The man, dressed in a plain black shirt and matching jacket and trousers, turned towards her, a white collar at his neck. He spoke to the two women, one of them giggled and nodded, and then he threaded his way through the pews.
He swaggered towards Kay, an easy smile breaking through his fashionably trimmed beard.
She realised he probably managed to charm all the ladies in the congregation, and smiled before holding up her warrant card as the religious man joined her, his brow creasing.
‘Duncan Saddleworth?’ she said, her voice echoing in the space between them.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m DS Kay Hunter from Kent Police,’ she said. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’
‘About?’ He ran his hand over light brown hair, his expression wary.
‘Sophie Whittaker.’
He glanced over his shoulder at the two women trying their best not to stare while they worked, and back to Kay. ‘Um, okay, well I suppose we could use the vestry.’
‘Lead the way.’
Saddleworth turned left and moved towards the back of the church.
Kay raised her gaze to the gallery, the pipes from the church organ vaulting up into the shadows of the ceiling, a spotlight above the organist’s chair casting a soft yellow hue over the rows of keys and buttons.
The lines of pews ended and as Kay passed a large stone font, the plain flagstones gave way to a thin carpet. A flight of steps behind an ornate wooden screen led up to the gallery, and then Saddleworth opened a door and held it so Kay could enter before him.
‘Give me a moment,’ he said as he followed her in and closed the door behind them, ‘I’ll clear one of these chairs for you.’
As he began lifting what looked like Sunday school textbooks from a chair next to the door, Kay ran her eyes over a small desk covered in various pages from a notebook, a large bible opened three-quarters of the way through, and a small printer. An ancient computer sat to one side, its keyboard gathering dust – either from lack of use or the cleaners being banned from the room, she supposed.
‘Here, please – have a seat,’ said Saddleworth.
‘Thank you.’
Kay lowered herself into the wooden chair, put her bag on the floor at her feet and extracted her notebook and a pen.
She waited while Saddleworth fussed over the pages on his desk before he clipped them together, tossed them onto the open bible and sat down, his hands clasped in front of him.
‘Now, Detective, how can I help? I gave my statement to the police last night.’
‘I understand,’ said Kay. ‘As I’ll be co-managing the investigation, however, I like to speak to people myself wherever possible. What time did you arrive at the Whittakers’ house?’
‘Just after five o’clock,’ said Saddleworth. ‘Sophie was getting a bad case of stage fright, I think.’ He smiled benevolently. ‘Diane phoned me an hour before and said Sophie wanted to go through her lines one more time before the ceremony.’ A wistful expression crossed his face. ‘She needn’t have worried – she was perfect.’
‘I’ll come back to that in a moment,’ said Kay. ‘Can you tell me a bit about yourself?’ She gestured around the room. ‘How did you end up here? I can hear a trace of an American accent, can’t I?’
Saddleworth smiled, and leaned back in his chair. ‘I was a bit of a nomad before I came here,’ he said. ‘When I graduated from Oxford, I volunteered to work abroad with a charity – I ended up in South America for a couple of years, and then ended up in Connecticut.’
‘How come? Seems an odd choice.’
‘I met some people while I was serving in Ecuador who were from Bridgeport, and their volunteering stint ended at the same time as mine, so they invited me to go back to the States with them.’ He sighed. ‘After being away from England for so long, I knew I’d have to work hard once I got back here, so I figured a short stay in the USA on the way home would give me a kind of a break first.’
‘How long were you there for?’
‘About a year.’
‘That’s a long holiday.’
‘I ended up helping out in one of the local churches. I only came back here because my visa was due to expire.’
‘And this was when?’
‘Six years ago,’ he said. ‘I came to Maidstone two years ago.’
Kay leaned forward on the chair to try and stop her backside going numb while ignoring the ominous creak from the dilapidated furniture. ‘This “purity pledge” that Sophie took yesterday. What’s all that about? I’ve never heard of it before.’
‘It’s become very popular in the past fifteen to twenty years amongst the more conservative church organisations—’
‘Like the one you worked with in Connecticut?’
He nodded. ‘The purity movement started in Connecticut,’ he said. ‘And grew in popularity as more and more girls chose to take a pledge. In short, a girl can be any age to take it, but it’s typically done between the ages of twelve to sixteen.’
‘About the time they’d start taking an interest in boys, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go on.’
‘The girl, Sophie in this case, undertakes to remain chaste until her wedding day, and to serve God. The father, Matthew in this case, makes an oath to help his daughter maintain that pledge.’
‘What about boys?’
Saddleworth shook his head. ‘No. Boys aren’t required to take the oath. Upon marriage, any woman that has taken a purity pledge in her youth forgives her future husband for any indiscretions he may have committed.’
Kay lowered her gaze and drove her pen nib into her notebook. She made herself count to ten before speaking.
‘Surely this “purity movement” as you call it is simply based on hysteria formed out of the notion that a girl could be damned by her God if she doesn’t take the pledge, or if she breaks it?’ said Kay, her brow furrowed. ‘It’s just a way of controlling a potentially wayward teenager, isn’t it?’
She resisted the urge to throw her pen at Saddleworth as a patient
