The Mind Readers

CHAPTER I The Breaking GroundThe great city of London was once more her splendid self: mysterious as ever but bursting with new life. In the tightly packed clusters of villages with the ancient names—Hackney, Holborn, Shoreditch, Putney, Paddington, Bow—new towers were rising into the yellow sky; the open spaces, if fewer, were neater; the old houses were painted; the monuments were clean. Best news of all, the people were regrown. The same savagely cheerful race, fresh mixed with more new blood than ever in its history, jostled together in costumes inspired by every romantic fashion known to television. While round its knees in a luxuriant crop the educated children shot up like the towers, full of the future. Early one Thursday evening, late in the year at one particular moment, just before the rush hour, when the lights were coming up and the shadows deepening, five apparently unrelated incidents in five ordinary, normal lives were taking place at points set far apart within the wide boundaries of the town. Five people, none of whom was particularly aware of the others, were taking the first casual steps in one of those mystic, curling patterns of human adventure that begin with imperceptible movement, like the infinitesimal commotion which surrounds a bud thrusting through the earth but which then sometimes develops, gathers speed and swells and grows up swiftly into a huge and startling plume to alter the whole landscape of history. The first of the five was no more than an idle thought. The D.D.I. of the Eastern Waterside Division of Metropolitan Police was sitting in his office kicking himself gently because he had forgotten to tell his old friend Detective Superintendent Charles Luke of the Central Office, who had just left after a routine visit, a little piece of nonsense which might have intrigued that great man. They had been so busy moralizing over the effects of the latest threat of total world annihilation on the local suicide rate among teenagers that he had quite forgotten his own story about that well-known city “character,” the End of the World Man, which had come into his mind and gone out again while Luke was talking. It was an odd thing he had seen with his own eyes as he had traveled through the West End in a police car at the end of the summer. As he had passed the corner of Wigmore Street and Orchard Street up by the park, he had observed the familiar figure of the old fanatic in the dusty robes and hood, carrying his banner proclaiming the worst, striding away from him among the shopping crowds on the pavement. Less than four minutes later by his own watch after a clear run, he had seen him again, head on this time, walking up the Haymarket from the direction of the Strand. So, as Luke might possibly have been entertained to hear, the man had either developed a power of miraculous transportation, which seemed unlikely on form, or there were two of him dressed exactly alike and one of them at any rate taking great care to resemble the other. This was funny in view of what he and Luke had been saying about the increase of interest in these people’s gloomy subject. The second stirring in the hard ground, taking place at exactly the same time, was a conversation which occurred on the western side of the city, where two people were talking in a Regency rectory in a half-forgotten backwater called St. Peter’s Gate Square. They were in a book-filled study, the smaller of two downstairs reception rooms. Canon Avril had lived there so long that the tremendous changes which had dismembered the world outside had come very gently to his own household. Now in his old age, a widower for many years, his daughter married and away, he lived on the ground floor humbly but comfortably while William Talisman, his verger, made his home in the basement and Mrs. Talisman kept an eye on them both. Upstairs there was the canon’s daughter’s suite, which was now let as a pied-à-terre to his nephew Mr. Albert Campion and his wife when they visited London; and above that there was a cottagelike attic flat, at the moment also let to relatives. These were Helena Ferris and her brilliant young American husband, who fled to it whenever they could escape from the island research station on the East Coast where he was working. The canon was a big man with a great frame and untidy white hair. He had a fine face which, despite its intelligence, was almost disconcertingly serene. He had seen the neighborhood decline from Edwardian affluence to near-slum conditions and now edge back again to moneyed elegance. Throughout all the changes his own income had remained the same and his present poverty could have been agonizing, but he had few needs and no material worries whatever. He was certainly shabby, and it was true that at the end of each week it was literally impossible to borrow so much as a shilling from him, but he remained not only happy but secure throughout the harrowing crises which so often sprang up around him. Nor was he a visionary. There was an intensely practical element in his outlook, even if it was apt to appear slightly out of alignment to those who were unaware that he did not stand in the dead center of his own universe. One of his most practical and sensible innovations was in the room with him at the moment, interrupting him almost unbearably with her well-meaning chatter. Miss Dorothy Warburton was a thin maiden lady of certain everything—income, virtue and age—and she lived in one of the two cottages just past the church next door. She managed the canon’s personal finances in exactly the same way as she managed the church fête—that is to say, firmly, openly and, of course, down to the last farthing. He had no privacy, nothing of his own, no excuses. His charities, which were his only extravagance, were subject to her scrutiny and had to be justified, and this kept him factual and informed about what things did or did not cost. However, apart from these, material considerations were not permitted to weigh upon him, and he never forgot how blessed he was or how much he owed his dear Decimal Dot, as he called her. On her side she respected him deeply, called him her “church work” and bossed him as she would certainly have done a father. Mercifully she did not consider herself unduly religious, seeing her role as a Martha rather than a Mary, and it may have been something to do with the classic resentment which made her a little insensitive where he was concerned, especially when she was curious. This was the hour which the canon liked to set aside. It had become for him a period of intense technical and professional activity for which few gave him credit. He never explained, being well aware of the pitfalls in that direction, but accepted interruptions meekly if he could not avoid them. On the other hand, he never permitted himself to be discouraged from what he felt was his chief duty. With the years he had become one of the more practiced contemplative minds in a generation which largely neglected the art; simple people often thought him lovable but silly, and those who were not so simple, dangerous. Avril could not help that; he did what he had to do and looked after his parish, and every day he sat and thought about what he was doing and why and how he was doing it. Miss Warburton could not make out what he was up to, wasting time and not even resting, and every so often when she had an excuse, she used to come in and prod him to find out. Today she was full of news and chatter. “House full tomorrow!” she said brightly. “You will enjoy that! Albert and Amanda and their little nephew Edward, and Helena and Sam, all home for half term. That will be lovely for you and such a change!” Avril knew it would be. After weeks of having the place empty he could hardly miss it. It was she who was most lonely, he feared, and he let her chatter on. “Mrs. Talisman is baking a cake in case they ask Superintendent Luke over. She thinks that because she can cook and lives in a basement it’s the correct thing to do, since he’s a policeman! I wonder she doesn’t make it a rabbit pie and have done with it since we’re all out to be Victorian. Poor Martin Ferris. He works far too hard on that dreadful electronics island.” “Does he?” “It sounds like it, if he can’t be spared for a weekend up here with his family when the child comes home for half term, but must stay out on that freezing marsh researching. I never saw two young people so much in love when they started, but I warn you, Canon, that marriage could founder if they drive him like that. I suppose we’re going to have another war.” “I hope not!” “So do I. Things are quite dear enough already. I only have to put my nose in the supermarket and I spend a pound. I saw Mrs. Flooder, by the way, and heard a most extraordinary story. The poor wretched man could have died and burned the house down.” Avril did not rise to the bait, but his eyes lost their introspection as a trickle of corrosive poison crept into his heart. She had reminded him of a silly incident and his own behavior in it, which had been careless and not even like him. He would not have believed he could have been so stupid. “She told me you saw her,” Miss Warburton continued in her instructive way. “You ran right into her, I believe, just as she was coming out of the shop. She nearly dropped her parcels and you changed the subject by telling her that her sister’s boy had put up the banns at last.” The canon bowed his venerable head. It had not happened like that at all. The bison of a woman, maddened with acquisitiveness and laden with loot, had almost knocked him over, sworn at him for being in the way and turned to sycophantic mooing as she recognized her parish priest. It was then that the fatal statement had escaped him. “Why, it’s Mrs. Flooder. I’ve just been hearing your nephew’s good news. A grand wedding in the family, eh?” Before the final word was out of his mouth he had recognized his mistake. He had broken rule number one in his book; he had made trouble. The news had crept into Mrs. Flooder’s intelligence visibly like a flame creeping up a fuse, and the explosion was quite frightful. “Cat! My sister Lily’s a cat. Never told me one bloody word! Hoping I’ll stay away. Just you wait until I get hold of her. Dirty little lying cat. I’ll drop in as I go past!” Avril had seen her rush off with his heart full of selfloathing. The tasteless blunder had bothered him out of all proportion and all today he had been irked by it. He slid a little lower in his chair. “It was the first she’d heard of the marriage, so she went straight to her sister’s house,” continued Miss Warburton, relieved that she had interested him; at least he wasn’t ill. “She told me to tell you she would never have dreamed of dropping in if you hadn’t mentioned the white wedding and the hired hall . . .” “I said no such thing!” “Never mind; it’s a mercy if you did. Lily was out, you see, and Mrs. Flooder found the poor man choking, smoke coming from under his door. It seems he’d fallen over and broken his hip—caught his foot in the cord of the electric heater. He was too weak to shout by the time Mrs. Flooder got there.” Avril sat up in astonishment and concern. “Who was this?” “Lily’s lodger—taken in to help pay for the wedding, I shouldn’t be surprised. He could have burned to death if that woman Flooder hadn’t broken in to look for her sister. She thought she was hiding up.” “I’d never heard of him.” “Nor had I. He moved in one evening and this happened the next morning. Mrs. Flooder can’t get over it. She said she’ll always ‘take notice of a clergyman’ because she’d ‘gone in to make a beastly row’ and before she knew it, there she was, a heroine! There, I thought that would make you laugh, so I’ll leave you in peace. Have a little doze.”