The Verger’s Borrowed Bicycle Bell
The village of Steeple Morford smelled of cut grass and cooling stone that Tuesday morning, the kind of late-September air that carries the faint sweetness of fallen apples from someone’s orchard a field away. Agnes Purcell sat on the low wall outside St. Edmund’s with her canvas bag on her lap and her eyes on the noticeboard, where a printed sheet announced, in bold and rather agitated capitals: PARISH RESTORATION APPEAL — TARGET £4,000 — CURRENT TOTAL £1,247.
She had been there ten minutes and was on her second mint imperial when Reverend Callow came out through the side door, his cassock hem dragging through the damp gravel.
“Agnes.” He stopped. He pressed his lips together in the way he did when he was about to say something he’d rather not.
“Sit down, Martin,” she said. “You’re making the path look untidy.”
He sat beside her on the wall, though he was too tall for it and had to hunch. “I’ve had to let Geoffrey go,” he said.
Geoffrey Binns had been verger of St. Edmund’s for eleven years. He oiled the hinges, polished the lectern brass until it shone like a lamp, and made the tea at every fundraiser without being asked twice.
“On what grounds?” Agnes said.
“The restoration tin. Twenty-three pounds gone from it last Thursday. Geoffrey was the only one with a key.” Reverend Callow turned a button on his cassock, turning it, turning it. “I’ve spoken to the treasurer. The count was right on Wednesday, and Geoffrey collected the tin on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, the money was short.”
“Did you ask Geoffrey?”
“He says he didn’t touch it. But what else would he say?”
Agnes looked at the noticeboard again. She thought of Geoffrey Binns, who always arrived first and left last, who swept the porch even in February, whose hands smelled permanently of beeswax and who had, on one occasion, quietly paid the heating bill from his own pocket when the collection fell short at Christmas.
“Where is Geoffrey now?” she asked.
“Gone home, I imagine. He was very quiet about it. Didn’t shout or anything. Just handed me the key.”
Agnes stood and straightened her coat. “I’d like to look at the vestry.”
—
The vestry smelled of damp wool and old books. The restoration tin sat on the shelf above the coat hooks, a round biscuit tin with a painted tartan lid. Agnes examined it without lifting it. Then she looked at the shelf itself, which was dusty except for a clean ring where the tin sat and, just beside it, a faint rectangular impression in the dust.
“What usually sits there?” she asked.
Reverend Callow frowned. “Nothing. Just the tin.”
Agnes crouched slightly, then straightened. She went to the window and looked out into the churchyard, where a bicycle was propped against the yew tree.
“Who does that bicycle belong to?” she asked.
“That’s Dorothy Finch’s. She’s arranging flowers in the nave.” He paused. “She was here Thursday as well, actually. She and Mrs. Hartley were setting up for the harvest supper.”
Agnes walked through to the nave. Dorothy Finch was at the altar table with a bucket of dahlias, her back to the door, her secateurs snipping briskly. She was a broad, capable woman who chaired the Village Improvement Committee and whose opinion of Geoffrey Binns had never been particularly warm.
“Dorothy,” Agnes said pleasantly. “What a lovely bell that is on your bicycle.”
Dorothy turned. She had quick eyes. “Beg pardon?”
“Your bicycle bell. Shiny brass. I couldn’t help noticing.” Agnes smiled with her mouth only. “Though I thought your bicycle had a plastic one last week, when I saw it outside the post office.”
Dorothy said nothing. Her secateurs were still.
“It’s a very particular kind of bell,” Agnes continued. “Round, with a little lever on top. The sort that attaches with a small screw. Geoffrey has one exactly like it on his bicycle, or rather he did. He mentioned to me last month that it had been a gift from his late wife. He was very fond of it.”
Reverend Callow had come into the nave behind Agnes. He stood very still.
“Geoffrey keeps his bicycle in the vestry porch on Thursdays,” Agnes said. “Doesn’t he, Martin? Just there, under the coat hooks. Where there is, I notice, a rectangular impression in the dust on the shelf, the size and shape of a small tin. Not the restoration tin. A different tin. Something moved, and then replaced.”
Dorothy Finch set down her secateurs. She looked at the bucket of dahlias as if they might offer some assistance. They did not.
“My account is at the post office,” she said finally, her voice flat and careful. “I simply moved funds to cover a temporary shortfall in the improvement committee’s float. It was only ever a loan.”
“To yourself,” Agnes said, “from a charity, without permission, for which an innocent man has just lost his position of eleven years.”
The nave was very quiet. Somewhere outside, a wood pigeon called twice and stopped.
—
Geoffrey Binns was back at St. Edmund’s by Thursday. He oiled the hinge on the vestry door, which had been squeaking since June, and set a new pot of beeswax on the shelf above the coat hooks.
Agnes watched him from the porch, her canvas bag over her arm.
He paused by the noticeboard on his way out and looked at the restoration total, which had been amended in fresh ink to read £1,270.
“Docked my own wages,” he said quietly, not quite to Agnes. “To make up what was missing. Seemed only right.”
Agnes looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached into her canvas bag, took out an envelope, and tucked it into the collection slot of the restoration tin.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Now, put that bicycle bell back where it belongs.”
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