The Reaper

'Well, the cakes have all gone, but we're still here,' said Cynthia, beaming and entirely missing the point.

'Am I too late, then? No, I see you have some of my all-time favourites-marguerites.'

'Coconut pyramids, actually.' Cynthia couldn't resist correcting him.

'Whatever. I'll take them. And the damage, Mrs. Hayden-hall?'

Rachel heard and savoured that little touch of formality.

'You can have them for thirty pence,' said Cynthia.

'No special price for the clergy,' said the rector. 'I'll pay full whack.'

'Twenty-five, then,' Rachel said at once.

He thought a moment, then laughed, and looked at Cynthia. 'You weren't over-charging me?'

'It was worth a try,' said Rachel. She was careful not to look at Cynthia. 'In a good cause.'

When the rector had moved on, bag of' cakes in hand, to the next stall, Cynthia said to Rachel, 'What a strange thing to say. It made me look quite foolish.'

There was an unkind answer to that, but Rachel held herself in check. 'Just a bit of fun, Cyn. He knew what was going on. They're human, you know.'

Cynthia turned her head like a hen and looked in the opposite direction.

Rachel nudged her in the ribs. 'I saw him eyeing up your coconut pyramids.'

She swung around, her spirits restored. 'Go on-you didn't!'

'He fancies you something rotten.'

'The rector?' Cynthia's eyes shone. 'He ought to be ashamed of himself.'

Not far away, someone else was discussing the rector. Owen Cumberbatch had recently come to live with his sister in Fox-ford. Tub-shaped and triple-chinned from many years' consumption of pub food and beer, Owen had been a publican all his adult life, steadily drinking the profits. When the brewery retired him, he no longer had a home, so he appealed to his family for help, and his youngest sister, being single and in possession of a good house, was the family's choice for fall guy. Owen was already well known in Foxford as a man eager to impress, claiming friendship with Peter O'Toole, Denis Thatcher, Placido Domingo, Tiger Woods and the late John Lennon, and the names were always prefaced with 'my old chum.' To be fair, he usually had some intriguing inside knowledge of his chums to confide, just enough to create uncertainty.

Pausing by the bottle stall, he was telling Bill Armistead, the organiser of the Neighbourhood Watch scheme, outrageous things about the rector's career as a serial killer. 'Oh, yes, he's clever with it, but there's no denying he did away with several in his last parish, including his wife and the sexton. 1 lived in the next town, you see, so I saw what was going on.'

'I didn't know sextons still existed,' said Armistead, sidestepping the main issue. He didn't want to be caught discussing such slanderous nonsense.

'There's one less at St. Saviour's, Old Morden, I can tell you that,' said Owen with a smile.

'What do they do exactly?'

'Sextons? Look after the building and the churchyard, dig the graves and toll the bell, of course. This one was an awkward cuss, I heard. He disappeared one night. He's on the missing persons' list to this day, but no one's going to find him. Only Otis Joy knows where he is, and he won't tell.'

Armistead looked about him. Nobody was close enough to listen. 'What would a man of God be doing, knocking people off? I can't believe a priest would kill people.'

'That's the clever part. No one suspects him.'

'Except you.'

'Except me, yes. It's an ideal situation for a serial killer when you think about it. A position of trust. Nobody expects the priest to slip them poison in the Communion wine.'

'Now that's ridiculous.'

'There you go. You don't believe he'd do it, so he'd get away with it.'

'You've got a fertile imagination, Owen, but you want to be careful. If he's really in the murdering line, he'll top you one of these days for spreading stories like this.'

Owen took that as a compliment. 'I'll watch out for him, then, be on my guard day and night.'

At last came the time when the raffle was drawn, the bottles of sweet sherry, the knitted dolls, the cheap chocolates and the baskets of fruit claimed, and they could dismantle the stalls. The cakes had raised over eighty pounds. Cynthia strutted across to hand the money to Stanley Burrows, the parish treasurer, confident that her stall had raised more than any other.

Rachel was left to deal with the trestle table. She didn't mind. It was a relief to do something her own way. And even better when someone behind her said, 'You can't lift this on your own.'

She knew the voice. A little frisson of excitement fizzed through her.

Together, she and the rector carried the table across to the church hall and stacked it with the others. 'How about a cuppa in the rectory?' he offered.

Blushing, she said, 'That'p kind, but-';

'It's open house. Other people are coming.'

'Oh. In that case …'

'And I won't be serving coconut pyramids.'

She laughed. 'Saving them all for yourself?'

'Don't ask.'

'But the whole point about the pyramids is that they were built to last, weren't they?'

'Not these.'

The great and good of the parish gathered in the rectory and Rachel was disturbed to find that through some oversight Cynthia had been left out. It couldn't have been deliberate. She went outside to look for her, but she had definitely gone. She would have wanted to be there, and should have been.

Returning, she went into the kitchen to help, not from altruism, but to get a sight of how the rector lived. The kitchen was huge, old-fashioned and spotless.

Two full kettles were slowly coming to the boil. He was alone in there unwrapping biscuits, trying inexpertly to loosen the paper at the top.

'Careful,' she said, and some little demon made her add, 'You may need your apron.'

His eyes flashed and he was quick to respond, 'I only put it on to answer the door.'

She showed him how to cut the packet with a knife. She arranged the biscuits on a plate and offered to carry them in.

'Great idea-but not till I pour the tea. The Potter children.'

'Are they keen on biscuits?'

'Anything. On the last Sunday school outing, Kenny Potter ate three people's picnic lunches and was sick before we got to Weymouth.'

'Watch out, then,' said Rachel. 'I saw him with his sisters going through the hamburgers this afternoon, followed by candy floss.'

He pulled a face. 'Pink alert.'

She laughed. 'So how can I be useful?'

He gave that a moment's thought and said mysteriously, 'By not being useful. Take a seat. Relax.' He went on to explain, 'You've been hard at it all afternoon. This is my chance to thank you.'

'And all the others,' she pointed out.

'And all the others,' he repeated in a downbeat tone that Rachel took as a compliment.

Since this seemed to be getting personal, she said, 'But you've been on duty like the rest of us.'

'So I have,' he said. 'Let's forget the others and clear off to the pub.' He aimed two fingers, pistol-style, at his head. 'Joke. Shouldn't have said that, you a married woman, and me … I think we're coming to the boil, don't you?' He took a large blue teapot to the kettle and warmed it in the approved fashion before tossing in several teabags. 'And if anyone mentions coffee, pretend you didn't hear.'

Rachel carried in the first tray. This wasn't her imagination. The rector was getting frisky. If that was what