As the Pig Turns - By M.C. Beaton Page 0,3

ear against it and listened hard.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ roared a stentorian voice.

Agatha caught a frightened glimpse of a man who had just entered the church. She quickly closed her eyes and slumped to the floor. The confessional opened and Mr Bloxby and the priest came out.

‘What is going on?’ demanded the reedy voice of the priest.

Agatha opened her eyes. ‘What happened?’ she demanded weakly. ‘I felt dizzy and saw Mr Bloxby coming in here and wanted to ask him for help.’

‘She was listening!’ said a thin, acidulous man.

‘I know this woman,’ said Mr Bloxby. ‘Mrs Raisin, step outside the church with me.’

Agatha got to her feet. No one helped her. She put on her shoes. Mr Bloxby marched ahead, and Agatha trailed after him, miserably.

Outside the church, Mr Bloxby snapped, ‘Get in my car, Mrs Raisin. You have some explaining to do.’

Agatha got into the passenger seat of the vicar’s car. It had begun to rain: soft, weeping rain.

‘Now,’ said Mr Bloxby, ‘explain yourself, you horrible woman.’ The vicar had never liked Agatha and could not understand his wife’s affection for her.

She’ll never speak to me again, thought Agatha sadly as she realized she would have to tell the truth.

‘It’s like this, Alf . . . may I call you Alf?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, what happened, I met your wife in the pub last night and she had been crying. She thinks you’re having an affair.’

‘How ridiculous . . . although come to think of it, I have had to ward off a few amorous parishioners over the years.’

‘I promised not to snoop,’ said Agatha.

‘Which in your case is like promising not to breathe.’

‘Right! I’m fed up feeling guilty,’ said Agatha. ‘What the hell were you doing in the confessional box of a Catholic church?’

‘I needed spiritual guidance.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost your faith?’ demanded Agatha.

‘Nothing like that. You know that we use the old Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible?’

Agatha hadn’t noticed, but she said, ‘Yes.’

‘It is the most beautiful writing, on a par with Shakespeare. The bishop has ordered me to change to modern translations of both. I can’t, I just can’t. I felt I had to unburden myself to a priest of a different faith.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell your wife?’

‘I had to wrestle with my conscience. I even thought of entering the Catholic Church.’

‘And taking a vow of celibacy?’

‘The Vatican is proposing making provisions for people like myself.’

‘Don’t you talk to your wife?’

‘I prefer to wrestle with spiritual matters on my own.’

Agatha saw a way out of her predicament. She threw him a cunning look out of her small, bearlike eyes. ‘I could fix it for you.’

‘You! Do me a favour.’

‘I will, if you’ll shut up and listen. The bishop will not go against the wishes of the parishioners. The whole village will sign a petition to keep things as they are and send it to the bishop. Easy. I’ll fix it for you if you promise not to tell Mrs Bloxby I had anything to do with it. I’ll fix it up with the local shop. Everyone shops there in the bad weather. I’ll get Mrs Tutchell, the new owner, to say it’s her idea. You start talking about it now, all round the village, starting with your wife. Of course, if I find you have breathed a word about my involvement in this, you’re on your own, mate. Of all the silly vicars . . .’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ asked Mrs Bloxby plaintively half an hour later, after having heard her husband’s explanation.

‘At first, I wanted to wrestle with the problem on my own, but I called in at the village store and happened to mention it on my way home. The villagers have been very supportive and are sending a petition to the bishop.’

‘Did Mrs Raisin have anything to do with this?’

‘Of course not,’ said the vicar, addressing the sitting-room fire. Just a white lie, God, he assured his Maker. ‘Can you imagine me asking her for help?’

Agatha busied herself for most of the rest of the day by going door-to-door in the village, raising support for the vicar and urging everyone to sign the petition at the village store. A good proportion of the villagers were incomers who only went to church at Easter and Christmas but were anxious to do the right ‘village thingie’, as one overweight matron put it. Agatha headed to the office in the late afternoon to find Toni just leaving