Geoffrey nodded gloomily. ‘Precisely. From what?’
‘I suppose,’ said Fielding mournfully, ‘that beer you’re drinking is all right?’
Geoffrey jumped visibly. It occurred to him that he was not, perhaps, feeling very well. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said testily. ‘People don’t go putting poison in people’s beer. Or if they do,’ he added with rising indignation, ‘it’s no use worrying about it until it happens, or we shall all go raving mad and have to be put away.’ He relapsed into sulks. ‘I shall keep an eye on Mr James,’ he mumbled, and then, with sudden irritation: ‘And where the hell is Fen? Really, it’s too bad of him not to be here when I arrive.’ He brooded on his wrongs, cherishing them individually.
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Fielding cautiously, ‘about these’ – he waved a hand, evoking a myriad phantom butterflies – ‘insects.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Geoffrey replied, ‘because you don’t know Fen. My better self persuades me that he’s a normal, sensible, extremely healthy-minded person, but there are times when I wonder if he isn’t a bit cracked. Of course, everyone has these obsessions about some transient hobby or other, but Fen’s personality is so’ – he hesitated over words – ‘large and overwhelming, that when he gets bitten it seems like a cosmic upheaval. Everything’s affected for miles around.’
Frances chuckled. ‘It began,’ she said, ‘when he found a simply gigantic grasshopper on the clergy-house lawn. I must say I’ve never seen anything quite so vast. He put it in a deep cardboard box and brought it in to dinner that night to show us. The Bishop was dining.’ She gurgled, enchanted by the imminent and foreseeable climax. ‘When he took off the lid, poor Dutton nearly fainted. Then he poked at the wretched thing until we were all ready to scream. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s biologically impossible for it to get out.” The first leap landed it in the Bishop’s soup. I’ve never seen a man so pale. Finally it ended up in the hearth, where the dog ate it. “Nature red in tooth and claw,” said the Bishop (we gave him a new plate of soup, but he wasn’t happy about it). “There,” said Fen, “a perfect specimen, and it’s gone. You can stop their noise,” he said, “by pricking them with a pin.” We said we shouldn’t be surprised.’
Fielding rocked with silent laughter. Even Geoffrey giggled absurdly. ‘But I thought,’ he remarked, ‘that Fen was busy investigating this business about Brooks. He…’
The girl got up suddenly. In a moment, as it seemed, the laughter was gone. Just so might a child intent on play run out of her own front door into a garden never seen before, and better not seen. Just so might a man turn with a casual remark to a friend in a darkened train, and see a dead mask. Frances took two short steps and turned. When she spoke, her voice was not as it had been.
‘Sooner or later,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to know. It may as well be now.’ She seemed struggling for utterance. ‘It was kept from the papers, but they would never have printed it in any case. It was – after a choir-practice. Dr Brooks went back to the cathedral for something. They found him next morning, not unconscious, though there was a bruise on his head.’ She stopped, and for a moment covered her face with her hand. ‘Devilry…You’ll think I’m mad, but I’m not. Everything isn’t well here. Things happen that can’t be explained. You – you must –’ She was violently agitated.
Fielding half rose. ‘Look here, Miss Butler –’
But she brushed him aside, and went on speaking more rapidly than before. ‘I’m all right. Thank God it isn’t me. They took him to the hospital – in secrecy. He’s had moments of sanity, but they haven’t been many. He was locked in, and the key was lying outside – they found it on the grass. An empty cathedral isn’t a good place to be in all night. Ever since they brought him away he’s talked and babbled and raved – about the slab of a tomb that moved, and a hanging man.’
4
Teeth of Traps
They were in one of many mouths of Hell
Not seen of seers in visions; only felt
As teeth of traps…
OWEN
The clergy-house drawing-room was a large one, shabby but comfortable, well-lighted, and decorated, not with Pre- Raphaelite Madonnas, but with caricatures by Spy of ecclesiastical dignitaries long dead and awaiting transfiguration, together with one original Rowlandson etching tucked away in a corner. This represented two obese clerics, one throwing bread contemptuously to an equally contemptuous rabble, the other surreptitiously embracing a large and simpering wench, very décolletée; a cathedral which was recognizably Tolnbridge stood in the background. A few scattered books showed tastes not far removed from the worldly: fiction by Huxley, Isherwood, and Katherine Mansfield; plays by Bridie and Congreve; and, in another but still noble sphere, John Dickson Carr, Nicholas Blake, Margery Allingham, and Gladys Mitchell. The cathedral clergy are great readers – they have little else to do.
Geoffrey and Frances had left Fielding at the Whale and Coffin to unpack and were sitting together, talking a little restrainedly. Now they were alone, Geoffrey felt even more attracted by her, and she quieted his bachelor’s misgivings (which she may have suspected) by an almost timorous reserve. The evening sunlight lay green and gold on the broad lawn outside the French windows, glistening on the thickly-clustered yellow roses and the shaggy chrysanthemum blooms. A faint scent of verbena drifted in from a plant which clung to the grey wall outside.
It appeared that since Brooks’ arrival at the hospital little more had been heard of him. The nature and cause of his insanity were still unknown, except perhaps by the doctors who attended him, and no friends had been allowed to see him. Of near relatives he had only a brother, with whom he had been on the worst possible terms. This brother had been summoned by telegram, but had not appeared, and indeed it seemed doubtful whether he would have been the slightest help to anyone if he had. This much Frances knew, and no more.
There was still no sign of Fen.
Geoffrey asked who would be at dinner that night.
‘Well, Daddy’s coming over,’ said Frances. ‘And then there’ll be Canon Garbin and Canon Spitshuker, and little Dutton, of course – the sub-organist. Oh, and Sir John Dallow’s dropping in for coffee – there’s to be some sort of meeting afterwards. Have you heard of him? He’s the big noise on witchcraft in this country.’
Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Is Canon Garbin married?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘There was a Mrs Garbin in the compartment we travelled down in. With a young clergyman.’
‘Oh, that was probably July Savernake. Come to think of it, he did say he’d be back today. I expect he’ll be at dinner too.’
‘What about him?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, what sort of person is he?’
She hesitated. ‘Well…he’s Vicar at Maverley, about twelve miles from here. Got the living almost as soon as he was ordained.’ Geoffrey sensed a deliberate reservation behind the recital of facts, and wondered what its cause might be. ‘He spends half the year buying expensive books and wine and playing the curé bon viveur, and the other half having to economize, and playing the “poore persoun”. A see-saw sort of existence.’ Frances laughed apologetically. ‘That doesn’t tell you much, I’m afraid. But you’ll be meeting him, anyway.’
Fielding came in, and Frances left to supervise the final preparations for dinner. ‘Hideous little room I’ve got,’ said Fielding mournfully as he fell into a chair, ‘but it will do. How are you feeling?’
‘A bit nightmarish.’
‘It is rather like that. Do you know, I’ve been wondering if those attacks on you weren’t bogus from beginning to end – designed to conceal the reason for something else. Probably the attack on Brooks. All those preposterous warnings! That would bring you into the limelight all right – which is just what they wanted. I suppose they didn’t care whether you were killed or just injured. Whoever it is, and whatever they’re after, it seems they can afford to wa
ste lives like water.’
Geoffrey lit a cigarette and sucked at it without pleasure. ‘It sounds plausible, but there might be some other explanation.’
‘There’s only one way of testing it out,’ said Fielding emphatically, ‘and that is by keeping quiet about it. If we once let out that we’ve rumbled it, they’ll abandon the whole business. But if they think it’s taking people in, they’ll probably try something else – try to kill you again, for example.’
Geoffrey sat up in annoyance. ‘A nice thing,’ he exclaimed bitterly, ‘asking me to keep quiet about a beastly theory, so as to encourage somebody to murder me. It’s undoubtedly someone here, by the way. The postmark on that letter was Tolnbridge, and it must have been someone connected with the cathedral to know I’d been sent for…’
He broke off. Footsteps were approaching outside, accompanied by two voices raised in argument, the one shrill and voluble; the other deep and laconic. A touch of acerbity and resentment was audible beneath the tropes of polite discussion.
‘…But my dear Spitshuker, you apparently fail to realize that by taking the universalist view you are, in effect, denying the reality of man’s freedom to choose between good and evil. If we are all to go to heaven anyway, then that choice has no validity. It’s as if one were to say that a guest at a tea-party has freedom to choose between muffins and crumpets when only crumpets are provided.’
‘I hardly think, Garbin, that you have grasped the essential point in all this, if you will forgive my saying so. You would concede, of course, that the Divinity is a god of Love?’
‘Of course, of course. But you haven’t answered –’
‘Well, then. That being so, His aim must be the perfection of every one of His Creation. You will agree that even in the case of the greatest saint, perfection is impossible of attainment in the three-score years and ten which we have at our disposal. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that there must be an intermediate state, a purgatory –’
The door swung open, and Canon Spitshuker came into the room, closely followed by Canon Garbin. Canon Spitshuker was a little, plump, excitable man, with swan-white hair and a pink face. By contrast, Canon Garbin was tall, dark, morose, and normally laconic; he walked soberly, with his large, bony hands plunged deep into his coat pockets, while the other danced and gestured about him like a poodle accompanying a St Bernard. Their juxtaposition as canons of the same cathedral was a luckless one, since Canon Spitshuker was by long conviction a Tractarian, while Canon Garbin was a Low Churchman; furious altercations were constantly in progress between them on points of doctrine and ritual, never resolved. Unlike parallel lines, it was inconceivable that their views should ever meet, even at infinity.
The unexpected presence of Geoffrey and Fielding cut short Canon Spitshuker’s oration. He spluttered for a moment like a faulty petrol-engine, then recovered himself, dashed forward, and wrung Geoffrey by the hand.
‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘I’m Spitshuker, and this’ – he pointed at the other, who stood regarding the scene with a faint but unmistakable disgust – ‘is my colleague, Dr Garbin.’
Garbin slightly bowed, an uncertain and derisive smile appearing momentarily on his face. Geoffrey murmured introductions.
‘Henry Fielding?’ Canon Spitshuker clucked delightedly. ‘Not,’ he added, ‘the author of To—?’
‘No,’ said Fielding rather tersely. Canon Spitshuker seemed a little abashed.
‘And you’ – he paused for a moment, apparently testing the propriety of the question – ‘are staying here?’
Geoffrey explained the situation, Canon Spitshuker nodding his head in vigorous and unnecessary affirmation all the time. Canon Garbin crept into the room and deposited his long limbs circumspectly in an armchair.
‘You must remember, Spitshuker,’ he said. ‘Professor Fen mentioned Mr Vintner’s name at the time of the business about poor Brooks, and Butler asked him to get in touch with him.’ He paused lengthily; then added, just in time to anticipate Spitshuker’s next outburst: ‘We are very glad to see you. Very glad indeed. We shall greatly appreciate your help.’
‘Greatly appreciate it,’ Spitshuker chanted antiphonally.
‘I was afraid,’ said Geoffrey, ‘knowing Fen, that he’d brought me down unofficially, as it were.’
‘You heard about Brooks, I suppose?’ asked Spitshuker. ‘Poor fellow, poor fellow. A terrible and mysterious business. Let’s hope that nothing of the kind happens to you.’
‘It has happened,’ Geoffrey was about to retort; but he thought better of it and restrained himself. ‘You don’t know where Fen is?’
‘I haven’t the least idea. Wasn’t he here to welcome you? Very bad, very bad. But I haven’t seen much of him since he arrived – don’t come into this house very much at any time. The living arrangements are unusual here. No cloisters – the prebends’ houses are all scattered about the town. There’s a Deanery, of course, and a Bishop’s Palace of a sort, but the Bishop isn’t there a great deal. Very uncomfortable – don’t blame him. This house,’ said Spitshuker cheerfully, ‘is used as a sort of general rubbish-heap for minor canons and the sub-organist and any incumbents of the diocese who want to put up for a night or two. Can’t think why Fen isn’t staying at the Deanery – why you aren’t, for that matter. Disgraceful. Still you’ll be comfortable enough here, I dare say. Frances – Miss Butler, that is – is an excellent housekeeper. I’d ask you to stay with me, only my housekeeper is ill at the moment, and to bring in guests, however pleasant, would be a trial.’ He paused for breath, while Geoffrey uttered sounds expressive simultaneously of deprecation, civility, gratitude, complete understanding, sympathy, and sad surprise.
‘I think you’ll find the choir in very good order,’ Spitshuker was proceeding irrepressibly, ‘and the organ, I’m told, is an excellent one.’ His mind switched subjects with the rapidity of a signalman changing points. ‘The Precentor has a brother-in-law staying with him, I understand, and is to bring him round this evening. Poor Frances will have yet another to cater for at dinner, I fear.’ He giggled. ‘But she can conjure up a banquet out of nothing – a most competent person. The Precentor’s brother-in-law is a psycho-analyst, I believe,’ he pursued without waiting to take breath. ‘Interesting – extraordinarily interesting. We shall have to see what we can do to challenge his secular interpretation of the workings of the human mind.’
Garbin, who had ostentatiously taken up and opened a book during this monologue, now looked up. ‘Don’t be foolish, Spitshuker,’ he boomed with dreadful emphasis. ‘Peace has come here on a social visit, not to be dragooned into amateurish debates on serious subjects. My wife, by the way, seems to have travelled down with him this afternoon from London.’
‘Mrs Garbin is back, then?’ said Spitshuker. ‘Savernake came down with her, I suppose?’
Garbin nodded gloomily. ‘That young man,’ he said, ‘spends a good deal too much time away from his parish. I’m aware that it’s too much to expect any parish priest nowadays to do more than merely conduct the services, but Savernake carries the business of ignoring his parishioners’ affairs to an extreme. Butler, I believe, has complained to the Bishop about it.’
‘You don’t mean,’ piped Spitshuker excitedly, ‘that Butler is trying to get rid of Savernake? Transfer him to another diocese, that is? I knew he never liked him, but – well –’
‘Personally, I am in entire agreement with the Precentor,’ Garbin stated dogmatically. ‘Though I think a disciplinary reproof would be sufficient.’
‘Reverting to the question of Brooks,’ Geoffrey put in, ‘has anyone here been able to think of an explanation of what happened to him?’
‘One can conceive several possibilities,’ said Garbin slowly, ‘but I think it better not to discuss them at present.’
‘I asked because whatever is going on here seems rather to concern me. There have been today two attempts on my life.’
A dead hush fell unexpectedly on the little gro
up. For what seemed an age no one spoke. Then Canon Spitshuker gasped slightly and said:
‘My dear fellow –’
Words failed him. The hush was renewed. Geoffrey said:
‘I’ve heard, you see, what happened to Brooks. And it seems to me that this is no time for false reticence. Of course I know nothing about your affairs here, and in the ordinary way of things wouldn’t want to know. But it’s quite obvious that my visit here was the cause of those attacks, and we – or the police – will have to start probing sooner or later.’
Garbin looked up. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, and seemed to be very carefully weighing his words. ‘You – or they,’ he said at last, ‘will find investigation a particularly difficult business. There is no calling which requires a stricter attention to reputation than the Church. Things do, of course, happen. When they do, they are kept very quiet – very quiet indeed. I don’t refer to – serious misbehaviour. Merely small things, which are perhaps more damning in the eyes of the world.’ He paused, labouring under some obscure emotional strain. ‘You know that Brooks is mad – stark, gibbering mad. I hope and devoutly pray that none of us was responsible for that. I think’ – he smiled wryly – ‘that even Spitshuker will agree there is a hell prepared for whoever did that.
‘For some human being was responsible, Mr Vintner. Someone gave Brooks, when he was unconscious, a large dose of some drug – the details I don’t know – nearly enough to kill him, and quite enough to turn his brain, to make of him an invalid and a maniac for what little remainder of life God may give him. Was it sheer devilry, do you think – or a mistake? Was the intention to kill him, and was he left for dead?
‘Brooks knew something, Mr Vintner. Something which concerned the cathedral, and which he must not be allowed to say. In his delirium he has often called for the police, has struggled to speak coherently and has never succeeded. The police are always beside his bed. They take down every word he says.’
Holy Disorders Page 6
