study. There was a phone on the desk. Eva went over and lifted the receiver and dialled Ipford 66066. Then was no reply. Henry would be at the Tech. She dialled the Tech number and asked for Mr Wilt.
‘Wilt?’ said the girl on the switchboard. ‘Mr Wilt?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva in a low voice.
‘I’m afraid he’s not here.’ said the girl.
‘Not there? But he’s got to be there.’
‘Well he isn’t.’
‘But he’s got to be. It’s desperately important I get in touch with him.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’ said the girl.
‘But…’ Eva began and glanced out of the window. The Vicar had returned and was walking up the garden path towards her, ‘Oh God,’ she muttered and put the phone down hurriedly. She turned and rushed out of the room in a state of panic. Only when she had made her way back along the passage to the kitchen did it occur to her that she had left her ivy behind in the study. There were footsteps in the passage. Eva looked frantically around, decided against the courtyard and went up a flight of stone steps to the first floor. There she stood and listened. Her heart was palpitating. She was naked and alone in a strange house with a clergyman and Henry wasn’t at the Tech when he should have been and the girl on the switchboard had sounded most peculiar, almost as though there was something wrong with wanting to speak to Henry. She had no idea what to do.
In the kitchen the Rev St John Froude had a very good idea what he wanted to do; expunge for ever the vision of the inferno to which he had been lured by those vile things with their meaningless messages floating across the water. He dug a fresh bottle of Teachers out of the cupboard and took it back to his study what he had witnessed had been so grotesque, so evidently evil, so awful, so prescient of hell itself that he was in two minds whether it had been real or simply a waking nightmare. A man without a face, whose hands were tied behind his back, a woman with a painted face and a knife, the language…The Rev St John Froude opened the bottle and was about to pour a glass when his eye fell on the ivy Eva had left on the chair. He put the bottle down hastily and stared at the leaves. Here was another mystery to perplex him. How had a clump of ivy got on to the chair in his study? It certainly hadn’t been there when he had left the house. He picked it up gingerly and put it on his desk. Then he sat down and contemplated it with a growing sense of unease. Something was happening in his world that he could not understand. And what about the strange figure he had seen flitting about between the tombstones? He had quite forgotten her. The Rev St John Froude got up and went out on to the terrace and down the path to the church.
‘On a Sunday?’ shouted the manager of Sweetbreads. ‘On a Sunday? But we don’t work on a Sunday. There’s nobody here, The place is shut.’
‘It wasn’t last Sunday and there was someone here, Mr Kidney,’ said the Inspector.
‘Kidley, please,’ said the manager. ‘Kidley with an L.’
The Inspector nodded. ‘OK Mr Kidley, now what I’m telling you is that this man Wilt was here last Sunday and he…’
‘How did he get in?’
‘He used a ladder against the back wall from the car park.’
‘In broad daylight? He’d have been seen.’
‘At two o’clock in the morning, Mr Kidney.’
‘Kidley, Inspector, Kidley.’
‘Look Mr Kidley, if you work in a place like this with name like that you’re asking for it.’
