by Jan Ellis
“If you hadn’t bought the Bible,” said Malcolm, thoughtfully, “Joshua might simply have thrown it away, which would have been much worse.”
“True, but I’m sure I’ve short-changed him – well, the vicar actually, because the money went into the church fund.”
“Why don’t you speak to Philip White before you visit Joshua?” said Daniel. “It might set your mind at rest about the Bible at least?”
Eleanor nodded. “Yes, I think will.”
Chapter 27: A Date with the Vicar
The next day, Eleanor put Joshua’s Bible into a bag and lugged it through town to St Cuthbert’s Church. It was a welcoming place, where people often popped in to grab a few moments of peace, but today it seemed completely empty.
She eventually found the vicar on his hands and knees in the children’s corner surrounded by piles of Lego, wooden toys and books, one of which he was reading intently. He smiled as Eleanor approached.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said.
“Not at all,” said Philip. “I was just tidying up.” He closed the brightly coloured pages and put the book on a shelf. “So what can I do for you on this fine day?”
“I’d like to ask your opinion about something, if I may.”
Philip stood up and rubbed his hands together. This was what he’d entered the Church for: to examine the finer points of theology, to argue for the power of prayer as a force for good, to debate the nature of evil – he was ready for anything. “I’m always delighted to help where I can,” he said, leading her to the vestry.
Eleanor spoke first. “You remember I bought some books from Joshua at the Antiques Road Show thingy?”
“I certainly do, because the money went into the church funds.”
“That’s right. Well now I’m wondering whether I did the right thing by taking – buying – the Bible off him. I was going to put it on the shelves in my shop and sell it, but perhaps you could find a better use for it – send it off to Africa, maybe?”
Philip was secretly disappointed that the question was not more intellectually challenging, but determined not to show it. “It’s a generous offer, but our church has special funds for Bibles. Frankly, our base in the Gambia is awash with them!”
“I doubt they have many like this one, though.” Eleanor took the heavy volume out of her bag for the vicar to see. Philip’s slight annoyance at not being invited to debate a tricky religious point faded when he saw the handsome volume. Taking the heavy book in both hands, he ran his fingers reverently over the gold embossing of the cover.
“What a pity Joshua doesn’t want to keep it or hand it down to his relatives – I assume he has family?”
Eleanor shook her head sadly. “His wife died and he doesn’t have children. I’ve tried to ask about nieces and nephews, but he won’t be drawn on the subject.”
Philip turned the pages, alighting on one of the black and white engravings. “These prints were created by the French artist Gustave Doré, you know, so it will date from the late nineteenth century.”
“Really? Gosh, no I didn’t know that. Lordy, I am ignorant – oops, sorry to blaspheme Father, er, Phil.” Eleanor was aware of getting into a tangle, not knowing how to address a vicar and taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Philip’s expression turned saintly as he wafted his hand in the air. “I don’t think He would mind too much under the circumstances and would perhaps agree that this Bible should stay in Joshua’s family where it belongs.”
“I could try to persuade him to take it back, but what if he refuses?”
“In that case, you might consider donating it to your local parish church.” The vicar smiled, continuing to turn the pages, admiring the prints and smoothing each one down with his hand. The book was heavy so he leant it up against two other books to make it easier to turn the pages. “Now, what have we here?”
Inside the back cover was an envelope.
“Oh, I wanted to ask your opinion about this as well,” said Eleanor, taking the envelope and carefully withdrawing the poem. “Joshua gave me a St Christopher pendant in a Victorian tea caddy and this was in with it. My father-in-law thought it might be a prayer and I wondered whether you might recognise it, what with being in the prayer business.” Eleanor laughed nervously, wondering why being with a man of the cloth made her talk rubbish.
Philip unfolded the flimsy sheet and began reading aloud the words written there. “‘Seeker bold, ye who travelled from afar, Think but on this…’ Well, well. How interesting.”
“Is it familiar to you?”
Philip stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Funnily enough I do recognise the words, although this isn’t a traditional prayer as such. Come with me.”
Standing, he led the way out of the vestry with its African memorabilia into the church. Eleanor followed him down the nave to the rear of the building. “There, do you see?” He pointed at a dark wooden panel with words etched on it and outlined in gold.
Eleanor crouched down to read. “They’re the same words!” She read the words again, but there was no name of an author or a date. “Do you know how long the panel has been here?”
“To my shame I don’t remember, but it will be in our records. I’ll look it up and let you know.”
“Thank you, Vicar. I’d be grateful.”
* * *
Later that day, Eleanor received a phone call from Philip.
“I have some information about your poem. Can you come over to the church?”
“Sure.” She checked her diary. “I can pop over tomorrow if you’re free.”
“I’ve got the mums and toddlers at twelve, but any time before that would be fine. Oh, and bring the pendant Joshua gave you.”
“You mean the St Christopher?”
She was sure she could hear Philip chuckling down the line. “Yes, that’s the one.”
When Eleanor arrived at the church the next morning, the vicar was outside pulling up dandelions. “I know they’re all part of God’s creation, but they are rather a nuisance.” Philip got to his feet, brushing soil from his hands. “Come on in.”
Eleanor followed Philip out of the sunshine into the building’s dimly lit interior where the cleric’s sandals made a flapping sound on the cool terracotta floor. He stopped by the inscribed panel and turned to her. “We Anglicans don’t pay much attention to the saints, as you know, so I’ve had to do a little bit of homework. May I see your pendant?”
“Of course,” said Eleanor, handing it over.
“Aha. Just as I thought.” He smiled, weighing it in his hand. “I’ll come to this in a moment but, first, what do you make of the stained-glass figure?”
Eleanor lifted her eyes from the inscribed words in the direction of where Philip was pointing: in the window above the panel was a tall bearded figure in a blue cloak holding a staff.
“Oh, it’s St Christopher.”
“Are you sure? Look again and tell me what’s missing.” The vicar was enjoying himself now.
Eleanor racked her brains for what she remembered about how the saint was generally depicted. “Isn’t he normally shown with a child on his shoulder?”
“Exactly! But there’s no child here. Do you see what he’s carrying instead?”
She stepped forward to examine the saint more carefully. “He seems to be holding a ship. And he’s standing on a sea monster.”
“It’s a whale actually, but well done!” Eleanor knew she should be annoyed at being treated like a child, but Philip was so pleased with himself she couldn’t help being pulled along by his enthusiasm. “Now look again at your pendant. Oh, you may need this.” He extracted a small magnifying glass from his shirt pocket and handed it to Eleanor.
Holding the glass over the silver oval she could see every detail of the figure moulded into the metal. “It’s the same – the saint has a ship tucked under his arm and there’s a fish – I mean whale – under his feet.”
“So…?”
“So if it�
�s not a St Christopher, what is it?”
“It’s a St Brendan medal,” said Philip triumphantly.
“And he was?”
“St Brendan the Navigator, patron saint of sailors. Which makes perfect sense in an ocean-going community like our own.”
“Yes, I suppose it does.” Eleanor bent down to study the verse under the window again.
“And the inscription is a prayer for sailors, do you see?” Philip read out the last lines, tracing each word with his finger. “‘No more shall he breach the lusty waves but Divine peace shall be his who Abides in God’s tender care, No more to fret upon life’s travails. ’”
“That’s pretty – and clever, too,” said Eleanor, pleased with herself for having noticed something Malcolm and now Philip had missed. “It’s an acrostic poem.”
“Sorry?”
“Look at the initial letters of each line.”
Philip read them out. “S, T, B, R, E… oh, they spell St Brendan!”
“Right – but who wrote it?”
“Oh, I have information about the inscription here.” Philip picked up a musty book from the pew and opened it at a spot he had marked with a piece of card. “The stained-glass window and the panel were both donated to the church in September 1900.”
“By?”
“The window was made by Gideon Smith, a leading stained-glass artist of his time, and the prayer was etched and gilded by a Mr Philips.”
“But who wrote the poem and paid for the stained glass and the panel to be erected? Is that recorded?”
“I’m afraid not. All it says in our records is that both pieces were gifted to the church by an anonymous benefactor.”
“Anonymous? Is that normal?”
“Actually it’s quite unusual. Generally when a local bigwig makes a sizeable donation of this kind, they want to make sure everyone in town knows about it.” Philip put the bookmark back into the record book and closed its yellowing pages. “I’m sorry, but it looks as though we’ll never know who that kind person was or, indeed, why they commissioned such a fine decoration for St Cuthbert’s.”
Eleanor chewed her lip thoughtfully. There might not be a written record, but a theory was beginning to form itself in her mind.
Chapter 28: An Exciting Discovery
Eleanor decided to run her ideas past Erika over coffee the next morning, before the bookshop opened for business.
“What do you think of my theory about the identity of the mysterious benefactor?” she asked, offering a plate of biscuits to Erika.
“Let me get this straight: the church contains an engraved panel and a stained-glass window of St Brendan the Navigator, but there’s no record of who commissioned and paid for them?” Erika jotted down the facts on a scrap of paper.
“Correct. And there’s no dedication either, which Phil tells me is unusual.”
“And the epigraph inscribed on the wall is the same as the poem written on the piece of paper you found in the tea caddy given to you by Joshua Pinkham?”
“Yes, in a hidden compartment underneath the silver pendant that just happens to have the same saint engraved on it as the chap in the church window. All of which leads me to conclude that the mystery donor must have been someone in Joshua’s family, wouldn’t you agree?”
Erika frowned. “The evidence does seem to be pointing in that direction, but you need to consider other options before coming to a conclusion.”
“What other options?”
“You’re doing the sleuthing, boss, so you tell me!”
As Eleanor thought about it now, it seemed quite obvious. “Well, I suppose whoever wrote down the verse on the piece of paper and put it in the tea caddy might have copied it from the church wall. There’s no reason to think they were the author of the poem or the donor.”
“Precisely.”
“Darn.”
“Which doesn’t mean that’s the answer, but it’s something to bear in mind.”
“You’re good at this,” said Eleanor. “I bet Eric was an ace copper.”
“He was.”
They sat in silence sipping their drinks, the subject of Erika’s past life hanging in the air. After a moment, Eleanor spoke again. “Of course, it might be that the donor was indeed a Pinkham but Joshua doesn’t know about it because the person was so modest he…”
“Or she – who’s to say the person who paid for the window wasn’t a woman?”
“Fair point.” Eleanor nodded. “That he or she didn’t even tell their nearest and dearest, so Joshua isn’t aware of the connection.”
Erika tapped the rim of her coffee cup thoughtfully. “On the other hand, if the benefactor was a Pinkham and Joshua does know about it, you’d think he’d be proud to tell everyone. And he’d want to hang on to the pendant and handwritten verse if they were linked to the donation in some way.”
“I agree.”
“I’d like to see the pendant sometime.”
“That can be arranged.” Eleanor went across to the counter to fetch her handbag and brought out the paisley silk bag. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to her colleague.
“That’s nice.” Erika took the pendant out of its bag and peered at it through her reading glasses. “Have you opened it yet?”
“Opened it? What do you mean?”
Erika raised an eyebrow. “There’s a hinge at the top so I’m guessing it’s a locket.”
“Is there? None of us noticed that!”
“Not much gets past me.” Erika handed it back. “You open it – I don’t want to tear a nail when I’ve just had them done.”
Eleanor slipped the tip of her thumbnail under the catch and carefully prised open the locket. She smiled at her colleague. “There’s a photograph.” In the oval frame was a studio photograph of a young woman. Her hair was waved and tied up at the back but wisps had escaped and were gathered around her brow. Her eyes appeared bright and thoughtful as they gazed out from under dark eyebrows in her heart-shaped face. “She was very pretty, whoever she was. And all without the magic of Photoshop.”
As Eleanor opened the locket fully, a curl of paper slipped out from beneath a second cover and wafted gently down to the floor. Erika bent to pick it up then went to hand it to her boss who nodded at her to uncurl and read it. “It says ‘I did you a great harm, for which I am truly sorry. Your melancholy friend, V.’.”
“Wow. This is fascinating – who was V?” Eleanor was walking up and down excitedly. “First I uncover a mysterious hidden cupboard at the back of one of the bookcases and a briefcase that Joshua is reluctant to open, then this. Things are becoming very interesting indeed.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the shop’s brass bell jingling as the door opened and one of their regular delivery drivers came in carrying two cartons of books.
“Right,” said Erika, “I’d better get on with some proper work.”
“Me too,” said Eleanor, drinking the last of her coffee. She then carefully smoothed out the slip of paper from “V.” and put it in an envelope next to the locket in a desk drawer.
“I’ve had a thought,” said Erika, some minutes later. “Didn’t you say Joshua sold you a Bible?”
“He did, yes, and told me to give the money to the vicar for his roof.”
“Have you had a good look at it? In days gone by, people often kept family records in Bibles – births, deaths, marriages, that kind of thing. If the gifts to St Cuthbert’s Church were made by one of Pinkham’s forebears, you might find a note about them in there.”
“That’s a brilliant idea,” said Eleanor, who was kneeling on the floor restacking the children’s storybooks. “I haven’t spotted anything, but it might be worth taking another look. Thanks for the tip!”
* * *
Back at the cottage, Eleanor decided to follow up Erika’s suggestion and search the Bible for proof that it was a Pinkham who had paid for the church window. There was nothing like a family tree and no other records inside the front cover so she be
gan laboriously leafing through every page.
When Daniel came in from his run, he paused to kiss his wife before heading upstairs for a shower. “Have you suddenly found religion?” he asked, his brow shiny from his exertions. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you read the Bible before.”
“It’s nothing quite as holy as that.” Smiling, Eleanor told Daniel the reason for her search. “I’ve been sitting here for hours and I’ve only checked through this much,” she said, indicating a small span with a finger and thumb. “I’ve still got about an inch and a half to go through yet.”
“Would a nice glass of cold white wine make it easier?”
“Definitely, darling,” said Eleanor, tipping back her head so Dan could kiss her lips.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll fetch us one.”
Eleanor carried on leafing through the book, listening to the ancient plumbing clank above her head. It wasn’t long before Daniel reappeared in fresh clothes, his dark hair clean and damp. Eleanor wolf whistled as he walked past her to the fridge to fetch the wine. “D’you know, I really quite fancy you?”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, his lips forming the lazy smile that always made Eleanor’s heart flip. “Cheers Miss Marple.”
“Cheers.” Eleanor sipped her drink. “I’ll spend another few minutes on this then I’ll think about supper. Is pizza and salad okay?”
“Perfect,” said Dan, drawing up a chair on the opposite side of the table to his wife and stretching out his long legs. “What’s that?” he asked, nodding towards the book.
“What’s what?”
“It looks like there’s something going down into the spine.”
Eleanor tilted the heavy book up towards her so she could see what her husband was pointing at. “This? Oh, it’s a ribbon bookmark. It should be resting between the pages but it seems to have been folded back on itself and pushed down the spine instead. How odd.”
She tried and failed to pull it out with her fingers. “It seems to be well and truly stuck.”
“You need to reach underneath it with something. Hold on a second,” said Daniel, rummaging through the kitchen drawers. “Try this.”