“Yes, padre. You can tell me on which Sunday this winter you preached about thankfulness.”
“Thankfulness? Well, now, that’s rather a favourite subject of mine. Do you know, I find people very much disposed to grumble — I do indeed — and when you come to think of it, they might all be very much worse off. Even the farmers. As I said to them last Harvest Festival — Oh! you were asking about my Thankfulness sermon — well, I nearly always preach about it at Harvest Festival…. Not so long ago as that?… Let me think. My memory is getting very unreliable, I fear…” He made a dive for the door. “Agnes, my dear! Agnes! Can you spare us a moment?… My wife is sure to remember…. My dear, I am so sorry to interrupt you, but can you recollect when I last preached about Thankfulness? I touched on the subject in my Tithe sermon, I remember — would you be thinking of that? Not that we have had any trouble about tithe in this parish. Our farmers are very sensible. A man from St. Peter came to talk to me about it, but I pointed out to him that the 1918 adjustment was made in the farmers’ interests and that if they thought they had reason to complain of the 1925 Act, then they should see about getting a fresh adjustment made. But the law, I said, is the law. Oh, on the matter of tithe I assure you I am adamant. Adamant.”
“Yes, Theodore,” said Mrs. Venables, with rather a wry smile, “but if you didn’t so often advance people money to pay the tithe with, they mightn’t be as reasonable as they are.”
“That’s different,” said the Rector, hurriedly, “quite different. It’s a matter of principle, and any small personal loan has nothing to do with it. Even the best of women don’t always grasp the importance of a legal principle, do they, Lord Peter? My sermon dealt with the principle. The text was: ‘Render unto Caesar.’ Though whether Queen Anne’s Bounty is to be regarded as Caesar or as God — and sometimes, I admit, I feel that it is a little unfortunate that the Church should appear to be on Caesar’s side, and that disestablishment and disendowment—”
“A Caesarean operation is indicated, so to speak?” suggested Wimsey.
“A—? Oh, yes! Very good,” said the Rector. “My dear, that is very good, don’t you think? I must tell the Bishop — no, perhaps not. He is just a leetle bit strait-laced. But it is true — if only one could separate the two things, the temporal and the spiritual — but the question I ask myself is always, the churches themselves — the buildings — our own beautiful church — what would become of it in such a case?”
“My dear, said Mrs. Venables, “Lord Peter was asking about your sermons on Thankfulness. Didn’t you preach one on the Sunday after Christmas? About thankfulness for the Christmas message? Surely you remember. The text was taken from the Epistle for the day: ‘Thou art no more a servant, but a son.’ It was about how happy we ought to be as God’s children and about making a habit of saying ‘Thank-you Father’ for all the pleasant things of life, and being as pleasant-tempered as we should wish our own children to be. I remember it so well, because Jackie and Fred Holliday got quarrelling in church over those prayer-books we gave them and had to be sent out.”
“Quite right, my dear. You always remember everything. That was it, Lord Peter. The Sunday after Christmas. It comes back to me very clearly now. Old Mrs. Giddings stopped me in the porch afterwards to complain that there weren’t enough plums in her Christmas plum-pudding.”
“Mrs. Giddings is an ungrateful old wretch,” said his wife.
“Then the next day was the 30th December,” said Wimsey. “Thanks, Padre, that’s very helpful. Do you recollect Will Thoday coming round to see you on the Monday evening, by any chance?”
The Rector looked helplessly at his wife, who replied readily enough:
“Of course he did Theodore. He came to ask you something about the New Year’s peal. Don’t you remember saying how queer and ill he looked? Of course, he must have been working up for that attack of ’flu, poor man. He came late — about 9 o’clock — and you said you couldn’t understand why he shouldn’t have waited till the morning.”
“True, true,” said the Rector. “Yes, Thoday came round to me on the Monday night. I hope you are not — well! I mustn’t ask indiscreet questions, must I?”
“Not when I don’t know the answers,” said Wimsey, with a smile and a shake of the head. “About Potty Peake, now. Just how potty is he? Can one place any sort of reliance on his account of anything?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Venables, “sometimes one can and sometimes one can’t. He gets mixed up, you know. He’s quite truthful, as far as his understanding goes, but he gets fancies and then tells them as if they were facts. You can’t trust anything he says about ropes or hanging — that’s his little peculiarity. Otherwise — if it was a question of pigs, for instance, or the church organ — he’s quite good and reliable.”
“I see,” said Wimsey, “Well, he has been talking a good bit about ropes and hanging.”
“Then don’t believe a word of it,” replied Mrs. Venables, robustly. “Dear me! here’s that Superintendent coming up the drive. I suppose he wants you.”
Wimsey caught Mr. Blundell in the garden and headed him away from the house. “I’ve seen Thoday,” said the Superintendent. “Of course he denies the whole story. Says Potty was dreaming.”
“But how about the rope?”
“There you are! But that Potty was hiding behind the churchyard wall when you and I found the rope in the well, and how much he may have heard, I don’t know. Anyway, Thoday denies it, and short of charging him with the murder, I’ve got to take his word for it. You know these dratted regulations. No bullying of witnesses. That’s what they say. And whatever Thoday did or didn’t do, he couldn’t have buried the body, so where are you? Do you think any jury is going to convict on the word of a village idiot like Potty Peake? No. Our job’s clear. We’ve got to find Cranton.”