“All right,” said George philosophically, “you didn’t see anyone, you don’t know anything. I get it. But you do know what this is for, don’t you? Avaunt, ye spirits of chaos, spawn of darkness, malicious powers, make yourselves scarce! This is no place for you, this is a place protected. All right, you can unhook it now, it’s served its purpose.”
“I dursen’t, sir,” said Ebenezer Jennings without a blush, and stood by George’s side in full daylight to be surveyed, his face as hard as the building stone they had once quarried from the western slope of Callow, now long overgrown in bracken and furze. “That’s magic, sir. That’s good magic. I don’t meddle with yon. This church is troubled bad, and that garland, that’s blessed. Yes, I do know what virtue’s in these leaves. You leave ’un there, I say. That ain’t no ill, is it? Leave ’un be, and hope!”
George wondered, in one instant of mental irresponsibility, whether it was the mere fact of the man’s office as verger, or something in his remarkable appearance, that enabled him to get away with that kind of language without being ridiculous. He was almost sure that it was not because of any actual belief he had in these things; on the contrary, the whole delivery had something of the impressiveness of a first-class theatrical performance, larger than life and double as natural. The office of verger was practically hereditary in Mottisham; and this was the role that went with it, the trappings, the privilege.
Eb Jennings the Fifth was a man of medium height and inordinate dryness, all stout bones and leathery hide without much flesh between. He looked as if the wind might blow him away, but he was as tough as old boots. His head was large, with a lofty, domed skull bristling with long grey hair, his face all forehead, tapering away down a long nose to a narrow, hanging jaw, and his eyes in their gaunt sockets burned with a dark, prophetic fire. He would not have been out of place in the direst books of the Old Testament. Even in ancient flannels blotched with paint and grease, and a washed-out oiled-wool sweater, beginning to unravel at the hem, he was impressive.
“And how can you be sure it was put there to protect?” George asked curiously, watching the verger’s lantern of a face. “Oh, yes, we know that’s what it means, or what it’s supposed to mean, but what if whoever put it there did it to frighten the whole village half to death, on the principle of ‘the mair mischief of mair sport’? That wouldn’t be much benefit to anybody except the murderer, would it? If he stirred up enough muck he might escape notice in the obscurity. Might even be left free to make his next move, whatever that may be. You live here at the lodge on the corner of the churchyard, don’t you? Right in the danger zone!”
A boy of about eighteen or nineteen came butting through the gathering rain, shears in hand, and dived into the porch beside them just in time to hear this. George had seen him clipping back the encroaching ivy from the north wall before the shower began.
“Don’t you waste your time trying to scare this old raven,” he said, punching Jennings lightly in the ribs, and dropping the shears on to the bench inside the porch. “I’d be sorry for the demon that tried tangling with him, I tell you.”
“You mind your own business,” Eb Jennings told him smartly, “and don’t interrupt your elders and betters.”
“And don’t let him kid you he takes any stock in this Dracula stuff,” went on the boy, undeterred, nodding a shaggy, light-brown head at the dangling wreath. “He’s got his own recipes.” He sat down beside his shears, and leaned to examine the withering leaves more closely. His lively lips curled in tolerant disdain. “You know there’s a couple of London cranks from some psychic research gang booked in the ‘Arms’ last night? And a folklore collector from Birmingham? As well as a few national press folks. Somebody slipped the word out there were devils loose up here.”
“Somebody,” said George, “certainly did.” He was less concerned about that particular somebody. The murderer was hardly likely to want professional observers on the scene, however effectively they might embarrass the police; they were all too likely to turn up something he wanted to remain buried. But the man who hung up a clear alarm signal on the spot could well be the murderer himself, studying to redouble confusion, while he himself withdrew farther into the undergrowth. “Good for the hotel trade, at any rate.”
“Maybe Mrs. Lloyd hung up the parsley,” suggested the boy cheerfully. “Bait for the ghost-hunters!”
“Only fools mock the presence of evil,” said Eb Jennings reprovingly, scowling at the boy, whose long legs spread across the porch almost to the bench on the other side.
“Why not, if propitiation does no good? You might as well die laughing.” He patted the purring iron beast. “Caution, guard dogs on patrol!”
“I will not stay,” said Jennings magnificently, “to listen to impious talk. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Felse, I’ve got work to do.” And as he made his exit through the church, that being the driest way, he looked back at the boy and said, making a lightning return to everyday practicality: “And since you’ve been druv in by the rain, you can go and get some wood in for your mother.”
He was gone, leaving the knocker swaying gently, and rustling as the leaves brushed the door. He also left his own minor shock still almost palpable on the air. George told himself that he ought to have guessed. There was something in their wrangling, teasing, needling exchanges that yet stopped short of all malice, and argued a very considerable area of understanding between them. And yet they were, physically, so strikingly unlike.
The boy was more than a head the taller, elegantly long and loose-knit and athletic, with straight fair hair and blue-grey eyes. His face, too, was elongated, but in suave curves, and with a lot of shapely bone; a high-bridged nose jutted haughtily, and brows level as the pommel of a sword underlined a broad forehead. He was looking straight back at George, well aware of what he must be thinking, and visibly speculating as to whether he would or would not ask. Which made it imperative to ask bluntly or not at all.
“So he’s your father?”
“Well,” said the boy with cheerful deliberation, “by courtesy he is. And anyhow, I’d sooner be Jennings, than Macsen-Martel.”
“Like that, is it?” If the boy was willing to accept the conversation on this level, so was George. “You’re the wild oat I’ve been hearing about.”
“I’m one of them,” said the boy drily. “When you’ve been around here a bit longer you’ll learn to spot this debased Norman pan.”
“He’s left more of you around?”
“Brother,” said the boy reverently, “he could field a football team.” The blue-grey eyes flashed in an impudent but engaging smile. “And probably a netball team as well. You ask Sergeant Moon.” He got up, hoisting the shears from where he had laid them. “I suppose I’d really better go and get some wood in for my mother—it’s set in for the day, by the look of it.” And he walked away unconcernedly through the rain, weaving his way blithely among the graves to take the nearest line to the lodge, and whistling as he went, and George saw in this rear view of him the tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-flanked shape and long gait of the Macsen-Martels, unmistakable in movement where he might have missed it completely in repose. One of the family strays, but one that had found a good home. There was nothing the matter with the relationship between courtesy father and son; and what was further implied was that the situation had been accepted by both of them from the beginning. Ask Sergeant Moon! Not bad advice in the circumstances.
There was moss wound into the parsley wreath, and there was the grit of soil and the remains of an orchreous moisture in the moss. Better let the laboratory have a go at it, they might be able to suggest the locality from which it had come, and if the spirit-hunters had begun to arrive, that might not be Mottisham at all. Either some superstitious crank or earnest student of the occult had really put it there in an effort to guard the church and the community against evil spirits, or the murderer had attempted a piece of conjurer’s misdirection to divert attention from his own solid humanity and his entirely earthly motives. No, on reflection there was, regrettably, the third possibility: someone who enjoyed trouble and chaos had simply added his own contribution to the brew here out of pure devilment. Of that kind of devil even villages as remote as Mottisham have more than enough.