“Yes,” said Bobby, and waited.
“It’s not a thing I much care to remember,” Mr. Childs went on. “It was—unfortunate. I knew Brown was avoiding me. He seemed determined to avoid a personal talk. I was equally determined to have one. I felt convinced that if we could talk, a great deal that he entirely misunderstood I could put in an entirely new light. And I felt that his careful avoidance of me showed that he was in a way uncertain of himself; showed a kind of inner knowledge he had that his position was unsound. I wished to make him examine it. I felt it a duty to make the attempt. He had zeal. He was not indifferent—oh, that awful indifference. Neither hot nor cold. If you only knew what it is to battle against it day after day. Better by far, even misdirected zeal. There is, at least, a chance of turning it into the right road. I confess I had my hopes of returning, bringing my sheaves with me. Of rejoicing more over one strayed sheep restored to St. Barnabas, than over the ninety and nine faithful who had never left us. I seemed to see him as possibly a most valuable fellow-labourer in the vineyard.” He paused. “I’m afraid you may disapprove of what I did. Unconventional, I know. Illegal, even criminal, I suppose. And the result was—disastrous.”
“Yes,” said Bobby again, wondering what was coming next.
“As you may imagine,” Mr. Childs continued, “I said nothing about it. There was no reason to. I hoped it would remain—well, a secret. So it would have done but for …” He paused once more and contemplated the tiny darn that told so much. “And I have no other pair,” he said regretfully. He went on: “I knew Brown went to Midwych every week. Once or twice I have been on the same train. This time I came back early, on purpose. My idea was to be waiting for him when he got back—about five, generally, I knew.”
“But surely,” Bobby protested, “even if you were waiting, he could still dodge you. He could have gone off again or simply refused to talk—let himself in and banged the door behind him.”
“Ah-h,” said Mr. Childs, and for the first time he smiled with a kind of half-ashamed admiration for his own cunning, “you see, I meant to be already indoors, in the kitchen, waiting for him there.”
“How were you going to manage that?” demanded Bobby, visions in his mind of a burglarious entry by one of the back windows. “Brown didn’t leave his door open, did he?”
“I had the key of next door,” explained Mr. Childs simply. “A member of the St. Barnabas choir lives there. He has been sent to London on bomb damage repair work. He took his wife with him and he left the key with me, asking me to keep an eye on his home. I think he was a little afraid it might be handed over to evacuees if more were sent here. I knew that all those cottages have much the same lock and that one key would probably do for them all. I found that was the case. I let myself in. In Midwych I had bought a few cakes and so on and so forth. And I had a large thermos flask with tea in it. I laid the table. I lighted the fire. I waited in the scullery behind.” He paused and smiled again, half proud, half doubtful; like a child not quite certain whether it is going to be praised or punished.
Bobby guessed he was still inclined to think it had all been very clever, even though, apparently, it had not turned out very well. Mr. Childs resumed: “I hoped the tea I had prepared, not without pains, would, so to speak, break the ice. I meant to show myself while he was still too surprised to be actively resentful. I hoped it would show I only wanted a perfectly friendly chat. I trusted, I expected, I think I had a right to expect, it would be received as the friendly overture it was meant to be.”
“Was it?” Bobby asked.
“Far from it,” Mr. Childs answered sadly. “The teapot was instantly thrown at my head. The cakes followed. Fortunately the teapot missed. The cakes—er—did not. Especially the squashy, creamy ones. There was an attempt to use physical violence. Brown quite lost his head. He seemed to go mad. He was shouting something I couldn’t make head or tail of at the time. I imagine now from what you have told me that he was thinking of his concealed store of gold and that he believed I knew about it and even had designs upon it. I had to defend myself. I learned how when I was chaplain to the forces, when I took some of their courses including the unarmed combat course. But his attack was so violent and fierce that a chair got knocked over and we both fell over it. That must have been when I tore my trousers. I managed to push Brown into the scullery and I retired—I suppose I must admit with more haste than dignity. I was afraid Brown might follow me. He contented himself with throwing a jelly. At the back of my neck—very cold, very slippery. I didn’t notice what had happened to my trousers till my housekeeper pointed it out and mended it for me.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said, and he felt very worried indeed.
Was this odd story the truth or was it just an ingenious invention, a carefully prepared tale? Or was it true as regards the beginning but not as regards the ending? Had that ending been a grim and dreadful ending, very different from a hurried thrusting into the scullery, a hurried and undignified retreat? Admittedly, there had been a scene of violence. And when violence begins, who can tell when it will end? According to Mr. Childs’s story Brown ‘had seemed to go mad.’ Was that true only of Brown? Had a kind of temporary madness overcome them both? No doubt it was the consciousness of his hidden gold that had excited Brown so much, and made him lose his self-control. Had his attack on Mr. Childs caused similar excitement, similar loss of self-control? In other words, had his frenzy, kindled by fear for his secret gold, called forth a corresponding, answering frenzy? The possibility was not one that could be forgotten or overlooked. Bobby did not like it at all. He said aloud:
“An unfortunate business.”
“Most unfortunate,” agreed Mr. Childs, “a most unfortunate ending. And I had such high hopes. They were very nice cakes,” he added thoughtfully. “I got them in one of the best shops in Midwych.” Still more thoughtfully, he added again: “Nice but squashy.”
“Yes,” said Bobby. “Yes. Very unlucky.”
“Jam. Cream,” said Mr. Childs, and lapsed into troubled reminiscence.
“I expect your housekeeper wondered what had happened,” observed Bobby.
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Childs, “I took some care she should not know. An undignified affair altogether. Fortunately she was out and I was able to tidy myself before she returned. Fortunately, too, managed to get home without anyone seeing me.”
“Very fortunate,” agreed Bobby and meant very unfortunate, since this meant no corroboration was available. If only someone had seen the vicar leaving Brown’s cottage with visible traces on his person of what he had so feelingly described as ‘Squashy’ cakes—cream, jam—on his person, all would have been well. Then his story could have been accepted and forgotten as irrelevant. But apparently no such corroboration was to be obtained and so there was nothing to show his tale was true. If he had bought his cakes in Oldfordham the transaction might have been remembered and that would have been something. But apparently he had got them in a busy Midwych shop where no memory of any such casual sale was likely to remain. Bobby could not blind himself to the possibility that the whole story might simply be a cunning invention designed to hide the truth of what really happened. He supposed, not too happily, that so it would have to be left for the time in the hope that presently further evidence could be found at the best, to confirm, at the worst, to disprove, what he had been told.
He decided to change the subject.
“What I called for as much as anything,” he said, “was to ask your opinion of Duke Dell. I understand you think it may have been through him that Brown began this brawling business?”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” declared Mr. Childs. “Until Mr. Dell started what he calls his mission, Brown showed no interest in church matters. A typical Laodicean. Then Mr. Dell appeared and began making very ignorant, very foolish attacks on St. Barnabas. Soon afterwards, Brown also began his own disgraceful proceedings.”
“What I am wondering,” Bobby said; and felt that he was groping blindly
for a clue that always evaded him, that indeed very likely was not there, “is this, can there have been—how shall I put it?—any special cause or reason or anything that made Brown specially sensitive to Dell’s preaching? Brown seems to have been quite indifferent before—a Laodicean, as you say. What, so to say, provided the spark, fired the train, that led him to become suddenly excited about the St. Barnabas services?”
“There is always,” Mr. Childs said quietly, “always and inevitably a spark in every man that only needs a breath of wind from the right quarter to become a flame. I cannot tell you why Dell’s irresponsible, ill-informed preaching should have provided that breath of wind. I should like to think our work at St. Barnabas had so revived the spark in Brown’s case that only the merest further suggestion was needed. Often he who gathers the harvest is not he who sowed the seed. That is as may be. I cannot tell. But my wish to know was one reason why I was so very anxious for a talk with him.”
“Do you think Dell really believes he has had what he calls his Vision? He talked a lot about it when we saw him, but I couldn’t make much sense of what he said.”
“There are visions and visions,” Mr. Childs said, still speaking very slowly and thoughtfully. “If they come from above, as we must believe, for they are recorded in Holy Writ, why not from below? If such visions need to be interpreted as again we must believe on the same authority, it seems to follow also that they can be misinterpreted, misunderstood.”
“You know sir,” Bobby said uneasily, “all this is very much beyond me. I’ve never known or heard of a case in which religious motives appeared. You don’t expect religion to lead to murder.”
“Religion may lead anywhere,” Mr Childs told him. “People often try to think of it as an afternoon tea and hot-buttered-muffins affair. Rather is it strong wine that calls for strong heads. That is the value, the enormous value, of the historic background. The church has a history, a tradition, and therefore a discipline. Remember the Ethical Societies. They started off with a great flourish of trumpets, boasting of their higher standards, sneering at those who had to be kept in the right path by the bribe of heaven or the fear of hell. They needed neither bribes nor threats, they said; they rested securely, they boasted, on their simple humanity and sense of duty, on their self-respect. That was not so long ago. Now they think nothing of telling you that chastity and temperance are merely laughable taboos, or that the best teacher for children would be a woman of loose life because she would have more experience. That’s where you get to without the historic background.”
“Yes, I see,” agreed Bobby, though not much interested in ethical societies or historic backgrounds. “What bothers me—of course, I’m speaking in strict confidence —is that Dell seems to have said more than once that Brown would be better dead. As far as I can make out, Brown said first that he had had a Vision like Dell, and then apparently began to hedge and to feel there might be more whisky than vision to it. We found plenty of empty bottles in his cottage. I suppose you can still get it if you are prepared to pay. Duke Dell seemed to think it would be better for Brown to be dead than for him to go back on his story. The question is: Did he think that strongly enough to—well, to see that it was so?”
“Oh, I can’t believe that,” declared Mr. Childs, and looked very surprised and startled. “A Vision misunderstood, misinterpreted, may lead astray but not like that, not to murder. Surely you can’t suspect—?”
“It is my business to suspect,” Bobby answered grimly, as Mr. Childs left his sentence uncompleted. Nor could Bobby help wondering if Mr. Childs, even though he seemed so odd a mixture of a child-like simplicity and of profound insight, could possibly be unaware that he himself was under suspicion. “The thing is—if you think a man better dead, what are you likely to do about it? Especially if you are under the influence of something you call a Vision. But I take it you are inclined to believe that Duke Dell isn’t merely a humbug, that he may have had some sort of real experience, even if he can’t or won’t describe it?”
“The indescribable cannot be described,” Mr. Childs answered. He was clearly both perplexed and troubled. “Such an experience may come to any, the wind bloweth where it listeth. It may be misunderstood, misinterpreted. But hardly in such a way as to lead to murder. And yet—and yet—and yet strange things have been done in the name of religion, under its over-powering urge.”
“Then you do accept it as a possibility that Duke Dell may really have had whatever it is he means when he talks about his Vision?”
“Oh yes. Certainly. Why not? Glimpses of the unseen are not rare. Even in our days. The spiritualist mediums for example—those that are genuine at least. But what comes to them is evidently very often from undeveloped, even evil sources. When that happens outside the discipline and teaching of the church it is like a child playing with a high explosive bomb. Hitler, for example. Perhaps you know that Austria, especially the district Hitler came from, has produced some most remarkable mediums, though chiefly of a low physical type. Hitler’s companions used to call him the medicine man. I don’t doubt it. But he mis-used, misunderstood, misinterpreted. He heard of the kingdom and thought it meant the kingdom of this world for himself. He chose to believe as he wished to believe and so he was led deeper and deeper. There are depths in the unseen as well as in the heights. Man is always free to choose. Hitler chose. Possibly this man Dell, too, chose. I don’t know. But this is all a question of belief, of possibilities. Have you any facts to base such a terrible suspicion on?”
“Oh, none,” Bobby answered quickly. “I only wanted to know if from your experience you thought Duke Dell might be genuine or if you thought it more likely he was just a humbug? Or can he be both? Is that possible?”
“All possibilities exist in religion,” Mr. Childs told him. “The Spanish Inquisition as well as the martyr Jesuit missionary. The witch hunter side by side with the good Samaritan.”
“What it comes to,” Bobby said, “is that the motive for Brown’s murder may be something quite outside normal experience; and until I can get some idea of the motive, it’s all very much groping in the dark. I do wish,” he grumbled, “people would keep religion out of their murders.”
Whereat Mr. Childs looked so shocked that Bobby had to try to explain away what he had said. He did not succeed very well.
CHAPTER XVII
MIRROR IMAGE
Bobby left the vicarage in a mood even more troubled, doubtful and uneasy. For now into the already tangled problem facing him had thrust themselves motives and impulses as profound and complicated and hard to understand as any known to humanity. For who can measure or guess the extent to which fanatical belief can drive the spirit of man? Possible, Bobby supposed, that Duke Dell, following what he called his Vision, had killed, believing he did so righteously. Was it not Pascal who said that men never did evil so willingly and completely as when urged by religious conviction?
Again, what had really passed between the dead man and Mr. Childs? Had ‘odium theologicum’ been the real cause of the quarrel and had the violence generated gone, as violence will, beyond all bounds? If that had happened, would Mr. Childs, certainly an honest man in grain, feel that he must deny it, preserve his secret, not so much for his own sake as to avoid resulting scandal and harm to the church? Some of the things he had said had certainly suggested that he was highly sensitive to public opinion.
But then, in that case, if that was what had really happened, the secret store of gold Brown had hidden away played no part in the tragedy. Bobby found that hard to believe. And what was the meaning of the will leaving it to Mr. Goodman, to whom certainly the bequest had been such a surprise? Again, who was it who had attacked and nearly killed Mr. Spencer and why? For what motive? Was it only a coincidence that Flight Lieutenant Denis Kayes had arrived in Oldfordham at this time? And who was the other young man who bore to Kayes a personal resemblance Bobby refused to believe was only a matter of chance? Bobby told himself moodily that everything he knew was contr
adicted by everything else. Of only one thing was he sure—that unless and until he could bring into the harmony of one completed whole all these diverse and contradictory elements, the murderer of Alfred Brown would go unidentified and unpunished.
Deep in the confusion of all these thronging thoughts, Bobby, who was intending to go to the police station, took a wrong turning. Not a difficult thing to do in this old part of the town where a labyrinth of steep and narrow streets climbed up and down the hill. He soon realized he had gone astray but he did not turn back—he never liked turning back. Presently he noticed without much interest that he was passing Mason’s Temperance Hotel, the only hotel the town boasted, and ‘Temperance,’ so Sergeant Hicks had unkindly hinted, because Mr. Mason had been unable to obtain a license. Close by, on the same side, was a narrow opening with a sign saying ‘To the Station, pedestrians only.’ Bobby had nearly gone by before he noticed it. He turned abruptly as it occurred to him that this path would probably take him where he wanted to go, and in turning he came face to face with Miss Theresa Foote, who had apparently just left the Mason establishment.
A chance encounter, of no importance, the most trifling of incidents indeed. But what did startle Bobby was the look on the girl’s plump and normally not displeasing features that he glimpsed for just the one passing, fleeting moment during which their eyes met as he turned so unexpectedly. Hate, rage, threat, in the extreme was what he seemed to read in her strangely contorted features, transformed as it were from those of pleasant smiling girlhood into those of a passionate and evil priestess of destruction. It was only a momentary impression, so momentary, so fleeting, in a way so incredible, that he wondered if he had not been deceived by some passing trick of light and shade, if he had not been letting his imagination run away with him. For now, as in the twinkling of an eye, she changed, she was once more the skittish, flirtatious self he had known before. Her voice was all honey and seduction, her innocent blue eyes soft with invitation, as she tripped towards him, holding out her small, daintily gloved hand.
It Might Lead Anywhere Page 13
