“Yes, Warlock Parkin?” Mrs Framlington’s hand rose behind her ear.
“Shouldn’t Maiden Pentatuke have read the minutes first?”
Maiden Pentatuke did not wait for Mrs Framlington to consult her.
“Certainly not,” she called. “This is an emergency meeting and there hasn’t been time for minutes to be copied into the book. They’ll be read next time.”
“Emergency meeting,” Mrs Framlington echoed, nodding her head very decisively at Mr Paracelsus Parkin. “No time to be copied.” She was a little afraid of Mr Parkin, brother of evil-eyed Amy. He was a former Baptist lay preacher who had been drummed out of the Church on account of his too liberal interpretation of the word “lay”. He was reputedly addicted to muscle culture and stamp collecting, and more than one member of the Coven suspected that his adherence to wizardry was less for love of the black art for its own sake than in the selfish hope that he might become sufficiently skilled in its practice to wreak personal vengeance upon his late accusers, in particular the Rev. William Harness and Miss Bertha Pollock of the Flaxborough Borough Welfare Department.
“I was saying,” resumed Mrs Framlington, “that the Sabbath Sub-committee thinks that certain events of the last few days could be of great importance to...to our little gathering, and that they ought to be discussed.”
She looked inquiringly at Mrs Pentatuke, who thereupon barked “Without delay“.
“Without delay,” said Mrs Framlington. She assumed a straighter posture and took a few sips of water.
“Unfortunately, as some of you may be aware, I was prevented by sickness from attending the Sabbath in person at Roodmas, so I hope that you, Madam Maiden”—she turned to Mrs Pentatuke—“will correct me if I betray ignorance on any particular point.”
Mrs Pentatuke drummed her long fingers on the black minutes book and stared stonily out of the window.
“Of course,” Mrs Framlington went on with a fond, reflective smile, “I was really amongst you all in a sense that night.” She looked up. “Through my Familiar, you know. Did any of you see my little Billy Boy—no, Belial—my little Belial flying about? I did let him out of his cage, you know, and he flew around for quite a while looking for the keyhole in the bedroom door, bless him, and when I woke in the morning there he was, back on his perch again, and I knew—I knew—well, because I’d dreamed, you see, and anyway he was chattering away thirteen to the dozen—‘Looo-cifer, Looo-cifer, Bicky for Billy, Looo-cifer...’ ”
“Point of order, Sister chairman!”
A plump hand was held aloft by a man with a neatly trimmed beard. His conventional shopkeeper’s suit of dark serge hid and constrained the pale belly that had bounced and flopped above a velvet loincloth three nights before.
He was Henry Pearce: draper, toxophilite and husband of Mrs Tossie Pearce, whose choice of widow’s weeds as her orgy costume had been prompted solely by sensual eccentricity and in no degree by wishful thinking. Indeed, Henry himself had provided the outfit from his discovery in a corner of the stockroom of a cache of apparel hidden away by some long dead, thrifty predecessor in the corsetry trade.
Mrs Framlington did not at once see the raised hand. She peered nervously round the room. Mrs Pentatuke leaned across and tapped her shoulder, then pointed out the interrupter.
“Just half a minute, Sister chairman,” said Warlock Pearce, in the tone of a long-suffering shop steward. “With all due respect, I think I can say that we did not come here today to hear about the doings of your little Belial.”
He paused and smiled thinly at a mutter of approval that came from some half-dozen members of the Coven.
“I think I can fairly say that. I mean to say, the Familiars do get a fair crack of the whip. There’s the annual tricks competition for one thing. But I don’t think I need go on about that. Time and place for everything. What we do want to know, and what my good friend Warlock George Gooding and the sub-committee want to know, is this...”
Mrs Framlington, goaded by digs from Mrs Pentatuke into asserting her authority, quaveringly demanded: “Isn’t that rather a lengthy point of order, Warlock Pearce?”
“Never you mind about length, Sister chairman,” retorted Mr Pearce. “I’ve got the floor and I’m going to put my question. It’s about the police...”
“Black blisters and the scalding weeps be on ’em!” shouted a stout, red-faced woman from her seat at the back of the room.
She was Mrs Margaret Gooding, the Sabbath participant who had worn woollen drawers and claimed to be a drinker of baboon blood.
“...the police, I said,” repeated Warlock Pearce, “and if Sister Gooding wants to move a curse as an amendment, that’s up to her, but what I’m asking is in regard to a point of order, Sister chairman, which is, and I put it to you fair and square—Who called them in when Sister Hillyard took off, as is her right as a witch, I don’t think anyone will quarrel with that.”
Mrs Framlington looked perplexed. Not sharing with Mr Pearce the privilege of membership of Pennick Rural District Council, she was unaccustomed to the somewhat dislocated language in which the affairs of that and similar authorities habitually are conducted. She turned to make mute appeal of Mrs Pentatuke.
“All Warlock Pearce means,” ruled Mrs Pentatuke brusquely, “is that you should get straight to the point about police inquiries into whatever’s happened to Edna Hillyard. He suggests, if I understand him aright, that there was a tip-off of some kind.”
“Who says that anything has happened to Sister Edna?” called out Warlock Parkin.
One or two others made noises of support.
“The police want to take their long noses out of what doesn’t concern them or they might find the same thing happening to those said noses as I had the pleasure of seeing happen last Lammas to the nose of a certain party in the Post Office who steamed open a certain letter.”
The reference seemed a familiar one—at least to Mrs Pentatuke, who raised her eyes and sighed “Lucifer all-bloody-mighty! Not again!”
Mrs Framlington tapped the table with a pencil.
“If we can just have a little order, I will ask our Sister who has actually been visited by the police to tell you what she thinks it is all about.”
Mrs Gloss stood up and gave a brief account of her questioning by Detective-Constables Palethorp, Brevitt and Pook. She said it was her opinion that the interrogation had been of an unnecessarily importunate kind. Why, one might ask, had no fewer than three policemen been sent to her house? None had offered any good reason to suppose that Sister Edna had come to harm. She believed her so-called disappearance was being used as an excuse for police persecution. Small wonder that ratepayers resented having to find huge sums of money for the maintenance of law and order. Was this what they were to understand by law and order? She for one could think of other names for it.