Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (17 page)

“I am naturally gregarious,” said Mr. Calder.

“Now, now. You won’t pull the wool over my eyes. I know better. You’ve been sent.”

Mr. Calder said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice, “Sent by whom?”

“I’ll mention no names. We all know that there are sects and factions in the church who would find our Rector’s teachings abhorrent to their own narrow dogma. And who would be envious of his growing reputation.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Calder.

“I’m not asking you to tell me if my guess is correct. What I do want to impress on you is that there is nothing exaggerated in these stories. I’ll give you one instance which I can vouch for myself. It was a tea party we were giving for the Brownies. I’d made a terrible miscalculation. The most appalling disaster faced us.
There wasn’t enough to eat.
Can you imagine it?”

“Easily,” said Mr. Calder with a shudder.

“I called the Rector aside, and told him. He just smiled, and said, ‘Look in that cupboard, Miss Martin.’ I simply stared at him. It was a cupboard I use myself for music and anthems. I have the only key. I walked over and unlocked it. And what do you think I found? A large plate of freshly cut bread and butter, and two plates of biscuits.”

“Enough to feed the five thousand.”

“It’s odd you should say that. It was the precise analogy that occurred to me.”

“Did you tell people about this?”

“I don’t gossip. But one of my helpers was there. She must have spread the story. Ah, here is the Rector. Don’t say a word about it to him. He denies it all, of course.”

“I’m glad to see that Miss Martin has been looking after you,” said the Rector. “A thought has occurred to me. Do you sing?”

“Only under duress.”

“Recite, perhaps? We are getting up a village concert. Miss Martin is a tower of strength in such matters—”

“It would appear from his reports,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that your colleague is entering fully into the life of the village. Last Saturday, according to the
East Anglia Gazette
, he took part in a village concert in aid of the RSPCA. He obliged with a moving rendering of the ‘Wreck of the Hesperus’.”

“Good gracious,” said Mr. Behrens. “How very versatile.”

“He would not, however, appear to have advanced very far in the matter I sent him down to investigate. He thinks that the Rector is a perfectly sincere enthusiast. He has his eye on three people, any one of whom
might
have been planted in the village to work on him. Have you been able to discover anything?”

“I’m not sure,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’ve made the round of our usual contacts. I felt that the IBG was the most likely. It’s a line they’ve tried with some success in the past. Stirring up local prejudice, and working it up into a national campaign. You remember the school children who trespassed on the missile base at Loch Gair and were roughly handled?”

“Were alleged to have been roughly handled.”

“Yes. It was a put-up job. But they made a lot of capital out of it. I have a line on their chief organiser. My contact thinks they
are
up to something. Which means they’ve got an agent planted in Hedgeborn.”

“Or that the Rector is their agent.”

“Yes. The difficulty will be to prove it. Their security is rather good.”

Mr. Fortescue considered the matter, running his thumb down the angle of his prominent chin. He said, “Might you be able to contrive, through your contact, to transmit a particular item of information to their agent in Hedgeborn?”

“I might. But I hardly see—”

“In medicine,” said Mr. Fortescue, “I am told that when it proves impossible to clear up a condition by direct treatment, it is sometimes possible to precipitate an artificial crisis which
can
be dealt with.”

“Always bearing in mind that if we do precipitate a crisis, poor old Calder will be in the middle of it.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Fortescue.

It was on the Friday of the second week of his stay that Mr. Calder noticed the change. There was no open hostility. No-one attacked him. No-one was even rude to him. It was simply that he had ceased to be acceptable to the village. People who had been prepared to chat with him in the bar of the Viscount Townshend now had business of their own to discuss when he appeared. Mr. Smedley did not answer his knock, although he could see him, through the front window reading a book. Mr. Smallpiece avoided him in the street.

It was like the moment, in a theatre, when the iron safety-curtain descends, cutting off the actors and all on the stage from the audience. Suddenly, he was on one side. The village was on the other.

By the Saturday, the atmosphere had become so oppressive that Mr. Calder decided to do something about it. Stokes had driven the colonel into Thetford on business. He was alone in the house. He decided, on the spur of the moment, to have a word with the Rector.

Although it was a fine afternoon, the village street was completely empty. As he walked, he noted the occasional stirring of a curtain, and knew that he was not unobserved, but the silence of the early autumn afternoon lay heavily over everything. On this occasion he had left a strangely subdued Rasselas behind.

His knock at the rectory door was unanswered. Remembering the Rector saying, “We never lock our doors here,” he turned the handle and went in. The house was silent. He took a few steps along the hall, and stopped. The door on his left was ajar. He looked in. The Rector was there. He was kneeling at a carved prie-dieu, as motionless as if he had been himself part of the carving. If he had heard Mr. Calder’s approach, he took absolutely no notice of it. Feeling extremely foolish, Mr. Calder withdrew by the way he had come.

Walking back down the street, he was visited by a recollection of his days with the Military Mission in war-time Albania. The mission had visited a remote village, and had been received with the same silent disregard. They had usually been well received, and it had puzzled them. When he returned to the village some months later Mr. Calder had learned the truth. The village had caught an informer, and were waiting for the mission to go before they dealt with him. He had heard the details of what they had done to the informer, and although he was not naturally queasy, it had turned his stomach.

That evening Stokes waited on them in unusual silence. When he had gone, the colonel said, “Whatever it is, it’s tomorrow.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m told that the Rector has been fasting since Thursday. Also that morning service tomorrow has been cancelled, and Evensong brought forward to four o’clock. That’s when it’ll break.”

“It will be a relief,” said Mr. Calder.

“Stokes thinks you ought to leave tonight. He thinks I shall be all right. You might not be.”

“That was thoughtful of Stokes. But I’d as soon stay. That is, unless you want to get rid of me.”

“Glad to have you,” said the colonel. “Besides, if they see you’ve gone, they may put it off. Then we shall have to start all over again.”

“Did you contact the number I asked you to?”

“Yes. From a public call-box in Thetford.”

“And what was the answer?”

“It was so odd,” said the colonel, “that I was afraid I might get it wrong, and I wrote it down.” He handed Mr. Calder a piece of paper.

Mr. Calder read it carefully, folded it up, and put it in his pocket”Is it good news or bad?”

“I’m not sure,” said Mr. Calder. “But I can promise you one thing. You’ll hear a sermon tomorrow which you won’t forget.”

When the Rector stepped into the pulpit his face was pale and composed, but it was no longer gentle. Mr. Calder wondered how he could ever have considered him nondescript. There was a blazing conviction about the man, a fire and a warmth which lit up the whole church. This was no longer the gentle St. Francis. This was Peter the Hermit, “whose eyes were a flame and whose tongue was a sword”.

He stood for a moment, upright and motionless. Then he turned his head slowly, looking from face to face in the crowded congregation, as if searching for support and guidance from his flock. When he started to speak it was in a quiet, almost conversational voice.

“The anti-Christ has raised his head once more. The Devil is at his work again. We deceived ourselves into thinking that we had dealt him a shrewd blow. We were mistaken. Our former warning has not been heeded. I fear that it will have to be repeated, and this time more strongly.”

The colonel looked anxiously at Mr. Calder, who mouthed the word, “Wait.”

“Far from abandoning its foul work at Snelsham Manor, I have learned that it is not only continuing, but intensifying it. More of God’s creatures are being imprisoned in its cells and tortured by methods which would have showed the Gestapo. In the name of science, mice, small rabbits, guinea-pigs and hamsters are being put to obscene and painful deaths. Yesterday a cargo of African tree beavers, harmless and friendly little animals arrived at this—at this scientific slaughterhouse. They are to be inoculated with a virus which will first paralyse their limbs, and then cause them to go mad with pain, and finally to die. The object of the experiment is to hold off the moment of death as long as possible—”

Mr. Calder, who was listening with strained attention to every word, had found it difficult to hear the closing sentence and realised that the Rector was now speaking against a ground-swell of noise, which burst out suddenly into a roar. The Rector’s voice rode over the tumult like a trumpet.

“Are we going to allow this?”

A second roar crashed out with startling violence.

“We will pull down this foul place, stone by stone. We will purge what remains with fire. All who will help, follow me.”

“What do we do?” said the colonel.

“Sit still,” said Mr. Calder.

In a moment they were alone in their pew with a hundred angry faces round them. The Rector, still standing in the pulpit, quelled the storm with an upraised hand. He said, “We will have no bloodshed. We cannot fight evil with evil. Those who are not with us are against us. Enoch, take one of them. Two of you the other. Into the vestry with them.”

Mr. Calder said, “Go with it. Don’t fight.”

As they were swirled down the aisle, the colonel saw one anxious face in the crowd. He shouted, “Are you in this too, Stokes?” The next moment they were in the vestry. The door had clanged shut and they heard the key turn in the lock. The thick walls, and nine inches of stout oak cut off the sounds. They could hear the organ playing. It sounded like Miss Martin’s idea of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. A shuffling of feet. A door banging. Then silence.

“Well,” said the colonel. “What do we do now?”

“We give them five minutes to get to the rectory. There’ll be some sort of conference there, I imagine.”

“And then?”

Mr. Calder had seated himself on a pile of hassocks, and sat there, swinging his short legs. He said, “As we have five minutes to kill, maybe I’d better put you in the picture. Why don’t you sit down?”

The colonel grunted, and subsided.

Mr. Calder said, “Hasn’t it struck you that the miracles we’ve been hearing about were of two different types?”

“Don’t follow you.”

“One sort was simple animal magnetism. No doubt about that. I saw the Rector operating on Rasselas. Nearly hypnotised the poor dog. The other sort – well, there’s been a lot of talk about them, but I’ve only heard any real evidence of two. The bells that rang themselves and the food that materialised in a locked cupboard. Isolate them from the general hysteria, and what do they amount to? You told me yourself that the key of the vestry had been mislaid.”

“You think someone stole it. Had it copied?”

“Of course.”

“Who?”

“Oh,” said Mr. Calder impatiently, “the person who organised the other miracle of course. I think it’s time we got out of here, don’t you?”

“How?”

“Get someone to unlock the door. I notice they left the key in it. There must be some sane folk about. Not all the farmers were in the church.”

The colonel said, “Seeing that the nearest farm likely to be helpful to us is a good quarter of a mile away, I’d be interested to know how you intend to shout for help.”

“Follow me up that ladder,” said Mr. Calder, “and I’ll show you.”

The Rector said, “Is that clear? They’ll be expecting us on the southern side, where we attacked before. So we’ll come through the woods, on the north. Stokes, can you get the colonel’s Land-Rover up that side?”

“Easily enough, Rector.”

“Have the grappling irons laid out at the back. Tom’s tractor follows you. Enoch, how long to cut the wire?”

“Ten seconds.”

This produced a rumbling laugh.

“Good. We don’t want any unnecessary delay. We drive the tractors straight through the gap and ride in on the back of them. The fire raising material will be in the trailers behind the rear tractor. The Scouts can see to that under you, Mr. Smedley.”

“Certainly, Rector. Scouts are experts at lighting fires. If we start upwind, that should give you time to get the animals out before it takes hold.”

“Excellent. Now, the diversion at the front gate. That will be under you, Miss Martin. You’ll have the Guides and Brownies. You demand to be let in. When they refuse, you all start screaming. If you can get hold of the sentry, I suggest you scratch him.”

“I’ll let Matilda Briggs do that,” said Miss Martin. “She’ll enjoy it.”

Enoch Clavering touched the Rector on the arm and said, “Listen.” Then he went over to the window and opened it.

“What is it, Enoch?”

“I thought I heard the bells some minutes ago, but I didn’t like to interrupt. They’ve stopped now. It’s as it was last time. The bells rang themselves. What does it signify?”

“It means,” said the Rector cheerfully, “that I’ve been a duffer. I ought to have seen that the trap-door to the belfry was padlocked. Our prisoners must have climbed up, and started clapping the tenor and the treble. Since they’ve stopped I imagine someone heard them and let them out.”

Miss Martin said, “What are we going to do?”