A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,13

Father Hart sucked eagerly at the cigarette. He looked at his fingers. The nicotine stains climbed past every joint. No wonder he'd been offered one. He shouldn't have forgotten his own, should have bought a pack back at King's Cross. But there was so very much then.... He puffed hungrily at the tobacco.

"Father Hart?" the older man said. He was obviously the blond's superior. They'd all been introduced but he'd stupidly forgotten their names. The woman's he knew: Havers.

Sergeant, by her garments. But the other two had slipped his mind. He gazed at their grave faces in mounting panic.

"I'm sorry. You asked...?"

"Did you go to Teys's farm every Sunday?"

Father Hart made a determined effort to think clearly, chronologically, systematically for once. His fingers sought the rosary in his pocket. The cross dug into his thumb. He could feel the tiny corpus stretched out in agony.

Oh Lord, to die that way. "No," he answered in a rush.

"William is...was our precentor. Such a wonderful basso profundo. He could make the church ring with sound and I..." Father Hart took a ragged breath to put himself back on the track.

"He'd not come to Mass that morning, nor had Roberta. I was concerned. The Teyses never miss Mass. So I went to the farm."

The cigar smoker squinted at him through the pungent smoke. "Do you do that for all your parishioners? Must certainly keep them in line if you do."

Father Hart had smoked his cigarette down to the filter. There was nothing for it but to stub it out. The blond man did the same although his was not half-smoked. He brought out the case and offered another. Again the silver lighter appeared; the flame caught, produced the smoke that seared his throat, soothed his nerves, numbed his lungs.

"Well, it was mostly because Olivia was concerned."

A glance at the report. "Olivia Odell?"

Father Hart nodded eagerly. "She and William Teys, you see, had just become engaged.

The announcement was to be made at a small tea that afternoon. She'd rung him several times after Mass but got nothing. So she came to me."

"Why didn't she go out there herself?"

"She wanted to, of course. But there was Bridie and the duck. He'd got lost somehow, the usual family crisis, and she couldn't be settled down until he was recovered."

The three others glanced at one another warily. The priest reddened. How

absurd it all sounded! He plunged on. "You see, Bridie is Olivia's little girl. She has a pet duck. Well, not really a pet, not in the actual sense." How could he explain all of it to them, all the twists and turns of their village life?

The blond man spoke, kindly. "So while Olivia and Bridie were looking for the duck, you went out to the farm."

"That's so exactly right. Thank you." Father Hart smiled gratefully.

"Tell us what happened when you arrived."

"I went to the house first, but no one was there. The door wasn't locked and I remember thinking that was strange. William always locked everything tight as a drum if he went out. He was peculiar that way. Insisted I do the same with the church if I wasn't about.

Even when the choir practised on Wednesdays he never once left until every person was gone and I'd seen to the doors. That's the way he was."

"I imagine his unlocked house gave you a bit of a turn," the blond man said.

"It did, really. Even at one o'clock in the afternoon. So, when I couldn't raise anyone with a knock..." He looked at them all apologetically, "I suppose I walked right in."

"Anything peculiar inside?"

"Nothing at all. It was perfectly clean, as it always was. There was, however..." His eyes shifted to the window. How to explain?

"Yes?"

"The candles had burned down."

"Have they no electricity?"

Father Hart looked at them earnestly. "These are votive candles. They were always lit.

Always. Twenty-four hours a day."

"For a shrine, you mean?"

"Yes, that's exactly what it is. A shrine," he agreed immediately and hurried on. "When I saw that, I knew at once something was wrong. Neither William nor Roberta would ever have let the candles go out. So I went through the house. And from there, out to the barn."

"And there...?"

What was there really left to report? The chilling tranquillity had told him at once.

Outside, in the near pasture, the bleating of sheep and the cry of birds spoke of sanity and peace.

But in the barn, the absolute quiet was the core of diablerie. Even from the door the rich cloying smell of pooled