Someone in the House (29 page)

“Have you two had a fight already? This business with Debbie—”

“Really, Roger!”

“Oh, come on, Bea, this is important. Kevin is our main concern, isn’t he? I don’t give a damn about what he and Anne are doing—except that I hope they are enjoying it.”

He grinned at me, and I was tempted to stick out my tongue at him and his damned patronizing amusement, but of course I didn’t. After a quick glance at Bea’s pink face, Father Stephen said, “Wait a minute, Roger, you’re getting me confused. Let someone else talk for a change. Anne, have there been any new developments that I ought to know about?”

That beautiful display of tact was primarily for Bea’s benefit. Father Stephen must have known I had no intention of suppressing anything; in fact he may have assumed all along that Kevin and I were sleeping together.

“Kevin changed rooms last night,” I said.

“An excellent idea. I should have suggested it myself.”

“Yes, we all wondered why it hadn’t occurred to us before,” I said grimly. “We keep talking about our concern for Kevin, but we’ve been sickeningly negligent; we should have kept watch every night.” I hesitated, but only for a moment. “I was with Kevin from about two o’clock on. I can’t swear that nothing happened before I got there, but I don’t believe it did.”

“I see.” Father Stephen nodded coolly. “So he may indeed have benefited from the change to another room. We can’t be sure, however; there are too many other—er—factors involved. You are absolutely correct, Anne; we have not been sufficiently concerned with Kevin’s well-being. Is there anything else?”

Again I hesitated, cursing myself for failing to arrange my thoughts in advance. I didn’t want them to think I was ashamed of having been with Kevin, but there were so many things I couldn’t mention without betraying Bea’s confidence. She was not going to help me. Her eyes avoided mine; her hands were tightly clasped. She had told Roger about the séance, but not about the sleeping pills. Father Stephen didn’t know about either. Well, I thought, it’s up to her.

“There is something else,” I said. “Did Roger explain his idea about a prehistoric cult?”

“Yes, he told me about it before you came in. He also mentioned your suggestion.” From the gleam of amusement in his eyes I knew Roger had not omitted my suspicions of various people. I gave Roger a hard stare.

“I hope Roger also mentioned that I was just tossing ideas around. I didn’t really believe—”

“No apologies are necessary, Anne. I don’t know whose ingenuity to admire more, yours or Roger’s. In fact, your neatly woven plot makes better sense than his.”

“Do you mean—”

“Good heavens, no. I would be the last to deny that such groups do exist, but I’m sure nothing of the sort is happening here.” He glanced at Roger and added, in the blandest possible voice, “If I thought our quiet little community harbored a witchcult, I’d assume Roger must be the head of the coven.”

Grinning, Roger raised his glass in salute.

“Witch cult? What are you talking about?” Bea asked.

“Just one of Annie’s harebrained ideas,” Roger said. “I had a chance to talk to that little blond nitwit before you and Kevin came in, Anne. She hasn’t a thought in her mind except to drag Kevin to the altar. I understand she will be graduating next year, and at her college a girl who hasn’t got a ring on her finger by June is a failure.”

“Kevin is quite a catch,” I said. “Young, good-looking, rich, intelligent, gentle, kind—”

My voice cracked. It surprised me as much as it did the others. I turned my head away.

“It’s all right, Anne,” Bea said. “Really it is. Let me speak now. I was going to tell him anyway.”

The offer sounded nobler than it really was. She must have known Roger would spill the beans if she didn’t and she did not mention the sleeping pills.

I thought Father Stephen would be horrified. He just looked tired. The lines on his face deepened as Bea spoke, and when she had finished he shook his head wearily.

“I wish you had not done that. I warned you.”

“I can’t see that it did any harm,” Bea said.

I said bitterly, “‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.’”

Father Stephen glanced at me with a slight smile. “That’s Eliot, isn’t it? He’s always pithy. But this was not the right deed. Never mind, Bea; we’ll discuss it another time.”

“You still want to go ahead with your ceremony?” Roger asked.

“I cannot accept Bea’s story as conclusive evidence.”

“We agree on that, anyhow,” Roger said. “But exorcism—”

“Confound it, Roger; how many times must I repeat this? I cannot conduct an exorcism without a license from the Bishop, and I can’t apply for that without Bea’s permission.”

“It might be interesting at that,” Roger murmured. “I’ve read about the procedure, but I’ve never seen it done. I can’t see why Christian ritual and symbolism would affect something that never respected them in the first place.”

“You’re missing the point, Roger.” Father Stephen leaned forward, intent on the argument. “Did you read about the church in Mildenhall, England, which was closed recently because it was possessed by the spirits of pre-Christian devil worshipers?”

Roger laughed. “Yes, I saw the article in the paper. The vicar believed the church was built on the site of a pagan temple, where virgins were sacrificed. You people get so uptight about virgins—”

“But isn’t that precisely what you claim happened here?”

“I don’t know about the virgins. In that particular case exorcism didn’t help, did it?”

They went on sniping at one another all through dinner, and my annoyance continued to mount. They were old friends, they enjoyed their debates, but they had no right to discuss the subject as if it were another exercise in rhetoric.

Bea said very little. We exchanged only a few words as we cleared the table, leaving the men to continue their discussion. Then we all went to the chapel.

III

The window over the altar faced west. That evening it glowed as gloriously as the finest modern stained glass, a blend of bright copper and gold. Framed within its wide rectangle, a towering mass of pearly clouds might have been an impressionist rendering of the celestial city.

Bea closed the heavy oak doors. Even Roger seemed subdued, though it may have been regard for Bea rather than the golden silence that affected him. Father Stephen was…taller. Larger in every way. He didn’t look at us, or speak; he started slowly down the aisle. Bea slipped into a nearby pew. We sat in a row, like children in an old-fashioned school. Bea bowed her head and folded her hands. Roger sat bolt upright, his arms at his sides. I fell into the uneasy slump that is my stupid compromise when I’m forced to attend a church service—head down, eyes fixed on my knees.

Father Stephen stood with his back to us, his head raised. He was contemplating the sunset, or the carved relief on the wall under the window, I couldn’t tell which.

When he began to speak his voice was so soft I could not hear all the words. I guess it was one of the conventional prayers. Bea’s voice joined his in an equally inaudible murmur.

After the initial prayer he spoke more clearly, and I recognized much of the substance—it was almost all from the Bible, various Psalms and quotations from the Gospels, especially Luke. He had turned to face us. The setting sun gave his silvery hair a glowing nimbus. His voice was even more impressive than his appearance—low but distinct, investing the beautiful old phrases with a deeper meaning and a melodic music. As his quiet voice went on, I started to feel sleepy—not surprising, after my eventful night and busy day. Calmed and at peace, my mind wandered, remembering the moss-carpeted glade with its veils of green boughs. The memories didn’t seem irreverent; they were in perfect harmony with the soft voice that spoke of love and mercy and kindness.

The light went out, as suddenly as if a curtain had been drawn or a switch pressed down. Startled, I looked up and saw that the western window was black with storm clouds. The room was so dark I could hardly see. Father Stephen had changed from a silver-haloed saint to a dark, featureless shadow, identifiable only by his voice. He finished the sentence he had begun in the same calm tone, and then fell silent. After a moment a point of light sprang up and multiplied. He was lighting the candles on the altar table. The flames were like tiny folded hands; but the illumination seemed weak and frail compared to the tempest-darkened skies. When Father Stephen turned, his long black shadow leaped and quivered, a mocking distortion of the human form. Lightning bisected the high windows. For an instant every object in the chapel shone with a lurid glow.

A thunderstorm at that time of year was not unusual. Sometimes they came on with astonishing suddenness. But in this case my normal dislike of such phenomena was intensified by the uncanny impression of struggle between the great impersonal Forces without and the single small human figure whose quiet voice was increasingly drowned out by the roll of heavenly kettledrums. Between thunderclaps the rain provided a pounding, persistent counterpoint.

When the storm was at its loudest, Father Stephen got down to cases. He began to pray for all the dwellers in this house, for all those who had suffered and were troubled in spirit. In a brief—very brief—lull in the thunder, I caught the name of Edmund Mandeville.

Participating in Bea’s séance had not been fun, but this was worse. I felt as if I were on a battlefield, right next to the commanding general, and that all the enemy cannon were trained on him. A hit, or a near miss, would blow me to smithereens. Yet after a time I began to think that maybe our side was winning. The rain slowed to a drizzle, the thunder died; the western window paled to a lighter gray. Father Stephen’s voice rose in triumph. “As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax—”

The next clap of thunder bellowed like a bomb going off. The candle flames, which had burned steadily in that solidly insulated room, danced wildly. A second crash, like an echo, literally shook the floor. And this one, unlike the first, had come from within the room.

I leaped to my feet and banged into Roger, who was trying to push past me. Before we could untangle ourselves, Bea snapped, “Sit down, both of you!”

Her command was repeated, in an equally forceful tone, by Father Stephen. “Be calm; there’s nothing to be afraid of. Pray with me—yes, Roger, you too. ‘The Lord is my Shepherd….’”

I suppose he picked that one because he hoped even the heathen among us would know it. Which we did. If there is anything in the Bible, aside from the Lord’s Prayer, that is part of our universal heritage, it is the Twenty-third Psalm. Psychologically the choice was sound. There are no more reassuring words. Except for that part about the Valley of Death.

And as his voice rolled smoothly on, the storm passed. “Surely goodness and mercy…” brought light to the western window; and “the house of the Lord forever” called out a ray of pale sunshine.

The Psalm concluded, Father Stephen made a final sotto-voce appeal to the altar. I glanced at Roger. He looked like a gargoyle, his lower lip protruding, his cheeks bulging with repressed exclamation. Finally he could hold them in no longer.

“I’ll be damned! Look at that.”

Bea’s breath hissed out between her teeth. Father Stephen paid no attention, but I think he cut his final prayer short, knowing Roger wouldn’t keep quiet much longer. As soon as he turned, Roger bounced up, shoved past my knees, and erupted into the aisle. I had never imagined that Bea’s pretty features could look so malevolent. The look she threw at Roger’s retreating back should have burned a hole between his shoulder blades.

Father Stephen met his old friend/enemy in front of the altar. It was not until then that I realized what had prompted Roger’s impious exclamation. The relief of the mother and son—whichever mother and son—was no longer on the wall.

I joined the men, who were staring at something behind the altar. The slab of stone with the relief leaned against the wall at a slight angle, with the sculptured face still visible. Apparently it had slid straight down, striking with a force that produced the second crash, but had not fallen face down because the edge of the altar table had tilted it backward. I looked up at the wall. The stone had been supported by four metal brackets, two above and two below. The two lower supports had snapped. The jagged pieces remaining were red with rust. No doubt—oh, no doubt at all—the vibration of the last clap of thunder had finally broken the worn metal.

Roger was the first to speak. “Not bad, Steve, not bad at all. I don’t know how you conjured up the storm, but it couldn’t have been more suitable.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Father Stephen said calmly. “If I ever preached on hellfire and damnation—which I don’t—such an accompaniment would be perfect. I’d have preferred something a little less theatrical on this occasion.”