Inquisitor 1939: Close Quarters by Vagans

Yes, it’s us again blogging as Ken is in hospital – hope that things are steadily improving Ken and that you are able to ‘hop about’ OK.

The Preamble:

Christmas is over. It’s very quiet in the snowbound Cathedral Close. Too quiet: a murder has been committed. And one of the staff must be the culprit.

Solvers must locate (i) six suspects, clockwise in the perimeter housing (clued by wordplay only); and (ii), by changing one letter in the initially filled grid, the victim, whose identity is confirmed by three connected names spelled by single extra letters generated by the wordplay of each down clue. Six across clues each contain an extra word, which is a potential weapon in disguise. Five are red herrings; the broken pieces of the one actually used form a straight-line trail from the body to the murderer’s house. Victim, (broken) weapon and murderer must be highlighted. The letter change leaves real words. One answer is an initialism.

As we had only just returned from two weeks away, things were pretty busy and we were hoping for an easier ride than last week which was very devious. Thankfully things fell into place reasonably quickly but no less enjoyably.

As usual, we had no idea what was going on so we just started trying to solve the clues regardless. 9ac was a give-away but that didn’t help with any of the connecting down clues unfortunately.

The first one which revealed a potential weapon was 12ac as it was fairly obvious that ‘ragged was an anagram of ‘dagger’ and the definition was clear too. The rest of the weapons were not too difficult to guess either.

So, we steadily chipped away at the clues.

The extra letters in the down clues were not that helpful for trying to guess any missing ones unfortunately.

Once we had solved a couple of the suspects, we realised that they were all linked to roles within the cathedral.

The completed grid looked like this:

Once we had completed the grid, we started looking for the victim.

The three words revealed by the extra letters in the down clues were NELLIE, ACHESON and ARABIN. Given the list of suspects, we thought of Nellie Dean but could not remember anything else apart from the name.  DEAN featured in a fairly central location in the grid too if you changed the W to a D. A bit of googling revealed:

Nellie Dean – The main narrator in Wuthering Heights

Dean Acherson – US Cold War diplomat

Dean Arabin – a significant character in the Barchester Chronicles

Once the letter had been changed we had the victim (DEAN) being killed by a broken weapon (SPEAR) leading to the murder’s house in the Cathedral Close (VERGER)

Thanks Vagans – we enjoyed this!

Suspects (alphabetical order of solutions)

• Needing no introduction, our succentor’s first inside bistro? (6)

BURSAR – oUR (missing first letter or ‘needing no introduction’ S (first letter of succentor) inside BAR (bistro?)

• Reel back after fate (10)

CHANCELLOR – A reversal (‘back’) of ROLL (reel) after CHANCE (fate)

• Men following short prayers and section of Bible (9)

PRECENTOR – OR (other ranks – ‘men’) following PRECEs (prayers) missing last letter or ‘short’ NT (New Testament – ‘section of Bible’)

• Sectarians losing base getting dispersed (9)

SACRISTAN – An anagram (getting dispersed’) of SeCTARIANS without ‘e’ (base)

• Retired vicar taking work on board (6)

VERGER – A reversal (‘retired’) of REV (vicar) reversed around or ‘taking on board’ ERG (work)

• Surrender in vain when disturbed (8)

VICEDEAN – CEDE (surrender) inside an anagram (‘disturbed’) of VAIN