Reverend Pritam Anand chewed a second codeine tablet and winced at the taste. He’d woken that morning with his head throbbing and feeling as if his brain had been grabbed by invisible hands and wrung like a wet hand towel. Nothing had eased it all day, and he was looking forward to a quiet rest before resuming his chess game with John when he heard the knocking at the presbytery door.
Now, two guests were in the sitting room.
Pritam quietly shut the door at the far side of the room that led to the bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen.
“I don’t want to wake the Right Reverend,” he explained. “He’s an odd sleeper. He’ll rise about ten tonight till two or three in the morning.”
He returned to sit opposite Nicholas Close and his sister, Suzette Moynahan. The siblings each held a cup of steaming coffee.
The sitting room’s walls were lined with bookshelves. Its chairs were old but comfortable leather club seats. A chessboard was set mid-game on a small occasional table. A mantel clock tocked and a bar heater ticked pleasantly; warm bricks, dark timber. On one wall hung a Turner print and a framed map of the world; on another, a solitary crucifix; the opposite wall held two dozen framed photographs of the church’s reverends, from the present Reverend Hird back to the nineteenth century and its first, Reverend de Witt.
Pritam noted that Nicholas was straining not to look at the last photograph. He liked Nicholas; he’d proved an interesting conversationalist when he’d invited him into the church after Gavin Boye’s funeral. But tonight he looked pale with dark shadows under his eyes. If he’d not met the man before, Pritam would have guessed he was a heroin addict.
“Pritam,” said Nicholas abruptly. “Are the church’s records kept here?”
“Yes.” Pritam pointed at a closed door marked Storeroom. “Everything. Weekly tithes. Repair bills. Who married here. Baptisms. Funerals. Tax records. There are perhaps nine or ten archive boxes in there. Why do you ask?”
“Dating back?”
“Dating all the way back.”
“Can we see them?”
Pritam stretched his neck, but kept his eyes fixed on his guests.
“An interesting request. That depends,” he replied. “Once again: why do you ask? And please bear in mind that I have a rotten headache and am really in no mood for this ill-advised masquerade about your making some community history newsletter.”
He saw Suzette level a cool look at her brother.
“I’m sorry, Pritam. I don’t think you’d believe us,” said Nicholas.
Pritam felt the veins in his temples throb.
“Won’t believe him,” clarified Suzette, pointing at Nicholas. “I thought it was a bad idea to trouble you with our … suppositions.”
Pritam regarded them both.
“It is quite a dismal night out. And neither of you—forgive me for this assumption—look the sort to prefer the polite company of an Indian priest over a night on the couch in front of Californication. So this is somewhat important, yes?”
Nicholas met Pritam’s gaze and nodded.
Pritam inclined his head.
“And does it have anything to do with Gavin Boye’s suicide?”
Nicholas and Suzette exchanged a glance. Nicholas nodded again. “And Eleanor Bretherton,” he said.
Pritam let out a breath and squeezed the bridge of his nose. The codeine was beginning to work, but was a long way from making him feel sociable. He shifted in his chair, unable to get comfortable.
“Did you know that I was offered a Rhodes scholarship?” he asked. “Well, I went to seminary here instead of going to Oxford, so some would argue that makes me a bit of a fool. Regardless, I cannot think of any connection between Gavin Boye and a long-dead patron of this church.”
“Yeah,” sighed Nicholas. “I don’t think you’re gonna fancy the one I’m about to tell you.”
Pritam smiled. “My father was fond of an old saying: When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him. You, my friend,” he pointed at Nicholas, “look like you’re in ten different kinds of trouble. So may I suggest trying me.”
Nicholas looked at Suzette. Pritam saw her shake her head as a final discouragement. Nicholas ignored her.
“Every fifteen years or so,” he began, “for the last hundred and twenty years at least, a local child—a child from around here in Tallong—has been murdered.”
Pritam refused to blink. His headache began to win back its tug of war with the codeine.
“The second-to-last murder was a childhood friend of ours, Tristram Boye,” continued Nicholas. “Gavin Boye’s brother. He was killed in 1982. Tris was chased into the woods on Carmichael Road but found a few miles away with his …” Nicholas licked his dry lips, “with his throat cut. The last child murdered was the Thomas boy. He also had his throat slit.”
Pritam said nothing, but watched his guests. Suzette broke the silence.
“We think the murders are connected,” she said.
Pritam’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”
“All of them,” replied Nicholas.
Pritam stopped moving in his chair.
“Connected? Over a hundred and twenty years?”
“Or more.” Nicholas nodded. “Maybe a hundred and fifty years.”
Nicholas shook his head at his sister.
Pritam frowned. Since he’d arrived in Tallong, he’d found it a pretty, hospitable, slightly dull suburb. But now a suggestion that these murders were not a string of chance happenings, but were somehow linked … Maybe a few days ago, he’d have laughed this off. But his aching skull and the dark mood he’d felt since his evening alone in the church had punched down his sense of humor.
Pritam nodded and stared at the floor, deep in thought. The ticking of the mantel clock seemed suddenly loud. “I urge you to be very careful answering this next question,” he said. “Are you also suggesting a connection between all these murders and this church?”
He realized he was gripping the arms of his chair tightly. He looked up at his guests; they’d both noticed the same thing.
“No,” said Nicholas slowly. “To her.” He nodded at the leftmost photograph. It showed Reverend de Witt smiling beside dour Eleanor Bretherton as she laid the church’s foundation stone.
Pritam felt his headache returning like a flash tide and he closed his eyes at the pain.
“Pritam?” asked Nicholas.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing. “This is all a bit fantastical for me this evening. Perhaps …” He indicated the door.
“Jesus, hear us out,” said Nicholas.
Pritam blanched at the blasphemy.
“Let’s go,” said Suzette firmly, taking her brother’s arm. “Maybe another time, Reverend.”
Nicholas shook her grip off.
“Look, if you just let us check through your records—”
Pritam found his voice rising, riding the unwelcome wave of the headache, and was powerless to stop it. “Nicholas, you are suggesting cult murders, you’re suggesting some cover-up. It is insulting to my congregation, it’s insulting to Reverend Hird, and it’s insulting to me.”
“I don’t give a fart about him or your congregation,” said Nicholas. He jabbed a finger at the photograph of Eleanor Bretherton. “It’s her!”
Suzette yanked Nicholas out of his chair and dragged him to the door.
“We’re sorry,” she said.
“I’m not sorry,” snapped Nicholas, eyes locked on Pritam. “Maybe there is some cover-up!”
Suzette threw open the door and dragged Nicholas out into the drizzle, hissing unheard words at her brother.
“No, it’s a fucking joke,” he snapped.
“Good night,” said Pritam, eyes hard.
“Sorry,” said Suzette, closing the door.
Nicholas seemed to think of something, and again slipped out of her grip and stuck his foot between the door and the jamb.
“Please, Nicholas …” began Pritam, walking wearily to the door.
“One last question and I’ll go.”
Pritam hesitated a moment, then waved his hand—fine.
“Get Hird to look at the photograph of Bretherton. Ask him if he remembers a seamstress named Mrs. Quill. Quill, like feather. Will you do that?”
Pritam watched Nicholas for a long moment.
“You should consider getting some grief counseling, Nicholas.”
Nicholas let out a bark of a laugh and withdrew his foot.
Pritam shut the door with a loud, solid click. Outside, retreating footsteps and the surf-like hush of rain. Already, his headache seemed to be withdrawing.
He went to the nearest window and eased aside the heavy tapestry curtains. Across the rain-shiny street, brother and sister hurried to their car. He heard their doors close, then the car start and take off. Soon, the only noise was his breathing, the tocking of the clock, the soft clicking of the bar heater element.
Pritam took a deep breath and walked over to the photograph of the Right Reverend de Witt and Eleanor Bretherton laying the foundation stone. The photograph had disturbed him since he first laid eyes on it. He’d always assumed it was because the church, now so solid and real, was merely a slab in the photograph; looking at the old image was like seeing an autopsy picture of a close acquaintance lying naked and too exposed. But now, fixing on the severe gaze that Eleanor Bretherton sent back through the glass and a hundred and thirty years, Pritam realized he might have been wrong. The reason the photograph was disturbing was her.
He berated himself. Nicholas Close had undergone trauma. I should have been more sympathetic, he thought. Tomorrow, clear of this awful headache, he’d call the man and apologize. But as for child murders … there was no way he would upset John Hird with talk of cult killings.
He switched off the outside light.