Holy Disorders. Edmund Crispin

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СКАЧАТЬ shook his head. ‘It is, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘And when you come to think of it, isn’t psycho-analysis silly? Anything can mean anything, you know. It’s like that series of sums in which whatever number you start with the answer is always twenty-one.’

      ‘Well,’ said Geoffrey, ‘couldn’t you start a system of psychoanalysis based only on the conscious mind?’

      The other brightened; then his face fell again. ‘I suppose one might,’ he said, ‘but I don’t quite see how it’s possible. Still, I’ll think about it. Thank you for the suggestion.’ He became very despondent; Geoffrey hastened to change the subject.

      ‘Have you ever been to Tolnbridge before?’

      ‘Never,’ Peace replied; he seemed to regard this admission of deficiency as the very acme of his troubles. ‘It’s very beautiful, I believe. Are you proposing to stay long?’

      Geoffrey, for no very sound reason, became suddenly suspicious. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

      ‘My brother-in-law,’ said Peace didactically, ‘is Precentor at the cathedral there, and I’m going to see my sister – the first time in several years. I confess I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t get on with the clergy’ – he lowered his voice, glancing furtively at its representative in the far corner. ‘I find they regard one as a sort of modern witch-doctor – quite rightly, I suppose,’ he concluded miserably, remembering his doubts.

      Geoffrey’s interest was aroused. ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I’m going to stay at the clergy-house myself, so we shall probably be seeing something of one another. I shall be playing the services, for a while at all events.’

      Peace nodded. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘that organist fellow was knocked out, of course. My sister told me over the phone this morning. Said she wasn’t surprised – fellow drinks like a fish, apparently. I suppose it would have been my brother-in-law who asked you to come down?’

      ‘It should have been, by rights. Actually it was a friend of mine, Gervase Fen, who’s staying at the clergy-house at the moment. Presumably he was authorized.’ Knowing Fen, Geoffrey was suddenly seized by a horrible doubt. But plainly the Enemy considered him to be authorized, or they wouldn’t be wasting their time on him.

      ‘Gervase Fen,’ said Peace meditatively. ‘I seem to know the name.’

      ‘A detective of sorts.’

      ‘I see – investigating the attack on this fellow Brooks, I suppose. And it was he who sent for you to act as deputy? Extraordinary the things the police take on themselves nowadays.’

      ‘Not an official detective – amateur.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘So you’re really just holidaying, then?’

      ‘Not entirely. I have to see my brother-in-law about…’ Peace suddenly checked himself. ‘A matter of business. Nothing important.’ Geoffrey did not fail to notice the alteration in his tone; and he seemed to think he had said too much in any case, for he leaned back and automatically took up the Daily Mirror again. Geoffrey felt he had been dismissed. There was one more question he wanted to ask, however.

      ‘Did you by any chance happen to see me pick up a letter from my seat shortly after I came into the compartment?’ he said.

      Peace looked at him curiously for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘As it happens, I did. Nothing alarming, I hope.’

      ‘No, nothing alarming. You didn’t notice how it got there, I suppose?’

      The other paused for some moments before replying. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said at last. ‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t notice at all.’

      Geoffrey found himself being pursued with a butterfly-net across the Devon moors. The persons of his pursuers were vague, but they moved with great rapidity. He was not surprised to find Peace running beside him. ‘It is necessary,’ he said to Peace, ‘that we should run the unconscious to ground wherever it may be. We can hide there, and besides, I strongly suspect that Gervase Fen will be somewhere in that neighbourhood too.’ His companion made no reply – he was too much occupied with the baby he was carrying. When they reached the cathedral, the pursuers were a good deal closer, and they ran at full speed to the altar, shouting: ‘Sanctuary! We demand sanctuary!’ They were stopped beneath the rood-screen by a young clergyman. ‘We can’t go on failing indefinitely,’ he said. ‘It is impossible for us to go on failing indefinitely.’ The pursuers were by now very near. Peace dropped the baby. It screamed, and then began to whistle shrilly, like a railway engine. The noise grew in volume, like the swift approach of a tornado…

      The engine of a train passing in the opposite direction swept past the compartment, its whistle at full blast, as Geoffrey struggled back to consciousness. Without moving, he opened his eyes and looked about him. Peace slumbered in the opposite comer, the paper dropped from his hands; the intruder still snored; the mother was whispering softly to the baby, which moaned and struggled spasmodically. Fielding sat reading a book – he seemed curiously isolated and strange. Geoffrey felt that if he spoke to him he would turn without recognition in his face, a stranger merely. The clergyman and the woman with the rug were talking together in low tones, their words inaudible above the incessant, monotonous beating of the wheels. Geoffrey sat and stared, first at a disagreeable photograph of Salisbury Cathedral, and then at the ‘Instructions to Passengers in the Event of an Air Raid’, which had been annotated by some passenger with overmuch time on his hands:

      DRAW ALL BLINDS AS A PRECAUTION AGAINST – nosey bastards.

      DO NOT LEAVE THE CARRIAGE UNLESS REQUESTED BY A – hot bit.

      He blinked sleepily about him, and tried to stop thinking about the heat.

      The sirens wailed as the train began braking on the stretch into Taunton. All along the coast, the fierce merciless battle against the invading bombers began. The intruder awoke from his long sleep and gazed blearily out of the window. His hasty movements of departure came as a welcome diversion. He got to his feet, scowled round him, and reached up to the rack above Geoffrey’s head, where his heavy portmanteau lay. It was, of course, not entirely surprising, in view of its weight, that he should have let it slip, and if it had fallen directly on to Geoffrey’s head as he leaned forward to talk to Fielding, the consequences would have been serious. Fortunately, Fielding saw it coming, and pushed Geoffrey against the back of the seat with all his force. The portmanteau landed with a sickening thud on his knees.

      A confused clamour arose. The agent of this disturbance did not, however, wait to make his apologies, but was out of the compartment and on to Taunton platform before the train had come to a stop. Geoffrey sat doubled up with agony, nursing his thighs; but happily the human thigh-bone is a solid object, and Peace showed himself a fairly expert doctor. As to a pursuit, that was out of the question. By the time order was restored, the train was in any case on the move again.

      ‘He might have broken your neck!’ said the woman with the baby indignantly.

      ‘So he might,’ said Geoffrey painfully. Feeling very sick, he turned to Fielding. ‘Thanks – for the second time today.’

      Peace had unlocked the case, and was gazing with bewilderment at the medley of old iron it contained. ‘No wonder it was so heavy,’ he said. ‘But what on earth…?’ Abruptly he decided that this was not the time for investigation. СКАЧАТЬ