The Deaths of Old Wallop

1. Funeral

The afternoon sun poured through the windows and bounced off the coffin. A good job she was dead, thought the watching killer; the old bint would have hated that.

Old Wallop crematorium had filled with the denture-rattling of mint humbugs and the unsettling whiff of lower-end charity shops. A sea of shrunken ball-of-wool heads bobbed with hushed opinion, for one of their own had died and any one of the them could be next.

Bobby the vicar, young, desperate and without any semblance of tradition had decided that this would be the day to have the trial run of his new service. He'd walked into the building not knowing whether to stick with convention but, to this point, all had gone well. More mourners than he'd been led to expect, the woman in the coffin, Viola, was a weathered hag by all accounts, and no-one too large for the seats; a recurring point on the parish agenda. He dragged a crumpled tissue across his forehead in the heat. The sun, refracted through the stained-glass, gave a synthetic, Eighties gild to proceedings; indeed in the front row, Elsie Cox bore a sudden marked resemblance to Boy George. Sweating into his shoes, Vicar Bobby's foot squeaked as he embarked on his high-risk opening gambit:

"What does it matter that's she dead? Why should we care?"

***

Sally's walnut face fell agape.

"Did he really just say that? About our Viola?"

"That's that generation that is. All iPhones and computer hacking. No feelings."

"But he's a vicar."

"So what? Maybe he just fell into it. I never wanted to be an accounts clerk."

Sally and Eileen had been neighbours of Viola. Gubbins House, the sheltered accommodation they all shared, had been rocked by the news. It wasn't the death. As a home of retirement, the local joke was that a conveyor-belt should be built between Gubbins and the grave, but it was the manner of it. Viola had been deliberately poisoned.

"Is there cake, do you think," asked Sally.

"At a poison victim's funeral?"

"Sandwiches then?"

"I'm not sure."

"I'll hang on just in case. What's he on about now?"

"He's asking why we've all bothered to turn up, and what's the point of being born in the first place."

"I couldn't help it," said Sally.

"Me neither," Eileen began to idly thumb through the order of service as she spoke. "I wonder if the poisoner is here? Could be...Oh Bread of Heaven. I know that one."

***

"...but we all wind up in the sorry state that's under that lid right now. Christ. Right. Well, I suppose it's in my capacity to say something. There's a lot of you out there, especially considering it's only old Viola in the box, and I imagine that's because of the murder. It stands to reason then, in order not to stand out as the person who didn't attend, the killer is in this room." Vicar Bobby paused for effect. "In this house of God."

He'd looked forward to this bit and scanned the room. The various factions were represented and sat together. He had their attention now. The shopkeepers sitting with Paula and Pete, the owners of the B&B. The old, gnarled women from Gubbins. Kate and Andrea from the school. Iain from the restaurant. The tradesmen Fat Pig Petr and Colin. Ted the landlord, and Eric from the other side and underneath of his bar. A cross-section of sleepy, English society.

Strange though.

He'd spoken to most of them in his six months in the village. He'd been challenging. Provocative. He'd asked them in what situations they could step out of their slumbering humanity. In what situations could they act; could they take God into their own hands. He'd thought they'd been joking, he'd thought they were all in on it.

Now the murder had happened though, and all of them, at one time or another, had indicated that they may well be capable.