Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert Page A

but he had to push off, and so I’m doing it for him.’
    He said nothing of a holiday curtailed by this good Samaritanism, and Pollock rather admired him for it.
    â€˜Do you mind if I come with you?’ he asked. It was an idea which had occurred to him some minutes before, that as an unobtrusive spectator at Evensong he might have a good opportunity of observing some of his prospective victims – or perhaps “clients” was the more appropriate word. He wondered for a moment whether it was quite seemly to make a stalking-horse out of a religious service, but comforted himself with the thought that the end might justify the means (and anyway there was no harm in just having a look at them).
    Halliday appeared to welcome the suggestion. ‘Come and sit up in the choir,’ he said, and again voicing Pollock’s thoughts with disconcerting clarity he added, ‘then you’ll be able to have a good squint at all of us.’
    It was beginning to get dark as they left the house and cut across the road into the precincts. The light, almost transparent mist of an early autumn evening enhanced both the quiet and the beauty of the setting. For the first time Pollock saw Melchester Close as a place of tranquillity and secrecy. Lights were springing up in drawing-room windows. Eighteen households – eighteen separate little entities making up a community.
    And how quiet everything was! The clack of the gate behind them as they entered the precincts sounded startlingly loud. They left the path and struck off across the grass for the south door, and their footsteps were deadened in the turf. There was a faint but pleasant smell from a bonfire of leaves in Canon Bloss’ garden.
    Ahead of them, through a chink in the big west door, showed a soft gleam of light, and in the stillness Pollock could hear the sound of the organist playing the voluntary. In silence he followed his guide round the south-west corner of the cathedral, into the south porch, through a swing door and into the cathedral itself.
    His first impression was that the building was completely empty. Rows and rows of chairs but no congregation. Halliday seemed to find nothing surprising in this, for he plunged off up the south aisle without a word and Pollock followed. When he got closer to the choir screen he saw that his first idea had been erroneous; there was a congregation. It numbered seven. Six old ladies and one very old lady.
    â€˜Quite a good muster for a weekday,’ whispered Halliday enthusiastically as he strode across the south transept with Pollock breathlessly at his heels. ‘That’s old Mrs. Judd – marvellous old lady – comes to cathedral every morning and evening. Can’t hear a word, but regular as clockwork. Must leave you now – find yourself a seat in the choir.’
    Pointing a vague finger towards the north he plunged into a room from which was audible a cheerful but subdued babble, and which Pollock took to be the vestry. Bereft of his guide, and feeling as an outsider that he had no right to a seat in the choir at all, he glanced anxiously round him in the gloom. Behind him was the bulk of the organ – now working up into a breathless crescendo. He advanced a few uncertain paces, passed through a gateway and found himself “within the choir.” This, as he began to realise, signified no more than the space to the east (or on the altar side) of the screen. It contained a vast number of finely carved stalls, and was absolutely empty. Pollock seated himself in comparative obscurity, opened an enormous tome on the ledge in front of him – it turned out to be a volume of Bishop Hooker’s sermons – and breathed a sigh of relief. So far, so good. He felt that he had entrenched himself within the inner citadel of Melchester.
    He had barely established, as it were, his pied-à-terre when a general movement in the body of the cathedral warned him that the choir