Devices and Desires (55 page)

He said: “Thank you. These tragedies at Larksoken have taken away some of the immediate satisfaction, but it’s still the most important job I’m ever likely to hold.”

Then, as Dalgliesh turned away, he said: “So you think we still have a killer alive on the headland.”

“Don’t you?”

But Mair didn’t reply. Instead he asked: “If you were Rickards, what would you do now?”

“I’d concentrate on trying to find out whether Blaney or Theresa left Scudder’s Cottage that Sunday night. If either of them did, then I think my case would be complete. It isn’t one that I’d be able to prove, but it would stand up in logic and I think that it would be the truth.”

Dalgliesh drove first out of the drive but Mair, accelerating sharply, overtook him on the first stretch of straight road and remained ahead. The thought of following the Jaguar all the way back to Larksoken was, for some reason, intolerable. But there was no danger of it: Dalgliesh even drove like a policeman, inside, if only just inside, the speed limit. And by the time they reached the main road, Mair could no longer see the lights of the Jaguar in his mirror. He drove almost automatically, eyes fixed ahead, hardly aware of the black shapes of the tossing trees as they rushed past like an accelerated film, of the cat’s eyes unfolding in an unbroken stream of light. He was expecting a clear road on the headland and, cresting a low ridge, saw almost too late the lights of an ambulance. Violently twisting the wheel, he bumped off the road and braked on the grass verge, then sat there listening to the silence. It seemed to him that emotions which for the last three hours he had rigorously suppressed were buffeting him as the wind buffeted the car. He had to discipline his thoughts, to arrange and make sense of these astonishing feelings which
horrified him by their violence and irrationality. Was it possible that he could feel relief at her death, at a danger averted, a possible embarrassment prevented, and yet at the same time be torn as if his sinews were being wrenched apart by a pain and regret so overwhelming that it could only be grief? He had to control himself from beating his head against the wheel of the car. She had been so uninhibited, so gallant, so entertaining. And she had kept faith with him. He hadn’t been in touch with her since their last meeting on the Sunday afternoon of the murder, and she had made no attempt to contact him by letter or telephone. They had agreed that the affair must end and that each would keep silent. She had kept her part of the bargain, as he had known she would. And now she was dead. He spoke her name aloud, Amy, Amy, Amy. Suddenly he gave a gasp which tore at the muscles of his chest as if he were in the first throes of a heart attack and felt the blessed releasing tears flow down his face. He hadn’t cried since he was a boy and even now, as the tears ran like rain and he tasted their surprising saltiness on his lips, he told himself that these minutes of emotion were good and therapeutic. He owed them to her and, once they were over, the tribute of grief paid, he would be able to put her out of his mind as he had planned to put her out of his heart. It was only thirty minutes later, when switching on the engine, that he gave thought to the ambulance and wondered which of the few inhabitants of the headland was being rushed to hospital.

As the two ambulance men wheeled the stretcher down the garden path, the wind tore at the corner of the red blanket and billowed it into an arc. The straps held it down, but Blaney almost flung himself across Theresa’s body, as if desperately shielding her from something more threatening than the wind. He shuffled crab-like down the path beside her, half-bent, his hand holding hers under the blanket. It felt hot and moist and very small, and it seemed to him that he was aware of every delicate bone. He wanted to whisper reassurance but terror had dried his throat and when he tried to speak his jaw jabbered as if palsied. And he had no comfort to give. There was a too-recent memory of another ambulance, another stretcher, another journey. He hardly dared look at Theresa in case he saw on her face what he had seen on her mother’s: that look of pale, remote acceptance which meant that she was already moving away from him, from all the mundane affairs of life, even from his love, into a shadow land where he could neither follow nor was welcome. He tried to find reassurance in the memory of Dr. Entwhistle’s robust voice.

“She’ll be all right. It’s appendicitis. We’ll get her to hospital straight away. They’ll operate tonight and with luck she’ll be back with you in a few days. Not to do the housework, mind; we’ll discuss all that later. Now, let’s get to the telephone. And stop panicking, man. People don’t die of appendicitis.”

But they did die. They died under the anaesthetic, they died because peritonitis intervened, they died because the surgeon made a mistake. He had read of these cases. He was without hope.

As the stretcher was gently lifted and slid with easy expertise into the ambulance, he turned and looked back at Scudder’s Cottage. He hated it now, hated what it had done to him, what it had made him do. Like him, it was accursed. Mrs. Jago was standing at the door holding Anthony in her unpractised arms with a twin standing silently on each side. He had telephoned the Local Hero for help, and George Jago had driven her over immediately to stay with the children until he returned. There had been no one else to ask. He had telephoned Alice Mair at Martyr’s Cottage, but all he had got was the answerphone. Mrs. Jago lifted Anthony’s hand and waved it in a gesture of goodbye, then bent to speak to the twins. Obediently they too waved. He climbed into the ambulance and the doors were firmly shut.

The ambulance bumped and gently swayed up the lane, then accelerated as it reached the narrow headland road to Lydsett. Suddenly it swerved and he was almost thrown from his seat. The paramedic sitting opposite him cursed.

“Some bloody fool going too fast.”

But he didn’t reply. He sat very close to Theresa, his hand still in hers, and found himself praying as if he could batten on the ears of the God he hadn’t believed in since he was seventeen. “Don’t let her die. Don’t punish her because of me.
I’ll believe. I’ll do anything. I can change, be different. Punish me but not her. Oh God, let her live.”

And suddenly he was standing again in that dreadful little churchyard hearing the drone of Father McKee’s voice with Theresa at his side, her hand still cold in his. The earth was covered with synthetic grass but there was one mound left bare and he saw again the newly sliced gold of the soil. He hadn’t known that Norfolk earth could be so rich a colour. A white flower had fallen from one of the wreaths, a small, tortured, unrecognized bud with a pin through the wrapped stalk, and he was seized with an almost uncontrollable compulsion to pick it up before it was shovelled with the earth into the grave, to take it home, put it in water and let it die in peace. He had to hold himself tautly upright to prevent himself bending to retrieve it. But he hadn’t dared, and it had been left there to be smothered and obliterated under the first clods.

He heard Theresa whisper and bent so low to listen that he could smell her breath.

“Daddy, am I going to die?”

“No. No.”

He almost shouted the word, a howled defiance of death, and was aware of the paramedic half-rising to his feet. He said quietly: “You heard what Dr. Entwhistle said. It’s just appendicitis.”

“I want to see Father McKee.”

“Tomorrow. After the operation. I’ll tell him. He’ll visit you. I won’t forget. I promise. Now lie still.”

“Daddy, I want him now, before the operation. There’s something I have to tell him.”

“Tell him tomorrow.”

“Can I tell you? I have to tell someone now.”

He said almost fiercely: “Tomorrow, Theresa. Leave it till tomorrow.” And then, appalled by his selfishness, he whispered: “Tell me, darling, if you must,” and closed his eyes so that she should not see the horror, the hopelessness.

She whispered: “That night Miss Robarts died. I crept out to the abbey ruins. I saw her running into the sea. Daddy, I was there.”

He said hoarsely: “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell me any more.”

“But I want to tell. I ought to have told you before. Please, Daddy.”

He put his other hand over hers. He said: “Tell me.”

“There was someone else there, too. I saw her walking over the headland towards the sea. It was Mrs. Dennison.”

Relief flowed through him, wave after wave, like a warm, cleansing summer sea. After a moment’s silence he heard her voice again: “Daddy, are you going to tell anyone, the police?”

“No,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve told me, but it isn’t important. It doesn’t mean anything. She was just taking a walk in the moonlight. I’m not going to tell.”

“Not even about me being on the headland that night?”

“No,” he said firmly, “not even that. Not yet, anyway. But we’ll talk about it, what we ought to do, after the operation.”

And for the first time he could believe that there would be a time for them after the operation.

Mr. Copley’s study was at the back of the Old Rectory, looking out over the unkempt lawn and the three rows of wind-crippled bushes which the Copleys called the “shrubbery.” It was the only room in the rectory which Meg would not dream of entering without first knocking, and it was accepted as his private place as if he were still in charge of a parish and needing a quiet sanctum to prepare his weekly sermon or counsel those parishioners who sought his advice. It was here that each day he read Morning Prayer and Evensong, his only congregation his wife and Meg, whose low, feminine voices would make the responses and read alternate verses of the psalms. On her first day with them he had said gently but without embarrassment: “I say the two main offices every day in my study, but please don’t feel that you need to attend unless you wish to.”

She had chosen to attend, at first from politeness but later because this daily ritual, the beautiful, half-forgotten cadences, seducing her into belief, gave a welcome shape to the day. And the study itself, of all the rooms in the solidly ugly but comfortable house, seemed to represent an inviolable
security, a great rock in a weary land, against which all the rancorous, intrusive memories of school, the petty irritations of daily living, even the horror of the Whistler and the menace of the power station beat in vain. She doubted whether it had greatly changed since the first Victorian rector had taken possession. One wall was lined with books, a theological library which she thought Mr. Copley now rarely consulted. The old mahogany desk was usually bare, and Meg suspected that he spent most of his time in the easy chair which looked out over the garden. Three walls were covered with pictures: the rowing eight of his university days with ridiculously small caps above the grave, moustached young faces; the ordinands of his theological college; insipid water-colours in golden mounts, the record by some Victorian ancestor of his grand tour; etchings of Norwich Cathedral, the nave at Winchester, the great octagon of Ely. To one side of the ornate Victorian fireplace was a single crucifix. It seemed to Meg to be very old and probably valuable, but she had never liked to ask. The body of Christ was a young man’s body, stretched taut in its last agony, the open mouth seeming to shout in triumph or defiance at the God who had deserted Him. Nothing else in the study was powerful or disturbing; furniture, objects, pictures all spoke of order, of certainty, of hope. Now, as she knocked and listened for Mr. Copley’s gentle “Come in,” it occurred to her that she was seeking comfort as much from the room itself as from its occupant.

He was sitting in the armchair, a book in his lap, and made to get up with awkward stiffness as she entered. She said: “Please don’t get up. I wonder if I could talk to you privately for a few minutes.”

She saw at once the flare of anxiety in the faded blue eyes and thought, He’s afraid I’m going to give notice. She added
quickly but with gentle firmness: “As a priest. I wish to consult you as a priest.”

He lay down his book. She saw that it was one he and his wife had chosen the previous Friday from the travelling library, the newest H.R.F. Keating. Both he and Dorothy Copley enjoyed detective stories, and Meg was always slightly irritated that husband and wife took it for granted that he should always have first read. This inopportune reminder of his mild domestic selfishness assumed for a moment a disproportionate importance, and she wondered why she had ever thought he could be of help. Yet was it right to criticize him for the marital priorities which Dorothy Copley had herself laid down and gently enforced over fifty-three years? She told herself, I am consulting the priest, not the man. I wouldn’t ask a plumber how he treated his wife and children before letting him loose on the leaking tank.

He gestured towards a second easy chair and she drew it up opposite him. He marked his page with his leather bookmark with careful deliberation and laid down the novel as reverently as if it were a book of devotions, folding both hands over it. It seemed to her that he had drawn himself together and was leaning slightly forward, head to one side, as if he were in the confessional. She had nothing to confess to him, only a question which in its stark simplicity seemed to her to go to the very heart of her orthodox, self-affirming but not unquestioning Christian faith. She said: “If we are faced with a decision, a dilemma, how do we know what is right?”

She thought she detected in his gentle face an easing of tension, as if grateful that the question was less onerous than he had feared. But he took his time before he replied.

“Our conscience will tell us if we will listen.”

“The still, small voice, like the voice of God?”

“Not
like
, Meg. Conscience
is
the voice of God, of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit. In the Collect for Whit Sunday we do indeed pray that we may have a right judgement in all things.”

She said with gentle persistence: “But how can we be sure that what we’re hearing isn’t our own voice, our own subconscious desires? The message we listen for so carefully must be mediated through our own experience, our personality, our heredity, our inner needs. Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?”