Holy Murder

by Rodney Hobson

  “It was three days ago. It was pretty short notice, I can tell you, to get 10 ringers together but some of the bell-ringers come from the fens where she has her practice and she is their GP so they were more conducive to the idea than they might have been. In any case, she stressed that the event would raise money for the church so we felt some obligation to cooperate. So, after a bit of arguing amongst ourselves, we agreed, although I have to admit that Dr Austin had to twist a couple of arms.”

  “She must have been pretty keen,” Amos suggested.

  “I suppose she must have been,” Townsend conceded reluctantly. “It didn’t seem that way, though. Anyway, we agreed to do it. It wasn’t a problem for anyone. Dr Austin stressed that she wanted this event to put Boston Stump in its rightful place at the heart of the community. The idea was to make a joyful occasion of it.”

  “Joyful?” Amos asked thoughtfully. “Yet your choice of music – if that’s the right word – was a little out of kilter if I may say so. The Brides of Mavis Enderby is a warning peal, is it not?”

  “You’re remarkably well informed,” Townsend said enthusiastically. “Yes indeed, traditionally pealed from this very church to warn of East Coast floods or pirate raids. But few people would know that these days. I assumed that Dr Austin chose it because its curious name refers to a small Lincolnshire village.”

  Amos, however, did know all about the peal. He could not resist quoting triumphantly from Jean Ingelow’s poem High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire:

  “The old mayor climbed the belfry tower,

  The ringers ran by two, by three;

  ‘Pull if ye never pulled before;

  Good ringers, pull your best,’ quoth he,

  ‘Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston Bells!

  Play all your changes, all your swells,

  Play uppe The Brides of Enderby’.”

  Townsend picked up his story: “For the past 40 years, since the last flooding of the East Coast in 1953, we have practised that peal once a month, always at low tide, as Dr Austin was well aware, so that no-one can mistake it for a genuine warning.

  “We will ring it in earnest at high tide if the sea defences are ever breached again, heaven forbid.”

  “Did she not tell you when to start the peal?” Amos enquired. “Didn’t she ask you to wait until the tower was empty?”

  “She gave us a precise time to start,” Townsend replied emphatically, “and we were spot on, at the lowest point of the tide, so no-one could mistake it for a genuine warning. The Haven was practically down to a dribble. Timing is everything for campanologists. She said that would be when there was a break between the experienced abseiling team members making the descent and the first of the volunteers. It would really attract attention, she said.”

  Amos resisted the temptation to ask “are you sure?” again, given the indignation he provoked the last time he queried Townsend’s recollection of events.

  “It didn’t work out that way, though, did it?” he asked instead. “I gather that two people were at the top of the tower and another two, including Dr Austin, were on their way up when you started.”

  “How was I to know?” Townsend demanded. “I was in the belfry with the rest of my team. We did as we were asked and I resent taking the blame, though everybody seems to think it was my fault.”

  “I don’t think anyone blames you for Simeon Knowles’s death,” the detective inspector reassured him. “You didn’t get much chance to sabotage the equipment.”

  Chapter 7

  A quick check with Detective Sergeants Swift from HQ and Burnside from Boston confirmed that all the key suspects had been interviewed and names and addresses of lesser mortals had been taken as far as possible.

  The basic story from each suspect who had been interviewed in detail was much the same. Detective Inspector Paul Amos was satisfied that they now had a good idea of the morning’s events up to the death of a man who was widely referred to as Saint Simeon.

  The one person Amos did want to talk to again, Dr Lesley Austin, had disappeared. There had been no reason to detain her further once she had finished her interview. Not to worry, Amos thought, we can catch up with her at her surgery in due course.

  “We need,” Amos said, “to climb up to the walkway to see the spot where Saint Simeon got as near to God as he could before meeting his end. Gerry,” he said to Burnside, “you don’t have to come up if you don’t want to. It’ll be a long, steep climb.”

  “Like hell I won’t come up,” Burnside exclaimed irreverently. “I’ve worked directly opposite the Stump for years and never been to the top. Too mean to pay a couple of quid for the privilege. Now I can do it free. They say the views are spectacular.”

  The churchwarden came bustling up as the three officers made their way to the pillar at the northeast corner of the tower. The door at the bottom of the spiral stone stairway had stood open all the time with a lone policewoman on guard.

  “It’s a one way system,” the churchwarden said. “You go up this tower and come down the other staircase. There’s virtually nowhere to pass on the stairs. I trust that you are all in good health. No heart problems? There’s 300 steps to the walkway.”

  Amos simply ignored the obsequious man and walked past him to the foot of the spiral stairway, nodding in acknowledgement to the sentinel policewoman.

  “Go at a slow, steady pace,” Amos said over his shoulder as he squeezed through the narrow doorway. Burnside followed him with alacrity but soon found that he was condemned to move at Amos’s sensible speed. Swift tagged on the end with somewhat less enthusiasm.

  They climbed the steep, circular stairway in silence, save for the rhythmic beat of footsteps and the increasing puffing emanating from Amos. At last the inspector reached a small alcove where he could pause for breath and allow Burnside to come bounding through.

  “See you at the top,” Burnside called back cheerily. “Last one up’s a cissy.”

  It was a few moments before Swift reached Amos, by which time he had recovered his breath sufficiently to resume the climb. He set off again with scarcely a glance at Swift. His steady plod, plod, plod took him relentlessly higher and he became conscious in the confined space that the echo of Burnside’s steps was slowing noticeably until it was beating at a lesser rate than his own footsteps.

  Swift, in contrast, was not audible at any pace.

  Amos eventually saw daylight percolating down through the gloom. He heard Burnside puffing his way onto the eastern walkway as he rounded the last twist of the tight, circular climb.

  Burnside was collapsed over the railings atop the waist-high stone wall, desperately recovering his breath and trying to look nonchalantly across 250 feet of church roof to the river Witham meandering out to the nearest corner of the Wash.

  “Fantastic view,” he wheezed. “You can see all along the Norfolk coast to Hunstanton.”

  Amos had been all for walking straight along the north face of the tower to reach the western walkway from which Simeon Knowles had plunged to his fate but he succumbed to temptation and hoisted himself up the very steep step that separated him from the vision that had so captivated his Bostonian colleague.

  Even without binoculars, you could just distinguish the big wheel at the fairground at Hunstanton.

  “Best get on,” Amos said, dragging himself reluctantly away from the vista. Burnside, having recovered his breath, nodded his assent. It was only then that they realised Swift was edging cautiously and nervously up the final steps of the narrow circular stairway.

  She looked distinctly green. In the low light she had the appearance of a ghostly apparition approaching from the depths.

  Chapter 8

  Amos gasped.

  “Juliet, what on earth has happened? Have you been attacked?” he asked urgently, flushed with guilt that in his quest to show up the bounding Burnside he had neglected his deputy.

  Swift hovered at the exit to the stairway, committing herself to go neither left nor right, i
nstead clinging to the central spine of the spiral.

  “Sorry, sir,” she gasped. “I’m not too good at heights. I thought I could do it.”

  “Go back to ground level,” Amos urged her. “It’s OK, there’ll be no-one coming up.”

  “No, no. I’ve got to beat it. If I go back down to the next level and get my breath back I’ll be all right.”

  With that, Swift edged gingerly back down the narrow spiral.

  Amos hesitated for a moment but decided to plough on with his inspection. He and the now fully recovered Burnside walked along the north side of the Stump, admiring the view across flat land to the south wolds some 15 miles away. On the Western horizon, Lincoln Cathedral could be seen standing sentinel at the edge of the escarpment left by the retreating ice age.

  Amos looked over the low wall down at the tent erected to cover the body of the unfortunate Knowles. The river had filled up and a couple of small boats that had been left high and dry when the abseiling event began were now bobbing merrily as water flowing from the sluice gates a hundred yards or so upriver met the incoming tide.

  Ropes still festooned the outside Western wall of the Stump and a harness lay on the walkway. Two small fold-up seats were propped against the inner wall and a thermos flask lay on its side next to them as if it had been knocked over. A small plastic box stood nearby.

  Amos prised the top off the box and looked inside. It contained sandwiches and two slices of madeira cake. The food had not been touched.

  Burnside checked the ropes. They were in perfect condition and were fastened securely to metal rings set in the wall rising up to the lantern tower atop the Stump. Everything seemed to be in order.

  Amos looked again down across the river. The sizeable crowd that had melted away as soon as police officers had started taking names and addresses was building up again and the appearance of two figures at what had been the point of no return for Simeon Knowles produced an extra attention.

  “I don’t think we can do anything more up here,” Amos declared. “Let’s make our way back down and see if Juliet is OK.”

  “I think we’re supposed to come back down a different staircase,” Burnside commented. “The one at this far corner.” He indicated that they should go round the southwest corner and along the southern wall. “I don’t suppose anyone will be coming up but you can hardly squeeze past, it’s so tight.”

  The pair moved along in the direction that Burnside had pointed out, pausing momentarily to watch a two-carriage train from Skegness edge into Boston station before proceeding to Grantham.

  The few seconds delay was sufficient to allow Swift to emerge at the corner behind and to call out to them. As they swung round in surprise, Swift began to edge gingerly towards them, her back firmly against the inner wall of the walkway. She fixed her eyes on them, not daring to look up or down, or out across the stunning vista.

  Burnside gallantly pushed past Amos and positioned himself between Swift and the low wall along the edge of the walkway. As he leaned back nonchalantly against the metal safety rail, Swift let out a screech and grabbed his arm, pulling him from the edge. An ironic cheer went up from the far river bank.

  “Sorry,” Burnside muttered. “I was trying to help.”

  “Don’t,” Swift replied ungraciously and, ignoring the hapless would-be Sir Galahad, sidled more quickly along to Amos.

  At each corner there was a circular turret where the walkway passed through a small archway. Swift felt more comfortable in the enclosed space. Recovering her composure, she addressed Amos: “I went back down to the belfry level. I can usually climb higher if I go back a bit and take a few deep breaths.

  “As I came down I heard someone coming up the stairs at a brisk pace and saw him open the door onto the floor the bell-ringers stood on. We’d walked past the door on the way up without really noticing it.

  “So I followed him in. It was that creepy churchwarden. He seemed to be looking for something near the wall over to my left. He really jumped when he realised he was being watched.”

  Swift was all the time looking intently at Amos, not daring to let her eyes stray towards the wide open spaces beyond the archway.

  “Did you see him actually pick anything up?” Amos asked.

  “No, but he had his back to me so I can’t be sure. He muttered something about checking if the bell ropes had been hung up properly and scooted off in a flash through a door in the corner nearest to him. He’d gone before I could stop him and I could hear his feet clattering down the steps – there’s another spiral stairway down that corner.”

  Amos nodded.

  “Yes, there seems to be a one-way system. You come up one set of steps and go back down the other. Gerry. Get down those steps to the belfry. He may have come back.”

  Burnside squeezed with some difficulty past the other two officers, strode briskly along the south face and disappeared into the southeast turret.

  “Ready for the final dash?” Amos asked in a kindly, fatherly way.

  Swift nodded and walked unsteadily across to the sanctuary of the stairway without glancing over the bustling town laid out below in the sunshine.

  Going down the roles were reversed. Swift scurried round and round the spiral, each step taking her closer to the safety of the ground while Amos stumbled, his eyes taking time to adjust from sunshine to semi-darkness and his larger feet finding the inside of the anticlockwise spiral too narrow for his left foot.

  Amos finally arrived at the belfry level puffing more than he had on the ascent. Burnside was inquiring solicitously and persistently about how Swift was coping, much to her increasing irritation. She grabbed the opportunity to break away from the clearly disappointed Boston officer to report to Amos.

  “Nothing here,” she said in as business-like a tone as she could muster. “If the churchwarden was looking for something, either he had already picked it up when I saw him or he came back while we were at the top. Either way he certainly wasn’t tidying up the bell ropes.”

  Amos looked around the small room. Sure enough, the ropes had been left higgledy piggledy as if dropped in haste.

  “We’d obviously better have another word with him before he gets away,” Amos said. “What’s his name?”

  The other two looked blank.

  “Did either of you interview him?”

  Again blank looks.

  “He was never there when anyone was free to interview him,” Burnside blustered. “He was always fussing around when you didn’t want him. I’m not sure anyone got a statement from him. He kept slipping through the net.”

  There was no time to argue about whose fault it was.

  “You two get down the stairs and find him,” Amos ordered. “And don’t let him go.”

  Juliet Swift swept to the door with a sideways glance to ensure that she would be through well clear of Burnside and set off down the stairs. Burnside followed with alacrity but a good couple of seconds behind.

  Amos took one final look round the belfry room and followed them down the spiral stairway.

  Chapter 9

  Back down at ground level the church had cleared except for a dozen church officials who stood or sat around, looking blank and shocked. They were scattered in ones and twos as if not daring to speak to each other after the dreadful event. Some were in the open area between the north and south doors, others were in pews down the start of the aisle. All were silent.

  Amos stood in the centre of the space at the base of the tower and looked round for the churchwarden. He was nowhere to be seen.

  One of the young women who served in the shop on the north side of the open space, and who stood in its doorway with her colleague, guessed who the inspector was trying to locate.

  “If you’re looking for the churchwarden, he was here a couple of minutes ago,” she proffered. “I saw him come down from the Stump but I didn’t see where he went.”

  “He’s like that tribe in Brazil, the invisibles,” a nervous elderly lady in one of th
e pews chimed in. “You know,” she added to her nearest companion, feeling the relief of just saying something, however unhelpful, “the one where they filmed the dam collapse in miniature on Ashby river. He just merges in and out of the woodwork, the same as the tribe did in the rainforest.”

  Sensing Amos’s growing frustration, one of the bell-ringers stepped forward and said: “I saw him slip out through the north door. He moves like a shadow, a ghost.”

  Amos looked at the officer guarding the north door.

  “Sorry, sir,” he stammered. “I understood we were releasing people who had been interviewed.”

  Burnside took the sheets of interview statements and shuffled through them twice, shaking his head.

  “It looks like he slipped through the net,” he admitted warily, speaking as quietly as possible to minimise the broadcasting of the blunder.

  “Let’s start with his name,” Amos said, with an air of barely controlled exasperation. He looked round in expectation but about half of those present had blank stares and for three or four seconds no-one spoke.

  Then a general hubbub broke out. Some people were saying: “I don’t know his name, do you?” Then the name Fred emanated from different directions. Something about “up the A16” emerged among the chatter.

  Amos held up his hands for silence.

  “For heaven’s sake,” he cried. “Someone must know his name and address.”

  The curate stepped forward.

  “He was a very private man and hardly spoke to anyone unless he had to. When he had to give his name he usually just said Fred. His full name was Fred Worthington. But I don’t know where he lived. He was very evasive about it.”