Читать книгу Holy Disorders - Edmund Crispin - Страница 7

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of

pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love.

BACON

After the dim, barn-like vastness of Waterloo, Paddington appeared like an infernal pit. Here there was not the order, the strict division and segregation of mechanical and human which prevailed at the larger station. Inextricably, engines and passengers seethed and milled together, the barriers provided for their separation seeming no more than the inconvenient erections of an obstacle-race. The crowds, turgid, stormy, and densely-packed, appeared more likely to clamber on to the backs of the trains, like children piling on to a donkey at the seaside, than merely to board them in the normal way. The locomotives panted and groaned like expiring hedgehogs prematurely over-run by hordes of predatory ants; any attempt at departure, one felt, must infallibly crush and dissipate these insects in their thousands – it would be impossible for them to disentangle themselves from the buffers and connecting-rods in time.

Amongst the crowds the heat banished comfort, but stimulated the itch to uneasy and purposeless movement. Certain main streams, between the bars, the platform, the ticket-offices, the lavatories, and the main entrances, were perhaps discernible; but they had only the conventional boundaries of currents on a map – they overflowed their banks amongst the merely impassive, who stood at the angles of their confluence in attitudes of melancholy or despair. Observed from ground level, this mass of humanity exhibited, in its efforts to move hither and thither, surprising divergences from the horizontal; people pressed forward to their destinations leaning forward at a dangerous, angle, or, peering round the bodies of those in front of them, presented the appearance of criminals half-decapitated. A great many troops, bearing ponderous white cylinders apparently filled with lead, elbowed their way apologetically about, or sat on kit-bags and allowed themselves to be buffeted from all angles. Railway officials controlled the scene with the uneasy authority of schoolmasters trying to extort courteous recognition from their pupils after term had ended.

‘Good God,’ said Geoffrey as he struggled forward, carrying a suitcase with which he made periodic involuntary assaults on the knees of the passers-by, ‘are we even going to get on this train?’

Fielding, still inappropriately dressed in the morning clothes belonging to his recent occupation, merely grunted; the temperature seemed to overcome him. When they had progressed, clawing and pushing, another two yards, he said:

‘What time is it supposed to go?’

‘Not for three-quarters of an hour yet.’ The relevant part of the sentence was drowned in a sudden demoniac outburst of hooting and whistling. He repeated it at the top of his voice. ‘Three-quarters of an hour,’ he bellowed.

Fielding nodded, and then, surprisingly, vanished, with a shouted explanation of which the only word audible was ‘clothes’. A little bemused, Geoffrey laboured to the ticket-office. The tickets occupied him for some twenty minutes, but in any case the train seemed likely to depart late. He waved his bag in optimistic query at a porter, passing on some nameless, leisurely errand, and was ignored.

Then he went, reflecting a little sadly on the miseries which our indulgences cause us, to get a drink.

The refreshment-room was decorated with gilt and marble; their inappropriate splendours cast a singular gloom over the proceedings. By the forethought of those responsible for getting people on to trains the clock had been put ten minutes fast, a device which led to frequent panics of departure among those who were under the impression that it showed the right time. They were immediately reassured by others, whose watches were slow. Upon discovery of the real hour, a second and more substantial panic occurred. Years of the Defence of the Realm Act had conditioned the British public to remain in bars until the latest possible moment.

Geoffrey deposited his bag by a pillar (someone immediately fell over it), and elbowed his way to the bar, which he clutched with the determination of a shipwrecked sailor who has reached a friendly shore. The sirens lurking behind it, with comparative freedom of movement, were engaged in friendly discourse with regular customers. A barrage of imperative glances and despairing cries for attention failed, for the most part, to move them. Some brandished coins in the hope that this display of affluence and good faith would jerk these figures into motion. Geoffrey found himself next to a dwarfish commercial traveller, who was treating one of the barmaids to a long, rambling fantasy about the disadvantages of early marriage, as freely exemplified by himself and many friends and relations. By pushing him malignantly out of the way, Geoffrey managed eventually to get a drink.

Fielding reappeared as inexplicably as he had gone, dressed in a sports coat and flannels and carrying a suitcase. He explained rather breathlessly that he had been back to his flat, and demanded beer. The ritual of entreaty was again enacted. ‘Travelling,’ said Fielding with deep feeling.

‘I hope we don’t have to get in with any babies,’ said Geoffrey gloomily. ‘If they don’t shriek out and crawl all over me, they’re invariably sick.’

There were babies – one, at least – but the first-class compartment containing it was the only one with two seats vacant – one of them, on to which Geoffrey at once hurled a mass of impedimenta in token of ownership, an outside corner. He then applied himself to getting Fen’s butterfly-net on to the rack, assisted by Fielding, and watched with interest by the other occupants of the compartment. It was just too long. Geoffrey regarded it with hatred: it was growing, in his eyes, into a monstrous symbol of the inconvenience, shame, and absurdity of his preposterous errand.

‘Try standing it up against the window,’ said the man sitting in the corner opposite Geoffrey’s. His plumpness and pinkness outdid Fielding’s. Geoffrey felt, regarding him, like a man who while brandishing an Amati is suddenly confronted with a Strad.

They put this scheme into practice; whenever anyone moved his feet the net fell down again.

‘What a thing to bring on a train,’ said the woman with the baby, sotto voce.

It was eventually decided to lay the net transversely across the carriage, from one rack to the other. The whole compartment rose – not with any enthusiasm, since it was so hot – to do justice to this idea. A woman seated in one of the other corners, with a face white and pock-marked like a plucked chicken’s breast, complainingly shifted her luggage to make room. Then she sat down again and insulated herself unnecessarily against the surrounding humanity with a rug, which made Geoffrey hot even to look at. With a great deal of obscure mutual encouragement and admonition, such as ‘Up she goes’ and ‘Steady, now’, Geoffrey, Fielding, the fat man, and a young clergyman who occupied the remaining corner hoisted the net into position. The baby, hitherto quiescent, awoke and embarked upon a running commentary of snorts and shrieks; it grunted like the pig-baby in Alice, until they expected it to be metamorphosed before their eyes. The mother jogged it ruthlessly up and down, and glared malignantly at the progenitors of the disturbance. People searching for seats peered into the compartment and attempted to assess the number of people engaged in this hullabaloo. One went so far as to open the door and ask if there was any room, but he was ignored, and soon went away again.

‘Disgraceful!’ said the woman with the baby. She bumped it up and down even more furiously than before, and cooed at it, adding to its noises with her own.

The net was by now secured at either end, and more or less conveniently placed, except that anyone rising incautiously or coming into the compartment was liable to bang his head on it. Geoffrey profusely thanked his assistants, who sat down again looking hot but pleased. He turned back to transfer the remainder of his belongings from the seat on to the rack. They were now topped by a letter not his own, but plainly addressed to him. The paper and typing looked uncomfortably familiar. He opened it and read:

There’s still time to get off the train. We have our setbacks, but we can’t go on failing indefinitely.

Ignoring Fielding’s curious glance, he put it thoughtfully in his pocket and heaved the remainder of his things out of the way. In the confusion of a moment before, anyone in the compartment could have dropped that note, and for that matter – since the window was wide open – anyone could have flicked it in from outside. He tried to remember the dispositions of the various persons in the compartment, and failed. He sat down feeling somewhat alarmed.

‘Another?’ said Fielding; he raised his right eyebrow in elaborate query.

Geoffrey nodded dumbly and handed him the note.

He whistled with noisy astonishment as he read it. ‘But who—?’

Geoffrey shook his head, still refusing to utter a sound. He hoped to convey by this means his suspicion of one of the occupants of the compartment. Any open discussion of the matter might, he obscurely felt, convey information of value to the enemy. The others were eyeing unenthusiastically this gnomic interchange.

But Fielding was for the moment oblivious of such innuendoes.

‘Quick work,’ he said. ‘They must have had a second line of defence ready in case the business in the store failed. Simply a matter of phoning someone here while we were on our way. They’re certainly taking no chances.’

‘I wish you’d remember,’ said Geoffrey a trifle peevishly, ‘that I’m the object of all this. It’s no pleasure to me to have you sitting there gloating over the excellence of their arrangements.’

No notice was taken of this. ‘And that means,’ Fielding continued impassively, ‘that the typewriter they used is somewhere in this neighbourhood – damn it, no it doesn’t, though. The wording of that second note is so vague it could easily have been got ready beforehand.’ The failure of his calculation threw him into a profound despondency; he stared dejectedly at his feet.

Geoffrey meanwhile was carrying out an inventory of the other persons in the compartment. The man opposite, who had been so helpful over Fen’s butterfly-net, had a well-to-do professional air. Geoffrey was inclined to put him down as a doctor, or a prosperous broker. His face was amiable, with that underlying shyness and melancholy which seems always to be beneath the surface in fat men; he had sparse straight hair, pale grey eyes with heavy lids like thick shutters of flesh, and very long lashes, like a girl’s. The material of his suit was expensive, and it was competently tailored. He held a thick black book, one of the four volumes, Geoffrey observed with surprise, of Pareto’s monumental The Mind and Society. Did doctors or brokers read such things on railway journeys? Covertly, he regarded his vis-à-vis with renewed interest.

Next door was the woman with the baby. Repeated jogging had now shaken the infant into a state of bemused incomprehension, and it emitted only faint and isolated shrieks. By compensation, it had begun to dribble. Its mother, a small woman vaguely and unanalysably slatternly in appearance, periodically wiped a grubby handkerchief with great force and determination across its face, so that its head almost fell off backwards; while not occupied in this way, she gazed at her companions with great dislike. Probably, Geoffrey reflected, she could be omitted from the list of suspects. The same could not be said for the clergyman sitting in the corner on her right, however. It was true that he looked reedy, young, and ineffectual, but these were too much the characteristics of the stage curate not to be at once suspicious. He was glancing occasionally, with anxious inquiry, at the woman with the rug. She, meanwhile, was engaged in that unnerving examination of the other persons in the compartment which most people seem to regard as necessary at the beginning of a long railway journey. Eventually, feeling apparently that this had now been brought to the point where embarrassment was likely to become active discomfort, she said to the clergyman, looking sternly at a small wrist-watch:

‘What time do we get into Tolnbridge?’

This query aroused some interest in other quarters. Both Geoffrey and Fielding started slightly, with well-drilled uniformity, and shot swift glances at the speaker, while in the Pareto-addict opposite Geoffrey some stirrings of attention were also discernible. All things considered, it was not very surprising that someone else in the compartment should be going to Tolnbridge, even though compared with Taunton and Exeter it was an unimportant stop; but Geoffrey at all events was too alarmed and uneasy to make such a simple deduction.

The clergyman seemed at a loss for an answer. He looked helplessly about him and said:

‘I’m afraid I’m not sure, Mrs Garbin. I could perhaps find out—?’ He half-rose from his seat. The man opposite Geoffrey leaned forward.

‘Five-forty-three,’ he said with decision. ‘But I’m afraid we’re likely to lose time on the way.’ He took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘We’re ten minutes late in starting already.’

The woman with the rug nodded briskly. ‘In wartime we must resign ourselves to that sort of thing,’ she said, her tone loaded with stoic resignation. ‘You are getting off there yourself?’ she asked after a moment.

The fat man bowed his head. The reluctant and self- conscious democracy of the railway compartment was set into creaking motion. ‘Have you far to go?’ he inquired of Geoffrey.

Geoffrey started. ‘I am going to Tolnbridge, too,’ he replied a trifle stiffly. ‘The trains are almost always late nowadays,’ he added, feeling his previous remark to be by itself an insufficient contribution to the general entertainment.

‘Inevitably,’ said the clergyman, contributing his mite. ‘We are fortunate in being able to travel at all.’ He turned to the woman with the baby. ‘Have you a long journey, madam? It must be very tiring travelling with a child.’

‘I’m going further west than the rest of you,’ said the mother. ‘Much further west,’ she added. Her tone expressed a determination to remain in her seat as far west as possible, even if the train should be driven over Land’s End and into the sea.

‘Such a good boy,’ said the clergyman, gazing at the child with distaste. It spat ferociously at him.

‘Now, Sally, you mustn’t do that to the gentleman,’ said the mother. She glowered at him with unconcealed malevolence. He smiled unhappily. The fat man returned to his book. Fielding sat morose and silent, scanning an evening paper.

It was at this moment, amidst a shrieking of whistles which advertised immediate departure, that the irruption occurred. A man appeared in the corridor outside, carrying a heavy portmanteau, and peered through the window, bobbing up and down like a marionette in order to see what lay within. He then thrust the door aside and stepped aggressively over the threshold. He wore a shiny black suit with a bedraggled carnation in the buttonhole, bright brown shoes, a pearl tie-pin, a dirty grey trilby hat, and a lemon-coloured handkerchief in his breast-pocket; his hands were nicotine-stained and his nails filthy; his complexion was sanguine, almost apoplectic, and he wiped his nose on the back of his hand as he trampled in over the clergyman’s feet, hauling his case like a reluctant dog after him. It swung forward and struck the woman with the rug a resounding blow on the knee.

‘No room!’ she said as if at a signal. A confused murmur of admonition and discouragement went up in support of this remark. The man stared aggrievedly about him.

‘Wadjer mean, no room?’ he said loudly. ‘Djer think I’m goin-ta stand aht in the bloody corridor the ’ole journey? Because if yer do, yer bloody well wrong, see?’ He warmed to his theme. ‘Just because yer travelling bloody first-clarse, yer needn’t think yer got a right to occupy the ’ole train, see? People like me aren’t goin’ ter stand the ’ole way just so you plutocrats can stretch yer legs in comfort, see?’ He became indignant. ‘I paid for a seat same as you ’ave, ’aven’t I? ’Ere’ – he shot out a finger towards the fat man, who jumped visibly with fright. ‘You put that there arm up, an’ we’ll all ’ave a chance ter sit down, see?’ The fat man hastily put the arm up, and the intruder, with expressions of noisy satisfaction, inserted himself into the gap thus created between the fat man and the mother and child.

‘You mind your language when there are ladies present!’ said the mother indignantly. The baby began to bellow again. ‘There – see what you’ve done to the child!’

The intruder ignored her. He produced a Mirror and Herald, and, after slapping the former down on his knee, opened the latter at full spread, so that his elbows waved within an inch of the noses of those on either side. The woman with the rug, after her first sortie, had recognized defeat in the monotonous stream of blasphemy and become silent. Geoffrey, Fielding, and the clergyman, afflicted by a bourgeois terror of offending this unruly manifestation of the lower classes, sat impotent and disapproving. Only the mother, who maintained her intransigence with scornful glances, and the fat man, whose position was more desperate, still showed resistance.

‘I suppose,’ said the fat man, abandoning his Pareto, ‘that you’ve got a first-class ticket?’

A deathly silence followed this question. The intruder jerked himself slowly up from his paper, like a pugilist who has been unfairly smitten in the belly and is gathering forces ponderously together for retaliation. The others looked on aghast. Even the fat man quailed, unnerved by the ominous delay in answering his query.

‘What’s it got ter do with you?’ asked the intruder at last, slapping his Herald shut. A dramatic hush ensued. ‘Not the bloody ticket-collector, are yer?’ The fat man remained dumb. ‘Just ’cos I ain’t as rich and idle as you, ain’t I got a right ter sit in comfort, eh?’

‘Comfort!’ said the woman with the baby meaningly.

The intruder ignored her, continuing to apostrophize the fat man. ‘Snob, aren’t yer? Too ’igh-and-mighty to ’ave the likes o’ me in the same compartment with yer, are yer? Let me tell you’ – he tapped the fat man abruptly on the waistcoat – ‘one o’ ther things we’re fightin’ this war for is ter get rid o’ the likes o’ you, an’ give the likes er me a chance to spread ourselves a bit.’

He spread himself, illustratively, kicking Fielding on the shin in the process. The baby wailed like a banshee. ‘Caliban,’ said the mother.

‘Nonsense!’ the fat man protested feebly. ‘That’s got nothing to do with whether you’ve got a first-class ticket or not.’

The intruder twisted himself bodily round and thrust his face into that of the fat man. ‘Oh, it ain’t, ain’t it?’ He began to speak very rapidly. ‘When we get socialism, see, which is what we’re fighting for, see, you and yer like’ll ’ave ter show some respect ter me, see, instead of treating me like a lot o’ dirt, see?’ Finding this line of thought exhausted, he transferred his attention to the fat man’s book, removing it, despite faint protests, from his hands. He then inspected it slowly and with care, as a surgeon might some peculiarly loathsome cancer after removal.

‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Vilfreedo Pareeto,’ he announced to the compartment at large. ‘Ther Mind and Society,’ he read. ‘Oo’s that – some bloody Wop, is it? ’Ere, you,’ he addressed Geoffrey. ‘You ever ’eard of ’im – Vilfreedo Pareeto?’

The fat man looked at Geoffrey appealingly. Treacherously and mendaciously, Geoffrey shook his head. Worlds would not have induced him to admit acquaintance with that sociologist.

The intruder nodded triumphantly, and turned to Fielding. ‘What abaht you?’ he said, waving the volume. ‘You ever ’eard of this?’ As treacherously, but with more truth, Fielding denied it. The fat man turned pale. So solemn were the proceedings, he might have been awaiting sentence from the Inquisition, the only two witnesses for the defence having been suborned against him.

The intruder breathed heavily with satisfaction. Portentously he turned the pages of the book. ‘Listen ter this,’ he commanded. ‘“The principal nu-cle-us in a de-riv-a-tive (a non- log-ico-ex-per-i-ment-al the-ory) is a res-i-due, or a number of res-i-dues, and around it other sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues cluster.” Does that make sense, I arst yer? Does that make sense?’ He glared at Geoffrey, who feebly shook his head. ‘Sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues,’ repeated the intruder with scorn. ‘Lot o’ nonsense, if yer arst me. ’Ere’ – he turned back to the fat man again, hurling the book on to his knee – ‘you oughter ’ave something better ter do with yer time than read ’ighbrow books by Wops. And if yer ’aven’t, see, you just mind yer own business, see, and don’t go poking yer nose into other people’s affairs, see?’

He turned back aggressively to the other occupants of the compartment. ‘Anybody got any objection ter my sitting ’ere, first-class or no?’

So successful had been the process of intimidation that no one uttered a sound.

Presently the train started.

All afternoon the train rattled and jolted through the English countryside, towards the red clay of Devon and the slow, immense surge of the Atlantic against the Cornish shore. Geoffrey dozed, gazed automatically out of the window, thought about his fugue, or meditated with growing dismay on the events of the day. The possibility – almost, he decided, the certainty – that he had an enemy within a foot or two of him made Fielding’s company very welcome. Of the why and wherefore of the whole business he thought but briefly; strictly there was nothing to think about. The occurrences which had followed his arriving down to breakfast that morning, in a perfectly normal and peaceable manner, seemed a nightmare phantasmagoria devoid of reason. Almost, he began to wonder if they had taken place at all. The human mind properly assimilates only those things it has become accustomed to; anything out-of-the-way affects it only in a purely superficial and objective sense. Geoffrey contemplated the attack on himself without a shred of real belief.

Fielding and the woman with the rug slept, shaking and jolting like inanimate beings as the train clattered over points. The young clergyman gazed vacantly into the corridor, and the mother rocked her baby, which had fallen into a fitful slumber, beset in all probability with nightmares. The intruder also had gone to sleep, and was snoring, his chin resting painfully on his tie-pin. The fat man eyed Geoffrey warily, and put down the Daily Mirror, which had been forced on him in a spirit of scornful condescension by the intruder, and which he had been reading unhappily ever since the train left Paddington. He grinned conspiratorially.

‘Devil of a journey,’ he said.

Geoffrey grinned back. ‘I’m afraid you’re worse off than I am. But it’s bad enough in any case.’

The fat man appeared to be considering deeply. When he again spoke, it was with some hesitation. ‘You, sir, are obviously an educated man – I wonder if you can help me out of a difficulty?’

Geoffrey looked at him in surprise. ‘If I can.’

‘An intellectual difficulty merely,’ said the fat man hastily. He seemed to think Geoffrey would imagine he was trying to borrow money. ‘However, I ought to introduce myself first. My name is Peace – Justinian Peace.’

‘Delighted to know you,’ said Geoffrey, and murmured his own name.

‘Ah, the composer,’ said Peace amiably. ‘This is a great pleasure. Well now, Mr Vintner – my whole problem can be summed up in three words: I have doubts.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Not like Mr Prendergast?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In Decline and Fall.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never read Gibbon,’ said the other. The admission appeared to irritate him in some obscure way. ‘The fact is that by profession I’m a psycho-analyst – quite a successful one, I suppose; successful certainly as far as money goes. The amount of money,’ he said confidentially, ‘which some people will pay for information which they could get from three hours’ intelligent reading in any public library…However’ – he became conscious that he was getting off the point – ‘there it is. I suppose in London I’m pretty well at the top of my profession. You may think we’re all charlatans, of course – a lot of people do’ – Geoffrey hurriedly shook his head – ‘but as far as I’m concerned, at least, I have tried to go about the business methodically and scientifically, and to do the best for my patients. Well, then—’ He paused and mopped his brow to emphasize the fact that he was now coming to the crux of the matter; Geoffrey nodded encouragingly.

‘As you know, the whole of modern psychology – and psycho-analysis in particular – is based on the idea of the unconscious; the conception that there is a section of the mind in some sense separate from the conscious mind, and which is responsible for our dreams, certain of our impulses, and all the complex manifestations of the irrational in human life.’ His phraseology, Geoffrey thought, was taking on the aspect of a popular text-book. ‘From this concept all the conclusions of analytical psychology are derived. Unfortunately, about a month ago it occurred to me to investigate the origins and rationale of this basic conception. A terrible thing happened, Mr Vintner.’ He leaned forward and tapped Geoffrey impressively on the knee. ‘I could not find one shred of experimental or rational proof that the unconscious existed at all.’

He sat back again; it was evident that he regarded this statement as in some sense a personal triumph.

‘The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that in fact it didn’t exist. We know, after all, nothing at all about the conscious mind, so why postulate, quite arbitrarily, an unconscious, to explain anything we can’t understand? It’s as if,’ he added with some vague recollection of wartime cooking, ‘a man were to say he was eating a mixture of butter and margarine when he had never in his life tasted either.’

Geoffrey regarded Peace with a jaundiced eye. ‘Interesting,’ he muttered. ‘Very interesting,’ he repeated beneath his breath, like a physician who has diagnosed some obscure and offensive complaint. ‘One accepted it, of course, as a thing no longer requiring any investigation, like the movement of the earth round the sun. But I don’t quite see…’

‘But you must see!’ Peace interrupted excitedly. ‘It strikes at the root of my profession, my occupation, my income, my life.’ His voice rose to a squeak. ‘I can’t go on being a psychoanalyst when I don’t believe in the unconscious any longer. It’s as impossible as a vegetarian butcher.’

Geoffrey sighed; his look conveyed that he, at least, could see no way out of the impasse. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘the matter isn’t as serious as all that.’

Peace 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. ‘You’d better do some walking before stiffness sets in,’ he told Geoffrey. ‘You’ll find it’ll hurt, of course, but it’s really the best thing.’

Geoffrey crawled to his feet, banged his head against the butterfly-net, and cursed noisily; this, he felt, was the last straw.

‘I’ll go and get a wash,’ he said. ‘One gets so filthy on these journeys.’ Actually he was afraid he was going to be sick.

‘Better let me come with you,’ said Fielding, but Geoffrey brushed him impatiently aside; he was consumed by a hatred of all mankind. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he mumbled.

He swayed down the corridor like a drunk on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. The lavatory, when he reached it, was occupied, but just as he was passing on to the next a young man came out, grinned apologetically, and stood aside to let him in. Geoffrey was contemplating his features gloomily in the mirror preparatory to turning round and locking the door when he realized that the young man had followed him in and was doing this for him.

The young man smiled. ‘Now we’re shut in together,’ he said.

‘Third time lucky,’ said Fielding cheerfully.

Geoffrey groaned, and again shook himself free of a nightmare. He was back in the compartment, whose occupants were regarding him with some concern; even the baby gaped inquiringly at him, as though demanding an explanation.

‘What happened?’ Geoffrey asked conventionally.

‘I got the wind up when you didn’t come back,’ said Fielding, ‘and set out to find you. Fortunately, it wasn’t very difficult, and we were able to lug you back here. How do you feel?’

‘Awful.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Peace. ‘The blow must have upset you.

‘I should damn well think it did,’ said Geoffrey indignantly. ‘Where are we?’

‘Just coming into Tolnbridge now.’

Geoffrey groaned again. ‘Past Exeter? He must have got off the train there.’

‘My dear fellow, are you all right? He got off the train at Taunton.’

Geoffrey gazed confusedly about him. ‘No, no – the other. Oh, Lord!’ His head was swimming too much to think clearly. He rubbed it ruefully, feeling it all over. ‘Where’s the bruise?’ he asked. ‘There must be a bruise.’

Peace, who was collecting his things from the rack, looked round in surprise.

‘Where he hit me,’ explained Geoffrey peevishly.

‘My dear chap, nobody hit you,’ said Peace amicably. ‘You must be dreaming. You fainted, that’s all. Fainted.’