the cabin door opened and she looked up at the silhouette of the Rev St John Froude in the cabin doorway.
‘What the hell…’ she muttered and leapt off Gaskell.
The Rev St John Froude hesitated. He had come to say his piece and say it he would but he had clearly intruded on a very naked woman with a horribly made-up face in the act of making love to a man who as far as a quick glance enabled him to tell had no face at all.
‘I…’ he began and stopped. The man on the bunk had rolled on to the floor and was writhing there in the most extraordinary fashion. The Rev St John Froude stared down at him aghast. The man was not only faceless but his hands were tied behind his back.
‘My dear fellow,’ said the Vicar, appalled at the scene and looped up at the naked woman for some sort of explanation.’ She was staring at him demonically and holding a large kitchen knife. The Rev St John Froude stumbled back into the cockpit as the woman advanced towards him holding the knife in front of her with both hands. She was clearly quite demented. So was the man on the floor. He rolled about and dragged his head from side to side. The bathing-cap came off but the Rev St. John Froude was too busy scrambling over the side into his rowing boat to notice. He cast off as the ghastly woman lunged towards him and began to row away his original mission entirely forgotten. In the cockpit Sally stood screaming abuse at him and behind her a shape had appeared in the cabin door. The Vicar was grateful to see that the man had a face now, not a nice face, a positively horrible face but a face for all that, and he was coming up behind the woman with some hideous intention. The next moment the intention was carried out. The man hurled himself at her, the knife dropped onto the deck, the woman scrabbled at the side of the boat and then slid forward into the water. The Rev St John Froude waited no longer. He rowed vigorously away. Whatever appalling orgy of sexual perversion he had interrupted, he wanted none of it on painted women with knives who called him a motherfucking sort of a cuntsucker, among other things didn’t elicit sympathy when the object of their obscene passions pushed them into the water. And in any case they were Americans. The Rev St John Froude had no time for Americans. They epitomized everything he found offensive about the modern world. Imbued with a new disgust for the present and an urge to hit the whisky he rowed home and tied up at the bottom of the garden.
Behind him in the cabin cruiser Gaskell ceased shouting. The priest who had saved his life had ignored his hoarse pleas for further help and Sally was standing waist-deep in water beside the boat. Well she could stay there. He went back into the cabin, turned so that he could lock the door with his tied hands and then looked around for something to cut the silk scarf with. He was still very frightened.
‘Right,’ said Inspector Flint, ’so what did you do then?’
‘Got up and read the Sunday papers’
‘After that?’
‘I ate a plate of All-Bran and drank some tea.
‘Tea? You sure it was tea? Last time you said coffee.’
‘Which time?’
‘The last time you told it.’
‘I drank tea.’
‘What then?’
‘I gave Clem his breakfast.’
‘What sort?’
‘Chappie.’
‘Last time you said Bonzo.’
‘This time I say Chappie.’
‘Make up your mind. Which sort was it?’
