Murdering Ministers (19 page)

From another box, Welkin took out a stack of Communion glasses.

“How many glasses did Foison prepare?” he asked Foot.

“He said he filled the two inner rings, but left the outer one empty.”

Welkin counted quickly, then began to put the glasses into the holder.

“That's about twenty glasses in each,” he said. “Forty altogether.”

“And only half a bottle of wine?” said Paddock. “Stone me, when I take me girlfriend out to a posh dinner, we're lucky if we can get two glasses each out of a whole bot.”

“What's the wine list like at Pizza Hut?” asked Foot, laughing so hard at his own joke, he was barely able to articulate. Paddock punched him playfully in the arm.

“All right, let's see,” said Welkin quickly, lifting a liter-sized bottle of Communion wine from the box.

“Wassat, guv? Gin?” asked Foot.

“Nah, it's holy water,” Paddock cut in, with a guffaw. “Then we're going to say our prayers and hope for a miracle.”

“I don't get it,” Foot admitted, after a token laugh.

Welkin finished preparing the glasses in silence and held the bottle up to the light. All of the glasses now contained a thimbleful of water, and the bottle was still half full.

“Big bottle, small glasses,” he said, putting the bottle on the floor and taking some index cards from his pocket, which he distributed among the detectives.

“Oh, I see why we're all here,” said Stoodby excitedly. “We're going to reenact the crime.” He held up his own card, which said “TAPSTER.”

“Blimey, Trev, you're gonna be the stiff,” cried Foot, brandishing his own identification as Potiphar. “That's typecasting. Hey, I wonder how they were planning to get the lid on that coffin. Perhaps it'll have to be banana-shaped, so he'll fit properly.”

“The rigor mortis does pass, you know,” Effie snapped wearily from the far end of the table. She had received Coppersmith, while Tish beside her was Quarterboy.

“It's a shame his old lady wasn't there to take advantage of the situation for one last time, if you get my drift,” Foot continued, nudging Paddock (Dock), who collapsed against him. Welkin stood back, instinctively guessing what was about to happen.

With the self-centeredness of the amateur japester, Foot had started to look around the room, to gauge the effect of what he thought was a barrage of Wildean wit. Trev Stoodby seemed genuinely offended—what had come over that prissy little git in the last couple of days, he used to love a good laugh? Graham Paddock was in hysterics, he's a good lad. Welkin wasn't saying anything; maybe he wasn't such a stuck-up arsehole after all. Tish was looking away, shocked, she probably didn't get it.
Not all she's not getting, I bet, I could show her what she's missing, give her one of Tezza's best boinks. Same goes for Goldilocks Strongitharm, too—thinks she too bloody good for us with her Scotland Yard this, Scotland Yard that, and all that bloody hair. She's the only one looking back at me…

Effie did not utter a word. Her disapproving, cold blue eyes spoke volumes. Foot felt his brain filling with ideas, images, faster than he could take it in. Somehow, in that moment, he found he knew all about Effie's experiences with murder, about the boundless professionalism of her colleagues, and how in two years of working with one of the best and most admired homicide detectives in the country and with at least two dozen cases under her belt, she had never once heard an investigating officer breathe a word of disrespect for the corpse. There was a dignity to death, no matter how undignified the dying. And he, a petty, pusillanimous man, barely out of uniform, working his first murder case as a detective, was wasting his able mind and everybody's valuable time with the constant quest for the cheap, the mean, the hurtful. He had fouled the code with his first footstep. (It was, after all, his imbecilic idea to keep on those Santa Claus outfits when they entered the church the day before.) A hundred years ago, his brother officers would have left him alone in an anteroom, with a loaded revolver and instructions to do the decent thing.

A millisecond later, he broke from Effie's gaze and stopped laughing. He stood up.

“Sir,” he said huskily to Welkin. “Those remarks were really out of line, and I apologize. I especially want to apologize to DS Strongitharm and DC Belfry for the, well, improper implications in my foolish comments. They were indecent and insulting. I'm very, very sorry.”

He sat down again, flushing, and stared disconsolately at his tie. Stoodby reached across and gently squeezed his hand. Foot sniffed and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. Sitting between them and turning from one to the other, Paddock looked mystified and slightly nauseous.

“Apology accepted, Terry,” said Welkin smoothly, taking his place at the table again and showing them that his index card said “PILTDOWN.” He picked up his notes.

“All right, I've conflated all the statements, including Sergeant Strongitharm's account of what happened, although she wasn't in the church when Tapster showed the first signs of poisoning. Surprisingly, there is almost no disagreement among the twenty-odd witnesses, at least in terms of the order in which things happened. We have to assume, then, that it's what's missing from at least one of these statements that will point to the guilty party. Let's begin to find out.”

In slow-motion, they reenacted the Communion service, from the point where Stoodby, as Tapster, resumed his seat after singing the strange carol. Welkin/Piltdown passed the bread plates to Tish/Quarterboy and Paddock/Dock, and they dutifully walked around the others and toward the imaginary congregation, returning the same way. Then the wineglass holders were given to Effie/Coppersmith and Stoodby/Tapster, who also walked into the church, removed the right number of glasses for the communicants on each aisle, and returned to the table. They watched carefully, pausing to make notes and comments, as Welkin now took the holder from Stoodby and passed it along the row of deacons. Stoodby drank the water and placed the glass on the table in front of him.

“Strychnine takes a while to work,” he commented. “Are we sure the poison couldn't have been in the bread?”

“The forensic report says it was in the dregs of Tapster's wine glass and no other,” Welkin answered.

“We're assuming the poison was meant for Tapster, because of all the trouble he was causing in the church,” Effie commented eventually. “But what if it wasn't?”

“Let's hear it.”

“I can think of two possibilities,” she continued. “Number one, it was a totally random act—somebody slipped the poison into the glass not knowing who would take it. And in that case, it could have happened at any time. Barry Foison may have done it. Any of the deacons who were milling around the table before the Communion service began. One of the two deacons who carried the wine to the communicants. Or even one of the communicants, spiking a glass that was still left in the holder. It was pure chance that Tapster took it.”

“But if it was one of the deacons,” said Tish, “how could he—or she, if we include Patience—have known which was the poisoned glass, so as to avoid it? Assuming it hadn't been taken already.”

“I've been wondering about the honey in Tapster's stomach, and on his hand,” Effie said. “Do you think there's a possibility that a smear of honey was a way of marking the glass, so the perpetrator would know which one to avoid. From a distance, it would look like a dribble of wine.”

“Not a bad idea,” admitted Welkin. “I was wondering if the honey had been some way of delivering the strychnine. You know, pour the powder into a blob of honey, wait for it to harden slightly, and then pop your pellet into the wine and hope the mark guzzles it at one go. But I still don't know when it could have been done. What was your other idea, Effie?”

“Oh, this is something I did witness. DC Foot isn't supposed to be here.”

I know, Foot agreed privately, I'm unworthy to walk among civilized people, I belong with the reptiles, the vermin, the mollusks of the world. But does she need to rub it in?

“I mean the person he's representing, Cedric Potiphar, wasn't supposed to be on the stage,” Effie continued, with a sly grin at Foot's guilty flinch, the only visible sign of his internal soliloquy. “Potiphar had lost his seat on the diaconate at the annual church meeting last Friday. His presence on the platform was a surprise. Perhaps it was a force of habit, perhaps it was a protest, or perhaps he felt the other deacons would all be too polite to tell him to go away, which they were. But that's what caused Tapster to be sitting on the piano stool for his first Communion as a deacon.”

“And you think Potiphar was the killer? That the real reason for going up there was to slip the poison into the wine of the man who had supplanted him?”

Effie shook her head. “No, I was wondering if his unexpected presence had somehow thrown off the killer's plans. Was there some method or order to the distribution of the glasses that Potiphar's presence screwed up?”

Welkin looked dubiously at the glass holder in front of him. “That sounds a little far-fetched,” he said, absentmindedly prodding the holder. “I know conjurors can make people take a particular card from a pack—it's called forcing it. And I was wondering if Piltdown had somehow forced a glass onto Tapster, by positioning this contraption at a certain angle or distance. But I don't see how you can anticipate the order in which a group of people will pluck their glass from one of these things.”

Effie was silent, suddenly aware that this idea only gave them further grounds for suspecting Piltdown.

“Another possibility, sir,” said Tish.

“Let's hear it.”

“We did a very thorough inspection of the table and platform, and we searched the minister and every deacon, but we didn't find any indication of how the poison was transported to the stage. Every deacon, that is, but one. Tapster.”

“If you're suggesting he wanted to commit suicide, Tish, I can think of considerably less painful methods,” said Effie wryly, unavoidably remembering the agony in Tapster's eyes.

“Maybe he was trying to kill somebody else on the platform and it all went horribly wrong for him. Perhaps he put his glass down for a second and DC Paddock switched it? I mean Dock.”

“You forget that we did search Tapster,” Welkin continued, looking though his notes. “Or at least the pathologist went over his clothes at the lab. Let's see, in his pockets he had some loose change, a credit card case, a set of keys, a handkerchief, a guitar pick, a pen, and a comb. Nothing else—certainly nothing like a vial or a small box that could have contained strychnine.”

“He could have hidden it in his guitar case,” Stoodby suggested.

“We took the case in with the evidence. It contained another plectrum and a spare set of strings. Oh, and a guitar. Which had no secret compartments, incidentally.”

“Well, he did go out to the back of the church just before the Communion service,” Tish persisted. “Perhaps he picked up the poisoned glass then. Why else would he have left the sanctuary?”

“He was taking a leak!” Welkin exclaimed.

The door opened, and a uniformed policewoman bustled into the room. She stopped dead when she saw the entire CID staff sitting in a row in thoughtful silence, like a truncated
tableau vivant
of Da Vinci's
The Last Supper
. She reversed out of the room again without speaking.

“Let's leave it there for now,” said Welkin eventually, climbing stiffly to his feet. “Since we can't fathom the means or the opportunity, I'm going back to the motive. I think it's time to give the Reverend Piltdown another rattle.”

“The Reverend
Mr.
Piltdown,” Effie muttered pleasantly, following Welkin into his office and closing the door. “You have to use the full title, Sir.”

Welkin froze. Effie had called him “sir.” She had never called him that in her life. That could only mean she wanted a favor, and now he was petrified in case he couldn't grant it.

“I'll remember that,” he said guardedly, wondering if he could anticipate the request. “Thanks for your help, Eff, I appreciated the mental workout. You know you'd be my first choice to assist me on this case, but I feel I should give one of my regular people a test drive.”

Effie sat down uninvited and loosened the ribbon that she had used that morning to gather her formidable hair. Oh shit, now he was for it.

“I wanted to ask you a favor, Sir,” she said. He shivered. “Do you remember Superintendent Mallard's nephew, Oliver? Oliver Swithin?”

An image of a slightly weedy, slightly toothy, slightly awkward young man with fair hair and cheap glasses flashed into Welkin's mind. Mallard had him in tow last summer, either as a technical advisor or for some perverse form of light relief, he hadn't figured out which. Pleasant bloke, not quite Welkin's cup of tea, but bright enough and prepared to be friendly in a shy sort of way, which is more than can be said for a lot of those stuck-up expert witnesses, flashing their bloody university degrees and strutting around crime scenes like Lord and Lady Muck of Turd Hill. But wait a moment, some half-absorbed memory was leaping to his defense—hadn't Gloomy Gus Moldwarp told him that Effie and this Swithin geezer have a little romance going on?
Tread carefully, Spiv.

“Isn't he the one who writes those kids' books about a stoat?” he asked, trying to stay on neutral territory.

“That's the one. You may remember that Tim Mallard thinks very highly of him.”

“Well?”

“Well, I happen to know him quite well. In fact, Sir, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that we are very good friends. But my reason for mentioning him is that he is also an old friend of Paul Piltdown, and he knows several of the characters involved in this case, including the late Nigel Tapster.”