The Knocker on Death's Door

CHAPTER 5

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George Felse stood under the arching trees that shadowed the south porch of St. Eata’s, in the first fine drizzle of rain, and stared at the wreath of wilted, greyish-green herbage that sagged on the sanctuary knocker. The head of the mythical beast, inanely grinning, jutted out of the tired greenery like a clown from a wilted muslin ruff, obscenely mocking the gravity of the beholders. Withdrawn, the village moved about stealthily in circles, eyes slanted always towards the profaned place of death, feet always directed assiduously somewhere else. There wasn’t a soul for two miles round who didn’t know.

The dark-green, crinkled leaves drooped despondently, as if they held out very little hope that they would be effective in warding off the obscure evil from outside human experience—which was hypothetically the purpose for which someone had placed them there. It was even something of an achievement to get hold of that much parsley in October, let alone hang it in position in this most exposed of places without being caught in the act. Though a soul benevolent enough to be scheming for the protection of this troubled place against all evil spirits should also have been indifferent to observation. Unless, of course, by demons, whose attentions it would be reasonable enough to avoid if possible.

“All right,” said George philosophically, “you didn’t see anyone, you don’t know anything. I get it. But you do know what this is for, don’t you? Avaunt, ye spirits of chaos, spawn of darkness, malicious powers, make yourselves scarce! This is no place for you, this is a place protected. All right, you can unhook it now, it’s served its purpose.”

“I dursen’t, sir,” said Ebenezer Jennings without a blush, and stood by George’s side in full daylight to be surveyed, his face as hard as the building stone they had once quarried from the western slope of Callow, now long overgrown in bracken and furze. “That’s magic, sir. That’s good magic. I don’t meddle with yon. This church is troubled bad, and that garland, that’s blessed. Yes, I do know what virtue’s in these leaves. You leave ’un there, I say. That ain’t no ill, is it? Leave ’un be, and hope!”

George wondered, in one instant of mental irresponsibility, whether it was the mere fact of the man’s office as verger, or something in his remarkable appearance, that enabled him to get away with that kind of language without being ridiculous. He was almost sure that it was not because of any actual belief he had in these things; on the contrary, the whole delivery had something of the impressiveness of a first-class theatrical performance, larger than life and double as natural. The office of verger was practically hereditary in Mottisham; and this was the role that went with it, the trappings, the privilege.

Eb Jennings the Fifth was a man of medium height and inordinate dryness, all stout bones and leathery hide without much flesh between. He looked as if the wind might blow him away, but he was as tough as old boots. His head was large, with a lofty, domed skull bristling with long grey hair, his face all forehead, tapering away down a long nose to a narrow, hanging jaw, and his eyes in their gaunt sockets burned with a dark, prophetic fire. He would not have been out of place in the direst books of the Old Testament. Even in ancient flannels blotched with paint and grease, and a washed-out oiled-wool sweater, beginning to unravel at the hem, he was impressive.

“And how can you be sure it was put there to protect?” George asked curiously, watching the verger’s lantern of a face. “Oh, yes, we know that’s what it means, or what it’s supposed to mean, but what if whoever put it there did it to frighten the whole village half to death, on the principle of ‘the mair mischief of mair sport’? That wouldn’t be much benefit to anybody except the murderer, would it? If he stirred up enough muck he might escape notice in the obscurity. Might even be left free to make his next move, whatever that may be. You live here at the lodge on the corner of the churchyard, don’t you? Right in the danger zone!”

A boy of about eighteen or nineteen came butting through the gathering rain, shears in hand, and dived into the porch beside them just in time to hear this. George had seen him clipping back the encroaching ivy from the north wall before the shower began.

“Don’t you waste your time trying to scare this old raven,” he said, punching Jennings lightly in the ribs, and dropping the shears on to the bench inside the porch. “I’d be sorry for the demon that tried tangling with him, I tell you.”

“You mind your own business,” Eb Jennings told him smartly, “and don’t interrupt your elders and betters.”

“And don’t let him kid you he takes any stock in this Dracula stuff,” went on the boy, undeterred, nodding a shaggy, light-brown head at the dangling wreath. “He’s got his own recipes.” He sat down beside his shears, and leaned to examine the withering leaves more closely. His lively lips curled in tolerant disdain. “You know there’s a couple of London cranks from some psychic research gang booked in the ‘Arms’ last night? And a folklore collector from Birmingham? As well as a few national press folks. Somebody slipped the word out there were devils loose up here.”

“Somebody,” said George, “certainly did.” He was less concerned about that particular somebody. The murderer was hardly likely to want professional observers on the scene, however effectively they might embarrass the police; they were all too likely to turn up something he wanted to remain buried. But the man who hung up a clear alarm signal on the spot could well be the murderer himself, studying to redouble confusion, while he himself withdrew farther into the undergrowth. “Good for the hotel trade, at any rate.”

“Maybe Mrs. Lloyd hung up the parsley,” suggested the boy cheerfully. “Bait for the ghost-hunters!”

“Only fools mock the presence of evil,” said Eb Jennings reprovingly, scowling at the boy, whose long legs spread across the porch almost to the bench on the other side.

“Why not, if propitiation does no good? You might as well die laughing.” He patted the purring iron beast. “Caution, guard dogs on patrol!”

“I will not stay,” said Jennings magnificently, “to listen to impious talk. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Felse, I’ve got work to do.” And as he made his exit through the church, that being the driest way, he looked back at the boy and said, making a lightning return to everyday practicality: “And since you’ve been druv in by the rain, you can go and get some wood in for your mother.”

He was gone, leaving the knocker swaying gently, and rustling as the leaves brushed the door. He also left his own minor shock still almost palpable on the air. George told himself that he ought to have guessed. There was something in their wrangling, teasing, needling exchanges that yet stopped short of all malice, and argued a very considerable area of understanding between them. And yet they were, physically, so strikingly unlike.

The boy was more than a head the taller, elegantly long and loose-knit and athletic, with straight fair hair and blue-grey eyes. His face, too, was elongated, but in suave curves, and with a lot of shapely bone; a high-bridged nose jutted haughtily, and brows level as the pommel of a sword underlined a broad forehead. He was looking straight back at George, well aware of what he must be thinking, and visibly speculating as to whether he would or would not ask. Which made it imperative to ask bluntly or not at all.

“So he’s your father?”

“Well,” said the boy with cheerful deliberation, “by courtesy he is. And anyhow, I’d sooner be Jennings, than Macsen-Martel.”

“Like that, is it?” If the boy was willing to accept the conversation on this level, so was George. “You’re the wild oat I’ve been hearing about.”

“I’m one of them,” said the boy drily. “When you’ve been around here a bit longer you’ll learn to spot this debased Norman pan.”

“He’s left more of you around?”

“Brother,” said the boy reverently, “he could field a football team.” The blue-grey eyes flashed in an impudent but engaging smile. “And probably a netball team as well. You ask Sergeant Moon.” He got up, hoisting the shears from where he had laid them. “I suppose I’d really better go and get some wood in for my mother—it’s set in for the day, by the look of it.” And he walked away unconcernedly through the rain, weaving his way blithely among the graves to take the nearest line to the lodge, and whistling as he went, and George saw in this rear view of him the tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-flanked shape and long gait of the Macsen-Martels, unmistakable in movement where he might have missed it completely in repose. One of the family strays, but one that had found a good home. There was nothing the matter with the relationship between courtesy father and son; and what was further implied was that the situation had been accepted by both of them from the beginning. Ask Sergeant Moon! Not bad advice in the circumstances.

There was moss wound into the parsley wreath, and there was the grit of soil and the remains of an orchreous moisture in the moss. Better let the laboratory have a go at it, they might be able to suggest the locality from which it had come, and if the spirit-hunters had begun to arrive, that might not be Mottisham at all. Either some superstitious crank or earnest student of the occult had really put it there in an effort to guard the church and the community against evil spirits, or the murderer had attempted a piece of conjurer’s misdirection to divert attention from his own solid humanity and his entirely earthly motives. No, on reflection there was, regrettably, the third possibility: someone who enjoyed trouble and chaos had simply added his own contribution to the brew here out of pure devilment. Of that kind of devil even villages as remote as Mottisham have more than enough.

George turned up the collar of his coat and made a dash for it through what had now become a downpour, across the road and into the vicarage drive. In the gateway he collided with a young man who had just descended from the Comerbourne bus and made for the same haven. They steadied each other solicitously with hasty apologies, and recognition was instant and mutual.

“I was just coming to see you, Mr. Felse,” said Dave Cressett, hugging The Midland Scene under his jacket from the driving rain, “I’ve got something here Mrs. Bracewell asked me to bring to you. And something besides to tell you.”

“Always the door,” said Sergeant Moon, late that Friday evening, after they had abandoned the mounds of official reports and statements, and were sitting back relaxed and tired over cigarettes and beer, thoughtfully brought in from the “Duck” by young Brian Jennings. “I’d be ready to bet my job that we were right, it’s the door, not the man. He just blundered into something he didn’t realise was dangerous— apparently merely by having this feeling that there was something odd about this door he’d once photographed for this magazine article. Now you tell me what dangerous secret there can be about an oak door? Worth killing for?”

“And before he’d even run to earth whatever it was he was after,” George pointed out. “A very dangerous secret indeed—show a little too much interest in it, and that’s enough, you’re knocked off just in case. Yet there was plenty of interest being shown in it—by all kinds of people. It was ceremonially on show. So what was so different about this man Bracewell’s interest, to mark him out as the chance that couldn’t be taken?”

“He was there prowling around it at night,” said Moon, “and alone. A crowd with a battery of cameras was O.K. One man with a torch sneaking back by himself wasn’t.”

“There was one more thing about him that was different, Jack. He’d seen it before.”

Moon considered that carefully. For centuries the door had hung in the cellars of the Abbey. The house had never been shown; and it was improbable that there had ever been more than one such article about it as the one in The Midland Scene. It wasn’t important enough or beautiful enough; it played too insignificant a part in history. The wonder was that it had achieved a place even once in such a series. That made Bracewell, in all probability, the only person present at the re-dedication, apart, of course, from the family, who had ever seen the door in its previous position.

“But even so, what could there have been about it to make him think he might get a scoop out of it? Something he hadn’t noticed until the thing was cleaned up? But then it would be there for everyone to notice. Whatever was queer about it meant nothing to anyone but him.”

“And what discoveries can you make about a door, for God’s sake? There it is, a solid block of wood with a lump of iron attached, everything about it visible at a glance.” George stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ll see this Miss Trent tomorrow, and have another word with Mrs. Bracewell. Who knows, I may hit on the right question by sheer luck, and stir a recollection, or she may have thought of something on her own. We’ve no choice about pulling out all the stops now, Jack. It took some hard work to get the Old Man to leave it with us, we’ve got to justify it now or die trying.”

“Well, at least we found the camera. Not that I expect the lab boys will get anything off it.” And of course it had been empty, the film extracted, and no doubt burned long before this. “There’s just a chance he’d have to take off his gloves to open and close the camera properly, but I’m not betting on it. It’s a smooth one to handle. And me with five chaps combing the place for it,” said Sergeant Moon sadly, “and it had to be young Brian who found it!”

The camera had been half-buried in the debris of dead flowers where old wreaths were dumped, in the most deserted corner of the graveyard. If Brian had not been tidying up the dump that morning, and happened to kick against metal, it might have taken them at least another day to work their way to it.

“It’s true, is it,” George asked, “that Robert Macsen-Martel—the late Robert, that is—left a trail of bastards all round these parts? Brian,” he explained wryly, “chose to account for himself. Quite frankly. According to him there are plenty more.”

“True enough. But the Jennings family, now, they’re a special case. Those three get on so well together, you wouldn’t believe. That’s what I call coming to terms with reality. You haven’t seen the mother, have you? She’s only thirty-nine now, and still as pretty as new paint. Linda Price, she was, went as maid to the Abbey—her old man must have been daft to let her. Nineteen, and a stunner, she was then. Exactly what you’d expect happened. Old Jennings, he’s twenty years older than her, he was a widower, and he had a soft spot for Linda. A sort of honourable bargain it was, and they’ve both kept it. He married her, and took on her boy—and gladly, I may say, his first wife never had any, and Linda’s never had any since, so it looks as if but for her slip-up he hadn’t a chance of getting a son. She’s never looked at anyone but old Eb since, she thinks the sun shines out of his high forehead. They got off lucky, all of ’em, they know how to value one another, even if they are a rum bunch. There’s many a family round here started off with a romantic love affair, and ended up with squabbling parents and problem children, and here’s the Jennings lot starting off with a business arrangement and ending as snug as old lovers, with an only child who hasn’t got so much as a complex or an inhibition to his name. Others,” said the sergeant sombrely, “weren’t so clever. There’s fathers round this valley that know their kids aren’t theirs, and make them pay for it, and what’s more, get it back off the kids with interest. And there’s others that don’t even know, and might very well do murder if they ever found out.”

“Not, however, this murder,” sighed George. “Plenty of reason for nursing grudges against the Martel clan, but what had this poor devil done?” He pondered for a moment, and human curiosity got the better of him. “Any special cases in mind? Locally?”

Sergeant Moon turned towards the window. Faintly through the wet trees beamed the distant lights of “The Duck”, and a mere murmur of music drifted in from the jukebox in the garden bar.

“Some time,” he said, “when you’re at leisure, go and take a good close look at Nobbie Crouch.”

“They’re taking the copper off guard tonight,” Saul Trimble said, flicking a beer-mat accurately in front of Joe Lyon and dumping a levelled-off pint of homebrewed on it without spilling a drop. He deposited his own pot carefully, for the corner table tended to rock slightly, but he knew his territory so well that it was no hazard to him. “Got to give the lads a few hours off in the end, and nothing’s happened so far, has it? I reckon even the spooks are bound to have a bit o’ respect for the English week-end. Back on duty a’ Monday.” He had an uncanny instinct for choosing the role that would most surely provoke whatever strangers he had hooked for the bar’s entertainment. Everyone had taken it for granted that the earnest researchers who had taken rooms at the hotel would carry their inquiries, after opening time, into the bar of “The Sitting Duck.” The natives did not use “The Martel Arms.” The reason was beer rather than caste, but the aliens were not to know that. They came slumming, and it was a wonder they didn’t bring their tape recorders with them, so quaint and primitive was Sam Crouch’s antiquated—and profitable—bar, and so renowned its characters. The visitors being believers, Saul had become a sceptic of the bleakest kind. He believed in nothing he could not touch, smell or drink. He deposited his lean rump in the red pulpit-cushions of the corner settle, and winked at Dinah Cressett across the crowded bar.

This was Saturday night, so everyone was there. The general hum of conversation—“The Sitting Duck” was never a noisy bar, they banished the young and loud into the garden pavilion—was constant, drowsy and warm, like the busy signature of a hive of bees. Over this background, dominant voices floated in emphatic moments like soloists in opera soaring out of the chorus, to subside again gracefully without breaking the continuous arc of rounded, communal sound. Not many pubs can command such orchestration and balance, these days.

“The mockers,” pronounced Eb Jennings, in an unexpected bass lead-in that seemed to emerge from the cellars under their feet, “the mockers may have blood on their hands by morning. Who took away the wreath that was meant to protect us all?”

On Saturday nights the Jennings family went their separate ways, each member with the family blessing on his choice: Eb to the bar of the “Duck,” Linda to the Bingo in the infant school, with her friend Mrs. Bowen, and young Brian, on his powerful pest of a motor-bike, to the weekly dance in Comerbourne, replete with beat groups blessed with incredible names, and heady with nubile girls. Brian was a heroic dancer and a Spartan motor-cyclist. His gear was stark, immaculately maintained and without insignia. In transit he looked more like one of Cocteau’s symbolic fates pursuing Orpheus than a modern, brass-knobbed, long haired, seedy enthusiast.

Within the memories of the regulars, however, Eb had never taken any active part in the entertainments staged impromptu at the “Duck.” Either something had got into him, tonight, or else this was the first occasion that had touched him nearly, and caused him to give tongue.

“In the midst of life,” he proclaimed, erect beside the bar like a prophetic angel, even his pint forgotten, “in the midst of life we are in death. Like our brother departed. No one should laugh who is not ready to go.”

For one instant he achieved such an impression that there was total silence in the bar. Then Saul said reasonably: “Well, nobody who’s ready to go is going to feel much like laughing, that’s for sure. And anyhow, you tell the police, Eb, lad, don’t tell us, we didn’t shift your parsley garland.”

“Nor call the coppers off night watch,” confirmed Willie the Twig. “After all, they’ve kept a guard on the church for three nights, and nothing happened. And they need plenty of men during the day on these jobs, they can’t wear out a constable minding the scene of the crime indefinitely.”

“Anyhow,” said Eli Platt sententiously, “lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”

“Have it your way, then,” intoned Eb, “but I tell you we’re not finished yet with this evil. ’Tis in the air all about us. ’Tis lurking there on the scene where the murder was done. I feel my thumbs prick and my blood chill when I go near that door.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” one of the visitors explained with kindly condescension, “if you approach these phenomena in a scientific spirit. From what you’ve told us of the past history of the Abbey, this is a very interesting case which ought to be investigated by someone trained in the proper research techniques. What’s needed is accurate and detached observation. That’s impossible if one is afraid.”

Everyone looked at him with the awed respect of the simple villager for the visiting expert. He was a large, slightly flabby man with an egg-shaped skull fringed with reddish hair, and his pale, probing nose was peppered with russet freckles. He was earnest and patronising, and none too free with paying for drinks; but so innocently impervious to all double meanings that Dinah felt it was a shame to take advantage of him.

“I intend,” he announced, having drawn all eyes upon himself, “to keep watch myself tonight. Alone!”

He declared himself with all possible ceremony. The effect was pleasing up to a point. Everyone gaped at him with curiosity, speculation, and—he was sure—admiration. He had hoped also for a degree of anxious solicitude, but of this he could be less certain.

“Sooner you than me, friend,” said Willie the Twig, with obliging (and quite mendacious) fervour. He lived alone in the back of beyond with his forests, his Land-Rover and a couple of setters, and habitually patrolled by night unarmed, even when he had reason to believe there were wood—or deer-poachers about; and so far no one had been able to identify anything in any real or imaginary world of which he could be said to be afraid.

“You’re venturing too far, ’tis daring the devil,” protested Eb, outraged. “You think you’re wise, my friend, but ’tis foolishness to walk too proud in the face of powers more than mortal.”

“Call it off till it stops raining,” offered Saul sportingly, “and we’ll make up a party. How about you, Hugh, lad?”

“Not me!” said Hugh, not without regret. “Sorry, but I’m driving in the Mid-Wales rally tomorrow. Got to get my sleep tonight, I shall be off about five in the morning. Any other time you plan a ghost-hunt, I’ll be delighted.”

“Oh, ah, that’s right, I forgot! Can’t afford to risk your chances in the hill run, that’s a fact. Anybody else game?”

Facetious offers of help and prophecies of doom came cascading from all directions in bewildering variety. The man from the research society was horrified. These attitudes were the outcome of ignorance, and did untold harm. How could extra-human forces be expected to manifest themselves and communicate where there was derision and noise and lack of understanding? Where no one believed except those who were afraid with the old panic terror, and no one at all had an open mind? He must and would be alone on his watch; it was an opportunity not to be missed. He had brought with him merely a raincoat, a notebook and a torch. His purpose was not to tape-record for his own glory, not to stand off an enemy, but to observe, to report truthfully, and to attempt to establish communication if the opportunity was offered.

“Pity, really, about the Mid-Wales being tomorrow,” Hugh whispered in Dinah’s ear, “we could have fixed him up with a set of phenomena he’d never forget.”

“Hush!” Dinah whispered back, smiling and frowning. “He really means it, you know. In a way there is something brave about it.”

“Brave nothing, love! Insensitive and big-headed! It would be gorgeous,” said Hugh, entranced with the prospect, “if he really did see something. I bet you wouldn’t see him for dust! Our Porsche wouldn’t keep his tail-lights in sight!”

That was what was really occupying his mind, Dinah realised, tomorrow, and the twenty-four-hour rally he had a sporting chance of winning. Ted Pelsall, who was Jenny’s brother and their best mechanic, had withdrawn the car a week ago to his own yard, in the ramshackle ex-farmhouse close to the Abbey, and had been working on it lovingly ever since. He always acted as Hugh’s navigator, and since they had to make such an early start to reach the muster-point on time, Hugh was sleeping at the Abbey tonight, where Ted would pick him up before dawn. At least his mother would be happy to have him in the house, even if she saw him for only half an hour before retiring to bed. Sometimes, since that strained evening in her company, Dinah thought of his mother with a curious compassion, detached and mature, surprising even to herself.

“We ought to be going soon,” she whispered.

“Yes, love, I know…” But he went on staring in thoughtful abstraction at the physic researcher, who was standing his ground with an obstinacy so publicly declared that now it could hardly be retracted. Yet to do him justice, he must have meant it from the beginning, since he had come provided with a packet of sandwiches and a small flask of coffee as well as his raincoat and torch. Retreat before his own accusing eyes would have been even harder than retreat in the face of all the mockery and terrorisation “The Sitting Duck” was exercising upon him. And perhaps he was as stupidly big-headed as Hugh had said. Whatever his motives, scientifically pure or humanly stubborn, he meant to go through with it. He would go through with it.

“Drink up, then, my fond and fair one! Sure you wouldn’t like the other half?”

“No, really, thanks. We promised Dave we’d cut it short.”

Hugh held her coat for her, and they withdrew among a chorus of good nights. Everyone who remembered about the rally added fervent good wishes. One or two even had bets on him. They passed close by the earnest stranger, who was also climbing into his coat with slightly defiant resolution. The torch he fished out of a deep pocket was truly formidable in size. Hugh eyed it respectfully in passing.

“You need that to see the ghosts, or what?”

“They don’t like light,” said Eb Jennings mysteriously, as if, had he wished, he could have given this amateur a lot of valuable tips.

“He’s right, you know,” said Hugh seriously. “Much better leave it behind. You’re taking this whole thing too lightly. In for a giggle, in for a thrill, if the monks don’t get you, the devils will!”

“You’re awful!” said Dinah, as they darted through the rain to the car, the everyday Mini they used for general transport. “You just don’t give a damn for anybody!”

“Those people burn me up. Coming to a place they know nothing about, and feel nothing about, where if they had sense they’d sit and listen, and put out feelers until they understood at least the language! I can’t stand phoneys!”

“I’ll drive,” said Dinah, slithering behind the wheel, for she had, in any case, to drive herself home from the Abbey after dropping him. They threaded the roads between autumnal, leaning trees, streaming and gleaming with rain. She drove well; both Dave and Hugh had had a hand in teaching her, and her vision was phenomenally sharp and her reactions naturally rapid and decisive. “Take me as navigator,” she said suddenly, “I mean next time. Ted wouldn’t mind, just for once.”

“Ted wouldn’t mind anything you suggested, and you know it. Ted dotes. Sometimes I’m downright jealous. You sure you want to run yourself into the ground on a stint like that?”

“I could do it,” she said confidently. “I bet I can stick out anything you can.”

“If only it hadn’t got so damned professional these days, we’d do the Monte together. I’d love it! Dinah, Dinah…”

“Hey, cut it out!” protested Dinah, unexpectedly kissed behind the left ear and—by mistake on a curve—in the left eye. “You’ll have us in the hedge!”

They turned into the Abbey drive. There were lights in the drawing-room.

“Good, Mother’s still up.” It was not much after nine o’clock. “She’s got a bit of a cold, Rob said, but it probably won’t be much. Anyhow, I’ll go and give her your love, shall I?”

“Yes,” said Dinah, “do that.” It wasn’t love she felt, but it was something outgoing and grievous and urgent, and the word love would do for want of one more exact. She was sorry for everyone who was old and lonely, and narrow, and cold.

Hugh kissed her, now with a more assured aim, and at leisure. “See you some time Tuesday morning, then.”

“Give me a ring when the results are out, I’ll be waiting to hear how you got on.”

He promised, and disentangled himself reluctantly.

“And go to bed as soon as she does,” ordered Dinah, as he got out of the car, “or you’ll be dropping tomorrow.”

He mouthed one more promise and blew a kiss back to her, and was gone. Dinah turned the car in the broad stretch of unkempt gravel before the door, and drove back home. The rain continued, steady, soft-voiced and impersonal, a curtain of pearl-textured sound against the stillness of the night.

The Saturday night dances in Comberbourne ended, in deference to the English sabbath, at midnight, but in practice no one actually left before half past twelve, even if the extra half hour was spent in gossiping and finishing up the last drinks after the band had gone. Consequently it was regularly after half past one in the morning when Brian Jennings roared back into Mottisham, accompanied by the hearty curses of all the residents he disturbed in passage. Brian considered he was entitled to one anti-social moment in his week, and this was it. He admitted he could have made his machine quieter if he’d cared to, but he just loved the music it made. At about twenty to two on this particular Sunday morning Dave, whose bedroom overlooked the road, heard him thunder by on his way home. About ten minutes later the offence was aggravated by a second disturbance, just as Dave was drifting into sleep again. A handful of gravel rattled sibilantly down the window. Dave rolled out of bed and flung up the sash. “What the hell do you think…”

“Don’t shoot, Dave! It’s me, Brian Jennings…” There was the slender black figure, anonymous as a skin diver in the P.V.C. overalls he wore over his good suit. As if he felt the need to identify himself beyond question, the boy hurriedly hauled off helmet and goggles, and tilted upwards a tense, wide-eyed face.

“Let me in, will you, please, I’ve got to use the ’phone. Honest, it’s urgent. I didn’t want to knock up the Rev., and there’s no copper there tonight…” His voice was a strenuous whisper, and conveyed just enough of shock and excitement to restrain Dave from argument. Reactions were quick in Mottisham these days.

“What’s happened now?”

He kept his voice down, too. Dinah slept on the other side of the house, no need for her to be disturbed.

“There’s another one copped it,” said Brian tersely. “Only this one isn’t dead—not yet…”

“I’ll come down,” said Dave, and vanished from the window.

Brian was pressed against the jamb of the door by the time Dave reached it, and slid inside as soon as it was opened. He was quivering gently, but more with a terrier’s excitement in the hunt than with superstitious alarm. “Sorry about this, I’d have gone straight to the police, but this is the one night there’s nobody there… I’d better get the doctor first…”

“Who is it?” asked Dave, steering him towards the office.

“One of those new chaps—the spook-hunters…”

“In the porch, like the other one?” Dave hoisted the telephone from its rest. “Here you are, go ahead, it’s your story.”

“Right up against the door on his face, just like the first…” Brian’s hard young finger dialled rapidly and without error. Somewhere distant at the other end of the line a furious but controlled voice addressed him. Doctors are used to being called out at night, and used, moreover, to making the rapid decision as to whether to come or not on the evidence given, On public business Brian talked with the efficiency and authority of one sure of his ground.

“We’ve got a bad case of inquiry here at the church at Mottisham, I think it could be a fractured skull—head injuries, anyhow, and he’s unconscious. Should I call the ambulance or leave it to you? No, it wasn’t an accident, it looks like the last time. I know, I am getting on to Sergeant Moon as soon as this line’s clear…If you think I’m fooling, I’ll give you Mr. Cressett to talk to if you like. —Right, thanks, I’ll be standing by till you come.” He held down the rest and began to dial again, flashing a fiery glance at Dave. “They don’t trust anybody, do they? ‘Is this a hoax, young fellow?’ ” he mimicked savagely. “If you’re under twenty they think you’re missing on one cylinder.”

He misdialled ip his haste, and swore, and started over again. The sergeant’s voice, only slightly furred with sleep, came over the line.

“Brian Jennings, here, Sergeant, speaking from Cressett’s garage.” Brian had tensed from head to toes in concentration. “There’s another casualty here at the church, same place, same style—I found him about six minutes ago. He isn’t dead—at least, he wasn’t—I’ve called the doctor, he’s on his way. It’s one of those chaps from London, the psychic research blokes… And, sergeant—I saw the chap who hit him—only a glimpse, it was raining, and black as a bag there, but I saw someone dive out of the porch and make off in the trees. Look, you’re not going to like this,” said Brian apologetically, “and I don’t know that I care for it much myself, but it’s gospel—What I saw looked for all the world like somebody in a long brown habit, like those old monks used to wear.”