant figures with time on their hands or business relations to develop:

  ‘How about we discuss it over a round of golf?’

  It was a world Christopher was familiar with but not part of; and this was the final goodbye. His funeral would be an interesting event. Who from the office would go? And what would they say about him afterwards as they hung around the flowers before leaving. They’d probably discuss the football or house prices. He couldn’t imagine them spending very long on him.

  The climb was now steeper, Stormhaven below him and the golf course at the end of its reach. Up ahead was a young runner attempting the gradient but travelling so slowly that Christopher’s determined walk was in danger of taking him past the lad. And Christopher’s walk could be very determined; such physical force within that he’d never really harnessed or directed. If only he’d known who he was. He understood Samuel Becket’s lines, words scribbled on a post-it note in his kitchen, ‘There were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.’

  And now he stood on the soft grass at the top of the cliffs where only the keen walkers came. Beachy Head was the traditional place to leap, two miles further along the coast and generally, Christopher liked tradition, liked the familiar. But he also liked it here and looked around in appreciation of the wind-swept view. The young runner had made it to the top and now turned wearily inland. Surprisingly, he seemed to be going no faster on the flat than he had on the sharp climb. Perhaps he was a one-gear runner, equal in speed whatever the terrain, never fast, never slow but durable and steady, keeping going until the end and, as Christopher had mimicked him in life, so he’d mimic him in death. He’d keep going to the end.

  And then he was being greeted by the strange man in a habit. He’d seen him in Stormhaven before, struggling up the High Street or once in the supermarket talking with the till girl. But he’d never spoken himself. You don’t, do you? But now the two met at last as the wind quietened, a still morning air in high places and a strangely intimate winter silence.

  ‘Only committed walkers out today!’ the strange man in the habit said cheerily.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Christopher, glad of the human contact. And then a thought occurred to him: ‘Do you hear confessions?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Do you hear confessions?’

  ‘I do yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Though it’s a dying trade, not something people practice much now.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Christopher laughed inwardly at the spiralling and absurd nature of guilt, as new possibilities now became apparent. He could imagine it: ‘Father, I confess that I am guilty of allowing my confessions of guilt to become a little sporadic of late.’

  But the man in the habit did not seem like a vulture feeding off the self-condemnation of others.

  ‘Yes, they simply “move on”, ‘ continued the strange man in a throwaway manner. ‘But I sense you can’t do that.’

  There was a silence between them.

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I just want to say I’m sorry,’ said Christopher.

  ‘What are you sorry about?’

  ‘Many things. But I’m mainly sorry about the beach hut.’

  ‘The beach hut? Well, now you’ve spoken it and I’ve heard it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s enough.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘That’s a weight off my mind.’

  There
was another silence as a woman with an energetic Dalmatian passed them.

  ‘We all have our reasons,’ said Peter.

  ‘But they’re not always good reasons.’

  ‘What is it about the beach hut you’re sorry for?’

  ‘Just tell Mr Robinson at the council what I’ve said. He’s a good man.’

  ‘And how will I contact Mr Robinson?’

  Christopher placed a card in his hands.

  ‘I’m not so bad, am I?’ he said.

  ‘You were never bad,’ said Abbot Peter. ‘Whoever said that you were?’

  ‘My mother, teachers, where to begin?’

  ‘Then they didn’t deserve you.’

  There was a thought, but perhaps a thought too late.

  ‘I just want you to remember to tell Mr Robinson.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said as he turned and walked on, only doubling back when the strange man in the habit had continued on his journey back down into Stormhaven.

  Christopher looked out to sea beneath dark and blustery clouds. He glanced round, once more reaching out for elusive approval in the wind. And then he ran forward until the land ran out beneath his feet and he was falling, as every leaf must.

  Fifty Five

  The Christmas Fayre was going very well until Anton’s unexpected return.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Tamsin. ‘I feared I’d have to go alone.’

  They’d been due to meet outside the chip shop at 2.00 p.m. and Peter was five minutes late.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry but I just had to see Mr Robinson. Very important.’

  ‘And who is the mysterious Mr Robinson?’

  ‘The first time he’s been called that, I should think.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He’s a middle-to-large cog in the council’s Recreation and Leisure department.’

  ‘Why does that sound so bleak?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it any different from being a middle-to-large cog in the police force?’

  ‘I think it’s the Recreation and Leisure thing. Makes it sound like a complete waste of time.’

  ‘There speaks an activist.’