“What information I can impart you can find in the Bible.”
“Where’s Fredrick Regner?”
Too quickly, the man said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hitchcock was getting impatient and angry. “Mr. Peach, in the past twenty-four hours, there have been two murders and a kidnapping, events that give every dangerous sign of reaching epidemic proportions, thanks to a scenario conceived by Fredrick Regner.” He recited for the vicar the contents of Regner’s manuscript.
When Hitchcock was finished, Peach asked, “But how does it end?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Very softly, Mr. Peach said, “You are a very foolish man. You are treading where angels fear.”
“I’m very determined, and I’m very angry. My wife has been stolen, and I find corpses cluttering up my landscape most dismaying and most depressing. You and this church are in the scenario, which means you’re part of this tapestry of espionage!”
“Tapestry of espionage? How fruity. You must have been bitten by the Baroness Orczy. Your language belongs to The Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“You yourself come from Germany, don’t you?” It was a stab in the dark, but Hitchcock was rewarded when Mr. Peach’s eyes narrowed threateningly.
“If you have come here to make trouble for me, there are those who can make trouble for you.”
“You’re hardly offering me pious words of comfort. How unlike a vicar you speak. If you’re really a man of the cloth, you’re cut from a very peculiar bolt.” And then it exploded in Hitchcock’s brain. “My God! I’ll bet you’re not Lemuel Peach at all.” He moved backward as the man’s hand slowly reached for the bread knife. “You don’t frighten me, whoever you are. You’re not Peach, are you?”
“I said I am Lemuel Peach.”
“That’s what you say, but I suspect you aren’t. I don’t care for any more bread, thank you. You can put the knife down.”
“I think perhaps you should stay the night after all. It would be unchristian to deny you a bed on a night like this. You haven’t told me your name.”
“My name is Nemesis,” said Hitchcock archly.
“I don’t much care for Greeks,” said the possible vicar, “and I don’t much care for threats.”
“You work for the Germans/’
“I work for God.”
“You are part of a network that stretches from here to a village on the Channel coast.”
“Your scenario is poppycock.”
“My instincts aren’t. Why threaten me with the knife?”
“Because you’re talking like a madman. I get a lot of loonies here, but they’re rarely given to violence.”
Hitchcock had backed away to the door. With one hand, he was fumbling behind his back to open the bolt. “I think I understand why you’re in Regner’s scenario.”
“Did it mention me by name?” shouted the vicar, if he was the vicar.
“No, not by name. It just said ‘the vicar.’ I’ll bet there have been a lot of vicars here named Lemuel Peach. A real vicar doesn’t sport frivolous bow ties. Real vicars are dedicated men.”
“I, too, am a dedicated man!” stormed the improbable vicar as he sent the knife expertly flying at Hitchcock. Hitchcock yelled and stepped nimbly aside. The knife imbedded itself in the wooden door just a few inches from Hitchcock’s head. Hitchcock was now positive this man was not a vicar as he went rushing out the door, eager to be swallowed up by the fog. He ran up the stone stairs and across the street without thinking of the possible danger of moving vehicles. When he reached the pub, he stopped to catch his breath.
“Changed your mind, dearie?” asked the prostitute, who had crept up behind him on little tart’s feet.
Hitchcock continued his flight, and as he ran, he was suddenly reminded of the recurring nightmares he had suffered in Munich eleven years ago, and wondered if those pursuers were once again hot on his heels. He saw a fish-and-chips shop and went in. Later, holding a newspaper cone filled with fish and chips, a hot mug of tea and milk at his elbow, he tried to make sense of his encounter with the obviously ersatz Lemuel Peach. That’s what Regner had insinuated in his manuscript. Peach’s church had been taken over by spies. He had to be right, or why would the bogus vicar hurl a knife at him? It couldn’t have been his comment about frivolous bow ties. He filed a mental note to get this information to Jennings through John Bellowes as soon as he’d finished his supper. He couldn’t remember fish and chips ever having tasted this good before.
Nigel Pack’s wife was called Violet, at the moment a name appropriate to the color her face had turned at Pack’s announcement he was returning to Whitehall, where he would probably be working for the rest of the night. “I should never have married you!” she stormed.
“Quite right,” agreed Nigel as he changed his shirt, damning Sir Arthur Willing and Basil Cole and Alfred Hitchcock and all disciples of espionage and wishing he’d chosen to become a plumber’s assistant. “Ours is a marriage shipwrecked on the shoals of deceit. You thought our life would be a glamorous one with a possible accrual of wealth. Well, now is the moment of truth. Working in British Intelligence is tiresome and tedious, but it is all I’m equipped to do. We can’t accrue wealth because you spend my money as fast as I acquire it.”
“Our money.” She practically spat the words at him.
“And we can’t divorce because we don’t dare. We can’t afford it.”
She sat at her dressing table, absentmindedly picked up a hairbrush, and began stroking her hair. “I think I’ll go spend some time with Mummy and Daddy. The sea air, I think, would do me a world of good. “
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
She slammed the brush down. “I’m bloody bored with what you do and don’t prefer I do.”
“You will remain right here in London until this matter of the Hitchcocks is resolved. Then we’ll see what we can do to
