Reverend Bartle II

"Er, isn't that one of those martial arts?"  Reverend Bartle looked rather confused by Playfair's sudden change of tack, and Miss Flava sympathised.  She looked over at Calamity who'd by now dug up nearly half of the tomato plants.  At a guess, she'd say that a good half-a-morning's work had been reduced to so much scattered soil and half-dead plants.  The green, meaty smell of tomato plants drifted towards her, and she wrinkled her nose a little.  She'd never much liked tomatoes, preferring to hide them under salad leaves or pull them out of her egg-salad sandwiches and drop them in the bin.  From which Calamity would invariably retrieve them, if they were in the office, and then eat them.
"No.  That would make it respectable."  Inspector Playfair was definite.  "It's the art of re-arranging furniture for large sums of money.  And I use the word art, rather than science, to indicate in particular that it is funded solely by people who think that the effect something has is more important than the cause responsible for it and who can't see when a painting is, in fact, just the result of the artist having a seizure in front of a canvas while holding paint.  Rather than heal the poor bugger who's just chewed through eight tubes of paint they pay ridiculous sums of money for his canvas and hope he doesn't think of getting treatment himself."
"Er.  Right," said Bartle.  "So Feng Shui is redecorating with furniture is it?  Is that something you do at IKEA?"
"I hope not.  You're not a follower, or a fan of Feng Shui then?"
"Sorry, Inspector, I'm rather not.  I don't do much interior design, my partner looks after all that kind of thing.  I'm more of a cook and a gardener."
There was a pause while they both looked at Calamity who had now dug up all of the tomato plants and was frantically digging in the rockery, unearthing rocks, more soil, and the occasional tortoise shell.
"It looks like we might have to buy tomatoes this year," said Bartle with a hint of reproval.  Playfair ignored him.
"What's your opinion of the dead then?  You're a priest, right, you must have to do the odd funeral.  Do you play with the bodies a bit first?"
"What?!"  Bartle reddened and his eyes opened wider, he puffed his chest out and looked more than a little ridiculous in his dress.  "What are you suggesting, officer?"
"I think he's suggesting that you tampered with the evidence," said Miss Flava, who was turning over the tortoise shells with a foot.  They all seemed to be free of dead tortoise, fresh or decomposed, and there was no sign of the shells being broken into.
"What?" Bartle turned to face her now, still red in the face and his voice was increasing in pitch.
"How did you know it was a screwdriver sticking into his neck?" said Playfair, his voice suddenly soft and coercive.  "If all you could see want the handle, and the man was hanging, so necessarily higher up than you because he's got to be off the ground, and the ground's all soft with blood, so you wouldn't get too close; if all this is true, how did you know he had a screwdriver in his neck?"
Bartle stared at Miss Flava, then at Playfair, and finally at Calamity, who was now in a hole almost the same size as her and still digging.
"They told me," he said weakly.  "The policemen, when they came to ask me about things.  They told me there was a screwdriver in the side of his neck.  They wanted to see what tools I have, so I showed them.  I keep them all in the greenhouse anyway, and screwdrivers aren't really gardening tools, are they?  Where is you dog going, Inspector?"
"Down," said Playfair.  "Don't worry, she wont' dig so deep that she can't get out again.  So, you claim that you know about this screwdriver because someone else told you.  Why are you telling me about it like you saw it at the time then?"
"I didn't know this was an interview!  You just came over and let your damn dog loose to ruin my garden and started asking weird questions!"  Bartle was tripping over his words now and looked extremely agitated; his hands were trembling and he kept smoothing down the front of his dress, unconsciously rubbing mud into it over and over again.
"Calamity!  Car!"  Playfair's voice was stentorian, and Calamity lifted her head, regarded him for a second, then bounded out of her hole and galloped back to the car.  Miss Flava nudged the fifth tortoise shell into line with the others with her foot, and then strolled over to the car as well to open the door and let Calamity back in.
"I'll have more questions for you," said Playfair.  "But I'll need to decide what they are first.  Enjoy your gardening."
Bartle stared after them in astonishment, watching as Playfair made a stab at getting the driver's seat and was neatly cut-off by a very rapid Miss Flava.  He grimaced, but went back round the to the passenger side and got in there while Miss Flava made sure she was in the driver's seat before he'd even opened his door.  The dog, the enormous Rottweiler that had completely ruined his gardening, barked a couple of times, and then the engine started up and the car drove away, leaving him with no tomatoes, a huge hole in the rockery, and a ridiculous number of tortoise shells.  He was pretty certain that neither he nor the previous priest had ever even owned a tortoise.

Reverend Bartle

"Why are you wearing a dress?"  It would be unfair to describe Detective Inspector Playfair as snarling as then one would run out of words to describe his increasing levels of aggression too quickly.  The priest looked up, a little startled, and smoothed the front of his Jane Asher exclusive down.
"Do you like it?" he said.  "It's for the summer play.  We're doing Streetcar."
"Never heard of it," said Playfair automatically.  Miss Flava, stood next to him, and who thought that the priest seemed far too comfortable in the dress, equally automatically disbelieved Playfair.  She'd come to the conclusion that her boss worked very hard to give everyone the impression that he was like a wasp-stung bulldog on a short chain: ferociously aggressive and dangerously short-sighted, while in fact the brain of a classics scholar worked like a well-oiled machine in the background to discover the real facts of any given case.  All she had left to prove was the brain of the classics scholar was in fact his own, and she'd be free to admire him and his incredible depths of cynicism.
"Oh?  That's a shame, it's a fantastic play.  I do confess, I've been having to work on my Deep South accent a little for it though."  The priest giggled, and Miss Flava looked away, feeling a little uncomfortable.
"Right, Stanley," said Playfair.  "We're here looking for a Reverend Bartle.  Derek Bartle.  What have you done with him?"
"Oh, hah, that's me, I've done nothing with him!  Well, maybe hidden him in a dress.  Who are you?"
Playfair produced a bus pass, then his wallet, then a hip flask, and finally his warrant card.  "DI Playfair," he said.  "This here is the lovely Miss Flava, she's my gorgeous assistant and makes people disappear while I keep the audience entertained."
Miss Flava glared at Playfair and produced her own warrant card on the first try, since she kept it ready in an inside pocket.  The priest peered at both cards, and then at their respective owners.
"Yes, well that seems in order," he said.  "Perhaps I ought to change then, if this is official business?"
"It is, and don't bother," said Playfair.  "You're wearing more than some people I've interviewed in the past, and that's a relief.  Oh, Calamity!"
"What's the ma–" started the Reverend Bartle, but his words were lost as Calamity leapt on his back and pushed his face into the gardenias.  She leapt up at Playfair a couple of times, pawing the air and landing each time with her paws unerringly on Bartle's head.  After the first occasion he stopped trying to lift his head until the weight of the dog was off his back.  Miss Flava hurried forward to pull Calamity off, still wondering how the dog managed to do just what Playfair wanted despite that no-one ever saw him training her.
"Thank-you," said Playfair to Miss Flava as she hauled Calamity away from the priest and his now-awry gardenias.  "I'm sorry about Calamity," he said to Bartle.  "She does depend on the kindness of strangers."
"Urghh." said Bartle wiping compost from his eyes and mouth.  "That was... why is she called Calamity?"
"Calamity Jane, my favourite Crimean nurse," said Playfair.  "Why do you sign letters as Melpomene?"
"What?"  Bartle looked confused.
Playfair stared off into the distance instead of answering, looking at the length of the garden, the scattering gardening tools: tiny forks, trowels, lengths of dowel, string and unpotted plants waiting for embedding into the spring earth.  Beyond the garden was a cottage of sorts with heavy stone walls, huge doors and tiny, leaded windows, and behind them was a solid, Saxon church that looked as though it could withstand a siege.  The church had a campanile, at the top of which Playfair could see at least three bells, and after that trees obscured the view of what was very probably the graveyard.
"Someone killed a man here," he said at last.  "You found the body, and someone sent a letter to the local paper claiming the kill and calling themselves Melpomene."
"I didn't send the letter!  I just found the poor soul, hanging from a tree with a screwdriver sticking out of the side of his neck.  The ground all around him was soggy with blood!  It was dreadful!"  The man had whitened a little, but seemed to be otherwise retaining his composure.  "Why are you here?  We have a police-force of our own, and they've been and talked to me already.  And they were much nicer about it too!"
"That's why I'm here," said Playfair.  "They didn't get anywhere with their tea and cupcakes approach."
"So you come with your monstrous dog and your veiled threats?  I shall write to your superior officers about this!"
Miss Flava silently handed Bartle a business card.
"His immediate superior is the first name on the list," she said after a moment.  "Each name after that is one rank higher.  The address for all of them is on the back.  I can supply you with a form letter to copy from if you'd like, his superiors prefer to be able to identify the complaint quickly these days."
"You... you mean he gets a lot of these complaints?  Why's he still a policeman?"
"He gets a lot of results," said Miss Flava.  "Actual results, and not just convictions that are overturned as unsound or wrong, months or years later."
"I'm still complaining."
"Then here's the form letter."
Bartle stared at first her, then at Calamity who was now frantically digging up tomato plants, and then at Playfair.
"Do you use bonemeal for your plants?" asked Playfair.  Bartle nodded.  "That's why she's digging."
"How can I help you then," said Bartle finally, sounding depressed.  "You won't go away until I do, will you?"
"How much do you know about Feng Shui?" asked Playfair.