A Turbulent Priest Read Online Free PDF Page B

that away from him.”
    There was something here, some unexpected reservation about the man of whom she spoke so fondly. Others, she was hinting, would not be so kind in their memories of Father Bickerstaffe. But she was too upset for them to go straight to it. It would come out, in due course, if they let her talk, Lucy Blake decided. You had to be like a doctor, sometimes, listening and waiting, paying regard to what was unsaid as well as the straightforward revelations. It was one of the few aspects of interviewing in which she felt superior to Percy Peach. Lucy said, “Tell us about the life Father Bickerstaffe lived here, Martha, about the work he did and the work you did to keep the place running smoothly.”
    The last phrase brought a small, unexpected smile to the housekeeper’s lips. “That’s what I tried to do, you know. Keep the place running smoothly while Father went about his work. They’re only men, after all, aren’t they, even if they’re rather special men?”
    For a moment the old housekeeper was a conspirator in her gender with the pretty, green-blue eyed young woman who had come into her kingdom to question her. Lucy sensed in that instant that this woman had endured a hard life, of unremitting toil and service, with no regular hours and no union to plead her case.
    But it was Inspector Peach who took things forward. Percy had been brought up a Catholic, but had discarded the religion when he was eighteen and exploring the delights of girls. He now said with uncharacteristic gentleness, “Tell us a little about Father Bickerstaffe’s life. He said Mass every morning, I expect.”
    “Yes. Seven thirty every morning, nine and ten thirty on Sundays. There’s an evening mass on Sundays as well, but usually Father Arkwright comes down from St Mary’s to say that. I go to the morning mass, most weekdays. There aren’t more than ten or twelve of us, most times.”
    “You live on the premises?”
    “Yes. I have my own little flat upstairs. My own bathroom and sitting room.” She sounded defiant as she said it. She might be out of touch with the world and its wicked ways, but she wasn’t blind enough to have missed all the speculation about priests and their housekeepers. Well, you couldn’t accuse her of anything in that line, not at any time during the thirty years she’d worked in this presbytery with three different parish priests. Nor poor Father Bickerstaffe, for that matter. No one had muttered about anything of that kind. Perhaps if he’d had someone like this open-faced, attractive girl to share his bed, all might have been well… Martha surprised herself with that daring liberal thought; she certainly couldn’t claim to be an expert in such matters.
    Lucy said, “Can you give us some idea of the rest of his day after Mass, please?”
    “Well, he’d have breakfast at about nine, or just before. He’d been settling for this muesli stuff and toast, lately; I always made him a cooked breakfast when he first came here.”
    “And when would that be, Miss Hargreaves?”
    “Eight years ago.” The answer came very promptly. “He’d been a curate over in Preston, but I think they thought he deserved his own parish, even though he was still young. He was only thirty-two when he came here, you know.” She said it as proudly as if he had been her son. Then her face clouded a little, as if she wondered whether she should have revealed anything as intimate as a priest’s age to these strangers.
    “And he was the only priest working here on a regular basis?”
    “Yes. We could get help from St Mary’s when we wanted it — they have four priests there. But it wasn’t often that Father asked them to help out. We’re still quite a small parish, in spite of the new building. But it’s a busy one, with the school and the youth club.”
    “Yes, it must be. Busy life for you too, I expect.”
    “Well, I made tea for all Father’s visitors, if he asked me to. And some of my sponge cake