The Devil's Moon

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘You’re going to have to explain that.’

  ‘Many foods we eat are toxic if not prepared properly. Beans need soaking and boiling. Raw potatoes will give you a nasty turn. If you cook the calla leaves properly you destroy the toxins.’ She smiled at him. ‘All cooking is chemistry, you know.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Watts said.

  ‘Did you come in to ask me about cooking?’

  ‘Colin says you knew my father.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Donald Watts.’

  She squinted as she tried to remember. She shook her head.

  ‘He wrote as Victor Tempest.’

  She gave him a calculating look. ‘Victor Tempest was your father?’

  ‘You knew him?’

  She started to rummage in a drawer of the table. ‘Scarcely.’

  She took from a drawer a small package wrapped in silk. She carefully unwrapped a tarot pack.

  ‘These were Aleister Crowley’s own design. Useless for divination because he missed out essential elements of the original.’

  ‘Aleister Crowley gave them to you?’

  ‘I’m not that bloody old. He died in 1947, you know.’

  ‘Cremated in Brighton – yes, I know.’

  ‘You know why he was cremated, don’t you?’

  ‘Cheaper?’

  ‘They didn’t want his grave to become a shrine or a pilgrimage site. Plus, it seemed the appropriate way to send him to hell – reducing him to ashes.’

  ‘Who is “they”?’

  Avril didn’t hear his question. Or chose not to. ‘The conspiracy theory version has it that darker fears were in play. That Crowley was a magus and a powerful one and that only by burning him could his spirit be destroyed. His Poem to Pan was recited during the service and the local newspaper reported that this made the ceremony a Black Mass. Some say they saw his spirit rise in the smoke from the chimney of the crematorium and drift away in the clear blue sky.’

  ‘So cremation didn’t kill him?’

  Avril didn’t respond directly. ‘His ashes were taken out to sea off Black Rock and scattered by the light of the full moon. A Devil’s Moon.’

  ‘At midnight, I assume.’

  She smiled. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Ian Fleming, I think.’

  ‘You knew Fleming?’

  She shook her head. ‘He died when I was fourteen.’

  ‘Then how did he tell you?’

  ‘He and Colin corresponded.’ She proffered the cards. ‘I meant Crowley designed the cards, not that they were his. Your father gave them to me. Would you like them?’

  ‘No, no. They were a gift to you and the Tarot is not my thing.’

  ‘Tarot cards only do have power if they are a gift. If you purchase them for yourself they are useless.’

  ‘Did my father ever talk to you about Aleister Crowley?’

  ‘I don’t remember. So many conversations with so many men whilst taking so many drugs.’

  ‘Tell me about your children.’

  Avril looked cautious rather than surprised at the abrupt change of subject. ‘What about them?’

  ‘Do they still live at home?’

  ‘They flew the nest years ago, Mr Watts.’

  ‘Bob, please.’

  ‘Why do you ask about them? Bob.’

  ‘I noticed on my last visit that one bedroom, underneath all the books, still seemed to be used. And there is that second chalet in the garden . . .’

  Avril frowned. ‘I didn’t know you’d been poking around in our home.’

  ‘I observed in passing. Colin was showing me around.’

  ‘If you must know,’ Avril said. ‘Colin snores. I occasionally find it necessary to leave his side for the sake of my beauty sleep.’

  Watts spread his hands. ‘I just wondered if one of them still lived at home, that’s all.’

  Avril shook her head. ‘They stay over occasionally.’

  Watts smiled. ‘Colin also said you don’t believe in doctors.’

  ‘He’s been quite gabby, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Most modern medicines are plant-based in one way and another. I prefer to go to the source.’

  ‘How do you know how to identify the source?’

  She walked over to a table by the sink and picked up a book. She held it in front of her, cover out. ‘Culpepper’s Herbal Remedies. My Bible. And these Downs are my chemist’s shop.’

  ‘I imagined it was mostly grassland,’ Watts said.

  Avril smiled, showing her sharp incisors. ‘It’s a paradise. The whole of the valley is carpeted with orchids in June. There are many rare things here. The silver-spotted skipper butterfly, burnt orchid, even juniper trees. And there are many medicinal herbs and plants to be found.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘In the autumn you see a purple blanket of flowers. Know what they’re called?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  She laughed a pleasant laugh. ‘Devil’s bit scabious.’ Then picked up a long, oddly-shaped root from the table. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘It looks a bit like a human figure.’

  ‘Mandragora officinarum. Common name: the mandrake.’

  ‘Mandrake – that’s in Harry Potter, isn’t it? And not in a good way.’

  ‘It’s been associated with witchcraft since the Middle Ages. It’s because the roots are bifurcated they look a bit like the human figure. Legend has it that when you pull the plant from the ground it shrieks in pain.’

  ‘Did this one?’

  ‘The seeds are used medicinally. The flower has five points.’

  ‘Like a pentacle?’

  Avril looked at him for a moment. ‘Indeed. This root can grow up to two feet in length. It has narcotic properties if you get the proportions right. If you don’t you can fall into a coma.’

  ‘You use it as a narcotic? Or have done?’

  ‘Long ago and far away, Bob. In another life, it seems.’

  She waved at the things on the table.

  ‘Greater burdock – when the root is a year old, boil or steam it as a vegetable. You can cook the leaves and the stem tastes like asparagus. Angelica here has a liquorice taste – you can eat it raw. The stem is a good substitute for celery – and since it grows six feet there is a lot of it. This is Good King Henry – cook the leaves as an alternative to spinach.’

  ‘Do you provide ingredients for Plenty, by any chance?’

  Avril didn’t answer. She picked up a bell-shaped purple flower with a long stem.

  ‘This is my queen of plants, my beautiful lady.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Avril tilted her head and peered at it. ‘As I said – my beautiful lady. In Italian: belladonna.’

  ‘That’s a poison, isn’t it?’

  ‘Haven’t you got it yet, Bob? All the best medicines are poisons too if used in the wrong doses. It’s all about duality, Bob. And harmony.’

  She raised the flower. ‘It’s called belladonna because beautiful ladies in Italy used to apply it in a dropper to their eyes to make their pupils dilate and make themselves more beautiful. It is extremely poisonous. Especially the berries. That is why it is also known as the devil’s cherries – and deadly nightshade, of course.’

  ‘But you say it’s a medicine.’

  ‘In the right proportions. Extract the alkaloids from the leaves or the root and they can be used for asthma, colds and fevers, gastrointestinal disorders, migraines and arthritis and even motion sickness.’

  ‘They’re tropane alkaloids?’ Watts said.

  ‘They are – atropine and scopolamine.’

  Avril put the flower down and picked up the tarot pack again. ‘Are you sure you won’t take this?’

  He hesitated. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do.’

  Their hands touched as she passed the pack to him. Watts examined her placid face. Something was nagging at him but he couldn�
�t say what.

  ‘Should I say goodbye to Colin?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll say it for you. He’ll be sleeping.’ She picked up a lily. ‘Take this too. I heard you talking about Solomon. In the Song of Solomon this is the hosanna – the lily among the thorns.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Sherry, Vicar?’ Gilchrist said, smiling at David Rutherford.

  They were sitting in a booth of a stylish bar at Five Dials where Rutherford had suggested they have their conversation.

  He smiled at the cliché and looked at the waitress. ‘My usual, please.’

  When she had gone he turned to Gilchrist. ‘My own ritual after the ritual of the service.’

  ‘I heard some of your sermon,’ she said.

  He didn’t ask what she thought. Instead, he said: ‘There are some people so lonely and self-obsessed that they think God must have been the same as them once, all alone and therefore lonely in the vastness of the cosmos. And that is why he created us from clay.’

  ‘He wanted company.’

  ‘They assume. It is massively arrogant because what they are doing is creating God in our likeness rather than us in God’s. How dare we put our own petty feelings on to God?’

  ‘It makes some sense in one way,’ Gilchrist said. ‘He wanted company and then either he got bored or he decided he didn’t like us. Which is why he’s been ignoring us ever since.’

  Rutherford scrutinized her then turned to the waitress as she returned with their drinks. Gilchrist had ordered a white wine but Rutherford’s drink came in a V-shaped glass with three olives in it speared on a plastic stick. He contemplated it.

  ‘Dry martini. Gin not vodka. Shaken. Olives, not a slice of lemon. Light on the vermouth. What was it Buñuel said? In the perfect dry martini you should just wave the vermouth bottle over the gin in the glass.’

  ‘Buñuel?’

  ‘Great Spanish-Mexican surrealist filmmaker. Made Le Chien Andalou with Salvador Dali – the one that starts with a woman having her eye sliced open with a razor.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Gilchrist said, smiling uncertainly.

  He relished the first sip of his cocktail. He popped one of the olives into his mouth.

  ‘He was anti-church and religion. Right up your street, I would have thought. You should watch his Veridiana. A masterpiece.’

  ‘I’m not anti-church,’ she said. ‘Just sceptical.’

  Rutherford popped a second olive into his mouth and started talking as he chewed it.

  ‘If I may venture, in that regard you have the fierceness about you of someone who has been disappointed in your faith. Perhaps even wounded by it.’

  She sipped her wine and considered how to answer. ‘My father was a vicar,’ Gilchrist said. ‘At your church, briefly.’

  ‘Ah,’ Rutherford said, watching her. ‘Did the day you came have any significance for the two of you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I came on impulse.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  Gilchrist nodded. ‘But we don’t speak.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You should try being a kid and having a religious nut giving you advice over the breakfast table every morning.’

  Rutherford leaned in. ‘You should try looking in the mirror every morning and seeing that religious nut.’

  He held her look and smiled. Gilchrist couldn’t quite make the smile but she touched his arm.

  ‘You’re not a nut.’

  ‘I hope you’re right but from a certain perspective – a non-believing perspective – my faith makes me one.’

  She took a sip of her wine. ‘If I may say so, Andrew Callaghan sounds like he was a nut.’

  ‘Emotional intensity is always difficult to cope with – for everyone. Andrew was passionate about his beliefs. He believed Evil is a palpable reality in the modern world.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘When you look around at all the cruelty it’s hard to believe otherwise. But he believed in possession – he wanted us to do exorcisms and cast out demons.’ Rutherford spread his hands. ‘Mine is not that kind of church. I fear that had he lived there would have been a parting of our ways.’

  ‘He seemed full of fear towards the end,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Judging by his flat.’

  ‘And that is the perplexing thing. I don’t know what he experienced to turn him into that frightened soul.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can think of that triggered it? No encounter?’

  Rutherford shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t asked you about a significant other,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘There was no one,’ Rutherford said. ‘And if the subtext of your question was whether he was gay, I’m afraid I can’t answer that either.’

  ‘It wasn’t, but thank you.’

  She swirled the wine round in her glass. ‘What do you know about the Key of Solomon?’

  ‘I know that, according to your account, poor Andrew adopted at least one of its rituals to try to protect himself from Satan.’

  Gilchrist frowned. ‘The pentacle on the floor?’

  ‘Indeed. I’m guessing there were silver bowls at each point of the pentacle containing salt and mercury. Effective against the dark forces.’

  ‘What dark forces?’

  ‘Black magicians, wizards and witches.’

  ‘Hang on – we’re back in Harry Potter land, aren’t we?’

  ‘It’s more serious than that.’

  ‘Excuse me, Vicar, but magic is a load of baloney.’

  He examined his drink for a moment. ‘Whether you believe it or not there are people who believe absolutely in such things. Just as people believe in a Christian God. And if they feel someone has put a spell on them then it’s true to them. People have died from believing they are bewitched. Accounts of anthropologists around the world are full of such cases.’

  Gilchrist nodded reluctantly. ‘How do you know about the Key of Solomon?’ she said.

  Rutherford smiled. ‘My guilty pleasure the other week was to watch at the Theatre Royal a play called The Devil Rides Out. The Key of Solomon features. The heroes take refuge within such a pentacle from a powerful magician based, I believe, on Aleister Crowley. Crowley was, you may know, cremated in Brighton.’

  ‘An odd play for a vicar to watch,’ she said.

  Rutherford looked over the rim of his glass. ‘Good triumphing over evil? Surely not.’

  He smiled his gentle smile. ‘Besides, I like to know what the other side is up to.’

  He watched her drink her wine. ‘Why do you ask about the Key?’ he said. ‘Aside from wishing to deflect from comments about yourself.’

  ‘A copy of it has been stolen from the Jubilee Library.’

  ‘I didn’t realize the library had a copy. How interesting. But you think it may somehow be linked to Andrew’s persecution and murder?’

  ‘It seems an odd coincidence.’

  Rutherford had almost finished his cocktail. ‘Indeed. But don’t fear that it will give the thief magical powers. Not straight away, anyway. Serious occultists say a spell needs to be handwritten by the magus who wants to make use of the magic in it. A handwritten spell is the only thing with potency. That combination of the magician’s mind with the spells.’

  ‘I don’t believe we are in danger from any magical powers at all. What I find dangerous are those people you mentioned who do believe in them and will do vile things to acquire them.’

  Rutherford drained his glass.

  ‘Another?’ Gilchrist said.

  He shook his head. ‘One is my limit. But I am in no hurry for you to finish your wine.’

  ‘Do you believe in magic texts then?’

  ‘Perhaps in the one we have not yet found.’

  He saw her puzzled look.

  ‘Every library in the world has collections of catalogued and un-catalogued or mis-catalogued manuscripts. Every great house and palace has attics full of old documents, also un-catalogued. Half the world’s kno
wledge has been forgotten and is lying around waiting to be rediscovered. For all I know the God particle was discovered in some non-quantum physics way thousands of years ago and then the knowledge lost with the disappearance of a civilization and its language.’

  ‘God particle?’

  ‘The Higgs Boson? The particle that existed some infinitesimal moment after the Big Bang that gave mass to matter and made the world possible. It gave us life and quantum physicists at CERN think they’ve found it.’

  Gilchrist shook her head. ‘I’m just a plod, Vicar. I’m having enough trouble with all this black magic stuff without having to deal with physics – quantum or any other sort.’

  Rutherford smiled. ‘As you say. For what it’s worth, the scientific view of magic is that it is a pseudo-science in which people wrong-headedly suggest a direct cause-effect relationship between the magical act and the desired effect.’ He clasped his hands. ‘You might say I’m in the same business.’

  Gilchrist started to rise. ‘I need to get on,’ she said.

  He stood. ‘As do I.’

  Gilchrist extended her hand. Rutherford took it in both of his – but lightly.

  ‘If you need to talk more about your faith – lack of faith . . .’

  Gilchrist smiled and turned away as she realized she was about to cry.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Kate Simpson wanted to leave the Church of the Holy Blood in Hove almost the moment the service started but she was hemmed in. She clutched tightly in her hand the order of service she had been given when she entered. She couldn’t see anything remotely Christian about what was happening.

  The vicar was naked except for a thong and, frankly, he didn’t have the body for it. He was middle-aged and sagging in most of the places she’d rather he didn’t sag. He was also extremely hairy.

  He was standing at the front of the room with a narrow table beside him. On the table were spikes and needles. As he gave his sermon he pierced himself with them. Every time he did so the congregation moaned. Kate winced.

  Actually, it wasn’t so much a sermon as a monologue about his upbringing in a fiercely Pentecostal hamlet in Texas. It had the only church in the State where they handled snakes and scorpions, a practice common in the Appalachians and Georgia and Tennessee – the last his state of birth.