“What have they been telling you about young Oggy Howell, then?”
“His mother seems to think there’s a connection between Mrs Croll’s death and what she sees as a threat to take the boy away from her.”
Malley stroked one of his chins. “You realize the kid’s not very bright?”
“I know nothing about him.”
“I don’t mean he’s batty. Nothing like that. But I think he spends a lot of the time in a little world of his own. His mother brought him in here and I tried talking to him, but he could never have been put up as a witness. Larch more or less booted them both out.”
“Why?”
The sergeant puffed his cheeks. “Well, you know Larch. He’s not very tolerant of what we call one parent families nowadays. They’re all fallen women to the superintendent.”
“So you’ve no record of what was said.”
Malley shook his head.
“Did any of it make sense?”
“Not a lot. I don’t doubt the kid was there and peeking into the church through one of the windows.”
“At what time would that be?”
“Between eleven and midnight, his mother said. It was just before twelve o’clock that he came in. She was having supper. He had some with her and tried to tell her about something he’d seen.”
“How old is Oggy?”
Malley pouted. “About ten.”
“A late little bird.”
The sergeant said he did not doubt it.
“All right. Now tell me what Oggy said he saw.”
“You really want me to?”
Purbright waited. Malley was busy once more with his pipe ritual. It was not often, the inspector realized, that he had seen him actually smoking it.
“For what it’s worth,” Malley said at last, “the kid’s story was that there was a lady in the church who was going to do the washing...”
“She was what?”
Malley sighed. “I warned you.”
“Sorry. Go on. The lady was about to do the washing.”
“Right. And she was reading off a card how to do it. But then a big bird came and blew the candle out.”
“Blew the candle out,” Purbright repeated, woodenly.
“Yes.”
“A big bird.”
“That’s right.”
There was a long silence. Purbright sighed.
“I have no intention,” he said, “of reopening one of Mr Larch’s inquests. I certainly don’t want to cross-examine imaginative little boys who don’t get enough sleep. But I should love to know what that one really saw.”
“I don’t think there’s much mystery about the bird,” Malley said. “It can only have been poor Bernadette.”
“On her way down?”
“Aye. He’ll have been so scared that hed need to make up an explanation that he could cope with.”
“And the washing?” Purbright challenged. “The card the lady was reading?”
“Oggy’s mother tried to be helpful there,” said the sergeant. “She said she keeps a card of instructions pinned to a shelf above the washing machine at home so the kid associates reading with washing.”
“And where does that lead us?”
Malley shrugged.
“Did Miss Howell offer any suggestions?” the inspector asked.
For the first time in the conversation, Malley looked less than perfectly calm.
“Mothers,” he said, “always come up with something to justify their children. Sadie Howell tried to get Larch to believe that if Oggy said he’d seen a lady reading by candlelight, then that’s exactly what he had seen and that if it was Mrs Croll in the church, then it must have been Mrs Croll that he’d watched reading.”
Purbright considered briefly, then shook his head.
“I don’t see why we should quarrel with that. What the woman was doing before she climbed to the gallery and felt isn’t necessarily significant.”
“That’s all very well said Malley, “but Sadie tried to sell us the big bird story as well. She got it into her head that Mrs Croll hadn’t gone up the tower at all but had been attacked there where she was standing.”
“Attacked?”
“By somebody who rushed at her. Swooped like a bird, in fact.”
The inspector stared. “What on earth gave her that idea?”
Malley struck a match and regarded the flame thoughtfully. “There’s something we have to remember. Miss Howell had more than ordinary cause to stand by Oggy’s story once he’d started going round telling it to people.” The match had nearly burned out; he dropped it into a little jar on his desk and struck another. “She was scared that if ever there was a question about him not being all there he might be taken away from her.”
“But there’d have to be an application on behalf of the local authority to get him into care.
With great concentration, Malley sucked fire into the pipe bowl, then barbecued the end of his forefinger. “After the inquest, Sadie wrote a letter to the chief constable apologizing for wasting police time. She said the boy had made it all up and was sorry.”
“That could have been the truth of the matter, Bill.”
“Superintendent Larch thought so.”
“And you didn’t?” Purbright was watching Malley’s face.
“Me? I’m just the coroner’s tea boy. I don’t tell the CID what to do.”
“I should think not,” Purbright agreed, amiably. He stretched, looked at his watch.
There had to be endured a little more pipe-play on the part of the Wise Old Peasant, then Malley (he had a tucked-in, adenoidal way of speaking on these occasions) sniffed, regarded his hands and remarked to the ball of his left thumb: “Of course, it suited Mr Larch not to listen to Oggy’s tale.”
“Oh?”
The right thumb was addressed. “Midnight, locked church, lights off at the main switch—as they were still in the morning.” Mailey looked up. “Well, there was nothing to explain. Everything straightforward.”
“Much more satisfactory, I should have thought,” said Purbright, “than having to explain midnight laundry and big birds and candles.”
“And candlegrease,” added Malley, with such studied concern that he dropped his pipe.
Chapter Nine
Purbright had not expected much success in the matter of the candlewax traces. A parish church, even in an era of declining religious observance, is trodden by many visitors in a year. But there they were—dark discs on the stone. They had survived the passage of feet by virtue of having fallen in the shelter of the font plinth.