went upstairs and poked his head into several empty bedrooms. He came down again and stood in the hall listening. Then he returned to his study and tried to concentrate on his sermon, but the feeling that he was not alone persisted. The Rev St John Froude sat at his desk and considered the possibility of ghosts. Something very odd was going on. At one o’clock he went down the hall to the kitchen for lunch and discovered that a pint of milk had disappeared from the pantry and that the remains of an apple pie that Mrs Snape who did his cleaning twice weekly had brought him had also vanished. He made do with baked beans on toast and tottered upstairs for his afternoon nap. It was while he was there that he first heard the voices. Or rather one voice. It seemed to come from his study. The Rev St John Froude sat up in bed. If his ears weren’t betraying him and in view of the morning’s weird events he was inclined to believe that they were he could have sworn someone had been using his telephone. He got up and put on his shoes. Someone was crying. He went out on to the landing and listened. The sobbing had stopped. He went downstairs and looked in all the rooms on the ground floor but, apart from the fact that a dust cover had been removed from one of the armchairs in the unused sitting-room, there was no sign of anyone. He was just about to go upstairs again when the telephone rang. He went into the study and answered it.
‘Waterswick Vicarage,’ he mumbled.
‘This is Fenland Constabulary,’ said a man. ‘We’ve just had a call from your number purporting to come from a Mrs Wilt!
‘Mrs Wilt?’ said the Rev St John Froude. ‘Mrs. Wilt? I’m afraid there must be some mistake. I don’t know any Mrs Wilt.’
‘The call definitely came from your phone, sir.’
The Rev St John Froude considered the matter. ‘This is all very peculiar,’ he said, ‘I live alone.’
‘You are the Vicar?’
‘Of course I’m the Vicar. This is the Vicarage and I am the Vicar.’
‘I see, sir. And your name is?’
‘The Reverend St John Froude…F…R…O…U…D…E.’
‘Quite sir, and you definitely don’t have a woman in the house.’
‘Of course I don’t have a woman in the house. I find the suggestion distinctly improper. I am a…’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we just have to check these things out. We’ve had a call from Mrs Wilt, or at least a woman claiming to be Mrs Wilt, and it came from your phone…’
‘Who is this Mrs Wilt? I’ve never heard of a Mrs Wilt.’
‘Well sir. Mrs Wilt…it’s a bit difficult really. She’s supposed to have been murdered.’
‘Murdered?’ said the Rev St John Froude. ‘Did you say “murdered”?’
‘Let’s just say she is missing from home in suspicious circumstances. We’re holding her husband for questioning.’
The Rev St John Froude shook his head. ‘How very unfortunate.’ he murmured.
‘Thank you for your help, sir,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Sorry we have disturbed you.’
The Rev St John Froude put the phone down thoughtfully. The notion that he was sharing the house with a disembodied and recently murdered woman was not one that he had wanted to put to his caller. His reputation for eccentricity was already sufficiently widespread without adding to it. On the other hand what he had seen on the boat in Eel Stretch bore, now that he came to think of it, all the hallmarks of murder. Perhaps in some extraordinary way he had been a witness to a tragedy that had already occurred, a sort of post-mortem deja vu if that was the right way of putting it. Certainly if the husband were
