Holy Disorders

by Edmund Crispin

  Fielding sighed. ‘No, it’s not likely. Their organization seems very good,’ he added with a sort of melancholy satisfaction. ‘Unless you imagined all that.’

  ‘Imagined it,’ said Geoffrey, nettled. ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘He wasn’t just asking you the time?’

  ‘The time! You don’t follow people into lavatories and bolt the door simply in order to ask them the time,’

  Fielding sighed again; he breathed out lengthily and noisily. The discussion, he thought, could not profitably be continued. ‘Is it far?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes; very far,’ said Geoffrey, annoyed at being thus crudely unseated from his hobby-horse; he thought, too, that he perceived the animal being led away. But something else had occurred to Fielding, for he turned abruptly and said:

  ‘Those letters.’

  Geoffrey looked at him in silence for a moment, and then searched his pockets. The letters were gone.

  ‘Very thorough,’ said Fielding drily. ‘When they found you were coming here despite their warnings, they decided you shouldn’t have any clue to the machine they were typed on.’

  ‘So that was it. Damn. But it still doesn’t explain why I wasn’t knocked out.’

  ‘When you’re organizing a thing like this, you can’t give your agents a free hand to do whatever emergency dictates. Besides, this fellow may not even have known what was going on. I expect he was told simply to get the letters from you, and when you fainted there was no need to use violence.’ Fielding whistled gently. ‘They’re fairly thorough.’

  The heat had grown somewhat less. Peace had made off, presumably towards the Precentor’s house, in another direction. The woman with the rug and the young clergyman had long since disappeared. Looking at his watch, Geoffrey found that the train had got in only seven minutes late. He and Fielding started off down the station hill, Fielding carrying both bags, and Geoffrey the inescapable butterfly-net. On their right stood the cathedral, serenely beautiful. The great rose window in the south transept glowed momently at them with a rich, red beauty, and the gulls wheeled and screamed about the slender octagonal spire.

  The medley of tobacconists and second-rate pubs huddled round the station soon gave place to a rather dreary street of small villas; and this in turn to the squalid, beautiful houses of the old town. A little beyond the boundary of these two worlds they turned off to the right, and shortly arrived at the wrought-iron gates of the clergy-house, which had been built in the eighteenth century to replace the old clergy-house adjoining the north transept; this being now used for storing lumber, holding choir-practices, and other miscellaneous and untidy purposes. The gates, suspended on either side from pillars of soft, lemon-coloured stone, opened upon a depressing vista of shrubs and lawns, bisected by an overgrown gravel drive which curved round to the front-door, skirted the house, and led out beyond the extensive kitchen-gardens on to the cathedral hill itself. Geoffrey entered these regions with circumspection, peering intently at a withered laurel as though he expected it to contain springs, nets, and lime for his discomfort.

  In this realm of celibacy, the first thing they heard was a girl’s voice. ‘Josephine!’ it called; then with more force, and a tinge of irritation: ‘Come back!’

  There was a sound of running footsteps, and a young girl, plainly the object of these cries, came panting round the side of the house. She could not have been more than fifteen, and she was long, thin, and trembling, with curls of bright gold, tangled and disordered. Her face was red, not only with effort, but also with perceptible anger. She stopped short on seeing the strangers, and after staring at them for a moment, darted off into the shrubbery at one side, whence the diminishing rustle of innumerable graceless plants marked her retreat.

  They toiled towards the portico, a little shaken by this welcome, and suspecting, with some dismay, a domestic upheaval. They had not gone more than a few steps before the owner of the voice they had heard appeared also, in unenergetic pursuit. And this at least, Geoffrey thought, was not what one expected to find on cathedral precincts – a girl of about twenty-three, as dark as the other had been blonde, with blue, humorous eyes, a tip-tilted nose, red lips, and a slim, loose-limbed body. Her dress, though rich and sober enough, and her high heels gave, Geoffrey thought, a faint suggestion of the courtesan. Not that he objected to this. Having little experience of women, he classified them, a priori as it were, as either amateur prostitutes or domestic helps, and anyone not fitting snugly into one of these categories left him confused, suspicious, and uncomprehending (this masculine failing is commoner than perhaps women imagine). Certainly in this case a touch of the hetaera, the Lais or Phryne, was present; but there was also a practicality, self-possession, and intelligence which softened and diffused the impression.

  Fundamentally, Geoffrey was afraid of women. His endeavours to categorize those he had met as either courtesan or domestic had led to dismal misunderstandings, since he had never known anyone remotely resembling either kind. He also laboured, as a result of reading books, under the delusion that every unmarried woman he met was hunting, with all the tricks and subterfuges of her deadly and mysterious sex, for a husband, and congratulated himself inwardly upon hair-raising escapes from several women who in point of fact had never even considered marrying him, and who had merely used him as a convenient temporary paramour and offered him the honourable courtesy of the sex, a good-night kiss at the end of an evening enjoyed at his expense. Beyond the age of thirty, he had gradually shunned acquaintance with these puzzling beings. Consequently, he approached this new example of the species with a trepidation accentuated by her obvious charm.

  ‘Damn the child!’ she said, and gave up the pursuit.

  ‘Has she been naughty?’ said Fielding simply. He asked the question with the ease and authority of one too essentially courteous to need the formal preliminaries of acquaintance.

  The girl met him, with equal ease, on his own ground. ‘Do you think children should be spanked?’ she said. ‘Girls of that age, that is? I know I was – but Josephine’s such a proud, headstrong brat she takes it hard.’

  ‘I think you should avoid it if possible,’ said Fielding with unnecessary seriousness.

  The girl laughed – a low, gurgling, infectious chuckle. ‘I see – you think it was me. No, I haven’t got to the stage of walloping children yet. Father did it – and I must say I hardly blame him. Would you believe it, Josephine tore up and burnt the whole of the manuscript of the book he was working on?’ An almost imperceptible chill came into the atmosphere. There are acts of petulance and ill-temper, and there are acts of deliberate malice. Geoffrey changed the subject with painfully obvious intent.

  ‘We ought to introduce ourselves,’ he said. ‘This is the Earl of – the Earl of – What are you the Earl of?’

  ‘It’s not of the least importance,’ said Fielding. He had put down the bags and was despairingly towelling his face and neck with an immense white silk handkerchief. ‘Don’t misunderstand me – if I thought that either of you would resent my being an earl, I should give you the full details immediately. But we might just as well say Henry Fielding, and be done with it.’

  ‘Not,’ the girl said, ‘the author of—?’

  Geoffrey interrupted in some haste. ‘And I’m Geoffrey Vintner,’ he said. He made the assertion despondently, as though he scarcely expected anyone to credit it.

  ‘How nice,’ said the girl with business-like conviction. ‘We often do your Communion Service here. I’m Frances Butler.’

  ‘Good. So now we all know each other,’ said Fielding. He paused and gazed expectantly at Geoffrey.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘We are looking for Fen – Gervase Fen.’

  ‘I thought you were,’ said the girl, gazing pointedly at the butterfly-net, which he still brandished like a banner in front of him, ‘because of that.’

  Geoffrey regarded her gloomily for a moment. ‘Insects?’ he ventured at last.

  She nodded grav
ely.

  ‘He’s out at the moment, and I don’t know when he’ll be back again. I gather he’s going to make some experiment tonight with moths, but we told him he couldn’t do it here, because poor little Dutton, the Deputy Organist, is terrified of them at the best of times; and as it’s got something to do with males flying hundreds of miles to get at a female in a darkened room, we thought that a clergy-house was an unsuitable place for such demonstrations. Besides, in the unlikely event of its succeeding, we couldn’t possibly have the place full of moths. So I believe he’s going to do it somewhere else.’

  Geoffrey sighed. ‘How characteristic!’ he said. ‘He asks me to come down here, and then at the crucial moment disappears into the blue. I suppose he didn’t mention my arrival?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘No.’ Geoffrey sighed; the burden of Atlas seemed to be upon him. ‘No, I might have expected that.’

  ‘Were you going to stay here?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Well, I imagined so. But I can’t possibly push myself in if you’re unprepared.’

  ‘I could manage one of you,’ said the girl dubiously, ‘but not both, by any possible means. There just isn’t a bed.’

  ‘I can find somewhere in the town to stay,’ said Fielding.

  ‘You’d better go to the Whale and Coffin,’ said the girl.

  ‘It sounds terrible.’

  ‘It is terrible, but there’s nowhere any better. Look, Mr Vintner, leave your bags in the porch. Someone will take them in later, I dare say. And would you like a wash?’

  ‘What I really want,’ said Geoffrey, ‘is a drink. Several drinks.’

  ‘All right. We’ll all go down to the Whale and Coffin. It is after six, isn’t it? Then we can talk about things.’

  ‘I don’t want to drag you away…’

  ‘Away from what? Don’t be so silly. Come on, both of you. It’s only three minutes from here.’

  Geoffrey had nearly arrived before he realized he was still carrying the butterfly-net. He cursed it inwardly, murmuring under his breath.

  ‘Have a good, rousing swear,’ said the girl. ‘You’ll feel better.’

  The Whale and Coffin turned out to be a large, low, rambling building of indefinite date situated in the middle of the old town. It was provided with innumerable bars, labelled variously: Bar, Saloon, Lounge Bar, Public Bar, Private Bar, and so on; these departments being ineffectually presided over by a small shortsighted, elderly man who hurried constantly from one to another, less with any hope of being useful, one felt, than because it had become a habit and he couldn’t stop it. He peered astigmatically at Geoffrey as he ordered drinks.

  ‘Stranger?’ he said. ‘Not been here before?’

  ‘No,’ said Geoffrey shortly. He refused to be kept from his beer by well-meaning chatter.

  ‘I think you’ll like it,’ said the other without particular confidence. ‘It’s a good local brew and we get a nice crowd here.’ From his accent it was evident that he was not a Devon man. ‘Strange name for a pub, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘You’d imagine there’d be some story connected with a name like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There isn’t, though. Someone just thought it up one day.’

  Geoffrey looked at him with contempt and moved shakily back to the others, carrying drinks. They had settled in a remote alcove. Frances Butler crossed her legs, smoothed out her skirt with automatic propriety, and said:

  ‘You needn’t have worried – Harry never talks to anyone for more than a minute at a time. I’ve watched him.’

  ‘Do you come here often?’ asked Fielding.

  ‘Oh, so-so. I don’t haunt the place, if that’s what you mean. But it’s the nearest pub to the clergy-house.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Fielding vaguely, ‘you might have found a lot of silly prejudice about going to pubs at all – your father being Precentor, and so on.’

  ‘Can’t help that,’ said Frances, and grinned. ‘I expect there is some, but they think I’m a tart as it is. Going to pubs doesn’t affect matters much. And Daddy doesn’t seem to mind – that’s the chief thing. He brought me up terribly strictly till I was eighteen, but since then he’s just given me a lot of money and let me do what I like. Poor old Meg – the housekeeper at the clergy-house – got ill, and one can’t get servants for love or money nowadays, so I gave up living with Daddy and went to housekeep there. I don’t think the men like it very much, though. Each of them’s afraid the others will think he’s got designs on me. You’ve no idea the way they keep clear of my room, and the rumpus they make when they’re going to the bathroom.’

  She laughed, and drank pink gin with a theatrical air of wickedness. It occurred to Geoffrey that she probably got an innocent, childish enjoyment out of pretending to be wicked. He greatly doubted, at all events, if she actually was. But he realized that with his present knowledge of her an adequate assessment of her merits and demerits was out of the question. Certainly she was attractive – very attractive, he suddenly felt. And he sighed, recognizing the enormity of his inexperience in love.

  ‘Tired?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Just content.’ It was not, he reflected, entirely a lie, at that. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that I’ve been attacked three times today?’

  She laughed. ‘Attacked? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘One man tried to knock me on the head in a shop’ – ‘Store,’ said Fielding automatically – ‘another tried to drop a suitcase full of iron on my head, and another locked me in a lavatory on the train. That is to say—’ Geoffrey struggled for a more suitable form of words. Put like that, it didn’t sound nearly as serious as in fact it had been. ‘There were anonymous letters, too,’ he concluded lamely.

  ‘But how awful,’ said the girl. ‘No – what a stupid thing to say. I mean’ – she gestured helplessly – ‘well, why?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just the point. But I think it’s got something to do with the attack on Brooks here.’

  Frances put down her drink rather suddenly. The movement was a slight one, and in itself unimportant, but it brought a curious unease to the atmosphere. There was a long pause before she said:

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Her voice was suddenly very quiet.

  ‘That’s all I can think. If it hadn’t been for Fielding, I might now be dead – almost certainly should be, in fact.’

  When Frances took up her glass again, her hand was a fraction unsteady. But her voice was calm as she asked:

  ‘Was Dr Brooks a friend of yours?’ The question seemed to have a greater urgency, a greater importance, than common sense would allow. Geoffrey shook his head.

  ‘I only knew him slightly – a professional acquaintance.’ He hesitated. ‘You said “was”—’

  She laughed again, but there was no humour in it. ‘No, he’s not dead, if that’s what you mean. I –’ She seemed abruptly to make up her mind about something; with intended deliberateness and ostentation the subject was changed. ‘And Daddy asked you to come down here and play the services in his place?’

  Geoffrey acquiesced, repressing an almost irrepressible curiosity. ‘Well, no, not exactly. That is to say, I suppose he knew about it. Actually it was Fen who wired me to come.’ He became uncomfortable. ‘If I’m not wanted, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad of the break, and I shall like to see Fen again…’ He stopped, conscious that the words were meaningless.

  The girl’s tone was lighter now.’ Oh, I’m sure you’re wanted – I don’t know who else would have played, if you hadn’t turned up.’

  ‘I was wondering – surely there’s a deputy? In fact, you mentioned one.’

  ‘Little Dutton – yes. But he’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown. The silly boy overworked himself, trying to get God knows what stupid musical degree. The doctor won’t let him go near an organ at the moment.’

  Geoffrey nodded portentously. ‘That explains it,’ he said. In fact, he r
eflected, it explained very little. Frances had as good as refused to talk about the attack on Brooks – and, confound it, he ought to know the facts if anyone ought. He was summoning up courage to reopen the subject when the landlord hurried past, peering intently at a huge pocket-watch supplied with a magnifying-glass which raised the hands and the figures on the dial to grotesque dimensions. When he was almost out of the door he paused and came back to them.

  ‘Didn’t recognize you at first, Miss Butler,’ he said. He clipped his words with the nervousness of the very shortsighted. ‘How’s Dr Brooks getting on? Any improvement?’

  ‘I haven’t heard this evening.’ Frances spoke shortly. ‘Harry, you don’t know if Professor Fen’s in here this evening?’

  ‘What, that tall, mad fellow?’ There was something like awe in the landlord’s voice. ‘He might be in one of the other bars. I’ll look. But I don’t think so.’

  ‘If you see him, you might tell him I’m in here. And a friend of his, Mr Vintner.’

  The landlord’s reaction to this last piece of news was unexpected. He took a step back and began breathing very quickly. ‘Geoffrey Vintner!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Really, Harry. What on earth’s the matter with you? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.’

  The landlord hurriedly pulled himself together. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Didn’t quite catch the name. Thought you were referring to a friend of mine, who – who’s dead.’ He stood wavering in front of them for a moment, and then made a little too rapidly for the door.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Frances in frank surprise.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Fielding, I should have been dead, too,’ said Geoffrey aggrievedly. ‘Who is that man, anyway?’

  ‘Harry James?’ said Frances. ‘Don’t know anything about him, really. He’s had this pub for about five years – came from up north, I believe. Staunch Presbyterian. Leading light in the local Conservative Club. In fact’ – a thought seemed suddenly to strike her – ‘just the sort of respectable anonymity you’d expect from—’ She checked herself, and added humorously: ‘From what?’