Before Gary left for New Orleans with his jazz cronies, he told Rachel her broken wrist wasn't going to stop him going.
She said with dignity, "Why should it? I can manage."
"I'm just telling you I don't feel guilty. You'd like me to feel a total shit, but I don't."
"Come off it, Gary. I didn't break the wrist on purpose."
"Just an act of God, was it?"
"What?"
"An act of God. It happened in the churchyard under the rector's nose. God arranged it. There's got to be some dividend from all the Sundays you've spent in Church."
"Drop it, Gary."
"God could have put the mockers on my trip, couldn't he? I'd have to be a right bastard to leave you here with a broken arm. Well, maybe I am. You take all the sympathy that's going. Wallow in it. I'll send you a postcard."
"I can't wait."
He left for Heathrow the same evening.
Rachel opened a bottle of wine to celebrate and picked up her copy of There Goes the Bride, in which she was cast as Miriam in the Frome Troupers' October production. She was half through her first glass when the doorbell rang. She said, "Heavens above!" — and had a premonition that Otis Joy was there. She dashed to the mirror and scraped her hair into place and freshened up her lipstick.
When she got to the door, Cynthia Haydenhall was standing there, all dressed up for a visit. The disappointment must have been screamingly obvious because Cynthia said, "Were you expecting someone else, then?"
"No. I was sitting with my feet up, having a glass of wine."
"Where's Gary?"
Cynthia was unstoppable when rooting out information.
"On his way to New Orleans for the jazz. He left this morning.
"Oh? How long?"
"Three weeks."
"And you didn't go?"
"It's a sad old lads'thing."
"You don't mind if I come in, then? I've heard something that will make your hair stand on end."
With a build-up like that, it was impossible to send her away.
Seated in Gary's armchair, with a glass of Merlot in her hand, Cynthia explained, "I know someone who knows someone who works for the church, in the diocesan office. She says-this is Gospel truth, Rachel-Marcus Glastonbury, the bishop who killed himself, was into SM."
"What's that?" said Rachel, thinking it must be shorthand for spirit messages, or some form of worship regarded with suspicion by the church establishment.
"Come on, amigo. We're grown-ups. What do you think it is? Sadomasochism."
Rachel was speechless, eyes popping.
"Isn't it shocking?" Cynthia launched into her hot gossip. "He liked to have his backside whacked by women in black corsets. The night he killed himself he was on the phone to some creature who called herself Madam Swish, 'able with a cane.' "
Now Rachel couldn't stop herself from giggling. "Say that again."
Cynthia repeated it, shaking with laughter. "It isn't funny at all really. I bet he didn't tell her what he did for a living."
"He wouldn't, would he? How do they know about this?"
"His credit card."
"He used his credit card to make the phone call?"
"Those sex lines are expensive. You'd jolly soon run out of coins."
"And they traced it back. The church people?" Rachel was smiling again, thinking of some pure-minded person in the diocesan office getting through to Madam Swish.
"No, the police. They found it on his bill from Visa. You see, his state of mind on the night he died has to be investigated. There's got to be an inquest. They reckon he was so ashamed after using the sex line that he killed himself."
"Poor bloke." She felt guilty now, for laughing.
"He'd marked his bible at some passage about harlots. It was found in the car with a porn mag."
"That's awful."
"Of course it won't get out," Cynthia said. "They're going to keep it confidential."
Some chance, with you telling all and sundry, thought Rachel. "Surely it will have to be made public at the inquest?"
Cynthia was at her most irritating now, airing her supposed inside knowledge. "There's no need for that. In a case like this, the police tell the coroner ahead of time and he agrees to take certain bits of the evidence as read. It won't affect the verdict. There's enough to show that he meant to commit suicide. I mean, you don't drive your car into a quarry and park it at the top by accident."
"But they have to show he was depressed."
"That's no problem usually. Bishops are under a lot of stress. Someone will say he was overworked and worried about his health, or the state of the world. It's the best way to handle a sensitive case like this."
"Maybe," said Rachel, not entirely convinced.
"For the sake of the Church."
"And his family, I reckon. Did he have a wife?"
"No, but there are two sisters in their seventies. They wouldn't want the sordid details in the papers."
The facts were clear. Little else of substance needed saying, but Cynthia plainly didn't want to leave it.
"Of course, you know why some men want to be humiliated like that, don't you? I've heard the excuse that it goes back to the public school system, canings, and so on, but it goes much deeper than that. It's all about guilt. They're men with troubled consciences. Their minds are filled with lustful thoughts about women, and they feel so guilty that the only remedy is a good thrashing. It's the natural thing, really-for men of that sort, anyway. I don't think women are like that at all. Suffering is built into our lives, our monthly cycles, childbirth. Guys don't have any of that. They need punishing."
"You sound as if you wouldn't mind dishing some out," ventured Rachel, as the wine talked.
Cynthia smiled and took another sip, becoming skittish. "Why not, if they're attractive men? I could name a few bottoms I wouldn't mind beating."
"Bishops?"
"God, no. They'd be flabby and covered in pimples."
"Who, then? Name them. You said you would." Rachel could be just as shameless as Cynthia at stoking up the girl-talk.
"I said I could. I didn't say I would."
"Go on," she coaxed her.
Cynthia hid most of her face behind the wineglass. "Michael Owen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp."
"I thought you were talking about people we know."
"I couldn't"
"Couldn't do it or couldn't say?"
"You've made me all flustered now."
"Never. Attractive men, you said. Are there any in Foxford?"
"Several. All I'm willing to say is that they're under thirty and not at all like the bishop." Cynthia reached for the bottle and filled her glass again. "My idea is that they deserve a good beating and have to report to me and bend over my laundry basket for me to administer six of the best. And I make it sting."
"Wow!" said Rachel. The detail of the laundry basket gave Cynthia's whimsy unexpected substance. This was a full-blown fantasy. "So what have they done to deserve this?"
"Oh, passed me in their car without offering me a lift. Or ignored me in the village shop."
"You're very severe."
Cynthia smirked. "Only on the ones I secretly fancy. If I'm feeling lenient I wait for a second offence. It's only in my head, so it doesn't really hurt anyone."
Rachel was imagining some innocent bloke accepting an invitation to a meal in Cynthia's cottage.
"The other day, after the church fete, when you didn't get invited back to the rectory did you …?"
"Take it out on the rector? You bet I did. He got a right seeing-to."
"Oh, Cynthia!"
"Well, it wasn't very nice of him, considering all the work I do for the church. You're going to tell me it wasn't deliberate, just an oversight, and perhaps it was, but he ought to have thought of me first-well, among the first."