by Alan Beechey
“What’s your idea?” Effie asked Tish.
“Oh, it was your idea really. That business of going to the doctor. As you know, I checked, and Tina hadn’t been to her family doctor at all. But since Tina was at school on the day she disappeared, I wondered if she might have gone to the school doctor’s surgery instead. I called the school secretary this morning—fortunately, she was there even though the school’s broken up for the Christmas holidays—and she gave the doctor’s number. The doctor was very cagey, and she wouldn’t tell me a thing over the phone, not even whether Tina had been there recently. But she did say I could go round and see her this afternoon. She wouldn’t suggest that unless she had something to say, would she?”
“Well done, Tish,” said Stoodby, who had drifted over and was listening respectfully. Tish ignored him.
“So how did Heather Tapster take Nigel’s death?” Effie asked, remembering another assignment that had been entrusted to Tish.
Tish grimaced and put a hand on her sergeant’s arm. “Effie, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she confided. “No sooner were the words out of my mouth, than she started howling, bawling uncontrollably, and clawing at the carpet. It was like some animal. I mean, I know my mum loves my dad and would be devastated if anything happened to him, but I thought Heather was going to have a nervous breakdown, right there. Either that or turn into a werewolf.”
“How awful,” breathed Stoodby.
“Well, she had just lost her husband,” Tish conceded.
“I meant for you, having to break the news,” he said. Tish looked at him oddly. Inspector Welkin limped out of his office.
Spiv Welkin’s morning had begun punctually at nine o’clock, when, at a hastily convened meeting at the area headquarters, his commander had agreed that Welkin could continue to act as senior investigating officer on the Tapster murder. This was an unusual vote of confidence for someone who was a mere detective sergeant less than six weeks earlier. But, as Commander Hoodwink privately admitted, since there had to be a first time for every homicide detective to be SIO, it might as well be on a murder where the prime suspect was already in the hands of the police. And even if the minister had not done it—despite his convictions, Welkin was scrupulous in his account of the investigation—the true murderer was not going to be a random maniac roaming the borough but one of the other four deacons on the platform, none of whom seemed a flight risk. Besides, Hoodwink doubted that any chief inspector in the area would stoop to joining the parade this close to Christmas and at this stage of the investigation, after the elephants had passed. Why not leave the bucket-and-spadework to Welkin and his team?
Welkin had stopped off on his way back to the police station to inspect the graffito on the church and give the young constable who had failed to witness its execution a damn good bollocking. A two-hour interview with Piltdown followed, but though the minister was pleasantly and apologetically stubborn, he had not made any request to leave. Perhaps he thought he was under arrest, Welkin speculated, although he had not yet formally charged Piltdown with anything—not even obstruction. Then he returned to his office, which seemed to have grown narrower and more inadequate overnight, and started making a series of phone calls with increasing self-confidence.
“Good morning all,” he caroled, noting that all five detectives on that morning’s shift were assembled in the incident room. He pointed at the table he had set up. “Take a pew.”
The detectives looked quizzically at each other, and then one by one took a place among the six chairs that Welkin had lined up on one side of the bare table. Effie sat on the far left with Tish beside her.
“Not that one,” Welkin cried, as Foot tried to sit next to Tish. He grumpily moved down one place, forcing Paddock and Stoodby to take the remaining seats to his right. Welkin took the empty seat between Tish and Foot.
“I thought you might want to hear the latest on yesterday’s murder,” Welkin continued. “I need one or two of you to assist me as we go forward, but I’d like all of you to help me with something right now.”
He cleared his throat and consulted a batch of notes that he had grabbed from his office.
“First, the initial PM report. Tapster died of a heart attack, brought on by the effects of strychnine poisoning. Traces of the poison were found in his stomach and in his mouth. The other contents of his stomach were the remains of his breakfast, consumed approximately four hours before his death, a minute amount of honey eaten more recently, and some Communion wine. There was also a streak of honey on his left forefinger. The pathologist can’t estimate exactly how much strychnine was ingested, but he thinks it was a relatively small dose, perhaps less than seventy milligrams. Enough to bring on convulsions, but not necessarily enough to guarantee death. If Tapster hadn’t had a weak heart, and if he’d received the right medical treatment, he may have survived. But he didn’t, which is why we’re all here.”
He flipped a page on his notepad.
“Right, initial forensic reports. Tapster’s glass—or at least the glass that was found in front of his seat on the platform—had been emptied, but an analysis of the dregs shows a trace of strychnine. All the other glasses, including the ones that weren’t used, were clean. Communion wine only. Ladies and gentlemen, we must conclude that somebody, somehow spiked Tapster’s wine glass with poison, and that’s how he died.”
“Fingerprints?” Tish asked.
“On Tapster’s glass, we found his own prints and those of Barry Foison, a church member but not a deacon. And before you urge me to arrest Foison, I should tell you that it was his job to prepare the Communion sacraments, and his prints were therefore on practically every glass in the church.”
“Where does he do this preparation?” asked Effie, wondering why Welkin was involving the entire shift.
“I interviewed Foison,” Foot stepped in. “He prepares the bread and wine in a sort of side room, right beside the church itself. By ‘church,’ I don’t mean the whole building, I mean the big part of the church, where they have the services.”
“Call it the sanctuary,” Welkin instructed.
“All right, guv. Anyway, you have to go through this side room to get from the sanctuary to the back corridor, which in turn leads to all the rooms at the back as well as the church’s side entrance. You can also get into this corridor directly from a door on the other side of the church.”
“And when did the preparation take place?” Effie asked.
“Funny story. Foison says he sets out the glasses and plates and stuff before the service. He buys the bread on the way to church. Yesterday, he left the sanctuary during the third hymn to pour out the wine, but he found only a full bottle in the cupboard, and he didn’t have no corkscrew with him. Foison says he could have sworn there was half a bottle left over from the last Communion service, and that would have been enough. Anyway, he cut up the bread and, went back into the sanctuary to listen to the sermon. When it was over, he ran out to his car to get his Swiss Army knife, which has a corkscrew on it.”
Of course. Effie remembered watching Foison’s slim form rummaging in his car and then slipping around the side of the church, just before she had gone inside the previous morning. She had left that out of her report.
“So basically,” Foot continued, “he never took his eyes off the wine between the time he pulled the cork from the fresh bottle until the time he put the glasses on the Communion table in front of everyone. Including Sergeant Strongitharm.”
“Did anyone else go into the side room while Foison was pouring the wine?” Tish asked.
“One person,” answered Foot. “Guess who.”
“Nigel Tapster,” said Effie immediately, recalling that she had seen the victim come into the church through the side door just seconds after Heather had left. His wife had barely missed a final chance to see him alive, Effie thought sadly.
“That’s right,” said
Food, slightly deflated. “Foison says Tapster came in during the singing of the last hymn and went on through to the back of the church. Came back a couple of minutes later. Foison assumed he’d gone for a piss.”
“There’s one thing that puzzles me, Inspector,” said Stoodby, as if he were performing the final scene of a whodunit play. “Did Foison really think half a bottle of wine was going to be enough for an entire Communion service?”
“Let’s find out,” said Welkin. He limped over to his office and came back carrying a large cardboard box, which he deposited on the floor. He took out two metal platters and placed them on the table. Then he carefully lifted out two more devices, which Effie recognized as the glass holders from the previous day’s Communion service, although they now had noticeable smears of fingerprint powder on them. Each holder comprised two horizontal metal disks, roughly a foot in diameter, held about an inch apart, with an arching handle that enabled the holder to be carried. The upper disk was perforated with several circular holes, set in three concentric circles. If a small glass were placed in one of these holes, it would drop through until its bottom rested on the lower disk, and so would be held snugly as the holder was passed around the church, perhaps by deacons who weren’t as steady on their feet as they had been in younger years.
From another box, Welkin took out a stack of Communion glasses.
“How many glasses did Foison prepare?” he asked Foot.
“He said he filled the two inner rings, but left the outer one empty.”
Welkin counted quickly, then began to put the glasses into the holder.
“That’s about twenty glasses in each,” he said. “Forty altogether.”
“And only half a bottle of wine?” said Paddock. “Stone me, when I take me girlfriend out to a posh dinner, we’re lucky if we can get two glasses each out of a whole bot.”
“What’s the wine list like at Pizza Hut?” asked Foot, laughing so hard at his own joke, he was barely able to articulate. Paddock punched him playfully in the arm.
“All right, let’s see,” said Welkin quickly, lifting a liter-sized bottle of Communion wine from the box.
“Wassat, guv? Gin?” asked Foot.
“Nah, it’s holy water,” Paddock cut in, with a guffaw. “Then we’re going to say our prayers and hope for a miracle.”
“I don’t get it,” Foot admitted, after a token laugh.
Welkin finished preparing the glasses in silence and held the bottle up to the light. All of the glasses now contained a thimbleful of water, and the bottle was still half full.
“Big bottle, small glasses,” he said, putting the bottle on the floor and taking some index cards from his pocket, which he distributed among the detectives.
“Oh, I see why we’re all here,” said Stoodby excitedly. “We’re going to reenact the crime.” He held up his own card, which said “TAPSTER.”
“Blimey, Trev, you’re gonna be the stiff,” cried Foot, brandishing his own identification as Potiphar. “That’s typecasting. Hey, I wonder how they were planning to get the lid on that coffin. Perhaps it’ll have to be banana-shaped, so he’ll fit properly.”
“The rigor mortis does pass, you know,” Effie snapped wearily from the far end of the table. She had received Coppersmith, while Tish beside her was Quarterboy.
“It’s a shame his old lady wasn’t there to take advantage of the situation for one last time, if you get my drift,” Foot continued, nudging Paddock (Dock), who collapsed against him. Welkin stood back, instinctively guessing what was about to happen.
With the self-centeredness of the amateur japester, Foot had started to look around the room, to gauge the effect of what he thought was a barrage of Wildean wit. Trev Stoodby seemed genuinely offended—what had come over that prissy little git in the last couple of days, he used to love a good laugh? Graham Paddock was in hysterics, he’s a good lad. Welkin wasn’t saying anything; maybe he wasn’t such a stuck-up arsehole after all. Tish was looking away, shocked, she probably didn’t get it. Not all she’s not getting, I bet, I could show her what she’s missing, give her one of Tezza’s best boinks. Same goes for Goldilocks Strongitharm, too—thinks she too bloody good for us with her Scotland Yard this, Scotland Yard that, and all that bloody hair. She’s the only one looking back at me…
Effie did not utter a word. Her disapproving, cold blue eyes spoke volumes. Foot felt his brain filling with ideas, images, faster than he could take it in. Somehow, in that moment, he found he knew all about Effie’s experiences with murder, about the boundless professionalism of her colleagues, and how in two years of working with one of the best and most admired homicide detectives in the country and with at least two dozen cases under her belt, she had never once heard an investigating officer breathe a word of disrespect for the corpse. There was a dignity to death, no matter how undignified the dying. And he, a petty, pusillanimous man, barely out of uniform, working his first murder case as a detective, was wasting his able mind and everybody’s valuable time with the constant quest for the cheap, the mean, the hurtful. He had fouled the code with his first footstep. (It was, after all, his imbecilic idea to keep on those Santa Claus outfits when they entered the church the day before.) A hundred years ago, his brother officers would have left him alone in an anteroom, with a loaded revolver and instructions to do the decent thing.
A millisecond later, he broke from Effie’s gaze and stopped laughing. He stood up.
“Sir,” he said huskily to Welkin. “Those remarks were really out of line, and I apologize. I especially want to apologize to DS Strongitharm and DC Belfry for the, well, improper implications in my foolish comments. They were indecent and insulting. I’m very, very sorry.”
He sat down again, flushing, and stared disconsolately at his tie. Stoodby reached across and gently squeezed his hand. Foot sniffed and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. Sitting between them and turning from one to the other, Paddock looked mystified and slightly nauseous.
“Apology accepted, Terry,” said Welkin smoothly, taking his place at the table again and showing them that his index card said “PILTDOWN.” He picked up his notes.
“All right, I’ve conflated all the statements, including Sergeant Strongitharm’s account of what happened, although she wasn’t in the church when Tapster showed the first signs of poisoning. Surprisingly, there is almost no disagreement among the twenty-odd witnesses, at least in terms of the order in which things happened. We have to assume, then, that it’s what’s missing from at least one of these statements that will point to the guilty party. Let’s begin to find out.”
In slow-motion, they reenacted the Communion service, from the point where Stoodby, as Tapster, resumed his seat after singing the strange carol. Welkin/Piltdown passed the bread plates to Tish/Quarterboy and Paddock/Dock, and they dutifully walked around the others and toward the imaginary congregation, returning the same way. Then the wineglass holders were given to Effie/Coppersmith and Stoodby/Tapster, who also walked into the church, removed the right number of glasses for the communicants on each aisle, and returned to the table. They watched carefully, pausing to make notes and comments, as Welkin now took the holder from Stoodby and passed it along the row of deacons. Stoodby drank the water and placed the glass on the table in front of him.
“Strychnine takes a while to work,” he commented. “Are we sure the poison couldn’t have been in the bread?”
“The forensic report says it was in the dregs of Tapster’s wine glass and no other,” Welkin answered.
“We’re assuming the poison was meant for Tapster, because of all the trouble he was causing in the church,” Effie commented eventually. “But what if it wasn’t?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I can think of two possibilities,” she continued. “Number one, it was a totally random act—somebody slipped the poison into the glass not knowing who would take it. And in that case,
it could have happened at any time. Barry Foison may have done it. Any of the deacons who were milling around the table before the Communion service began. One of the two deacons who carried the wine to the communicants. Or even one of the communicants, spiking a glass that was still left in the holder. It was pure chance that Tapster took it.”
“But if it was one of the deacons,” said Tish, “how could he—or she, if we include Patience—have known which was the poisoned glass, so as to avoid it? Assuming it hadn’t been taken already.”
“I’ve been wondering about the honey in Tapster’s stomach, and on his hand,” Effie said. “Do you think there’s a possibility that a smear of honey was a way of marking the glass, so the perpetrator would know which one to avoid. From a distance, it would look like a dribble of wine.”
“Not a bad idea,” admitted Welkin. “I was wondering if the honey had been some way of delivering the strychnine. You know, pour the powder into a blob of honey, wait for it to harden slightly, and then pop your pellet into the wine and hope the mark guzzles it at one go. But I still don’t know when it could have been done. What was your other idea, Effie?”
“Oh, this is something I did witness. DC Foot isn’t supposed to be here.”
I know, Foot agreed privately, I’m unworthy to walk among civilized people, I belong with the reptiles, the vermin, the mollusks of the world. But does she need to rub it in?
“I mean the person he’s representing, Cedric Potiphar, wasn’t supposed to be on the stage,” Effie continued, with a sly grin at Foot’s guilty flinch, the only visible sign of his internal soliloquy. “Potiphar had lost his seat on the diaconate at the annual church meeting last Friday. His presence on the platform was a surprise. Perhaps it was a force of habit, perhaps it was a protest, or perhaps he felt the other deacons would all be too polite to tell him to go away, which they were. But that’s what caused Tapster to be sitting on the piano stool for his first Communion as a deacon.”