by Alan Beechey
“Would this persuade you to talk?” she asked. The dressing gown was all she had been wearing.
“Tim lies about his age!” Oliver blurted instantly, gazing up at her.
“Go on,” she said, stepping cautiously into the bath. Oliver sat up and moved his legs back to make room for her, but she turned and tied something to the showerhead.
“About twenty years ago,” he told her, “the Met put all its personnel records onto a computer. Somebody keyed in the wrong birthdate for Tim, making him five years younger than he really was. He’s never reported the error.”
“You’d better not be fibbing,” she said menacingly, hands on her hips. The water washed her shins.
Oliver swallowed. “Not at a time like this,” he gasped. Effie lowered her slim haunches gently into the suds. He noticed that a sprig of mistletoe now hung from the showerhead.
“Eff, you took the end with the taps,” he said. “It must be love.”
“Never mind that. Why didn’t Tim report the mistake?”
“By then, Uncle Tim was already a detective inspector and completely dedicated to police work. He thought the retirement age for detectives was ludicrously early, and he shrewdly speculated that the error might one day give him five more years doing what he loved. And he was right, as it turned out. Is that your foot?”
“Were you expecting somebody else’s?”
“Ah. Well, the problem was that all of Tim’s paperwork from the Yard’s precomputerized days still had his original birthdate. So he…er…arranged for an ambitious clerical assistant to lose it accidentally on a trip to the Criminal Records Office, as it was then. Until last week, that was the only unethical thing he’d ever done in his career. AC Weed found the long-lost file the other day, but I have a feeling Tim’s going to lose it again. So Superintendent Mallard’s back on the job for a few more years.”
“That tickles.”
“Sorry.”
“Did I tell you to stop doing it?” Effie lay back contentedly in the water and handed Oliver a flannel and a bar of soap. “All right, because you were honest, you may wash whatever parts of me you can reach.”
He leaned forward and set about the task with gleeful concentration, his tongue protruding slightly from the edge of his mouth.
“I hate to bring up Geoffrey Angelwine’s name at a time like this,” she said, “but he called just after you got into the bath.”
“What does he want, Tish Belfry’s telephone number?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. But he also had a message about your article for that website about Sundays in London.”
“Celestial City? Oh, well, I know it’s late, but I’ve certainly got a story now—intrigue, blackmail, murder, sex-changes, heroism, fires…”
“It’s off,” she said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“Celestial City folded after its first edition. According to Geoff, nobody on the editorial staff could think of anything to do on a London Sunday.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t really want to write the article, so that news makes a rather nice Christmas present.” A sudden thought troubled him. He dropped the soap and sat back.
“Er, Effie. What would you say if I’d just remembered that I didn’t get you anything for Christmas?”
She sat up and considered the statement, resting her elbows on his shoulders.
“I’d say you were a sweet, sensitive, thoughtful boyfriend who knew that I had no time to get you a gift because of my workload at Plumley, and who wanted to spare me the shame of receiving without giving. And I’d say that, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of a better present than the present—having you all to myself on Christmas morning. Now, I’m fed up with the taps sticking in my back.”
“Okay, we’ll swap,” Oliver said, relieved enough to put up with any discomfort for this extraordinary woman.
“No, stay there. I’ll join you at your end.” She pushed him back into the water and slithered up his soapy body until their faces were inches apart.
“Merry Christmas, Oliver,” she said softly.
“Merry Christmas, Effie.”
***
“Of course,” she said, a little later. “It’s understood that, on the day after Boxing Day, you and your credit card will be first in the queue at the nearest jeweler’s.”
“Of course.”
Author’s Note
Religion is a touchy subject. It’s quite possible that a believer could read this book and see it as a vindication of his or her faith, while another could declare its mere existence a case of blasphemy in the first degree. Similarly antithetical views could be held by a brace of atheists. That’s why I can’t emphasize enough that this is not a religious book but a murder mystery that—like many, many others—has a religious setting. As characters, Oliver Swithin and his friends have their own opinions about the varying and occasionally conflicting beliefs held by other characters in this story. As a narrator, I have tried, and probably failed, to remain terminally neutral.
Behavior is different from belief, however. Because of the setting—chosen because it was a very familiar aspect of my childhood and youth—all of the murder suspects have to be devoted churchgoers. If the intense scrutiny of their private lives reveals behavior, physical or mental, that seems at odds with the Christian faith as you understand it, dear reader (and, short of actual murder, most of the incidents and opinions I recount are based on my own observation, although naturally, the characters themselves are entirely fictitious and they know it), please judge them not as representatives of any faith, but as the fallible human beings we all are. Or don’t judge them at all. Lest…you know.
I’d like to thank the resourceful Luci Zahray, who gave me generous assistance with the technicalities of certain poisons (and whose story of what happened when her dog ate yeast and chocolate chips is too astounding to make its way into a work of fiction); if I still have the details wrong, it’s entirely my fault. And I’d like to thank my friend the Reverend Peter Carey, who donated the best joke in the book, and who is hereby absolved from accountability for any other part of it, religious or otherwise.
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