Murdering Ministers

by Alan Beechey

  Oliver glanced at his watch. “Time to go,” he said.

  “Go where?” asked Mallard, but Oliver rose from his pew, pushed his way through the crowded narthex and walked out into the cold night. The rain had stopped and the sky had partly cleared, but the sallow street lamps still had halos of lemon-colored mist. The temperature was close to freezing.

  Oliver turned down the quiet alleyway beside the church, ignoring the wet nettles that brushed against his trousers. He reached the side entrance to the church and opened the door into the long corridor that ran behind the sanctuary. At the far end of the corridor, several of the children in the Nativity play were chasing each other excitedly. He knocked briefly on a door marked MINISTER’S VESTRY and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.

  Paul Piltdown was sitting at a long table covered with a coarse cloth, which almost filled the dark room. The walls were covered with framed photographs, and Oliver could see a large marble fireplace at the far end of the room. The air was cold.

  “Welcome home,” Oliver said, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. His breath was misty.

  Piltdown tried to suppress a look of mild irritation. He smiled briefly and dragged a hand through his unkempt hair. “I only just made it in time. The police dropped me off at the manse a few minutes ago. I changed clothes and here I am. Now, Ollie, much as I love you, I must prepare for the carol service.”

  He looked up at a sizeable clock over the mantelpiece, which showed that seven minutes remained before the service was due to begin.

  “You knew it was Heather, didn’t you?” Oliver said softly.

  “Can’t this wait?”

  “No, it damn well can’t!” Oliver snapped.

  Piltdown raised his eyebrows and shifted his burly frame in the chair.

  “All that time in the police station,” Oliver went on, “you weren’t waiting patiently for the guilty deacon to run in and confess. You knew all along that they were innocent and that Heather Tapster killed her husband.”

  “How could I possibly know that?” Piltdown asked, wearily stretching out the sentence.

  “Because you saw her. You saw her dip the pitch pipe into the poisoned honey. Then she detuned Nigel’s guitar, so he’d have to use the pipe. She thought the piano shielded her from everybody’s view. It certainly shielded her from the congregation. But not from Tina, hiding up in the balcony. Nor from the pulpit, where you were sitting, supposedly in prayer. You saw her very clearly, through one of those little decorative spyholes you were boasting about last week. I don’t think you knew what she was doing at the time, but when the strychnine started to work, you put it all together. And your every move from that point on was to protect her. Why, Paul?”

  Piltdown picked up a stray rubber band that had been left on the table and stretched it over his fingers.

  “Being Tina Quarterboy’s confessor put me into a privileged position, Oliver,” he said, not meeting his friend’s steady gaze. He wrapped the band below the first knuckles of his index and middle fingers. “I knew the kind of monster Nigel Tapster had become. When I confronted him last Thursday evening, after I had sent Tina home to face her parents, he actually tried to convince me that she was lying about being pregnant. I know Tina. She wouldn’t know how to make up something like that. But there was Nigel, mocking her as a false witness or a slut or worse, dismissing my accusations, betraying and deceiving his wife. I have no idea how Heather found out about Tina, but the moment I realized she had poisoned her husband, I knew why she’d done it. That’s why I waited for her to come forward after my arrest. I could hardly show your girlfriend’s rather dim colleagues the error of their ways without betraying Tina’s confidence. Does that answer your question?”

  Piltdown opened and closed his fist swiftly. The rubber band seemed to jump to the ring and little finger. At another time Oliver would have asked him how he did it. He looked at the clock. Two minutes had passed. Five minutes to go.

  “You only had to tell the police what you saw,” Oliver remarked. “You weren’t obliged to suggest a motive for Heather’s actions. And anyway, you continued to keep quiet after we found out about Tina’s pregnancy. Why did you risk your own neck to protect Heather, a woman who’d broken one of the more serious commandments? For that matter, why did you nurture both of them? If Nigel Tapster was such a monster, as you say, why—only one day after you found out that he had impregnated the thirteen-year-old daughter of a trusted deacon—did you cast the deciding vote that made Tapster a deacon himself!”

  Piltdown glanced up sharply, fury on his face—but he did not deny the charge. “What do you think, Oliver?” he asked. “Give me your answer.”

  Oliver leaned back in his chair cautiously. This would not be the time to topple backwards.

  “I think the Tapsters found out you were gay, and they were blackmailing you, threatening to tell the deacons. You’d be thrown out of the church here, probably out of the ministry. Though God knows why, since your church members seem to turn a blind eye to Dougie Dock and Barry Foison, two men who are clearly homosexual.”

  Piltdown began to laugh humorlessly, staring at Oliver.

  “Dougie and Barry?” he repeated, with exaggerated astonishment. “Dougie’s not gay. His problem has always been a fondness for the female sex. He calls it gallantry, but these days it would be called unwelcome touching.”

  “His coworkers think he’s too keen on the boys in the Victory Vanguard.”

  “Then they’re small-minded bigots. Like any good Christian, Dougie loves children. He maintains a vision of childish innocence that’s positively Victorian. And completely chaste. Trust me, Oliver, I would not let him lead the Sunday School or the Victory Vanguard if I thought otherwise. Any suspicion of an untoward interest in the boys is a reflection of your own dirty-mindedness. I’m surprised at you.”

  Oliver absorbed the rebuke.

  “But what about Barry?” he riposted. “He’s a transsexual, for God’s sake!”

  Piltdown laughed again. “Yes, I’m not sure how the members are going to react when they discover Oona’s true identity,” he said pensively. “Barry may be effeminate, but he’s heterosexual as a male and so Oona will be homosexual as a female. He was confused about his sexual identity, not his sexual orientation. They’re not the same thing—I thought you’d have known that, being a sophisticated man of letters. No, Ollie, I’m the only queer here. And that’s still our little secret. Nigel and Heather had no idea.”

  “Then for God’s sake, why did you tolerate them?”

  Piltdown hooked the rubber band around his thumb and let go, shooting it away into the darker corner of the room.

  “I suppose Christian love won’t do as an explanation,” he answered ruefully and sighed. “When I first encountered Nigel Tapster, he seemed to epitomize everything I wanted in my spiritual life. When Nigel closed his eyes in fervent prayer, when he fell senseless in the presence of the Holy Spirit, he made you believe he was experiencing something truly transcendent. But it didn’t take me long to realize Nigel was a fraud, a humbug, a flimflam merchant, with his own ambitions for worldly power and worse. I heard about the trouble he’d caused at his last church and I gambled that he’d do less damage in Plumley as an insider than as an outcast. If I could bring him into the fold, then as a minister, I still had a pathway to the children who came under his spell. And if that meant sacrificing old Cedric’s unbroken record on the diaconate, so be it. The alternative was to watch the Tapsters rip the church apart on their way out and use the shreds to knit their cult.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you went on protecting Heather after Nigel’s death,” Oliver said, silently noting his friend’s first admission that the Tapsters were indeed building a cult.

  Piltdown leaned across the table, scratching at the harsh cover.

  “I tried to be a good shepherd to my flock,” he stat
ed, his eyes blazing. “But then Heather had a better idea. Kill the wolf. So don’t I owe her something in return? Not for my sake, but for the sake of my people? My good people!”

  He paused, holding Oliver’s gaze. Two minutes to go.

  Oliver stood up abruptly. “You arrogant son-of-a-bitch,” he said and walked to the door.

  “Here endeth the lesson,” muttered Piltdown, watching him with surprise.

  Oliver spun around. “Here’s the lesson, Paul,” he said bitterly. “Nigel died because Heather thought he was up to his old tricks. She claimed she found out about Tina’s pregnancy when she overheard you confronting her husband in their home. But I went to the house that evening, only a few minutes after you left. There was no way that Heather could have heard your conversation, because of the racket she and Billy Coppersmith were making. You said yourself it was going on all the time you were there. Heather didn’t even hear you leave. And when she greeted me that evening—after I’d had to hammer on the door—she didn’t behave like a woman who’d just overheard that her husband had betrayed their marriage and screwed up their ambitions.”

  One minute.

  “So who told Heather about Tina? Only three people at the church knew of Tina’s condition. Tina herself, and she denies speaking to Heather. Nigel, who was so terrified of his wife’s reaction that he swore Billy to secrecy about the girl’s visit. And you, supposedly bound by your ministerial code to keep her pregnancy a secret. But you didn’t, did you?”

  Thirty seconds.

  “When Tapster laughed in your face that Thursday evening, you were furious—I saw you afterwards. That’s why you returned to the house. Not to guide me to the manse, but to tell Heather that her husband had been hooking up with a thirteen-year-old disciple. Tina confided in you, Paul, because she trusted you more than anyone. But you used her as a pawn in your match with the Tapsters. It was an irresistible opportunity to divide and conquer your enemies, and you took it. And it led directly to murder.”

  “I thought Tina was going home to tell her parents about the baby,” Piltdown whispered. “I thought the whole church would hear about it soon enough! How could I have known she’d run away, keeping her secret? And how could I have known Heather would kill Nigel?”

  The minute hand reached the half-hour mark with a louder click.

  “You’d better get ready for your public,” Oliver murmured sadly and left the room.

  ***

  Piltdown was in the pulpit before Oliver had time to return to his seat. He felt the minister’s eyes on him as he moved into the pew and stood beside Mallard.

  Piltdown abruptly announced the first carol, and Oona played the opening chords of “O Come All Ye Faithful” at twice the normal speed. A quick march, not a dirge. Oliver liked it. As they began to sing, trying to keep up with the unfamiliar tempo, Oliver noticed that Effie wasn’t using the words printed in the hymn book.

  “How did it go back there?

  How did it go back there?

  How did it go back there?

  Does he know what we know?”

  Oliver started to sing back, but gave up instantly. The three trooped out to the narthex, which still held some latecomers. Sam Quarterboy and Patience Coppersmith were on duty to distribute hymn books.

  “Effie filled me in while you were gone,” Mallard informed Oliver, once they had formed a huddle out of the deacons’ earshot. “So Paul admitted he clammed up to stymie the police investigation? Because he felt guilty?”

  “He didn’t just clam up, Uncle,” Oliver said ruefully. “We’re pretty sure it was Paul who made off with the murder weapon, the perfidious poisoned pitch pipe. He was the only person who saw Heather tampering with it earlier.”

  “He had plenty of time to creep across and grab it from the guitar case in all the confusion over Tapster’s death,” Effie recalled. “Paul was most insistent that we all go over to the manse, immediately after Nigel died. He wouldn’t shut up about it. I believe he planned to smuggle the pipe out of the church, before the police arrived. But he must have stashed it somewhere in the meantime, or it would have turned up when the police searched him. But God knows where—Welkin’s crew were all over the crime scene.”

  “Tonight is the first time Paul has been back to the church since the murder,” Oliver added. “That’s why we chose to confront him, but without saying that we know he hid the pitch pipe. We hope it’ll force him to dispose of it now, while he thinks the coast is still clear. Let’s hope he doesn’t try to lick it clean of fingerprints!”

  “Effie, are you sure you didn’t see Paul leave the area around the body?” Mallard asked, stroking his white moustache. “Even for a moment or two?”

  Effie looked away, replaying the tape of Tapster’s disturbing death in her mind. On the other side of the curtain, the carol reached the final verse. “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.” She smiled. “There was one moment when I looked up and Paul was in the pulpit. It was odd, because he’d conducted the whole Communion service from the table. I assumed he was using the pulpit microphone to address the people in the church.”

  “Wouldn’t the police have searched the pulpit?”

  “The victim hadn’t been near it, so I doubt that they’d have given it more than a cursory sweep,” Effie replied. “If Paul tucked the pitch pipe well out of the way, they could have missed it. Thank you, Tim.”

  The carol ended. Mallard peeked through the curtains that separated the narthex from the main sanctuary. “He’s still up there,” he reported. “So I suppose our job now is to grab him and arrest him as soon as he comes down, before he gets a chance to destroy the evidence.”

  “Well, we’d certainly like to find the murder weapon,” said Oliver, “but do we really care about punishing Paul?”

  Mallard bristled. “Covering up a crime, concealing evidence, interfering with a police investigation—these are serious offenses,” he declared starchily. “It’s not just a puzzle, you know, with no consequences.” He turned to Effie. “Weren’t you planning to arrest him, Detective Sergeant Strongitharm?”

  She shrugged. “Spirit of Christmas, Tim. I would imagine Paul’s already plagued with guilt over his inadvertent role in Tapster’s murder, no matter how much he personally gains from it. And that’s nothing to the guilt he’s going to experience when he finds out the whole truth.”

  “You mean there’s more to come?” Mallard exclaimed. Sam and Patience both turned and glared at him.

  “Perhaps we’d better talk about it later,” Effie whispered. She and Oliver slipped back into the sanctuary, with Mallard reluctantly following, knowing he would have to wait until the service was over to get an explanation. The Nativity play had already started, and as they scuttled back to their pew the arrival of the angel Gabriel was being heralded by a sudden explosion of sound from guitar and organ, which the congregation could feel as well as hear.

  Billy Coppersmith had set up his amplifier at the back of the platform, and Oona had pulled the organ console’s curtain aside so they could share cues, giving the audience a side view of her long shapely legs on the pedal-board. Billy seemed preoccupied, as if it was dawning on him that Oona seemed somehow familiar. The leather-clad Kurt bolted through the door on the left of the sanctuary and swaggered onto the stage, to delighted snickers from the audience.

  “Yo, Mary!” he shouted, as Tina Quarterboy appeared on the stage.

  “Ah, this must be the Schubert setting of the ‘Yo Mary,’” Mallard murmured, opening a note that Effie had passed him. He groaned and handed it to Oliver. It said, “What family secret?”

  The play progressed mercifully quickly until it reached the scene with the shepherds, which Oliver and Effie had already witnessed in rehearsal. Barry/Oona could do no more than glare down from the organ bench when she noticed Kylie was carrying a soft-toy lamb, and Garth—who had heard about the detectives at
the church the previous Sunday—had not only kept his cotton beard, but had traded his entire policeman’s uniform for a Santa Claus outfit. Then the heavenly host—in their Victory Vanguard caps—marched swiftly across the front of the platform, bugles in hand, looking about as angelic as a police lineup.

  The angels’ instrumental hymn of praise started loud and got louder, causing the shepherds to welcome the news of the Christ Child with their hands over their ears. Many of the congregants in the front rows, showed signs of restlessness, if not actual pain.

  At last, the music ended on a thunderous final chord, with Oona stretching her legs far to the left to scoop the deepest bass notes from the sixteen-foot organ pipes. High up on the fretboard, Billy sustained a trill that only dogs could hear. The wall of vibrating air swept through the church, causing the floor and pews to tremble and candleholders to judder and slide on the windowsills. A tall metal candlestick on the platform began to sway.

  Time stood still for Oliver.

  The hollow, multitiered platform was acting like a sounding board, throbbing in sympathy with the growling organ pipes. The candlestick tipped past its center of gravity and fell, landing on the edge of Tina’s dress. She yelped and dropped the spirit lamp she was clutching. It shattered, showering methylated spirit over the floor. A bluish flame shot up from the platform’s cheap carpeting.

  A man in the stunned congregation stood up and shouted “Fire!” Oliver reacted, sliding toward the aisle, but counting on somebody much closer to the platform to get to the children first. The organ chord continued.

  Below the platform, a dribble of flaming spirit had trickled into a pile of paint-splattered rags stained with turpentine. Flames gathered themselves, feeding lazily on half-empty cans of paint and jars of cleaning materials. Then they crept toward several stacks of dry, out-of-date hymn books. They could afford this moment of patience—they had waited a long time for this one.

  There were more shouts of “Fire!” and screams, as the congregation realized that fireworks were not part of the play. People stood and moved into the aisles, which quickly became clogged with panicked worshippers hurrying to get out of the building. Oliver was halfway to the front of the church when he was pushed aside by the stampede.