The Arrangement on the Vestry Table
The church of St Botolph’s smelled of cold stone and candle wax and, on the first Thursday of every month, of Agnes Plum’s lavender water. She arrived at half past eight precisely, her basket over one arm, secateurs wrapped in a square of linen at the bottom. The porch door gave its usual groan. The flagstones rang under her heels.
She was halfway to the altar when she stopped.
On the vestry table, which had been bare and locked behind its little iron gate the previous evening, sat a vase of sweet williams. Pink and white, stems neatly cut, their clove-like scent drifting up the aisle like an accusation.
Agnes set down her basket. She stood very still, the way she used to stand at the front of a classroom when a child had given an answer that was almost right but not quite.
The gate to the vestry alcove had a padlock. The padlock was closed. The padlock, on close inspection, was closed but not clicked shut, its shackle resting in the housing without engaging.
She had not been in the church since Wednesday evening. Reverend Colwell had locked up at nine. The spare key lived in the post office under the counter, in a tin that also contained spare fuses and a very old boiled sweet.
Agnes did not touch the flowers. She stood back and looked at them properly.
The vase was the good crystal one, the one kept in the locked display cabinet behind the organ. That cabinet, she noted, stood slightly open.
She telephoned Constable Brigden from the church porch. He arrived twenty minutes later on his bicycle, clips still on his trousers, half a piece of toast in his hand.
“Morning, Mrs Plum. You said a break-in?” He peered around the door. “Doesn’t look broken into.”
“That,” said Agnes, “is precisely the problem.”
She showed him the cabinet. Three of the six good crystal vases remained inside. One was on the vestry table, full of flowers. Two were missing entirely.
“Could someone have borrowed them?” Brigden offered.
“The cabinet is kept locked. The key is on the same ring as the vestry gate. The key ring is kept in the Reverend’s desk.” Agnes walked to the desk and opened the middle drawer. The ring was there, exactly as it should be. “Someone returned the key. But not the vases.”
Brigden wrote something in his notebook. “Who has access?”
“Normally? Reverend Colwell. Myself. Mrs Dent, who does the brass. And Oliver Fitch, who runs the flower rota.”
“Mr Fitch.” Brigden looked at the sweet williams again. “He’s a gardener, isn’t he.”
“He grows sweet williams,” said Agnes. “Among other things.”
She picked up her secateurs and wrapped them back in their linen square. Her mind moved over the details the way her fingers moved over her rosary: methodically, without hurry. Oliver Fitch had keys to the church hall, not the church itself. Oliver Fitch had been on the flower rota until March, when there had been a quiet disagreement about money. A small sum from the flower fund. Nothing proved. The Reverend had simply suggested Oliver step back for a while.
“I’d like to walk past Mr Fitch’s cottage,” she said.
Brigden looked uncertain. “I’m not sure that’s really—”
“For my own interest,” Agnes said pleasantly, and set off.
Fitch’s cottage stood at the far end of Church Lane, its front garden a controlled riot of colour. He was outside when they arrived, kneeling by a border, trowel in hand. He looked up and his expression did something complicated before it settled.
“Mrs Plum. Constable.”
“Oliver.” Agnes looked at the garden. The sweet williams were in good bloom. There was a patch near the gate where several stems had been recently cut, the wounds pale and fresh. “Beautiful this year.”
“Thank you.” He got to his feet. A smear of dark soil across his left knee. Hands not quite steady.
“The vestry flowers,” Agnes said. “They’re lovely. Very thoughtfully arranged.”
A long pause. The sound of a wood pigeon somewhere in the sycamore above them.
“I have a key,” he said at last. “I had a key. I had a copy made, back when I was doing the rota. I know I should have handed it back.”
“And the vases?” Brigden asked.
Fitch’s jaw tightened. He went inside without a word and returned carrying two crystal vases, wrapped in a tea towel printed with maps of the Lake District. He held them out like a small surrender.
“I was going to return them properly. I only borrowed them for a dinner party. The flowers for the church were meant to be — I don’t know. A way of making it right before anyone noticed.”
Agnes received the vases. They were cold and heavy in her arms, and perfectly unharmed. “And the flower fund,” she said quietly, not looking at him. “From March.”
The wood pigeon called again. Fitch looked at the cut stems in his border. “I can return that too.”
Brigden took down the details. Agnes walked back along Church Lane carrying the crystal vases in her basket, their weight balanced carefully against each other.
At the church porch she paused. The sweet williams were still on the vestry table, pale and fragrant in the thin morning light. She considered removing them. Then she left them where they were. They were real flowers, honestly grown, and the church was rather bare this week.
She picked up her own secateurs and went to work on the window arrangements, the snip and stems and spill of water all exactly as they should be.
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