Mystical Paths (50 page)

VIII

I was blasted on to a different level of reality. The demonic spirit screamed.

The cross shuddered in my hand.

‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST –’ I recognised my voice but I was severed from it. My psyche had been dislocated, jolted from my body as the forces of darkness were battered by the forces of light.

‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, CHRISTIAN AYSGARTH, DEPART AND REST WITH GOD –’

I knew I had to stop that demon-infested spirit moving sideways out of Perry into someone else, but I was so weak, so shattered, so disorientated that I hardly had the strength to draw breath.

‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST –’

And then it happened. The Light exploded, pouring down upon us, and I saw the Dark disintegrate. Black blood gushed from the corpse. The demon died. And Christian’s spirit was finally set free.

‘DEPART AND REST WITH GOD!’ I shouted again with my last ounce of strength, and he was going, he was escaping at last, he was streaming forth on his journey towards all the freedom which had eluded him in life, and only the demon remained rotting in his place.

Then I found that the chapel was now a charnel-house, awash with blood and gore.

My psychic eye closed.

The stench of sulphur cut off the oxygen supply to my brain. I lost consciousness.

IX

When I opened my eyes again – my physical eyes – I was back in my body and my face was inches from the embroidered altar-cloth at the point where it touched the floor. Somewhere near me a woman was sobbing. The sobs were punctuated with words distorted by shock and terror. They were: ‘I killed him, I killed him, I killed him ...’

I failed to recognise the voice. I failed even to remember who she was. The police ... I’ll have to go on trial and evenything’ll be ruined, my whole life, everything,’ she was weeping, and then enlightenment arrived because it was Lewis who answered tersely: ‘Over my dead body.’

Memory assaulted me. I levered myself into a sitting position and looked at Perry who was lying in a heap on the marble floor before the altar. The back of his head was bashed in and his brains had burst out. The wooden cross lay nearby in a bog of blood. Beyond the chapel’s open door the birds were singing.

I looked around for my father but he was no longer there. Instead I saw Lewis and Rachel. They were halfway down the central aisle as if each had rushed to meet the other as soon as Lewis had entered the building. Rachel appeared to be glued to his chest as she shuddered and sobbed. He was clasping her tightly. As I hauled myself to my feet he glanced up the aisle and ordered: ‘Get her some water.’ His face was very pale.

I suddenly realised my little cross was lying at my feet. Retrieving it I put it back around my neck and stumbled to the vestry. My body felt as if it had been injected from top to toe with that drug dentists use to neutralise pain.

I was just filling the chalice – the only drinking vessel on the premises – when Lewis walked in. He strode over to me, removed the chalice from my hands and set it down in the sink with a thud. Then he grabbed my shoulders, spun me to face him and said in a voice which shook with rage: ‘You ignorant, arrogant, idiot of a boy, how
dare
you put my daughter in such danger, HOW DARE YOU!’ And he hit me on the cheek with the open palm of his hand.

I reeled back against the wall but he only closed in again. ‘I tell you,’ he said, renewing his grip on my shoulders and punctuating his phrases by giving me a series of violent shakes, ‘I tell you specifically – in words of one syllable – that Palmer might want to kill you. I explain – in great detail – why he could be dangerous. And
still –
STILL – you prance along into his trap because you’re so damned juvenile that you think you’re a comic-strip hero who’s discovered the secret of immortality! You ought to be flogged into a bloody heap!’ And he slapped me again before giving me such a blow on the jaw that I lost my balance and crashed against the cupboard where the vestments were kept.

I hit the floor. Lewis picked up the chalice and walked out, but a second later he had walked back, the chalice still in his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was unforgivable behaviour for a priest. I’m sorry.’ But then the rage roared through him again and he shouted: ‘No, damn it, I’m not sorry! Some people have to be beaten up before they can get it into their thick skulls that humility saves and arrogance kills!’ And once more he stalked out without looking back.

I lay on the floor. Then I managed to sit on the floor. I did try to get up but something seemed to have happened to my legs. Eventually I crawled on all fours to the sink and by gripping the rim I managed to lever myself to my feet. I stood there, breathing hard. Seconds later I was sick. I sluiced the mess away. Then I found my legs were working again so I crept back into the chancel.

Lewis and Rachel were now sitting in a pew halfway down the nave, and Rachel was sipping water from the chalice. Her tears had stopped but her eyes were swollen. Her make-up had streaked. She looked ill.

Lewis said curtly to me: ‘I’ve bolted the main door. Where’s the key which locks the door of the vestry?’

‘It should be in the lock.’

‘Turn it and come back here.’

I did as I was told. Afterwards he motioned me to the pew in front of him and I sat down, turning to face them both. Rachel never looked at me. She was still taking little sips from the chalice. Lewis’s right arm tightly encircled her body.

‘You’d better read this,’ he said, passing me a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘It’ll stop you wasting energy wondering how I came to be here.’

Unfolding the paper I read: ‘Dear Daddy, Nicholas and I are off to Starrington to meet the arch-villain Perry Palmer, who’s just phoned to suggest a rendez-vous in the Manor’s chapel! Don’t worry, Nicholas has worked out there’s nothinghe can do to us. We’re going to tape his confession. Back this afternoon sometime. Love, R.’

The paper slipped from my fingers but I made no attempt to retrieve it. I was feeling very sick again.

‘Now,’ said Lewis, ‘I need to know exactly what happened. Nicholas, I’ll hear your story first.’

I talked disjointedly for a while. The words only flowed rapidly when I recalled the horror at the end.

‘... and suddenly Perry spoke as Christian used to speak – he spoke in Christian’s voice at that same quick pace with the very slight stutter – he tripped on the T-H of "euthanasia" – and when I looked at him I saw Christian shining behind his eyes and I knew he was possessed, I knew the Devil had annexed Christian’s soul at the end of his life and planted a demon in it, and this demonic spirit was now infesting Perry in revenge for the murder, and the demonic spirit wanted to destroy Rachel and me. So I took off my cross and held it high to exorcise the demon, but at that moment I saw my father had entered the chapel, my father as he’d been in the 1940s – which meant he wasn’t dressed as a monk this time but as an ordinary priest – and I shouted: "Get out! Get back!" because he was so real, you see, so real, and it was all one reality, there was no break, I wasn’t in the past and seeing the past, he and I were both in the present, even though he was only in the present as his past self, and I thought he was in danger of being killed with us. Then when I shouted, Perry – who was Christian – the demonic Christian – spun round to face my father and Kachel grabbed the cross and swung it, though it’s amazing that she had the strength because it’s very heavy, but of course fear does give one abnormal strength – and she swung the cross and the moment he fell I knew I had to exorcise him before the demon could slip sideways into someone else, so I invoked the name of Jesus and commanded Christian’s spirit to rest with God, and suddenly the demon died, it split wide open and all the black blood spewed out, and as Christian went to God at last I was overpowered by the stench of sulphur from the dead demon, and I passed out.’

I stopped speaking. Several seconds passed. Then slowly, very slowly, I looked past Lewis’s inscrutable face and saw Rachel’s revolted expression. She whispered to her father: ‘He’s gone mad.’

‘I’ll sort him out later. Now darling, tell me if you can — but only if you want to — how it all seemed to you during those last moments.’

But Rachel had no trouble speaking her mind. She said to him strongly: ‘It’s rubbish to talk about possession. The only thing that changed was that Perry became dreadfully upset.’

‘Did you hear the change in his speech?’

‘It’s true he did begin to talk more quickly, and maybe he stammered slightly over "euthanasia", I can’t remember, but there was certainly nothing weird shining in his eyes! They were just tears. He was grieving, that’s all, and when he said he regarded Christian’s death as euthanasia I thought he was going to break down. It was obvious he’d loved Christian very much — well, he was confessing to a
crime passionnel,
wasn’t he? And that was tragic, of course it was, but there was nothing bizarre about it, and to suggest that Christian’s soul had been annexed by the Devil and implanted with a demon which had taken over Perry — well, I mean, it’s so fantastic that no one rational — no one
normal —
could possibly believe it. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life, and if you think it does, Nicholas, you should have your head examined. In fact maybe you should have your head examined right now because of course there was no man dressed in a clerical suit at the other end of the chapel, no demon splitting wide open, no black blood pouring out and quite definitely no reek of sulphur. All that happened was that I — I — I —’

‘It’s all right, my darling, there’s no need to speak of that now. What did Nicholas do after you’d done what had to be done?’

‘Bloody nothing! He didn’t lift a finger to help me, he just bawled out some religious rigmarole and passed out. Wonderful! A real hero on a white horse! Thanks a lot, James Bond!’ She started to sob again.

Lewis calmed her down. Then he said: ‘I’m not having my daughter standing trial for manslaughter just because a young man she barely knows used her to act out a fantasy. I’m going to detach you both from this disaster. I’m not going to let —’ But he decided not to utter the name of his old adversary. ‘I’m not going to let the wrong side win,’ he said instead, and as he spoke I saw him not just as an exorcist vowing to outwit the Devil, but as the maverick priest willing to travel beyond the law in order to serve God as he thought fit.

‘Now listen to me, both of you,’ I heard him say. ‘This is what we’re going to do ...’

X

We’re going to remove the body,’ said Lewis, ‘and leave it in his car, which is hidden away under the trees opposite that door in the wall. Once the body’s removed from the grounds of the Manor there’ll be no direct connection with any of us.’

I found myself saying: ‘How did you know the quick way to the chapel?’

‘Luckily for you the village pub happens to be one of my favourite watering-holes, and the landlord told me long ago about the famous little chapel at Starrington Manor.’ He paused before adding: ‘My own car’s parked near Perry’s — or at least I assume that car under the trees belongs to Perry; we’ll find out for sure when we try his key in the lock. But it doesn’t m.tter if any witness reports later that the two cars were parked within yards of each other, because I can always say I’d never seen Perry’s car before and therefore there was no way I could know it was his.’

My brain was beginning to function normally again. ‘You want the police to assume he picked up a hitch-hiker who turned violent?’

‘It’s as good an explanation as any other.’

‘In that case, should we take his wallet to make it look like robbery?’

‘No, we take nothing. If we take something, then we have the difficulty of getting rid of it. Let’s keep this very simple and then there’ll be less chance of anything going wrong — let’s leave it to the police to work out why he was carrying an unregistered gun and driving in the Starrington area. As far as we’re concerned we know nothing. You never spoke to him on the phone this morning, none of us saw him today, we had no idea he was planning to come down here.’

‘But what are we all doing at the Manor?’

‘You’d invited Rachel to see your home and eventually you brought her here to show her the chapel. In response to another invitation of yours, I then presented myself to be introduced to your father. We’d arranged to meet at the chapel, so I left my car by the door in the wall. However, Father Darrow’s turned out to be unwell so I’m not able to see him after all — or maybe I am; let’s wait and see what happens, because what we’ve got to do now is to stick to the truth as closely as possible. Then there’ll be less chance of making a mistake when we talk to the police.’

‘Did we meet Perry at Albany last night?’

‘Certainly we did, as that porter on duty will remember. I’d decided to treat myself to a dinner in London and I invited you to join me. We asked Rachel to come too, of course, but she had a headache and preferred to stay at home — which suited us well, as we had spiritual matters to discuss over dinner. Arriving in Mayfair at cocktail time you suddenly remembered your friend Perry and we decided to drop in at Albany on the chance that he’d be at home. I was interested to meet him because I thought he might have been related to the Palmer who was at Starwater Abbey with me in the ‘thirties.’

‘But why should you and I be such friends?’

‘We’re not. But when we met at Grantchester you realised I could be the spiritual director you were looking for, and I invited you to the vicarage so that we could further our acquaintance. Now,’ said Lewis, rising to his feet, ‘we’d better start clearing up the mess. Rachel darling, I want you to sit outside on the steps of the porch so that you can warn us ifanyone approaches. Nicholas, is any member of the Community likely to turn up?’

I glanced at my watch. ‘No, it’s almost lunch-time. They’ll be up at the house.’

‘As your father’s ill, mightn’t someone come down to prepare him a meal?’

‘Not in the middle of the day — although I suppose they might just want to check on him to see if —’

Which way would they come?’

‘For a quick visit they’d drive around to the door in the wall.’ ‘Run down and lock it. And take Perry’s keys so that you can make sure that car under the trees is his, but keep your wits about you and don’t leave your fingerprints all over the place.’

I somehow managed to extract Perry’s keys from the pocket of his jacket without vomiting all over his brains. I have no memory of my journey to the door in the wall. Across the road outside I saw the black Bentley. One of the keys opened the driver’s door which I opened and shoved shut with my hand masked by a handkerchief. Seconds later I was locking the door in the wall.

When I reached the chapel I found that Rachel had retired outside and Lewis was using his vest to mop up the blood on the floor. He had found the bucket which was kept in the cupboard below the vestry’s sink.

We don’t want to risk treading in this mess when we move the body,’ he said, ‘so I thought I should do at least a partial clean-up, but I’ll finish off more thoroughly later. Are you wearing a vest?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take it off and we’ll wrap the head in it. We don’t want blood dripping everywhere ... Did the key open the car?’ ‘Yes.’ I began to unbutton my shirt.

The head was appallingly mutilated, and when Lewis wrapped it without flinching I realised he had dealt with dead bodies in the war. To my humiliation I began to feel nauseated again.

We’ll burn all our clothes later in the vicarage furnace,’ Lewis was saying. ‘The police forensic scientists are so clever that we can’t take any risks.’ By that time he had secured the head. ‘All right, are you ready to move him?’

I had to say that I was.

‘If you’re going to be sick, do it now, in the vestry sink. We don’t want you making a mess in the wrong place.’

I went to the vestry sink but nothing came up. Everything had been vomited earlier.

‘Okay, take his legs,’ said Lewis on my return, ‘and concentrate on keeping in step with me. Then we’ll move more efficiently.’

We set off, leaving the chapel through the vestry door, and somehow maintaining a steady pace down the track. The journey to the wall seemed endless. I was again abnormally conscious of the birds singing among the sunlit trees.

‘Now for the tricky bit,’ said Lewis as we reached the door. Put your end down and take a look outside to see what’s going on.’

I took a look. No one was there. The Bentley stood waiting for us on the other side of the road.

We’d hear a car coming,’ said Lewis, ‘but let’s hope no one bowls around the bend on a bike. Okay, now when I give the word we head for the car
at the same pace.
Got that? If we try to hurry, the odds are we’ll get in a muddle.’

A new phase of horror began. We got across the road but on the verge I stumbled and dropped one of the legs. As the body tilted the gun fell out of the jacket. Lewis muttered a string of obscenities.

‘Sorry, Lewis, I –’

‘Don’t start apologising, just –’

I scooped up the gun, shoved it back in the pocket and retrieved the fallen leg.

‘Oh God, my fingerprints –’

‘I’ll deal with them. Just get going, Nicholas,
get going –
’

We blundered on and seconds later reached the far side of the car. ‘At least we’ve now got some cover,’ said Lewis, and he had barely finished speaking when a van passed by. Weducked out of sight. As we straightened our backs I said: ‘Where are we putting him?’

‘In the boot. Our mythical homicidal hitch-hiker would be anxious that the body should remain undiscovered for as long as possible.’

‘Isn’t that what we want too?’

‘Certainly. The more we obscure the exact time of death the more we distance ourselves from it.’ As he spoke he was unlocking the boot and raising the lid. We both looked around. The road was empty. There was no noise of approaching traffic. Once more we stooped over the corpse.

At that stage I would have succumbed to the dangerous impulse to hurry, but Lewis took his time. After the body had been stowed in the boot, he removed the gun from Perry’s jacket, wiped off my fingerprints and re-marked the gun with Perry’s prints before locking it in the glove compartment.

I said suddenly: ‘Why not wipe off Perry’s prints to make it look as if the gun belonged to the hitch-hiker? It would destroy any theory that Perry was a murderer on the loose and required killing in self-defence.’

‘I’m sure we should stick to the decision I made earlier to keep everything simple. The more we mess around, the more likely we are to make a fatal mistake.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘If the gun belonged to the hitch-hiker, why didn’t he shoot Perry instead of bludgeoning him? And why should he leave the gun to be found by the police?’

I was silenced.

I’m uneasy about that gun too,’ admitted Lewis after a pause, ‘but if Perry’s job at the Foreign Office really was as hush-hush as everyone was so keen to believe, maybe the Special Branch will stop the police from asking too many awkward questions. Certainly no one will want any scandal. In fact it may be in everyone’s best interests to cover up the murder.’ Handing me the vest which he had removed from the battered head he added: ‘Hold that for a moment.’

I watched in silence as he wiped clean the surfaces he had touched. He even wiped the steering wheel and the hand-brake, neither of which he had touched at all.

‘It’s what the hitch-hiker would have done,’ he said when I questioned him. ‘I’ll run through the story with you, but let’s wait till we’re safely back in the grounds.’ He locked the driver’s door, locked the boot and shoved the keys up the exhaust pipe before taking one last look around. Then back we ran across the road to the wall. The relief, as I slammed and locked the door behind us, was so great that my legs felt unsteady again.

‘Right – this is the script,’ said Lewis as we both slumped against the wall to recover, ‘and let’s hope it seems moderately obvious to the police. Last night when we visited Albany we both thought Perry was tired and needed a break. When we left, I gave him my card and told him to look me up if ever he was in the Starbridge area visiting you, but at no time did Perry say he would take a break the very next day; certainly if you’d known he was to be visiting the Manor, you would have expected him to drive up to the front door just like any other visitor; as far as you were aware he had no knowledge of the door in the wall and there was no reason why he should have parked there. The presence of the Bentley under the trees is a complete mystery to you.

‘With any luck the police will think: cheered by his visitors Perry feels much better he next morning and on an impulse heads into the country – to the Starbridge area which he knows so well from his visits to the Aysgarths. Acting on a further carefree impulse he decides to drop in at the Manor unannounced, but while he’s still some miles from Starrington he picks up a hitch-hiker. Away they drive, but shortly afterwards the hitch-hiker’s homicidal instincts get the better of him and he pulls out the blunt instrument which will be the murder weapon. He forces Perry to stop the car and get out. Then —’

‘Why didn’t Perry produce his gun?’

No opportunity. The gun’s locked up in the glove compartment.’

‘Oh, of course ... Sorry, go on.’

‘Another theory would be that this was a sexual episode andPerry left the car voluntarily. Anyway, the result’s the same: Perry’s bludgeoned to death. The killer then stows the body in the boot –’

‘Why not just leave the body where it was?’

If he removes the body from the scene of the crime he removes it from any clues lying around on the ground – footprints, for example.’

‘Okay. So with the body in the boot he drives off –’

— and decides to ditch the car at Starrington, a village with a mainline railway station ideal for a quick getaway. By one of those amazing coincidences which happen more often in life than in fiction, he dumps the car by the wall of the Starrington Manor estate; he figures that a Bentley will be less conspicuous tucked under the trees on the outskirts of the village than sitting in the station car park. Being mad but not mentally defective he then takes care to wipe all his prints from the interior of the car before he and the Bentley part company.’

‘I’m almost beginning to believe in this hitch-hiker.’

‘So much the better.’ Moving forward again he took the bloodstained vest from my hands and hid it under the nearest bush. Then he said: ‘After I’ve finished cleaning up with the other vest I’ll come back here and put both vests in my car. They’ll have to be wrapped up but fortunately I’ve got a rug in the back which can be burnt along with everything else.’

We headed up the track. Rachel, who had been waiting for us at the side of the chapel, disappeared from sight again as she resumed her position on the front steps.

It was Lewis who completed the task of cleaning up. He said mat no one who hadn’t been in the services knew how to clean properly. All I had to do was to run back and forth to the vestry sink in order to change the water in the bucket. I had to do this several times.

The last thing he cleaned was the wooden cross.

Put that back on the altar,’ he said, giving it to me, ‘and then double-check the altar-cloth to make sure there’s no speck of blood on it. After that you can try and work out if there’s anything we’ve forgotten.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To disinfect the bucket and put both vests in my car.’

He disappeared. I checked the altar-cloth and looked around. As he re-entered the building I was stooping to retrieve Rachel’s note from the floor.

‘I’ll burn that,’ he said as soon as he saw the folded paper, and reached for his cigarette lighter. Having flushed the ashes down the sink he himself checked the chapel to make sure nothing had been overlooked, and it was only when he declared himself satisfied that I .finally managed to say to him: ‘I’m very sorry for what I did. I know I deserved to be beaten up like that.’

Lewis never hesitated. He said: ‘No,’ and sinking down on the nearest pew he began to fumble for a cigarette.

‘No?’ I said, so startled that I forgot my shame and stared at him.

‘No. You didn’t deserve to be beaten up and I’m the one who should be apologising. Of course the person I really wanted to beat up was myself.’

I went on staring at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I was so involved with your problems that I was prepared to do anything to keep you under my supervision until the case was closed. I was even prepared to put my daughter at risk; I knew you were in an unstable state and I should never have left you alone with her.’ And when his cigarette was at last alight he managed to add: ‘Healing’s a dangerous ministry. You only need to make one slip — one little ego-trip such as the one I made this morning when I put my longing to achieve a cure above my daughter’s welfare — and then the Devil’s on the loose. There’s no room for pride and arrogance in the ministry of healing, Nicholas. You need humility, more humility and still more humility — and even then there’s never enough humility for all you have to do.’