Edmund Crispin - Holy Disorders

EDMUND CRISPIN

Ther saugh I first the derke ymaginyng

Of felonye, and al the compassyng;

The crueel ire, reed as any gleede;

The pykepurs, and eke the pale drede;

The smylere, with the knyfe under the cloke;

The shepne, brennynge with the blake smoke;

The tresoun of the mordrynge in the bedde;

The open werre, with woundes al bibledde…

The nayl y-driven in the shode a-nyght;

The colde deeth, with mouth gapyng upright…’

Chaucer

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Victor Gollancz 1946

Copyright © Rights Limited,

1946. All rights reserved

Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008124182

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124199

Version: 2017-10-26

To my parents

Contents

Cover

Title Page EDMUND CRISPIN

Copyright An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1946 Copyright © Rights Limited, 1946. All rights reserved Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017 Cover image © Shutterstock.com A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008124182 Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124199 Version: 2017-10-26

Dedication To my parents

Chapter 1: Invitation and Warning

Chapter 2: Do not Travel for Pleasure

Chapter 3: Gibbering Corse

Chapter 4: Teeth of Traps

Chapter 5: Conjectures

Chapter 6: Murder in the Cathedral

Chapter 7: Motive

Chapter 8: Two Canons

Chapter 9: Three Suspects and a Witch

Chapter 10: Night Thoughts

Chapter 11: Whale and Coffin

Chapter 12: Love’s Lute

Chapter 13: Another Dead

Chapter 14: In the Last Analysis

Chapter 15: Reassurance and Farewell

About the Author

Also in this series

About the Publisher

Footnotes

As his taxi burrowed its way through the traffic outside Waterloo Station, like an over-zealous bee barging to the front of a dilatory swarm, Geoffrey Vintner re-read the letter and telegram which he had found on his breakfast table that morning.

He felt as unhappy as any man without pretension to the spirit of adventure might feel who has received a threatening letter accompanied by sufficient evidence to suggest that the threats contained in it will probably be carried out. Not for the first time that morning, he regretted that he had ever persuaded himself to set out on his uncomfortable errand, to leave his cottage in Surrey, his cats, his garden (whose disposition he changed almost daily in accordance with some new and generally impracticable fancy), and his estimable and long-suffering housekeeper, Mrs Body. He was not, he considered (and the thought recurred with gloomy frequency as the series of adventures on which he was about to embark went its way), of a mould which engages very successfully in physical violence. Once one is over forty one cannot, even in moments of high enthusiasm, throw oneself heartily into anonymous and mortal battles against unscrupulous men. And when, moreover, one is a finical bachelor, moderately well-off, bred in a secluded country rectory, and with a mind undisturbed by sordid cares and overmastering passions, the thing begins to appear not only impossible but frankly ludicrous. It was no consolation to reflect that men like himself had fought with the courage and tenacity of bears all the way back to the Dunkirk beaches; they at least knew what they were up against.

Threats.

He groped in his coat pocket, pulled out a large, ancient revolver, and looked at it with that mixture of alarm and affection which dog-lovers bestow on a particularly ferocious animal. The driver regarded this proceeding bleakly in the driving-mirror as they entered upon the expanses of Waterloo Bridge. And a new thought entered Geoffrey Vintner’s head as, observing this deprecatory glare, he hastily put the gun away again: people had been known to be abducted in taxis, which hovered about their houses until they emerged, and then conveyed them resistlessly away to some place like Limehouse, where they were dealt with by gangs of armed thugs. He gazed dubiously at the short, stocky figure which sat with rock-like immobility in front of him, dexterously skirting the roundabout at the north end of the bridge. Certainly there was only one train which he could have caught from Surrey that morning, in time to get his connexion from Paddington, so his enemies, whoever they were, would have known when to meet him; on the other hand, he had had some considerable difficulty in finding a taxi at all, and without exception they had all seemed concerned more with eluding his attention than with trying to attract it. So that was probably all right.

He turned and looked with distaste at the traffic which pursued behind, with the erratic movements of topers following a leader from pub to pub. How people knew when they were being trailed he found himself unable to imagine. Moreover, he was not trained to the habit of observation; the outside world normally impressed itself on him as a vague and unmemorable succession of phantasms – a Red Indian could have walked through London by his side without his noticing anything untoward. He contemplated for a moment asking the driver to make a detour, in order to throw possible pursuers off the scent, but suspected that this would be unkindly received. And in any case, the whole thing was too preposterous; it would do no one any good to follow him publicly through the London crowds on a hot summer’s midday.