The Priest at Puddle's End (A Lady Marmalade Mystery Book 10)

by Jason Blacker

  “Has it got plants or herbs in it as nicknames for the children?” asked Turnbull.

  “Yes, it does. How do you know?” asked Frances.

  “I’ve seen one like it that the Deacon had. Just before he stopped abusing me he showed me his. I reckon he was trying to get me to be like him, yeah?”

  “Did the one you see have weather reports in it too?” asked Frances.

  “That’s not weather reports, that’s the type of abuse they done,” said Turnbull.

  “You’ll see in the back, Devlin,” said Frances, “that the names of the flowers coincide with initials. I believe those are the initials of the children who have been abused.”

  Devlin nodded and flipped back and forth in the book.

  “And the weather then,” he said, looking up at Turnbull, “is what he did to the children, is it?”

  Turnbull nodded.

  “What’s ‘sunny’ then?” asked Pearce.

  “Well, I don’t know if the priest here used the same as the Deacon, yeah, but for the Deacon, sunny meant that he was exposing himself.”

  Pearce furrowed his brow in concern. He flipped through the pages and turned to Frances.

  “This must be the most unpleasant case I’ve been involved in,” he said. “I’m going to send for more detectives from the Yard. We will upturn every stone in this village and poke every dark corner until I am certain that all of those who abuse kids are either dead or in custody. That this sort of thing could have carried on for so long in plain sight boggles my mind to be frank.”

  “Thank you, Devlin. I believe that the abusers are no longer here, but you are right to be certain. In that very book I counted over two dozen different initials and others with the same initials that must have been different children. This town will take a long time to heal these wounds. That I am sure of.”

  Pearce leaned down and placed the notebook in front of Turnbull.

  “I want you to go through every bit of weather in here and tell me what it means, however unpleasant.”

  Turnbull looked up at him.

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  And he went through the whole book and told Pearce and Frances and Florence and Sergeant Noble what they all meant. And captured within those euphemistic terms for weather was all manner of sexual abuse that a person could experience. Florence had to get up and leave towards the end. She was looking green and felt ill. It upset Frances too, but she steeled herself to listen through it all for it could only help to ensure that such atrocities never happened again so long as she had anything to do with it.

  When they were finished Turnbull handed the book back to Pearce. No words were exchanged. There was nothing to say. Only silent time could cleanse the filth from the space and room they were in. Pearce handed the notebook to Sergeant Noble.

  “I’ll have one of my men get a copy of that from you, Sergeant,” said Pearce. “In fact, we’ll get a copy of all your records related to this case as well as the previous case involving the Deacon.”

  “Of course, Chief Inspector,” said Noble.

  “I know this is difficult for you, Carbry,” said Frances, “and I’m grateful you have been willing to share what happened so that we can prevent this from happening to other children. Unless there is anything else you’d like to add about that experience, I’d like to ask you how you came to arrive in Puddle’s End in twenty-nine.”

  Turnbull looked up at her and nodded. He tried to smile, but it fell off his face and landed loudly on the floor.

  “I could fancy another fag,” he said.

  Noble went out again and was back quickly. This time he carried three cigarettes. He put them in front of Turnbull.

  “Ta,” said Turnbull.

  He took one and stuck it in his mouth and lit it up. He blew smoke out of his mouth and then looked at Frances briefly.

  “I left Blairgowrie in nineteen twelve just a few months after the Deacon moved, yeah? That place was nothing but bad memories for me. I made my way over the next two years down to London.”

  “And that’s where you got into trouble,” said Frances.

  Turnbull sucked on his cigarette and fiddled with his fingers.

  “I’m not looking to get into trouble for things I done,” he said.

  “We’re not here to get you into trouble for your past,” said Frances. “Isn’t that right, Chief Inspector?”

  She looked up at Pearce. He nodded at her.

  “This is about the Deacon’s murder,” said Pearce. “And so long as you didn’t kill him, I’m not concerned with your troubles in London.”

  Turnbull looked up briefly.

  “I don’t got no education,” he said. “And London ain’t a kind place for poor kids without no education. I tried selling newspapers, yeah? But the pay was no good, and I was living on the streets. If I wasn’t getting shortchanged by the boss I was getting robbed by bigger kids. So I started rummaging through garbage for food and scraps. But there’s only so much of that you can do. Next comes the thieving and then as you get older and bigger the robbery. I never meant to hurt no one. I really didn’t, but I was starving and hungry and cold all the time.”

  Turnbull flicked ash into the ashtray. He’d stopped picking away at his fingers. He looked down at the table.

  “But the most money, yeah, was for prostitution, right? Now I ain’t a fag, I want to make that clear. But the married men who’d come for sex was paying a lot and that helped and I’d known about it all my life, right? The Deacon, he showed me what to do, and ‘cos I was used to it I could do it for money, yeah? I didn’t always look like I do. I was a handsome boy, but time’ll do things to you. Unkind things.”

  “There’s no shame in being a homosexual,” said Frances.

  “Yeah, well I’m not a fag, yeah?” said Turnbull, getting flushed and raising his voice.

  “We know,” said Pearce, “carry on with your story.”

  Turnbull sucked on his cigarette and blew the smoke out towards the door.

  “Well, I couldn’t do that all me life, right? A lot of the men looking for this, they like the younger boys, yeah? Them who’s fourteen, fifteen, maybe sixteen. So come eighteen I try to join the army but they won’t have me on account of the bad stuff I’ve done. So I get to traveling round the country looking for odd jobs. Mostly I’m working the harvests and the slaughtering of chickens and stuff.”

  “How did you get to Puddle’s End?” asked Pearce.

  “Well, I ended up in Blackpool at the end of twenty-eight working the docks, yeah? I met a mate I’d known from Blairgowrie. Was one of the kids who’d also been buggered by the Deacon, right? He tells me he’s moving back to Scotland ‘cos he heard that the Deacon’s been at Puddle’s End all this time. Said he’d been there since nineteen twenty and he can’t be that close to the bastard.”

  Turnbull took a last drag on his cigarette and squashed it out next to the other two.

  “I’m almost thirty years old now. Time’s kicked me hard yeah? These missing teeth of mine didn’t just fall out. And when my mate tells me this I still gots a hate in my heart for the Deacon so I figures I’ll go to Puddle’s End, yeah, and kill ‘im.”

  Turnbull pauses and looks up at Frances and then Pearce.

  “But over that next year as I’m working in Blackpool I start thinking about maybe I can get money from the bastard instead, yeah? And I think maybe I can make sure he doesn’t do no more kids. So that’s my plan. That’s what I did.”

  “You went to Puddle’s End to get money from the Deacon?” asked Pearce.

  Turnbull nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s right. He gave me a job too as a groundskeeper with that coward Bolton. He’d been abused too, yeah? But he’s too lily-livered to do nothing about it. But when I seen the Deacon the first time he seemed like a feeble old man. I coulda killed him easy. But I got him giving me ten bob a month. Though only lasted the one month right?”

  “And what about the arguments that people heard you have
with the Deacon?” asked Frances.

  “What about them?”

  “We heard it was about money?”

  “Yeah, well he moaned and cried and told me he couldn’t get me ten bob that quick. I told him it was either that or his life, yeah? Then he got me the money. Now I told him he had to stop with the kids. I wanted to make sure about that, right? I told him he couldn’t touch no kids no more or I’d kill him.”

  “And you stole money from the church?” asked Frances, though the question was without malevolence.

  “Yeah, I did. Stole as much as I could. Got caught once. The priest said he was gonna call the coppers, yeah? I told him he’d do nothing like that unless he wanted me to tell the coppers about him and the kids. Told him to stop or I’d kill him too. I think he did. But you gots to understand, that church took everything from me, I reckoned I was owed a little and I was gonna take it.”

  Noble leafed through the notebook. He found the pages and leaned down and showed Frances.

  “Well, it looks like there aren’t any notes in there for most of August and September of twenty-nine.”

  Turnbull nodded, and he smiled a little. A genuine smile. Almost softened up his face a lot.

  “But you left really quickly after the Deacon was murdered. Why was that?”

  Turnbull lit up another cigarette.

  “‘Cos they was gonna think it was me, yeah? Drifter comes in that month and then the Deacon ends up dead. That Sergeant Potts he didn’t like me. He didn’t like outsiders coming into Puddle’s End unless they was visitors and had money. I knew he was gonna put it on me. And I spent time in jail in London, right? Who else was they gonna put it on? But I saw who did it.”

  “And who was that?”

  Turnbull folded his hands across his chest and looked at Frances and Pearce hard.

  “I ain’t telling that. I’m taking that to my grave. That man deserves a medal he does, not jail.”

  “That’s alright, Carbry, we know it was Galen Teel,” said Frances.

  Turnbull’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  “Yeah, well that’s a good man right there. A pillar of the community,” he said.

  “How did you know it was him?” she asked.

  “Peter was up in the front of the church, yeah? Waiting for his cousin. See, that’s what happens when you abuse kids, right, they get messed up. I was in the shed at the back of the grounds where them tools used to be. I reckon Galen figured nobody was around. Millar was down tending the graveyard, giving blessings or I dunno what. Galen comes down and they start arguing, yeah? He’s telling Millar he better stop putting his hands on the kids and Millar’s saying the kids are lying and stuff like that. He’s making Galen real angry. I can see it from the side window of the shed.

  The doors are open at the front of the shed, that’s how I can hear them, right? I’m thinking it’s funny ‘cos Millar don’t talk to me like that, right? But maybe he thinks Galen, being a man of the community’s not gonna do nothing. But he thought wrong, he did.”

  “What happened?” asked Frances.

  “Well, I can see Galen getting real mad. And the Deacon’s not taking it seriously. He’s lying too, yeah? Saying he ain’t touched any kids. The kids are little bastards, little liars. That’s what he’s saying. He tells Galen to go back to the pub and stop drinking and making up stories. Deacon turns his back on Galen and Galen’s real mad now, yeah? He yells at him. Something like don’t you turn your back on me you f…, he uses a bad word then,” says Turnbull.

  Frances nodded.

  “We get the idea,” she said.

  “Yeah, so he says to the Deacon, don’t turn your back on me you f’ing pedophile. And the Deacon, he’s just like waving his hands like he’s trying to swat a fly or something. Galen picks up a chunk of stone that’s lying around and he smacks the Deacon across the head. I heard it in the shed I did. Large sound it was. I thought he was gonna knock the head right off, yeah?”

  “And then what happened?” asked Frances.

  “He looks down at the Deacon. He kicks him softly, ‘cos I guess he wasn’t sure he was dead. Then he picks up his bag that he’d put down by the tree when he was arguing with the Deacon, yeah? And he heads up to the church. That time I go back to work, yeah? I was sharpening the shears and oiling the tools, right?”

  “And that’s it?” asked Pearce.

  “No sir. I figure he’s gone now, but he hasn’t, has he? I’ve gots me back to the shed doors, when I hear a knock on them. Guess he must have seen me in there after he comes back out of the church, yeah? I turn around and it’s him. Galen. He says to me, he says you didn’t see nothing, right? I says, seen what, Mr. Teel? You’re a good man. I glad to seen lightning strike that pervert down. I was talking about the Deacon, yeah?

  Galen nods at me. A devil in God’s clothes he says. And I says that the priest is just like him and he might want to take his kids away. He nods again, says he didn’t know about the priest but that he wasn’t gonna clean up all the messes. He reaches into his bag, yeah, and he pulls out this box they use in church for money from the candles. He reaches for a pry bar and cracks open the top of it, right? There’s some shillings in there.

  He takes them out and gives them to me. He says maybe I should get going on account of the police are gonna think it was me, and how he ain’t gonna be happy if I change my mind. He’s got a couple of pounds in his pocket which he gives to me too. I look him in the eye, I do, and I says to him. You’re a good man, Mr. Teel. That bastard out there, that man done things to me when I was a boy. If you weren’t gonna stop it I was. So he says it’s been done then. And he walks away.

  I leave too. I close up the shed and go to the church basement where I slept and take my things and leave. I don’t say nothing to nobody. I’d gone left Puddle’s End on the next train. By night I was miles away.”

  Frances nodded. Turnbull looked at his last two cigarettes. He put one in behind his ear and the other one in his mouth. He lit it up.

  “And you ended up in Scotland again, where Chief Inspector Pearce caught up with you?”

  Turnbull nodded as he blew smoke out of his mouth.

  “It couldn’t be helped,” he said. “I headed to Wales straight after. Thought I’d go someplace I hadn’t before. Get a fresh start, yeah? Wound up in Cardiff I did, working the docks there. Got steady work. That’s where I’d been from twenty-nine until forty-five. Despite everything I been through I’ve always loved me ma. I try and send her some money when I can. She kept writing to tell me to come home, but I couldn’t risk it, yeah? But I kept writing over the years.

  Then I get a letter she tells me she’s sick. Says she has cancer and wants to see me again before she goes, yeah? What could I do? I had to go home. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left in nineteen twelve. Over thirty years. I got back to Blairgowrie last autumn. Stayed with me ma until she passed fifth of November. She was sixty-six. I never been good with money, yeah? So I needed to make some more to get back to Cardiff. I landed up in Dundee at St. William’s Church. Father Donegal’s a good man there. Almost helped me get my faith back, but that ain’t gonna ever happen. But he’s how a priest should be, right? But it’s me own fault. I gots to fighting again at the pub and that’s how the police got me.”

  Frances nodded.

  “Thank you for being so forthright, Carbry. Your information has been really helpful.”

  He blew smoke up at the ceiling and tapped the cigarette on the ashtray.

  “Don’t charge Galen, he’s a good man. The Deacon got what’s coming to him. Galen ain’t a violent man like me. He’s not a bad man like me, he don’t deserve jail for what he done.”

  “That’s not possible I’m afraid, Mr. Turnbull,” said Chief Inspector Pearce. “A man’s been murdered, however evil he may have been it still wasn’t in self defense.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna testify at the courts,” said Turnbull.

  “You will unless you fancy more time in jail,” said Pearce.<
br />
  “Well, we might not need your testimony, Carbry,” said Frances. “I have a feeling that Galen Teel will confess.”

  “He shouldn’t be punished for what he done. He done a service for this community,” said Turnbull. “Now you want to arrest a decent man for doing the right thing. But when us kids was being buggered, where were you then?”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Turnbull, we would have done something,” said Pearce.

  “No, you didn’t. You had your chance. I seen it with me own eyes. Back in Blairgowrie. One of them kids being buggered like me told his dad, yeah? The coppers came in and looked around. Spoke to the Deacon and the priest but they never charge him, right? No, that boy though, he was taken out of church, but the rest of us got it worse. No, Inspector,” said Turnbull. “I seen you turn a blind eye to monsters. I seen you pretend to look for justice but you ain’t never looking in the dark corners. You ain’t never looking hard enough when it’s the kids begging for help, yeah?”

  Pearce didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry that happened,” said Frances. “Chief Inspector Pearce would have overturned every rock to get at the truth if he was there.”

  Turnbull didn’t say anything. He shook his head wearily.

  “We believe his kids killed the secretary Mrs. Walmsley and the priest Father Fannon,” said Frances.

  He looked up at her.

  “Yeah, so you’re gonna put them in chains too, you’re gonna ruin the whole family then, is it?”

  “No,” said Frances. “The children will not be charged.”

  “They won’t?” asked Pearce, looking down at Frances quizzically. She shook her head.

  “We don’t have hard evidence on them.”

  “We have enough to get them to confess,” said Pearce.

  “I doubt they will,” said Frances. “I’m sure Galen will confess to those murders too. And they were abused, Devlin, let’s remember that. They were children when they were abused.”

  “And they’re adults now and should know better.”

  “Or perhaps they were just trying to end the abuse that children to this very day were suffering.”