by Heron Carvic
“Oh—mind!” exclaimed Miss Seeton.
Like a spear the pointed ferrule aimed for Ted’s head, made contact; the umbrella tilted and its handle hooked a rung. It hung awaiting its next chance. This unexpected harpoon made Ted clutch wildly at the air above him; upset his balance. He flung himself back against the ladder and the umbrella handle, accurate with practice, caught him on the nose. He swore.
Oh. It certainly wasn’t Mr. Foxon. She must hurry.
Sir George was marshaling his troops. Choosing the most trustworthy among the men, he posted guards at both doors of the church. Intrigued, the main section of the villagers converged to watch, to criticize, to supervise. They were ordered back: old men, women and children’s places were in the rear. To keep them in their allotted place Sir George suggested that they should carry on: done a good job with their bit of singing; got the enemy on the run. Never knew—might still be a few lurking inside; a bit more caterwauling should flush ’em out. Nigel and young Hosigg, the farm foreman, were detailed to lead the raiding party. Boosted on friendly shoulders, they climbed through the broken windows, calling back, “No enemy in sight.” While reinforcements followed them they deployed, unbarred and opened both the doors. The reserve troops jostled in: they peered and pried, they oohed and aahed; one farmhand mounted the pulpit steps, which thereupon collapsed. Nigel meanwhile explored the chancel, moved to the altar. He stood there shocked, then bent down and, lifting the rotting altar cloth, shrouded the puppet’s body. He remained for a moment, swallowing; swallowing. He went to fetch his father.
Miss Seeton had just managed to free her other arm when an extra jolt forced her to snatch a hold upon a rung and lose her hold upon her bag.
“Oh, please—mind out!” she called, dismayed.
What was that hellcat throwing now? Ted tilted back his head and the handbag hit his upturned face. He let out a howl of rage and, spurred by pain, flung himself upward. He’d get her for that or die for it. Miss Seeton reached the platform, tried to step off, and the bucking ladder threw her to her knees against the wall. Ted laughed; only a few more feet—he had her. The duffel coat came to him, spreading as it fell, sleeves outheld for the dance. Blinded and breathless, he wrestled with his new encumbrance, but the ladder, as though in shedding itself of Miss Seeton’s weight it had also shed responsibility, teetered upright, swayed, seemed undecided, then, leaning over, gathered speed and smacked the opposite wall. With a rending crack of splitting wood, the top half broke; in breaking, broke his hold. The coat released him: Ted shrieked as by the light of his own flashlight he trod his last pas seul on air and the coat that had been Death’s dancing partner followed him.
Ted’s howl of rage, muffled by distance and the door, echoed eerily round the church. Sir George’s army halted. Some troops deserted. The stouter hearts closed ranks and held a consultation.
“Cor, that made un jump.”
“Where’d be coum from?”
“B’ain’t nowhere.”
“None but t’ old belfry.”
“No bat that weren’t.”
In a body they trepidated toward the bell tower door. Before they reached it, a cracking sound, a shriek which, starting in the sky, came plummeting toward them in crescendo, a thud which shook the floor. They backed aghast. Nigel, returning with Sir George, joined with young Hosigg and they rushed the door. A flashlight showed them the squatting bells, two men’s bodies, a splintered ladder, a spilled handbag, an empty coat and lying to one side a silk umbrella, broken. A handbag … umbrella? With dismal misgiving they looked again. There was no more to see.
Outside the church the rear guard felt inspired. It was too clear that Things were Going On. The Devil’s hosts were in that church and who, they would like to ask, had got them out? They had. And whose idea was it? they asked again. No one but theirs. Sir George was right. The thing must be finished, properly. They urged the vicar on, they egged the choir, and lifted voices in “Jerusalem.”
“… me my spear. O clouds, u-unfold,” they implored.
It was a night for prayer: all suits were granted. Dutifully the clouds parted and in strained moonlight the outline of the church took shape: the roof, the battlements, the gargoyled gutters; the bell tower loomed, with gargoyles on each corner… . Each … corner? Mrs. Blaine squeaked in shock, Miss Nuttel cowered, all craned their necks to look and saw an extra gargoyle nestling there. Their song was dead; their martial spirit quenched. It was the vicar’s turn. Deeply impressed by what had taken place and humbly aware that God had shown His hand and blessed their enterprise, he knew his path was clear. It was his bounden duty, and he realized it, to end this desecration of an anointed house. Boldly he stepped forward under His protection to confront this monstrous Impiety aloft.
“Begone!” he cried. His voice and courage gathered strength. “I command thee, unclean spirit.” He was stem. “You leave this place and return to your Infernal Home below where thou shalt burn in everlasting fire.” Slowly the gargoyle’s head was turned toward them. All shrank. They could see the rolling, flaming eyeballs, the forked tongue darting back and forth. The Reverend Arthur braced himself. “Begone, I say, cursed spirit. Come down at once. Avaunt.”
The scene was bathed in light as two cars reached the lichen gate. Uniforms jumped from one, Bob Ranger from the other, in time to catch Impiety’s refusal.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Treeves,” Miss Seeton called. “I can’t come down—I’m stuck.”
chapter
~13~
The Yard was now officially in charge and Delphick, installed once more at the George and Dragon, which, on this his third visit, was beginning to feel like home, had the passing thought that in view of Miss Seeton’s recent history and her unfailing aptitude for becoming the eye of any whirlwind that offered, it might be simpler in the long run now that she was accredited to the force for the authorities to enlarge Plummergen Police Station, of which the normal complement was PC. Potter, Mrs. Potter, Amelia Potter, aged three, and a cat named Tibs, and install a Seeton posse, complete with a mobile unit, who could be on permanent call to assist in her exploits when and where they occurred. What, he wondered, had she got on to now? That the Nuscientists would have been glad to have seen her notes of the meeting was understandable, but they must have known, when the initial attempt failed, that a second try would be too late. Nothing that he could think of—nothing, apparently, that she could think of—explained two vicious attacks upon her life in one night. Conceivably the second attempt could have been due to resentment on the part of the devil worshipers at the penetration of their mysteries by an outsider. Conceivably. But only just. There must be more to it than that, since to kill for such a trivial reason was extreme to the point of absurdity. Also Foxon, now recovered and suffering only from a slight concussion, suspected that, in the brief glimpse he had had of him down the length of the ill-lit church, his assailant was one of the toughs who had thrown him out of the Maidstone meeting. Certainly the body, on which they had as yet no identification, had worn a black plastic ring, which would seem to place him in Nuscience. Could this be taken as proof of a link between the two rackets? He had interviewed Miss Wicks; but there was nothing helpful in a sibilation concerning the Queen and the Ace of Spades associated with a sense of menace in Miss Seeton’s house. Such flummery could hardly be adduced as concrete evidence of ill intent, even against astral powers. Fortunately Miss Seeton’s ambience appeared to extend to her friends. Due to her hat, Miss Wicks, now installed in Knight’s nursing home and peeping above banks of flowers and fruit and homemade jellies, was having the time of her life instead of her death and whistling out her story to a constant stream of visitors. She had even achieved a paragraph with headings in the local paper, but since she had suffered only violence with neither robbery nor rape she had not attained the nationals. There must have been something someone wanted at Sweetbriars. Something they knew was there. And since only the drawers of the bureau had been searched, they must have found it
. Delphick tried again.
“Are you certain,” he asked, “that there’s nothing missing? A paper of some kind would be most likely from a desk. One of your sketches perhaps?”
Miss Seeton, kneeling on the floor with her portfolio, spread her hands. “It’s very difficult, Superintendent, to be sure. So many of the sketches are just notes—and one forgets. But I’ve been right through them and I can’t find anything that isn’t there.”
Delphick frowned. “Nothing that you’ve drawn recently? Nothing about any recent drawing that has struck you as odd in any way?”
Miss Seeton looked helpless. “Why, no. Nothing at all. Oh.” Memory nudged her. “Nothing, that is, of course, except the church.”
“What church?”
“I’ve no idea. It must have been some church that I’d seen sometime, and wanted to remember, and made a note of. And then didn’t. Remember it, I mean.”
The sergeant shut his notebook. She was back on form—or rather off. The Oracle generally seemed to be able to toe the ball and follow through, but for himself it was no good taking shorthand notes in English of speech in double Dutch.
“And then,” Miss Seeton remembered, “there was that watercolor done by the sea; just to give one something to judge the children’s competition by.”
“And where is that?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m afraid I lost it—so very careless—and had to do another.”
“I see.” The superintendent paced Miss Seeton’s sitting room. “This second one—the copy—may I see that?”
Miss Seeton stood up. “But of course. I’m quite sure Mr. Jessyp wouldn’t mind. It’s at the school. He was going to pin them all on the classroom wall this morning and mine was to be there just to give an idea of the view that they were aiming at.”
They repaired to the school.
Delphick was struck by the standard of work of children up to eleven years of age and surprised to see the composite pictures and the poem. “You mean they can get away with things like this? In my day when we were told to draw, we drew or somebody wanted to know the reason why.” “But surely,” Miss Seeton protested, “the main point in such a lesson should be teaching them to see.”
Miss Seeton’s picture, however, was not on exhibition. She looked around and found her folding sketch frame on the teacher’s table. She opened it. Oh. She gazed, nonplussed. Beside her Delphick scanned the somber color wash in sepia tones, in grays and black: a church merging into the background of night sky; into a wood which swept down the slope behind and threatened to engulf it. There was a sense of suspended threat: lightning might strike at any moment; thunderbolts might fall.
“Is this,” he asked, “the church that had gone missing?” “Yes,” said Miss Seeton, and fell silent.
Delphick waited. Really, she thought, how very difficult. She knew that she must be precise. Precision was so important to the police. But how could one be precise about something that one didn’t understand? Something that should have been impossible. And something that was, in any case, precisely the opposite to what one had expected. “Well?” he prompted her.
“It’s a little difficult,” she said finally. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Well, if she didn’t, Bob decided, they’d had it. It was bad enough when she knew what she was talking about, but … He moved to look at the painting. Crikey. Bit gloomy. Bats in the belfry and all that sort of thing. Bats in the …? It was that damned church they were at last night. There was the bell tower at the side they’d seen her peeping out of and’d had to send for the fire brigade to get her down. When in hell had she found time to knock off this little effort? “It looks,” said Miss Seeton tentatively, “a little like the church Mr. Foxon took me to last night. I’m so relieved to hear that he’s all right. But the other young man’s accident. Quite dreadful. And I do feel that it might have been, in part, my fault. He was in such a hurry that he made the ladder sway and I’m rather afraid I dropped things.”
Delphick repressed a smile. From the evidence he’d say she’d literally bombarded him to death, and a good job too. “When did you do this picture of the church?”
“Oh, but I didn’t,” she disclaimed. “I’ve never seen it. The picture, I mean. I mean I can’t think how it got here.”
The superintendent looked at Miss Seeton carefully: had she, like Foxon, got concussion too? Well—take it step by step. “You say this is the picture of the church which got lost, and now it’s turned up again.”
“Oh, no, it didn’t,” she informed him quickly. “Get lost, that is. Because it was never there.” Recognizing that this might, perhaps, sound a little involved, she determined to make it clear. “Not the church itself, I mean. That, evidently, must always have been there. But the first, as I remember, was by day. And this one is by night. And, I think, from a different angle. But although it has, as you say, turned up, one could not say ‘again,’ because it was not there to start with. The picture, I mean.”
Delphick blinked. Was it he who’d got concussion? Bob gazed at Miss Seeton with respect. For once the Oracle was up the spout; she’d got him on the run. The facts began to jell in Delphick’s mind. Twice she’d drawn, or thought she’d drawn, a seascape. Twice she’d ended up with pictures of a church. Twice, or he missed his guess, she’d caught a forewarning of trouble, and twice, unconsciously, had set it down on paper. He signaled Bob to get his notebook out and settled down to question her. He learned of where she’d been and what she’d done; of her fall—so very careless; and of the tunnel that led down to the seashore. Obviously the Nuscientists thought that Miss Seeton possessed knowledge which was dangerous to them, so maybe the tunnel was important in some way. Or was it just the church, since that must be the drawing that they’d stolen? But how could they have learned about her burrowing underground? And how could they have found out about the drawing of the church? She insisted that on the first occasion she had been alone and that her sketching frame was already closed and her paints and brushes packed before Lady Colveden had called for her. No one, she was sure, could have seen the picture.
“You yourself saw no one? No one at all? No one passed by?”
“No one, Superintendent, there was no one there at all. Except, of course, the girl.”
At last. More questioning. She’d seen the girl again at the Nuscience meeting. Had she seen her since? No. She was sure? Quite sure. Though she had the impression that she was staying in the village. Delphick remembered the beauty sitting at a table alone on the far side of the room at breakfast. Fine. He’d soon have her name and start a few inquiries. What connection could the girl have with the church? He ruminated.
“Can you bear to describe again this so-called service at the church last night?”
Miss Seeton’s hands began to stray; her mind went blank. “There was nothing, Superintendent, that I haven’t told you. There was very little light and it all seemed rather childish. And then, it was so quick. Some woman screamed and they all ran away. I’m sure that Mr. Foxon would be able to give you a better idea than I could.”
Delphick wasn’t listening. He watched the restless hands. He smiled and got up. Miss Seeton started to rise. He laughed and stopped her. “No you don’t, you stay where you are; I’ve got a job for you. You’ve got more paper in that sketching thing of yours? Good. And colored pencils?” They found some in a drawer. “I’m going to borrow Mr. Jessyp’s telephone and follow up a few lines—among them local knowledge of tunnels, things like that—and I want you to sit here quietly and think about last night. And then if anything occurs to you, no matter what it is or how silly it seems, just get it down on paper.” He sat Bob on a bench near the door, behind Miss Seeton, and left the classroom.
Bob sat and waited as quietly as a stomach striking half past lunch allowed. So far as he could judge, Miss Seeton merely sat. If she didn’t buck up they’d get no food, the children’d be back for afternoon classes, and they’d look pretty silly sitting stewing here in so
lemn silence. He watched as she picked up a pencil, toyed with it—and put it down. Then chose another. She made a few tentative passes on the paper. Then, suddenly, she was working, quickly and absorbed. It dawned on him that the Oracle was back in the doorway, watching and waiting. Miss Seeton finished, put down her crayons and sat back reviewing the result. Apparently it displeased. She picked up the paper and was about to tear it when the Oracle, beside her in two strides, removed the drawing. She became flustered.
“I’m sorry, Superintendent. It’s no good. I’ve got things mixed. I was trying to give some idea of that affair last night, but somehow it looks more like that meeting at Maidstone. I suppose,” she concluded, discouraged, “because they both seemed so silly.”
Bob looked over his chief’s shoulder and chuckled. This was more like it. Better than that other gloomy thing. Quick, sure strokes showed the church interior with its aisle and pews as viewed from the sanctuary. In the foreground, profiled, one lifted hand holding a black candle dripping wax, the other hand pointing an admonitory finger down to regions below, stood the Master from Maidstone. Before him, briefly limned, the congregation milled in attitudes of devotion or of fear. Apart from the Master only two or three had features delineated: a fair-haired girl whom Delphick recognized at once as the breakfast beauty; a displeasing woman with a beaky nose, wearing a twisted turban in garish colors and a young man with eyes set close together. He pointed to the last.