‘Oh yes, we will,’ he had shouted hoarsely. ‘If there is one single pie left from that batch we’ll get it and when we do the Lab boys will…’
‘Find nothing but pork in it,’ said Wilt before being dragged off to his cell. At least that was the truth and if Flint didn’t believe it that was his own fault. He had asked for a confession and he had got one by courtesy of Meat one, the apprentice butchers who had spent so many hours of Liberal Studies explaining the workings of Sweetbreads Meat Factory to him and had actually taken him down there one afternoon to show him how it all worked. Dear lads. And how he had loathed them at the time. Which only went to show how wrong you could be about people. Wilt was just wondering if he had been wrong about Eva and perhaps she was dead when he fell asleep.
In the churchyard Eva watched the Rev St John Froude walk down to the boathouse and start rowing towards the reeds. As soon as he had disappeared she made her way up the path towards the house. With the Vicar out of the way she was prepared to take the risk of meeting his wife. She stole through the doorway into the courtyard and looked about her. The place had a dilapidated air about it and a pile of empty bottles in one corner, whiskey and gin bottles, seemed to indicate that he might well be unmarried. Still clutching her ivy, she went across to the door, evidently the kitchen door, and knocked. There was no answer. She crossed to the window and looked inside. The kitchen was large, distinctly untidy and had all the hallmarks of a bachelor existence about it. She went back to the door and knocked again and she was just wondering what to do now when there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive.
Eva hesitated for a second and then tried the door. It was unlocked. She stepped inside and shut the door as a milk van drove into the courtyard. Eva listened while the milkman put down several bottles and then drove away. Then she turned and went down the passage to the front hall. If she could find the phone she could ring Henry and he could come out in the car and fetch her. She would go back to the church and wait for him there. But the hall was empty. She poked her head into several rooms with a goad deal of care and found them largely bare of furniture or with dustcovers over chairs and sofas. The place was incredibly untidy too. Definitely the Vicar was a bachelor. Finally she found his study. There was a phone on the desk. Eva went over and lifted the receiver and dialled Ipford 66066. Then was no reply. Henry would be at the Tech. She dialled the Tech number and asked for Mr Wilt.
‘Wilt?’ said the girl on the switchboard. ‘Mr Wilt?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva in a low voice.
‘I’m afraid he’s not here.’ said the girl.
‘Not there? But he’s got to be there.’
‘Well he isn’t.’
‘But he’s got to be. It’s desperately important I get in touch with him.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’ said the girl.
‘But…’ Eva began and glanced out of the window. The Vicar had returned and was walking up the garden path towards her, ‘Oh God,’ she muttered and put the phone down hurriedly. She turned and rushed out of the room in a state of panic. Only when she had made her way back along the passage to the kitchen did it occur to her that she had left her ivy behind in the study. There were footsteps in the passage. Eva looked frantically around, decided against the courtyard and went up a flight of stone steps to the first floor. There she stood and listened. Her heart was palpitating. She was naked and alone in a strange house with a clergyman and Henry wasn’t at the Tech when he should have been and the girl on the switchboard had sounded most peculiar, almost as though there was something wrong with wanting to speak to Henry. She had no idea what to do.
In the kitchen the Rev St John Froude had a very good idea what he wanted to do; expunge for ever the vision of the inferno to which he had been lured by those vile things with their meaningless messages floating across the water. He dug a fresh bottle of Teachers out of the cupboard and took it back to his study what he had witnessed had been so grotesque, so evidently evil, so awful, so prescient of hell itself that he was in two minds whether it had been real or simply a waking nightmare. A man without a face, whose hands were tied behind his back, a woman with a painted face and a knife, the language…The Rev St John Froude opened the bottle and was about to pour a glass when his eye fell on the ivy Eva had left on the chair. He put the bottle down hastily and stared at the leaves. Here was another mystery to perplex him. How had a clump of ivy got on to the chair in his study? It certainly hadn’t been there when he had left the house. He picked it up gingerly and put it on his desk. Then he sat down and contemplated it with a growing sense of unease. Something was happening in his world that he could not understand. And what about the strange figure he had seen flitting about between the tombstones? He had quite forgotten her. The Rev St John Froude got up and went out on to the terrace and down the path to the church.
‘On a Sunday?’ shouted the manager of Sweetbreads. ‘On a Sunday? But we don’t work on a Sunday. There’s nobody here, The place is shut.’
‘It wasn’t last Sunday and there was someone here, Mr Kidney,’ said the Inspector.
‘Kidley, please,’ said the manager. ‘Kidley with an L.’
The Inspector nodded. ‘OK Mr Kidley, now what I’m telling you is that this man Wilt was here last Sunday and he…’
‘How did he get in?’
‘He used a ladder against the back wall from the car park.’
‘In broad daylight? He’d have been seen.’
‘At two o’clock in the morning, Mr Kidney.’
‘Kidley, Inspector, Kidley.’
‘Look Mr Kidley, if you work in a place like this with name like that you’re asking for it.’
Mr Kidley looked at him belligerently. ‘And if you’re telling me that some bloody maniac came in here with three dead bodies last Sunday and spent the day using our equipment to convert them into cooked meat edible for human consumption under the Food Regulations Act, I’m telling you that that come under the head of…Head? What did he do with the heads?’ Tell me that?’
‘What do you do with heads, Mr Kidley?’ asked the Inspector.
‘That rather depends. Some of them go with the offal into the animal food bins…’