Death on Allhallowe’en (9 page)

He looked it. A smallish, delicate-featured man, he had fine grey hair carefully arranged about a face which fitted the old popular conception of a poet, sombre eyes under black-pencilled eyebrows and a petulant mouth. His voice was carefully modulated and his movements graceful. He wore a plum-coloured velvet smoking-jacket and chain-smoked cigarettes, using a holder.

‘I'm delighted to meet you,' he told Carolus. ‘I have read your book
Who Killed William Rufus?
and found it most amusing. Scholarly too. That's the way to treat history—as a criminologist. What will you drink?'

Carolus asked for his invariable Scotch-and-soda.

‘I suppose you expect me to drink dragon's blood,' he said. ‘Real dragon's blood, I mean. But it happens that among my
wife's attainments is the making of an almost perfect dry martini. I take advantage of that every evening before dinner though I'm not a drinking man. How do you like our village?'

‘At present not at all,' said Carolus.

‘Oh?'

‘It has a threatening air.'

‘You find that? But don't you think it has probably always had that?'

‘No. I think it's phony. There's something, of course. Something going on, if I may use the expression. But people here seem to make the most of what there is instead of laughing at it.'

‘I see. You think
it
—whatever it is—is a joke?'

‘Not all, of course. I don't think a small boy being frightened to death is a joke. Or a crucifix hung upside down. But the Murrains and all they stand for seem merely silly to me.'

Xavier smiled.

‘And I, Mr Deene? Merely silly, you think?'

‘I don't know you at all, still less what you stand for. But if you took the late Aleister Crowley seriously I'm afraid I do.'

Xavier's face darkened.

‘I did at the time,' he said. ‘Oh, yes, I certainly did. But I was a young man then, you know. And very inexperienced. It takes considerable experience to distinguish the true from the false—in what is called black magic as in many other fields. Crowley had certain faculties. He wasn't all charlatan. He had studied deeply, I might say religiously. But he exploited his knowledge for unworthy motives. You see, he wanted disciples. His whole life was a search for disciples.'

‘Interesting. A paranoiac, of course.'

‘Of course. But he was not negligible. In some ways he was formidable. He had courage. Have another drink?'

‘Thank you. And you continue his studies?'

‘Oh, no. I dabble. I read and … dream.'

‘Pleasant dreams?'

‘Interesting,' said Xavier Matchlow.

‘You don't experiment?'

'Oh, no. Mine is an old man's hobby. If anyone thinks of experimenting with these things he needs to be young and fit and have all his wits about him. Otherwise accidents can happen.'

‘You find that?'

‘I
know
that. They happened to Crowley. They can happen to anyone who … isn't entirely master of the situation.'

‘But is any man, ever, in black magic?'

‘No. And I don't much like that term, though in a qualified way I used it first.'

‘It's a good old one, isn't it? We both know what it means.'

‘I would prefer not to use it. No, I don't experiment. Or, if I do, not in a way to involve others. No one has the right to do that.'

Judith came into the room, letting in a delicious smell of cooking in which herbs and spices were distinguishable.

‘Finished your drinks?' she said cheerfully. ‘I'm just going to dish up.'

‘Is the claret
chambré?
' asked Xavier.

‘Of course, darling.'

‘Then—' He glanced at Carolus. ‘Shall we go in?'

Sitting at an oval mahogany table, polished to look like East India Sherry, and eating an excellent but in no way eccentric meal, Carolus forgot all magic but that of gastronomy.

Judith smiled.

‘I knew you two would get on,' she said.

‘Well, we haven't actually come to blows,' said Carolus. ‘But that's not to say our discussion has been exactly cosy.'

‘There are of course fundamental differences of opinion between us,' said Xavier.

‘Then let them wait till after dinner. We don't often open a bottle of the Chateau Whatsit.'

Smiling at his wife's vagueness, Xavier masticated with every sign of contentment.

‘I hear you're coming to the dance tomorrow,' Carolus observed to his host.

Xavier looked up sharply.

‘I am. Yes.'

‘We long to know why,' Judith told him.

‘Curiosity, perhaps. Or a stricken conscience.' Xavier did not look in the least conscience-stricken. ‘I know so little of the people among whom I live. I could not even recognise many of them.'

‘It's a bit late in the day to feel like that, surely?' suggested Judith. ‘But the Rector's delighted. He feels you could do so much to stop these silly rumours in the place.'

‘By showing that I don't actually grow horns or have cloven hoofs? You mustn't blame me for rumours.'

Why
was
he coming? Carolus wondered again. To show that he was not elsewhere?

‘I blame everyone who has taken part in any kind of quasi-magical performance here,' said Carolus.

‘You're not suggesting that I run around the Beacon on Allhallowe'en?' said Xavier good-humouredly.

‘I suggest that a number of unidentified people did so last year with very terrible results.'

‘Then I'm afraid you're more credulous than I thought, Deene.'

After this dangerous exchange the two men returned to Xavier's study. It was now that Carolus deliberately brought up the name of Major Horseman. Xavier reacted at once.

‘I can't stand the fellow. A philistine and an ignoramus.'

‘Rumour has it …'

‘Rumour again.'

‘That you had a violent row with him shortly after Allhallowe'en last year.'

‘I don't know when it was, but otherwise rumour's right, for once. I told the fellow exactly what I thought of him. He curries favour with a certain younger section of the villagers and writes ridiculous nonsense about witchcraft. He is an impostor, a blackmailer …'

Carolus seized on that word.

'A blackmailer? What do you mean by that, Matchlow?'

Xavier tried to evade the point.

‘Every kind of rotter,' he explained vaguely.

‘But you made a specific charge. You said a “blackmailer”.'

‘Oh, come, we're not in court, are we?'

‘You must have had something in mind when you said that.'

‘Not really. I'm sure he's capable of blackmail. Whatever some of the young ones of the village think of him, there are people here who resent him very deeply. So deeply that I wonder he doesn't move away while he has a whole skin.'

‘Perhaps he doesn't realise this.'

‘I can't see how he can avoid it. He has been made aware of it often enough.'

‘I see. That shot…'

‘What shot?'

‘Oh, come. You're not going to say you're so much out of the village that you never heard of a shot
at
or
near
Horseman a few nights ago?'

‘I heard nothing.'

‘Horseman was passing Chimneys, Murrain's house, on his way to the rectory after dark when a shot was fired from the churchyard.'

‘Did it hit Horseman?'

‘No. It struck the roof of Chimneys.'

‘Then what's all the fuss about?'

‘Horseman was badly scared.'

Xavier grinned.

‘Perhaps that was the idea.'

‘Perhaps. But why? You don't like the man, but he doesn't seem to do any harm.' Carolus leaned forward. ‘He's no
threat
to anyone, is he?'

Caught off his guard, Xavier lost his calm.

‘Threat? I should think not! How could he threaten anyone? He's a charlatan.'

‘Then why was this—even in your opinion—an attempt to scare him away?'

'God knows. I told you he was unpopular.'

‘Surely with all this … magic about he could be scared away by less crude methods than a revolver shot?'

‘Who knows any less crude methods? Alice Murrain, with her Evil Eye?'

‘You, surely?'

‘I? Do you think I would try to use poor old Aleister's tricks? I've told you my interest is purely theoretical. I've no doubt Aleister could have thought up something.'

A kind of glee came to his voice as he went on to talk of Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg and the rest of them in the days of the Great Beast's curious achievements. Carolus watched him closely as he talked. There was no doubt that Xavier Matchlow was what he had called Crowley, a paranoiac, and that in certain respects he was, as Carolus put it to himself, barking mad.

While he was talking the phone rang.

‘Excuse me,' said Xavier calmly and politely, as he reached for the instrument.

He held the receiver close to his ear and Carolus could hear nothing. Xavier listened for a moment, then said, again with calm politeness to his caller, ‘Would you mind ringing again in about half an hour's time? I'm engaged at the moment.'

‘I should be leaving, anyway,' said Carolus. ‘Thank you for …'

No impatience was perceptible in Xavier.

‘Judith's gone to bed, I expect.'

‘Please thank her for a delicious dinner.'

‘Delighted you could come. We must continue our discussion another time. I'm not driving you away I hope because of that call? It's of no importance really. Someone else with a problem.'

He came to the front door and watched Carolus get into his car. They called good night to one another as though they were old friends.

But once out of earshot Carolus reversed and drove back
to a point at which he calculated his engine, confused with others, could not be heard from the House to stop. He drove on to a grassy verge.

Very cautiously he alighted and silently closed the door of his car. He waited some moments, then with care began to approach the House. There was light in an upstairs window, but the study in which he had sat with Matchlow had heavy curtains and he could only see one chink of light to show that Matchlow was still there. He moved cautiously close to the windows and was relieved to find that one of them had been left slightly open when the curtains had been drawn. He came close to it and waited.

A hateful task. However exciting the chase, or however morally justifiable his actions, there were times when his old-fashioned bourgeois conception of gentlemanly behaviour revolted. To listen to the private conversation of another person, even if that person was a suspect, was repugnant to him. He had long ago conquered his squeamishness in practice, but still he could never feel comfortable in the act.

The rain had ceased and the night was so silent that he could hear everything from the room, Matchlow's clattering with a poker to stir the fire, even his striking a match for his cigarette.

When the phone rang again he heard each word, but Matchlow did not address his caller by name. There was a long pause while Matchlow listened to the other. Then he spoke crisply.

‘I've told you not to worry about him.'

This seemed to be received with moderate protests.

‘I've got all that in mind,' Matchlow said quietly.

Then, after listening to the other—restlessly, Carolus felt—Matchlow in his turn broke out.

‘You won't? You'll do exactly as I tell you. Both of you.'

That ‘Both of you' should have helped him to identify the caller. But it didn't. The suspects—or possible suspects—seemed to run in pairs. It could have been addressed to Ron and Margaret Lark, the Garries, father and son, Gerald and
Alice Murrain, the brothers Sloman, the Gunnings, Ebby Smith and his daughter, even Connor and Mavis Horseman.

‘Certainly,' Matchlow continued almost at once. ‘You'd better remember that, next time you lose your temper.'

Finally Matchlow, in a harsh, decisive voice meant to silence all argument or objection, said: ‘Not the slightest. Exactly as planned. Good night.'

Carolus heard the metallic sound as the receiver was returned to its holder.

He moved away swiftly and silently, keeping an eye on the curtains behind him to make sure they were not opened. Then he got under cover of the surrounding shrubs, for there were other windows from which observation might have been made without a light in the room.

Beside his car he found Charlie Sloman waiting. Charlie looked at him with that strange mixture of near-idiocy and cunning which characterised him.

‘Hullo, Mr Deene. Forget something back at the House?' he grinned.

‘Yes,' said Carolus shortly.

‘You can drive much nearer than this.'

‘I know.'

Carolus was waiting for a lorry or car to pass to start his engine unheard. He smiled back at Charlie.

‘You'd better be getting home,' he said in a friendly way.

Charlie did not move, but just then a heavy lorry used for collecting from the farms came noisily towards them.

‘Now you can start her up,' said Charlie.

Carolus did so and drove away to the rectory. He wished he had not brought the car that night.

‘There's a tel for you, Car,' called Mrs Lark musically at lunch-time next day when Carolus came in.

The telegram had been handed in that morning in Margate. It was curt.
‘MRS STICK TAKEN HOSPITAL PLEASE COME.'

Carolus told John Stainer.

‘Looks as though I shall miss the dance tonight,' he said. ‘Pity, that. I was looking forward to it.'

‘Oh, dear. I did hope you'd be there. I have the most uncomfortable expectations about this dance.'

‘Can't be helped. Read this. Mrs Stick has been with me for more than twenty years. I must go immediately after lunch.'