“Where is—what is it? Bligh Vennel?” Grant asked. “Far from here?”
“No. ’Bout two streets. Less as the crow flies, but that won’t be much good to you in Canterbury. It’s in the lanes behind the Cock and Pheasant. I’d show you myself, if Jim wasn’t waiting for his smoke. A sixpenny packet, Mr. Rickett, please.”
“After hours,” said Mr. Rickett, gruffly, avoiding the detective’s eye. The woman’s confidence was a conviction in itself.
She looked surprised, and before she should commit herself further Grant pulled his own cigarette case from his pocket. “Madam, they say a nation gets the laws it deserves. It is not in my weak power to obtain the sixpenny packet for you, but please let me repay your help by providing Jim’s smoke.” He poured his cigarettes into her astonished hands, and dismissed her, protesting.
“And now,” he said to Rickett, “about this brotherhood or whatever it is. Do you know it?”
“No. There is such a thing, now I remember. But I don’t know where they hang out. You heard what she said. Behind the Cock and Pheasant. Half the cranks in the world has branches here, if it comes to that. I’m shutting up now.”
“I should,” Grant said. “People wanting cigarettes are a nuisance.”
Mr. Rickett growled.
“Come on, Williams. And remember, Rickett, not a word of this to anyone. You’ll probably see us tomorrow.”
Rickett was understood to say that if he never saw them again it would be too soon.
“This is a rum go, sir,” Williams said, as they set off down the street. “What’s the program now?”
“I’m going to call on the brotherhood. I don’t think you had better come along, Williams. Your good healthy Worcestershire face doesn’t suggest any yearning after the life ascetic.”
“You mean I look like a cop. I know, sir. It’s worried me often. Bad for business. You don’t know how I envy you your looks, sir. People think ’Army’ the minute they see you. It’s a great help always to be taken for Army.”
“Considering all the dud checks on Cox’s, I find that surprising! No, I wasn’t considering your looks, Williams, not that way. I was just talking ’thoughtless.’ It’s a one-man party, this. You’d better go back to the aspidistra and wait for me. Have a meal.”
They found the place after some search. A row of first-story windows looked down upon the alley, but the only opening on the ground floor was a narrow door, heavy and studded. The building apparently faced into a court or garden. There was neither plate nor inscription at the door to give information to the curious. But there was a bell.
Grant rang, and after a long pause there was the sound, faint through the heavy door, of footsteps on a stone floor. A small grill in the door shot back, and a man asked Grant’s business.
Grant asked to see the principal.
“Whom do you wish to see?”
“The principal,” said Grant firmly. He didn’t know whether they called their Number One abbot or prior; principal seemed to him good enough.
“The Reverend Father does not give audience at this hour.”
“Will you give the Reverend Father my card,” Grant said, handing the little square through the grill, “and tell him that I shall be grateful if he would see me on a matter of importance.”
“No worldly matter is of importance.”
“The Reverend Father may decide differently when you have given him my card.”
The grill shot back with an effect which might in a community less saintly have been described as snappish, and Grant was left in the darkening street. Williams saluted silently from some paces’ distance and turned away. The distant voices of children playing came clearly from adjoining streets, but there was no traffic in the alley. Williams’s footsteps had faded out of hearing long before there was the sound of returning ones in the passage beyond the door. Then there was the creak of bolts being drawn and a key turned. (What did they shut out? Grant wondered. Life? Or were the bars to keep straying wills indoors?) The door was opened sufficiently to admit him, and the man bade him enter.
“Peace be with you and with all Christian souls and the blessing of the Lord God go with you now and for ever, amen,” gabbled the man as he shot the bolts again and turned the key. If he had hummed a line of “Sing to Me Sometimes” the effect would have been exactly similar, Grant thought.
“The Reverend Father in his graciousness will see you,” the man said, and led the way up the stone passage, his sandals slapping with a slovenly effect on the flags. He ushered Grant into a small whitewashed room, bare except for a table, chairs, and a Crucifix, said “Peace be with you,” and shut the door, leaving Grant alone. It was very chilly there, and Grant hoped that the Reverend Father would not discipline him by leaving him there too long.
But in less than five minutes the doorkeeper returned and with great impressiveness bowed in his principal. He uttered another of his gabbled benedictions and left the two men together. Grant had expected the fanatic type; he was confronted instead with the successful preacher; bland, entrenched, worldly.
“Can I help you, my son?”
“I think you have in your brotherhood a man of the name of Herbert Gotobed—”
“There is no one of that name here.”
“I had not expected that that was the name he is known by in your community, but you are no doubt aware of the real names of the men who enter your order.”
“The worldly name of a man is forgotten on the day he enters the door to become one of us.”
“You asked if you could help me.”
“I still wish to help you.”
“I want to see Herbert Gotobed. I have news for him.”
“I know of no one of that name. And there can be no ’news’ for a man who has joined the Brotherhood of the Tree of Lebanon.”
“Very well. You may not know the man as Gotobed. But the man I want to interview is one of your number. I have to ask that you will let me find him.”
“Do you suggest that I should parade my community for your inspection?”
“No. You have some kind of service to which all the brothers come, haven’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“Let me be present at the service.”
“It is a most unusual request.”
“When is the next service?”
“In half an hour the midnight service begins.”
“Then all I ask is a seat where I can see the faces of your community.”
The Reverend Father was reluctant, and mentioned the inviolability of the holy house, but Grant’s casually dropped phrases on the attractive but obsolete custom of sanctuary and the still-surviving magic of King’s Writ, made him change his mind.
“By the way, will you tell me—I’m afraid I’m very ignorant of your rules and ways of life—do the members of your community have business in the town?”
“No. Only when charity demands it.”
“Have the brothers no traffic with the world at all then?” Herbert was going to have a perfect alibi, if that were so!
“For twenty-four hours once every moon, a brother goes into the world. That is contrived lest the unspottedness of communal life should breed self-righteousness. For the twelve hours of the day he must help his fellow beings in such ways as are open to him. For the twelve hours of the night he must meditate in a place alone: in summer in some open place, in winter in some church.”
“I see. And the twenty-four hours begin—when?”
“From a midnight to a midnight.”
“Thank you.”
Chapter 21
The service was held in a bare chapel, candlelit and whitewashed, very simple except for the magnificence of the altar at the east gable. Grant was surprised by the appearance of the altar. Poor the brothers might be, but there was wealth somewhere. The vessels on the white velvet cloth, and the Crucifix, might have been a pirate’s loot from a Spanish American cathedral. He had found it difficult to associate the Herbert Gotobed he kn
ew by reputation with this cloistered and poverty-struck existence. Being theatrical to no audience but oneself must soon pall. But the sight of that altar gave him pause. Herbert was perhaps running true to form after all.
Grant heard no word of the service. From his seat in the dim recess of a side window he could see all the faces of the participants; more than a score of them; and he found it a fascinating study. Some were cranks (one saw the faces at “anti” meetings and folk-dance revivals), some fanatics (masochists looking for a modern hair shirt), some simple, some at odds with themselves and looking for peace, some at odds with the world and looking for sanctuary. Grant, looking them over with a lively interest, found his glance stayed as it came to one face. Now what had brought the owner of that face to a life of seclusion and self-denial? A round sallow face on a round ill-shaped head, the eyes small, the nose fleshly, the lower lip loose, so that it hung away from his teeth as he repeated the words of the service. All the others in that little chapel had been types that fitted easily into recognized niches in the everyday world; the principal to a bishopric, this one to a neurologist’s waiting room, this to a depot for unemployed. But where did that last one fit?
There was only one answer. In the dock.
“So that,” said Grant’s otherself to him, “is Herbert Gotobed.” He could not be sure, of course, until he had seen the man walk. That was all he had ever seen of him: his walk. But he was ready to stake much on his judgment. The best of judges were at fault sometimes—Gotobed might turn out to be that lean and harmless-looking individual in the front row—but he would be surprised if Gotobed were any but that unctuous creature with the loose lower lip.
As the men filed out after midnight, he had no more doubt. Gotobed had a peculiar walk, a gangling, shoulder-rotating progression which was quite his own.
Grant followed them out and then sought the Reverend Father. What was the name of the last man to leave the chapel?
That was Brother Aloysius.
And after a little persuasion Brother Aloysius was sent for.
As they waited Grant talked conventionally of the Order and its rules and learned that no member could own any worldly property or have communication for worldly purposes with human beings. Such trivial worldlinesses as newspapers were, of course, not even thought of. He also learned that the principal intended in about a month’s time to take over a new Mission in Mexico, which they had built out of their funds, and that the privilege of electing his successor lay entirely with him.
A thought occurred to Grant.
“I don’t want to be impertinent—please don’t think this idle curiosity—but would you tell me whether you have decided in your mind on any particular person?”
“I have practically decided.”
“May I know who it is?”
“I really do not know why I should tell to a stranger what I am not prepared to tell to the brothers of my own Order, but there is no reason to conceal it if I may trust your secrecy.” Grant gave his word. “My successor is likely to be the man you have asked to see.”
“But he is a newcomer!” Grant said before he thought.
“I am at a loss to know how you knew that,” the Reverend Father said sharply. “It is true Brother Aloysius has been with us only a few months, but the qualities necessary for the priorship” (so he was a prior!) “are not developed with length of service.”
Grant murmured agreement, and then asked which of their community had been on an errand in the streets this evening.
None of them, the prior said firmly; and the conversation was brought to an end by the entrance of the man Grant wanted.
He stood there passively, his hands folded within the wide sleeves of his dark brown gown. Grant noticed that his feet were not sandaled but bare, and remembered that there had been no warning of his approach when he had presented himself in the newsagent’s. The looker-on in Grant wondered whether it was an appearance of humility or the convenience of a noiseless tread which appealed so greatly to Herbert.
“This is Brother Aloysius,” the prior said, and left them with a blessing, a much more poetic performance than the doorkeeper’s.
“I am from Messrs. Erskine, Smythe, and Erskine, the lawyers in the Temple,” Grant said. “You are Herbert Gotobed.”
“I am Brother Aloysius.”
“You were Herbert Gotobed.”
“I never heard of him.”
Grant considered him for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re looking for Gotobed about a legacy that has been left him.”
“Yes? If he is a brother of this Order, your news will be of little interest to him.”
“If the legacy were big enough, he might realize that he could do far more for the cause of charity outside these walls than in them.”
“Our oath is for life. Nothing that happens outside these walls is of interest to any member of our Order.”
“So you deny that you are Herbert Gotobed?”
Grant was conducting the conversation automatically. What his mind was occupied with, he found, was that the expression in the man’s small pale eyes was hate. He had rarely seen such hate. But why hate? That was what his mind asked. It should be fear, surely?
Grant felt that to this man he was not a pursuer but someone who had butted in. The feeling stayed with him while he took his leave and all the way back to the hotel opposite the tobacconist’s.
Williams was brooding over a cold meal he had caused to be set for his superior.
“Any news?” Grant asked.
“No, sir.”
“No word of Tisdall? Have you telephoned?”
“Yes, I telephoned about twenty minutes ago. Not a word, sir.”
Grant slapped some slices of ham between two pieces of bread. “Pity,” he said. “I’d work much better if Tisdall were out of my mind. Come on. There isn’t going to be much bed for us tonight.”
“What is it, sir? Did you find him?”
“Yes, he’s there all right. Denied he was Gotobed. They’re not allowed to have any worldly transactions. That is why he was so shy in the shop. Didn’t even wait to see who the second person behind the counter was: just fled at the very prospect of a watcher. That’s what’s worrying me, Williams. He seems much more occupied with not being chucked out of the order than with being run in for murder.”
“But his running out of the shop might have been because he wanted to keep on in hiding. That monastery place is as good a hideout as a murderer could wish for.”
“Ye-s. Yes, but he’s not frightened. He’s angry. We’re spoiling something for him.”
They had been going quietly downstairs, Grant eating large mouthfuls of his improvised sandwich. As they approached the ground floor they were confronted by an enormous female who blocked their exit from the stairway. She had no poker in her hand, but the effect was the same.
“So that’s what you are!” she said, with concentrated venom. “A couple of sneaking fly-by-nights. Come in here, as large as life, you do, and make me and my poor husband buy the best of everything for your meals—chops at tenpence each, and tongue at two-and-eightpence the pound, to say nothing of English tomatoes to suit your very particular tastes—and all we get for our expense and our trouble is a couple of empty rooms in the morning. I’ve a good mind to ring up the police and give you in charge—if it weren’t for—”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Grant said angrily; and then began to laugh. He hung over the banisters laughing helplessly, while Williams talked to the angry hostess.
“Well, why didn’t you say you were bobbies?” she said.
“We’re not bobbies,” Williams said, ferociously, and Grant laughed the more, and dragged him from the scene.
“Gilbertian!” he said, wiping his eyes. “Quite Gilbertian. Did me a lot of good. Now, listen. These monks, or whatever they esteem themselves, retire to their cells at midnight and don’t move out of them till six. But Herbert gets in and out of that building more or less when he likes. I don�
��t know how he works it: those first-floor windows are low enough to drop from but much too high to get back into, and he doesn’t look like a gymnast. But get out he does. No one knew—or at least, the powers that be didn’t know—he was out tonight. Well, I have a hunch that he’s going walking again tonight, and I want to see where to.”
“What makes you think so, sir?”
“Just instinct. If I were Herbert I’d have a base to conduct operations from. I walked around the block before I came back to the hotel. There are only two points where the monastery property abuts on the street. At the side where the door is; and at the very opposite side where the garden ends in a wall that looks fifteen feet high. There’s a small gate there; iron and very solid. It’s a long way from the living quarters, and I think our original side is the most helpful. But I want you to keep watch on the garden side, and tail anyone who comes out. I’ll do the same on the door side. If nothing happens by six o’clock you can creep home and go to bed.”
Chapter 22
Grant had been waiting for what seemed an eternity. The night was soft, with a damp air, and smelled pleasantly of green things and flowers. Somewhere there was a lime tree. There was no sky, only a thick misty dark above. Bells chimed every now and then, with aloof sweetness. In spite of himself, Grant found the peace of the night invading him; his mind grew blurred and incurious and he had to whip it to wakefulness.
And then, a few moments after half-past two had struck, something happened, and his mind leaped without any goading. He had heard no sound, but in the lane in front of the monastery there was movement. It was too dark to see a shape; all that happened was that the darkness moved, as a curtain might stir in a current of air. Someone was in the street.
Grant waited. The movement grew less, became more blurred, and ceased. Whoever was there had moved away from him. Grant slipped his unlaced boots from his feet and strung them across his shoulder; every step on a shod foot would be audible on a night like this. Silently he moved down the lane and past the high wall of the house. Out of its shadows the visibility was slightly better: he could see the movement in front of him again. He followed it with every sense alert; it was not only difficult to gauge his exact distance from it, but almost impossible to tell if it stopped for a moment. In the street beyond it was easier; the movement in the darkness became a form. A form retreating swiftly and effortlessly into the night. Grant set out to keep pace with it. Down the little streets of two-story houses. Past small houses with small gardens. Past an occasional small paddock.
A Shilling for Candles Page 18