Inspector Peter Gogan was the only one of the four main investigators on the case to reside sufficiently close to the converted second world war two fighter aerodrome to be able to return home each evening. His smallholding in St, Peters was approximability a twenty-minute drive from the camp, just sufficient for him to be able to shake the melancholies off his brow before being greeted by his wife of five years, Matilde. Every evening she would be waiting patiently in the open front doorway to greet him gladly with a cheerly word and embrace. Peters second wife Pricilla would be just inside the door ready to double the welcome, having appropriately taken a moment of two away from the kitchen, where dinner would be all but ready for serving and consumption, as soon has Hubbie John and washed up and thrown on some more comfortable evening attire.
The Gogan clans allegiance to the very alien tenants of their non-British sect of quasi-Christianity would have subject of considerable surprise had that fact the been of general knowledge. However, Peter Gogan and his wives had kept than information entirely secretive, appearing for intents and purposes to be a completely average domestic couple cohabitating with an much younger close female acquaintance. Priscilla was presently a mere sixteen years of age and had been invested with her present partners for the previous three years. The trio considered their version of domestic bliss to be entirely normal, legitimate, and religiously and socially sound. Pricilla had been raised within a community believing in the rightness of marriage multiplicity and had never known a differing communal framework. Both Peter Gogan and Matilde were converts to their faith, but had an unshakeable conviction in the righteousness of the chosen creed. As with most modern manifestations of archaic notions the guiding principles had been tempered to benefit the more gratuitous perspectives of the post bohemian hippy era, particularly concerning the interrelationship forms acceptable within family pods. Peter, Matilde, and Priscilla shared everything, the perfect pell-mell of communal and sexual equality, bordering upon a rather formal concept of dominance and servility.
Like so many others who exist in an alternative universe, the Gogans found it quite surreal to consider or comprehend that their lifestyle caused the slightest ripple on the surface of the ocean of general social actuality. Nothing that occurred within or without their realm had the slightest affect or influence upon any other individual or group beneath the skies broad expanse.
The Isle of Thanet was exactly the correct area for a family with very individual ways to reside, a place crawling with the most conservative and insular of people, a rampant live and let live attitude to all things, as long as nothing happening however irregular or noxious disturbed the bland nothingness of the streets, fields, and beaches beyond the privacy moat surrounding your own well-maintained castle.
The slightly odd aroma of an irregular domestic arrangements would hardly have infringed on the well-educated nostrils of the locals, all thoroughly accustomed to travelling about with their noses raised to a convenient height to avoid any unpleasant niffs being discovered.
Peter Gogan’s locally renowned position as a mid-level police officer obliged a certain suspicion and respect from the immediate community, and the well positioned ‘Keep Out Private’ signs he has posted on every available access point that thus far proved highly effective a avoiding unwelcome intrusions. Like with so many other Bohemian sects initial visual perspectives to their lifestyle within the small holding would have aroused few concerns that not all was exactly as should be usually expected.
The only periods of obvious danger were the occasional visits by youngsters affiliated to other offshoots of their social brethren who might not comprehend the prime necessity to present a completely abstract and unalarming appearance to strangers. Thankfully Peter had surmised the possible issue and had constructed sound proofed holding cells amongst the array of outbuildings. Undisciplined adolescents could thus be safely and silently incarcerated in moments of inconvenience. Mathilde had proven herself a most adequate jailer on numerous occasions, although occasionally inclined to toy with those physically constrained.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 