“Much good it did him,” said Sam.

“Eh? Oh yes. The inscription. The anticlerical Mr. Winander. Took a nonbeliever to get really indignant that they wouldn’t give him a church burial.”

“What did the vicar say about the way Flood was acting the day he died?”

“He appeared quite normal during the morning services and at lunch. The vicar left shortly before two o’clock to go to the church in preparation for the Sunday School. He was accompanied by his housekeeper, Mrs. Thomson. He was a widower, by the way. Mrs. Thomson’s duties included acting as monitor at Sunday School. I gather some of the kids used to get restless during his analysis of the Church’s Thirty-Nine Articles.”

He uttered his ironies deadpan in a neutral monotone.

“Any suggestion he was screwing her?” asked Sam.

The old man looked at her blankly for a moment, then grinned.

“Jacko did write Query jig-a-jig alongside their names, which I wasn’t going to mention out of delicacy but I see I needn’t have bothered. Who knows what goes on under a cassock? But I doubt it. Rev. Paul was old school. St. Ylf’s didn’t need central heating. His description of hell could get you sweating on the coldest winter day.”

“You knew him?”

“Oh yes. He was in charge when I arrived. Not a comfortable man. To him pastoral care meant getting your Sunday roast carved before the gravy went cold. His son’s a different kettle of fish, like he’s trying to compensate. Real helpful to everybody.”

Not to Aussie visitors asking awkward questions, thought Sam.

“To continue,” said Melton. “On their return shortly after three, he and Mrs. Thomson were surprised to find a note canceling the Bible class pinned to the vicarage door. About fifteen minutes earlier, the curate had been seen coming through the vicarage gate by two boys on their way to Bible class. Silas and Ephraim Gowder.”

“The Gowder twins?” exclaimed Sam. “Jeez, no wonder they don’t bother with names. Which is which?”

“How would I tell you?” said Melton. “You’ve obviously met them.”

“I saw one of them digging a grave when I visited the church yesterday. And I’ve got a feeling the other was up on the church tower.”

“Before your accident? Which I heard was caused by the wind blowing the trap shut. But you suspect a human agency?”

“I’m probably wrong. Why should a Gowder want to harm me?”

“The thought processes of the Gowders are mazy and hazy,” said Melton. “They strike me as a throwback to some race which preceded man. They are not brutes, they are not malevolent, but they act and react instinctively, which means that sometimes their actions can appear both brutish and malevolent. I shouldn’t care to provoke them.”

“Which I did by climbing up the ladder?” said Sam incredulously.

“Hard to credit, but not impossible for a Gowder. I doubt he meant to harm you.”

“Then he shinned down the ladder and left me for dead? Sounds like harm to me.”

“All he would see was trouble for himself if he tried to help you or summoned aid. But to return to their evidence: they declared that Mr. Flood stopped when he saw them and told them the class was canceled. They didn’t notice anything odd.”

“Would they, being the Gowders?” said Sam.

He said, “Oh, they’re sharp enough, believe me. Next witness was Miss Clegg, district nurse. At five past three she passed Flood walking down the main road. They spoke briefly, a conventional exchange, she said, but he seemed rather agitated.”

“That’s two down,” said Sam. “Who was it who saw him going up Stanebank?”

“That was Dunstan Woollass from the Hall. He was driving down the Bank about three-thirty when he spotted Flood. He wound down the window to say hello. The curate just nodded and went on by. He looked very pale, the squire thought. On his return that evening when he learned that Flood was missing, Mr. Woollass contacted the police and that’s why they concentrated the search on Mecklin Moss.”

Sam ran her eye along a mental blackboard, checking the equations so far and trying to compute where they might lead.

She said, “And the verdict was suicide, so something happened early that afternoon to push him off his trolley.”

“True. Though as I once heard the police trick-cyclist say, we shouldn’t forget that an event can take place in the mind with no apparent external cause.”

“Nothing happens without cause,” said Sam with the certainty of one to whom the concept of infinity was a working tool. “Any lunch guests? Any visitors after lunch?”

“No guest. No visitors that came forward.”

“What about the son, Pete? He’d just be a boy then. Was he at home?”

Melton smiled approval, and said, “Jacko asked that too. Yes, he was there.”

“And did Jacko interview the boy?”

“Ultimately. This was the emergency I mentioned before. Pete was eleven. When he found Bible class was canceled, he bunked off before his dad got back and headed up the valley with the Gowder lads. They were in the same class at school and quite matey. They were scrambling around on some rocks when he slipped. Only fell about six feet or so, but he managed to bruise himself badly, twist an ankle and break his wrist.”

“Poor kid. No wonder his dad was distracted!”

“Distracted… yes. And probably hopping mad his son had been breaking the Sabbath. The boy had to go to hospital, of course. They kept him in for observation. The Rev. Paul got back just before evening service was due to start. He expected that his curate would have shown up by now and have everything in train, so I daresay he wasn’t best pleased to find he had to head straight into church himself and do the business.”

“So when Jacko got to see the kid, what did he say?”

“Nothing helpful. Yes, he’d spoken briefly with Sam after lunch – he called him Sam, Jacko noted. He said he’d been in his bedroom getting ready for Bible class when the curate called up the stairs that it was canceled. Then he went out.”

Sam thought for a while, then said, “So what it’s all down to is a crisis of faith. Suddenly starts wondering if there really is a God, so kills himself to find out. Is that it?”

“Balance of mind disturbed, it says here. I think your version sums it up better.”

“What about DI Jackson? What did he think? You said he had his own ideas.”

“Maybe. But nothing to bother the coroner with.”

“I don’t reckon you’ve kept hold of his notebook out of sentiment, Mr. Melton.”

“You’re right there,” said Melton. “Get sentimental about the past, you stop seeing it properly. OK. Jacko did have a working hypothesis, nothing he could prove, so it stayed in his head with a few hints in his notebook. It ran something like this. Sam Flood got on well with kids. Both sexes. Maybe too well. When pressed, Greenwood admitted he’d heard a rumor about the curate and some underage kid, but no names and nothing substantial enough to make him dust his magnifying glass off. Mind you, Jack the Ripper would have been on his sixth victim before Greenwood began to get suspicious.”

“But your Jacko found nothing to confirm this?”

“Not a jot. The more questions he asked, the more they clammed up. Pride themselves on taking care of their own here in Illthwaite. So all Jacko could do was speculate. Suppose Mr. Flood found he had a taste for young flesh? Suppose he even found himself fancying young Pete Swinebank? Jacko got a sense the boy was holding something back. Maybe something happened after lunch when they were alone.”

“Like?”

“Like he went to the boy’s room and saw him naked and was horrified to realize just how much he fancied him. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the boy. Maybe he got a phone call. Or made a call and heard something that really threw him…”

Sam shifted in her chair. It was time to go. As an exercise in mathematical logic all this might be of some interest, but from a personal point of view all Melton had done was confirm what Winander had told her. But the old cop had been very kind.