Marda did not remember much of the immediate frenzy that followed Gould’s phone call to the police and ambulance service, when blue uniforms and white coats filled the kitchen. She did remember being carried into an ambulance, placed alongside her brother, and something being injected into her arm. She had been starved and tortured for months, she had been traumatised by Duval’s attempted crucifixion of her brother, and she had just endured a lengthy immersion in icy water. No wonder, for the moment, Marda’s physical reserves were utterly depleted. The ambulance was warm and safe; lulled by the unaccustomed comfort, she drifted into sleep.
An hour after her deliverance she was wheeled on a mobile stretcher into the casualty department of the Royal Surrey County Hospital, by which time she was feeling reasonably alert again. Marda had been too long a helpless victim. Duval had not only been the lord of her life and death, but also the lord of the manner of death. Despite the months of agonising pretence and her ploys to appease or manipulate him, there had been little ambiguity in the relationship, merely a crude juxtaposition of the powerful and the powerless. Her life had depended on him alone. She had had to be grateful to this single embodiment of her fate for everything that happened to her-food and water and light-and, more importantly, for the things that did not happen to her. And yet her spirit had not been broken. The hardest steel had reinforced her will when she had finally confronted Duval, physically and psychologically. No more would she be dictated to. She had been transformed by her terrible ordeal; from now on, no matter how unconventional she might appear, she would choose her own path. Her body, showing obvious signs of maltreatment, had temporarily been subdued, but her will, her mental stamina, was not only undiminished but eager to continue the battle against her tormentor. With an acute stab of fear in the depths of her stomach, she sensed that it was not all over yet.
As the nurses prepared to move her into the starched white sheets of a bed, she said, “Where’s my brother? I need to see him now.”
The staff were used to the truculent behaviour of patients suffering from shock. A nurse, younger than Marda, said gently, “He’s in intensive care. Don’t worry, we’ll look after him. Please let me help you into bed; the doctors want to have a good look at you. We’ve heard what a horrible time you’ve had and…”
Marda very calmly interrupted her, “I would like to borrow some clothes, please. A dressing-gown or something. I absolutely insist on seeing my brother.”
The young nurse recognised the patient’s determination and went to fetch the ward sister, leaving Marda to sit on the bed, swaddled once again in a blanket. She was even more resolved to break the cycle of her victimisation.
Despite the sister’s remonstrations and the duty doctor’s best efforts, Marda absolutely refused to be admitted formally to the hospital, even though she submitted to a brief medical examination. Legally, she could not be kept against her will. And she did not have to be told that she was malnourished. She showered in the hospital, and was loaned some clothes and shoes by a concerned nurse. In the nurses’ staff room, over a steaming cup of tea, she gave an initial briefing to a very considerate detective inspector.
The briefing was interrupted by a tumultuous welcome from her father and mother when they arrived; they embraced Marda in a tight scrum of intense relief and passionate endearments. Marda enfolded them both, not ever, ever wanting to let them go, while all three cried, talked and kissed at the same time. It was her parents who finally persuaded the doctors to let them see Mark.
They peered through an inspection window in the intensive care unit, and saw that Mark was fitted with a phalanx of tubes and suspended bottles.
A specialist spoke in a soft, assuring tone: “He’s very weak at the moment, but he’s a fit young man and I believe he will pull through. The best thing you can do is to let us get on with it. If you’d like to sit in the waiting room, I should be able to update you in an hour or so.”
For an hour the Stewart family talked intensely about their experiences, although Marda felt she could not disclose the full extent of her horrific ordeal to her parents, anxious as they were about her and even more distracted by Mark’s condition.
Finally, they were told by the specialist that Mark was expected, all things being equal, to make a full recovery.
The jubilation was disturbed by the detective inspector, who apologised for his intervention: “Miss Stewart, I really am sorry to press you at this sensitive time, but we are obviously very anxious to catch Duval. The doctors say I can talk to you, and, if you feel well enough, I would like a few words in private, if possible.”
Marda drank more tea in a quiet corner of the staff room, where she was joined by Professor Gould, who had also been debriefed by the police; she showed obvious pleasure at the American’s arrival.
Marda did not want to argue with her parents, who would surely try to insist that she stay in hospital. She asked the inspector, “Is it safe to return to my flat, if my parents are told to meet me there?”
The policeman tried briefly to persuade her to stay in hospital, but she was adamant. Eventually he said, “I will send one of my officers to your flat, and ask your parents to join you there. We have set up an operations room in Shere police station, so the village will be very safe.”
Gould, who had said very little, spoke directly to the inspector: “If Marda is so insistent on checking herself out of this hospital, may I presume to escort her back to Shere?”
The inspector excused himself to speak to one of his uniformed subordinates.
He soon returned and said, slightly begrudgingly, “OK, Professor Gould, I’ll get a key from Mr. Stewart, and arrange for the parents to go there later, when they are sure Captain Stewart’s on the mend. But please go to Shere directly. We don’t want to lose Marda again. Is that clear?”
“Of course, Inspector, and thank you,” said Gould.
So Marda was released from hospital on the understanding that she would undergo further police interviews and medical examinations later, and she returned with Gould to Shere. For the moment she had done all she could for her brother, but now she wanted to know what had happened to Duval. And she wanted revenge.
It was eight o’clock in the evening as Professor Irvine Gould drove Marda Stewart back to Shere from the hospital in Guildford.
“You really should have stayed in for twenty-four hours’ observation, Marda,” the American said with deep concern.
“Freedom is enough, Professor,” she replied forcefully, as she savoured the lights, the people, the smell of newness in the hired car. “Freedom is enough for the moment.”
“Are you sure you want to go back to your apartment? It’ll be cold. And, even with a police guard there, Duval is still on the loose.”
“No offence, Professor, I appreciate your concern, I really do,” she said, touching his arm, “but I’ve had enough of being told what to do and when. I’ve been living like a robot for too long. I know where I have to go first…Take me back, please, to Duval’s house.”
“Where?” Gould was astonished. “Why there of all places?” He slowed the car instinctively. Like most men, he found it almost impossible to concentrate on two important matters at once.
“There are things I must collect before the police ransack the place.”
“The police will be there now.”
“Precisely,” said Marda, with complete determination.
The professor, reluctantly, did what he was told. He wanted to appease her, to delay the breakdown he thought was inevitable. He had served in Korea, and had witnessed numerous breakdowns caused by stress and trauma.
He parked outside Hillside, next to a police car, and a large lorry from the Water Board which was pumping out the cellar. Gould helped Marda up the stairs; she was still weak, and wearing someone else’s clothes.
PC McGregor and the sergeant on duty at the house were astounded to see her back. She explained that she had come to collect Bobby en route to joining the police at her flat.
“Aye, I was wondering what we were going to do with him,” said the amiable constable. “Nice little beggar. I don’t see why you shouldn’t look after him. But you need to leave the crime scene immediately. I’m breaking all the rules because you’ve gone through hell. So be quick, and then, please, go straight home.”
They let her into the house to collect the dog. Alone for a few seconds, she sneaked into the study and saw on the desk a file of papers, amongst them a typescript with a cover sheet saying “Anchoress of Shere by Michael Duval.” Marda hid the papers in her bulky borrowed anorak: Christine Carpenter, too, must be freed from Duval’s evil.
With a sense of utter relief she led the dog to Gould’s car, and away from her prison. She thanked the two policemen, and then impulsively kissed Gould on the cheek.
“Thank you, Professor.”
“For what? For being so dumb? For taking so long to put two and two together?”
“For saving me, Mark…and Bobby here,” she added, hugging the dog.
The professor looked sheepish. “I wish I could have done a damn sight more and a damn sight sooner.”
“I don’t want to go to an empty, unguarded flat. Until the police get there, will you please take me somewhere warm and safe, where I can have a proper bath? I want to get rid of the smell of this place, of him, of that bastard Duval.”
Saying his name seemed instantly to undermine the front she was putting on: she was nearly hysterical.
Gould tried to calm her: “All right, but once we’ve cleaned you up we must go back to the police at your apartment.”
As they drove the half-mile to the White Horse, Marda’s pulse was racing and her body surged once again with adrenaline. Despite her extended trauma, she wanted to get out and see the whole world as soon as possible. She could not believe how alive the outside was, how sweet the air smelt, how wonderful it was to be free. She could now truly relate to how Christine felt when she escaped from the wall. But she also wanted to touch things; she felt the smoothness of the anorak she had borrowed, the plastic of the car seat, and, to Gould’s slight embarrassment, the roughness of the jacket he was wearing.
Gould became aware of her intense femininity, in spite of the pain etched on her face. Despite himself, he wondered whether she would automatically regard him as an old man, even though he was only ten or fifteen years her senior. Mark had talked a lot about his sister, and Gould liked what he had heard about her character. And he felt he wanted to make amends for taking so long to put the jigsaw together, a delay that could have killed both brother and sister. Why were academics so impractical? he asked himself.
Marda’s emotions were too crowded to think beyond the moment. Gould was a friend of her brother’s, and her saviour. And because of, or in spite of, her ordeal, she felt instinctively at ease with him, not least because he was, she sensed, the polar opposite of the loathsome Duval. That was enough, for the time being. Her nerves jangled with all the stimuli which even the dark, cold winter’s night could not disguise: a car-horn beeping, the powerful colours of the traffic lights, the glowing shop windows…she could stop where she wanted, speak whenever she wanted to, cry, laugh, sing, run…Duval had missed out so many little elements of freedom in his book, she thought; he could never have understood how Christine had really felt, not just because Duval was a man, but because he was incapable of genuine empathy.
The car stopped abruptly outside the White Horse, a hundred yards from Marda’s home. The village gossips had already been electrified by the rumours of Marda’s discovery and the police manhunt, so the bar was fuller than usual. Gould’s entry into the pub with a dishevelled and now famous ex-captive, in clothes far too big for her and leading a dog, inspired a swell of excitement not seen since VE Day. The trio ignored the stares and the few cheers, and swept up the stairs into the professor’s room.
“I need a good soak,” said Marda rather imperiously. Seeming to have regained some control, she did not ask his permission as she rushed into the en-suite bathroom.
“Please would you order me some tea and, yes, orange juice, and as many sandwiches as possible,” she called back to him, a little more politely. “I’ll have my bath first, but I just want to see some food.”
“You go ahead and I’ll go downstairs and fix that up.”
She put her head around the bathroom door. “Please don’t be long. I don’t want to be alone, not for a very, very long time. May I use your phone,” she said brightly, “to ring my friend Jenny?”
The professor carefully locked the door to the room and went downstairs. He ordered the refreshments, and spoke to the very attentive landlady: “May I borrow some women’s clothes for Miss Stewart, and may I use your phone to make a quick call?”
“Anything you like, Professor, this is the busiest we’ve been in months. Like Piccadilly Circus.” And then in a soft voice: “How is she?”
“As fine as can be expected. She’s had a very rough ride.”
The landlady led him to the phone in the room behind the bar, and promised to deliver the clothes within minutes. Gould then dutifully rang Shere police station to inform them where Marda was.
Politely refusing the numerous offers of congratulatory drinks from the over-curious crowd at the bar, he trotted up the stairs and unlocked his room. The bathroom door was half-open and the air was hot and steamy.
“Are you OK, Marda?”
There was no response.
He shouted this time, nearer the door: “Is everything OK?”
He heard the lavatory flush.
“Yes, I’m cleaner, but still starving and parched.”
“Oh, good. I’ve scrounged some clothes for you. Much more your size. They’re on their way. I’ve rung the police and told them where we are. I don’t want them to think you’ve disappeared again. A respectable professor taking a beautiful young lady and a dog to his room is not something I could hide for long-if I read you English correctly… Especially when I asked the landlady for some women’s clothes.” He hoped a little levity would help the girl.
The professor knew that Marda should be in hospital, where she would have received expert attention, yet he also admired her pluck. He was trying to jolly the girl along, hoping he might help to stop her collapsing. He knew that such anguish could not be suppressed for long, especially at the moment of safety, when the body, so long enduring, often gives up in abject surrender. One remedy was to keep talking, because it helped to let it all out, bit by bit. His job was to calm her down until she could receive proper medical help.
She came out, wearing a towel wrapped turban-style around her head and another large one around her body.
“Two big towels; you are spoiled, professor. Mostly they have a single little one in English hotels.”
She retreated into a small armchair. She had been obsessed by her starved frame when she was in her cell, but now the elation of freedom helped her transcend such concerns.
“I look like Twiggy, don’t I? I’ll have to eat six meals a day for a month,” she said, a little self-consciously, and with a slight tinge of suppressed hysteria in her voice.
She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Marda jumped slightly.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe now,” Gould said reassuringly. “Come in.”
The landlady came in with the clothes that Gould had requested, and a large tray of sandwiches, tea and orange juice, which the ex-captive fell upon.
The landlady said, “Hope everything will be all right now that you’re free. If there’s anything you want-make-up or anything of that sort, just ask me, love.” And, before leaving, she gave Marda a little hug. Marda wanted to say thank you but her mouth was too full of food, so she just nodded her appreciation.
After she had demolished five or six more sandwiches over the next twenty minutes, Marda began to ask a thousand questions. She begged for a cigarette, and Gould gave her one of his Marlboros. She was smoking, eating, drinking and talking in a frenzy.
“Take it easy, Marda, you’ll be sick,” Gould warned.
She tried on the borrowed clothes, gabbling all the time. “They fit reasonably well; they’ll do until I get to my flat; presumably my clothes will still be there, don’t you think, Professor? Might be a bit damp, though.” Her words were barely comprehensible through the thick ham sandwich wedged in her mouth.
“Marda, seeing as we’re sharing a bathroom, at least call me Irvine. My friends call me Irv.”
“OK, Irv.” She got up, and walked back into the bathroom to remove some food stuck in her teeth.
“Why did you call the police?” she asked distractedly through the open door.
“Well, for one thing, because the police need to know where you are right now, especially since Duval hasn’t been caught. I wanted to check that there is a policeman in your flat. And they mentioned again your not staying in hospital.”
“Professor, I couldn’t stand to be locked in any more, even in a hospital.”
She came out of the bathroom again and faced him squarely. “I will go to the hospital tomorrow, and every day, to see my brother. I’ll have a check-up, but I can’t be ordered to be in one place. I have to be physically free. Free. Free. At last.” She hiccupped as a result of her hasty eating, put her hand to her mouth, swallowed, and added very plaintively, “Don’t you understand?”
“Slow down, Marda. The police will have to ask you lots of questions.”
She lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and coughed. “I have a question for you, Professor, I mean Irvine. Irv. Mark mentioned that you knew Duval. What exactly is your connection with him?”
“My research on Christine, the Anchoress of Shere.”
It was the very last thing that she wanted to hear at that moment.
“You’re not another maniac who’s obsessed with locking people up, are you?” She said this without alarm in her voice, because her brother had spoken highly of the professor during their shouted exchanges in the cellar.
“No, no,” replied Gould. “I’ve been working on an article on her life in France, but you don’t want to hear any more about an obscure fourteenth-century religieuse, I’m sure. And, incidentally, I didn’t know Duval at all really. Just read a few of his articles and met him briefly.”
The slightly defensive tone in the professor’s voice prompted Marda to indulge in a small smile for the first time since her release: “Actually, I’m a world authority on the subject of Christine Carpenter,” she said. “That’s what the pile of papers there is about. It’s Duval’s book. The only copy, I think. The one he forced me to read again and again while he kept me in his awful prison.”
“To be honest, I can understand you returning for the dog, but going back into that prison just for a book…I don’t get it.”
Marda took another bite from a sandwich. “I can’t really explain, but somehow I wanted her-Christine-to be free of him as well. We both had to get out of his clutches. In some way I identified with her. Who knows? You can take it to read. But look after it.”
“I can see it’s precious to you. I will read it, and presumably so will the police.”
“No,” said Marda emphatically. “The police would take it and keep it as evidence. It’s private, and it’s mine. Some of the stuff he wrote was absolutely mad, but she is-was-separate from him. I’m sure she was a good person. I think I deserve to keep the book after all I’ve gone through.”
“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.
Duval felt the salt taste on the edge of his mouth. Balanced precariously on the cross-spar at the base of the cross, he removed his jacket, shirt and trousers. He was too engrossed in his spiritual dedication to feel the cold, but it would take a supreme act of will to force his wrists and feet through the beckoning nails.
The powerful presence of the saintly anchoress would be appeased by the blood of crucifixion, the ultimate act of worship. But Duval asked himself whether he was strong enough, let alone holy enough, to imitate his Saviour.
Despite the lateness of the hour, Marda’s parents had made her flat warm and inviting. And, despite the presence of the police guard and the lanky American, Marda was smothered with family affection, and the dog was curled up in front of an electric heater. It was a time of joy and concern: a daughter returned, a son recovering in intensive care. Marda’s father and the professor demolished most of a bottle of Scotch, while the two women and the police officer consumed endless cups of tea.
Marda tried to explain her feelings, the complete desperation she had felt while in her prison, her total anguish at the manner of her brother’s treatment by Duval, the lengths to which Mark had gone to save her.
“But I also feel so strong,” she said. “I survived the ordeal and I’m alive! Perhaps God, after all, answered my prayers…”
She stopped, surprised to realise how important these prayers had been to her sanity. She wondered, too, if she could continue to be strong, to survive the coming weeks, especially, God forbid, if Mark did not pull through.
Her mother seemed to read her thoughts. “It might be hard, coming to grips with life again. A new life, for it will never be the same,” she said, putting both her arms around the emaciated girl. Her very last reserves of strength utterly depleted, Marda fell soundly asleep on her mother’s shoulder.
The knock on the flat door came at eight o’clock in the morning, when it was still almost dark outside. The policeman opened the door and was met by his breathless superintendent, who enhanced the drama of his message by trying to underplay it: “We’ve found him,” he said, trying to control his excitement. “In the church. We’ve called off the alert.”
“So you trapped him there?” Gould asked.
Superintendent Woodward led Gould outside to answer him, because he thought the details might upset the already distressed Stewart family. “No, he was already dead. Crucified, it appears.”
Gould looked at the policeman in amazement.
“This is just preliminary, you understand. One of my men saw a police car at the rear of the church and went in. I’ve just taken the message on the car radio. One of my men is missing, too. I’m going straight to the church now, but I wanted to tell the Stewarts first.”
“May I come with you, Superintendent?” asked the professor.
The policeman nodded, and the two men hastened to the nearby church.
Gould had seen thousands of depictions of crucifixions, but nothing could have prepared him for the reality: the head was slumped on the chest and dried, matted smudges of blood and strands of tissue disfigured the body, especially around the wrists and feet.
The three policemen and the academic just stared.
Gould was the first to ask: “Why is his face so smashed up?”
He waited a long moment before adding, “Are you sure it’s Duval? You said one of your men was missing. It must be damned difficult to crucify yourself.”
The policemen looked at him in horror. They did not want to believe it could be one of their own.
Shere’s doctor had had a busy night. Arriving a few minutes after Gould, he cleaned up the face a little and suggested that it was the body of a man in his late fifties or early sixties. Too old, probably, for Duval, but even the sergeant at McGregor’s own station was not sure.
“I’m sorry, Super,” he said, his voice strained. “I’ve never seen old McGregor with no clothes on, and the face is unrecognisable. There are no rings an’ all, but he’s missing and it could be him.”
The body was not positively identified until two hours later. The official alert was renewed, and the sweep of the woods was begun. It had given Duval, however, that extra margin of time. He had used it well: at that very moment, Father Duval was contentedly smoking his pipe on board a small fishing boat en route to Ireland.
The professor walked back to Marda’s flat, alongside the Tillingbourne. The weeping willows, bent in anguish, matched his mood. He did not want to inflict more pain on the Stewarts, so he explained that the police would bring further news shortly.
When, a few minutes later, the superintendent told the assembled Stewart family that the dead man was a policeman who had been guarding Duval’s house, Marda and the professor stared at each other. There was a profound intensity and understanding in that look.
“Why did he go back to the house?” Marda’s father asked.
“It’s amazing how many murderers are drawn back to the scene of their crimes, even when it’s highly dangerous to return,” the superintendent said confidently.
“No, Superintendent.” Marda’s voice sounded suddenly very tired. “He was looking for a book, one he has worked on for years.”
Marda said no more. She knew intuitively that Duval had found his book. A glance at Gould told him not to say anything, not to alarm her parents any more than was necessary; the news that Duval was still loose on a murderous spree was more than enough. Marda wondered whether her long isolation had honed some sixth sense.
“Since I clearly know so little of the psychology of the man,” said the superintendent, barely disguising his emotions, “may I ask why-why-he would have killed my officer in this horrific way, and in a church of all places?”
Gould felt Marda had answered enough police questions already. “He was obsessed by the Anchoress of Shere, Superintendent. It was his consuming passion. I suppose he will burn in hell.”
“After we catch him, Professor. And we will. He’s killed one of my men, and I won’t stop looking for him.” The policeman paused to manage his anger. “But it’s odd that he remained such a cold and calculating criminal for so long, but now seems to have gone berserk.”
“Maybe because Marda stood up to him,” said Gould, tentatively. “Perhaps I played a part, a small one. I uncovered some new data on your Anchoress of Shere. Maybe it finally got to be too much for him. Perhaps the enormity of his crimes affected his conscience, if he had one. I suppose in all senses of the word the game was up.”
“It’s a strange game you historians play,” the superintendent said brusquely.
The phone rang for the superintendent and the room started to buzz with police jargon.
Sensing Gould’s hurt at the policeman’s probably unintended slight, Marda walked over to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She touched his hand gently.
“I haven’t thanked you properly for helping me…and my brother. I don’t lump all you history nuts together, I promise.”
“I should be comforting you, Marda,” Gould said, looking up at her. “I would like to. When all the police stuff is sorted out, when you’ve spent some time with your folks, when your brother’s out of hospital…when you’ve done some grieving for yourself, I guess…would you visit me in the States? I live in a lovely historical part of Georgetown.”
“Yes, I’d like that. Later, I’ll need to talk things through, to try to understand what’s happened to me, and inside me. I know I can talk to you.”
“And when you’re all talked out, no more medieval history, OK?”
“No more history, Professor Irvine Gould. No more history. When I’ve recovered I’ll look forward to the future.”
She squeezed his hand. He responded with the sensitive strength of both his scholar’s soft hands. Marda appreciated a gentle, tactile man. That touch was to prevent Marda hating men and God, and would be her resurrection. After so long in a tomb it was, for her, the most important gesture on earth.