‘Yes indeed,’ said Donnie, taking a pen from his purse of tinselly yellow. He wrote rapidly, and Sam read what he had written.
‘Annie, you’re a good woman. Too good for me. I shall think of you as a sister.
Signed Deborah.’
‘Deborah,’ said Sam between his teeth.
‘Yes, I have changed my name. Jim didn’t like the name “Donnie”.’
Sam put his hand out to Deborah (Donnie) while at the same time he was thinking that he should kick her (him) in the teeth.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘And may you learn more about those fleshpots than you know now.’
As he left ‘THE MESS OF POTTAGE’ he was thinking that he would not make much from this case – his fee, and his expenses, which were the rates for the ferry and the bus.
He would have to try and find some more complicated cases. Little did he know that there was one waiting for him which would be known as ‘The Case of The Disappearing Pulpit’ and which would push his logical powers to the limit, and bring him expenses to the devil-possessed village of Acharacle.
The Old Woman and the Rat
When the old woman went into the barn she saw the rat and she also saw the feathers of the little yellow chicken among which the rat was sitting. It was a large grey rat and its whiskers quivered. She knew that there was no way out for it but past her, for there was a hole between the door and the wall and she knew that this was the place where the rat had entered. She regretted that she had not filled this up before. It seemed that the rat was mocking her but certainly it knew that she was present. And it also knew that the chickens had belonged to her, those beautiful little chickens of bright yellow which she had nursed so carefully and which had seemed so much the sign of a new spring. The day was Easter Friday.
As she gazed at the rat she felt a ladder of distaste shudder up her spine climbed by many rats, but she stood where she was and then bent down slowly to pick up a plank of wood with nails at one end of it. Her back ached as she bent. The barn itself was large, spacious and clean with a stone floor. At the far end were the remains of the chickens and the hens. Above were the rafters on which hung an old mouldy saddle which her father had once had for the horses. It hung its wings on both sides of the rafter. She thought, and then quite deliberately she stuffed it, mouldy and breaking as it was, into the hole which the rat had entered by. All this while the rat watched her with bright intelligent eyes as if it knew perfectly well what she was up to. The arena was prepared, the large clean spacious arena. She made her way rather fearfully towards the rat. She felt rather unsteady but angry. After all, she was quite old and she had arthritis in her hands and she had varicose veins in her legs. The rat certainly was fitter than her, more agile, more swift. She advanced on the rat steadily with her plank, the nailed end foremost. It waited, almost contemptuously. She went up to it and thrust the plank at it. It moved rapidly away and crouched, looking at her, its long rat tail behind it, its whiskers quivering, its bright eyes moving hither and thither. Where have you been? she thought. Before the chickens, where have you been? She thought of her husband, dead in the cemetery, and closed her eyes. She deliberately made visions of flowers appear.
She thought. Then slowly she went over to a big disused table which she had put in the barn many years before and propped it up on end, to cut off part of the space. But that was useless for the rat immediately climbed up to its top and stood there slightly swaying and half smiling. For the first time as she looked up at it she thought that it might leap down at her from above and this frightened her. She was also frightened that her fear might be communicated to the rat which might then attack her. She backed away from the rat slowly, thinking. What a terrible thing to have this battle when she could be in church, but then some things were more important even than church. She backed towards the door still holding the short nailed plank ahead of her. She pulled the door slowly behind her and backed out, shutting the door quickly. She was determined that the rat would not escape. She almost felt the rat’s claws in her back as she turned away but she knew that it was still there in the barn with the remains of its feast, its obscene supper. She went into the house and got a box of matches. Then she went round the side of the house in the great calm of the morning and got a lot of straw and grass, all of which was dry because of the blue cloudless weather. She felt happy now that she had something to do. But clutching her masses of grass and straw and with the box of matches in the pocket of her apron she was slightly frightened entering the bare arena again. Still it was better to be bare than not, for one knew where one was then. She felt in her mouth the tiny fragile bones of the chickens, and the taste of the blood. She slowly opened the door and edged in with all that grass and straw. The rat stayed where it was, licking its body.
