Unholy Writ

by David Williams

  Treasure looked at his watch. It was close to midnight, and the return call he had arranged with Molly would come through at any time after five-thirty in the morning. He wanted to be back then in the study to receive it instantly and to avoid the sound of the bell waking the whole household. There were three telephone receivers in the Dower House – the one beside him, another in the kitchen, and the third in Moonlight’s dressing-room. Treasure knew that this last instrument was fitted with a ‘bell off’ switch, a civilizing device provided by the Post Office for those subscribers who, like Treasure himself, preferred to exercise an option on whether or not to have their slumbers disturbed by insomniac friends in the middle of the night. Since Moonlight had no doubt returned from seeing Thelma Goodbody properly launched, Treasure thoughtfully determined to caution his host about silencing his telephone unless he needed rousing at five-thirty.

  Treasure ascended the stairs and gave a gentle tap on Moonlight’s door. Elizabeth had retired some time before in the main bedroom. Her husband’s dressing-room, next door, was fairly large, and big enough to accommodate a bed of its own. Moonlight, who was an asthmatic, generally slept here to avoid disturbing his wife. Treasure opened the door quietly. The room was in darkness, but the light from the hall was sufficient to reveal that the bed was unoccupied. Assuming either that Moonlight had not yet returned or – more likely – that he had joined Elizabeth in the next room, Treasure switched on the light and made for the telephone.

  The instrument was on a small table beside the bed. Alongside the ’phone were the books Treasure remembered Moonlight had been carrying when he left the study earlier in the evening. On top of these were two calf-bound volumes of obvious antiquity, and some typed pages. Had the top page been a letter, Treasure would automatically have resisted every temptation to read it. He was conscious as he scanned the heading to the typescript of what was obviously a series of notes that even this action was morally indefensible – but a name and some dates made it somehow compulsive. SARAH MOONLIGHT DIARIES 1658–1659 read the heading. Yet just over an hour before Arthur Moonlight had positively asserted there were no diaries covering those two years.

  Adequately to explain or justify what followed, it must be remembered that Treasure had arrived at Mitchell Stoke to discover that one of his nearest friends was not only in a fit of deep depression but also irrationally eager to enter into financial negotiations that, if completed, would reduce him to a state of near penury. He, Treasure, had thereafter spent an anguished afternoon fearful that Moonlight might somehow be involved in – or, at best, caught up in – an act of murder, and just as Moonlight had assuaged concern on this score, he had set up a new train of doubt by virtually admitting he knew more about the demise of Maggie Edwards than he had been prepared to tell his guest. Then there was the smaller but significant point of Moonlight’s attitude towards Dankton throughout dinner: he had been close to contemptuous – behaviour on his part that Treasure knew was totally out of character. And despite his own invidious position in relation to the Happenwack affair, Treasure was convinced that any continuing suspicion harboured by Inspector Bantree was based on the belief that he, Treasure, was somehow engaged in protecting Moonlight. There was now evidence in front of Treasure that Moonlight had told a deliberate lie at dinner, and embellished it for his own wife’s consumption.

  In short, Treasure was close to the belief that Moonlight was so deeply affected by some unhappy event or circumstance as not to be responsible for at least some of his own actions, and it was the summation of these events and conclusions that, occurring to Treasure at this moment, prompted his immediate and some equally important later actions. If the decision to pick up and read the notes on Sarah Moonlight’s diaries was prompted through a victory for intuition over a distress of conscience, it was a decision that Treasure never regretted, and one for which Moonlight was to be eternally grateful.

  The report read:

  ‘The conclusions you have drawn from your own researches on the Diaries for these two years are substantially correct. Sarah is difficult enough to follow in English, and we shall never be sure why she decided in 1658 suddenly to begin recording her confidences in indifferent French – she reverts to English of course in 1660. The fact that she was resident during these years for some of the time in Bruges but for most of it in Brussels clouds rather than clears the mystery. Servants in her households in those two cities would have been a good deal more familiar with French than with English, so it is doubtful that the change of language was intended to outwit the prying domestics.

  Of the three lovers mentioned – again, circumspectly, by first names only – Fernando and Carlos were presumably Spanish. The third, Richard, deserves further investigation, having such a roundly Anglo-Saxon ring about him. We noted there was a Richard in the Diary of 1663 and deduce it may be the same man.

  It is not so surprising that Sarah actually came to England and returned to the Continent during 1659. The risk of such a journey for a lady of substance in the last year of the Protectorate would have been, if not negligible, then at least calculable. Arriving and leaving through Southampton apparently without disguise or subterfuge was nevertheless daring, but quite in keeping with the lady’s character.

  As to her visit to Mitchell Stoke, our translations and readings have produced little more than you have gleaned already. It is clear that as the result of a letter written to her by her husband in 1644, and delivered to her in Paris two years later, Sarah knew that her jewellery and other household valuables had been hidden by him in a subterranean chapel. She retrieves the valuables, sells them in Winchester on the way back to Southampton, and hands the proceeds to the impoverished King Charles in Brussels – a credit to her acuity if not entirely to her generosity. The money involved must have been repaid a hundred times over in the course of the years following the Restoration. In any event the action finally explains the reason for the Kang’s later benevolence to a courtesan well past her physical prime.

  We are intrigued at the consummate ease with which Sarah appears to have collected mes bjioux et mes argenteries. The hiding place being a subterranean chapel, we assume she refers to the crypt of the parish church. Though this hardly sounds the safest of secret repositories, it would certainly make for easy access. It is not clear, however, why Sarah takes “the only passage open, not from the house”. The assistance she obtains from the villagers in fetching and carrying is again a reflection on the times. No doubt they were aware that the usurping family resident in Mitchell Hall had its days there numbered.

  We have no way to knowing what was contained in what we roughly translate as “the papers ruined by damp” and which Sarah discards as worthless on the return journey. If she had thought to preserve her husband’s letter for our perusal no doubt we should have had a clearer idea of the nature of documents considered important enough to preserve along with the family plate.

  Altogether we are jointly of the view that these Diaries add immeasurably to the value of the others you found earlier and that an edited version in one volume would, after further research, be of considerable historic interest as well as unquestionably a commercial success.’

  The document ended with two signatures above the address ‘Hertford College, Oxford’, followed by the date.

  Treasure replaced the papers in the order and position in which he had found them on the bedside table. The contents had had no immediate significance for him. Certainly they went some way to explaining Moonlight’s refusal to admit the existence of the diaries referred to. Presumably he was planning some literary and historical coup, a fact which he might well have divulged within a circle of close friends, but not in the presence of Dankton who for some reason had evidently been dropped as collaborator. Nothing Treasure had read helped in any way to lighten his concern. His host was sufficiently informed to realize that the publication of some seventeenth-century diary, no matter how racy and intimate the text, would hardly generate the funds required to re-pur
chase Mitchell Hall.

  Closing the dressing-room door behind him, Treasure began walking towards his own room when he heard a movement in the hall. A light was still burning in the porch and it illuminated the figure of Arthur Moonlight in the act of closing the front door. Moonlight looked up. ‘Hello, Mark, still about? – thought I’d finish off that lock in the church,’ he offered in an over-hearty tone, and as reason for his late return. ‘Like a nightcap?’

  Treasure glanced at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. He decided that the curious story of Mr Happenwack as well as the confession he intended making to Moonlight about reading the diary report could both wait for the morning. He had switched off the bell on Moonlight’s telephone and considered that this underwriting of an undisturbed night was probably the best service he could provide his friend at this particular time.

  ‘No, thanks, Arthur,’ Treasure called down softly in order not to wake Elizabeth.

  Chief Inspector Bantree examined his watch in the wispy moonlight that some time since had relieved the dark and cloudy sky. ‘Sergeant,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s nearly one o’clock. That means we’ve been on this job twelve hours, and it’s not solved yet. You should be ashamed: simple little case of suspected murder and you’re standing there baffled … No wonder the Chief Superintendent’s not allowing us any toys.’

  Wadkin closed the gate of PC Humble’s village police house behind them. It was a neat, modern brick abode some fifty yards along from the vicarage. The two began the walk back to Mitchell Hall where Bantree had left his car. His telephoned report to Headquarters had produced precisely the response he had expected. The curious case of Horace Worple was being afforded very low priority, at least for the remainder of the night. The Thames Valley Police, in all its branches, had more than enough work for its available manpower without sparing patrol cars to lie in wait at all strategic points for a fugitive Filipino.

  A solitary motor-cycle patrolman was stationed at the corner opposite the church. He saluted the Chief Inspector and gave Wadkin a friendly nod.

  ‘Well, it’s all yours till four a.m. I’m afraid, Morgan,’ said Bantree cheerfully. ‘Keep your eyes skinned, and in the unlikely event of your sighting an Oriental approaching down the middle of the road, whistle up reinforcements fast on your radio.’ Then he added more seriously, ‘And I mean that: the chap’s dangerous and he may be armed.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The two senior men continued along the road.

  ‘Right,’ said Bantree, ‘I’ll drop you home on the way through Didcot.’ The Inspector lived in Abingdon. ‘Ring me at home from the Station around eight with an up-date on anything new they’ve picked up at Old Windsor. There might be something on the Filipino by then too.’

  ‘Could be, sir, but I imagine the chap’s miles away by now. The tracker dog we had here just went round in a circle, ending up at the swimming pool. His handler thinks Fred – er, that’s what they call him, sir – got a lift outside the Golf Club.’

  ‘Fred was working at the swimming pool this morning?’

  ‘Yes, sir. According to Johnnie, their foreman, he speaks no English at all, so we ought to be able to pick up his progress when he gets hungry. We have a general alert out for him. The others should be half way to Manchester by now.’

  The Inspector looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose we did the right thing letting them go.’ Then, as though mindful that evidence of indecision in a senior officer might be bad for morale: ‘Too many unpromising suspects are much worse than too few – they get in the way. This can hardly have been a group crime, although I think more than one person must have been involved.’

  ‘You mean Fred had an accomplice who knew the way to Old Windsor?’

  The Inspector grimaced. ‘Fred, the fierce Filipino who speaks no English, working closely with an ordained minister of the American Episcopal Church familiar with the location of deserted boat-houses. One of them would have to be good at sign language.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘There’s no logic to it, is there? But my money’s still on the Reverend Happenwack. He’ll be tailed day and night for the remainder of his rubber-necking visit – which according to him is three days.’

  ‘Isn’t he a bit of a long shot, sir?’

  ‘Not if you take the testimony of Mr Mark Treasure seriously. Merchant bankers – and he’s a big one – are the best poker players in the business, but they don’t tell lies and they don’t invent stories. No, we’ve got a bit to learn yet about Mr Happenwack, and hopefully we should have it from the States before morning.’

  As they reached the car, Bantree glanced back along the still, deserted main street of Mitchell Stoke, then at Mitchell Hall behind them, which was in darkness save for a chink of light showing between the nearly drawn curtains of a single upstairs window. The Inspector’s gaze stopped there for an instant while he searched for and found a myriad reasons why law-abiding citizens permitted the normal hours of sleep should not take advantage of their good fortune. He turned back to Wadkin. ‘Jump in. I’m for bed.’

  The departure of the Inspector’s car brought a sigh of relief from the figure clad in overalls watching the scene from one of the darkened upstairs windows of Mitchell Hall. The vigil was over at last. The business of uncovering the most momentous literary discovery since the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls was about to begin.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The explosion took place at one-twenty exactly. No more shattering event had occurred in Mitchell Stoke since a night in September 1943 when a German pilot had parachuted on to the vicarage greenhouse and promptly surrendered to an aged priest clad in pyjamas and a gas mask.

  Constable Humble was out of bed lacing up his boots almost before the echoes of the blast had receded. A moment later he was unlacing them again because they prevented him from putting on his trousers.

  Mr and Mrs Banquet sat up in bed like two puppets jerked to life by the same string. ‘It’s that North Sea gas,’ said Mrs Banquet with conviction. ‘I knew it. I said it wasn’t safe. Close the window quick.’ Her husband adjusted his pullovers preparatory to obeying the instruction.

  Bishop Wringle raised his head from the pillow, observed that his wife had left the room, wished that their bathroom plumbing generated a little less noise, and went back to sleep.

  Timothy Trapp and Thelma Goodbody cannoned into each other on the vicarage landing. ‘Are you all right, Thelma?’

  ‘Yes, darling, are you?’ Miss Goodbody was over-decorous in borrowed pyjamas so large that neither her hands nor feet were allowed to protrude. This gave her a waif-like appearance that Timothy found irresistible. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  Miss Goodbody giggled. ‘Did you arrange that bang just for this?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. I was just interested. But if you didn’t, don’t you think we should find out what’s happened?’

  ‘Good idea. Go back and put some clothes on quickly.’

  Bach positioned himself expectantly at the front door, ready to retrieve.

  Mark Treasure reacted more promptly than anyone else. He was still dressed when the noise of the explosion erupted through the night. He noted the time in a reflex action, and hurried on to the landing. Elizabeth Moonlight was at the door of her room, looking dazed. ‘Mark, what was it?’

  ‘An explosion of some sort – might be a gas main, but it sounded like dynamite. Tell Arthur I’m going to investigate.’ He hesitated. ‘Stay in the house like a good girl till I come back.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  For reasons of their own – some of them related by circumstances – Moonlight, Scarbuck, and Speke-Jones were all of them fully dressed and very much alert at the time of the explosion.

  Motor-cycle Patrolman Morgan was a well-trained and observant officer. Despite the leather flaps and earphones that covered his ears, he pinpointed the likely area of the explosion although he had seen no flash. It had come from the far side of the churchyard
or else from just beyond the wall to the Hall. No one had entered the churchyard from his end in the hour he had been sitting in patient vigil, nor had anything else happened that could have been regarded as suspicious. If the violent and powerful eruption had been caused by human agency, then that agent’s entry had most likely been effected from the Hall area, which meant, in PC Morgan’s experience, that his exit would be made the same way. Being a mobile policeman, PC Morgan elected to ride along the road to the Hall instead of running through the churchyard, which enabled him at the same time to call up his radio control and report that the bombers were out in Mitchell Stoke.

  ‘It came from the other side, Officer,’ Treasure had halted beside the open gate that led from the Hall garden into the churchyard as the beam from the motor-cycle headlight swept across him. PC Morgan had caught sight of the banker’s hastening figure as he had driven around the side of the Hall, and common sense had dictated that he should bear down upon, and apprehend, the only person in view two minutes after a noisy unexplained incident. He manoeuvred the motor-bike around the edge of the swimming pool, braked to a halt between Treasure and the gateway, parked the machine with the engine running, and dismounted.

  ‘Your name, sir …’

  ‘Is Treasure. I’m staying with Sir Arthur Moonlight at the Dower House. I’ve been helping Chief Inspector Bantree with his investigations all day, and I suggest that if you have any more questions you ask them as we go along. The explosion came from beyond this wall. Come on.’

  Treasure plunged through the gateway, followed by a mildly affronted patrolman not entirely convinced that matters were proceeding in an orthodox way, but satisfied that the only character available to be suspected was jogging ahead of him literally under his surveillance.