Page 92 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
“In the meantime, I was wondering what you could tell us about the lunch you attended with Alex Majors the day before his wife’s funeral?”
Toby blinked. “Really? I’m not sure what use that’s likely to be.”
I cleared my throat. Ow. “Okay if I use your loo?” Might as well take a butcher’s around the place while we were here, right? And it wasn’t like I was going to be any more use out here.
“Of course. By the front door, on the right as you go out.”
“Cheers.” I went out through the sitting room into the hallway, closed the door behind me, and listened.
Blimey. The Force was strong with this one, all right. The trail was blinding bright, with faint strands of guilt almost hidden under a blaze of religious fervour.
I shuddered. Christ. Had it been Toby who’d tried to kill me? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, Sodom and Gomorrah, and all that vicious Old Testament stuff? The trail led to a small room that was set up as a study. I glanced behind me nervously (and pointlessly: that door from the sitting room had a creaky hinge and I’d have heard it open) and slipped inside. There was a desk with a computer and wall-to-wall shelving full of files, but it was one of the desk drawers that was blazing bright like a heretic on Bonfire Night and calling out to me like a siren. I tried the handle.
Locked.
I looked in the desk tidy. There was a small key nestling in the paper-clip tray, and when I tried it in the lock, it turned. Toby, Toby, Toby. If I switched on his computer I’d lay odds I’d find his password was Password. Well, that or something like Jesus Christ.
My heart thumping, I pulled open the drawer. What was it gonna be? Secret membership of that weirdo church in America that hates homosexuality? Details of pray-away-the-gay camps he was planning to set up in Britain? The first thing I saw was a year-old edition of Church Times. I shifted that aside impatiently—and hit pay dirt.
A colourful booklet with a montage of happy, smiling priests and nuns on the cover, and at the bottom, the words: Converting to Roman Catholicism: A Guide for the Ordained. Underneath it, I found another, less glossy booklet—The Road to Rome—and, slipped neatly inside its front cover, letters between Tobes and Cardinal someone. Long letters, and lots of them, in spidery handwriting, because apparently this was something you didn’t dare trust to your hard drive.
I didn’t have time to decipher a lot of the letters, but I caught several mentions of meetings to discuss the faith. The skirt he’d reputedly been chasing? Was bright crimson and came with a matching skullcap.
I couldn’t help it. I snorted out a laugh. This was Toby’s deep, dark secret? He was defecting to the pope’s lot? Just to check, I listened again.
Nothing. Not a blip. Which meant not even a porn stash. Apparently, for all his faults, Toby really was as holy as he was painted.
I shoved everything back the way I’d found it, locked the drawer, and replaced the key. Then I trooped back into the conservatory. Toby looked up. “Ah, at last. I was becoming a little concerned about the state of your colon. I trust you’re feeling better now?”
Yep. Holy, maybe, but still a git.
Phil raised a questioning eyebrow. I shook my head minutely, and he stood up. “Well, we won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for your time, Bishop.”
Tobes nodded graciously.
“What did you find?” Phil asked as we buckled ourselves back into his Golf.
I grinned. “You’re not gonna believe it. He’s turning Catholic.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
Phil drummed his fingers on the wheel. “And there was nothing else?”
“Nope.”
Phil sighed. “I think we need to talk to Violet Majors again. Tomorrow,” he added firmly, with a stern look in my direction.
“Yes, Mum,” I said, and tried not to look too relieved.
Honestly? I was cream crackered. Takes it out of you, this detecting business.
Okay, so maybe it was really down to the getting-strangled bit.
“You’re sure you’re up for this?” Phil asked for the umpteenth time the next morning.
“Course I am.” My throat was feeling a lot better today, after an early night and a breakfast of eggs lovingly scrambled by my fiancé. I’d asked for fried, but he’d said he reckoned scrambled would be better for my throat, which I took to mean he was still finding the yolk thing a bit daunting.
