Here we are, Troy thought drowsily, and there, outside in the churchyard, are all the others going back and back—
She saw a girl, bright in the evening sunlight, reach from a balcony toward a multitude of wings. She was falling— dreadfully—into nothingness. Troy woke with a sickening jerk.
“—on stony ground,” the rector was saying. Troy listened guiltily to the rest of the sermon.
Mr. Bates emerged on the balcony. He laid his Bible on the coping and looked at the moonlit tree tops and the churchyard so dreadfully far below. He heard someone coming up the stairway. Torchlight danced on the door jamb.
“You were quick,” said the visitor.
“I am all eagerness and, I confess, puzzlement.”
“It had to be here, on the spot. If you really want to find out—”
“But I do, I do!”
“We haven’t much time. You’ve brought the Bible?”
“You particularly asked—”
“If you’d open it at Ezekiel, chapter twelve. I’ll shine my torch.”
Mr. Bates opened the Bible.
“The thirteenth verse. There!”
Mr. Bates leaned forward. The Bible tipped and moved.
“Look out!” the voice urged.
Mr. Bates was scarcely aware of the thrust. He felt the page tear as the book sank under his hands. The last thing he heard was the beating of a multitude of wings.
“—and forevermore,” said the rector in a changed voice, racing east. The congregation got to its feet. He announced the last hymn. Mrs. Simpson made a preliminary rumble and Troy groped in her pocket for the collection plate. Presently they all filed out into the autumnal moonlight.
It was coldish in the churchyard. People stood about in groups. One or two had already moved through the lych-gate. Troy heard a voice, which she recognized as that of Mr. De’ath. “I suppose,” it jeered, “you all know you’ve been assisting at a fertility rite.”
“Drunk as usual, Dick De’ath,” somebody returned without rancor. There was a general laugh.
They had all begun to move away when, from the shadows at the base of the church tower, there arose a great cry. They stood, transfixed, turned toward the voice.
Out of the shadows came the rector in his cassock. When Troy saw his face she thought he must be ill and went to him.
“No, no!” he said. “Not a woman! Edward! Where’s Edward Pilbrow?”
Behind him, at the foot of the tower, was a pool of darkness; but Troy, having come closer, could see within it a figure, broken like a puppet on the flagstones. An eddy of night air stole round the church and fluttered a page of the giant Bible that lay pinned beneath the head.
It was nine o’clock when Troy heard the car pull up outside the cottage. She saw her husband coming up the path and ran to meet him, as if they had been parted for months.
He said, “This is mighty gratifying!” And then, “Hullo, my love. What’s the matter?”
As she tumbled out her story, filled with relief at telling him, a large man with uncommonly bright eyes came up behind them.
“Listen to this, Fox,” Roderick Alleyn said. “We’re in demand, it seems.” He put his arm through Troy’s and closed his hand round hers. “Let’s go indoors, shall we? Here’s Fox, darling, come for a nice bucolic rest. Can we give him a bed?”
Troy pulled herself together and greeted Inspector Fox. Presently she was able to give them a coherent account of the evening’s tragedy. When she had finished, Alleyn said, “Poor little Bates. He was a nice little bloke.” He put his hand on Troy’s. “You need a drink,” he said, “and so, by the way, do we.”
While he was getting the drinks he asked quite casually, “You’ve had a shock and a beastly one at that, but there’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Troy swallowed hard, “there is. They’re all saying it’s an accident.”
“Yes?”
“And, Rory, I don’t think it is.”
Mr. Fox cleared his throat. “Fancy,” he said.
“Suicide?” Alleyn suggested, bringing her drink to her.
“No. Certainly not.”
“A bit of rough stuff, then?”
“You sound as if you’re asking about the sort of weather we’ve been having.”
“Well, darling, you don’t expect Fox and me to go into hysterics. Why not an accident?”
“He knew all about the other accidents, he knew it was dangerous. And then the oddness of it, Rory. To leave the Harvest Festival service and climb the tower in the dark, carrying that enormous Bible!”
“And he was hell-bent on tracing these Hadets?”
“Yes. He kept saying you’d be interested. He actually brought a copy of the entries for you.”
“Have you got it?”
She found it for him. “The selected texts,” he said, “are pretty rum, aren’t they, Br’er Fox?” and handed it over.
“Very vindictive,” said Mr. Fox.
“Mr. Bates thought it was in your line,” Troy said.
“The devil he did! What’s been done about this?”
“The village policeman was in the church. They sent for the doctor. And—well, you see, Mr. Bates had talked a lot about you and they hope you’ll be able to tell them something about him—whom they should get in touch with and so on.”
“Have they moved him?”
“They weren’t going to until the doctor had seen him.”
Alleyn pulled his wife’s ear and looked at Fox. “Do you fancy a stroll through the village, Foxkin?”
“There’s a lovely moon,” Fox said bitterly and got to his feet.
The moon was high in the heavens when they came to the base of the tower and it shone on a group of four men—the rector, Richard De’ath, Edward Pilbrow, and Sergeant Botting, the village constable. When they saw Alleyn and Fox, they separated and revealed a fifth, who was kneeling by the body of Timothy Bates.
“Kind of you to come,” the rector said, shaking hands with Alleyn. “And a great relief to all of us.”
Their manner indicated that Alleyn’s arrival would remove a sense of personal responsibility. “If you’d like to have a look—?” the doctor said.
The broken body lay huddled on its side. The head rested on the open Bible. The right hand, rigid in cadaveric spasm, clutched a torn page. Alleyn knelt and Fox came closer with the torch. At the top of the page Alleyn saw the word Ezekiel and a little farther down, Chapter 12.
Using the tip of his finger Alleyn straightened the page. “Look,” he said, and pointed to the thirteenth verse. “My net also will I spread upon him and he shall be taken in my snare.”
The words had been faintly underlined in mauve.
Alleyn stood up and looked round the circle of faces.
“Well,” the doctor said, “we’d better see about moving him.”
Alleyn said, “I don’t think he should be moved just yet.”
“Not!” the rector cried out. “But surely—to leave him like this—I mean, after this terrible accident—”
“It has yet to be proved,” Alleyn said, “that it was an accident.”
There was a sharp sound from Richard De’ath.
“—and I fancy,” Alleyn went on, glancing at De’ath, “that it’s going to take quite a lot of proving.”
After that, events, as Fox observed with resignation, took the course that was to be expected. The local Superintendent said that under the circumstances it would be silly not to ask Alleyn to carry on, the Chief Constable agreed, and appropriate instructions came through from Scotland Yard. The rest of the night was spent in routine procedure. The body having been photographed and the Bible set aside for fingerprinting, both were removed and arrangements put in hand for the inquest.