Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert

you got a car?’ interrupted Pollock.
    â€˜Afraid not,’ said Halliday. ‘Can’t afford it, you know.’
    â€˜In that case,’ said Pollock with a smile, ‘and seeing that we are at least two-hundred and fifty miles from North Devon, I don’t think I need trouble you for any detailed account of how you spent the rest of the night.’
    â€˜Well, that’s lucky anyway,’ said Halliday with an answering grin. ‘Old Evershed’s vintage port being all that it is, I don’t remember much myself until breakfast at nine-thirty the next morning.’
    â€˜What did you do on Monday?’ said Pollock.
    â€˜Golf with the chap I was telling you about from Cambridge, tea in the clubhouse about five.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Pollock. ‘Subject to verification, I think that disposes of you. You’d better let me have the name of the man you had dinner with.’
    â€˜Sir Lionel Evershed. The Red House, Tawton, North Devon.’
    â€˜Thank you, I’ll make a note of that.’
    â€˜This is really rather fun, isn’t it?’ said Halliday unexpectedly. ‘I mean I’ve read so often in books of people being asked to account for all their movements on the night of the thirteenth of April, and I’ve always rather wanted to be asked to account for my own. In fact, I sometimes wondered if I should be able to remember exactly what I’d done on a particular night after, say, six months.’
    â€˜It’s not very difficult,’ said Pollock, ‘as long as there’s something to fix it by and you don’t have to be exact about times.’
    â€˜If you want to eliminate someone else who has been away,’ suggested Halliday, ‘why not try your arts on Canon Beech-Thompson?’
    â€˜I have questioned Canon Beech-Thompson,’ replied Pollock shortly.
    â€˜And got an imperial raspberry?’ said Halliday with a most unclerical grin. ‘I suppose he went all Crockford at once. He’s not such a bad chap really. Very good-tempered if you rub him the right way. You know they all call him “Jumbo?” I think his trouble is really that he suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex, and that’s always inclined to make you brusque to strangers, don’t you think?’
    Pollock, who was beginning to like Vicar Choral Halliday, agreed with this diagnosis and rose to take his leave, but was pressed to stay to tea, and as it was nearly five, and he guessed that tea at the deanery was now a thing of the past, he agreed readily. Over this meal – served by the still suspicious Biddy – he made the acquaintance of Miss Halliday, a pleasant coltish girl, a little younger than her brother, he guessed, and learned among other miscellaneous items of information that Canon Bloss was “very mysterious” but “rather a dear” (this from Miss Halliday); that Vicar Choral Prynne was universally disliked (and yet Pollock got an illogical impression that Miss Halliday rather admired him); that Malthus was notorious for always being hard up, having a large family to support; indeed, that all the vicars choral were hard up, being scandalously underpaid, whilst the canons apparently received salaries a good deal in excess of their capabilities. That the same inequality extended to the vergers; as far as Halliday knew, Appledown – for some obscure reason connected with the foundation and having its origin in the shadowy recesses of diocesan history – got considerably more than both the other vergers put together.
    At this point the sound of a distant bell brought Halliday to his feet, and glancing at the dock Pollock saw that it was twenty past five.
    â€˜Don’t you go – that is unless you have to,’ said his host. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to dash off. The call of duty, you know. Evensong, five-thirty. I have to sing the service; it should really be Malthus,