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By Root 331 0

—I stuck my head into the room Margery uses as a private meditation chapel and saw Marie sitting there, so I walked in. Before I could say more than ‘Marie, have you seen—’ she jumped up and grabbed my arm and started pushing me back out the door. Now, you probably could guess how most of us feel about Marie. I mean, she does her job and protects Margery from being eaten up, but she’s hardly an easy person to get along with. Anyway, I stopped dead and said, ‘Marie, what on earth is the matter?’ and she hushed me and glanced across the room, the way you do when you want to make sure you haven’t disturbed someone, so I pushed forward a few steps and saw Margery. She was kneeling, sort of sitting on her heels, and her shoulders were thrown back and her arms dangled down and her head was back, just rigid. She hadn’t heard me. She looked as if she wouldn’t have heard a bomb going off. I couldn’t see her face very well, but her mouth seemed to be open slightly, and she looked… otherworldly, as if she weren’t in the room. Marie snatched at me and started shoving at me—God, she’s an irritating person!—and I let her push me to the door. I turned around when we got there, to look over her shoulder, and just then Margery sort of collapsed, like a marionette with its strings cut. Just went limp and folded into a huddle on the floor. Marie gave me a final push and bolted the door, and I could hear her walking—not running—across the room. I didn’t mention it to Margery, or to anyone else for that matter. I don’t know if she knows I saw her. It was a Tuesday,” she added, somewhat irrelevantly.

Time had been called and the pub was quieting, but neither of us took much notice for several minutes, until the owner came and began pointedly to clear the tables next to us. We drained our glasses and put on our coats.

“Thank you for telling me, Ronnie,” I said. “I agree, she’s an interesting person.”

“You don’t think I’ve gone daft, then?”

“Oh, no,” I said emphatically. “By no means.”

I took to my narrow bed that night with a mind awhirl, plucked at by the plight of Miles Fitzwarren, the motives of Sherlock Holmes, and the spiritual life of Margery Childe. I did not sleep overly much.

* * *

NINE

Friday, 31 December-

Saturday, 1 January

Let the woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I do not suffer a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over men, but to be in silence.

Timothy 2:11-12

« ^ »

I did ring the Temple the following morning, and after long delays and losing the connexion twice, I finally spoke with the churlish Marie, whose accent on the telephone was thick as marzipan. I shifted to French, but she stubbornly persisted with fracturing English, and at the end of the bilingual conversation, it transpired that Miss Childe was not able to see me that day for longer than fifteen minutes, that Miss Childe wished to see me for a longer period of time, and that Miss Childe therefore suggested that I dine with her the next evening, Saturday, at a half past six. I told Marie in the most florid of French that such an arrangement was entirely felicitous and unreservedly acceptable, then rang off.

I sat for a minute at the telephone desk, whistling tunelessly, and then picked up the receiver again and asked for a number in Oxford. While waiting for the trunk call to go through, I retrieved the morning paper. The day’s article on Iris Fitzwarren stretched one meagre piece of news (that the nightclub she had been in was raided by Scotland Yard late Thursday night, with a number of deliciously scandalous arrests) into two columns, but despite the writer’s efforts, it was obvious that nothing was happening. Had it not been for her name, the story would have been killed or relegated to the innermost recesses.

The exchange came up then with my number, and I spoke for a few minutes to the man on the other end, referring obliquely to certain debts and favours and describing the information I wanted, and said I would ring him back in an hour. Holmes would have done the matter by telegram, I knew, but I always prefer