Late of This Parish by Marjorie Eccles

subdued activity as the white-overalled SOCOs swarmed over everything, dabbing with Sellotape, crawling over the chancel floor with hand-held vacuum cleaners and amassing their collection of samples in polythene bags. The photographer, Napier, was standing waiting by the rotund figure of the pathologist who was kneeling on one side of the wheelchair with Ison on the other.
    The two doctors looked up. Ison nodded and Timpson-Ludgate, after greeting Mayo in his usual genial manner, said, 'Not much doubt about this one. Plain as the nose on your face. Asphyxiation due to suffocation. The altar cushion, you say? Yes, it’s possible.’
    Timpson-Ludgate had recently gained a certain amount of fame (or notoriety) by writing a book about his experiences as a Home Office pathologist, the sort of thing for which the general public seemed to have an insatiable appetite. It was written in the racy manner one might have expected, given his personality. Despite the flamboyancy of his approach, Mayo had a great respect for him and his opinions.
    â€˜The killers always make the same mistake of thinking their victims are too old and too feeble to struggle but they do,’ he went on, ‘and he must’ve struggled hard. See those petechial haemorrhages? With luck, there’ll be skin tissue under sonny boy’s nails, if and when you find him. I’m playing golf tomorrow but I know how impatient you always are so I’ll have him on the slab before I go, and set your mind at rest. Come on, laddie,’ he said to Napier, ‘one more shot – here – and then I’m finished.’
    The photographer adjusted his lens; the SOCO sergeant, Dexter, had put the altar cushion inside a polythene bag and was waiting to dab Sellotape on to the clothes of the dead man for any contact traces from the killer. Another hour and they’d all gone: the doctors in their cars; the fingerprint men, photographers and plan drawers in the Scenes of Crime van; and the body of the Reverend Cecil Willard in the mortuary van, encased in a green polythene body bag.
    Mayo despatched Wainwright home to a belated supper, with a request to be back sharpish in the morning, and leaving one of his men posted outside the church and the rest to await the arrival of the mobile unit, he asked Kite to accompany him on his next call, which he intended to be on Mrs Oliver.
    Kite had been gathering more information from Wainwright while Mayo had been otherwise occupied. ‘We’ve drawn up a list of the residents in the square, ready for starting on the house-to-house tomorrow morning. Wainwright knows them all and he’s given me some useful gen. Most of them would’ve known Willard. The Mrs Thorne where Miss Willard is staying teaches languages at the boys’ school and her husband’s the Director of the Fricker Institute –’
    â€˜The Fricker? Where the bomb went off? Hadn’t realized that. I only saw his wife when I called earlier.’
    The bomb which had been planted wasn’t Mayo’s investigation, it didn’t come under his jurisdiction, but he remembered it and recalled now that the Director of the Institute was a Dr Denzil Thorne. There was no reason why he should have made the connection between the Director and Mrs Thorne before, but now that he had, he felt a sudden prickle of the hairs on the back of his neck. Was it possible that here was the first lead?
    It had been assumed, though as far as he knew there had as yet been no claim, four weeks later, that the bomb at the Institute had been the work of animal rights extremists, protesting against the experiments carried out there. He hadn’t heard, either officially or otherwise, how the investigation was proceeding and in the absence of any information to the contrary he’d assumed it wasn’t complete. The connection with Willard’s death might be altogether too tenuous and his suspicions quite unfounded. On the other