Inspector Colbeck's Casebook by Edward Marston Read Free Book Online Page A

they?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Leeming, reluctantly. ‘They play with nothing else.’
    ‘So the railway does have a useful purpose, after all.’
    ‘They’re too young to understand.’
    ‘And you’re far too old
not
to understand its value to us.’ He became serious. ‘A man has been slaughtered in a church – and on a Sunday. Doesn’t that make you want to track down the killer?’
    ‘It does, sir,’ said Leeming, roused. ‘What he did was unforgivable.’
     
    When a brutal murder took place, there was, as a rule, universal sympathy for the victim. That was not the case with Claude Exton. Staff on duty at Wolverton station all knew and loathed the man. More than one of them seemed pleased at the news that he was dead. What they did do was to provide useful background details for the detectives. Leeming recorded them in his notepad. Exton was an unpopular member of the community, a shiftless man of middle years who lurched from one job to another. He’d been banned from one pub for causing an affray and was thrown out of another for trying to molest the landlord’s wife. Other outrages could be laid at Exton’s door.
    ‘In other words,’ said Leeming, ‘he was a real reprobate.’
    ‘That’s putting it kindly,’ muttered the stationmaster.
    ‘Was he a churchgoer?’ asked Colbeck.
    ‘No, Inspector. He always boasted that the only time they’d get him across the threshold of a church was for his funeral. It seems he was right about that.’
     
    The collective portrait of the deceased was unflattering but it gave them a starting point. Colbeck and Leeming walked swiftly to the church. Everyone had heard the news. People were standing outside their houses discussing the murder with their neighbours. A noisy debate was taking place on a street corner. There was a small crowd outside the church itself and a uniformed policeman was blocking entry to the building. When he saw them approach, the vicar guessed that they must be the detectives and he rushed across to introduce himself. In the circumstances, the Reverend John Odell was surprisingly composed. He was a short, tubby man in his fifties whose normally pleasant features were distorted by concern.
    ‘This is an appalling crime,’ he said. ‘A church is supposed to be a place of sanctuary against the evils of the world. I thank God that I got here early enough to stop any of my parishioners seeing that hideous sight.’
    ‘Were you the first to discover the body?’ asked Colbeck.
    ‘No, Inspector. That gruesome task fell to the warden, Simon Gillard. When I arrived here with the sacristan, we found the poor fellow prostrate in the aisle. He’d fainted and injured his head as he hit the floor.’
    ‘We’ll need to speak to him.’
    ‘Then you’ll have to go to his house. As soon as he’d recovered, I had him taken straight home. Then I sent for the police.’
    ‘Is the body still inside the church?’ wondered Leeming.
    ‘Yes, it is,’ replied Odell. ‘I want it moved as soon as possible, obviously, but I thought you might prefer to see it exactly as it was found. Claude Exton was not a churchgoer but he nevertheless deserves to be mourned.Since we couldn’t use the church, I conducted a very short, impromptu service out here and we prayed for the salvation of his soul. Then I urged the congregation to disperse to their homes but, as you see, the news has attracted people of a more ghoulish disposition.’
    ‘Human vultures,’ murmured Leeming. ‘We always get those.’
    ‘I’m assuming that the warden unlocked the church this morning,’ said Colbeck. ‘Who else has a key?’
    ‘Well, I do, naturally,’ said Odell, ‘and so does the other warden but he’s ill at the moment. Between us, we hold the only three keys.’
    ‘So how did the killer and his victim get inside the church?’
    ‘That’s what puzzles me, Inspector. It was locked overnight.’
    ‘Is it conceivable that any of the keys went missing?’
    ‘Oh, no,’ said