floor. The only sound was the tick of old wood settling in the night, and the chime of the clock in the church tower telling the three-quarters. Only the papers on the floor, barely seen in the dimness, affirmed the truth of what I had seen. The open door, the vanishing figure, seemed no more than the negative of some dream still printed on the retina as one opens one's eyes from sleep.
I swallowed hard, and willed my heartbeats to slow down again. A robed figure in a darkened church? Absurd. They had a word for the silly penny-dreadful, didn't they?
Gothic, that was it. Robed nuns and ancient houses and secret passages, the paraphernalia of melodrama that Jane Austen had laughed at in Northanger Abbey, and that we had all laughed at when the psychical research people had investi gated Rob Granger's specter in this very church. My specter would, of course, be the same as his; any robed figure leaving a church vestry and locking it after him was reasonably likely to be the Vicar. And the dead switchboard? No doubt Mr. Bryanston thought it safer to turn off the mains at night. And probably, I thought, as I reached for the main switch bar, which was certainly up, he would come back when he saw the lights go on.
I had left all the switches on, vestry, chancel, altar floods, organ steps. When I pressed the bar down, the whole east end of the church leaped into light. I stood for a moment, listening, but could hear no sound of returning steps. I picked the papers up from the floor, and took a quick look round the vestry. No sign of any other disturbance. I laid the papers on the table, beside a neat pile of books that looked like parish registers, and weighted them with an ink bottle. They were accounts, I noticed; no doubt parish accounts left here for the next council meeting. I waited for a little longer, listening, but there was no sound. I switched out all the lights except the altar floods, then made my way back into the dimness at the west end of the nave, and sat down. The lights bloomed softly on blue carpet and bistered lilies and the gilded heads of the angels that held the hammer-beams. Slowly, the silence settled back like dust.
There are parts of one's life that are, and ought to remain, private. What passed then between me and whatever else was to be spoken with in the dark of All Hallows' Church is my affair. I believe I had had some idea that trying to open my mind's powers here would sanction the act, but the Hallows themselves apparently didn't see it like that. In the way I had known it before, in the way I wanted it now, nothing came; nothing but silence.
Till, just as I got to my feet and started for the vestry to put out the light, the vestry door opened and a robed figure entered the church.
The Vicar. As I had thought, the Vicar, a prosaic figure in his cassock, with his spectacles glinting in the light. It didn't stop me jumping half out of my skin before I registered who it was and went sheepishly to meet him.
"My dear child! It's you! I understood you were coming over in the morning. I saw the light just now when I went into my study, and came across to see who it was. Did I frighten you?"
"You did give me a start. I'm sorry I dragged you out again, Mr. Bryanston. I hope you don't mind my coming here this evening? I'm coming back in the morning, as I told you, but I—I wanted to leave the casket here overnight. I was going to call and tell you, before I went back to Worcester. Do you mind?"
"Of course not. Come whenever you like, the church is never locked."
He took his spectacles off and began absently to polish them on his cassock sleeve. He was a man comfortably into his middle sixties, with curly grey hair thinning back from a high forehead, a rounded face with the fresh skin of a child, a long upper lip and a habit of looking over his spectacles down the arch of his nose. He had longsighted grey eyes distorted by the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.
He had been at Ashley as long
I swallowed hard, and willed my heartbeats to slow down again. A robed figure in a darkened church? Absurd. They had a word for the silly penny-dreadful, didn't they?
Gothic, that was it. Robed nuns and ancient houses and secret passages, the paraphernalia of melodrama that Jane Austen had laughed at in Northanger Abbey, and that we had all laughed at when the psychical research people had investi gated Rob Granger's specter in this very church. My specter would, of course, be the same as his; any robed figure leaving a church vestry and locking it after him was reasonably likely to be the Vicar. And the dead switchboard? No doubt Mr. Bryanston thought it safer to turn off the mains at night. And probably, I thought, as I reached for the main switch bar, which was certainly up, he would come back when he saw the lights go on.
I had left all the switches on, vestry, chancel, altar floods, organ steps. When I pressed the bar down, the whole east end of the church leaped into light. I stood for a moment, listening, but could hear no sound of returning steps. I picked the papers up from the floor, and took a quick look round the vestry. No sign of any other disturbance. I laid the papers on the table, beside a neat pile of books that looked like parish registers, and weighted them with an ink bottle. They were accounts, I noticed; no doubt parish accounts left here for the next council meeting. I waited for a little longer, listening, but there was no sound. I switched out all the lights except the altar floods, then made my way back into the dimness at the west end of the nave, and sat down. The lights bloomed softly on blue carpet and bistered lilies and the gilded heads of the angels that held the hammer-beams. Slowly, the silence settled back like dust.
There are parts of one's life that are, and ought to remain, private. What passed then between me and whatever else was to be spoken with in the dark of All Hallows' Church is my affair. I believe I had had some idea that trying to open my mind's powers here would sanction the act, but the Hallows themselves apparently didn't see it like that. In the way I had known it before, in the way I wanted it now, nothing came; nothing but silence.
Till, just as I got to my feet and started for the vestry to put out the light, the vestry door opened and a robed figure entered the church.
The Vicar. As I had thought, the Vicar, a prosaic figure in his cassock, with his spectacles glinting in the light. It didn't stop me jumping half out of my skin before I registered who it was and went sheepishly to meet him.
"My dear child! It's you! I understood you were coming over in the morning. I saw the light just now when I went into my study, and came across to see who it was. Did I frighten you?"
"You did give me a start. I'm sorry I dragged you out again, Mr. Bryanston. I hope you don't mind my coming here this evening? I'm coming back in the morning, as I told you, but I—I wanted to leave the casket here overnight. I was going to call and tell you, before I went back to Worcester. Do you mind?"
"Of course not. Come whenever you like, the church is never locked."
He took his spectacles off and began absently to polish them on his cassock sleeve. He was a man comfortably into his middle sixties, with curly grey hair thinning back from a high forehead, a rounded face with the fresh skin of a child, a long upper lip and a habit of looking over his spectacles down the arch of his nose. He had longsighted grey eyes distorted by the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.
He had been at Ashley as long
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