Constable Evans 02: Evan Help Us Read Free Page A

it?” Evans-the-Meat snapped. He headed back to his store, then turned to Evan again.
    “See you at the Dragon then, will I?”
    Evan nodded. “I expect so. As soon as I’ve closed up shop at the police station.”
    “It must be hard, all that walking up and down and stopping for cups of tea,” Evans-the-Meat said.
    Evan smiled, although he was never quite sure when Evans-the-Meat was joking.
    “It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, haven’t they?” he retorted. “See you then. Don’t go waving that thing around, will you, or I might have to cite you for carrying a deadly weapon.” He gave a friendly wave to the butcher and headed on up the street.
    The boys were already in the midst of their football practice when he reached the village school. He paused to watch for a moment, his gaze straying to the gray stone school building beyond. Bronwen often stayed late to prepare the next day’s lessons. He hoped she’d glimpse him outside and come out to talk. Evan wasn’t usually shy about talking to women, but he had been deliberately taking it slowly with Bronwen Price. Sometimes he wondered if she wasn’t a little too serious and intellectual for him. He knew very well that two dates with one girl in a village like Llanfair would have everyone planning the wedding day. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married some day, but he wasn’t in any big hurry either.
    But he certainly enjoyed Bronwen’s company and her quiet wisdom. She was the one person he could talk to when he had something on his mind. She was a great listener and didn’t make any rash judgements. The way she sat there, her head slightly on one side, her long ash blond hair falling like a curtain of golden rain, had often encouraged him to say far more than he had meant to. And he had gone away feeling strangely content.
    But Bronwen didn’t appear from the school today and Evan resumed his trek to the top of the village street. The last two buildings were both chapels. On the left was Chapel Bethel, Reverend Parry Davies, Sunday school 10 A.M. worship service 6 P.M. (sermon in English). On the right was Chapel Beulah, Reverend Powell-Jones, worship service 6 P.M. (sermon in Welsh and English). They framed the street, unpretentious gray stone mirror images of each other, even to the identical billboards beside their front doors. Only the biblical texts on their billboards were different.
    If the outsider paused to wonder why a village the size of Llanfair needed two chapels, the messages on the billboards should have given him a clue. The two chapels were at constant war. Today the message outside Chapel Bethel read “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” while Beulah proclaimed, “Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek!”
    Evan grinned. The war of the billboards was the civilized way that Reverends Parry Davies and Powell-Jones got at each other. When one came out with a new billboard quote, the other rushed straight to his Bible to contradict or better it. There was no animosity more passionate than that between rival Christians, Even thought.
    He had reached the end of the village. Before him the road snaked up to the top of the pass, a gray ribbon between green hills. The only building was the Everest Inn, its wood-shingled Swiss chalet roof glowing in the evening sunlight. Evan paused and scanned the hills above. He picked out a figure moving across the high pastures and caught the glint of something bright. That would be the colonel’s silver-tipped cane, he decided. On his way down from another of his expeditions. He marvelled at the old man’s strength and determination. He must be going on eighty and yet he was up there, tramping around, wet or dry, determined to come up with King Arthur’s crown, or maybe the rotting remains of the round table.
    As Evan turned to head back to the police station, his attention was caught by something lower down the mountain. There was a flash of bright red in the meadow behind