Death After Evensong

by Douglas Clark

  Masters was impressed. He’d often worked from drab stations. This was more comfortable and lived-in than he had expected or hoped for. There was a bright fire with a bucket of coal and a heap of fuzzy peat blocks on the hearth: two easy chairs and the carver from an old dining set: on the table a red chenille cloth stained with ink blots and fringed with bobbles: on the floor a square of straw-coloured, broadloom Armadillo matting. In an alcove was a modern sink unit with a two-burner gas ring and a kettle on the draining board. Nicholson introduced a young constable: ‘P.C. Crome. He was the one called to the body.’ He turned to Masters. ‘Crome’s one of the two stationed here in Rooksby. The other is Senior Constable Vanden, who’ll be seeing the kids across the road after school before reporting back for a cup of tea.’ He raised his voice. ‘And talking of tea, jump to it, Crome, lad. Our visitors’ll want a pot of hot and strong, and I’m feeling dry myself.’

  Masters was summing up Nicholson. The superintendent was heavily built and still fair-haired where a dark man might have turned grey. He put Masters in mind of a retired professional footballer. He moved with the forward slant and the stiff, hunched gait of a man who had done too much physical training earlier in life and was now taking no exercise at all.

  The tea came up dark in blue and white banded mugs. Masters gulped a mouthful and said to Nicholson: ‘You called us in a bit quick, didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew we’d have to have you as soon as I saw the body. Too fishy right from the word go. And when we couldn’t find either a weapon or a bullet after an hour’s search, I told the C.C. that I reckoned you’d like to get here today rather than tomorrow. And he agreed.’

  Green had joined them. ‘He was shot, you say?’

  ‘Shot, yes. But we couldn’t find the bullet.’

  ‘Bullet hole in the wall, ceiling, floor? In a bit of furniture?’

  Nicholson didn’t like Green’s patronizing tone. He said, stiffly: ‘We looked everywhere.’

  Green narrowed his eyes and opened his lips in disbelief. Masters forestalled any remark. He said: ‘Perhaps we could start at the beginning.’ Green took the hint, walked over to the fire and started warming his hands. Hill and Brant were with Crome at the sink. Nicholson said: ‘There’s not much to tell.’ He set his mug down and lit a cigarette. Masters guessed he wasn’t quite sure how and where to start.

  ‘Crome was on early turn this morning. At eight o’clock he was standing on the corner of the square opposite here.’

  ‘Where the main road runs out?’

  ‘That’s it. It’s the best place for keeping an eye on the early heavy stuff going through. Anyhow, about five past eight . . .’

  ‘Was it still dark?’

  ‘Darkish. Sunrise was about a quarter to eight, but it’s a dull day. Anyhow, one of the local builder’s men ran up to Crome and told him they’d just found the parson dead in the school.’

  ‘The school we passed on the way in?’

  ‘That’s the new school. This was the old one. Used to be the Church School. In use up to Christmas, but the Comprehensive opened in the new year, so the old one closed down.’

  ‘What were the builders doing? Pulling it down?’

  ‘No. It’s been rented by the potato factory as a despatch store. They’ve got brickies and chippies in turning one classroom into offices and making a loading bay out of the school hall.’

  Masters could see it in his mind’s eye, using his own first school as a stage setting. An old building with a flagged hall that was too cold and draughty to be used as anything but a corridor. He remembered it with a little burst of nostalgia. How happy he’d been there. He used to ring the handbell—a coveted honour. He said: ‘The workmen clocked in at eight and found the body?’

  ‘That’s right. It’d been empty since they left on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Was the school locked over the weekend?’

  Nicholson grimaced in disgust. ‘Was it hellers like! You’ll see for yourself. The playground wall’s been knocked down to let in the lorries and the wall of the school itself has been knocked out at the back to make the loading bay.’

  ‘So anybody could get in and out as they wanted. And probably unseen.’

  ‘If they wanted to. Certainly they could by dark. Mark you, there were some planks nailed up in the gap in the school wall, but they only had to be prised aside.’

  Masters began to fill his pipe. He asked: ‘Where’s the body now?’

  ‘Still there. Just as it was found.’

  ‘What?’

  Nicholson shrugged. ‘When I knew you were coming up straight away I thought you’d like to see him just as we found him. The weather’s as cold as any mortuary slab so I didn’t think it would do any harm.’

  He didn’t say so, but Masters’ opinion of Nicholson went up a few notches. He contented himself with: ‘That was a useful idea. Had I known, I wouldn’t have wasted time here.’

  ‘No hurry. The electric’s still on in the school so you’ll have plenty of light.’

  ‘What about the workmen? Are they still there?’

  ‘They’d got some other job they could do so we let them collect their tools and push off. My sergeant’s in charge at the school.’

  Masters picked up his coat. He said: ‘I suppose they nailed up the entrance because they’d left their tools in the school. Anything reported missing?’

  ‘Nothing. I thought of that one.’

  They moved towards the door. Green, behind them, said: ‘Have we got anywhere to stay?’

  Nicholson said: ‘There’s five pubs in Rooksby, but only one with any accommodation—the Goblin. We’re not what you might call a holiday centre . . .’ Masters shivered inwardly at the thought, ‘. . . but a few commercials come this way now and again. Binkhorst can let you have two singles and one double. All right?’

  Masters going first down the stairs said: ‘Who’s Binkhorst? The publican? Is he foreign?’

  ‘He’s not, but his wife is. Italiano. You’ll find a lot of foreign-sounding names in Rooksby. Dutch mostly. Like Vanden, our other constable here.’

  Green said: ‘Why?’

  ‘They came over to do the draining ages ago. They made Rooksby their centre and settled here.’

  Green said: ‘So we’re dealing with a crowd of Boers. I had a hunch they were something like that.’ He turned to Crome, arriving last at the foot of the stairs. ‘Who’s the character called Perce who shoves a barrowful of buckets about the streets?’

  ‘That’ll be Percy Jonker, sir. He keeps the ironmonger’s. He’d be fetching a load from his warehouse to the shop if you saw him.’

  ‘I saw him. Ironmonger! Troublemonger more like. He’ll be behind iron bars if he’s not careful. Tell him to watch it or I’ll shove his nose up his own backside and make a wheelbarrow trundle out of him.’

  Masters asked: ‘And who is Ted who drives a ten-tonner for the potato factory?’

  ‘Ted Blount, sir. Our local boxer.’

  ‘He looked a bit of a bruiser. And what, or where, is Barrett’s?’

  ‘Barrett’s farm, sir. Big potato growers. If that’s where Ted was going today he’d be in a hurry.’

  ‘He was. But why?’

  ‘They’ll have opened up a clamp, sir, and they’ll be wanting to get all the potatoes moved before night in case the frost sets in.’

  They’d reached the car. Masters said to Nicholson: ‘How far’s the school?’

  ‘About a couple of hundred yards.’

  ‘In that case d’you mind if we walk? I’d like to see the village. Sergeant Brant can bring the car along. And I don’t think there’s any need for your constable to come.’

  Crome was disappointed. He hung back as the others set off. Green didn’t like the thought of being out in the cold wind, but he felt relieved he wouldn’t have to drive in failing light through more narrow streets with the chance of ten-tonners bearing down on him from behind. Nicholson pointed out the Goblin facing across the square. Leaning again
st the wind they moved past the drab war memorial and out along the single pavement of the main road. Masters felt that not only the weather was depressing. On their side they passed little houses with doors opening directly from front rooms on to the narrow path. Across the road were death-trap shops lit by low-powered bulbs. Masters wondered whether the youngsters of Rooksby stuck to the place when they grew up or whether they swelled the belt-fed migration to the south-east. He decided the Dutch element would probably stay on, perpetuating their isolationist enclave, while the native British would flee to more congenial areas, glad to be free of drab, flat surroundings and dour neighbours.

  They came to another crossroad: a replica of the spot where they had met Perce, except that here two of the corners were shop premises. A private grocer and the Co-op shop in direct competition. They turned left round a high wall of old bricks newly rebuilt. The nameplate said: Church Walk.

  Nicholson broke the silence. ‘This on the left is the vicarage garden. It stretches from here to the church.’ Masters could just make out, forty or fifty yards away across the end of Church Walk, a lych-gate. Beyond that, a few bare trees silhouetted against a bit of sky a paler grey than the rest; and the heavy blur of a church tower. Nicholson added: ‘The other side’s all school property—or was.’

  Masters crossed to look. The others followed. Behind a four-foot wall was what had once been the school garden. Ill-cared for and drear, even in the gathering gloom, the small plot divisions where children had laboured could still be made out. A wall divided the garden from the school itself. The main building stood about ten feet back from Church Walk, behind high iron railings on a dwarf footing. The narrow path to the playground behind ran between the garden wall and the gable end of the school. Masters stopped at the main gate and looked across at the vicarage opposite: a tall, greyish, nondescript house too big for present-day needs. He walked on, past the remainder of the school railings to the lych-gate. He noted that an unmetalled way, guarded by upright wooden posts to stop vehicles, ran off to the right between the walls of the churchyard and school. The church stood a hundred gloomy feet away. Too big ever to be filled these days. He guessed the churchyard was permanently fuller than the pews could ever be. A hummocky carpet of graves and broken stones with—strangely stark—a few early daffodils, golden in the gloom, being blown to an early death. Between the trunks of bare trees behind the church he could just make out the grey water of an overfull dyke poppling in the wind. He shivered mentally: cheerless and cold. He spared a moment to wonder if the dead vicar’s last view of his church had been as full of foreboding as this.

  He joined the others at the main gate. Brant had arrived in the car. Nicholson led the way round the side alley to the playground. Loads of sand, ballast and bricks were dumped on a still clearly marked-out netball pitch. The lean-to bicycle shed was housing hundredweight bags of cement. The back wall of the school had been roughly holed. A light shone out. Masters saw that two tall windows and the brick courses between and below them had gone. Wooden puncheons supported the gap. Between the puncheons the builders had nailed a crazy wall of old doors and worn floor boards. Some had been levered aside. Just inside the gap, out of the wind, was one of Nicholson’s detective constables. He was standing six inches below the level of the playground. Silhouetted against the light he appeared deformed, with a great body on legs too short to support it.

  Masters peered in. The wooden floor and joists of what had formerly been the school hall had been ripped out. The space below was half filled with hard core, ready for concreting. Nicholson asked: ‘Where’s Sergeant Chapman?’

  ‘In the classroom, sir.’

  There were obviously several classrooms: green doors with spherical brass handles, badly tarnished, led off the hall at both ends. Masters and Green followed Nicholson diagonally across the rubble. Nicholson opened one of the doors and stepped up into the room. Masters half expected to see rows of desks. Instead, the floor was littered with rolls of thermal padding for roofs; a neat heap of six by four plaster boards; and a several hundred foot run of heavy squared timber. Sergeant Chapman was sitting on a form at a makeshift table made from a blackboard resting on saw benches. He hadn’t made it himself. Judging from the brewing gear, Masters guessed it was where the workmen wetted their tea. Nicholson asked: ‘Anything new?’

  Chapman got to his feet. He looked keen, but browned off. ‘Nothing, sir. I’ve written up the workmen’s statements and the doctor’s verbal report. And I had a good scout round outside while it was still light. Nothing there besides building materials and junk. No blood anywhere apart from the wall. And no bullet inside here, either.’

  Green said: ‘These rolls of padding would conceal a bullet.’ He sounded accusing. Chapman didn’t like it. He said: ‘I’ve been through them with a flea comb.’

  Masters was looking round the room. It was just like one he’d known as a kid. He could have described it with his eyes shut. No ceiling. It ran, high roofed, up to an apex with brown painted heavy beams laid across at wall top level, tied by long metal bottle screws to the roof trusses. He remembered thinking how, as a little boy, he’d imagined himself climbing among them: but always his imagination had soared too high for his childish equilibrium, and he’d felt a stab of fear at the thought of the drop even though his feet had been firmly planted on the floor.

  The joiners had already started putting up a false ceiling. Subsidiary struts of raw, white wood were nailed across the beams, waiting for plaster boards and the insulating material. Nicholson said in a whisper: ‘They’re lowering it so’s they’ll be able to keep it warm.’ He was in the presence of death and it constrained him.

  Masters asked, in a normal voice: ‘Why heat a warehouse? Or does dried potato have to be kept warm?’

  ‘Not warm. Dry. But that’s not the point here. This room’s being divided into offices.’

  Green said: ‘That explains those plates on the walls.’

  Masters looked puzzled. ‘Plates?’

  ‘Those planks of wood nailed vertically. See? One plumb in the centre of each wall. They’re there to take the ends of partitions.’

  Nicholson said: ‘That’s right. And the vicar was standing dead in front of one of them when he was killed. Have a look.’ Green opened his mouth to sneer at the unintentional pun and then thought better of it. They followed Nicholson. On the floor, near the wall opposite the door, was the body. It was covered with a sheet of heavy duty, milkily transparent polythene.

  Sergeant Chapman drew the stiff sheet aside. Masters asked: ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Herbert James Parseloe. Known locally as Gobby Parseloe.’

  Green asked why.

  ‘Because he was always either speaking or eating at other people’s expense.’

  Masters asked: ‘Not popular?’

  ‘Not very. He was an outner, of course. Nobody who’s not been born in Rooksby is ever really well received.’

  Masters hitched his new trousers and squatted beside the dead man. He studied him carefully from top to toe. The bloodless face with the beard area covered in stubble. The thin hair, still mainly black, plastered down with solid brilliantine that still glistened, and though awry now, obviously worn dressed into a skimpy covering for the obvious bald patch. The meagre moustache, shaved too narrow for the depth of the upper lip, giving a downward, mean look to the thin mouth. The gold-rimmed spectacles the wrong shape for the face—too wide and too shallow to make them a congruent feature. The dog-collar with a faint rime of grubbiness along the upper edge which suggested it had been worn a day too long. The cassock, unbuttoned as far as the waist, but still held firm by a cord round the middle. Black corduroy trousers, pale grey nylon socks and slip-on shoes, dull and scuffed for want of polish.

  There was blood about. Not much. Masters drew the stiff top of the cassock aside. Green said: ‘Where’s his black front?’

  Because Green had been so pleased with himself about the plates on the walls, Masters said without l
ooking up: ‘Rabats are worn with jackets, not necessarily with cassocks.’

  The shirt had a saucer-sized bloodstain with a small ragged hole near the top edge. Green said: ‘He didn’t bleed much.’

  ‘I’d have thought there would have been more,’ Nicholson said.

  ‘If he died instantly, as he must have done, there’d only be one pump of blood left in the heart. About an eggcupful. It’d be forced down the artery and out. After that, nothing. His vest, shirt and cassock would soak it up easily.’ With great care Masters moved the shirt front. The strands of the string vest were clogged, stiff and dry. A small, bluish, jagged hole showed up almost in the centre of the chest. He examined it closely without speaking. Green squatted beside him, frightened to miss anything. Nicholson said: ‘What’s up? Aren’t you satisfied?’

  Masters didn’t answer immediately. He took a small plastic rule from his pocket and took a couple of measurements near the entrance wound. Then he asked: ‘Is this the position he was in when he was found?’

  ‘Not quite. The doctor had to examine him, so we had to move him a bit.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘He wasn’t on his back.’ Chapman came over with a photograph. ‘Like this. More on his side. At least his face was. See? And his chest was over frontwards.’

  ‘But still in this spot?’

  ‘Right there. We turned his top half over so that the doctor could get at his chest, but his legs didn’t move much.’

  Masters said: ‘Can you put him back like he was?’

  Chapman stepped forward slowly. He didn’t like the job. Masters helped until Nicholson was satisfied. All they could now see of the features was the left-hand profile. In the middle of the back was a mess of gore, solidified, dark, unpleasant. Masters felt sick. The vomit actually reached his throat. It took conscious effort to keep it down. Green stared and then turned away, heaving. Masters, forcing himself to do it, used his rule to lay bare the crater. Nearly three inches in diameter and an inch deep. Only when he was satisfied he could have missed nothing did he straighten up, the rule dangling between finger and thumb.