ANDREW TAYLOR
THE JUDGEMENT OF STRANGERS
For Val and Bill
‘Cursed is he that perverteth the judgement of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.’
from the Service of Commination, in the office
for Ash Wednesday in The Book of Common Prayer.
‘The Manor of Roth is not mentioned in the Domesday Book …’
Audrey Oliphant, The History of Roth
(Richmond, privately printed 1969), p. 1.
Then darkness descended; and whispers defiled The judgement of stranger, and widow, and child …
.....
With flames to the flesh, with brands to the burning, As incense to heav’n the soul is returning
from ‘The Judgement of Strangers’ by the Reverend
Francis St. J. Youlgreave in The Four Last Things
(Gasset & Lode, London, 1896)
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
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31
32
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35
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37
We found the mutilated corpse of Lord Peter in the early evening of Thursday the 13th August, 1970. He was the first victim of a train of events which began towards the end of the previous summer when I met Vanessa Forde – or even before that, with Audrey Oliphant and The History of Roth.
Every parish has its Audrey Oliphant – often several of them; their lives revolve around the parish church, and in one sense the Church of England revolves around them. It was inevitable that she should be a regular visitor at the Vicarage, and it shamed me that I did not always welcome her as warmly as I should have done. It also irritated me that the Tudor Cottage cat treated the Vicarage as his second home, braving the traffic on the main road to get there.
‘Miss Oliphant practically lives here,’ said my daughter Rosemary at the end of one particularly lengthy visit. ‘And if she doesn’t come herself she sends her cat instead.’
‘She does an awful lot for us,’ I pointed out. ‘And for the parish.’
‘Dear Father. You try and find the best in everyone, don’t you?’ Rosemary looked up at me and smiled. ‘I just wish she would leave us alone. It’s much nicer when it’s just the two of us.’
Audrey was in her late forties and unmarried. She had lived in Roth all her life. Her house, Tudor Cottage, was on the green – on the north side between Malik’s Minimarket and the Queen’s Head. Its front garden, the size of a large bedspread, was protected from the pavement by a row of iron railings. Beside the gate there was a notice, freshly painted each year:
YE OLDE TUDOR TEA ROOM
(Est. 1931)
PROPRIETOR: MISS A.M. OLIPHANT
Telephone: Roth 6269
Morning Coffee – Light Meals – Cream Teas
Parties By Appointment
I had known the place for ten years, and in that time trade, though never brisk, had steadily diminished. This gave Audrey ample opportunity to read enormous quantities of detective novels and to throw herself into the affairs of the parish.
One evening in the spring of 1969, she appeared without warning on my doorstep.
‘I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ she asked, initiating a ritual exchange of courtesies, a secular versicle and response.
‘Not at all.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ I owed her this polite fiction. ‘I was about to have a break.’
I took her into the sitting room and, making a virtue from necessity, offered sherry. Audrey was a small woman, rather plump, with a face whose features seemed squashed; it was as though her skull, while still malleable, had been compressed in a vice – thus the face would have been splendidly in proportion if the eyes and the cheekbones and the corners of the mouth had not been