what was a toque; she kept silent on the matter.
When she opened her eyes again, Fludd was standing by the window, looking down into the street. People were on their way home from work, he said, hurrying to Exchange Station and to Victoria. It was raining, he said, and the people were packed on the pavements under their bobbing umbrellas, like lines of black beetles on the march.
Fludd stood watching them, leaning with his outstretched arm propping the wall. His head drooped on to his arm, and he nuzzled it with his forehead and cheek, like a cat against a sofa. “I feel trapped, in this room,” he said. “Tomorrow we must certainly go out.”
But it is only one day, she wanted to protest. Twenty-seven hours ago, she had been in the convent parlour, dressing herself under the directions of Sister Anthony. Twenty-four hours ago—perhaps a little less—they had entered this room. Elsewhere, life went on as before; bells rang, the convent kept its hours. Whatever had Purpit said, when she returned from her parish visits and found her gone? Had she known at once, or was it at chapel she had missed her, or at the evening soup collation? Had the others made some excuse, to hide her absence as long as possible? Had they lied for her? Had they imperilled their immortal souls?
She twisted Miss Dempsey’s paper ring round and round on her finger. It really was a skilful construction. Already, when she thought about it, Purpit’s face was growing dim: as if time and experience had consumed her, burnt her like a wax doll.
Presently Fludd, tired of watching the office workers, rejoined her in the bed.
Miss Dempsey, that little smile still hovering about her lips, brought in the tea-tray. In Fetherhoughton, of course, the weather was worse than in town. The bishop sat blocking the fire, looking chilly and shrunken, a shadow of himself.
He had not been into the church yet; he was not pious, except upon provocation. When he did go in, he would simply leap to the conclusion that his orders had been ignored. The statues, upon their plinths, were as good as new, each one with its iron circle of candles; for the Children of Mary had washed them down, buffed and polished them, and made good any minor damage with their paintbrushes.
Father Angwin toyed with a bourbon biscuit. What will you say, Aidan Raphael Croucher, when you conclude your fiat has been ignored? If you are wise, and do not want your former opinions blazoned about the diocese, you will smile at me politely and say nothing. And in the future, you will deal more respectfully with me.
“Absconded,” the bishop said, in a flat voice. “Dear, oh dear. Modern manners.”
“Absconded, perhaps. Or done away with.”
“Oh, dear God,” said the bishop. “Do you tell me?” He could see repercussions from this.
“I am expecting the police, tomorrow at first light, to dig about the grounds. An Inspector was here. He walked about behind the garage and saw a place where the ground had been disturbed.”
“Is it possible?” The bishop’s hand trembled; his tea slopped over into his saucer. “Who would want to do away with a nun?”
“Suspicion would fall upon the people from Netherhoughton,” Father Angwin said, “seeking a virgin for their rites.”
He recalled the parishioner who, with trembling hand, had come to him after early Mass, and handed him a brown paper bag. In that bag was a part of Fludd’s vestments—his stole, found tied to a fence post on the allotments. Rumours of the curate’s disappearance were already about the parish, and there were those who had opined, when dawn broke over the hen-houses, and in the early light the silken streamer became visible from Back Lane, that he had placed it there as a flag of distress; others, quicker to conclude against their neighbours, believed that a drunken and cannibalistic raiding party from the Old Oak and the Ram had carried off the young man in the small hours from the unfortified presbytery, and now flew his stole as a banner of triumph.
Father Angwin was perfectly confident that nothing ill had befallen Fludd, but he could not say so; for then he would be obliged to account for him, produce him. But he had tried to assuage the parish’s fears, earlier that day, by encouraging the rationalist tendency; and by laying the blame for any malfeasance in the district at the door of a certain stranger, who had been about the place unremarked until, the railwaymen said, he had turned up at the station at six o’clock yesterday evening and purchased a single ticket to town. The railwaymen remembered the stranger’s tweed suit; but as for his features, they were not able to give even the vaguest information.
But thankfully, the bishop had not yet mentioned Fludd. He was preoccupied with convent affairs. “Please God she may be discovered safe and sound,” he said. “She can be brought back if we can discover her. We could put out some story about amnesia. It would prevent the giving of scandal.”
“The Protestants will make hay with it,” Father Angwin remarked.
“You sit there, Father, and look so cool,” the bishop burst out. He slammed his cup and saucer down onto the table, spilling some tea over Agnes’s red chenille cloth. “You look so cool, after telling me a professed sister has run off from the convent, that Mother Perpetua has burst into flames while on her parish visits—tell me, what did she say, she must have said something before they took her away, you do not have a nun, and a convent superior at that, just suddenly set on fire!”
Father Angwin picked a crumb from his knee, fastidious, making no immediate reply. He remembered how a wondering Sister Anthony had brought the news: “Mother Purpit has burnt up, wart and all.” The bishop, he noticed, washed his fists together in an agitated way, right hand in left palm, then left hand in right.
“She was in no condition for much conversation,” he said. “The stretcher-bearers said she mumbled something about a low blue flame, creeping towards her over the grass … They could make nothing of it.”
“She must be questioned at the hospital.”
“They say she is not fit. Agnes telephoned this morning and they said she had spent a comfortable night. That is what hospitals say, Agnes tells me, when you are nearly dead. I spoke to the ward sister myself and they said that she was not much disfigured but that she had had a shock. They couldn’t think when she would be able to explain events. I think you underestimate, Aidan, the seriousness of the conflagration. As you know, she was only put out by the good offices of a passing tobacconist.”
“The tobacconist must be questioned. He is a Catholic, you say?”
“A prominent parishioner. Very active in the Men’s Fellowship.”
“Oh dear, dear,” said the bishop again. “What a mercy he was passing. It is a bad business, this, Angwin, it is a very bad business. It looks very bad, and it all comes back on me.”
