Furious Old Women (10 page)

“And you?”

“God gave me a sense of humour,” claimed Grazia, waving a heavily bangled arm. “I was able to see the funny side of poor old Millicent especially when I once nipped over to the church and gave it a good censing with the best incense just before their dreary old Eleven O'Clock Service which Father Waddell
will
keep on to please them. Millicent really thought Father Waddell had been using incense at Sung Mass—she never comes to that. She rose in her pew and said in a ringing voice, ‘Incense is an abomination to me! Isaiah 1, XIII, 1.' Then she marched out of the church. Father Waddell was very cross with me. He had to go and explain that I had done it as a joke. ‘Such jokes', said Millicent, ‘will call down fire and brimstone from heaven utterly to consume the wicked'. You see the sort of thing? Yes, she hated me, all right, but I could only find her funny and stuffy and protty, poor old thing.”

“I hear there was a reconciliation.”

“If you call it that,” said Grazia Vaillant, pouring another cup of tea for Carolus. “You see I was most anxious to have a Lady Chapel. When I tackled Father Waddell he took refuge in a kind of diplomacy which I can't say I admired. ‘If you can get Millicent Griggs to agree, yes,' he said. ‘If you can't talk her round I shall have to say no.' So I went to work and asked her here to tea. She was very much on her guard at first but I put it in the most modest way. A matter of convenience, I said, to save light when there are only a few people. ‘You already have the Lord's Table,' she said. ‘I know, but we want two Lord's Tables', I said. ‘If you don't object to one why should you object to two?' Rather clever of me, I thought, and very soon I saw she was coming round. She asked how many candlesticks would be on it, and I said only two. She agreed to give me her answer two days later and came round again. This time she asked whether I would subscribe to one of her pet charities—to convert the Jews or something. When I agreed she said she would
not stand in the way of what she called the second Lord's Table. She little knew that I'd bought a great big statue of Our Lady of Lourdes all ready for it.”

“So the vicar now agreed?”

“Well, it was only two days before she was murdered, poor old thing, and of course we've all been rather upset since then.”

“Naturally.”

“I was often very angry with her. She was infuriating, sometimes. She called everything we did to restore the church to its old state an
innovation
. You could not make her see that Protestantism itself was an innovation and our religion the old one. Whenever I did some perfectly natural thing like cross myself or kneel for a part of the Creed she looked at me as though she would like to strangle me. She wasn't quite sane, you know.”

“I certainly didn't know. Are you serious?”

“Quite. I won't say she was certifiable, though the sister Flora really is. But unbalanced. You couldn't have such ferocity in a normal mind. She once threatened me with her umbrella because someone told her my position with regard to Transubstantiation. She blamed me for everything. I was ‘plotting and scheming' to undermine what she called the ‘grand old English church service'. That sort of thing. It was an obsession with her. She spoke of me as ‘that Popish Vaillant woman'. There was a time when I really thought she would do me some physical injury. Can you call that sane?”

“Your disagreement does seem to have gone to some lengths. It is surprising that you should have been reconciled.”

“We weren't, really. Things were just patched up. She never ceased to hate me. She admitted that she would like to see me dead. She believed, sincerely believed, that an avenging fire would strike me from heaven.”

“No!”

“Truthfully. She told her sister Flora that, on the day before she died. ‘Not long', she said. Then changing the
sex in the words, she quoted Isaiah again. ‘Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with her: for the doing of her hands shall be done to her.' Then she went on, quoting correctly, ‘As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them.'”

“How do you know this?”

“Rumble heard it and told his wife. She told me.”

“It's very interesting.”

“It did not worry me. I know that kind of Calvinism.”

“Are there many people in the parish who felt as you did about—er, ritual and so on?”

“You really do put things in an odd way. If by ‘ritual and so on ‘you mean the Car-tholic religion, oh yes, there are a number of good folk who want to see dear Father Waddell take a firm line. The Miller-Wrights, for instance, are sound enough on vestments though they buck at a Sanctus bell. The Wilmingtons go all the way, bless them, though Moira Wilmington confided in me once that she always gets stuck on Eternal Damnation. The Skiptons we are educating nicely—they've got as far as Sung Eucharist and I
think
were coming round to auricular confession.”

“But the working people?”

“My old Mrs Rumble is a great comfort. She doesn't know what it's all about but she wants things brightened up, she says. Then have you heard of a woman known as Flo?”

“Have I
not!
”

“A teeny bit of a Mary Magdalene, I gather. Not very particular in her morals. But she has the right idea. She used to go to St Christopher's Hoxton in the great days of Father Wemyss-Buchan. She's been well taught.”

“You mean she goes to church?”

“Well, not very often. I
did
persuade her to attend our Midnight Mass last Christmas. (There was endless trouble with the Griggses about holding that and Father Waddell got over it by promising them a Watch Night Service on
New Year's Eve.) But I can't pretend poor Flo is a regular communicant. I don't think she's a really bad woman. Just hopelessly compliant. I blame the men of the village.”

“She seems an amiable soul.”

“There were one or two others with the right ideas. And several more who would have been all right if the Griggses had left them alone.”

“Tell me, what about the other clergyman? Mr Slipper?”

“Father Slipper? Oh, he was all right. Good little chap. Did as he was told. Left all decisions to Father Waddell.”

“Was he—er, High Church or Low? If those are the correct terms.”

“Your education has been neglected, Mr Deene. We don't speak of High Church. That goes back to Victorian days. As I have told you, we are Car-tholics.”

“Is that what is meant when people speak of Anglo-Catholic?”

“I suppose so but I don't like the term.”

“And Mr Slipper?”

“All right on most things. All the Sacraments except Extreme Unction. Celibacy of the Clergy, the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, all sound. A bit shaky on Reservation and Benediction. But his heart's in the right place.”

“He organizes things for the youth of the parish?”

“Wonderful with boys. Open air, you know. Healthy. Scouting and cycling. Organizes camps in the summer. He has persuaded old Sir Marriott Gibson to let them use the swimming pool in his grounds.”

“And in the winter?”

“Oh, he has his Club and Scout headquarters. Always arranging something. A play or physical culture. Weight-lifting for the older ones. I hear they're entering a team for some competition. They all walk about as though they couldn't forget their shoulders. Waygooze, our organist,
gets quite fed up with them flexing their muscles when they ought to be learning the
Kyrie Eleison
. But there's no doubt Father Slipper does a lot of good.”

“Did Miss Griggs recognize that?”

“I think so. She gave him a subscription whenever he asked for it. It was she who bought new bell tents for them last summer. I gather she has left money in her will both to Father Slipper and his pet causes.”

Grazia was gathering together the New Hall tea-service and putting it on the old Sheffield plate tray, with a jolly tinkle of beads and bangles.

“Of course from my point of view it's all very well, this youth organization, but I can't help feeling that a priest should be a priest and not a physical training instructor or expert on cooking over a fire in the open. I should like to see more catechism and less camp for the boys. But that's no doubt my old-fashioned point of view. I don't say Father Slipper doesn't get many of them to church but if they have to be induced to sing together in the choir by being allowed to sleep in tents, it doesn't seem to me to be putting first things first.”

“I suppose not.”

“There's a great deal of good in it, no doubt. But you know in a small place like this where there is sufficient labour, I'm
not
convinced that their bob-a-job scheme is so good. The boys hang round the cottages willing to lend a hand but most of them have very little to offer. It seems to me that Father Slipper is groping after something but never seems to find what he wants. However you don't need to hear my views. It's facts you're after. What can I tell you?”

“Mr Waddell tells me that he called to see you on the evening Miss Griggs died and that you were out.”

“The silly man! I was nothing of the sort! I may have been having a little snooze—I often do about that time. In fact now I come to think of it I remember waking up and finding I hadn't yet put on the lights and the tea things were still out.”

“What time was that?”

“It must have been nearly seven. Shocking, wasn't it? Sloth, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. If Father Waddell had only pulled at my old ship's bell instead of just pressing the electric one he would have awakened me.”

“Did you go out at all that day?”

“To early Mass, yes. Father Slipper said it that morning. We've managed to persuade Father Waddell to have a daily Mass though he has to call it Communion. The Griggs contingent would have a fit if he didn't….”

“But later in the day?”

“Let's see. I don't think I did. It was cold, I remember.”

“Not in the afternoon or evening, anyhow?”

“I'm sure I didn't. I always do the flowers on Tuesdays and Saturdays at the church. No. I stayed in that day. Like a dormouse.”

“You heard or saw nothing which might be helpful?”

“Nothing, I'm afraid. My good Mrs Rumble told me her husband was digging a grave for Chilling, I remember.”

“You didn't enter the church?”

“No, Mr Deene.”

“I don't think there's anything else I need ask you, Miss Vaillant. Unless you care to throw any light on one of the small mysteries—that of your reconciliation with Millicent Griggs. It does puzzle me that after years of antagonism she should have come here twice in a week.”

“It puzzled me,” said Grazia Vaillant immediately. “But I've told you all about it.”

“I haven't yet met Miss Flora Griggs. Do you think she shared in her sister's kindlier feelings?”

I'm not sure that Millicent's feelings were kindlier. If they were, Flora certainly did not share in them. She has a sort of Old Testament hatred for poor me.”

Carolus's eyes went back to that landscape—the only beautiful thing in the room.

“Ah—you're looking at my Constable,” said Grazia. “Fine, isn't it? “She threw out her hand. “Good-bye!” she said.

Carolus said good-bye with some relief and left Grazia Vaillant among her antiques.

It was still raining and a dark night but the ship's light over the door had been switched on and he could go quickly down the crazy pavement path to his car.

He started the engine, but when he switched on the lights he saw someone hurrying towards him, gesticulating to indicate that he should wait.

There came into his head absurd things like Mrs Stick's warning—' you oughtn't to be hanging about after dark, either. If they can do for an old lady they can do for you'. And Commander Fyfe's questions about people ‘hanging about'.

When he recognized the approaching figure he remembered also Fyfe's description of him as ‘a dangerous character, lawless, violent'. For the man who had stopped him was Mugger.

M
UGGER
had a thin insinuating voice. It might have been that in which Brer Fox addressed Brer Rabbit. He brought his long solemn face, with its ginger hair visible under his cap, to the window of Carolus's car, and Carolus opened this by a few inches. The rain was pelting down on him but seemed to have no effect as though his very skin were rainproof.

“I want to speak to you,” he said.

“You'd better get into the car,” Carolus told him and the long thin man twined in, scarcely opening the door. There was a silence.

“It was Rumble told me about you,” said Mugger at last, the tone of his voice not changing. “He said it would be all right if I told you.”

“What's that?”

“Something,” said Mugger promptly and flatly.

Carolus with his usual patience, waited.

“You're not a copper, are you?” said Mugger.

“No.”

“You wouldn't say anything?”

Carolus was greatly tempted to give a promise. But he had to come out with the old prim line which sounded so odd, spoken here in half-darkness in the rain-washed car.

“It depends on what you tell me. I'll only promise to respect your confidence as far as I honestly can. You see, you might tell me something which would have a direct bearing on the recent murder case. What could I do then?”

“I want to show you something.”

“Even then, how do I know that it won't be my duty to report it?”

“I don't know what to do,” said Mugger. “And I'm not a man not to know what to do. I saw you talking to Slatt the other night. Did he say anything about me?”

“No.”

“I give
him
a hard time. See, I don't say I'm an angel.”

“No.”