War in Heaven

by Charles Williams

  “Excuse me, mister,” a voice said, “but is this the way to Fardles?” He pointed down the road.

  “That is the way, yes,” the Archdeacon answered. “Keep to the right all the way.”

  “Ah, thankee,” the stranger said. “I’ve been walking almost all night—nowhere to go and no money to go with.” He was standing a few yards off. “Excuse me coming in like this, but seeing a gentleman——”

  “Do you want something to eat?” the Archdeacon asked.

  “Ah, that’s it,” said the other, eyeing him and the chalice curiously. “Reckon you’ve never been twenty-four hours without a bite or sup.” He took another step forward.

  “If you go round to the kitchen you shall be given some food,” the Archdeacon said firmly. “I am on my way to the church and cannot stop. If you want to see me I will talk to you when I come back.” He lifted the chalice and went on down the path and through the churchyard.

  The Mysteries celebrated, he returned, still carefully carrying the chalice, and set it out of sight in a cupboard in the breakfast-room. When his housekeeper came in with coffee he asked after the stranger.

  “Oh yes, sir, he came round,” she said, “and I gave him some food. But he didn’t eat much, to my thinking, and he was off again in ten minutes. Those folk don’t want breakfast, money’s what they’re after. He wouldn’t stop to see you, not after I told him you might get him a job. Money, that’s what he wanted, not a job, nor breakfast, either.”

  But the Archdeacon absurdly continued to doubt this. He had felt, all through the short conversation in the garden, that it was not himself, but the vessel that the stranger had been studying—and that not with any present recognition, but as if he were impressing it on his memory. His train went at half-past nine; it was now half-past eight. But the train was out of the question; he had to explain the state of the church to the locum tenens; he had to go over to Rushforth, not now for Persimmons, but for his own needs. And, above all, he had to decide what to do with that old, slightly dented chalice that was hidden in the cupboard of the breakfast-room of an English rectory.

  The first thing that occurred to him was the bank; the second was the Bishop. But the nearest bank was five miles off; and the Bishop was probably thirty-five, at the cathedral city. He might be anywhere, being a young and energetic and modern Bishop, who organized the diocese from railway stations, and platforms at public meetings before and after speaking, and public telephone-boxes, and so on. The Archdeacon foresaw some difficulty in explaining the matter. To walk straight in, and put down the chalice, and say: “This is the Holy Graal. I believe it to be so because of a paragraph in some proofs, a man who tried to buy it for a mission church and said that children ought to be taught not to do wrong, a burglary at my church, and another man who asked the way to Fardles”—would a young, energetic, modern Bishop believe it? The Archdeacon liked the Bishop very much, but he did not believe him to be patient or credulous.

  The bank first then, and Rushforth next. And, in a day or two, the Bishop. Or rather first a telegram to Scotland. He sat down to write it, meaning to dispatch it from the station when he took the train to town. Then he spent some time in looking out a leather case which would hold the chalice, and had indeed been used for some such purpose before. He ensconced the Graal—if it were the Graal—therein, left a message with his housekeeper that he would be back some time in the afternoon, and by just after nine was fitting his hat on in the hall.

  There came a knock at the door. The housekeeper came to open it. The Archdeacon, looking over his shoulder, saw the stranger who had invaded his garden that morning standing outside.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” the stranger said, “but is the reverend gentleman in? Ah, to be sure, there he is. You see, sir, I didn’t want to worry you over your breakfast, so I went for a bit of a walk. But I hope you haven’t forgotten what you said about helping me to find work. It’s work I want, sir, not idleness.”

  “You didn’t seem that keen on it when you were talking to me about it,” the housekeeper interjected.

  “I didn’t want to forestall his reverence,” the stranger said. “But anything that he could do I’d be truly grateful for.”

  “What’s your name?” the Archdeacon asked.

  “Kedgett,” the other answered, “Samuel Kedgett. I served in the war, sir, and here——”

  “Quite,” the Archdeacon answered. “Well, Mr. Kedgett, I’m sorry I can’t stop now; I have to go to town most unexpectedly. Call”—he changed “this evening” into “to-morrow morning”—“and I’ll see what can be done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the other said, with a sudden alertness. “I’ll be there. Good-bye, sir.” He was out of the porch and down the garden path before his hearers were clear that he was going.

  “What a jumpy creature!” the housekeeper said. “Dear me, sir, I hope you’re not going to give him work here. I couldn’t stand a man like that.”

  “No,” the Archdeacon said absently, “no, of course, you couldn’t. Well, good-bye, Mrs. Lucksparrow. Explain to Mr. Batesby when he comes, won’t you? I shall be back in the afternoon probably.”

  Along the country lane on the other side of the churchyard there was little to be seen beyond the fields and pleasant slopes of the country twenty miles out of North London. The Archdeacon walked along, meditating, and occasionally turning his head to look over his shoulder. Not that he seriously expected to be attacked but he did feel that there was something going on of which he had no clear understanding. “How vainly men themselves amaze,” he quoted, and allowed himself to be distracted by trying to complete the couplet with some allusion to the high vessel. He produced at last, as he came to a space where four roads met and as he went on through what was called a wood, but was not much more than a copse—he produced as a result:

  How vainly men themselves divert,

  Even with this chalice, to their hurt!

  and heard a motor-car coming towards him in the distance. It was coming very quietly from the direction of the station, and in a few minutes it came round the curve of the road. He saw someone stand up in it and apparently beckon to him, quickened his steps, heard a faint voice calling: “Archdeacon! Archdeacon!” felt a sudden crash on the back of his head, and entered unconsciousness.

  The car drew up by him. “Quick, Ludding, the case,” Mr. Persimmons said to the man who had slipped from the wood in the Archdeacon’s rear. He caught it to him, opened it, took out the chalice, and set it in another case which stood on the seat by him. Then he gave the empty one back to Ludding. “Keep that till I tell you to throw it away,” he said. “And now help me lift the poor fellow in. You have a fine judgement, Ludding. Just in the right place. You didn’t hit too hard, I suppose! We don’t want to attract attention. A little more this way, that’s it. We have some brandy, I think. I will get in with him.” He did so, moving the case which held the Graal. “Can you put that with the petrol-tin, Ludding? Good! Now drive on carefully till we come to the cross-roads.”

  When, in a few moments, they were there, “Now throw the case into the ditch,” Persimmons went on, “over by that clump, I think. Excellent, Ludding, excellent. And now round up to the Rectory, and then you shall go on to the village or even the nearest town for a doctor. We must do all we can for the Archdeacon, Ludding. I suppose he was attacked by the same tramp that broke into the church. I think perhaps we ought to let the police know. All right; go on.”

  Chapter Five

  THE CHEMIST’S SHOP

  For some three weeks the Archdeacon was in retirement, broken only by the useful fidelity of Mrs. Lucksparrow and the intrusive charity of Mr. Batesby, who, having arrived at the Rectory for one reason, was naturally asked to remain for another. As soon as the invalid was allowed to receive visitors, Mr. Batesby carried the hint of the New Testament, “I was sick and ye visited me” to an extreme which made nonsense of the equally authoritative injunction to be “wise as serpents.” He was encouraged by the feeling
which both the doctor and Mrs. Lucksparrow had that it was fortunate another member of the profession should be at hand, and by the success with which the Archdeacon, dizzy and yet equable, concealed his own feelings when his visitor, chatting of Prayer Book Revision, parish councils, and Tithe Acts, imported to them a high eternal flavour which savoured of Deity Itself. Each day after he had gone the Archdeacon found himself inclined to brood on the profound wisdom of that phrase in the Athanasian Creed which teaches the faithful that “not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God” are salvation and the Divine End achieved. That the subjects of their conversation should be taken into God was normal and proper; what else, the Archdeacon wondered, could one do with parish councils? But his goodwill could not refrain from feeling that to Mr. Batesby they were opportunities for converting the Godhead rather firmly and finally into flesh. “The dear flesh,” he murmured, thinking ruefully of the way his own had been treated.

  In London the tracing of the murderer seemed, so far as Stephen Persimmons and his people could understand, to be a slow business. Descriptions of the murdered man had been circulated without result. There had been no papers—with the exception, crammed into the corner of one pocket, of the torn half of a printed bill inviting the attendance of outsiders at a mission service to be held at some (the name was torn) Wesleyan church. The clothes of the dead man were not of the sort that yield clues—such as had any marks, collars and boots, were like thousands of others sold every day in London. There were, of course, certain minor peculiarities about the body, but these, though useful for recognition, were of no help towards identification.

  Investigations undertaken among the vanmen, office boys, and others who had been about the two streets and the covered way about the time when the corpse entered the building resulted in the discovery of eleven who had noticed nothing, five who had seen him enter alone (three by the front and two by the side door), one who had seen him in company with an old lady, one with a young lad, three with a man about his own age and style, and one who had a clear memory of his getting out of a taxi, from which a clean-shaven or bearded head had emerged to give a final message and which had then been driven off. But no further success awaited investigations among taxi-drivers, and the story was eventually dismissed as a fantasy.

  Mornington suspected that a certain examination into the circumstances of the members of the staff had taken place, but, if so, he quoted to his employer from Flecker, “the surveillance had been discreet.” Discreet or not, it produced no results, any more than the interview with Sir Giles Tumulty that Inspector Colquhoun secured.

  “Rackstraw?” Sir Giles had said impatiently, screwing round from his writing-desk a small, brown wrinkled face toward the inspector, “yes, he came to lunch. Why not?”

  “No reason at all, sir,” the inspector said, “I only wanted to be sure. And when did he leave you—if you remember?”

  “About half-past two,” Sir Giles said. “Is that what he ought to have done? I’ll say two, if you like, if it’ll help you catch him. Only, if you do, you must arrange for me to see the hanging.”

  “If he left at half-past two, that’s all I want to know,” the inspector said. “Did you happen to mention to anyone that he was coming?”

  “Yes,” said Sir Giles, “I told the Prime Minister, the Professor of Comparative Etymology at King’s College, and the cook downstairs. Why the hell do you ask me these silly questions? Do you suppose I run round telling all my friends that a loathsome little publisher’s clerk is going to muck his food about at my table?”

  “If you felt like that,” the inspector said, holding down his anger, “I wonder you asked him to lunch.”

  “I asked him to lunch because I’d rather him foul my table than my time,” Tumulty answered. “I had to waste an hour over him because he didn’t understand a few simple things about my illustrations, and I saved it by working it in with lunch. I expect he charged overtime for it, so that he’d be two shillings to the good, one saved on his food and another extra pay. I should think he could get a woman for that one night. How much do you have to pay, policeman?”

  The inspector at the moment felt merely that Sir Giles must be mad; it wasn’t till hours afterwards that he became slowly convinced that the question was meant as an insult beyond reach of pardon or vengeance. At the time he stared blankly and said soberly: “I’m a married man, sir.”

  “You mean you get her for nothing?” Sir Giles asked. “Two can live as cheaply as one, and your extras thrown in? Optimistic, I’m afraid. Well, I’m sorry, but I have to go to the Foreign Office. Come and chat in the taxi; that’s what your London taxis are for. When I want a nice long talk with anyone I get in one at Westminster Abbey after lunch and tell him to go to the Nelson Column. We nearly always get there for tea. Oh, good-bye, policeman. Come again some day.”

  The immediate result of this conversation was to cause Colquhoun to suspect Rackstraw more grievously than before. But no amount of investigation could prove the tale of the lunch unreliable or connect him in any way with an unexplained disappearance or even with any semi-criminal attitude towards the law. He owed no money; he seemed to do nothing but work and stop at home, and his connection with Sir Giles, which was the most suspicious thing about him, was limited apparently to the production of Sacred Vessels in Folklore. The inspector even went the length of procuring secretly through Stephen Persimmons an advance copy of this, and reading it through, but without any result.

  Another of the advance copies Mornington had sent personally to the Archdeacon, and a few days before the official publication, and some four weeks after the archidiaconal visit to the publishing house he had a letter in reply.

  DEAR MR. MORNINGTON, the Archdeacon wrote, I have to thank you very much for the early copy of Sacred Vessels which you were good enough to send me. It is a book of great interest, so far as anything intellectual can be, and especially to a clergyman; who has, so to speak, a professional interest in anything sacred, and especially to anything which has a bearing on Christian tradition—I mean, of course, Sir Giles Tumulty’s study of the possible history of the Holy Graal.

  There is one point upon which I should like information if you are able to give it to me—if it is not a private matter. This article on the Graal contained, when I glanced through it in the proofs you showed me, a concluding paragraph which definitely fixed the possibility (within the limitations imposed by the very nature of Sir Giles’s research) of the Graal being identified with a particular chalice in a particular church. I have read the article as it now stands with the greatest care, but I cannot find any such paragraph. Could you tell me (1) whether the paragraph was in fact deleted, (2) whether, if so, the reason was any grave doubt of the identification, (3) whether it would be permissible for me to get into touch with Sir Giles Tumulty on the subject?

  Please forgive me troubling you so much on a matter which has only become accidentally known to me through your kindness. I am a little ashamed of my own curiosity, but perhaps my profession excuses it in general and in particular.

  I hope, if you are ever in or near Castra Parvulorum, you will make a special point of calling at the Rectory. I have one or two early editions—one of the Ascent of Mount Carmel—which might interest you.

  Yours most sincerely,

  JULIAN DAVENANT.

  “Bless him,” Mornington said to himself as, coiled curiously round his chair, he read the letter, “bless him and damn him! I suppose Lionel will know.” He dropped the letter on his desk, and was opening another, when Stephen Persimmons came into the office. After a few sentences had been exchanged, Stephen said: “When do you go for your holidays, Mornington?”

  “I was going at the end of August—for some of them, anyhow,” Mornington answered—“if that fits in all right. It fitted in when I fixed it. But I’m only walking a little, so, if there’s any need, I can easily alter it.”

  “The fact is,” Stephen went on, “I’ve been as
ked to go with some people I know to the South of France at the beginning of August, and I might stop six weeks or so if things didn’t call me back. But I like you to be here while I’m away.”

  “The beginning of August—six weeks—” Mornington murmured, “and it’s the fifth of July now. Well, sir, I’ll go before or after, whichever you like. Rackstraw goes next Friday, and he’ll be back by the end of the month.”

  “Are you sure it’s convenient?” Stephen asked.

  “Entirely,” the other said. “I shall walk as long as I feel like it, and stop when and where I feel like it. And I can walk in July as well as in September. Anyhow, I’m only taking ten days or a fortnight now. I have to go to my mother in Cornwall in October for the rest.”

  “Well, what about now, then?” said Stephen.

  “Now, then,” Mornington answered. “Or at least Friday week, shall we say? Unless, of course, I’m arrested. I feel that’s always possible. Didn’t I see the inspector calling on you the other day, sir?”

  “You did, blast him!” Stephen broke out. “Why that wretched creature got huddled up here I can’t imagine. It’s killing me, Mornington, all this worry!” He got up and wandered round the office.

  Behind his back his lieutenant raised surprised eyebrows. It was a nuisance, of course, but, as Stephen Persimmons had for alibi the statement of every other reputable publisher in London, this agitation seemed excessive. It might be the murder in general, but why worry? Stephen was always reasonably decent to the staff, but to worry over whether any of them had committed a murder seemed to point to a degree of personal interest which surprised him.

  “I know,” he said sympathetically. “You feel you’d like to murder the fellow just for having been murdered. Some people always muddle their engagements. Probably he had arranged to be done in at a tea-shop or somewhere like that—he was just that kind of fellow—and then got mixed and came here first. Has the inspector any kind of clue? The body, by now, is past inspecting.”