The Tiger In the Smoke (32 page)

The moment of clarity passed and he became a worried old man again, preparing to go to bed. The clock on his shelf said ten minutes after one. The house was silent, and from outside the only noise which reached him was the far-off booming of the shunting trains at the terminus.

He stripped the Paisley coverlet from his bed, noted the hump which the stone hot-water bottle made under the blankets, and then, switching off the light, he felt his way over to the window to draw the curtains. The window gave on to the stone staircase between the house and the church, and because it was on ground level it had been fitted, when the house was built, with slender iron bars on the outside. Avril always drew the curtains because he liked the sun to wake him, and always turned out the light before he did so. It was a habit of the war years and he had never corrected it.

The square of grey light, tiger-striped with bars, filled him with pleasure. He did believe the fog was lifting at last. He peered to see if the familiar triangle of sky, just above the high wall and bounded by the spire, had stars in it. He could see none. But for the first time for days the triangle was visible, a lighter grey than the rest. As he stood watching, the corner of his eye caught something else. It was faint and very brief and when he looked properly it had gone, but he knew at once what it had been and he felt suddenly sick with apprehension.

He had caught a flicker of light, swift as the flash of a kingfisher's wing and just as brightly blue, high up in the grey walls above him. A light from inside the church, the beam of a torch perhaps, had passed across the east window, catching the azure robe of the saint in stained glass who prayed here unceasingly. Avril stood transfixed.

Now that he saw the rapids, now that the trend appeared, the whole workaday reality of the position rose up before him with complete certainty, and he knew as clearly as if someone had just informed him of them all those facts which, as the psychologists could have told him, his undermind had known all along.

For instance, he knew that when Mrs Cash had shown Sergeant Picot over her little house she must also have shown him the minute yard at the back with the door of the coalshed in it. It was not probable that even the thorough sergeant had opened that door, which, situated as it was in the wall of the very foundations of the sacred building, must have appeared to have very little depth. Even if he had, Avril thought it unlikely that he would have stared beyond her small stock of fuel to the heavy door behind it.

Twenty-six years before he had given Mrs Cash permission to make a coalshed out of the service entry to the crypt. This entrance had been made for the convenience of the original verger, who, in wealthier times, had lived in the cottage, and it was recessed deep in the thick wall. As landlord, Avril had paid for the alteration himself and had stipulated at the time that the old door at the back should be kept locked and the key given to Talisman.

Now for the first time it occurred to him that it had never been done. In the light of his present knowledge of all the people concerned, he was sure it had not. The old way must have remained open, and the crypt, now never used for lawful purposes, must have stayed open for Mrs Cash to enter and use as she chose.

He went on to think of the missing men and their hiding-place. It was so simple, so convenient. They must have approached it from the church itself, entering not from the closely guarded square but from the avenue behind. The building was kept locked when not in use, but there was a loose stone in the lintel beside the small door of the vestry and under it the idle Talisman had kept the key since the end of the First World War at least.

The man who called himself Havoc would have known of that key, and once in the church it was simple for one who knew the way to go down to the crypt from inside.

Avril, standing alone in the dark, realized that Luke would never have believed it had he gone to him at that moment and told him that all these pertinent facts had never become assembled in his mind before. Yet it was true. Until now, not one of them had occurred to him to have any bearing on the other. He was not usually so obtuse.

Avril accepted his stupidity as a mystery which would be explained. In his strange peacefulness, his own unprecedented intellectual shortcomings appeared to be only a part of something much greater and more important. He waited, and presently he found himself perceiving the reason for his visit to Mrs Cash that afternoon. Of course, by conveying to her, and through her to the man behind her, that Martin's letter was not in the rectory, he had also conveyed to her he knew where it was.

Avril knew where the boy would look for it. Doubtless he was there now, rummaging through the old black folder which the Canon kept under the lectern in his pulpit. He must have felt he was safe in the small hours, but his torch had betrayed him and Avril had seen it.

Suddenly, his forward mind shrinking as it had been shrinking all the evening, Avril raised his head to see where the stream was carrying him, and he saw what he was about to do.

‘No,' he said aloud in the darkness, ‘no, that is madness.' Yet in that moment he had recognized the demand and knew that he would submit to it. All his human weakness, his casuistry and his common sense, rose up to betray him and turn him from his work.

It resolved into an argument between the two Avrils, conducted politely but vigorously, as though between two old brothers who had lived together for a long time.

‘My dear fellow,' protested the wise prelate in him reasonably, ‘this is one of those cases when no single human being must interfere. If you go down and attempt to talk to that wretched boy alone tonight he will kill you as he has killed four other people, and it will be suicide on your part and murder on his. You are not particularly afraid of dying, but if you do, who will suffer? Everybody you love best – Meg, Sam and his missus, they will have to find a new home, for no incumbent is likely to put up with them. William and poor Mary Talisman and Emily, who will shelter them? Dot. Dear Dot. It would destroy Dot's reason for living, and my sad over-confident soul, what good would it do?'

‘I do not know,' replied the essential Avril, who was shrinking and mindless and without existence save in obedience. ‘I only know that events have so arranged themselves that I have no choice.'

‘Listen,' said the practical man in him, ‘telephone the boy Luke. Do it now. He is the professional man whose job this is. Tell him all you know, commend your soul to the Almighty and go to bed. If you want to talk to the other boy, you can do it when he is in jail. That way you will protect him as well as yourself. Who are you to lead him into such monstrous temptation?'

‘Again I do not know,' said the naked Avril. ‘I do not ask. But if that had been the way, I should have known what I know now tonight when I was talking to Luke.'

At that point his sense of humour, which was always hindering him, began to laugh. ‘You are standing here, talking like Launcelot Gobbo to his friend,' it remarked. ‘Don't be a fool, Avril. Telephone Luke.'

‘I will call him when I return.'

‘You won't return,' said his common sense. ‘Why on earth should he spare you, of all people? He hated and feared you in spite of everything you ever did for him, and that was when he was a child. Why on earth should he listen to you now? You are the last person to have any influence over him. Do you remember when you caught him alone in the church mocking the service, and how after you had watched and made certain it was not innocent naughtiness but intentional sacrilege, you put him across your knee? That boy is of Evil. He was of Evil as a babe. Deliver yourself from it while you can. There is a telephone in this room put there for your salvation. Use it. You don't have to remember a number, even. Ask for the police and go on asking until you get Luke.'

As he still stood irresolute, his reason became cunning.

‘At least take a sensible precaution,' it said. ‘Get hold of Luke and tell him to meet you in the church in half an hour. He may come sooner but that will not be your fault. Leave the rest to Providence, but do telephone now.'

Avril moved over to the telephone in the dark. It was an extension from the main instrument in the hall and had been put in during the war for A.R.P. purposes. He was greatly troubled and he took off the receiver unhappily.

The complete silence over the wire comforted him. He was, of course, the one person in the house whom Sam had forgotten to tell of his new arrangement, and he had no idea that downstairs the whole system was switched off.

He took the silence as confirmation. He dialled, but there was no answering buzz and he sighed and hung up.

‘There, you see,' he said to himself, ‘I was quite right. I thought so.'

He went quietly out of the room and down the corridor.

Picot's snores were loud in the hall, and the Canon let himself out quietly so that he should not wake the weary man. The fog was clearing rapidly and he could just discern the tulip tree in the square. No one was about. The detective on duty outside had only that moment entered the kitchen to call his opposite number, and for the first time that night the coast was clear.

Avril was unaware of all this. He walked like a child amid the pitfalls, climbed the stairs to the avenue, and passed round under the high wall to the church gate, crossed the paved yard without stumbling in absolute darkness, and made his way to the vestry door.

It was unlocked and it opened with the quietness of recently oiled hinges and let him into the blackness inside. He was physically frozen and his heart thumped in his breast, but deep within him he was still very quiet, very happy, very much at peace.

His long robe brushed against the woodwork of the vestry wall and he pushed open the inner door and stepped into the misty darkness of the great building, sweet with the dry scent of paper and flowers, and paused and looked round into the dusk.

‘Johnny Cash,' he said in exactly the same voice which he had used so many years before, ‘come out.'

—

THE BEAM OF
Havoc's torch cut through the darkness like a blade and found Avril where he was standing in the side aisle. For an instant it trembled there, transfixed, and, recollecting his dressing-gown for once in his life, the old man pushed back his hood and let the light play on his face.

‘Come down, my boy,' he said in the slightly schoolmasterish tone he always used when he wanted something done quickly. ‘There's nothing there for you at all.'

The acoustics of St Peter's of the Gate had always been a problem, and tonight, with the building empty, the echoes seized upon the voice and threw the sound ricocheting up to the roof and down again. ‘At all …' they sang hollowly, ‘at all … at all … at all…'

As soon as he spoke and his voice was recognized, the beam shot away from him and sped to explore the entrances one after the other. It was a series of startled glances seeking out a trap, but the blank doors, baize-lined with red, stood steady and the silence was absolute.

Meanwhile, during one of the flashes, Avril had noticed a pew beside him and now he felt for it and seated himself, folding his hands in his lap. His body was afraid and its trembling embarrassed him a little, but his mind was peaceful, relieved, and extraordinarily content. He felt at home in the church, as he always did, and presently he cleared his throat with a loud pre-Litany ‘Hur-ump!'

‘Shut up!' The whisper was the most violent sound the old building had ever heard within its walls. The torch beam died like a falling tape and in the darkness there was a scuffling, light foot steps on polished wood, and then silence again.

After it had lasted a fraction too long, the shaft of light reappeared to dart round the entrances again. It leapt from one to the other suspiciously, waiting, going out and reappearing in the same place, finding nothing. The building remained silent and deserted.

The soft laugh when it came at last had so much relief in it that it was almost gay. It astonished Avril because it was so close to him, but although there was sweat on his forehead he did not feel alarmed.

‘You're alone.' The whisper had incredulity in it as well as amusement.

‘Of course I am,' said Avril testily and reaped the habitual truth-teller's only reward.

‘You've telephoned, though. You've put out a warning.' The man had ceased to whisper, although he spoke very softly. The voice was more mature than when Avril remembered it, but it still aroused the uneasiness in him which it had always done. It was a false voice, every true thing in it hidden rather cheaply.

‘No,' he said, thanking his stars that he had been protected from making that mistake and so could answer. ‘No. No one knows that you and I are here.'

‘You – old fool.' The monstrous adjective was so uncleanly that it passed over Avril's head. Either his ears actually rejected it or he did not believe them. He made room beside him in the dark.

‘Come and sit down,' he said.

There was no immediate reply, only light movement so soft that it could have been no more than the scurry of a rat over the tiles, and when the voice spoke again it was behind him.

‘This'll do me best.' And then, in the artificial wide-boy idiom which the Canon found so unpleasing, ‘What's the big idea, Padre? Not Prodigal Son stuff, surely?'

All the worst in Avril rose up at the approach and he might have failed at that first hazard, but he kept his temper and his perceptions, and he smelled creeping to him, through the scent of the paper and the flowers, the one odour which every animal, human or otherwise, recognizes the first time it assails him. Avril smelt fear.

With it came a portrait of the boy as he remembered him at fifteen, and as he had half fancied he had just discerned him under the hard shadows and unrevealing highlights of the police photographs. He saw again the same disfiguring stamp of tragedy on the young face, with the short upper lip and the flat eyes, blue as gentians but with nothing behind them.