And then there was a strange coincidence the other day. Laurence and I sent each other a wire with exactly the same words, at the same time. It was horrifying. Like predestination.’
‘These things can happen,’ said Father Jerome. ‘Coincidence or some kind of telepathy.’
‘But the typewriter and the voices — it is as if a writer on another plane of existence was writing a story about us.’ As soon as she had said these words, Caroline knew that she had hit on the truth. After that she said no more to him on the subject.
As she was leaving he asked her how she had liked St Philumena’s.
‘Awful,’ she said, ‘I only stayed three days.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I didn’t think it was your sort of place. You should have gone to a Benedictine convent. They are more your sort.’
‘But it was you recommended St Philumena’s! Don’t you remember, that afternoon at Lady Manders’, you were both so keen on my going there?’
‘Oh sorry. Yes, I suppose we were. What didn’t you like?’
‘The people.’
He chuckled. ‘Yes, the people. It’s a matter of how you take them.’
‘I believe it is,’ said Caroline as though she had just thought of something.
‘Well, God bless you. Get some sleep and keep in touch.’ She found Laurence in when she returned to the flat in Queen’s Gate. He was fiddling about with a black box-like object which at first she took to be a large typewriter.
‘What’s that?’ she said, when she saw it closer.
‘Listen,’ said Laurence.
He pressed a key. There was a whirring sound and the box began to talk with a male voice pitched on a peculiarly forced husky note. It said, ‘Caroline darling, I have a suggestion to make.’ Then it went on to say something funny but unprintable.
Caroline subsided with laughter and relief on to the divan.
Laurence did something to the instrument and the words rumbled forth again.
‘I knew your voice right away,’ Caroline said.
‘I bet you didn’t. I disguised it admirably. Listen again.’
‘No!’ said Caroline. ‘Someone might overhear it. Dirty beast you are.
He replayed the record and they both laughed helplessly.
‘What have you brought that thing here for?’ Caroline said. ‘It might have given me a dreadful fright.’
‘To record your spook-voices. Now see. I’m placing this disc in here. If you hear them again, you press that. Then it records any voice within hearing distance.’
He had placed it against the wall where the voices came from.
‘Afterwards,’ he explained, ‘we can take out the disc and play it back.’
‘Maybe those voices won’t record,’ Caroline said.
‘They will if they’re in the air. Any sound causes an occurrence. If the sound has objective existence it will be recorded.’
‘This sound might have another sort of existence and still be real.’
‘Well, let’s first exhaust the possibilities of the natural order —’
‘But we don’t know all the possibilities of the natural order.’
‘If the sound doesn’t record, we can take it for granted that it either doesn’t exist, or it exists in some supernatural order,’ he explained.
She insisted, ‘It does exist. I think it’s a natural sound. I don’t think that machine will record it.’
‘Don’t you want to try it?’ He seemed disappointed almost.
‘Of course. It’s a lovely idea.’
‘And better,’ he said, ‘than any ideas you’ve had so far.’
‘I’ve got a good one now,’ Caroline said. ‘I’m sure it’s the right one. It came to me while I was talking to Father Jerome.’
‘Let’s have it,’ he said.
‘Not yet. I want to assemble the evidence.’
Caroline was happy. Laurence looked at himself in the mirror, smiled, and told himself, ‘She says I’m a dirty beast.’
The flat was untidy. Caroline loved to see her own arrangement of things upset by Laurence. It was a double habitation now. They had told the housekeeper that they had got married. He was only half satisfied with the story but he would put the other half on the bill, Laurence predicted. She was used to being called ‘Mrs Manders’: it was easy, as if they had never parted, except for the knowledge that this was an emergency set-up. Another week, at the most, and then something would have to be done. She regretted having disclosed her plight to the Baron. He had been pressing Laurence to get Caroline into a nursing home. She did not mind this suggestion, so much as the implication. ‘A nursing home.’ He meant a refined looney-bin. Laurence opposed it; he wanted to take her back with him to his grandmother. The Baron had carried the story to Helena, who offered to pay Caroline’s expenses at a private nursing home for Catholics. Helena did not mean a looney-bin, however.
