“Box? Oh, you mean that trunk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s just a few odd bits and pieces. I collect antiques. I have a few books in there, a couple of statuettes. Bits and pieces.”
The customs official made a note on his clipboard. Then he pointed with his ballpen to a side bay where a couple of Germans were already having their Mercedes thoroughly searched. He was just about to say something when he frowned, and looked back at me, and then looked around as if he’d lost something.
I said, “Is everything all right?”
He shook his head, as if it was foggy. “Yes, sir. I just had the feeling I was going to say something. I can’t remember what it was.”
I licked my lips tensely, and glanced over at Madeleine. Neither of us said a word.
The customs official said: “Very good, sir. Have a pleasant time,” and stuck a label on the Citröen’s windshield. I started the engine up, and we drove out of the docks and into the town. It was only when we were out of sight of the cranes and the ships that I let out a long whistle of relief.
Madeleine whispered: “The devil must have known what was going to happen! Did you see what it did to that man’s mind? It wiped him clean.”
I took a quick look round at the dull lead-coloured trunk. I was beginning to feel so nervous about it now that I kept imagining itches on my skin, and my right eye flickered with a tic that I couldn’t control. I didn’t dare try to imagine what that thing inside it really looked like. I had seen enough in the darkness of Father Anton’s bedroom, and heard enough of its rustling body and scratching claws and its husky, evil voice.
We drove aimlessly around the town of Newhaven, which wasn’t much more salubrious than Dieppe. Mean, red-roofed houses with primrose-painted gates. Warehouses and shops. Madeleine said, “What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Find a place to stay, I guess.”
She checked her watch. “I think we ought to try to find where the Reverend Taylor lives before we do that. The pubs are open now. Let’s have a drink and something to eat, and then we can go to the local library. They have a clerical directory called Crockford’s in England, and if he’s still alive, we’ll find his name in there.”
We parked the Citröen in a municipal car park, and crossed the road to a big, dingy Victorian pub called The Prince of Wales, which smelled of spilled beer and cooking fat. We sat by the engraved-glass window drinking some tepid Skol lager, and eating cold sausage rolls with no sausage in them. Gastronomically speaking, England is always a miserable experience after France. Mine host behind the bar was a fat fellow with a check shirt and walrus moustache, who kept pulling pints of beer for himself and discussing the relative merits of the A23 and the A24, which turned out to be roads. One of the Englishman’s greatest obsessions, after cricket scores, is route-planning; and when you see the roads you know why.
After our drink, we went in search of the library. It turned out to be a small brick building not far from the car park, where a spinster in a pale-blue cardigan and upswept glasses was almost ready to close for the night. She found a copy of Crockford’s Clerical Directory for us, and brought it over to the checking-out table with a face as long-suffering as a Rhesus monkey with a mouthful of vinegar. We flicked through the pages as quickly as we could, while she pulled on her coat, and huffed, and tugged on her gloves, and huffed again, and switched off all the lights at the far end of the room.
But after a quick search through the directory, we found what we were looking for. Taylor, Percy Woodfall. The vicar of St. Katherine’s, in the village of Strudhoe, near Lewes.
Madeleine breathed, “That’s it! That’s him! He’s still alive!”
I looked up, and called to the lady librarian, “Excuse me, ma’am. Can you tell me where Lewes is? Is it near to here?”
She huffed and sniffed and looked at me as if I was mentally defective. “It’s eight miles up the road. You can’t miss it. It has a ruined castle.”
“And Strudhoe?”
“Well, oh dear, that’s even closer. Three miles along the Lewes road, on the right. Between the main road and the river.”
I turned to Madeleine and I guess I was as pale as she was. If the Reverend Taylor lived that close, and if he knew where the twelve brother devils of Elmek were, then we could have this whole grotesque business finished by tonight.
FOUR
In winter, the valley of the Sussex Ouse is grey with mist, and you can hardly see the long backs of the Downs that surround it on both sides. At the head of the valley, you can make out the cluttered rooftops of Lewes, with its dark tumble-down castle, and from there the river Ouse flows indifferent and colourless between raised banks, sliding towards the sea. As we drove out of Newhaven and headed north along the west bank of the river, it was almost too dusky to see anything, but we could make out blotted clumps of trees, and patches of half-melted snow on the fields.
I kept the window of the car open. The English countryside in winter has a distinctive flat smell to it, mingled with the sharp aroma of woodsmoke from log fires; whereas French fields always smell of dung and frost. Madeleine strained her eyes to catch the road-sign for Strudhoe, and kept reminding me nervously to drive on the left. In the back, the copper-and-lead chest rattled softly and ominously against the side of the car as we bounced over the twisting roads.
“There!” said Madeleine. “That’s it! Next on the right!”
I saw the sign flash past in the light of my yellow French headlamps, and I put on the brakes. The turning was almost hidden by overhanging branches and narrow flint walls, and when I negotiated the Citröen across the main road and down towards the village, I felt as if we were disappearing down a rabbit-hole.
We drove slowly past whitewashed houses with ancient clay-tile roofs; tiny walled gardens and narrow brick pavements. The village was only twenty or thirty houses, all of them hundreds of years old, and I almost drove right through it and down to the fields before I realized that we’d arrived. I stopped the car, and pulled on the handbrake.
Madeleine said, “I wonder where the vicarage is.”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s going to be easier to get out and look for it on foot.”
She reached over and held my hand tightly. “Oh, God, Dan, I’m scared.”
I switched off the engine. It was only then that we heard the soft, subtle noises from the trunk at the back. We sat tense and silent in our seats, staring at each other in horror, and then we heard Elmek’s dreadful whispering voice again.
“We are near, aren’t we?”
I said nothing.
Elmek insisted: “We are near, aren’t we?”
Madeleine nodded at me, encouraging me to answer, and I said in a taut, strained voice: “Yes. Yes, we’re near.”
“You have done well. You have found the Reverend Taylor quickly. I will reward you, you know. I will give you the power to snap a man’s neck, if that is what you want. Or to thrust knives and razors into a girl’s sex. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”
I closed my eyes in desperation, but Madeleine squeezed my hand and whispered, “Agree, Dan. All you have to do is agree.”
I said loudly: “Yes, Elmek. I’d enjoy that.”
Elmek laughed. Then it said, “Are you going to find the Reverend Taylor now? I can feel him! He’s close by!”
“Yes, we’re going to find him.”
“And you won’t do anything foolish, will you? I am sure that the Reverend Taylor’s house contains as many knives as Father Anton’s. Just remember Antoinette. Didn’t she scream! didn’t those knives and skewers hurt her!”