The action filled Blanche with rising panic.

  Shoebridge stood up and tidied the rest of her things into the handbag. Blanche, her throat dry, and her heart beginning to pound fast, said hoarsely, “What are you going to do? For God’s sake, what are you going to do?”

  Shoebridge looked round at his wife. Mrs. Shoebridge gave a little nod as though she had agreed to some unspoken question. Shoebridge turned back to Blanche. She saw Mrs. Shoebridge rise from her chair and begin to move.

  Shoebridge said, “What can I do, Miss Tyler? I have worked for years for this day. I have a dream which I mean to turn into reality. You mean nothing to me. The fact that it may be known you came here puts me to no risk which I cannot face with confidence. I have to go on, Miss Tyler. You are in my way.”

  Blanche stood up, panic coursing through her, destroying all but one thought. “No! No . . . Oh, no!” she cried and turned to run for the door.

  Shoebridge put out an arm and caught her. He swung her round and held her with both hands, clamping her shoulders up against his chest. As Mrs. Shoebridge came in front of her Blanche began to scream. Neither of the Shoebridges took any notice of the scream. Mrs. Shoebridge reached out and pulled the lapel of the open lambskin coat back. She unbuttoned the front of the red jacket and slid a hand under the loose silk blouse neck, exposing part of the right shoulder, the flesh pink and soft.

  Blanche screamed again, long and with animal fear, and the Shoebridges did nothing to stop her. Mrs. Shoebridge raised the hypodermic syringe. Blanche’s scream was cut to a long wailing sob through which she called, “Henry! Oh, Henry . . .” Mrs. Shoebridge inserted the point with great care, her hand steady. As the point went in Blanche screamed again, and kicked out with her feet so that Shoebridge had to hold her upright. Then she slowly slumped in his arms and he lowered her gently into her chair.

  He stepped back, looked at his wristwatch—it was half-past seven—and then said to his wife, “We’ve got plenty of time. You take her car. I’ll drive her in the van. We’ve got to take her back to her own part of the country. I’ll give you the route. It’s got to be done half an hour before she’s due to recover. We’ll find a place. Until we do we are at risk but it is unavoidable.” He stood looking down at Blanche and reached out with his right hand and took his wife’s arm, his fingers clamping hard on the flesh.

  * * * *

  A little after nine o’clock that night, George switched off the television in his cottage and got up to make himself a night-cap. He was pleased with himself. The gardening thing was coming along. He’d got a good secondhand van lined up and had agreed the price for repainting it. Next week he would be going after equipment and have an advertisement out for a strong lad as help. Handposters were being printed. They’d be ready in a few days. By the end of next week he would be ready to distribute them. He and the boy could do that in the van. Lumley’s Sunshine Gardens. As advertised weekly in the local press. Before he knew where he was he would be expanding all over the place. Work it up into a real concern and—who knows?—end by selling it lock, stock and barrel and with the cash go on to bigger and better things. He looked across at Albert, who was sitting on the window-seat. Outside the wind and rain sweeping down the river valley were slashing and shaking at the window.

  As George poured whisky into his glass a particularly vicious storm squall beat against the window, shaking the loose frame, the hammer of rain and wind like the great surge of some elemental force outside assaulting the house, determined on entrance. Albert jumped to his feet and, raising his head towards the window, its curtains flapping in the draught, began to howl, and went on howling until George threw a cushion at him.

  At that same moment, too, in Reed Court, Miss Rainbird, who was sitting reading a book in the solitary light from her table lamp, happened to look up and her eye fell on the chair, deep in the shadows, which Madame Blanche had always used during her sessions. Just for a moment through a trick of light and shadow disposed over its cushions and the shawl which Miss Rainbird had thrown over the chairback on coming in, it looked as though someone were sitting there. So vivid was the impression as Miss Rainbird flicked her eyes to relieve them from the strain of reading that she was sure someone was there. She felt the skin at the back of her neck creep. A moment later she realised that the chair was empty and she gave a little snort of self-disgust at her imaginative nonsense.

  And at that moment in a little wood high on the barren lands of the western part of Salisbury plain, Blanche died.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GRANDISON’S DIRECTIVE FROM the conference at 10 Downing Street was as Bush had expected. The kidnapper’s terms must be met. There was no question whatsoever of any action being taken which would put the Archbishop’s life in jeopardy. The code message would be put in the Daily Telegraph on the Monday and the department would then await instructions giving the terms and method of release. There would be no publicity either now or after the release of the Archbishop. No publicity at the moment was imperative for the safety of the Archbishop’s life. No publicity later was equally imperative to protect the professional and public reputations of the high-ranking members of the government and the police. If in years to come the story should leak then it could easily be claimed that secrecy at the time had been the wisest policy and by then there would be no threat to anyone’s reputation.

  The Archbishop’s family was told the truth and so also were a few members of the hierarchy in the Church who had to know. A press release was put out that the Archbishop was suffering from a severe chill and would be confined to his bed for the next few days. All his public engagements were cancelled.

  The whole affair, Bush had to concede, was running exactly as the kidnapper had planned. If by some stroke of fortune he were to find out within the next couple of days who the kidnapper was and where he was hiding the Archbishop, still no action would be taken until the ransom had been paid and the Archbishop was safely back in the bosom of his family. Grandison’s brief was explicit on this point. Not the smallest move was to be made which would even for a few minutes expose the Archbishop to danger.

  The Archbishop had taken his afternoon stroll around the lake at River Park and had been seized either as he was going in or coming out of the private chapel. The lock of the wall door on to the roadway had been forced, and the letter for Sir Charles Medham left at the lodge gates as the kidnapper drove away. Except for the Commissioner at Scotland Yard there was not a policeman in the country who had any idea that the Archbishop had been kidnapped.

  When Grandison had explained the position to Sangwill and himself, Bush had said, “It’s so simple I wonder it hasn’t been done before.”

  Grandison shook his head. “It’s not only simple. It’s audacious and arrogant. We shall be sitting in that damned hallway again, and the man or woman will come and collect a half a million. He or she will walk out and that will be the end. They will never bother us again.”

  “Unless?” Sangwill pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes.

  Grandison shrugged his shoulders. “You know the answer to that one. You’ve run all your computer combinations. You’ve fed the big brain everything you know. The oracle refuses to utter. Prayer is the answer. I told Bush that ages ago, but he refuses to go down on his knees, refuses to sacrifice a couple of chickens to some heathen god. The man behind all this is prepared to sacrifice himself if the gods desert him. They won’t desert him, not unless you or someone bribes them with richer offerings than his own arrogance and audacity.”

  Humouring Grandison’s extravagant mood, knowing that it covered a frustration greater than his own because Grandison would never have accepted the kidnapping terms, would have refused and put the Archbishop at risk, Bush said, “What is there to offer? What have we got?”

  Grandison smiled. “There’s always something we can find that will please the dark powers that control time and chance. Some simple little donation that catches their imagination or a sincere appeal to their sense of irony.”

  Sangwill laughed. “I really think you mean it.”

  “Of course I mean it. What we should pray for is the moment of chaos, the small sideslip in time, the million to one chance, the mutation which makes a nonsense of normality. If it doesn’t happen, then we aren’t going to be anything but witnesses to a man or woman collecting half a million and disappearing into the night for ever.”

  * * * *

  The following day, which was a Monday, the Daily Telegraph personal column carried the item—Felix. All fine at home. Please write. John.

  * * * *

  That same day at ten in the morning a farm labourer walking through a wood on the downs a few miles from Salisbury found a car parked between the trees a hundred yards from the road. Behind the wheel was a dead woman. All the windows of the car were closed except for a small triangular vent in the offside back window. A length of rubber piping had been wired to the exhaust pipe and led into the car through the vent.

  The farm labourer called the police without opening the car. When the patrol car arrived one of the policemen recognised Blanche. She was slumped behind the wheel, wearing her lambskin coat and gloves. The gloves were marked with rust and dirt stains acquired presumably when she had wired the rubber tube to the exhaust pipe. A pair of pliers from the car tool kit lay on the ground by the exhaust pipe with a small piece of loose wire. It had rained hard during Saturday evening and for most of the Sunday. Blanche’s shoes were mud-covered where she had stood on the wet ground fixing the tubing. The flushed red colour of her face was no surprise to the two policemen. They had seen deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning before. The tracks of the car into the wood from the road, and the footprints at the back of the car, were all badly obliterated by the rain.

  Over the weekend George had not missed Blanche. Her visits to his cottage followed no fixed pattern. She sometimes telephoned and said she was coming, or just turned up. To go a whole week or more without seeing her when he was not professionally working for her was nothing unusual to George.

  Blanche’s mother had not missed her either. She had gone off on Saturday morning saying she was going for a drive in the country. Blanche never discussed her clients or professional work with her mother. When she did not return Mrs. Tyler assumed that she was staying with George. The Salisbury police informed Mrs. Tyler of Blanche’s death at midday and she went in the police car to identify the body. A routine autopsy was performed on Blanche that evening.

  * * * *

  That evening the Archbishop prepared himself for his third night in his cellar quarters. So far he had seen nothing of the people who were keeping him captive. He had followed the routine dictated to him over the loudspeaker. He knew why he was being held because he was already familiar with the kidnapping cases of Archer and Pakefield. He had, in fact, met Pakefield socially once since the man’s release and had been given an account of his experiences and had been quietly amused at the low payment demanded for his release. He had a mild interest in the actual amount which might be asked for his own release as a measure of his own importance, but he was distinctly upset by the thought that the money—no matter whether a large or small amount—could ill be spared from the Church’s funds. He had no personal concern for his own safety. He was in God’s good hands and was certainly being afforded ample time in which to practise his devotions and to find comfort and strength in the power of prayer. The food he was given was very good and the wine which he had been brought on his second evening was one which he would have served with confidence at his own table. Before settling to bed now, he said his prayers and included his captors in them. He had no doubt of the plurality. That he had been abducted by the man and woman in the chapel porch was beyond doubt. It was a strange and violent world that he lived in. But then, of course, it had always been a strange and violent world . . . without faith and belief it would be difficult to make any sense out of it at all.

  * * * *

  That same night, Miss Rainbird slept badly. When she awoke at five o’clock in the morning it was to find that she had one of her bad headaches. She could remember nothing of her dreams except that they had been disturbing and that they had concerned Madame Blanche. She lay back against her pillows and told herself that it was really going to be too much if she had to cope with Madame Blanche in her dreams as well as Harriet. It was enough to give anyone a bad headache. And it was a bad headache, throbbing away in her skull. She remembered how Madame Blanche had cured her once and had told her that she could cure herself if she really tried.

  She shut her eyes and lay in the darkness and began to imagine that Madame Blanche was at the head of the bed behind her, that her fingertips were stroking her brow. She told herself that the woman was there, the string of pearls swinging as she moved her hands, the air touched with the scent of the strong perfume she used. She could feel the fingertips, incredibly light, moving across her skin. For all that the woman was clearly quite mercenary minded, there had been something about her, some gift, some quality which could not be rationalised away. An extraordinary woman.

  Miss Rainbird fell asleep. When she woke an hour later her headache was gone.

  * * * *

  Mrs. Tyler telephoned George early in the morning and told him the news about Blanche. When he put the telephone down, George stood staring through the window. Outside, snowdrops and daffodils were showing in the rough grass of the paddock. Spring was touching the earth with colour and stirring the wild life. There was a blur of blue and yellow wings from the budgerigars in the aviary. It just could not be, he told himself. Not Blanche. Blanche was life. All robust and warm and earthy. Full of it. For all her spiritualism and ethereal ideas, the last thing Blanche would have wanted to do was deliberately to leave this world before her proper time. It was just unbelievable that Blanche was never going to come here again, that he was never going to burn the toast for her and take up her breakfast again. Never going to see her sitting up in bed, waiting for him, a gorgeous, generous woman, or hear her shout at him to keep Albert out of the bedroom. He would never hear her laugh again, or see that sudden odd withdrawal from the world around her as she went off into one of her spells of talk with the other world . . . Henry and her Temple of Astrodel. Poor Blanche . . . she was never going to get that now, not in this world.

  He sat down slowly and felt tears begin to wet the corners of his eyes. He was a simple, uncomplicated man. He had no sophistication or philosophy in him which helped to meet grief. Perhaps, he thought, he really had loved her. Theirs wasn’t just one of those loose arrangements which some men and women have. Perhaps, too, she had really loved him. He ought to have recognised it all, taken charge, and married her. It would have taken some bullying, but he could have done it . . . made her want it. If they had been married this couldn’t have happened. And now it had, he still couldn’t understand it. Of all the people he knew, Blanche was the last one likely to do a thing like that. . . mucking about with bits of wire and rubber piping, sitting up there on the plain with the rain belting down, and just waiting calmly for it to happen. In God’s name why? Why?

  He stood up, suddenly angry. How could you ever tell with people, he thought. You never knew where you bloody well were. You never got right across to them and they never really got right across to you. Part strangers all the time. What on earth had got into her? Had she been to see a doctor some time and been told she had cancer? She wouldn’t say anything if she had. She wouldn’t want to go through all that, not when she knew that she could always pass over. . . . Cancer? For God’s sake, that was nonsense. She was as fit as a horse.

  The telephone rang. It was the Salisbury police. They would be obliged if George could make it convenient to see them at half-past twelve that morning.

  Before going to the police headquarters George went to the Red Lion and had a couple of glasses of Guinness. The first one he drank for Blanche, a silent, farewell toast. She’d loved a glass of Guinness.

  George was interviewed by a detective sergeant, a big, fatherly figure. The man knew George fairly well and quite liked him. But quite liking people was something that was never allowed to interfere with duty. He told George of the circumstances of Blanche’s death and said that since George— after her mother—was the closest person to her, they felt that anything he had to offer might be of help to them.

  The sergeant said, “We’ve had an autopsy and, of course, there will be an inquest. I don’t want to embarrass you, Mr. Lumley, but I should make it clear that we know something of your relationship with Miss Tyler.”

  “That’s all right. Scores of people knew. What I want to know is why the hell she’d do a thing like that?”

  “That’s what the coroner will want to find out too. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Of course not. Anything I can do—”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “Wednesday last week. She was full of the joys of spring. Sorry, I don’t mean to be . . . Well, it’s a fact. She was on top of the world.”

  “You didn’t see her or hear from her after that?”

  “No.”

  “Did she tell you what her movements were going to be over the weekend?”

  “No, she didn’t. But I told her I was going to be busy. I’m trying to set up a small business. I must say all this has taken the steam out of it a bit now.”

  “She left home fairly early Saturday morning and she took a picnic lunch with her. When she was found the lunch had been eaten. No idea where she might have gone to?”

  “None at all. Except. . . well, you know she was a spiritualist. Professionally. Sometimes she just liked to go off. Get into the country to be by herself. Think things out. Meditate, maybe. I know a lot of people think it’s all fake and nonsense. But it’s not. She’d got something.”