"It never depressed him, so far as I know," said Joy. "Is that what you're wondering?"
"The books appear to be in order. Up to date."
"They would be. Stanley was methodical, as a treasurer should be." He signalled a shift in tone by putting down his cup and saucer. "Nobody informed me you were taking away the church accounts. I have to say I take a dim view of that."
"I was acting for the coroner," said PC Mitchell without apologising. "We don't upset people for the sake of it, but when all's said and done, we have the job to do and the power to carry it out."
"When will we get them back?"
"Today, if you like. We've finished with them."
"Barking up the wrong tree, then?"
"We bark up all the trees, Rector."
A wasp was hovering over Otis Joy's cake. "The cause of Stanley's death is obvious, isn't it?"
"Not so much as you'd think. He didn't leave a note. That's unusual, him being so methodical."
"Surely the burglary …"
"In my job, you learn not to make assumptions. I just assemble the facts for the coroner. When did you last see Stanley?"
The wasp had settled on the cake. It wouldn't move, even when a paper napkin was waved over it. "Now you're asking. I'm hopeless at remembering."
"But I expect you keep a diary. You'd need to, with all the things you have to do."
"Good thought. Did Stanley keep one?" Joy suggested as a diversion.
"None that we found." PC Mitchell leaned across and flicked the wasp off Joy's piece of cake with his fingernail, killing it outright. "I'd like to see yours."
"1 could fetch it if you like." The offer was half-hearted.
Mitchell gave a nod.
"But I can't let you take it away. I depend on it."
There was no reaction from the coroner's officer.
In the security of his study, Otis Joy turned to the relevant page of the diary. He was ninety-nine per cent sure he hadn't made a note of Stanley's visit on the day of his death. Stanley had not made an appointment. He had come at lunchtime, fretting over the burglary. The chance of anyone having seen him was slight. Mercifully the rectory was not overlooked. It stood at the end of a lane behind the church.
As he thought, there was no record of the visit in the diary.
Back in the garden, George Mitchell had finished his slice of cake, and was biting into a plum he had picked.
"It's just an appointments book," Joy explained. "Baptisms, weddings and funerals and the odd Parish Council meeting."
Mitchell licked his sticky fingers and wiped them on a paper napkin before handling the diary.
"This is the ninth, the day of the burglary."
"Is it? I wouldn't remember."
"You had a day off by the looks of things.";
"That's right. I'm busy on!the Sabbath, you see. I take my day off some time in the week."
"What do you do? Potter about the house?"
"No, I need to get out of the village. There are interruptions if I stay in."
"So you wouldn't have had a visit from Stanley?"
"I wasn't here."
"You're certain?"
Otis Joy hesitated. Did Mitchell have some information? "I told you I went out for the day. What's this about?"
Mitchell turned over the page and looked at the innocuous entries for the 10th: a visit to the church school for scripture lesson; two home calls on recently bereaved families; a wedding preparation meeting; an ecumenical meeting with the Methodist and Catholic clergy at Warminster.
"It's about money," Mitchell said, and Otis Joy twitched.
"Damned flies," he said, rubbing his face.
"On the day of the burglary, Mr. Burrows visited the bank and took out a hundred pounds in cash from his personal account. When he was found, he had less than twenty in his wallet."
"Wasn't some cash stolen from the cottage?"
"Ninety-two pounds. But that was in the morning. He drew out this money in the afternoon."
"And spent about eighty apparently," said the rector, trying to sound uninterested. "Perhaps he had a bill to pay."
"According to the parish account book, he paid a hundred and sixty-two pounds into the church account the same afternoon. Seventy of that was the takings from the bring-and-buy morning. I think the other ninety-two was his own money."
"Why?"
"I think he was too ashamed to tell anyone it was church money that was stolen in the burglary."
Joy frowned. "He didn't say anything to me about it."
"He wouldn't, would he?" said George. "You didn't see him to speak to."
"1 mean he could easily have phoned." The rector sighed heavily. "But you must be right, George. This puts everything in a different light."
"How do you mean, sir?"
Otis Joy's brain was in overdrive. "Knowing Stanley as I do, it would be a body blow to lose church money through carelessness. Devastating. The cash must have been lying around in the house. Usually he banked everything at the first opportunity. He'd take this as a personal failure. I don't like to think of the torment the poor man suffered."
George Mitchell was saying nothing.
"So," the rector summed up, "you've got your explanation. Poor Stanley. He made up the money from his own savings rather than let anyone know. And even then he couldn't live with the shame of it."
This plausible theory seemed to find favour. George nodded, wiped his forehead and replaced his police cap.
"George, you must come here again when you're off duty," said Joy. "Do you play chess, by any chance?"
"Not my game, sir."
"Well, I wouldn't challenge you to Cluedo. With your police training, you must be red hot. Scrabble?"
"I get the tiles out with my wife once in a while."
"Let's indulge, then. How about Monday evening?"
George looked bemused by the prospect of Scrabble with the rector. "All right, sir. Monday evening it is."
"Shall we say seven-thirty? And do call me Otis. Everyone does."
Six
Stanley had a bigger send-off than any departing Fox-ford soul in years. People were standing at the back of the church. There just wasn't room for the extra chairs from the church hall. Former pupils and teaching colleagues came from miles around. The school choir filled the front pews and the singing was glorious.
The Reverend Joy was equal to the occasion. He was in his element that morning, telling the mourners it had become the custom to treat funerals as the celebration of a life and that Stanley's life was worthy of more than that-of a fanfare- regardless of the tragic circumstances of his passing.
He told an enchanting story to illustrate Stanley's devotion to the church: "Sometimes at the end of a service, when we look at the offerings on the collection plate we find a foreign coin-put there by mistake, I'm sure, along with the occasional button."
He waited for some murmured amusement, and got it.
"And you can't get anything back for foreign coins, unfortunately. The exchange bureaux refuse to accept them, so what do we do with them? For years, and long before my time as rector, they were put in an old tin that once held toffees. This troubled Stanley, this money earning nothing for the church. So when he went on holiday to Spain last year-I think it was his first foreign holiday-he said he would take the half-dozen or so peseta coins with him. I said yes, we'd be glad to get shot of them and perhaps he would like to chip in a few English coins in their place. But no, Stanley's idea wasn't to spend the money. He meant to find a Spanish church that kept their foreign coins and do an exchange. A lovely thought, typical of Stanley's thoroughness.
"I think he must have spent most of his time on the Costa del Sol calling at churches instead of relaxing in the sun. Eventually he found a priest who produced a wooden box containing foreign coins, some of them English. They did their little deal, and Stanley returned with six coins of the realm. I congratulated him. He said yes, it was progress, but unfortunately the coins had been kept a long time. They were pennies of the old sort, no longer legal tender. However, he hoped we might be able to sell them. They went into the toffee tin.