Holy Disorders

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘I’ll be down.’

  James went out, slamming the door behind him. Savernake bent over the recumbent body.

  But Geoffrey was not doped. With a perceptivity unusual in him, he had observed that the last whisky he ordered was not drawn from the bottle suspended above the bar, but brought in from outside by the woman in charge, on the excuse of its being a better brand. He saw, too, that there was someone watching him through the chink of a door marked ‘Private’ beside the bar. With an ostentatious gesture he turned his back and pretended to drink, actually pouring the doped whisky down his collar inside his shirt. It felt extremely uncomfortable, but his buttoned coat hid the broad stain, and fortunately none of the other customers had noticed, or shown surprise at, this unusual manoeuvre. Wiping his mouth, he turned back to the bar, put his empty glass on it, and with some facetious remark ordered another. The woman went off to get it, and Geoffrey leaned idly on the bar until, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door by the bar softly close, and knew that for a moment he was safe. He knew, too, that Fielding had been caught, and what he must do.

  He strolled carelessly to the door leading on to the street, and standing there for a moment, whistled a bar or two of ‘Widdecombe Fair’. In response to the prearranged signal, the constable moved gently away; but once out of sight of the windows, he ran. It was only five minutes’ walk from the Whale and Coffin to the police station. Geoffrey calculated that in little more than ten the place could be surrounded.

  He turned back to the bar, and pushed his way through to the lavatories. From them, he remembered, there was a second exit into the hotel proper. But once there, where to start looking? The place was an absolute warren of rooms and passages, in which the unknowledgeable might easily get lost. He considered, as well as he could. He knew at least where Fielding’s room was, and it was by no means unlikely that he had started his search there, working outwards. Also, it was plain that he had not had time to search far. The upshot of it was that in another minute Geoffrey was entering that outer room which Fielding had entered a few minutes before.

  As he stood on the threshold, the door leading into the inner room opened, and Savernake came out, shutting and locking it carefully behind him. Savernake! But Geoffrey did not pause to consider. He would not have paused to consider if it had been the Archbishop of Canterbury. He performed a sort of flying leap across the room, and landed on top of Savernake before the clergyman had even become aware of his presence.

  Like most struggles, it was a hazy, chancy, unscientific business. But Geoffrey had the advantage of surprise, and Savernake was unable to get his gun out of his pocket. Moreover, Savernake was smaller, weaker, and less wiry than Geoffrey. The end of it was that he fell, smashed his head against the skirting-board, and lay there, dazed and moaning.

  Geoffrey was not waiting to make sure of him, however; the smell of gas from the inner room was becoming too insistent for that. He burst in, turned off the gas, tore the tape from Fielding’s mouth and nostrils, and applied what methods of first aid he could think of. Fielding was still breathing. Somewhere below Geoffrey heard a car start up and drive off. Then in a little time other cars drove up, and the police were on the stairs. Geoffrey pulled Fielding from the inner room to the other. He found Savernake had gone, and wondered momentarily if it had been he who had been in that car. But no; there would not have been time for him to get downstairs and out.

  The Inspector had brought with him a doctor, who set about applying restoratives to Fielding and dressing his wound. Geoffrey explained what little he knew.

  ‘Savernake!’ the Inspector exclaimed. ‘So that was it. Though I still don’t see…’ He checked himself. ‘Never mind that. We’ll get him.’

  ‘I think James must have left in a car.’

  ‘We’ll get him, too. I’ll telephone the county police and the military authorities, and we’ll arrange for a cordon.’ He disappeared abruptly from the room.

  ‘He’s coming round,’ said the doctor. He pillowed Fielding’s head in his arm. ‘Someone ring the hospital and tell them to send an ambulance.’

  Fielding opened his eyes and was violently sick. He groaned and struggled to speak.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ said the doctor. ‘You’ll be all right. I don’t think the wound’s serious,’ he added to Geoffrey. ‘It must just have missed the right lung.’

  ‘…James…Savernake…’ Fielding said. His speech came slowly, broken by long, retching gasps, and his face and fingernails were blue with cyanosis. ‘Fen…gassed…in…in…’ His voice became incoherent. Geoffrey leaned forward.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Yes?’ His whole body was itching with impatience.

  Fielding tried again, but only succeeded in retching air. Then he fell back, with his eyes closed.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Geoffrey to the doctor. ‘For God’s sake try and bring him round somehow. He knows where Fen is…Fen’s life depends on it…You must bring him round.’

  ‘My dear sir,’ said the doctor with a touch of irritation, ‘you’re demanding the impossible. That is…Well, I could try, but it would be infernally dangerous. It would probably kill him.’

  ‘He’d want you to do it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the doctor drily; ‘but that hasn’t got anything to do with it.’

  ‘I should say it had everything to do with it.’

  The doctor looked at Geoffrey steadily for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘All right. I shall get struck off the register, and probably had up for manslaughter into the bargain. My wife and children will starve. But I’ll try. Give me that bag.’

  Fen had awoken from a dream in which he was being pursued by a gigantic praying mantis down the steep slope of a railway cutting, to find himself constricted in a large white contraption which he only slowly recognized as a strait-jacket. After trying to sort out the implications of this unusual situation for a moment, he devoted himself to being quietly sick. Then he looked up to see Savernake and James, who were standing silently watching him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. ‘You look pretty silly.’

  Savernake sneered. ‘Not as silly as you do, I assure you. There’s a certain appropriateness about your surroundings, don’t you think? This is the old lunatic asylum, you know.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Fen briefly. He made experiments with his limbs, and found that his legs also were tied.

  ‘Don’t bother to try and get free,’ said Savernake. ‘It will be a waste of energy.’

  ‘Why did you kidnap me?’

  ‘To be able to kill you quietly and conveniently.’

  ‘Thanks so much…Excuse me, gentlemen, but I’m going to be ill again…your blasted chloroform…’

  ‘Do.’

  When he had finished, Fen said: ‘And what now?’

  ‘We shall be obliged to dispose of you.’

  ‘Do talk English,’ said Fen with a touch of acerbity. ‘And try to stop imagining you’re in a book.’

  ‘My dear Professor, I am the last person you are ever going to speak to. You might pretend to be civil.’

  Suddenly Fen laughed. ‘How old are you, Savernake?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wanted to know.’

  ‘I’m twenty-six.’ Fen laughed again, and Savernake snarled: ‘What the devil’s so funny?’

  ‘It’s only that I know your type of undergraduate so well. It’s always existed in Oxford – over-clever, incapable of concentration or real thought, affected, arty, with no soul, no morals, and a profound sense of inferiority.’

  Savernake stepped forward and kicked Fen in the face. After a minute:

  ‘That hurt,’ said Fen mildly, ‘and you’ve knocked out one of my teeth.’ He spat it on to the floor. ‘Why do you conspire against your country?’

  ‘That has no relevance at present, and I am not prepared to discuss it. I find a certain charm, however, in the fact that Nazism muzzles the fools, the public-bar wisea
cres, the democratic morons.’

  ‘It kills a lot of people.’

  ‘That does not matter.’

  ‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t to you. When you’re being killed it will, though. You’ll find it most unpleasant, and at that moment you’d give your soul to spend the rest of your life listening to public-bar wiseacres.’

  ‘Like all democrats, you are a sentimentalist.’

  ‘I think killing people is a bad thing, that’s all,’ said Fen, still mildly. He sighed. ‘Well, what are you going to do with me?’

  ‘Turn on the gas.’

  ‘The gas?’ Fen was surprised. ‘But I thought this place was deserted. It’ll be off at the main.’

  ‘It’s being taken over by the military authorities the day after tomorrow,’ said James. It was the first time he had spoken. ‘The gas has been very conveniently put on again.’

  ‘Where is this, anyway?’ Fen asked.

  ‘Five miles out of Tolnbridge,’ Savernake replied, ‘a mile from road or cottage in every direction. If your nerve fails and you scream, as you very probably will, no one will hear you. But we shall gag you before we leave, just in case.’

  Fen thought for a moment. Then: ‘I think,’ he remarked, ‘that I’d rather have a quicker death than gassing.’

  ‘Very well,’ Savernake’s voice was totally indifferent. ‘Shoot him, James.’

  James took a revolver from a shoulder-holster, opened the magazine, and shut it again.

  ‘Do hurry up, man,’ said Savernake in the same lifeless tone. ‘We can’t stop here all night. And for God’s sake put your glasses on. You might not do it properly first time, and we don’t want a filthy mess.’

  James nodded, without speaking. He drew a case from his pocket, opened it, took out the glasses, polished them carefully, and put them on. Then he cocked the pistol, pointed it at Fen’s head, and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  Fen abruptly changed his mind. ‘I think I’d rather be gassed,’ he said very rapidly, and added, as James with a shrug lowered the gun: ‘Plutôt souffrir que mourir, c’est la devise des hommes.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll try and arrange for you to suffer,’ said Savernake. He went over to the gas-jet in the wall, and experimentally turned it on. There was a sharp hiss.

  ‘Admirable,’ he said. ‘But that would make it rather too quick.’ He turned the tap down to the lowest possible point. ‘Now, let’s see. The windows are closed, but the room won’t be properly sealed, so there’ll be some escape. I should say that with the gas at that strength it will take about an hour and a half.’

  ‘That seems bloody foolhardy to me,’ muttered James. ‘Suppose someone finds him before the time’s up?’

  ‘No one will. How can they? And we must leave him a little time to meditate, mustn’t we?’ To Fen: ‘I’m afraid we must gag you now. We’ll make it as comfortable as possible.’ Then, when it was finished:

  ‘Goodbye. I won’t say that I’m sorry to have to do this, because it delights me. Come on, James.’

  Fen, being incapable of other utterance, nodded his head in dismissal. They went out, locking the door behind them.

  Fen found the silence a relief. He bent his head towards the jet, which was on the other side of the room, but the issue of gas was so weak that it gave no sound. Then he did a little struggling, without other effect than to accentuate his cramp and send spasms of sharp pain through his limbs. The strait-jacket made him extremely hot, and he soon desisted. The room offered no promise of assistance, being large and totally devoid of furniture – the warden’s office, he judged. Germans, he reflected vaguely, seemed to have a neurotic obsession about mad-houses – there was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, for example, and The Testament of Dr Mabuse. But these were Nazi agents, and the Nazis had driven out Wiene and Lang…He pulled himself together. These vague meanderings would not do. He was conscious of an insistent regret at the prospect of dying.

  Fielding’s eyes were still closed. The doctor put his things back in his bag and looked up at Geoffrey, ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No go. I can’t bring him round.’

  ‘Oh, God…He isn’t worse, is he?’

  ‘No. He’ll pull through all right. Is that the ambulance? About time we got him out of here. I’ll let you know the moment he utters a word.’

  Geoffrey stood helpless, irresolute. ‘If they only catch James or Savernake…No, it’s hopeless. Fen’ll be dead by then.’

  ‘They’re swine, aren’t they?’ said the doctor simply. It was more comforting than an elaborate assumption of concern.

  Fielding was taken out on a stretcher. He seemed hardly to be breathing. The doctor followed. Geoffrey cursed viciously and racked his brains. Where had they put Fen? What way was there to find out? He sought desperately for a clue, but none came. Gassed…a tap in a wall…gas, gas…gasometers…gas company…

  He emitted a sudden yell. ‘Idiot!’ he shouted to the empty room. ‘Idiot!’ It gave a surprised and slightly mocking echo. Geoffrey rushed like a lunatic down the stairs.

  He met the Inspector coming away from the telephone. ‘So far, so good,’ said that worthy, blandly unaware of Geoffrey’s pressing desire to communicate with him. ‘The cordon’s out, and I don’t think that car’ll get through it. Savernake must be on foot, or on a bike. I’m going after him…’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ Geoffrey interrupted him excitedly. ‘Get back to that telephone!’

  The Inspector stared.

  ‘The Gas Company!’ Geoffrey bawled. ‘The Gas Company…’

  Five minutes later, beneath some four thousand lunches in the last stages of preparation, the gas flickered and went out. The supply for the whole district had been cut off at source.

  Three times already Fen had been violently sick, and twice he had only just prevented himself from going under. There must be a good deal of gas in the room by now, he thought, and his mind was by no means clear. What the time was, and how long had passed since James and Savernake had left, he had no means of telling. His face hurt badly, but the gas had a little anaesthetized the pain. He found he could no longer focus the room properly. He sighed inwardly, and devoted himself to meditating on the First and Last Things.

  A quarter of an hour later, he found to his surprise that he was still meditating on the First and Last Things. The shock was sufficient to clear his brain a little, and to allow him to observe that the sun was appreciably higher than it had been when he had last looked. Moreover, the room was coming back into focus, and his face was hurting more. A mood of mild curiosity seized him. Perhaps there was something peculiar about his lungs which made him immune from gas. The thought amused him so much that he made himself sick again trying to laugh at it, and to be sick with a gag in your mouth is not a pleasant experience. He calmed down a bit.

  But two hours later still, when Geoffrey, the doctor, and two constables broke into the room, he was feeling lively, irritable, and obscurely aggrieved. The first thing he said, when they had taken the gag out of his mouth and he had painfully forced his jaws into working order again, was:

  ‘I’m immune from gas.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It was turned off hours ago at the main. And oh, you old devil, how glad I am to see you again.’

  While they helped Fen down to the car, Geoffrey explained what had happened. ‘Eventually,’ he concluded, ‘I remembered that when we were in the Three Shrews you pointed to some place on the map which you said might be the gang’s centre of operations. Then Fielding interrupted you, and we never heard what it was. But I noticed a name near where you were pointing. I couldn’t remember what it had been – you know that sort of complete mental blank – but I knew it had something to do with the ghost story and Thurston’s diary. I rushed round to Dallow’s house, and looked at the diary again. There it was – “met her today secretly, in the coppice beyond Slatter’s Close.” Of course – Slater’s Wood. The police knew there was only one empty building near there – this one. So here we are
.’

  ‘Ah.’ Fen was unusually laconic. ‘Well, it was a pure guess on my part, but a lucky one. Thank heavens for all of you.’ After a while he said grandiloquently: ‘I have saved the country.’ He went on saying this for some weeks afterwards, but as no one took any notice of it, he finally gave it up.

  They drove back to Tolnbridge, to the police station.

  But when they got there, the cupboard was bare. Which is to say that the Inspector and most of his men were out on the search for James and Savernake. From an excitable Sergeant left in charge, his head evidently full of heroic deeds and high responsibility, they learned that Fielding was going on as satisfactorily as could be expected; that it was almost certain James was still in the area, since the cordon had been quickly and tightly organized; and that no sign had been discovered of Savernake, who it was supposed had gone to earth in some part of the town. They decided to wait in the hope of getting some news. It was now nearly tea-time, and a constable brewed them a thick oily concoction of tea. They went and saw Peace – still in his cell, still reading The Mind and Society – and told him everything that had happened. He seemed bewildered.

  ‘Well, I never liked Savernake,’ he said. ‘But I shouldn’t have thought he had the mentality to organize a thing like that.’ He embarked on an account of psychological types, to which nobody paid much attention.

  Meanwhile, the Inspector pursued his ways, alone and full of a righteous indignation. He had organized the men at his disposal so as to cover the places at which Savernake was most likely to be found, and had chosen, for himself, to return to Dr Butler’s house. Savernake, he reminded himself, had frequently stayed there, and might at least have looked in to collect money or belongings. In this he was proved to be right. Frances met him in the drive, pale-faced and frightened.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come!’ she exclaimed. The words tumbled over one another. ‘It’s July – Savernake. He’s been here with a gun. What’s been happening? Is Geoffrey all right? Did July kill my father? He disconnected the phone and we couldn’t reach anyone, and we didn’t dare come out of the house, in case he was still about. He took all the money we had.’