'Well?' said Lejeune.
'Sounds most unlikely,' said Corrigan dampingly.
'On the face of it, perhaps. But I'm not so sure.'
'This Osborne fellow – he couldn't really have seen anyone's face very clearly on a foggy night like that. I expect this is just a chance resemblance. You know what people are. Ring up all over the country to say they've seen a missing person, and nine times out of ten there's no resemblance even to the printed description!'
'Osborne's not like that,' said Lejeune.
'What is he like?'
'He's a respectable dapper little chemist, old-fashioned, quite a character, and a great observer of persons. One of the dreams of his life is to be able to come forward and identify a wife poisoner who has purchased arsenic at his shop.'
Corrigan laughed.
'In that case, this is clearly an example of wishful thinking.'
'Perhaps.'
Corrigan looked at him curiously.
'So you think there may be something in it? What are you going to do about it?'
'There will be no harm, in any case, in making a few discreet inquiries about this Mr Venables of -' he referred to the letter – 'of Priors Court, Much Deeping.'
Chapter 9
I
'What exciting things happen in the country!' said Hermia lightly.
We had just finished dinner. A pot of black coffee was in front of us.
I looked at her. The words were not quite what I had expected. I had spent the last quarter of an hour in telling her my story. She had listened intelligently and with interest. But her response was not at all what I had expected. The tone of her voice was indulgent – she seemed neither shocked nor stirred.
'People who say that the country is dull and the towns full of excitement don't know what they are talking about,' she went on. 'The last of the witches have gone to cover in the tumble-down cottage, black masses are celebrated in remote manor houses by decadent young men. Superstition runs rife in isolated hamlets. Middle-aged spinsters clank their false scarabs and hold seances and planchettes run luridly over sheets of blank paper. One could really write a very amusing series of articles on it all. Why don't you try your hand?'
'I don't think you really understand what I've been telling you, Hermia.'
'But I do, Mark! I think it's all tremendously interesting. It's a page out of history, all the lingering forgotten lore of the Middle Ages.'
'I'm not interested historically,' I said irritably. 'I'm interested in the facts. In a list of names on a sheet of paper. I know what has happened to some of those people. What's going to happen or has happened to the rest?'
'Aren't you letting yourself get rather carried away?'
'No,' I said obstinately. 'I don't think so. I think the menace is real. And I'm not alone in thinking so. The vicar's wife agrees with me.'
'Oh, the vicar's wife!' Hermia's voice was scornful.
'No, not 'the vicar's wife' like that! She's a very unusual woman. This whole thing is real, Hermia.'
Hermia shrugged her shoulders.
'Perhaps.'
'But you don't think so?'
'I think your imagination is running away with you a little, Mark. I dare say your middle-aged pussies are quite genuine in believing it all themselves. I'm sure they're very nasty old pussies!'
'But not really sinister?'
'Really, Mark, how can they be?'
I was silent for a moment. My mind wavered – turning from light to darkness and back again. The darkness of the Pale Horse, the light that Hermia represented. Good everyday sensible light, the electric light bulb firmly fixed in its socket, illuminating all the dark corners. Nothing there – nothing at all – just the everyday objects you always find in a room. But yet – but yet – Hermia's light, clear as it might make things seem, was after all an artificial light.
My mind swung back, resolutely, obstinately.
'I want to look into it all, Hermia. Get to the bottom of what's going on.'
'I agree. I think you should. It might be quite interesting. In fact, really rather fun.'
'Not fun!' I said sharply.
I went on:
'I wanted to ask you if you'd help me, Hermia.'
'Help you? How?'
'Help me to investigate. Get right down to what this is all about.'
'But Mark dear, just at present. I'm most terribly busy. There's my article for the Journal. And the Byzantium thing. And I've promised two of my students -'
Her voice went on reasonably – sensibly – I hardly listened.
'I see,' I said. 'You've too much on your plate already.'
'That's it.' Hermia was clearly relieved at my acquiescence. She smiled at me. Once again I was struck by her expression of indulgence. Such indulgence as a mother might show over her little son's absorption in his new toy.
Damn it all, I wasn't a little boy. I wasn't looking for a mother – certainly not that kind of a mother. My own mother had been charming and feckless; and everyone in sight, including her son, had adored looking after her.
I considered Hermia dispassionately across the table.
So handsome, so mature, so intellectual, so well read! And so – how could one put it? So – yes, so damnably dull!
II
The next morning I tried to get hold of Jim Corrigan – without success. I left a message, however, that I'd be in between six and seven, if he could come for a drink. He was a busy man, I knew, and I doubted if he would be able to come at such a short notice, but he turned up all right at about ten minutes to seven. While I was getting him a whisky he wandered round looking at my pictures and books. He remarked finally that he wouldn't have minded being a Mogul emperor himself instead of a hard-pressed over-worked police surgeon.
'Though, I dare say,' he remarked as he settled down in a chair, 'that they suffered a good deal from woman trouble. At least I escape that.'
'You're not married, then?'
'No fear. And no more are you, I should say, from the comfortable mess in which you live. A wife would tidy all that up in next to no time.'
I told him that I didn't think women were as bad as he made out.
I took my drink to the chair opposite him and began:
'You must wonder why I wanted to get hold of you so urgently, but as a matter of fact something has come
