The Killer in the Choir

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For ever and a day.

She’s not shut out because of sin.

Her virtue’s plain to see.

It’s just … she never knew when to come in,

And could never find the key.

The trouble is, thought Carole Seddon peevishly, that no one knows any of the old hymns any more. Though devoutly anti-religious, she did have standards when it came to certain matters of British tradition. And she was strongly of the view that children should be brought up to know the basic repertory of hymn tunes that she’d had to learn at their age.

Carole was not a frequent visitor to All Saints Church in the village of Fethering. Lack of faith precluded regular Sunday attendance and, as a divorced woman in her fifties, she was not invited to many weddings or christenings. So, it was just funerals, really. And it was a funeral that had brought her to All Saints that Thursday morning in late February.

She had not known the deceased, Leonard Mallett, well, nor liked him very much. Of his professional career, in the world of insurance, she knew nothing. But they had both been on the same committee, which he had chaired, for the Preservation of Fethering’s Seafront. Though the group only met a couple of times a year, Carole had found out through the local grapevine that most of the other members would be attending the funeral. So, after the disproportionate amount of soul-searching that she brought to every social situation, she’d decided she ought to join them. Though Leonard himself was obviously beyond being offended, and Carole hardly knew his wife Heather, she still felt the danger that her absence might be interpreted as some kind of snub (unaware of the more likely truth that it simply wouldn’t be noticed).

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