time. A sort of promise, really, and quite usual.”
“You are sure, Jack? I should not like you to be placed in an awkward situation.”
“Quite sure. And by the time the cheque has to be honoured, your money to repay the five hundred for the Lucy will have come through—you did say three weeks, didn’t you?—and been put into our joint account.”
He leaned back, smiling. “Now then, what do you think of that?”
“Well, it certainly does sound an excellent plan. I had no idea banks could be so accommodating. Mine seems so terribly unapproachable. Perhaps it is because I have never asked about such things.”
“Probably,” Trelawney said.
He looked at his watch.
“I think we’ll just have nice time to go round and set things moving.”
Inspector Purbright, blissfully unaware of the failure of the Pook-Love consortium, was looking into the windows of his favourite shops in Northgate as he made his way slowly towards the Oxmove mission hall.
Long before he arrived there, the light breeze carried to his ear the eternal song of the blessed. Did they ever leave the hall for meals, he wondered, or were nutrients administered to them where they stood, as was done for the stalwart and single-minded bellringers of St Luke’s, Chalmsbury, into whose mouths were thrust sponges soaked in egg nog and set on sticks.
He entered the gloom of the porch—a sort of corrugated iron Galilee chapel stuck on the main building—and felt for the farther door. Pushing this open, he was met and winded by the full force of the hymn.
The light from three bare electric bulbs hung high in the garage-like roof was reflected stickily from match- boarding walls and from rows of benches that seemed to have been fashioned from treacle toffee. The air was cold and smelled like old women’s washstands.
Having regard to the noise, the congregation was incredibly small—a knot of perhaps a dozen at the left front.
Just beyond them, a woman wearing a big black hat jerked backwards and forwards before a harmonium. There was an air of desperation about her; she held down first one lot of keys, then another, then quickly submerged a third bunch—just as though they were a litter of black and white kittens, too numerous and too resilient to drown.
The minister, the Reverend Leonard Leaper, stood by the harmonium, leaning lightly upon it and singing like mad.
Purbright advanced a little way down the aisle. He made polite beckoning gestures towards Mr Leaper.
Mr Leaper gave him a cheerful wave and sang even louder.
The inspector again caught his attention and signalled more peremptorily. Leaper abandoned the harmonium and walked up to him. The congregation seemed not to notice the defection; it just went on bellowing on into God’s ear.
“Hello there, brother,” greeted Leaper.
Purbright merely nodded. He remembered Leaper’s previous existence, as a young newspaper reporter, when it had always been Hello, chief. Obnoxious modes of address seemed endemic to his nature.
They went into the relatively hymn-proof porch.
“I was wondering if you could help me, Len.”
“Fire away, brother.”
“Do you know a woman called Reckitt—Miss Martha Reckitt?”
Leaper’s eyes crossed to regard the end of his long, spiky nose; it was his way of aiding thought. “Yes,” he said after a while, “I think I do.”
“How well?”
“I used to talk to her sometimes, try to offer her comfort and tidings, brother, tidings.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not of late, I should say. No, definitely not of late.”
“You don’t happen to know of any friendships she might have struck up in the last couple of months or so? There’s been some mention of a clergyman. First name, Giles.”
Again Leaper’s vision converged upon his nose tip, but this time to no avail. “Of a Giles I know nothing. Or a clergyman, so called? Nix, brother, nix.”
“We understand that Miss Reckitt subscribed to an organization called Handclasp House, a sort of matrimonial bureau...”
“That’s right,” confirmed Leaper proudly. “I advised her to.”
“You, Len?”
“I did, brother. And within scripture. Multiply, remember. That’s one way of looking at it. The widows of Sidon? Oh, yes, but I’m not to be caught on that. Do you know Sister Staunch?”
“I have met her.”
“A goodly woman. I am glad, brother, to help where I can.”
Good lord, thought Purbright; was this tatter-minded pepperminty young man a Rasputin to the Staunch’s Tsarina? Absurd. Finding him a bit simple, she probably encouraged him to hang around in order to give the impression that her agency enjoyed church patronage.
