It was my employee, James. Except that he didn’t look like my employee; he gave me a look of grand contempt and said, ‘Mr Morgan, may we come in?’ There were three others, gloomy large men in long dark overcoats in spite of the sunny morning. They looked like they never took them off. They made the police look like boy scouts in bob-a-job week.
They settled on to Hermione’s graceful little chairs, and turned her cosy lounge into a court of law. Worse than a court of law.
Mr Maidment. Mr Crombie. Mr Shaftesbury. I fixed it in my mind that Mr Maidment was quite old, with a nearly entirely bald head when he finally took his dark trilby hat off. Just a few dark strands combed across, like seaweed on an empty beach. Mr Crombie was the youngest, not much over forty. Mr Shaftesbury was the one who was neither Mr Maidment nor Mr Crombie. They had not offered to shake hands. They put down their hats as if fearing pollution wherever they put them. They looked at the room, at the little untidinesses, and turned it into a brothel. They looked at Hermione and turned her into a tart. They looked at me and turned me into a fallen sinner.
Mr Maidment looked at me harder still.
‘Tell us, Mr Morgan, what has happened since James left you?’
I tried asking myself who the hell he thought he was, but it was no use. Their authority, their certainty, their righteousness was a wall you could hammer against till your fists bled, and it wouldn’t do any good. I had not felt so small since the last time my headmaster summoned me to his study, back in 1958.
So I began to tell them all that had happened. It seemed the easiest way to get rid of them. I was looking for paths of least resistance by that time. They were good listeners, I’ll say that for them. And they expressed no surprise at anything I told them. Just nodded occasionally, in a grave way, as if their worst fears were being confirmed. Just once, Mr Shaftesbury muttered something to Mr Maidment that sounded like Latin. ‘Malleus malificorum’, I think. Mr Maidment gave him a look that silenced him immediately.
They heard me out to the finish. At the same time, they seemed to regard Hermione as a creature of no importance, as if only men were worth listening to, however sinful they might be.
At the end, Mr Maidment said, ‘Was it your impression that the seat of the creature was in the cellars?’
‘Yes,’ said Hermione. He gave her a look as if he was surprised she was there at all, and disgusted that she should dare to speak. When he had stared at her enough for his purpose, he returned his gaze to me. And asked me the question all over again.
I wanted to say, ‘Why can’t you take Hermione’s word for it?’ But all that came out was a weak ‘Yes’.
‘Has the creature any force outside the house?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. Only . . . through the mud from the Pond. Or the things we took out of the Pond.’
They all three nodded. ‘A binding prayer,’ said Mr Crombie, with a little flicker of excitement in his dark sombre eyes.
He got the same treatment as Mr Shaftesbury had got. This Maidment creature, did he think he was God?
‘In the cellars, was there . . . stonework? Old stonework?’
I wanted to say, ‘Ask Hermione, she was in front.’ But it died on my lips. So I said, ‘I caught a brief glimpse of some old rough stonework.’
‘Have there been any instances of people snatched from their beds? Unexplained pools of blood or pieces of flesh in the open air?’
‘Not that I’ve heard of. The only people we know have vanished have been those who lived in that house.’
He nodded, and seemed relieved. If such a face could show relief.
‘So it holds. But for how long? If the house was to be demolished . . . the only solution is fire. Fire to the foundations. Fire beneath the foundations.’
The other two nodded. They got to their feet. They looked down at poor James, who tried to raise his eyes to them, like a beaten spaniel, in a way that made me sick.
‘James will see to it. When you are ready, James, let us know. We will be there.’
And then without a word, without a thank you or a nod, they left.
When the