LITMIR.BIZ

      While Hollis wondered about Marcus and the possibility of his involvement, Rhona Simpson set off to interview JJ Staynor, husband of Paul Robertson’s most recent girlfriend. Staynor had told her his office was at the rear of the building, accessible through the back door. Almost before Rhona’s knuckles contacted the metal, the door opened. A large man, fleshy and red-faced, loomed in the doorway.

      “Come in.” But his threatening stance suggested Rhona “keep out.”

      She ignored the partial blockage of the doorway and stepped around him into a small hall. On her right, an open door revealed a large room where butchers transformed the sides of meat into sanitized guilt-free trays of chops, steaks and ground meat. In the antiseptically clean room, every knife, mallet and saw had its designated resting-place outlined in black on a pegboard. The room, which resembled a surgical theatre or autopsy room, impressed her with its sterile efficiency.

      Staynor led her across the hall to an office as orderly as the surgery. With arms crossed over his chest and his hands pressed against his body, he glowered at her. “I hope you realize this is a busy time of year. I have a big order coming in this afternoon for the twenty-fourth.”

      Hostile message received but ignored. “I wasn’t aware people ate anything special on the Victoria Day weekend.”

      The big man loosened his grip on himself. “It’s not as big a day as Christmas, Easter or the first of July, but we sell quantities of turkeys and hams for the third weekend in May.” He lumbered behind his desk and sagged down on the well-worn swivel chair, simultaneously waving Rhona to the visitor’s wooden chair.

      If the neatly labelled hooks for invoices and receipts, the annotated wall calendar, and the clearly marked loose leaf notebooks lined up on the bookshelf meant anything, Staynor valued order. A collection of china, metal and plastic bulls and steers crowded a plate rail encircling the room. On the otherwise bare desk, a magnificent china bull pitcher stuffed with pens and sharpened pencils drew Rhona’s eye.

      The two sat in a silence that stretched like a rubber band and increased in tautness as it lengthened. Staynor snapped the tension. His lips widened into a caricature of a smile, but his gaze didn’t meet Rhona’s. Instead, as if unable to fix on any object, his eyes moved constantly. “ ‘I hated him for he is a Christian’,” he rumbled while his eyes fixed first on one object then on another.

      This was not what Rhona had expected.

      Staynor’s smile disappeared. His features drooped, along with his body, and he slumped in his chair. He pursed his mouth and twisted his hands, as if imitating Lady MacBeth.

      This wasn’t getting them anywhere. Time to shock him.

      “Did you kill Paul Robertson?”

      Staynor, relentlessly scraping his hands together, shook his head.

      “Was your wife having an affair with Reverend Robertson?”

      Staynor’s strange smile reappeared when his hands stilled. He leaned forward without meeting Rhona’s eyes. “ ‘The devil having nothing else to do went off to tempt my Lady Poltagrue. My lady, tempted by a private whim, To his extreme annoyance, tempted him,’ ” he recited in a hoarse whisper before he relaxed. His eyes lit up. “The poets know it all. There’s nothing new. Richard the Third, ‘He clothed his naked villainy; with odd old ends of holy writ. And seemed a saint when most he played the devil.’ Was that Paul, or wasn’t it?”

      This was one weird man. How did he interact with his customers? Surely he didn’t whisper riddles and quotes when he sold hamburger and pork chops?

      Staynor straightened up and spoke in a normal voice. “You’re surprised, aren’t you? You figured since I was a butcher I’d be an illiterate oaf? I wasn’t always a meat chopper. There’s no law against a butcher learning a thing or two about something besides veal cutlets and rack of lamb. Ever since Chaucer, writers have commented on the villainy of the clergy. Recently I’ve savoured the knowledge—Paul was one in a long line.”

      Had he been toying with her? Playing the part of a demented man.

      “Henry Fielding was acquainted with men like Paul. He said there was, ‘not in the universe a more ridiculous nor contemptible animal than a proud clergyman.’ ” Staynor jerked upward as if an invisible giant had pulled a string. “More to the point, Fielding said there was one fool at least in every married couple.”

      After this burst of enthusiasm, the invisible giant released the cord, and Staynor’s vertebrae telescoped. “That’s the important quote. My wife chose to have affairs. Paul wasn’t the first—he won’t be the last. Paul didn’t take her. Women aren’t sides of beef a man can steal. They have to want to go, or they don’t go. I was the fool, and I suppose I hated him because he made me look foolish. Adultery’s not new. It’s not worth killing or being killed for. Shakespeare covered that too; ‘I pardon that man’s life. What was thy crime? Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery. No. The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly / Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive.’ I don’t think I’d agree that it should thrive, but it’ll exist. It isn’t worth murder.”

      Staynor produced a facsimile smile. “Are you familiar with Auden’s poem about a man who knifed another for holy reasons?” He answered his own question. “You probably aren’t. I’ll give you a bit. ‘He stood above the body, He stood there holding the knife, And the blood ran down the stairs and sang: ‘I’m the Resurrection and the Life’. They tapped Victor on the shoulder. They took him away in a van; He sat as quiet as a lump of moss saying, ‘I am the Son of Man’ / Victor sat in the corner Making a woman of clay; Saying: ‘I’m the Alpha and Omega, I shall come to judge the earth one day.’ ”

      His face reflected his astonishment. “Where did that come from? You’ll think I’m as crazy as he was.” At the word “crazy”, Staynor covered his face with his massive hands.

      Rhona waited.

      After a time, Staynor dropped his hands

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