The Triple Goddess (72 page)

The DL ignored her man’s whingeing, commenting only that she found such sensitivity odd in one who was accustomed to inhaling sulphurous fumes round the clock at home. She recommended that he start eating kippers himself, on the same principle that eating garlic, in addition to keeping vampires at bay, inured one to the smell of it in others.

The devil lady also delighted in consuming another fish at teatime: the salmon that was most conveniently smoked at a local premises and purveyed either at the adjoining shop or for home delivery by van, by a stalwart family business only a few miles away. Served with lemon juice and brown bread and butter, the smoked salmon was quite delicious, and the DL had diaried a reminder to herself to find out if the company accepted export orders. When one day the DL’s serving-man, hoping to wean her off the kippers, brought in the tea trolley with the addition of some succulent pieces of chicken and duck that had been cured at the same place, the devil lady struck the table with an appreciative napkin and lowered her eyes to Hell in ecstasy.

‘Infernal smokes! How exceedingly fortunate I am to have been condemned to such luxury!’

Her unmusical laughter at her little joke was accompanied only by a sneer from her manservant. ‘Who do you think you are, the Queen of Sheba? As if eating three square meals a day weren’t enough without wanting this…this stuff in between. You’re getting fat.’

Appalled, the DL pushed back her chair and got up. She was very vain about her appearance. ‘Rubbish!’, she said, self-consciously smoothing her hips and thinking that there might be something in what her man said. ‘And don’t make personal remarks.’

‘Pah! The house smells like Billingsgate on a hot day.’ Her servant stared with loathing at two blistered items on a plate that had previously done business as members of the herring species.

‘How typical of the lower class,’ the DL murmured, sitting down and nibbling a piece of duck, her equanimity restored, ‘not to have an appreciation of the finer things in death. This stuff is a real devil-send to one in need of a bit of pampering. By the way, on the liquid front I note that you’ve been at the whisky decanter again. I know because I marked the level. I’ll thank you to remember that the drinks are for myself and our guests, should we ever have any. Really, it is so hard to get good help these days.’

‘Spare me the self-righteous twaddle. I’m sorry to interrupt your ladyship’s oh-so-refined enjoyment, but I am the bearer of bad news.’

‘What is it?’

‘Effie’s begun a campaign to rouse people up against Father Fletcher. Piled on the make-up and paint and gone on the warpath.’

‘Warpath?’

‘That’s what I said. Calling door-to-door, bawling into a very unnecessary megaphone along the Street, starting a petition, organising a demonstration—the works, Harrumphshire-style. She’s demanding that everyone send letters of complaint, drafted by herself, to the Bishop about you and the Darkster. The PCC’s up in arms and the churchwardens are taking the matter very seriously. Coffee-time after Ophelia’s services have turned into opposition rallies.’

The manservant endeavoured to conceal his pleasure at having been able to make such an announcement, and it seemed to him that the
eau de kipper
may have receded somewhat. ‘There’s more. HQ wants a full report. How they found out I have no idea,’ he added, looking away; ‘but to say they’re irked would be an understatement. There’s a fax just came in and several e-mails, reminding you that we’ve never lost ground in this area before. Harrumphshire is regarded as a very safe constituency.’

‘Bloody Heaven.’

‘In other words you’ve been put on notice. They’ll be watching you closely from now on, and won’t hesitate to send in a Specialist if things don’t improve sharpish.’ The man gazed at the chandelier and decided to postpone dusting the crystal pendants.

The duck turned from smoked to ashes in the devil lady’s mouth. Specialists were bad news, the very worst. She massaged her temples in an attempt to restore the flow of thought, then got up from the table and paced the hearth. One of the most terrible things about a devil’s lot was that HQ set no store by one’s recent commendable achievements. It was only interested in today’s results and the prospects for tomorrow. There were no laurels to rest on in Hell: the genus
Laurus
, family Lauraceae, was nowhere to be found in its purlieus.

Suddenly she utterly lost her composure, which was something she had never before. ‘Woe, woe, woe!’ she wailed, flapping her hands as her man stiffened with surprise and concern. Whatever he might think of his mistress at any given moment or however much he might disapprove of anything she did, they stood or fell, further, together. ‘A Specialist? Is there to be no respite, nothing to relieve the endless grind and persecution?’

This was a rhetorical question, of course, for the facts were stark: the DL’s career had not been prospering for most of the last century, and sometimes she felt as if she would be unable to bear up under the strain and stress of her responsibilities. Although sometimes cracks showed upon the veneer of her self-possession, the outburst was unprecedented: no such manifestation of a loss of confidence had ever occurred when she was not alone.

The fact was that when the devil lady had left London for the country, however she dressed it up in her mind as a step up in death, it had been in a desperate, even last-ditch, attempt to ease some of the pressure upon her and preserve the last vestiges of her self-esteem. As vain an aspiration as she knew this to be—she could run, but she could not hide—she was still confident that her skills might win her enough glory in a less competitive environment than London to reinstate her position in the upper quartile of devilish rankings that used to be taken for granted. Success in so doing would enable her, eventually, to gain promotion to a level that would remove her from field duty, and the constant need to prove herself.

Oh! how she longed to be behind a desk in a management position, one that came with a full staff instead of this one cantankerous flunkey, who she was sure told tales about her shortcomings and failures to his cronies at home, which then would be passed on to her superiors. Just as Madame Cornuel had observed that no man is a hero to his valet, the same was true of her and her manservant.

‘That’s all they think about, isn’t it?’, raged the DL; and she recited the words from her catechism: ‘“Souls tarnished and blackened, seeds of doubt sown, sins and venalities incited, offences encouraged, evils perpetrated, acts of charity denied, good intentions scotched, escutcheons blotched.” “Murder most foul”, quoth the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Effie! I knew that woman was trouble the moment she blew in here the other day. Of all the villages in all the countries in all the world, I had to move into hers!

Feeling like a most unlikely Ingrid Bergman in the movie
Casablanca
, the devil lady picked up a smoked salmon sandwich from the table and thrust the comfort food into her mouth as she fell into a chair. It was too early for gin in her joint.

Her man’s shock was diluted with a
soupçon of
smug as he continued his report. ‘Effie’s rallying support behind the crazy curate she lives with, nudge nudge wink wink, Ophelia, and rousting out an army of supporters, all spoiling for a fight. She’s tearing around doling out rock cakes to anyone who’ll have them. Rock cakes. She mentioned rock cakes when she was here, didn’t she? Bakes ’em by the cartload. In fact that’s what she’s using: a cart, pulled around by that borrowed horse of hers.’

The DL’s spirits, such as they were, lifted slightly. ‘I’ll be surprised if they don’t all get indigestion,’ she sneered; ‘I dare say even that woman’s sponges are like concrete.’

‘Nevertheless you might give them a try for tea instead of fish. At least they don’t smell.’

In an attempt to regain her equilibrium, the DL chose to ignore the jibe and put on a bold front. ‘A woman who does battle with a rolling-pin hardly constitutes a threat to one of my experience,’ she said languidly. “Sire, the peasants are revolting!”, said the courtier to King Richard the Second. “I find them disgusting myself”, he replied.’ But within herself she found herself wondering whether it had been wise to leave London. If south of the river was as bad as people made out, it would be fertile territory.

The man said, ‘Let me remind you about Ophelia, the priest woman. This isn’t all about Effie. Ophelia wears sandals and is a certified lunatic. Oxford graduate, Lady Margaret Hall. Some in the Church, those who are in favour of women in the clergy for one reason or another, used to speculate years ago that she might become the first woman bishop. That was before she lost her marbles and split for China. All bets were off after she wigged out.’

The DL’s lip curled like the edge of a stale sandwich. ‘The thought of stooping to deal with a mere curate, the lowliest of the low amongst the ordained, is depressing. To do so would be extremely infra dig. I have a reputation to maintain.’

The manservant’s upper lip imitated his mistress’s, but he curbed his tongue. ‘Perhaps, but get this: she is said to believe in the power of prayer. Or so I’m told by them as know,’ he added slyly, tapping the side of his nose. He instantly regretted this last remark. He was a lowly individual himself, and such information could only have been gleaned from secure intelligence sources that he did not have clearance to access.

Such was her consternation that this did not register with the DL as she sat bolt upright. ‘Great Scott! Are you sure? You know the form, why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Only just found out. I scanned her brainwaves from behind a hedge outside the church. Took the liberty of borrowing your meter after you told me what a bloody useless gadget it was. I didn’t get a chance to run the stats through the computer till this morning—the Server’s been down all week for repairs and I’ve had no time, what with this ruddy kipper-run you’ve had me on, and trying to keep the cats out of the kitchen. Anyway, when I did, I couldn’t make head nor tail of ’em. The brainwaves, not the cats, though I did get close enough to chop a tail off with a meat-cleaver.’

The devil lady was horrified, and not by the Manx-ed moggy. Now she would be required to file a report; the rules were as binding in Hell on this as the Hippocratic oath was to a doctor, with the difference that she had no choice but to adhere to them.

The manservant looked at his mistress inquiringly. He did indeed know the form. ‘Shall I call it in?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she replied as evenly as possible. ‘I’ll do it myself later on.’

He tried to keep the irony out of his voice. ‘Fine. You’re the boss.’ He was disappointed at not being assigned a role after he had brought the matter to her attention. Still, he could circulate the news amongst his colleagues, which would be almost as effective as going through official channels. There might even be a commendation in it for him.

The DL sighed. ‘Keep me posted. The smallest detail, you bring it to me, understand? In the meantime, have Dark summon Ophelia and order her to cause this…menopausal mockery, as he’ll probably put it in that ridiculous way of speaking he has, to cease. He’ll enjoy that, especially if I give him permission to hold the meeting here in order to intimidate her. It may not have worked on Effie but it might on Ophelia if she’s alone. Dark’s an odd fish, one as yet unsmoked, a paradigm of perverse parsonry, but it takes a crackpot to deal with a crackpot. Now clear the table and leave me alone until suppertime. I’ll ring when I’m hungry.’

Wrinkling his nose at the smell of fish-skin and bones, the manservant piled the tea things on the trolley without as much care as should be accorded to Staffordshire bone china. Rattling from the room, he slammed the door behind him with his foot.

Chapter Thirteen

Ophelia agreed to pay Father Fletcher a visit at the Old Rectory, where he had been instructed to receive her.

When the manservant answered the door he was impressed that the mastiffs, instead of displaying their normal aloofness, were rolling on their backs with their tongues lolling out to have their tummies scratched, and whining with subservience. The curate, to his surprise and not a little to hers, for she had not considered how she would behave, greeted the man with such disregard for his lowly status that he thought she must have mistaken him for Dark. Without a word he turned and led her into the drawing-room, where, although the weather was warm, a fire was roaring in the grate. Before it Fletcher Dark was posed in his jet-black soutane. Instead of coming forward to greet her, he waited for Ophelia to weave her way round the furniture, and did not proffer his limp handshake.

‘Don’t hand her a bunch, she’s out to lunch. Omit to ooze unctuousness in an atmosphere of ostentation.’ Dark’s nonsensical ejaculations were a verbal tic, and not consciously intended to be rude or snide. Ophelia advanced and raised the reverend’s damp hand from his side, moved closer and peered into his eyes.

‘My dear Fletcher,’ she said in a whisper of concern; ‘I do hope you won’t mind me calling you Fletcher this early in our acquaintance. I feel I know you so well already. We are so lucky to have you. Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice in your lovely home. Are you quite well? I’m so glad. I, on the other hand, never seem to be able…it’s my health, you know. Some days I don’t even know where I am, let alone where I’m going.’ To herself, Ophelia asked what on earth—she hoped it was earthly—was possessing her—she hoped nothing was—to adopt such an ingratiating tone. She suspected that Dark’s umbrageous persona and offensive manner must have triggered some nervous defensive mechanism within her. The senior reverend scowled, slid his hand from her grasp and moved backwards until he stumbled on the hearth and nearly fell. The heat of the fire was intense on the backs of his legs, but mostly he registered a feeling of irritation at being knocked off centre stage. ‘I wonder…’ continued his visitor, wondering what it was that she was about to wonder, but conscious of needing to gather herself, ‘...might I use the smallest room?’ She heard herself speaking as if she were the one being addressed, and half turned away, not knowing how to respond.