and tapped on the sitting-room door. “It’s him,” she said. “Will I get Father Fludd to talk to him?”
Father Angwin raised his hands, poised them like a pianist over the keys; he let them fall on to the arms of his chair, and bounced to his feet. “No,” he said, “I am responsible.” He opened the door and glanced swiftly up and down the hall, as if the bishop might be lurking in the shadows. “Where is Father Fludd?”
“In his room. I think I heard him go up.”
“I thought I heard him come down. Still, both are possible.” Both at once, he thought.
Agnes stood by his elbow when he took up the receiver. Formerly, she would have crept back to the kitchen. She had grown bolder; a smile played continually about the corners of her mouth, as if she had seen something gratifying, or learnt something that pleased her.
Father Angwin held the receiver at a good distance from his ear. For a while he listened to the bishop prosing on. She caught a phrase here and there:
“That Purpiture,” Agnes mouthed back, “has gone Upstreet. She might go in the Post Office and telephone him. Sister Polycarp said she took coins with her. She doesn’t shop, so what else could it be for?”
“She’s my mortal enemy,” Father Angwin whispered. “I wouldn’t put it past her.” He turned back to the bishop. “I was wondering, Aidan, could you help me out with a question put to me by a parishioner?”
There was a frigid pause on the line; Miss Dempsey wondered why Father had used the bishop’s Christian name, for he had never done so before. Father’s tone, she thought had a meaningful mysterious jocularity. “It’s about a friend of his, a doctor,” he continued. “This doctor has human bones in his possession, and got them when he was a student in a Protestant country. It may have been Germany, because my parishioner has another friend, some Hun, who is anxious to go to confession but speaks no English, and I hardly know whether we should have an interpreter or some other arrangement?”
Miss Dempsey strained to hear. It seemed that the bishop made no reply or a muffled one.
“No, don’t rush yourself,” Father said, “give it your leisurely consideration, it’s a nice point. Really, Aidan, you wouldn’t credit it, I am beginning to encounter the most bizarre difficulties, circumstances that one does not come across in forty years as a parish priest. There is also some confusion here in Fetherhoughton about the minutiae of the Church’s teaching on the Lenten fast, and we were wondering, out of the depth of your accumulated experience, would you advise us?”
There was a long pause; the bishop said, in a tone that lacked his habitual fire: “Now look here …”
Miss Dempsey missed his next words. Then she heard, “ … just doing my job. Duty of obedience. Task laid upon me … only a young feller.” Father Angwin hugged the receiver, and smiled. “Times change,” the bishop said. “ … hardly reason to be ashamed …”
“But you are ashamed, aren’t you?” Father Angwin said. “Why, man, if this were to get out, then where two or three modern bishops are gathered together, you would lose your credibility entirely.”
“I will be upon you, Angwin, one day this week. Count upon it.”
“And I will be upon you,” muttered the priest, as he put the receiver down. “I shall have your liver on toast. Agnes, warn Fludd.”
“Warn him?” The word stood out, shockingly, claiming attention for itself.
“Yes. Warn him that the bishop may turn up any time.”
“How shall I warn him?” Agnes said carefully.
“You may call up the stairs.”
“Shall I not go up?”
“To call will be sufficient.”
“Yes. I should not discommode him by tapping at his door.”
“He might be at prayer.”
“I should not like to interrupt him.”
They looked at each other. “I did not positively see him go up,” said Miss Dempsey.
“Or come down.”
“I would have to assume he was up there.”
“It would be a fair assumption. A reasonable man might make it.”
“Or woman.” Miss Dempsey went to the foot of the stairs. “Father Fludd,” she called softly. “Father Fludd?”
“Don’t expect an answer,” Angwin said.
“He would not break off his devotions.”
“But we can suppose he has heard.”
They knew, though, that the upper storey was empty, quite as certainly as they had ever known anything. Ashes rustled softly through the grate; on the walls twisted Christs continued dying; in the church grounds, yellow leaves floated in darkening air, birds huddled in the trees of the terraces, and worms turned.
“Shall I put the kettle on?” Agnes said.
“No, I am going to have a glass of whisky and read a book that a parishioner has lent me.”
