The priest had to make his final arrangements before leaving the country. The traumatic recent events had shocked him into a semblance of rational introspection and an ability to question his own sanity. Standing in the darkness of the woods, a cold logic penetrated his brain. Regrets started to swamp him, not moral regrets, but frustration with his own behaviour. If only he hadn’t drunk so much and then nearly choked in his kitchen. He cursed himself for falling into a hole he had dug himself.
“May all the demons in Hell be forever damned for leading me into such utter folly,” he said aloud.
He unscrambled his brain for an answer: psychologically, he had taken too long to recover from his beating. That was it. How could he know that his own disciple would turn on him? Who could have anticipated such betrayal? Her strength had been amazing, and her anger. The ungrateful witch.
And Gould’s deceitful article had shaken his whole being, undermining a lifetime of work. But it was foolish to succumb to Gould’s lies. He would recover and prove the American to be a forger and a charlatan. Yes, God would give him a second chance to finish his work.
The Almighty was on Duval’s side; he had proof of that. God had saved him: stopped him choking to death, and sent the bishop’s curate to the house to discover him lying in the half-finished grave and pull him out. Yes, that was a resurrection.
The curate, concerned for Duval’s mental and physical health, had driven him back to the episcopal palace in Guildford. But Templeton, incandescent with rage at the priest’s filthy and drunken condition, had simply locked him in a bedroom to sober up. He had been left there for over a day, his only visitor the bishop’s secretary bringing him tea and unbuttered toast.
“His Grace does not wish to see you today,” the man said. “He feels that a period of contemplation would be beneficial to you”-further evidence, as if Duval needed it, that the bishop was not God’s man and did not understand the priest’s holy calling.
“His Grace is going on a retreat,” the secretary continued. “He has left you these written instructions concerning the travel arrangements and other details regarding your posting in Bolivia.” With that he left the room, locking the door carefully behind him.
Duval sat stunned for a while, chewing on the unappetising dry toast. Late that evening he finally gathered his wits together and clambered out through the window of the locked room. And the bishop would get the car back, and the transistor radio he borrowed. It wasn’t theft.
Time had been lost, though. Duval estimated he had been away from his house for around forty-eight hours. Thanks to the bishop’s desire to banish him to South America, he had his escape route organised, but first he needed to get back into his house. He heard the initial news reports of the police cordoning his home on the radio he had “borrowed” from the bishop. He knew the place would be swarming with police, poking around in the cellar, digging up the garden; at first light they would start sweeping the woods. But the last thing they would expect him to do would be to go back to his own house.
Bishop Templeton was a seriously troubled man, but he knew where he would find solace. It had worked before: a day or two of isolation in a small monastery on the edge of Dartmoor. The abbot was an old friend. The bishop could pray, walk, and think there. He told his secretary to cancel all appointments for the next forty-eight hours.
The bishop departed for Dartmoor just two hours before the police arrived at his palace. Templeton drove himself, because he wanted to think, not engage in polite small talk with his driver. He brooded on Duval. God, he had tried to help the man, but he had been kicked in the teeth. The bishop blamed himself. He had been too indulgent. Too kind. His own reputation would be called into question if Duval were involved in any further scandals. The image of the Catholic Church had to be preserved at all costs; two thousands years of history had to be cherished. Human imperfection, he knew, would always threaten Rome’s ideals. But Duval would soon be in South America, and no longer his responsibility. The bishop smiled, and started to look foward to his retreat.
But when Templeton arrived at the monastery, a message from the Surrey police, relayed by the abbot, forced him to turn the car round and drive back to Guildford immediately. He had not been indulgent; he had inadvertently succoured a mass murderer. The bishop’s life and career were in ruins.
Little did Duval know it, but the bishop’s absence had bought him the extra time he needed.
From his vantange point overlooking the old rectory he watched as an ambulance took away Denise’s remains; various senior officers came and went, and for a while the place was a brightly lit circus. By three o’clock in the morning, however, just one panda car remained outside his house. If he was lucky, it would be occupied by the senile PC McGregor, probably asleep.
Duval was right: it was McGregor in the car, but the deeply superstitious officer was too frightened to sleep. Having locked all his doors to keep the devil-priest away, he was sitting rigid, with the police radio on and a truncheon on his lap. A tartan-patterned thermos flask lay empty on the front passenger seat.
Duval knew he would have to take his chance. He had to get back into the house, and he had wasted too much time already.
Duval would have liked to have taken his dog; that was now impossible, but there was one thing without which he would not leave Britain: his only typescript of the “Anchoress of Shere.” He had almost completed it, but not quite. Busybodies had interrupted him when he was on the eve of finalising this all-consuming life project. His experiments on twentieth century women had not worked out as he had hoped, but his spiritual insights, the comparative work which linked the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, had to be recorded for posterity. Yes, despite Gould’s lies, there were hundreds of years of mystical insight encapsulated in his work as well as twenty years of his own humble endeavours to add to this long sweep of history. He must finish it, and he had to take it with him. He was incensed with himself for not arranging a copy earlier, but events had crowded in on him.
Duval once more dismissed Gould’s work as fraud, sloppy research or crass ignorance. The shock of reading the American’s work had been overwhelming, but now he’d had time to think it through. He would cross-check Gould’s findings, reveal the professor to be a cheat. He was the better historian, and he would be proven right in the end.
Frenzied thoughts hammered away in Duval’s brain as he cautiously penetrated the dank copse at the rear of his garden. He scaled the wall by the big laburnum tree and peered over the top. No one was there…except a roe buck grazing near the wall. The animal stared at him before bolting back into the Hurtwood. There were no lights on, and as he crept through the garden he almost fell again into his recent excavations.
A yellow notice had been pasted on the back door: “No Entry-Police Investigation.” Duval looked at the repaired window and prided himself on his handiwork, necessitated by the failed rescuer’s vandalism. Ah, that was when he’d had time, and peace, before
He rummaged in the flowerpot near the window to find the hidden doorkey. Opening the door slowly, despite the gloom he realised that everything in his kitchen had been moved. He was very indignant at the intrusion into his home. And everything was so damp, as though the interfering morons had hosed down his kitchen.
Moving into the hall very carefully, he felt that the carpet underfoot was soggy, and a cold, wet, musty smell pervaded the house. Perplexed, he made his way into the study. All the curtains were closed, and no outside observer could see him. He could not put on the lights, so he felt his way to the desk.
The book was not where it should be. “They must have moved it,” he said aloud. He fumbled through the drawers of his desk and around the rest of the room. “They can’t have taken it, not yet! Why would those interfering bureaucratic clods be interested in my historical work? Perhaps it’s somewhere else in the house?”
He went upstairs for his small case and some clothes, and rummaged some more in search of his precious typescript.
“Maybe they’ve taken my passport,” he said to himself, “but they wouldn’t have taken my book. It can’t be possible!”
He went back to the kitchen and lifted up the trapdoor, then leaned down to turn on the light-switch. No one outside would notice the light in the cellar, but it wouldn’t work. He got his torch from the kitchen, descended the stairs, and was shocked to find two feet of water in the corridor. He had no idea why it was flooded.
All the cell doors were open. He looked into the sodden mess of Marda’s room, searching for his final chapter, even looking in the air vent. It was hopeless. He hardly gave a thought to his former charges, simply assuming the police had taken the brother and sister away, alive or dead. But Gould; perhaps he had the book? The American was jealous enough to steal it, or perhaps the police had asked his advice on the meaning of the text. “Find Gould,
