by Alan Beechey
Mallard ignored him. “What do you think, Eff?” he asked.
“Utterly ingenious,” Effie breathed, with admiration. Murray’s tail thumped against Oliver’s leg. “Tina’s small enough to squeeze around under the platform. And you’re right, Tim, there is a trapdoor under the table.”
“So it’s possible?” ventured Mallard, with growing excitement.
“Absolutely not,” she replied instantly. “The trapdoor covers the baptismal pool—the Diaconalists practice adult baptism, you see. The pool is built of brick and lined with tile, and the only way in or out is through a three-inch wide drain. You’d have to be a little thinner than Tina to fit in. And anyway, at the crucial moment you refer to, Tina was at the opposite end of the church, being pursued by yours truly.”
And lost, she added silently. There were now four closed doors on Tina’s Advent calendar that should have been opened by now.
Mallard’s face fell. “It was just a thought,” he mumbled.
“It was a very good thought, Tim,” Effie said, patting his hand sympathetically. “And I’m glad you’re here, because I need your expert opinion on something.”
She began to fumble in her handbag. Murray stood up and wagged his tail, convinced that she was searching for something edible. He looked as disappointed as Mallard when all she produced was a sheet of paper. She showed it to the two men. Oliver read the words aloud.
“‘And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.’”
“Do you know it?” Effie asked, aware that Mallard was a regular churchgoer.
“I’ve come across it before,” Mallard replied.
“What does it mean?”
“Anything you want it to mean, which is the problem with the Book of Revelation. Why don’t you ask Paul, since you have captive clergyman on the premises?”
“I’m asking you, Your Holiness.”
“Oh. Well, this verse comes from a passage describing two witnesses, sent by God to prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days—about three and a half years—while the Gentiles are trampling the Holy City. During that time, these witnesses are supposed to be invulnerable, and fire comes out of their mouths to consume their enemies. They can bring drought, turn water into blood, that sort of thing. But then they’re killed by a beast from the abyss, which is what your verse describes, and their bodies lie in the street for three and a half days without burial. And then they pop up again, rise to heaven, and an earthquake comes and kills seven thousand people.”
“How on earth do you remember that?” Oliver asked him.
Mallard smiled and seem to relax a little. “Actually, it’s thanks to your murder victim, Nigel Tapster. The case inspired me to look over some articles on cults this morning, and that passage came up in connection with the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in California. You remember, the poor sods who were convinced that a UFO was lurking behind the Hale-Bopp comet? Well, the founder of the cult and his main squeeze, who died several years before the suicide, believed that they were the two witnesses referred to in that biblical passage.”
“What’s the significance of the quote to Tapster’s death?” Oliver asked.
“Somebody wrote it on the church door last night,” Effie told them. “At least they wrote the reference.”
“Oh, that’s what Mr. Tooth was talking about,” said Oliver.
“Who?”
“Mr. Tooth. I met him in your waiting room, Effie. He’d been there since you opened up for business this morning. The station sergeant took his name, but nobody had called him in yet. He was still there when we left. Didn’t you see him? Quite a decent chap. Apparently, he saw a woman with long red hair painting something on the church door at about ten o’clock yesterday evening. It set me wondering if this was the same woman whom I saw waiting by the manse gate on Thursday evening.”
Effie began to rummage in her handbag again, renewing Murray’s interest. “Why the hell didn’t someone take a statement from this man?” she demanded of nobody in particular. She located her mobile phone and called the general number of the police station. The dog gave her a filthy look and transferred his affections to Oliver.
“Could this graffito on the church door connect Tapster with the Heaven’s Gate cult?” Oliver asked. “I heard they were all dead.”
“Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who founded Heaven’s Gate, called themselves ‘The Two,’ in a direct reference to that particular passage,” Mallard told them. “They identified themselves as the two witnesses sent by God, although they were actually convinced that they were aliens from a higher level of reality, reincarnated several times and always spending their lives together. They also called themselves Bo and Peep, Him and Her, Winnie and Pooh, Tweedle and Dee, Chip and Dale, Nincom and Poop, and Tiddly and Wink. They finally decided on Do and Ti.”
“As in Do, a deer, a female deer, and Ti, a drink with jam and bread?” Oliver asked, scratching the dog’s head.
“Exactly. Although Do was the male in this partnership. The pair believed they’d been sent to Earth to rescue civilization.”
“Don’t we all,” muttered Oliver. “So if the Revelation text echoed with them, perhaps it echoed for Nigel and Heather Tapster, who seemed to be on the verge of creating their own cult using all the traditional methods, particularly by rounding up the young and impressionable.”
“If you’re right about Nigel being the father of Tina’s child,” Mallard speculated with a slight shudder, “then he would certainly be copying the sexual antics of a lot of cult leaders.”
“I think we can safely assume that the graffito is a reference to the murder,” Effie responded, putting away her telephone.
“Agreed,” Mallard continued. “Then let’s look at the possibilities. The verse mentions the death of the Two at the hands of some beast from the abyss. So it may have been a warning from the killer that by killing Tapster, he or she was fulfilling a biblical prophecy, in which case somebody should keep an eye on the grieving widow in case she’s next for a toxic tonic. Or it may have been a warning to the killer from some nutcase who had identified Nigel and Heather with the Two and was trying to draw attention to the murder’s apocalyptic implications.”
Mallard needed to repeat the last phrase three times before the consonants came out in the right order.
“Could this mysterious woman with the long red hair be Heather Tapster herself in disguise?” Effie asked.
“No,” Oliver answered. “I first saw that girl on Thursday evening, waiting in the street in front of the manse. Paul and I had just left Heather at her house. I don’t think she could have changed and rushed over there that quickly.”
“Assuming that the graffiti artist is the same girl,” Mallard reminded him.
“One thing’s for sure,” said Oliver, “if this is a threat from the killer, then the killer can’t be Paul Piltdown. He was holed up in the police station before the graffito appeared.”
“If Welkin had understood the quotation, he might have hesitated about arresting Paul,” Effie commented ruefully. “But it won’t persuade him to let Paul go. If only somebody had interviewed your Mister Whatsisname earlier.”
“Tooth,” Oliver reminded her. Their meal was brought over, and Mallard busied himself with adding the right amounts of salt, pepper, and ketchup to his mixed grill. The conversation returned to the mechanics of Tapster’s death.
“What about the Communion bread?” asked Mallard, buttering a roll and taking a bite out of it. “Maybe somebody palmed a poisoned pellet off on him?” he continued indistinctly.
“There were traces of strychnine in Tapster’s used wineglass,” Effie reminded him, sipping her tea. “It always comes back to that. What we can’t figure out is how and when it got there.”
“How a
bout if that’s a red herring?” Oliver suggested. “Suppose Uncle Tim’s right, and Tapster was poisoned earlier. The glass Tapster used could have been switched after his death with a prepared glass that contained a trace of strychnine. There was plenty of opportunity to do that in the confusion.” He cut into his battered plaice.
Effie thought carefully, chewing her pork chop and reviewing what she knew about the case. “Tapster’s fingerprints weren’t on any other glass, and all the deacons were searched carefully, so they couldn’t have been concealing his original glass.”
“Perhaps the killer wiped that glass and put it on back on the table?” Mallard suggested.
“That doesn’t explain how Tapster put his fingerprints on the substitute glass after he was supposed to be dead. Besides, the pathologist also found both strychnine and Tapster’s saliva inside his glass. It was definitely the glass he drank from.”
“Then could some strychnine powder have been slipped into that glass after he put it down?” Mallard asked.
“There was only a small amount of liquid left, probably not enough to dissolve any strychnine crystals at that point. But this idea still supposes Tapster was poisoned earlier. Let me remind you that nobody saw him consume anything in the minutes leading up to his death, apart from the bread and the wine. And nothing else was found in his stomach, except for a tiny trace of honey, which Ollie thinks got stuck to his hand at breakfast.”
“We’ve agreed that he can’t have plopped poisoned honey into his morning cuppa, or he’d have died much sooner,” Oliver stated. “But could he have had a cup of tea later than breakfast? How about if he was a little careless with some honey that he had poisoned and planned to give to someone else?”
“A drip of honey that’s small enough to stay on your hand unnoticed isn’t likely to hold a fatal dose of strychnine,” Effie said. “And none of this accounts for those traces of dissolved strychnine in Tapster’s used wineglass. I’m afraid that the person who was best poised to slip Nigel the lethal liquid is still our prime suspect, the Reverend Paul Piltdown.”
Oliver put down his knife and fork noisily. “Paul didn’t do it,” he declared. The dog loyally panted his agreement.
“Why are you so keen to believe him?” she asked curiously, sitting back and folding her arms. “Because you unwittingly provoked his arrest?”
“I’m not sure that was a bad thing,” Oliver muttered. “Paul thinks the real murderer will come forward to save him, and an arrest certainly raises the stakes in that standoff. But I believe he’s innocent because he said so. Or as good as.”
“Ollie, my poor, sweet, trusting youth, does it occur to you that if your pal Paul did manage to murder one of his deacons, he wouldn’t be above telling you a porky or two?”
Mallard sniggered into his coffee. Oliver glared at him. So did Murray.
“Paul Piltdown didn’t kill Nigel Tapster,” he stated firmly.
“Then you’d better find out who did,” said Effie, scooping up her last four peas on her fork.
“What?”
Effie paused and looked at him, her head on one side.
“Well, Spiv Welkin’s not going to stir himself to find another murderer this side of Christmas. He’s perfectly content with the one he’s got. I certainly can’t go over his head and push on with a parallel investigation, and anyway, I still have to find Tina Quarterboy. Detective Superintendent Mallard is on holiday, and much as I’m sure he’s about to volunteer to help you, it would be very impolitic for him to show his face on the streets of Plumley.” She made the last point firmly, which caused Mallard to change his mind about speaking up. He slipped the dog an unexpected piece of sausage.
“But you, Ollie, are Paul’s self-appointed champion,” Effie went on. “You know the players and the details of the death, and you have the perfect excuse to make the rounds of the suspects—your famous article on the United Diaconalists.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” said Oliver thoughtfully.
“I hate to urge any nonprofessional to play detective,” said Mallard, “especially someone who owes his living to a rodent—”
“A ferret isn’t a rodent.”
“Don’t interrupt me when there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
“Sorry,” Oliver replied, humbly choking back an obvious reference to Mallard’s recent Shakespearian performance. Perhaps he was learning some tact at last, he speculated. Murray barked once, seemingly in agreement.
“I was going to say that, in this case, I agree with Effie,” said Mallard. “I can’t help you, anyway. They want me back at the Yard tomorrow. It seems that Assistant Commissioner Weed’s been having a few problems in my absence. So you find out what you can, Ollie, but don’t step on anybody’s toes.”
“Fair enough.” Oliver beamed at his companions. “Wow, a detective at last!” he purred. Then the smile faded. “Where do you think I should begin?” he asked the dog.
Chapter Seven
We’ve Been Awhile A-Wandering
Tuesday, December 23
“Come in, Mr. Swithin. Come in, Mr.…er…Angelwine,” Elsie Potiphar was saying, nervously welcoming them in from the misty rain.
Swithin and Angelwine. The Adventures of Swithin and Angelwine. The Case-Book of Oliver Swithin, as recorded by his friend and companion, Dr. Angelwine. No, no matter how you put it, they sounded more like a firm of Dickensian undertakers than a pair of tough, renegade cops.
Oliver had selected the Potiphars first in the hope that Cedric’s habit of spouting Bible references would make Geoffrey want to go back home. He had made the mistake of telling Geoffrey his plans over breakfast, only to find that his friend had begun his Christmas vacation that day and insisted on accompanying him.
They followed Mrs. Potiphar meekly through the dark entrance hall of the terraced house and into the small parlor, where the solid bulk of her husband was sitting imperiously in an armchair. Cedric rose steadily to his feet and greeted the two men with a solemn handshake, waving them to take a seat. Elsie disappeared, muttering under her breath.
The room had last been wallpapered sometime in the 1970s by a decorator whose taste was still in the 1930s. A pair of end-tables, piled with personal items and set up within reach of Potiphar’s well-worn chair, indicated that the septuagenarian spent most of his waking time in this part of the house, although there was no sign of a television or radio in the room.
“My condolences on the loss of your diaconal seat,” Oliver began loudly, remembering that the old man had a hearing problem. Cedric acknowledged the sympathy with a slight bow of the head and fixed Oliver with his small, brown eyes.
“‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee,’” he began, caressing the text with his Cornish accent, despite his obvious disappointment. “‘Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment.’ Luke, chapter fifteen, verse twenty-nine.”
Geoffrey was murmuring something as Cedric finished speaking, but Oliver assumed it was another of his friend’s inaccurate attempts to finish other people’s sentences.
“It’s been an eventful few days, I understand,” Oliver pressed on. “Nigel Tapster’s unfortunate demise, and then the arrest of your minister on murder charges.” He presumed the word of Piltdown’s detention had spread. “I suppose it puts a bit of damper on your Christmas.”
“My helpmeet and I were not planning to celebrate Christmas beyond our religious obligations in welcoming the Christ-Child as Jehovah’s unspeakable gift,” Cedric intoned. His aging leather-covered Bible was on the table beside his chair, and he patted it piously. “There’s nothing in my Bible about Christmas cards or Christmas trees or Christmas stockings.”
“Yes, but I’d imagine even tomorrow night’s carol service is a bit of no-go, with the minister in jail,” Oliver offered.
“If we have to remember the Nativity in our own mansions, so be it, as long as it pleaseth Alm
ighty God. As our Lord said, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’”
“Matthew, chapter eighteen, verse twenty,” said Geoffrey quietly. Oliver was about to whisper a hasty reproach, when he heard Cedric state the same reference. He turned to stare at his friend, but Geoffrey’s birdlike face was gazing off into the distance.
“I hate to bring this up,” Oliver continued, “but with Nigel Tapster dead, do you automatically reclaim your position as deacon, or does there have to be another church meeting? I need the clarification for my article.”
“I do not wish to speak ill of the deceased,” Cedric began, and Oliver waited for the citation, but apparently it wasn’t a biblical quote. After a second’s thought, Cedric clearly reconsidered this posture. “Nigel Tapster should never have won my seat. He was taking advantage of Sam and Joan Quarterboy’s absence by insisting that the election went ahead. I’m sure that if we all knew the true reason for their nonappearance, we would have postponed the meeting and supported them in the fellowship of prayer.”
“‘Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do,’” Geoffrey cut in.
Cedric stared at him before allowing a contented smile to cross his broad face. “One Thessalonians, chapter five, verse ten,” he declared.
“Verse eleven, actually,” Geoffrey answered humbly.
The smile faded. While Cedric tried to find the reference in his Bible, Oliver mouthed a few threats in Geoffrey’s direction. The old man located the passage, glared at it, glared at Geoffrey, and shut the book without another word.
“I’m curious about the last Communion service,” Oliver said. “You went up onto the platform. Was this a statement that you didn’t recognize Tapster’s right to be a deacon?”
“The Lord directed my feet, as he has for the last forty years of service in his tabernacle,” Cedric stated, clasping his hands and laying them on his belly.