Rite Judgement

Chapter 2

TWO

The news desk at the Portsmouth Evening News received a message for either Cecelia Crumpet or Everard Pimple, the newly formed dynamic-duo reporting team, who had scooped exclusively and were now currently writing up in depth, following their banner headline splash of a week ago, a news item that had all government departments in a spin. Already there had been a flurry of resignations at senior civil-service levels, Mandarins nervously gripping their bottoms, the whiff of government ministerial, laxative-induced reshuffles in the offing, not to mention powerful corporate magnates stunned into eating what was being described by journalists, inaccurately as it transpired, as Humble Pie.

The message reported a civilised furore at the Roman Catholic Convent school of St Winifrede’s. A violinist in the famous Nuns’ Orchestra had been decapitated, the body and head having now disappeared, or so it was proclaimed. The note was passed on to the journalists, who were currently staying with the Austins at number 5 Frisian Tun, the Austins being the source of their scoop and a lot more besides.

To the uninitiated, the Austins were believed to have retired from their senior police jobs and their secret-squirrel positions in MI5 and had set up, in their new retirement personas, Ooh La Lovelies, DaDa – the d**k and Duck Austin Detective Agency. Jack Austin being Dashing d**k, he having allocated his long-suffering (over a relatively short period of time) wife, the soubriquet, with no additional superlative epithet, Duck. And those who knew the fairly recently dubbed Mrs Amanda Austin, likely as far back as when she was Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce, would know that this strong woman, ordinarily a pillar of patience and understanding, would go along with her new title, (pretty much as she went along with being the wife of a well-known dipstick detective), allowing for the fact, should the occasion arise, as it most surely would, where d**k exceeded the bounds of her patience, which, as most also knew came with quite clear limitations as far as her new husband was concerned, she could slap him back into place. She would then say sorry, say that Duck loved d**k and then everything would be okay. Except it would start all over again – but isn’t this the way with prima donna dipstick detective men?

She did love the fifties fashions, though, especially the Ooh La Lovelies dresses, not that these suited d**k particularly, especially the scalloped necklines, though he did like the V-shaped deep cut to some of his wife’s dresses as this provided him with the occasional surreptitious opportunity for a “butcher’s hook” (d**k was a cockney) at his wife’s “Bristol Cities”. His notion of what he perceived as surreptitious was, though, pretty much blatant, his eyes out on stalks being a big giveaway to Duck, not that she minded, she loved the i***t, which led to many suggestions she get herself off to Specsavers and then a brain doctor. However, d**k did love the fifties lashings of ginger beer, except he didn’t like ginger, so he just had the beer. He did like the ginger-nut biscuits, though, which he dunked into his Dog’s Bollox ale. He was a tickler for Famous Five accuracy, he erroneously thought to himself and thus, broadcast to everyone, as he was prone to speaking his thoughts, a bit like the manner in which he would read, following a guiding finger; he spoke out loud reading as well. So you could see why it was necessary, every now and then, for Amanda to clump her dipstick. Life could be confusingly difficult at times for the reportedly retired detective chief inspector, though, we suspect, not as much as it was for the retired superintendent. And then, were they retired coppers or even retired spies?

That same day, nearly time for elevenses, which would have made it eleven o’clock in the morning, there or thereabouts, as it can sometimes take a while for the kettle to boil and the tea to brew, the conductor of the Nuns’ Orchestra, Beatrice Flat, not a nun, did not respond to Wanda Linley-Cloud’s repeated knock at her bedsit room door.

Coincidentally and curiously, for it is said she was long overdue a visit to Specsavers, Bea Flat was also the girlfriend of Aedd Murphy, who was a geography teacher at St Winifrede’s and brother to Sister Winifrede, leader of the second violins. Wanda had in mind sharing elevenses of camomile tea and Viennese whirls with Bea and talking through the planned orchestra rehearsal. Wanda, who was a member of the orchestra having once been a nun but left to get some and become a part-time window cleaner, was concerned that Bea was not ready for practice. This was unusual for a woman who had more than an authoritarian and controlling manner about her, although this could be diminished in effective power by the distinct nasal twang of her Midlands accent that people struggled not to laugh at.

After getting no response from her repeated rapping on the door and, seeking to preserve some skin to her knuckles as this could irritate when she dipped her hands in the bucket of water, in order to soak and wring out her chamois leather to clean windows, Wanda rattled the door. It was locked. She lowered herself to the keyhole, there was no key, which offered an unrestricted, though mini-porthole view into the room. Captured in an intense spotlight, she could see the body of Bea Flat, dressed beautifully in a bunched chiffon flowery-print dress, tulips we understand though flowers and agricultural crops in general are not my strong point, but the conductor was beautifully attired in a dress of some vegetation, but prone and also minus one head. The dress really suited the lady maestro of the Nuns’ Orchestra, even if she was a little on the chubby side.

Not able to gain entry, the room being locked from within, Wanda went out to the back garden and, collecting her double extending ladder that she always kept beside the dustbins, she scaled the wall to have a look in through the first-floor window of Bea’s modest bedsit room. The window was secured shut. Peeking through the window that she noticed could do with a clean, the scene she had espied through the keyhole was affirmed to her. The conductor’s body lay prostrate, arms stretched out as if in supplication at a church altar and it was highlighted in a pencil thin shaft of intense light. Bea was face down, except there was no face. The head was detached and similarly illuminated upon the bedside table. Wanda could not resist; she took a picture with her phone before she called the police and, after she returned to the ground and replaced the ladder, for she was most particular about a tidy back garden, she called the mother superior to suggest they call off orchestra practice. Wanda was then informed that rehearsal had already been postponed and so she relaxed and went back to her room for her camomile tea and Viennese whirls to await a visit from the cops.

The additional conundrum, which was to later fox the police, but not the Ooh La Lovelies, DaDa team, well d**k at least and it seemed that Everard Pimple concurred, was that the conductor’s body was locked within the room, secured from the inside. But later on, it had to be said, and after careful consideration of the photographs, Bea Flat’s hair, highlighted in the second beam of bright light, looked gorgeous. The new hairdo made the previously average-looking Rubenesque woman, attired as she was in a sumptuously dazzling floricultural dress, bunched with starched crippling petticoats (that might have been Crimplene), looked like a generously proportioned, nineteen fifties movie star. Well, she would have, had the head not been removed from the conductor’s comfortably plump body and placed on the bed stand with a conductor’s baton stuck up her nose. The head had been deliberately placed beside the bedside lamp, which was in the shape of a bust of Beethoven, whereupon it was easy to make the comparison as Bea had a strikingly similar hairdo as the composer. And beside both was a discarded nun’s wimple, which, upon later inspection, was found to have a note scribbled upon it, in red, blood. It said: Give us a sign, oh Lord. The reckoning is yours – with additional rinse and Composer set, £103.76 plus tip.