by Alan Beechey
***
Oliver returned with the change of clothes Piltdown had requested just as Effie arrived at the police station. He handed the clothes over to the station sergeant, and then she let him get a snack from the station vending machine before sweeping him into the incident room. Tish Belfry was waiting for Welkin to return from a meeting.
“I’m glad you’re both here,” Effie said archly. “I have some important news. Ollie, tell me again why you thought Tina suffered from an eating disorder.”
“Oh, all right.” Good point, why had he thought that? And why ask now, when Effie had just returned from Tina’s doctor? He supposed that the doctor must have confirmed his assumption about the girl’s health, and Effie wanted him to repeat his reasoning to show Tish why she respected his intelligence. He leaned back in the chair. “Well, Tina said that a lot of food was making her throw up, and that she thought she had been gaining weight, but you only have to look at her to see she’s a skinny thing. Plus I don’t recall her eating anything at the manse that evening. So given her age, I wondered if these were the symptoms of early anorexia nervosa, or more likely bulimia, given the nausea and the possible vomiting.”
“Uh-huh,” Effie said. “That’s a very perceptive diagnosis, Dr. Swithin. However, according to the school doctor, who examined her last week—”
“She’s pregnant?” asked Tish immediately.
“She’s pregnant.” Effie smiled broadly at Oliver, who dropped his cheese roll. She opened her notebook.
“Tina went to the doctor on Wednesday morning, complaining of nausea and cramps. She examined the girl, suspected a pregnancy, and took some blood to be sure. When the test came back positive, she summoned Tina to the surgery on Thursday afternoon and delivered the good or bad news, according to your role in the affair.”
“Did the doctor tell anyone? Tina’s teacher, her parents?” Tish asked. Effie shook her head.
“Tina apparently promised faithfully that she would go home and tell her parents herself, so the doctor didn’t feel she needed to act. Since the next day was the last day of the school term, she assumed that Tina would deal with her family doctor for the next few weeks.”
“But Tina didn’t go home,” said Oliver thoughtfully. “Not immediately.”
They were interrupted by Welkin, limping swiftly into the room, with the faint aroma of English Pub wafting from his overcoat. He glared briefly at Oliver—having already heard about his fruitless interview with Piltdown—but tolerated the young man’s presence while Effie filled him in.
“Do you think Tina did tell the parents?” Welkin asked, easing himself onto an office chair and laying his stick on the floor beside him. “Maybe there was actually some unholy row, and she ran off into the night? Maybe the father lost his temper and did away with her, and they’re lying about hearing her voice on the telephone?”
“I’ve seen Tina, Sir, so we know she’s alive,” Effie reminded him. “And I really don’t think they knew about her condition.”
“They did seem very keen to keep her disappearance a secret at first,” Tish offered.
“Yes, but I think that was their damaged pride. They were genuinely puzzled by the note she left, in which she said she didn’t want to disappoint her father. It’s quite clear now what she was talking about.”
“So do we tell them they’re about to become grandparents?” asked Tish. “Or perhaps they’ll insist on an abortion?”
“We have to tell them,” said Welkin. “The girl’s—what?—thirteen. She’s a minor. And let’s not forget that whoever put that bun in her oven has committed statutory rape, if not worse.”
“With respect, Sir, I’d like to wait until we find Tina before we tell them,” said Effie.
“And when’s that going to be?” asked Welkin tactlessly. “Let’s face it, Eff, now we know what we know, isn’t it likely that the girl’s run off with the father of her little bastard? That’s where she went after school on Thursday, to tell him he’s going to be a daddy. He’s probably some middle-aged schoolteacher with a frigid wife, going through a mid-life crisis. Tina’s fallen madly in love with him, and they’ll be holed in up a cheap Brighton boarding house posing as father and daughter, until it dawns on him that his girlfriend is too young even to buy him a pack of ciggies.”
Oliver coughed in a way that suggested he had no need to clear his throat.
“If I may,” he began, “I’m fairly sure I know where Tina went on Thursday evening.”
“Go on,” Welkin grunted.
“Paul Piltdown admitted to me that he knew why Tina had disappeared. But he wouldn’t tell me the reason or how he knew. Well, I think we can safely assume that Tina bolted because she was pregnant and she feared her parents’ reaction. Now, Tina left school at four last Thursday and was shut in her bedroom from six o’clock until she ran away in the middle of the night. The only way Paul could have found out about her pregnancy was if she told him, either during the famous missing two hours or after she’d left home. And I honestly think that if she’d gone to the manse after running away, Paul would have been able to persuade her to go home again.”
“If that’s what he wanted,” said Welkin. “But what if it suited him to have her out of the way? What if he’s the father?”
“Oh, surely not,” Effie exclaimed.
“Paul’s not the father,” Oliver continued calmly. “Tina went to Paul because she likes and trusts him, and because he’s the spiritual leader of the church. I’m going to guess she told him that Nigel Tapster was the father of her child.”
“Tapster!” cried Welkin. “The dead man? How do you get that?”
Oliver pulled out a chair beside Effie and threw himself into it. “Let’s assume Tina did go straight to the manse when she left school at four o’clock,” he said smugly. “I’m sure Paul would have listened to her story and then urged her to go home and tell her parents. She leaves. And at a quarter past five, what does he do? He heads straight over to the Tapsters’ house and has a blazing argument with Nigel. Paul was just leaving when I got there at a quarter to six. Care to guess what the argument was about?”
“But Tina wasn’t part of Tapster’s cult,” Effie protested.
“How far gone is she?”
“A couple of months.”
“A couple of months ago, she did go to some meetings at Tapster’s home,” Oliver informed them with a mild yawn, “until her parents put their foot down. Feet down. Rather too late.”
Welkin struggled to his own feet. “Since you’re the expert on what Piltdown’s thinking, is it worth confronting him with this information?”
Oliver thought carefully. “I’m sure he’ll admit to knowing what you know about Tina’s condition,” he claimed. “He’ll probably admit that she visited the manse that evening. But I doubt that he’ll reveal anything else she told him, including the identity of her baby’s father. To pass that on to anyone would be a severe violation of his personal ethics and a betrayal of his calling. So if you want to pin Tina’s pregnancy on Tapster, you still have to find her.”
Welkin surged away to visit Piltdown, with Tish in his wake. Oliver and Effie sat in silence for a while. Then she leaned over, patted him on the head, and began to type up her reports about the morning’s burglaries. Oliver wandered aimlessly around the incident room, peering at the crime scene photographs and the notes that had been scribbled on the room’s whiteboard.
“What’s this about honey?” he asked suddenly.
“Don’t call me ‘honey’ at work,” Effie snapped, without looking up. “In fact, don’t call me ‘honey’ at all. I don’t like it. It’ll be ‘hon’ next.”
“No, no, I mean there’s stuff about honey on your board.”
“The pathologist found undigested honey in Tapster’s stomach and on his fingers. Welkin wondered if it could have been used to carry the strychnine crystals.�
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“Did you know that Tapster put honey in his tea?” Oliver continued, remembering the exchange of quotations during his meeting with the dead man. He had Lambed Tapster’s Exodus, but now it occurred to him that a Brooke would have been a better counter, with extra points for the ecclesiastical theme. “I remember that he got it on his fingers and licked it off.”
Effie stopped typing and frowned into the middistance. “Now you mention it, I recall him sucking his finger while he was getting ready to play that awful song. Perhaps some honey had been stuck there since breakfast? If so, it could have been just a coincidence that it was ingested at about the same time as the poison.”
“Could the strychnine have been in his breakfast tea?”
“Absolutely not. It must have been given to him no earlier than thirty minutes and probably not later than ten minutes before the first symptoms. So he must have eaten it during or since Paul’s sermon. The only things we know he put in his mouth were the Communion sacraments. Besides, forensic found traces of the strychnine in the wineglass.”
“You know a lot about poisons, don’t you?” Oliver commented idly.
“Oh yes. That reminds me, what would you like me to cook you for dinner tonight? I may be able to get some time off.”
Welkin and Tish returned before he could answer.
“That’s all settled then,” he announced, his Cockney accent more prominent than usual. “Mr. Swithin, you were one hundred percent correct. The Reverend Piltdown knew Tina was pregnant. And she did go to the manse on Thursday evening. He would not tell us who the father of her child is, nor if she had confided this information in him. But he did tell us that he had advised Tina to go home and confess all to her parents. He offered to go with her, but she insisted that she wished to handle this alone, and agreed that she would telephone him if she needed his further help or advice. When Sam Quarterboy called the next day to say he would have to miss the church meeting, Piltdown assumed they were all too upset to come out. The first he knew that the girl had done a bunk was when Quarterboy visited Saturday morning.”
“So you’re going to let him go?” Oliver asked. Welkin looked at him strangely.
“Let him go?” he repeated. “No, indeed. According to your character assessment, Mr. Swithin, the Reverend Piltdown—sorry, Effie, the Reverend Mr. Piltdown—was the only person who could have known for sure that Nigel Tapster was the father of Tina Quarterboy’s child.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we have charged him with Tapster’s murder. Thanks to you, Oliver.”
***
When Welkin and Tish left the incident room, Effie immediately turned to Oliver, placed her hand on his head, and lifted it quickly.
“What was that?” he asked, shying in case the hand came down again.
“I’m taking back my pat,” she said irritably. “Look what you’ve done. You got Paul arrested.”
“What I’ve done?” Oliver cried. “I didn’t suggest for a second that he killed Tapster. I merely speculated that Tapster was Tina’s secret lover.”
“But you must see that Welkin is just itching to connect the two investigations. He’s already decided that Paul had the best opportunity to poison Tapster. Now you’ve given him the missing motive.”
“What missing motive? Slaying Nigel Tapster because he’s surging through the parish virgins? Paul Piltdown’s a man of the cloth, for God’s sake. If anything, he’s been more charitable to the Tapsters than any of his church members, despite their challenges to his spiritual authority. It’s a big jump from having a few cross words with his nemesis on Thursday night to slipping him a lethal mickey on Sunday morning.”
“Exactly. And who’s to say those cross words that you witnessed had anything at all to do with Tina’s pregnancy? Suppose Paul went to Nigel for some confidential advice on how to handle the girl’s confession? Or suppose he just felt annoyed because of what Tina had told him and decided to make the most of his bad mood by confronting Nigel about doctrinal issues? Isn’t that what he told you they’d been arguing about?”
“Well, yes…”
The telephone began to ring on Effie’s desk. “Your trouble, Ollie,” she said, fixing him with her pale blue eyes as she reached for the phone, “is you don’t know when to stop.”
She picked up the receiver and identified herself. After listening for a few seconds, she covered the mouthpiece and turned to Oliver, who had been soberly absorbing the scolding.
“It’s your uncle,” she said.
“Is he looking for me here, now?”
“No, he wants me. He says if I can spare him half an hour, he has an idea for me.”
“Me too, but I bet I’m thinking of something quite different.”
She smiled. “It’s a good job I love you, because I would have damaged you by now otherwise. Tim’s offering to pay for an early supper. Do you want to come?”
“You know he’s only trying to barge into your investigation because he’s bored at home. And he’ll hate it that I’m involved. When will he be here?”
“He’s already here. He’s calling from the car park.”
Mallard didn’t comment when he saw his nephew emerge from the police station with Effie, and Oliver maintained the resentful silence during the short drive to the transport café between Plumley and Edgware, where they could grab an unpretentious bite to eat and still leave Mallard enough time to get to Theydon Bois for the final performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He parked the Jaguar outside the café, expertly twisting the space-time continuum as he slotted the car into a gap that Oliver was convinced was too small for a tricycle. The three filed inside and found an empty table well away from the other diners. While they were waiting for their food, Effie briefed Mallard on what the investigation had uncovered since they had met at lunch the previous day, then she excused herself. Oliver and Mallard sat together in uneasy silence, trying not to meet each other’s eye. The café owner’s dog, a harrier called Murray, trotted over and watched them.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Mallard muttered eventually. “Shouldn’t you be at home writing about small furry mammals?”
“I’m here because Effie asked me to talk to Paul Piltdown,” Oliver told him. “I don’t just turn up because I’m having withdrawal symptoms from foul play. Like some people I could mention.”
“I happened to be passing,” Mallard snapped. “And since I was in the area, I thought I’d see how Effie’s murder was going.”
“It’s not Effie’s case.”
“It should be. And anyway, she can pass my idea on to Welkin. I do have an idea, you know.”
“You astound me, Holmes.”
Mallard ignored the sarcasm. He waited for Effie to return and began his explanation. “You remember my performance as Banquo in Macbeth earlier this year?” he asked smugly.
Oliver sighed and exchanged a glance with Effie. Social obligations to Mallard had meant that their first official date a few months earlier had been a trip to Theydon Bois to witness Humfry Fingerhood’s blood-caked production.
“What about it?”
“Well, Humfry had a rather clever idea for my first appearance as a ghost at the banquet, shortly after I was bumped off. He wanted me to be killed on one side of the stage, collapse in a bloody heap in full view of the audience, and stay there. On the other side of the stage, the table is brought in and set up for the feast. So naturally, the audience is waiting for me to get up and stomp across the stage to take my place at the table in time for Macbeth to see me there. But I don’t move from my recumbent posture on the left of the stage. And yet, when the moment comes, a thane moves aside slightly, and there I am, a blood-baltered apparition, already at the table on the right.”
“And how was this miracle achieved?”
“By using an old stage magician’s trick. Misdirection on a
classic scale. That was never me, getting bumped off on the left. Banquo is only onstage briefly before the murderers set upon him. So at that point, my role is performed by someone of my height and build, with his back to the audience. I shout his lines from the side of the stage. He falls there and I go under the stage and pop up through a trapdoor directly beneath the banquet table, getting to my feet behind a thane. Rather clever for Humfry, I thought.”
“‘Misdirection’ sounds like something Humfry Fingerhood would know about,” Oliver commented. “So why didn’t you do it?”
“We didn’t have any available actors who resembled me from the back,” Mallard claimed, somewhat proudly, since it must have meant he was noticeably taller and slimmer than the candidates.
“And you’re saying that wasn’t really Nigel Tapster on the platform yesterday morning?” Effie speculated.
“Don’t be absurd, Eff. I was just wondering what’s to stop somebody from getting into the church from the side entrance, finding a way under that platform, coming up under the Communion table, which you admit was covered with a large cloth, and creeping out to spike Tapster’s glass after he’d taken it, while they all had their eyes closed in prayer.”
“That suggests the killer isn’t one of the deacons. Did you have somebody in mind?”
“Not until a few minutes ago,” he admitted, “when I found out about the bun in Tina Quarterboy’s oven. If Tapster’s death is connected with her pregnancy, who knew about it?”
“Only Paul Piltdown,” Effie said, with a caustic glance at Oliver. “That’s why Welkin arrested him.”
“I can think of someone else,” said Mallard. “Someone who was in the church when Tapster was murdered, even though she wasn’t on the platform.”
“She?” Oliver echoed.
“Yes indeed, and Effie saw her. Has nobody bothered to ask the question what on earth Tina was doing at the church that morning?”
“Oh come on, Uncle Tim,” Oliver protested. “Even if you reckon that Tina had the desire to kill her seducer, how would she have got her hands on some strychnine?”