War in Heaven, Charles Williams [novels for teenagers .txt] 📗

>“That must have been what just flew past the window,” the other said bitterly. “Look here, Pewitt, I’m coming up myself. And God help you and your friend the constable if I find that house, for I’ll tear you limb from limb and roast you and eat you. And God help me if I don’t,” he said, putting back the receiver, “for if houses disappear as well as Dukes, this’ll be no world for me.”

It took him much longer than he expected to reach Lord Mayor’s Street. As his taxi climbed north, he found himself entering into what was at first a faint mist, and later, before he reached Tally Ho Corner, an increasing fog. Indeed, after a while the taxi-driver refused to go any farther, and the Assistant Commissioner proceeded slowly on foot. He knew the Finchley Road generally and vaguely, and after a long time and many risks at last drew near his aim. At what he hoped was the corner of Lord Mayor’s Street he ran directly into a stationary figure.

“What the hell—” he began. “Sorry, sir. Oh, it’s you, Pewitt. Damnation, man, why don’t you shout instead of knocking me down? All right, all right. But standing at the corner of the street won’t find the house, you know. Where’s the constable? Why don’t you keep together? Oh, he’s here, is he! Couldn’t even one of you look for the house instead of holding a revival meeting at the street corner? Now for God’s sake don’t apologize or I shall have to begin too, and we shall look like a ring of chimpanzees at the Zoo. I know as well as you do that I’m in a vile temper. Come along and let’s have a look. Where’s the grocer’s?”

He was shown it. Then, he first, Pewitt second, and the constable last, they edged along the houses, their torches turned on the windows. “That’s the grocer’s,” the Commissioner went on. “And here—this blasted fog’s thicker than ever—is the end of the grocer’s, I suppose; at least it’s the end of a window. Then this must be the confectioner’s. I believe I saw a cake; the blind’s only half down. And here’s a door, the confectioner’s door. Didn’t you think of doing it this way, Pewitt?”

“Yes, sir,” Pewitt said, “the constable and I have done it about seventeen times.”

The Assistant Commissioner, neglecting this answer, pushed ahead. “And this is the end of the confectioner’s second window,” he said triumphantly. “And here’s a bit of wall… more wall… and here— here’s a gate.” He stopped uncertainly.

“Yes, sir,” Pewitt said; “that’s Mrs. Thorogood’s gate. We called there, sir, but she’s an old lady and rather deaf, and some of her lodgers are on their holiday and some haven’t got home from work yet. And we couldn’t quite get her to understand what we were talking about. We tried again a little while ago, but she wouldn’t even come to the door.”

The Assistant Commissioner looked at the gate, or rather, at the fog, for the gate was invisible. So was the constable; he could just discern a thicker blot that was Pewitt. He felt the gate—undoubtedly it was just that. He stood still and recalled to his mind the page he had studied in the Directory. Yes, between Murchison the confectioner and Mrs. Thorogood, apartments, it leapt to his eye, Dimitri Lavrodopoulos, chemist.

“Have you tried the confectioner?” he asked.

“Well, sir, he wouldn’t do more than talk out of the first-floor window,” Pewitt said, “but we did try him. He said he knew what kind of people went round knocking at doors in the fog. He swore he’d got two windows, and he said the chemist was next door. But somehow we couldn’t just find next door.”

“It must be round some corner,” the Assistant Commissioner said; and “Yes, sir, no doubt it must be round some corner,” Pewitt answered.

The other felt as if something was beginning to crack. Everything seemed disappearing. The Duke had not come home, nor Mornington, whoever he might be; the Archdeacon and Gregory Persimmons had left home. And now a whole house seemed to have been swallowed up. He went slowly back to the corner, followed by his subordinates, then he tried again—very slowly and crouched right against the windows. On either side of the confectioner’s door was a strip of glass without blinds, and he dimly discerned in each window, within an inch and a half of his nose, scones and buns and jam-tarts. Certainly the farther one no more than the first belonged to a chemist. And yet for the second time, as he pushed beyond it, he felt the rough wall under his fingers and then the iron gate.

The Directory and Colonel Conyers must both be wrong, he thought; there could be no other explanation. Lavrodopoulos must have left, and the shop been taken over by the confectioner. But it was on Monday Colonel Conyers had called, and this was only Thursday. Besides, the confectioner had said that the chemist’s was next door. He felt the wall again; it ought to be there.

“What do you make of it, Pewitt?” he asked.

Out of the fog Pewitt answered: “I don’t like it, sir,” he said. “I dare say it’s a mistake, but I don’t like that. It isn’t natural.”

“I suppose you think the devil has carried it off,” the Assistant Commissioner said, and thought automatically of the Bible he had studied that morning. He struck impatiently at the wall. “Damn it, the shop must be there,” he said. But the shop was not there.

Suddenly, as they stood there in a close group, the grounds beneath them seemed to shift and quiver. Pewitt and the constable cried out; the Assistant Commissioner jumped aside. It shook again. “Good God,” he cried, “what in the name of the seven devils is happening to the world? Are you there, Pewitt?” for his movement had separated them. He heard some sort of reply, but knew himself alone and felt suddenly afraid. Again the earth throbbed below him; then from nowhere a great blast of cool wind struck his face. So violent was it that he reeled and almost fell; then, as he regained his poise, he saw that the fog was dissolving around him. A strange man was standing in front of him; behind him the windows of a chemist’s shop came abruptly into being. The stranger came up to him. “I am Gregory Persimmons,” he said, “and I wish to give myself up to the police for murder.”

Chapter Seventeen THE MARRIAGE OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

While Inspector Colquhoun had been discussing the Pattison murder with his chief that morning, the Archdeacon of Castra Parvulorum had been working at parish business in his study. He hoped, though he did not much expect, that Mornington would call on him in the course of the day, and he certainly proposed to himself to walk over to the Rackstraws’ cottage and hear how the patient was progressing. The suspicions which Mornington and the Duke had felt on the previous day had not occurred to him, partly because he had accepted the episode as finished for him until some new demand should bring him again into action, but more still because he had been prevented by the Duke’s collision with him from seeing what had happened. He supposed that the new doctor had been able to soothe Barbara either by will-power or drugs, and, though the doctor’s mania for possession of the Graal appeared to him as bad-mannered as Gregory’s, that was not, after all, his affair. The conversation of the previous night he kept and pondered in his heart, but here, again, it was not his business to display activity, but to wait on the Mover of all things. He went on making notes about the Sunday school register; the Sunday school was a burden to him, but the mothers of the village expected it, and the Archdeacon felt bound to supply the need. He occasionally quoted to himself “Feed my lambs,” but a profound doubt of the proper application of the text haunted him; and he was far from certain that the food which was supplied to them even in the Sunday school at Fardles was that which Christ had intended. However, this also, he thought to himself, the Divine Redeemer would purify and make good.

Mrs. Lucksparrow appeared at the door. “Mr. Persimmons has called, sir,” she said, “and would like to see you for a few minutes, if you can spare the time. About the Harvest Festival, I think it is,” she added in a lower tone.

“Really?” the Archdeacon asked in surprise, and then again, in a slightly different voice, “Really!” Mr. Persimmons’s manners, he thought, were becoming almost intolerable. He got up and went to interview his visitor in the hall.

“So sorry to trouble you, Mr. Archdeacon,” Gregory said, smiling, “but I was asked to deliver this note to you personally. To make sure you got it and to see if there is any answer.”

The Archdeacon, glinting rather like a small, frosty pool, took it and opened it. He read it once; he read it twice; he looked up to find Gregory staring out through the front door. He looked down, read it a third time, and stood pondering.

“‘Sihon, King of the Amorites,’” he hummed abstractedly, “‘and Og, the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever.’ You know what is in this note, Mr. Persimmons?”

“I’m afraid I do,” Gregory answered charmingly. “The circumstances… “

“Yes,” the Archdeacon said meditatively, “yes. Naturally.”

“Naturally?” Gregory asked, rather as if making conversation.

“Well, I don’t mean to be rude,” the Archdeacon said, “but, in the first place, if it’s true, you would probably know; in the second, you probably wrote it; and, in the third, you probably and naturally would read other people’s letters anyhow. Yes, well, thank you so much.”

“You don’t want to put any questions?” Gregory asked.

“No.” the Archdeacon answered, “I don’t think so. I’ve no means of checking you, have I? And I should never dream of relying on people who made a practice of defying God? in any real sense. They’d be almost bound to lose all sense of proportion.”

“Well,” Gregory said, “you must do as you will. But I can tell you that what is written there is true. We have them in our power and we can slay them in a moment.”

“That will save them a good deal of trouble, won’t it?” the Archdeacon said. “Are you sure they want me to interfere? ‘To die now. ‘Twere now to be most happy.’”

“Ah, you talk,” Gregory said, unreasonably enraged. “But do you think either of those young men wants to die? Or to see the vessel for which they die made into an instrument of power and destruction?”

“I would tell you what I am going to do if I knew,” the Archdeacon answered, “but I do not know. You are forgetting, however, to tell me where I shall come if I come.”

Gregory recovered himself, gave the address, reached the door, remarked on the beauty of the garden, and disappeared. The Archdeacon went back to his study, shut the door, and gave himself up to interior silence and direction.

Gregory went on to Cully. The slight passage at arms with the priest had given him real delight, but as he walked he was conscious of renewed alarms stirring in his being: alarms not so much of fear as of doubt. He found that by chance he was now in touch with two or three persons who found no satisfaction in desire and possession and power. No power of destruction seemed to satisfy Manasseh’s hunger; no richness of treasure to arouse the Archdeacon’s. And as he moved in these unaccustomed regions he felt that what was lacking