All Roads lead to Eoropaidh

The Midsomer Mallows Gazette’s front page was plastered with a dramatic photo of the fire at Windy Whistle Farm. Caroline Devere did not hear her parents talking in the background. She read the section concerning the missing couple, over and over, the words in a blur because of the tears soaking her eyes.
A forensic unit from Causton was pulled in, going over the premises, looking for bodies. The newspaper stayed vague on the identities of the possible victims, but everyone knew. Peter Drinkwater and that millionaire boy, probably a conceited runaway rich man’s son, Sparrow something. She couldn’t get herself to believe it. Peter? Dead? She wavered between being jealous – a feeling she’d never really admitted to herself – jealousy for losing Peter to nothing less than another man, and sorrow. She’d never forgotten Peter. He’d made such an impact on her, taken her by storm and made a woman out of her. She never lost hope of him ever finding back to her, but now it seemed all too late. Ever since she first discovered that he was seeing another man, she’d been crushed, severely disappointed over his continuous evasiveness when they glanced at each other in the streets. He’d looked so haunted – and in her anger, she’d guessed it was because his boyfriend wouldn’t let him sleep at night, and that they were continuously doing it in all manner of ways.
But then she began to look closer, to really study Peter whenever they happened to bump into each other in the streets. His gaze had wandered all the time, and he looked nervous and frightened, always with his head bowed, trying to make himself invisible, almost running whenever she decided to confront him. He didn’t look healthy. And she’d felt glee, knowing that he suffered, maybe because he felt guilty of having let her down. Maybe he regretted leaving her.
The eerie feeling of something not being quite right, wouldn’t leave her. The more she’d thought about it, the more she realized that it wasn’t just her. He had been avoiding all of them. She’d seen rope marks around his wrists and his throat. And once in a while, a blue cheek, or an eye. His nose had been red from time to time, as if he’d been bleeding heavily. And then the strange conversation in the queue inside the Bank.
She read further down the page. One person had been brought in for questioning. Good, then the Police had a lead.

The town gossip was already scattering about like lost butterflies through a fan at high speed. A fireman’s wife had called up her neighbour in the middle of the night, to get the unbelievable story off her chest. The husband had spilled all the details over a beer, chuckling at the memory of the drunken priest. So thus, the story had evolved to concern a mad and drunken reverend who, because of his repugnance towards the supposedly gay couple – though everyone had always know Reverend Brown to be a liberal and including Catholic – had set fire to the Windy Whistle Farm, to put an end to the obscenities taking place there on a daily basis. This conclusion again, led to a general confirmation of the fact that Peter Drinkwater in fact had been gay, and that his boyfriend, an aristocratic runaway son of someone’s millionaire whom nobody ever seemed to able to remember the name of, had also been gay. And gay people only lived in London. So they probably had it coming – some said. It was a disease which didn’t belong in Midsomer Mallows.
This opinion again, shot fire late in the afternoon of the first day, and caused people at the pub to clash together in a heated discussion about the rights of gay people and whether or not it was a disease, and why they did or did not have the right to reside in Midsomer Mallows.
A historic number of twenty people from Midsomer Mallows, were detained overnight at the Causton Police House for public disturbance of the peace. The second day, the headlines of the Midsomer Mallows Gazette again fronted the fire at Windy Whistle Farm, releasing photos of the missing persons, only there was no photo to be had of Peter’s supposed boyfriend. The debate pages, which usually were half empty and contained opinions about the annoying neighbour’s cat digging up the bloody flowers ever single day, were for once stacked to the last line with contributions concerning the horrifying attitude of the people of Midsomer Mallows and their concern regarding gay people. Even the politicians participated, feeling it necessary to defend or attack as about half of them had been among said disturbers of peace the other night at the pub. And the name ‘Peter Drinkwater’ was on everybody’s lips.

Chief Inspector Barnaby brought Jack Dorset in for an interview. He didn’t have much to tell, except it seemed like Peter had become determined never to be his friend again. He blamed the mysterious boyfriend, and claimed he never thought Peter Drinkwater to be ‘one of them’.

Likewise did they bring in Caroline Devere. Once people realized she’d been towed in to the police station, knowing that Caroline and Peter once had a relationship, she too ended on the pedestal that was town gossip, just like Reverend Brown. They whispered lower of her – for she was of good family, with her mother being in the town council – and common belief was that Peter Drinkwater had used Caroline. Now, in people’s imagination she was becoming something else – a vindictive murderess – the jealous lover – the loser which couldn’t stand being left for no less than another man. The mill of the gossip machine had, by the third day, been poured with so much water that word had it Caroline and the Reverend had plotted it together. Maybe they even were lovers. Maybe Jack had been involved as well. Maybe she had two lovers – to handymen to do her dirty work, paying them off with sex. On the fourth day, people realised no one had seen Reverend Brown for a while. His house had been silent, and no one had seen him up and about on his daily routine to the market place. On the fifth day, Chief Inspector Barnaby and Detective sergeant Troy decided to pay him a visit. The house was empty, and the walls filled to the bursting point with red scribbles. A large cross hanging up side down had been painted on the main living room wall opposite the TV. The stench of iron and sulphur made both detectives bolt outside for a breath of fresh air. There was no doubt whatsoever. It was blood which had been smeared on the walls.

When it was confirmed that it was not Reverend Brown’s blood, Chief Inspector Barnaby went to the pub. He was in dire need of a beer, for the entire town was in an uproar, and he was in charge and had no answers to give them. Five beers later, he resolutely hailed a cab and went home. As he was sitting there, half asleep, staring aimlessly out of the window, it suddenly hit him that for Malachi Sparrow-Monterey to be of such a wealthy and well regarded family, information about him was hard to dig up. It was almost like he didn’t exist. And he couldn’t recall having been informed about anyone notifying the Sparrow-Monterey Family. And why was it, that whenever it was talk about investigating the Sparrow family concerning possible motives - say honour murder because their son was gay, the very thought of picking up the phone, or looking them up on the internet or even attempting to bother them, became extremely cumbersome and made all police investigators uncomfortable? It was like trying to accuse the pope of a crime. Barnaby felt like some unseen force was working against him. Maybe it was something to Reverend Brown’s words after all?

Next morning, Chief Inspector Barnaby sat in his desk chair, rubbing his face in his palms. He had a print-out of the Reverend’s testimony in front of him. He’d read it twice in hopes of having the words speak some mystical truth to him. It was then, that Detective sergeant Troy popped his head in, with a chirpy hello. He sat down casually in the chair opposite Barnaby’s desk, and said: “Bad night, Sir?”
“Just a beer too many, Troy.”
“Did you by any chance glance at the complete forensic report yet, Sir?”
“No? Anything new?”
“Our friend Ken on forensic said something odd. Usually, there would be bits and pieces of planks and inventory left, right? But he thought it strange that every single item was burned beyond recognition. The heat was so intense, everything has evaporated, turned to dust. Even metal cans and forks, which usually survive somewhat. Everything gone. He has no way of saying if there in deed were people in the house at the time of the fire, let alone whether it was arson or electricity malfunction. Tom said it was like if you drenched every single object, every single plank in that house with gasoline and then lit them all at the same time. It’s all here” Troy said, handing the report to Barnaby. “I bet you the insurance company is going to have fun with this one!”

“Reverend Brown says in his statement that the walls in the living room of the Windy Whistle Farm, were full of scribbles. Spells. And I’ll bet you, dear Troy, that the scribbles there would match those found in Reverend Brown’s cottage. We need a translator, someone who can read Aramaic."