The Anchoress of Shere, page 30
“All right, Marda, if it’s that important to you. Technically, you have stolen police evidence, but let’s not make a fuss about it now. I’ll put it in the hotel strong-box later, if you like. I think it will be safe on the coffee table for the moment…”
There was another knock on the door and the sound of heavy boots shuffling outside.
“Sergeant Terence Davidson, Surrey police, sir.”
Soon the room seemed to be full of doctors, uniformed policemen and plain-clothes detectives. Marda’s friend Jenny was allowed in for ten minutes, and they hugged and kissed and promised to do a hundred things together once the policemen and doctors had finished their business.
Prompted by Gould, who was rapidly becoming her psychological mentor, his decency substituted for the evil of Duval, Marda briefed the police on her months in captivity; the professor insisted that she stay in the comfort of the hotel room rather than go to Shere police station. She would sign a full written statement the next day, once the doctors had given their agreement that she was fit enough. Meanwhile, the police needed some leads for their manhunt.
Marda tried to remain calm at the centre of this maelstrom. She did not cry, although she would, long and hard; but later, after it was all over, and with friends rather than strangers. After the initial police interview, everyone was asked to leave the room while a local doctor gave her a second, more detailed, check-up. Fifteen minutes later they all trooped back into the professor’s room.
“Rather run down and undernourished, but I’m sure she will be fine in a few weeks.” The doctor meant, but did not say, physically fine.
Marda smoked too many cigarettes and drank pints of orange juice, interspersed with cups of tea and visits to the bathroom every ten minutes.
The outpouring of her experiences was not only a necessary police procedure, but also a useful psychological catharsis. Gould was always at her side as a prompter or comforter, until Superintendent Woodward arrived and asked to speak to him.
Leaving a policewoman with Marda, they went downstairs to the emptying bar to talk. The landlord, thrilled that the White Horse had become the centre of a manhunt, offered them tea.
After brief preliminaries, the police officer said, “We’ve got a full alert out for Duval, and at first light we’ll comb the woods for him. His car has been towed to the police station. He won’t get far. We had a sighting of a second car in the vicinity of the old rectory and it was registered to the car pool at the cathedral in Guildford. He might have sought help there. If so, we’ll get him straight away.”
The superintendent realised he had said too much: the Church connection could become sensitive.
“You’d better catch him fast, Superintendent. He’s killed five or six women, and almost finished off poor Mark. And Mark’s a bloody good bloke.” Gould threw in another of his favourite English expressions. “The hospital expects him to pull through, thank heavens, probably because he’s in good shape thanks to his army training. You know that Duval tried to crucify him?”
“That is utterly bizarre, although I must say that I find Catholicism generally rather…er, medieval,” said the policeman, scratching his head nervously.
“Well, it’s hardly anything to do with modern Catholicism, of course. But, historically, it’s not entirely bizarre.”
The superintendent looked at the American as though he were an alien.
“It ties in with my own research. It is my field,” the professor said defensively. “A few medieval mystics actually believed they could eat of the flesh and blood of a crucified man, albeit preferably a holy man or woman. To put it crudely, just an extreme and perverted form of holy communion. Some devil-worshippers, and indeed some Christians, attached significance to such acts. That could explain it.” The professor noticed the disbelieving look on the policeman’s face, and added a caveat: “Perhaps-it’s only a theory.”
“Sounds a very unsavoury practice to me, Professor. Not normally the sort of crime we’re used to around here. You’ll be talking about flying witches next.” He took his leave, adding, “The sooner we get this unholy priest under lock and key the better. Goodnight.”
The unholy priest was hiding near the spot where his last victim had taken up his observation post a little more than a week before. The rest of the world would undoubtedly have defined Duval as mad, but insanity takes many forms and the deviant priest was still very capable of avoiding capture, not least because he possessed the extra cunning of the hunted.
The priest had to make his final arrangements before leaving the country. The traumatic recent events had shocked him into a semblance of rational introspection and an ability to question his own sanity. Standing in the darkness of the woods, a cold logic penetrated his brain. Regrets started to swamp him, not moral regrets, but frustration with his own behaviour. If only he hadn’t drunk so much and then nearly choked in his kitchen. He cursed himself for falling into a hole he had dug himself.
“May all the demons in Hell be forever damned for leading me into such utter folly,” he said aloud.
He unscrambled his brain for an answer: psychologically, he had taken too long to recover from his beating. That was it. How could he know that his own disciple would turn on him? Who could have anticipated such betrayal? Her strength had been amazing, and her anger. The ungrateful witch.
And Gould’s deceitful article had shaken his whole being, undermining a lifetime of work. But it was foolish to succumb to Gould’s lies. He would recover and prove the American to be a forger and a charlatan. Yes, God would give him a second chance to finish his work.
The Almighty was on Duval’s side; he had proof of that. God had saved him: stopped him choking to death, and sent the bishop’s curate to the house to discover him lying in the half-finished grave and pull him out. Yes, that was a resurrection.
The curate, concerned for Duval’s mental and physical health, had driven him back to the episcopal palace in Guildford. But Templeton, incandescent with rage at the priest’s filthy and drunken condition, had simply locked him in a bedroom to sober up. He had been left there for over a day, his only visitor the bishop’s secretary bringing him tea and unbuttered toast.
“His Grace does not wish to see you today,” the man said. “He feels that a period of contemplation would be beneficial to you”-further evidence, as if Duval needed it, that the bishop was not God’s man and did not understand the priest’s holy calling.
“His Grace is going on a retreat,” the secretary continued. “He has left you these written instructions concerning the travel arrangements and other details regarding your posting in Bolivia.” With that he left the room, locking the door carefully behind him.
Duval sat stunned for a while, chewing on the unappetising dry toast. Late that evening he finally gathered his wits together and clambered out through the window of the locked room. And the bishop would get the car back, and the transistor radio he borrowed. It wasn’t theft.
Time had been lost, though. Duval estimated he had been away from his house for around forty-eight hours. Thanks to the bishop’s desire to banish him to South America, he had his escape route organised, but first he needed to get back into his house. He heard the initial news reports of the police cordoning his home on the radio he had “borrowed” from the bishop. He knew the place would be swarming with police, poking around in the cellar, digging up the garden; at first light they would start sweeping the woods. But the last thing they would expect him to do would be to go back to his own house.
Bishop Templeton was a seriously troubled man, but he knew where he would find solace. It had worked before: a day or two of isolation in a small monastery on the edge of Dartmoor. The abbot was an old friend. The bishop could pray, walk, and think there. He told his secretary to cancel all appointments for the next forty-eight hours.
The bishop departed for Dartmoor just two hours before the police arrived at his palace. Templeton drove himself, because he wanted to think, not engage in polite small talk with his driver. He brooded on Duval. God, he had tried to help the man, but he had been kicked in the teeth. The bishop blamed himself. He had been too indulgent. Too kind. His own reputation would be called into question if Duval were involved in any further scandals. The image of the Catholic Church had to be preserved at all costs; two thousands years of history had to be cherished. Human imperfection, he knew, would always threaten Rome’s ideals. But Duval would soon be in South America, and no longer his responsibility. The bishop smiled, and started to look foward to his retreat.
But when Templeton arrived at the monastery, a message from the Surrey police, relayed by the abbot, forced him to turn the car round and drive back to Guildford immediately. He had not been indulgent; he had inadvertently succoured a mass murderer. The bishop’s life and career were in ruins.
Little did Duval know it, but the bishop’s absence had bought him the extra time he needed.
From his vantange point overlooking the old rectory he watched as an ambulance took away Denise’s remains; various senior officers came and went, and for a while the place was a brightly lit circus. By three o’clock in the morning, however, just one panda car remained outside his house. If he was lucky, it would be occupied by the senile PC McGregor, probably asleep.
Duval was right: it was McGregor in the car, but the deeply superstitious officer was too frightened to sleep. Having locked all his doors to keep the devil-priest away, he was sitting rigid, with the police radio on and a truncheon on his lap. A tartan-patterned thermos flask lay empty on the front passenger seat.
Duval knew he would have to take his chance. He had to get back into the house, and he had wasted too much time already.
Duval would have liked to have taken his dog; that was now impossible, but there was one thing without which he would not leave Britain: his only typescript of the “Anchoress of Shere.” He had almost completed it, but not quite. Busybodies had interrupted him when he was on the eve of finalising this all-consuming life project. His experiments on twentieth century women had not worked out as he had hoped, but his spiritual insights, the comparative work which linked the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, had to be recorded for posterity. Yes, despite Gould’s lies, there were hundreds of years of mystical insight encapsulated in his work as well as twenty years of his own humble endeavours to add to this long sweep of history. He must finish it, and he had to take it with him. He was incensed with himself for not arranging a copy earlier, but events had crowded in on him.
Duval once more dismissed Gould’s work as fraud, sloppy research or crass ignorance. The shock of reading the American’s work had been overwhelming, but now he’d had time to think it through. He would cross-check Gould’s findings, reveal the professor to be a cheat. He was the better historian, and he would be proven right in the end.
Frenzied thoughts hammered away in Duval’s brain as he cautiously penetrated the dank copse at the rear of his garden. He scaled the wall by the big laburnum tree and peered over the top. No one was there…except a roe buck grazing near the wall. The animal stared at him before bolting back into the Hurtwood. There were no lights on, and as he crept through the garden he almost fell again into his recent excavations.
A yellow notice had been pasted on the back door: “No Entry-Police Investigation.” Duval looked at the repaired window and prided himself on his handiwork, necessitated by the failed rescuer’s vandalism. Ah, that was when he’d had time, and peace, before they all disrupted his sacred mission.
He rummaged in the flowerpot near the window to find the hidden doorkey. Opening the door slowly, despite the gloom he realised that everything in his kitchen had been moved. He was very indignant at the intrusion into his home. And everything was so damp, as though the interfering morons had hosed down his kitchen.
Moving into the hall very carefully, he felt that the carpet underfoot was soggy, and a cold, wet, musty smell pervaded the house. Perplexed, he made his way into the study. All the curtains were closed, and no outside observer could see him. He could not put on the lights, so he felt his way to the desk.
The book was not where it should be. “They must have moved it,” he said aloud. He fumbled through the drawers of his desk and around the rest of the room. “They can’t have taken it, not yet! Why would those interfering bureaucratic clods be interested in my historical work? Perhaps it’s somewhere else in the house?”
He went upstairs for his small case and some clothes, and rummaged some more in search of his precious typescript.
“Maybe they’ve taken my passport,” he said to himself, “but they wouldn’t have taken my book. It can’t be possible!”
He went back to the kitchen and lifted up the trapdoor, then leaned down to turn on the light-switch. No one outside would notice the light in the cellar, but it wouldn’t work. He got his torch from the kitchen, descended the stairs, and was shocked to find two feet of water in the corridor. He had no idea why it was flooded.
All the cell doors were open. He looked into the sodden mess of Marda’s room, searching for his final chapter, even looking in the air vent. It was hopeless. He hardly gave a thought to his former charges, simply assuming the police had taken the brother and sister away, alive or dead. But Gould; perhaps he had the book? The American was jealous enough to steal it, or perhaps the police had asked his advice on the meaning of the text. “Find Gould, maybe find my book,” he said aloud.
He stared up and down the cellar corridor and his eyes alighted on the large crucifix. And then he knew what had to be done.
He tore at the crucifix with furious strength, but it was fixed firmly on the wall. He went back up to the kitchen for tools, and returned to loosen the fixtures and drag it off the wall. The cross was heavy, but he could just about pull it, dripping, up to the steps. His manic strength enabled him to stagger up the stairs with his load. He stopped for a moment, to draw breath and to think.
Frantically assembling the things he would need, he put them in a small hold-all that he hoisted over one shoulder. Over the other he dragged the cross to the front door. It was too heavy to carry very far, and he saw that the police had removed his old Morris from the drive. His rage was mounting to fever pitch.
Constable McGregor, dozing in the front seat of his police car parked on the road outside, awoke to the sound of a hammer smashing through the driver’s window. He did not have the time to raise his hands to protect his face as the hammer smashed twice into his skull. The third blow blinded him. He gurgled blood as his left hand reached out and fell lifeless on the tartan thermos flask. Duval wrenched the door open and, in frustrated rage, battered the policeman’s head until it was a shapeless crimson pulp.
It was less than a mile to St. James’s church from Hillside. Duval drove the police car with the rear doors open, the spar of the cross protruding. It was very dangerous. But Duval didn’t really care any more about anything, except how to tease out a little more time. He needed just a short breathing space to complete what he had to do. The journey along the winding lane between the dark hedges took just over a minute.
One hundred yards in front of the church, the village square was silent and deserted; the rear of St. James’s, shrouded in trees, was in total darkness. Shere was unusual in having no street lighting; the local council had decided that it would spoil the medieval ambience of the village.
Leaving the car and the crucifix in the lane behind the church, he crept through the shadows to the edge of the square.
The White Horse was in darkness, as was the lane beside it. No lights were on in the upper floor. Duval used the hammer to force the rear door of the pub open, and carefully ascended the stairs to the residents’ floor. He knocked gently on the door to room number three, Gould’s room. There was no answer. One heave of his shoulders broke the flimsy lock. Cautiously switching on the light, he entered the room; it was unoccupied. He could see a manuscript on the coffee table. It was his work, his life’s work. He seized it with both hands, and left quietly and quickly.
Keeping to the shadows, he walked along the stream side of the square. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two police cars, a hundred and fifty yards away, parked between the stone bridge and Marda’s flat. No one would expect him to be in the centre of Shere; that was the last place anyone would be looking, but he still had to move fast.
In the pitch darkness, he managed somehow to drag the heavy crucifix from the car to the side porch of the church. The door was never locked; even with the rise in crime, a village church was nearly always safe from vandals or thieves. Exhausted and soaked in sweat, he sat down on the pew nearest to the medieval site of Christine Carpenter’s cell. He looked with sadness on the sacred quatrefoil and squint, the last time he would gaze upon these relics of her life. These relics of his life, too.
He lit a candle and placed it at the base of the quatrefoil on the floor of the church. Alongside he placed his typescript, his offering to the holy Christine. Perhaps now, in his infamy, people would recognise his book, his lengthy intellectual toil.
Christine had prayed so long, so hard, for Jesus Christ to answer her; to provide a sign, to make the crucifix weep those tears of absolution. Now tears would weep for her. The agony of crucifixion would be displayed before her eyes.
The crucifix lay flat, shadowed by the flickering candle. One arm of the crucifix still had a nail protruding from where it had been fixed in the cellar. He hammered six-inch nails into the other spar and into the small spar on the base. Duval had practised a crucifixion recently. He had failed then, but nobody would stop him now.
Once the nails were in place, he carried the cross to the edge of the chancel, a short distance from the place where Christine had sought absolution. He propped the cross at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall. Using the thick cross-spar at the base as a step, he stretched his arms along the span of the cross and gazed longingly at the two squints, the windows of Christine’s cell, the lights of her tiny universe. His book stood reverentially at the base of her anchorhold, flickering in the candlelight of remembrance. Tears would fall from the crucifix before her very eyes.
