“Good morning, sir. I am Detective Sergeant Love, from Flaxborough, and I should like to speak to the manager.”
Love believed that straightforward declarations of this kind were more productive in the long run than the clever, pussy-footed approach.
“’Ow do?” responded the man. He held out his hand. “Brother Culpepper’s the name.”
As he shook hands, Love tried not to show the apprehension that always rose within him whenever involvement with religion threatened. A bloody monk! Surreptitiously, he glanced across the other’s shoulder for the sure sign of monkhood, a cowl. Yes, there it was.
“Pleased to meet you, Your, er...” (Reverence, was it? Grace?)
“The boss ain’t ’ere yet,” said Brother Culpepper. “I’m on me tod, ’smatterfact. Anyfink I can do for you?”
“Well, I don’t quite know. I’m just making some routine inquiries.”
Brother Culpepper looked up at him in friendly wonderment.
“Wot, somebody lost somefink, you mean?”
The chirpy Cockney accent increased rather than diminished Love’s respect. A man who could achieve holy orders despite such a social disadvantage must clearly be of the strongest character.
“No, nothing special, really. I just want to check on various things. Food and Drugs Act. You know.”
“Like to see rahnd? I’m the ’erbmaster. Or if you’d rather come back abaht eleven... Christ! I’ve left them choppers runnin’...”
He darted back into the shed. A few seconds later, the electric blender noise died.
“Sorry abaht that, but they run ’ot if they’re left. Nah then, wot was I sayin’?—yeah, if you like to give it an hour, the boss orter be in then. Wotcher fink?”
Love deliberated.
“Well, actually... Beg pardon, what was it you said you did here?”
“I’m ’erbmaster.”
“You look after the, er...” Love jerked his head towards the sheds.
“Thasright. The ’ole caboodle—’erbs, driers, choppers—the lot.”
“But isn’t there anyone else here? Working, I mean.”
“Only young Florrie.”
Brother Culpepper looked at his hands, then gave them a vigorous wipe on a square yard of his robe.
“She comes over three times a week from Moldham to do the packin’ an’ that. Then there’s the boss, o’ course. Office stuff—she does all that. But ’er hours ain’t wot you’d call regular, ’cos she’s got a long way to come, see.”
“And do you have far to travel?” Love knew of only one monastery and that was twenty miles the other side of Flaxborough.
“Wot, me? I live in, ’erbmasters always live in, mate. There are fings can go wrong. Lots o’fings.”
“Oh,” said Love.
He looked away from the man’s bright, upturned face. It reminded him a little of the face of a salesman on Flaxborough market who once had inveigled him into buying a ‘fuel extender’ to increase by forty per cent his motor cycle’s mileage performance. It had turned the petrol into a toffee-like substance that had effectively sealed the engine for ever. But this fellow seemed genuine enough. Why should he wear this get-up out here in the middle of nowhere if he wasn’t a real monk?
“I’ve always rather fancied gardening,” Love remarked. “Nice quiet sort of life.” He hoped he had compensated for the unworthy straying of his thoughts.
“Oh, it’s ’eaven,” agreed Brother Culpepper.
He regarded the sergeant carefully for a moment.
“I’m on wot they call release from the Order, see? Sort of lent aht. Abbot’s dispensation.”
“Ah,” said Love, nodding.
“Lickewer’s really my line, o’ course. Chartroose. This makes a change, though.”
“Yes, it must.”
Love gazed past the end shed, trying to discern some area of disciplined cultivation in the wilderness of weeds.
“What is it, exactly, this, er...you know—what you make here?”
“Wot is it?” echoed Culpepper, incredulously. “Don’t tell me you ’aven’t ’eard of Lucky Fen Wort?”
“Well, I...”
“Balm of Befle’em?”
The sergeant pretended to think hard.
“Samson’s Salad?” urged Culpepper. “Cor, but you must ’ave!”
“Oh, that. Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Course you ’ave!” The monk puffed his cheeks rougishly and gave Love’s chest a flip with the back of his hand.
The sergeant swallowed. “What is it supposed to do, though? I’m not very well up on herbs.”
At once Culpepper’s face was serious and eager once more.
“Look,” he said, “if I didn’t know wot was wot regardin’ miracles an’ that, I’d say that stuff was one. A miracle. No—straight up, I would.”
“Good, is it?”
“Good? Good?” Culpepper’s little eyes squeezed to mere creases behind his glasses, then popped. “It’s aht o’ this flippin’ world, bruvver!”
“You mean it cures things?”
“Har...”—Culpepper raised a finger—“as to that, we’ve got to be careful, ’aven’t we, eh? Claims is dodgy fings. I’m not goin’ to stand ’ere an’ tell you Lucky Fen Wort will cure this and Lucky Fen Wort will cure that. I mean, I know all abaht renderin’ under Caesar an’ all that. But wot I will say—and may ’E strike me if I tell a lie—’Im, not Caesar, I mean—wot I will say is, Lucky Fen Wort didn’t get it’s name for nuffink.”
The sergeant looked at his watch. The inspector was not going to thank him for having spent an entire morning learning that the promoters of Samson’s Salad offered nothing more definite than good luck (the late Alderman Winge’s experience notwithstanding).
“This manager of yours—you think she’d be here about eleven.”
“Should be.”
“And what did you say her name was?”
Brother Culpepper hauled up his gown and fished a leather wallet from his trousers pocket. He extracted a pale lilac card and handed it to Love.
“That’s ’er.” He pointed to the name in the bottom left corner of the card. “Luvly lady. Used to be a missionary.”
The sergeant noted that a smile of blissful devotion had appeared on Culpepper’s face. He examined the card. Under a delicate floral motif was printed MOLDHAM MERES LABORATORIES, MOLDHAM, ENGLAND...Director: Lucilla E. C. Teatime, M.B.E.
Love frowned, but only for a second.
“Is that the Miss Teatime who does the charity work in Flax?”
“Wot! You know ’er?” A beam of surprise and congratulation.
“We have met once or twice.”
“Oh, a luvly lady!”
Love looked again at the card, then slipped it into his pocket. “I hadn’t realized she was an M.B.E.”