‘My movements’ Dallow giggled foolishly, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and unnecessarily straightened his tie. ‘The good Inspector has already examined me on the subject, so you see I have my story ready. I have an alibi, my de-ear Professor, for six o’clock. I was here, and talking to my servant, at precisely that hour. But at ten-fifteen – no. I left that foolish meeting and went straight to discuss some business with a local contractor. Unhappily, he was out, and I had my long tramp for nothing. I arrived back here at, I suppose, half past the hour.’
‘What hour?’
‘But ten – of course.’ Dallow twisted his lips into a thin phantom of a smile. ‘I dined about seven, alone here. At five-fifteen I went down to the hospital to visit Brooks, but they wouldn’t let me see him. That must have been about the time he recovered his reason. It was then, by the way, that the excellent Inspector gave me the clergy-house key to the cathedral to bring back.’
‘Ah, yes, there’s a point there. To whom did you return it?’
‘Strictly, I suppose, to dear Frances. And she put it back in the vestibule, where normally it hangs. I saw her do it.’
‘That seems clear enough. Have you any ideas about Butler’s murder?’
‘None,’ said Dallow definitely. ‘Except that it was a blessing we had not dared to hope for.’
‘Blessing?’ Fen stared. ‘You disliked him, then?’
‘If we are to be candid, my de-ear Professor, I disliked him intensely. The man was a fool – neither scholar, nor artist, nor priest. More accurately, he was nothing, devoid of all talent and interest. And besides, he threw contempt on my studies. Human vanity being what it is, the last is the obvious motive for my detestation of our lamented friend.’ Dallow was slightly and absurdly flushed with annoyance.
‘And Brooks?’
‘Ah, Brooks I liked. He was a musician to his finger-tips. He made those boys sing as I have never heard boys sing before. He, my de-ear Professor, was an Artist.’ Dallow got up and paced lightly about the room. ‘O ces voix d’enfants,’ he exclaimed, ‘chantant dans la coupole!’
But Fen waved this Mallarmean ecstasy a trifle brusquely aside. ‘Why should anyone murder Brooks?’ he inquired.
The Chancellor paused to finger one of three huge orchids in a Chinese vase. ‘I dare say,’ he murmured, ‘that Butler was responsible.’
‘No.’
‘As you say.’ Dallow resumed his pacing with an elaborate shrug. ‘Brooks had no enemies that one knew of. Butler, on the other hand, had a great many, myself included. But as to who killed them, I haven’t an idea.’
He was at least frank, thought Geoffrey. But oh, the permutations of frankness and deceit – the double, triple, quadruple bluffs that were possible! Moreover, Dallow was quite intelligent enough to put on an act. The poseur so successfully hides his real self that he makes falsehood difficult to detect; where there is no apparent truth, there can be no obvious lie.
Fen, however, who had little of the traditional persistence of the investigator, was becoming bored. He shuffled his feet impatiently about and shifted the conversational ground. ‘Is St Ephraim a revenant?’ he asked.
Dallow stared, for the moment uncomprehending. ‘St Ephraim?’
‘I gather there have been rumours locally about the curious method of Butler’s murder – the tomb.’
Dallow’s face lit up with understanding. He suddenly clapped his hands with childish glee. ‘I see! No, St Ephraim has never, as far as is known, disturbed the peace of the living. The most active spirit in the neighbourhood is, of course, Bishop John – that excellent ghost.’
Outside, a soft warm rain had begun to fall. Beads of water gathered on the window-pane, joined, parted, joined again. Fen stared abstractedly out at the garden.
Geoffrey looked perplexed. ‘I wish I knew something more about it.’
‘Spitshuker,’ said Fen, ‘told us you could give us some information about the Bishop. The bare fact that he caused a number of unfortunate young women to be burned, we know. But his spirit, it appears, rests uneasily in his odd tomb, and seems likely to be more uneasy still after having it desecrated.’
Dallow was plainly delighted at the turn the conversation had taken. ‘So the people believe,’ he said. ‘I have heard rumours of it already – and very possibly it is true. The story of why he chose to be buried in Bishop’s Gallery is curious. It seems he could not bear the idea of being, in death, completely enclosed – a sort of posthumous claustrophobia.’ Dallow giggled. ‘The Gallery provided, as it were, an outlet into the world – and not one person, but many, have seen him hovering behind its parapet. He – and a woman.’
The rain-clouds were obscuring the light, and the room was darker now. Geoffrey shifted uncomfortably. This was a waste of time, and yet…And yet not for all the world would he have missed hearing more about Bishop John Thurston. He scented mystery. And he was not mistaken.
‘The tale,’ said Dallow, ‘is an interesting one. The Bishop was only twenty-five when he came here in 1688. As was so often the case in those days, such positions were obtained by influence, and the suitability or experience of the candidate hardly canvassed at all. Certainly that must have been so in his case. He was a curious problem of a man – an inconsequent mingling of rakehell and Puritan. His father had been one of Cromwell’s men, and had made a late marriage with a woman of good position in a Cavalier family. And there was something of both parents in the boy: the father’s severity and dull moralism; and the mother’s lightheaded looseness of character. He went to Eton and then to King’s College, Cambridge, and entered the priesthood at the age of twenty-three. He remained, as was normal in those days, unmarried, but when his parents died and left him considerable means, he was able to buy his sexual pleasures out of a glutted market, and there seems little reason to suppose that he restrained himself in any way. Such, in brief, was his history when he arrived here. I ought perhaps to have said that he was no fool – that he was, in fact, a man of considerable education and ability.’
Dallow was absorbed; his affectation and self-consciousness were gone. It occurred to Geoffrey that he was probably a born romancer; except that this was not fiction…
‘Curiously enough,’ Dallow went on, ‘it was not from Thurston that the persecution of the witches began in the first place, but from the townspeople themselves, who saw, or fancied they saw, the black art being carried on in every hole and corner. And there seems little doubt that several covens were operating in the district. Why, one wonders? Why at one particular time and in one particular place? Why in Salem? Why in Bamberg? Why in Tolnbridge? And yet it was so. And recusant priests of the diocese were involved, as it is said they must be, in the celebration of the Black Mass. That brought the ecclesiastical authorities, chief among them Thurston, to the centre of the persecution. Suspicions and accusations multiplied, because the best defence against suspicion of oneself was to accuse another. There’s no evidence that the Bishop, in the first instance, particularly encouraged or enjoyed the proceedings. But soon there came a change.’ Dallow paused. Fen was lighting a third cigarette from the end of the second; he seemed more than usually thoughtful.
‘You must know,’ Dallow continued, ‘that it was the custom to torture witches in order to extort confessions from them – though it often happened that they confessed without torture. And it was necessary, at least, that the confession should be reaffirmed without torture. But there was slow, methodical flogging and the hot witch’s chair, and thumb-screwing and leg-crushing and hoisting by weights. And it came to be observed that Bishop John Thurston was more frequently – though always unobtrusively – present at these scenes than his office warranted. He was present, too, at the executions, and it was said that it was he who had instituted the custom of burning as opposed to hanging the malefactors. Certainly some extraordinary legal quiddity must have been involved – though I have never succeeded yet in properly discovering what the legal position was – because elsewhere in England wit
ches were invariably hanged and not burned. And one has no means of telling whether or not the imputation was correct. At all events, Bishop John was beginning to read Glanvil, and the Malleus. And one sees how this ready-made, well sanctified moral issue would appeal to his underlying Puritanism – and how the methods used in dealing with it would appeal to his sensuality. For many of the women were young, and some beautiful. So it was in 1704, the year before he died.’
Dallow went to a cupboard, and took from it one of several thick, leather-bound books. Reverently he opened it, and turned over the pages.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘is the Bishop’s personal diary, for the last months of his life.’
Even Fen showed signs of intelligence at this.
‘It is,’ Dallow continued, ‘one of the most complete firsthand records of a haunting in existence, and there seems no doubt of its authenticity. The Bishop left orders that the diary was to be destroyed at his death – unread. But such is human curiosity, and so extraordinary was his account of the last months, that it passed into the keeping of the then Chancellor, and so came to me. Mr Vintner’ – Dallow crossed to Geoffrey’s chair – ‘perhaps you would care to look at it – to read it to us, even. I never tire of hearing the story. And the diary itself gives the whole thing, without any need for commentary. You are not in a hurry, Mr Fen?’
Fen shook his head, and Dallow gave the book to Geoffrey. It was heavy, and the writing was neat, large, and fastidious. Leaning over Geoffrey’s shoulder, Dallow turned the pages, and at last pointing to an entry:
‘You might perhaps begin here…’
So Geoffrey read, as the rain hissed softly on to the garden, and the yellow, veiled light of the sun came and went, cloud-driven, across the stiff, thick pages.
‘27 Febr. A° 1705. We are advis’d, in one of those Sermons of Dr Donne of St Paul’s that have so justly been rever’d as sound Doctrine, that the pleasures of the Senses are right to be employ’d in so far as they interpose no veil between the soul and its Maker; that is to say, moderately employ’d. Yet Donne himself was a notorious Rakehell in that earlier part of his life that preceded his reception in the bosom of the Church of Christ, a man of great profligacy and extravagancies, an associate of London whores and conycatchers. If there in Youth a man may overtop the limits of moderation and yet due to Repentance and Charity later defy the pains of Hell, why should I being yet in ye flower of mine age and full of natural energies be hinder’d through exercise of my Holy Office from the relaxations that are everywhere enjoy’d by common men? It is written that even the Sons of God lusted after the daughters of men. True it is that their Desire was Impiety by the disparity in Kind between the Angelic Substance and bodies of those Jewish Women; but let there be no such disparity, and where is the sin? If we believe, our crimes are expiated as soon as committed.
‘Often upon my pillow I think of my youth in London, of the Playhouses and those comedies of Mr Wycherley, and the darkness and the smell of the women’s hair and the gleam of their naked throats; and take out sometimes the Ars Amatoris, to read that Passage that concerns the wooing of a woman in the Playhouse (thus inaccurately paraphrased by Mr Dryden). These things for me are past by, but I desire them still. Here I am among Bumkins, having neither Wit nor Grace of body or mind. Their women are like sacks.
‘See that this be regularly lock’d away, after perusal.
‘4 Mar. Have seen her come twice this week into Mattins, most modestly veil’d; but was able to perceive the extraordinary Texture and richness of her Hair.
‘6 Mar. I have found that she is nam’d Elizabeth Pulteney, being niece of a woman burn’d last year by my order as a Witch. Her bodily perfection and Grace of carriage argue a higher origin than in that low station to which as I am assur’d she belongs. She is devout, yet there have been accusations against her. Four Women were burn’d this week. The crowds grow less continuously.
‘21 Mar. Return’d from the flogging of a woman to extort confession. It was not long. She was stripp’d and beaten with triple knotted thongs of leather. The screams were unusually piercing. I took no pleasure in it, as I should do, were I properly concern’d with the chastening of Satan through this punishment. My thoughts were continually elsewhere.
‘26 Mar. Spoke to her this morning for the first time. Her Skin is remarkably soft and fine. She is meek and reverent. I have offer’d her regular spiritual Guidance. She will come to me often now. To chasten that Submissiveness into active pain! But these are idle Fancies.’
(Here Geoffrey omitted a number of entries dealing with the work of the diocese. The next reference to Elizabeth Pulteney was dated April 23rd.)
‘Tonight her fourth visit. I stress’d to her the need of Absolute submission to those set in Authority over her, and set her the test of unclothing straightway before me. She demurr’d greatly and it was long before I persuaded her (by various Means) to do it. Her modesty excited me beyond all caution. Learn’d she is but seventeen years of age, but remarkably well-form’d, and the tresses of her Hair coiling long and golden about her…Milton, in his great religious Poem, tells of the naked beauty of Eve and of her hair. So also Donne in that Elegie.
‘She realiz’d my purposes early, and seem’d afraid. I twisted the Hair about her throat and pretended to be about to kill her. She is a foolish child, with her talk about being the Bride of Christ. As I said to her, is not the Church Itself that? But the threat of Persecution as a Witch silenc’d her.
‘Feel unusually depress’d. The house is over-silent, and it is not good to be alone. Must get to my bed and drive these thoughts and scruples away with recollections of the Pleasure I have had. But first to lock this away downstairs. The house has echoes, and I have always hated the dark. I dare not leave it here. The Servants have long since retir’d.
‘13 Aug. All goes well, and I have not had sufficient Leisure to write in here previously. Since I must to myself be honest, I have fear’d to face the doubts which have lain about me. I have reason’d with my self and see no cause for fear in my actions. If I have chasten’d her body, there is Authority and Precedent enough, as in the history of the early Church.
‘She grows very silent and unresponsive, and my interest dies. I shall not see her again. Why do I feel so continuously the enormity of my acts when Reason itself does not condemn them?
‘15 Aug. The worst has happen’d, and she is with child by me. But the threat of burning will keep her silent.
‘16 Aug. Met her this day secretly, in the coppice beyond Slatter’s Close. She is recalcitrant, and will own the parent of her child. It seems that even the Threat of torture as a Witch does not deter her. But there is no other course. Her Ravings against me will be held the evidence of demoniac Possession. She is resign’d, as it seems, to penitence and Expiation. Oh, the Follies of these religious women! I would spit upon their hateful Piety.
‘23 Aug. The Danger is pass’d. Her accusations against me were as I had anticipated an added condemnation of her self. It was Madness ever to fear that she would be believ’d. Today the thumbscrews to extort Confession. When that fail’d, hoisting by weights. The Confession greatly Circumstantial, led me to suppose her in fact a Witch. And what more likely than that the Devil through her employ’d his arts to surprize my steadfastness? I am convinc’d that this is the Truth.
‘Throughout her eyes fix’d upon me, though she no longer spoke against me. I do not like the Memory of that.
‘29 Aug. Deus misericorde me. Today she burn’d. I thought it might last for ever. Her hair was first shav’d, and burn’d separate. There was some Cavill and Murmuring in the crowd, that the Sergeants were forc’d to employ their Authority in the maintenance of a due silence and respect. Adjur’d to confess publickly, she kept obstinate silence, only as she came by me saying “Keep fast your doors against those that will wish to visit you.” Then was hurried to the Stake, bound, and the Faggots kindl’d. She seem’d little more than a Child.
‘I know not what she mean’
d by this, but the house is cold, and I were better in bed. Without doubt I acted rightly, and she was a Witch.
‘4 Sept. We are cruel punish’d for our Follies, and I, most miserable sinner, with hardest stripes. As I lay in bed last night, the curtains of the bed drawn upon three sides, and the fourth open to admit the light of the candles set upon my table, that fourth curtain (no Person being in the room) was drawn sudden in upon me, when I was left in the darkness. And some Creature of the Night, moving without, seem’d trying to crawl beneath the curtains, and plucking at the bedclothes, so that I scream’d out loud, and one of the Servants came running, but nothing was there. Had him stay with me the remnant of the night, in great fear and perturbation of mind, with every light burning. Shall see that all doors be fast lock’d but I fear ’twill make no difference. I dare confide in nobody. But Christ the Lord will protect me against the consequence of my Evil.
‘5 Sept. Today went about the house, setting the Pentagram upon the sills and thresholds, after repeating the rite of Exorcism. With these cares, I shall live long and happy. She shall not filch from me the time to expiate my sins. Though the Autumn is cold and windy, the house grows uncomfortably warm. Being just come in from Mattins, ask’d one of the servants if he had notic’d this, but he said no. Seeing he seem’d surpriz’d at my appearance, ask’d him the reason. “Why sure,” said he, “I thought your Grace was in the Studdy, for not ten minutes hence I heard someone walking to and fro there.” When I went up no one was there.
‘10 Sept. I have seen It for the first time, and pray I may never again. God have mercy on my Soul, and rescue me from the horror. Hell is not Anguish, but Fear, such as this. Tonight late in going to my Chamber, pass’d by the Studdy door, and there saw one of the serving-maids (as I thought) bending to make up the fire. I went in to reprove her for not being retir’d to her own quarters, when the Thing straighten’d suddenly and put its arms about me. I fell to the floor in a Faint, but one of the men happening to be by, came to my assistance, but saw no thing. I cannot write more. Christ, have mercy on me.
Holy Disorders Page 17