Midlands Canal Mystery: Scene 6: The Mortification (and Wages) of Sin

Now it was Caroline’s turn to look black with anger.

“I don’t know what I am more ashamed of,” she said, staring down a sheepish Roger with the wrath of a Greek goddess, her mane of silver-spiraled tendrils clinging to her wet face and neck. “You, smoking marijuana in a churchyard and defacing a gravestone, or me, fleeing from the scene like a guilty child. It’s too humiliating.”

The rest of us were silent. I shared her mortification about running from the churchyard. Even Gregory, who rarely feels guilty about anything, looked a little cowed. Roger, meanwhile, dealt with his wife’s anger the way he usually did, with a wide-eyed meekness that would – in time – subvert her fury.

We were camped in The Dog & Doublet, drying out while the storm continued unabated outside the ceiling-high picture window we sat before. The waitress arrived with our tea and shook her head, saying in an Irish brogue: “Have you ever seen such a rain? It’s like Noah’s flood, it tis.”

Caroline waited politely for the waitress to leave before she continued to harangue her spouse. “And you are lucky that Mr. Hedges is a church warden and not a policeman. Otherwise we’d be talking to you behind bars!”

“Leeny,” Roger objected, using his endearment for his wife. “There’s no way he knew it was pot. He ––“

“Roger, you think people don’t know?” Caroline cut him off. “You spend so much time among potheads you have no perspective on what the straight world sees!”

Roger co-owns a technical support collective that services small businesses in New York City. From what I gather, the technicians are stoned all day long. How they manage to fix hard drives while high is one of those mysteries best left unsolved.

Caroline’s mood seemed to fuel the blackening sky, which over the next half-hour brought early nightfall to the summer evening. After fits of uncomfortable conversation, Roger excused himself for a smoke – “a cigarette, I promise.” I believed him – only an utter fool would push the limits of his wife’s tolerance that far.

By now, Gregory and I had switched from tea to a local ale. Caroline had pulled out a Barbara Pym novel. When Roger returned about 20 minutes later, he announced that the rain was letting up. We needed to leave immediately or miss our opportunity before the canal curfew, which was in less than an hour.

We made our way back along the same road we had come in on, although now, slick and dark, it was far more treacherous. More than once we were forced into the roadside shrubbery by speeding cars whose drivers seemed to take no notice of us.

“I thought this was a country road!” I cried, terrified.

“It is, but it connects two main thoroughfares,” Gregory explained. “These must be commuters returning home.”

“Do they have to get there so fast?” I whined.

We quickly mobilized to leave. While Roger started up the motor, I jumped in the bow to retrieve the two windlasses to open the paddles on the lock gates.

I found only one.

I called out to Caroline, who was waiting up by the gates: “Did you move a windlass? There’s only one here.”

Demurring that she hadn’t done anything with any equipment, she joined me to search the boat. There was no second windlass to be found.

Events had conspired against us – the rain turned cold and hard and pelted us with steely drops the size of a British pound; it was too dark to search any more for the missing windlass; and, at ten minutes to eight, it was too late for canal travel. Feeling punished for our earlier misdeeds, we resigned ourselves to spend the night outside Sandon.