Holy Disorders. Edmund Crispin

felt that if he spoke to him he would turn without recognition in his face, a stranger merely. The clergyman and the woman with the rug were talking together in low tones, their words inaudible above the incessant, monotonous beating of the wheels. Geoffrey sat and stared, first at a disagreeable photograph of Salisbury Cathedral, and then at the ‘Instructions to Passengers in the Event of an Air Raid’, which had been annotated by some passenger with overmuch time on his hands:

      DRAW ALL BLINDS AS A PRECAUTION AGAINST – nosey bastards.

      DO NOT LEAVE THE CARRIAGE UNLESS REQUESTED BY A – hot bit.

      He blinked sleepily about him, and tried to stop thinking about the heat.

      The sirens wailed as the train began braking on the stretch into Taunton. All along the coast, the fierce merciless battle against the invading bombers began. The intruder awoke from his long sleep and gazed blearily out of the window. His hasty movements of departure came as a welcome diversion. He got to his feet, scowled round him, and reached up to the rack above Geoffrey’s head, where his heavy portmanteau lay. It was, of course, not entirely surprising, in view of its weight, that he should have let it slip, and if it had fallen directly on to Geoffrey’s head as he leaned forward to talk to Fielding, the consequences would have been serious. Fortunately, Fielding saw it coming, and pushed Geoffrey against the back of the seat with all his force. The portmanteau landed with a sickening thud on his knees.

      A confused clamour arose. The agent of this disturbance did not, however, wait to make his apologies, but was out of the compartment and on to Taunton platform before the train had come to a stop. Geoffrey sat doubled up with agony, nursing his thighs; but happily the human thigh-bone is a solid object, and Peace showed himself a fairly expert doctor. As to a pursuit, that was out of the question. By the time order was restored, the train was in any case on the move again.

      ‘He might have broken your neck!’ said the woman with the baby indignantly.

      ‘So he might,’ said Geoffrey painfully. Feeling very sick, he turned to Fielding. ‘Thanks – for the second time today.’

      Peace had unlocked the case, and was gazing with bewilderment at the medley of old iron it contained. ‘No wonder it was so heavy,’ he said. ‘But what on earth…?’ Abruptly he decided that this was not the time for investigation. ‘You’d better do some walking before stiffness sets in,’ he told Geoffrey. ‘You’ll find it’ll hurt, of course, but it’s really the best thing.’

      Geoffrey crawled to his feet, banged his head against the butterfly-net, and cursed noisily; this, he felt, was the last straw.

      ‘I’ll go and get a wash,’ he said. ‘One gets so filthy on these journeys.’ Actually he was afraid he was going to be sick.

      ‘Better let me come with you,’ said Fielding, but Geoffrey brushed him impatiently aside; he was consumed by a hatred of all mankind. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he mumbled.

      He swayed down the corridor like a drunk on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. The lavatory, when he reached it, was occupied, but just as he was passing on to the next a young man came out, grinned apologetically, and stood aside to let him in. Geoffrey was contemplating his features gloomily in the mirror preparatory to turning round and locking the door when he realized that the young man had followed him in and was doing this for him.

      The young man smiled. ‘Now we’re shut in together,’ he said.

      ‘Third time lucky,’ said Fielding cheerfully.

      Geoffrey groaned, and again shook himself free of a nightmare. He was back in the compartment, whose occupants were regarding him with some concern; even the baby gaped inquiringly at him, as though demanding an explanation.

      ‘What happened?’ Geoffrey asked conventionally.

      ‘I got the wind up when you didn’t come back,’ said Fielding, ‘and set out to find you. Fortunately, it wasn’t very difficult, and we were able to lug you back here. How do you feel?’

      ‘Awful.’

      ‘You’ll be all right,’ said Peace. ‘The blow must have upset you.

      ‘I should damn well think it did,’ said Geoffrey indignantly. ‘Where are we?’

      ‘Just coming into Tolnbridge now.’

      Geoffrey groaned again. ‘Past Exeter? He must have got off the train there.’

      ‘My dear fellow, are you all right? He got off the train at Taunton.’

      Geoffrey gazed confusedly about him. ‘No, no – the other. Oh, Lord!’ His head was swimming too much to think clearly. He rubbed it ruefully, feeling it all over. ‘Where’s the bruise?’ he asked. ‘There must be a bruise.’

      Peace, who was collecting his things from the rack, looked round in surprise.

      ‘Where he hit me,’ explained Geoffrey peevishly.

      ‘My dear chap, nobody hit you,’ said Peace amicably. ‘You must be dreaming. You fainted, that’s all. Fainted.’

       3

       Gibbering Corse

And then the furiously gibbering corse

Shakes, panglessly convulsed, and sightless stares.

PATMORE

      Tolnbridge stands on the river after which it is named about four miles above the sandy, treacherous estuary which flows into the English Channel. Up to Hanoverian times it was a port of some significance; but the growth in the size of shipping, together with the progressive silting-up of the river mouth, which is now penetrated only by a fairly narrow channel, pretty rapidly took from it that eminence, and it has fallen back into its pristine status of a small and rather inconvenient market-town for the farm products of that area of South Devon. There is still a fishing industry and (before the war at least) some holidaying, but the bulk of its prosperity has been transferred to Tolnmouth, a little to the east of the estuary, which as a summer resort is second only to Torquay on the Devon coast. Nor is Tolnbridge of much value from the military or naval point of view; it had received a certain amount of sporadic and spiteful attention from the bombers, but the main part of the attack was concentrated further up the coast, and it suffered little damage.

      The cathedral was built during the reign of Edward II, when Tolnbridge was enjoying an unexampled prosperity as the staple port for the wines of Bordeaux and Spain; in style it comes, historically, somewhere about the time of the transition from Early English to Decorated; but few traces of the later method are to be found in it, and it is one of the last, as well as one of the finest, examples of that superb artistry which produced Salisbury Cathedral and many lovely parish churches. Comparatively, it is a small building; but it stands in the centre of the town in a position of such eminence that it appears larger than is really the case. The river bank rises to a natural plateau, about a quarter of a mile back, on which the older part of the town is built. Behind this again there is a long and steeply-sloping hill, at the very summit of which the cathedral stands – the hill itself devoid of buildings, except for the clergy-house at the south-western end. So, from the town, there is a magnificent vista up this long slope, planted with cypress, mountain-ash, and larches, to the grey buttresses and slender, tapering spire which overhang the river. The effect would be overpowering were it not for the two smaller churches in the town below, whose spires, lifted in noble, unsuccessful emulation of their greater companion above, a little restore the balance and relieve the eye. Behind the cathedral, the hill slopes more gently down again to the newer part of the town, with the railway station and the paint factory, whose houses stream down on the northern side to join the old town and peter out to the south in a series of expensive