Murdering Ministers

by Alan Beechey

  She froze. Then, illogically, she began to sing, in a soft, pure, childlike voice, the last lines of the carol she had heard on the morning of the murder.

  “We hear the Christmas angels,

  “The great glad tidings tell…”

  Oliver had never heard her sing before, apart from half-hearted attempts to join in with rock music on her car radio, and to his disappointment, she broke off before she finished the verse.

  “Ollie,” she whispered excitedly, leaning in closely to his ear. “It’s Christmas Eve. Do you believe in angels?”

  Was this the moment that Effie had chosen to reveal some aspect of her personal theology? “I believe people think they see angels,” he said diplomatically.

  Effie got to her feet and began to edge her way out of the pew, watching him with an amused expression on her face.

  “Danni saw an angel the other day,” she said. “Remember? Right here, in a sunbeam.”

  She beckoned him silently. Intrigued, he followed her through the heavy curtain at the back of the sanctuary, across the narthex, and into the shallow vestibule, tracing the path that she had followed while pursuing Tina on the one occasion when she had seen the girl in the flesh. But this time, she didn’t run out through the main church doors, which were closed. Instead, Effie turned to right and approached a locked door that nestled against the side wall of the vestibule. She peered at the lock.

  “I left my bag in the pew,” she hissed. “Give me a credit card.”

  Oliver fished out his wallet and mutely passed over his American Express card. She prodded it into the space between the doorjamb and the lock. The door sprang open. Oliver found himself tensing as Effie eased the door toward her.

  Behind it was a closet containing an electricity meter and a dead mouse.

  Without a word, she marched to an identical door on the other side of the vestibule and repeated the operation. The door opened on the fourth attempt. She handed back his card and carefully pulled the door open.

  A narrow flight of wooden steps began behind the door and turned sharply left, ascending into darkness.

  They began to climb, single file in the confined space, holding tightly to the crude handrails, Effie’s low-heeled work shoes making more noise than Oliver’s Nikes. The stairs turned back on themselves. Above them, a dim rectangle grew larger until it surrounded them, and they emerged at the back of the dusty, disused balcony, high above the church floor and level with the tops of the largest organ pipes, far away on the opposite wall. The space was well lit, with more daylight coming through the clear circular window behind their heads. Four rows of high-backed pews dropped steeply away between them and the balcony’s parapet. There was an odd smell, mostly unpleasant.

  Oliver made a move to walk down the single aisle between the pews, but Effie placed a hand on his arm.

  “Tina,” she called gently. “You can come out now.”

  Nothing happened at first. Then there was a faint rustle, and a small pale face appeared above the back of one of the pews, blinking in the light. The girl’s dark hair was matted, and she was damp with perspiration.

  “I’d prefer to be called Chrissie,” she said. Then she vomited prodigiously.

  ***

  By the time Oliver returned from Plumley High Street with several Egg McMuffins and two pints of milk, Tina had taken a long, thorough bath and was sitting in the Manse kitchen wrapped in Paul Piltdown’s terry bathrobe, with wet hair hanging in tendrils down her back. Effie had found an electric heater in Paul’s bedroom and had brought it downstairs, and the girl was waving her slender bare feet in front of the glowing coils and talking. The breakfast, which she attacked gratefully and gracelessly, despite her earlier nausea, did little to slow her down.

  “I spent a lot of Friday just wandering about during the day—I had already hidden my suitcase behind the church, early that morning, because I know nobody goes there, at least not until after dark, when it’s best not to ask about the sort of things that take place, if you ask me. I’d taken some food from my mum, but it was all gone by the end of the day and I didn’t have any more money to buy stuff, but when I came back to get my case later that afternoon—I was up the High Street during the day—I remembered that the manse door over there was always open. Paul must have been upstairs, so I snuck in and took some stuff from the pantry and then I decided I’d hide in the church for the night.”

  “Specifically, Chrissie, it was finding Paul’s keys that gave you that idea, wasn’t it?” Effie said, her eyes sparkling.

  Tina looked shamefaced. “Will I get into trouble for all the stuff I’ve taken?” she asked humbly.

  “No. I’ll make sure everything’s all right. Go on with your story.”

  Tina took a long gulp of milk. “Okay, well, the church was all right as a hideout. It was empty a lot of the time, and I could use the toilet. It got pretty cold at night, but I found some old blankets in a cupboard.”

  “And a half-finished bottle of Communion wine?” Oliver ventured.

  “Yeah. Boy, that stuff was gross, really made me want to puke. Anyway, I knew when people were going to come in, ’cause my dad’s the church secretary and he keeps track of meetings and stuff. There was a big church meeting on Friday night, which they held in one of the Sunday School rooms, and then there was that rehearsal on Saturday—I should have been there, I half thought about coming out, I’m a much better Virgin Mary than pigging Kylie Fenwick. All I had to do at those times was go up to the balcony. Nobody’s been up there for years, you should have seen the dust and cobwebs I had to clear away.”

  “So it was you that Danni saw during the rehearsal on Saturday?” Oliver remarked, understanding Effie’s earlier question about angels.

  “I stood up to get a better view. I ducked down again before anyone else spotted me. You two were there then, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I remember Sergeant Effie’s hair. That’s why I came down on Sunday, the next day, while you were sitting in the church. I could only see the top of your head from the balcony, and I wanted to see if it really was you. I got a bit distracted by seeing Nigel on the stage and you nearly caught me. I hid pretty quickly though, didn’t I?”

  “You certainly had me fooled,” said Effie. The girl’s time-line had reached Tapster’s murder, but she wanted to curtail it for now. “It must have been really lonely in the church, all by yourself.”

  “I had my journal,” she said stoically, through a mouth stuffed with french fries. “I’ve been writing. And for the last couple of days, I haven’t felt very well, so I slept a lot, although I do feel a lot better now I’ve eaten a nutritious meal. When you’re a writer, you lose all track of time, you know! There aren’t enough hours in the day.” She spoke authoritatively, which made Oliver feel strangely guilty.

  “Oliver’s a writer, you know,” said Effie.

  “Oh yes, he told me when I met him the other week. I explained then how much I like to write and how much I want to be a writer. And I told him the sort of things I like to write about.”

  “I was thinking that, maybe, you could ask him about his books?” Effie added tentatively. Tina paused, gazing at Oliver and considering the question as if it had never occurred to her.

  “Are you two married?” she asked.

  “Let’s go back to Thursday evening, when you went to Nigel Tapster’s house,” said Effie hastily. “Did you go to see Nigel because he was your baby’s father?”

  Tina looked startled. “Oh, you know about that?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Babies are a gift from God,” Tina declared. “When the doctor told me I was pregnant, I knew it was a special gift for Nigel and me. That’s why I ran over to his home as soon as I found out. I wanted to tell him our good news, that this meant we could be together, no matter what my mum and dad said.”

 
“But what did you think he would do about Heather, his wife?” Oliver asked gently. Tina glared at him as if he had spat in her ear.

  “She didn’t care about Nigel,” she snapped. “She wasn’t a good wife. I loved Nigel, I’d have made a wonderful wife, and a great mother for his baby. Heather wasn’t giving him no babies—I’d heard her say as much. And she would laugh at him. She laughed when he sang to us, but I liked his voice. She used to say he couldn’t keep in tune and he didn’t know, because he didn’t have perfect pitch like she did.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “She thought she was a much better musician,” Tina continued, “just because she could play the piano. But Nigel was a good guitarist too, much better than Billy. Heather was jealous, she used to make jokes, pull tricks, she’d even make his guitar go out of tune on purpose, I saw her. And she’d bash that tambourine too loud, so you couldn’t hear him. I could tell Nigel didn’t really like her. He would have taken me with open arms, if it weren’t for her.”

  “Is that what he told you when saw him on Thursday?”

  The girl did not answer, sullenly staring at her thin legs. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “What did Nigel say?” Effie insisted.

  “He thought it was a joke!” she burst out. “He said I had to be mistaken, but if I was going to have a baby, it had nothing to do with him. He even talked about me having an abortion. I heard my dad talk about abortions, and it’s a sort of murder, isn’t it? I thought Nigel wanted to kill me. He was the father of my baby and I thought he’d be pleased, but instead he wanted to kill me. So I ran away from him.”

  She began to weep noisily. Effie tore off a paper towel and passed it to her.

  “And this is the same story you told the Reverend Mr. Piltdown when you went to see him?”

  “Yes,” Tina sniffed, wiping her eyes.

  “You didn’t go to Heather and tell her you were going to have Nigel’s baby?” Oliver asked.

  “I never saw Heather. I don’t talk to Heather.”

  “You promised Mr. Piltdown that you were going to tell your parents about the baby when you got home.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you mean it?” Effie pressed before the girl lost her ability to speak, although Oliver was sure it would be a very temporary loss.

  Tina nodded, talking in gulps. “Yes, but I really wasn’t feeling well, and I wanted to understand what Nigel had told me, and when my dad looked in, I asked him about abortion and he told me it meant murder and he said what he thought about girls who got pregnant. It was as if he knew about me before I told! That’s when I decided to run away. They all hated me, apart from Mr. Piltdown!”

  She gave herself up to sobbing, hunched over, her damp hair sticking to her shoulders.

  “No wonder Paul was pissed off at Tapster,” Oliver whispered to Effie, as they moved aside to give the girl time to recover. “Shouldn’t you be taking her home? I have a feeling this interview is not quite kosher.”

  “I’ll call the Quarterboys now,” Effie conceded. “You’re right, we certainly can’t ask her anything about the murder, in case we need her answer as evidence in court later. She couldn’t have seen anything I couldn’t have seen, anyway.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But I need to check on something. I’ll call you in about an hour.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  He smiled. “You’ve solved your case. Mine’s still open.”

  They talked further in low voices until Tina blew her nose noisily and Niagarally and attacked another McMuffin.

  “Chrissie, let me ask you one more question before I go,” said Oliver, pulling on his coat. “This is going to seem very odd and very personal, and I wouldn’t ask it if it didn’t really matter…”

  ***

  A rapid review of the last seven days told Oliver this was the eighth time he had made the trip to or from Plumley Central by tube. Normally he would have passed the half hour or so on the Underground train engrossed in one of the two novels that he always carried in his old leather satchel. Today, he was too excited to focus on anything more intellectually challenging than counting Underground trips and reviling Tina Quarterboy for eating his McMuffin. He hurtled through Tottenham Court Road station when he had to change from the Northern Line to the Central, and leaped off the second train when the doors opened at Holland Park, narrowly missing the three middle-aged ladies with beehive hairstyles who were jostling to get on. With no taxis visible on Holland Park Avenue, he opted to join the well-swaddled joggers in the park and made it to Edwardes Square within five minutes, breathless and sweating, despite the frigid rain.

  Susie Beamish had vacated the kitchen, leaving havoc in her wake, but Geoffrey Angelwine was sitting at the table, staring moodily into a coffee cup.

  “Ah, Oliver,” he said. “I need some advice. Do you think Tish Belfry would be impressed if—”

  ”You tattooed her name over your heart? Probably. Is Ben busy?” He didn’t wait for the answer but stole Geoffrey’s bacon and egg sandwich and clattered up the stairs to Ben’s studio.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” Geoffrey mumbled to himself. “It’s not a bad idea, though.”

  The studio door was closed. Oliver waited for a moment on the landing, emptying his mouth and trying to recover his breath, then he tapped on the door. There was no answer, but he became aware of the creaking of bedsprings, accompanied by high-pitched yelping.

  “Ben,” he hissed.

  The rhythmic moans went on, going up a notch in volume on every third occurrence, with an occasional cadence that suggested their perpetrator was getting a series of progressively more pleasant surprises.

  “Ben, it’s me—Oliver. I need to talk to you.”

  Still louder, still higher in frequency, in both meanings of the phrase. Oliver could hear a deeper, percussive accompaniment, too, as if a headboard were beating time on an internal wall.

  “Come on, Ben, knock it off,” Oliver called out. “It’s Christmas Eve, I know you don’t have any clients.”

  The noises continued. Oliver sighed.

  “Look, Susie told me about those times you pretended to be at work, just so I wouldn’t bother you,” he shouted. “Well, pack it up, I need your help.”

  The screaming was much more pronounced now, almost frenzied, joined by the snap of wet flesh slapping against more wet flesh.

  “Very funny, Ben. It doesn’t even sound like a real woman. Look, this is urgent! Okay, I don’t want to embarrass you, but I’m coming in.”

  He thrust open the door, which wasn’t locked, and strode into the studio, with a loud yell of “Caught you!”

  There was one very long scream.

  Three seconds later, Oliver was back on the landing, blushing. Ben shot out behind him, wrapping a hastily grabbed bed-sheet around his nearly naked body.

  “I ought to rend you limb from limb!” he was growling.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d have a real client in there,” Oliver stammered. “Although I don’t know how you can operate the camera in that particular position. Was it strapped to your foot?”

  “That’s not a client, you dolt, it’s my girlfriend. I was getting an early Christmas present.”

  “Giving one, too, by the look of it. At least it was wrapped.”

  “That’s just it, I didn’t invite you to look,” Ben fumed, gathering the sheet around his middle. “What are you, some kind of pervert?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who keeps his socks on!”

  “It’s cold in there, and…Never mind why I keep my frigging socks on!”

  “Well, you only have yourself to blame. Remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf?”

  “He was eaten,” Ben muttered wistfully.

  “Exactly. You shouldn’t have pretended to be on the job
all those other times. It’s your own fault!”

  “What the hell do you want anyway?” Ben demanded.

  “I need to see the contact sheets from the photographs you took at Plumley United Diaconalist Church.”

  “And if I give you these, will you leave me alone? Or do you plan another bout of Swithin Interruptus on this Christmas Eve morning?”

  “I shall not trouble you further, Benjamin,” said Oliver starchily. “But give me a magnifier, too. For a better view of Tapster’s performance, not yours.”

  Ben slid through the doorway. Oliver heard a brief, whispered conversation inside and then his friend reappeared, with a stack of oversize contact sheets and a loupe.

  “Oh, and Helga has a request,” Ben said sheepishly, passing over the photographs. “Can you wait, say, twenty minutes and then burst in again like that? She found it oddly arousing.”

  ***

  Oliver called the number of Effie’s mobile phone.

  “Scully, it’s me,” he declared, when he heard her voice. “Where are you?”

  “With the Quarterboys, Mulder. Patience Coppersmith and Elsie Potiphar are here, too, rallying round.”

  “How did they know Tina was back?”

  “They were already here, helping Sam and Joan keep vigil.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yes, I went into a different room to answer the call.”

  “How did it go?”

  “It’ll be all right. A few tears, some mild scolding, but a hell of a lot of love and joy. You’d have been proud of them.”

  “Do they know they’re going to be grandparents?”

  “Yes, Tina told them. Chrissie, I should say. They took it pretty well, considering. I think they wisely chose to postpone their reaction until Patience and Elsie have left. Sam and Joan are taking Chrissie to see her doctor shortly, but she seems in pretty good health.”

  “I don’t suppose Chrissie-Tina had any insights into Tapster’s death?”

  “It came up. She killed him.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the way she put it, although she denies being the instrument. The poor lamb is convinced that God killed Nigel Tapster on her behalf as retribution because—in her mind—he wanted to kill her. This comes down to her misunderstanding of abortion. So I’ve volunteered to give her a quick, belated lesson in the birds and the bees—the mechanics, not the morality. Mum and Dad have accepted my offer.”