3rd March
‘Is Swan at home?’ said Reverend Leadbetter to Helen as he stood on her doorstep.
‘Sorry,’ she replied, ‘he’s gone out for a couple of hours. Would you like to come in for a coffee anyway,’ she added. ‘I want to talk to you about the village fête.’
Five minutes later, Helen placed a tray of coffee and biscuits on the coffee table. ‘Can I tell Swan what you wanted to see him about?’ she asked.
‘I wondered if I could look through the books that were recovered from Sam’s house,’ the vicar replied. ‘I loaned to Sam a rare Victorian copy of “The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm”. I would rather like to reclaim it.’
‘OK,’ said Helen, ‘I’ll tell him when he comes in. Now, about the fête. …’
As they talked, the vicar glanced surreptitiously around Helen’s lounge. Bishop Hunter had explained that, to avoid risk of detection, only one listening device could be placed in the house.
Swan was lodging with Helen, so as far as the vicar was aware, there was no point in putting it in a bedroom. The room where important conversations might take place was most likely to be the lounge.
There were eight fully crammed bookshelves on each side of the protruding fireplace. They were screwed to the rear walls of the recesses, but the front edges of the shelves lined up with the front of the chimney breast. Leadbetter deduced that the shelves were far deeper than any book that stood upon them.
‘You’ve got a substantial collection of books,’ the vicar commented when matters of the fête were resolved.
‘I’m thinking of getting rid of quite a few,’ Helen replied. ‘I never look at any of them. All the books I read now are on my Kindle.’
‘I don’t suppose I could trouble you for another cup of coffee,’ the vicar said. ‘It’s been a busy morning, and this is the first time I’ve stopped for any refreshment.’
‘Of course,’ said Helen, taking the vicar’s cup and then walking towards the kitchen.’
As soon as she had left the room, he removed the listening device from his pocket and switched it on. He got up, crossed to the nearest bookshelf and inserted the device over some of the shorter books – placing it on the shelf behind them.
He had just removed his hand from the shelf when Helen returned with his coffee.
They had just been discussing the books, so it did not seem in any way odd to her that he had got up to look at them more closely.