morning.
'You can drive back with me,' I said.
Mrs Oliver looked doubtful.
'I think I'd better go by train.'
'Oh, come now. You've driven with me before. I'm a most reliable driver.'
'It's not that, Mark. But I've got to go to a funeral tomorrow. So I mustn't be late in getting back to town.' She sighed. 'I do hate going to funerals.'
'Must you?'
'I think I must in this case. Mary Delafontaine was a very old friend, and I think she'd want me to go. She was that sort of person.'
'Of course,' I exclaimed. 'Delafontaine – of course.'
The others stared at me, surprised.
'Sorry,' I said. 'It's only – that – well, I was wondering where I'd heard the name Delafontaine lately. It was you, wasn't it?' I looked at Mrs Oliver. 'You said something about visiting her in a nursing home.'
'Did I? Quite likely.'
'What did she die of?'
Mrs Oliver wrinkled her forehead.
'Toxic polyneuritis – something like that.'
Ginger was looking at me curiously. She had a sharp penetrating glance.
As we got out of the car, I said abruptly:
'I think I'll go for a bit of a walk. Such a lot of food. That wonderful lunch and tea on top of it. It's got to be worked off somehow.'
I went off briskly before anyone could offer to accompany me. I wanted badly to get by myself and sort out my ideas.
What was all this business? Let me at least get it clear to myself. It had started, had it not, with that casual but startling remark by Poppy, that if you wanted to 'get rid of someone,' the Pale Horse was the place to go.
Following on that, there had been my meeting with Jim Corrigan, and his list of 'names' – as connected with the death of Father Gorman. On that list had been the name of Hesketh-Dubois, and the name of Tuckerton, causing me to hark back to that evening at Luigi's coffee bar. There had been the name of Delafontaine, too, vaguely familiar. It was Mrs Oliver who had mentioned it, in connection with a sick friend. The sick friend was now dead.
After that, I had, for some reason which I couldn't quite identify, gone to beard Poppy in her floral bower. And Poppy had denied vehemently any knowledge of such an institution as the Pale Horse. More significant still, Poppy had been afraid.
Today there had been Thyrza Grey.
But surely the Pale Horse and its occupants was one thing and that list of names something separate, quite unconnected. Why on earth was I coupling them together in my mind?
Why should I imagine for one moment that there was any connection between them?
Mrs Delafontaine had presumably lived in London. Thomasina Tuckerton's home had been somewhere in Surrey. No one on that list had any connection with the little village of Much Deeping. Unless -
I was just coming abreast of the King's Arms. The King's Arms was a genuine pub with a superior look about it and a freshly painted announcement of Lunches, Dinners, and Teas.
I pushed its door open and went inside. The bar, not yet open, was on my left, on my right was a minute lounge smelling of stale smoke. By the stairs was a notice: Office. The office consisted of a glass window, firmly closed and a printed card. Press Bell. The whole place had the deserted air of a pub at this particular time of day. On a shelf by the office window was a battered registration book for visitors. I opened it and flicked through the pages. It was not much patronized. There were five or six entries, perhaps, in a week, mostly for one night only. I flicked back the pages, noting the names.
It was not long before I shut the book. There was still no one about. There were really no questions I wanted to ask at this stage. I went out again into the soft damp afternoon.
Was it only coincidence that someone called Sandford and someone else called Parkinson had stayed at the King's Arms during the last year? Both names were on Corrigan's list. Yes, but they were not particularly uncommon names. But I had noted one other name – the name of Martin Digby. If it was the Martin Digby I knew, he was the great-nephew of the woman I had always called Aunt Min – lady Hesketh-Dubois.
I strode along, not seeing where I was going. I wanted very badly to talk to someone. To Jim Corrigan. Or to David Ardingly. Or to Hermia with her calm good sense. I was alone with my chaotic thoughts and I didn't want to be alone. What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking.
It was after about half an hour of tramping muddy lanes that I finally turned in at the gates of the vicarage, and made my way up a singularly ill-kept drive, to pull a rusty-looking bell at the side of the front door.
II
'It doesn't ring,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop, appearing at the door with the unexpectedness of a genie.
I had already suspected that fact
'They've mended it twice,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop. 'But it never lasts. So I have to keep alert. In case it's something important. It's important with you, isn't it?'
'It – well – yes, it is important – to me, I mean.'
'That's what I meant, too.' She looked at me thoughtfully. 'Yes, it's quite bad, I can see – Who do you want? The vicar?'
'I – I'm not sure -'
It had been the vicar I came to see – but now, unexpectedly, I was doubtful. I didn't quite know why. But immediately Mrs Dane Calthrop told me.
'My husband's a very good man,' she said. 'Besides being the vicar, I mean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see, don't really understand evil.' She paused and then said with a kind of brisk efficiency, 'I think it had better be me.'
A faint smile came to my lips. 'Is evil your department?' I asked.
'Yes, it is. It's important in a parish to know all about the various – well – sins that are going on.'
'Isn't sin your husband's province? His official business, so to speak.'
'The forgiveness of sins,' she corrected me. 'He can give absolution. I can't. But I,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop with the utmost cheerfulness, 'can get sin arranged and classified for him. And if one knows about it one can help to prevent its harming other people. One can't help the people themselves. I can't, I mean. Only God can call to repentance, you know – or perhaps you don't know. A lot of people don't nowadays.'
'I can't compete with your expert knowledge,' I said, 'but I would like to prevent people being harmed.'
She shot me a quick glance.
'It's like that, is it? You'd better come in and we'll be comfortable.'
The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by a gargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the energy to curb. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar reason. It was, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby chairs bore the impress of resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimney-piece ticked with a heavy comfortable regularity. Here there would always be time to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the cares brought about by the bright day outside.
Here, I felt, round-eyed girls who had tearfully discovered themselves to be prospective mothers, had confided their troubles to Mrs Dane Calthrop and received sound, if not always orthodox, advice; here angry relatives had unburdened themselves of their resentment over their inlaws; here mothers had explained that their Bob was not a bad boy, just high-spirited, and that to send him away to an approved school was absurd. Husbands and wives had disclosed marital difficulties.
And here was I, Mark Easterbrook, scholar, author, man of the world, confronting a grey-haired weather- beaten woman with fine eyes, prepared to lay my troubles in her lap. Why? I didn't know. I only had that odd surety
