“I have a standing invitation,” said Mr. Calder. “For the shooting.”
Hedgeborn has changed in the last 400 years, but not very much. The Church was built in the reign of Charles the Martyr and the Manor in the reign of Anne the Good. There is a village smithy, where a farmer can still get his horses shoed; he can also buy diesel oil for his tractor. The cottages have thatched roofs, and television aerials.
Mr. Calder leaned out of his bedroom window at the Manor and surveyed the village, asleep under a full moon. He could see the church at the far end of the village street, perched on a slight rise, its bell tower outlined against the sky. There was a huddle of cottages round it. The one with a light in it would belong to Mr. Penny, the verger, who had come running down the street to tell the rector that Farmer Allen’s farm was on fire. If he leaned out of the window Mr. Calder could just see the roof of the rectory, at the far end of the street, masked by trees. Could there be any truth in the story of the bells? It had seemed fantastic in London. It seemed less so in this forgotten backwater village.
A soft knock at the door heralded the arrival of Stokes, once Colonel Faulkner’s batman, now his factotum.
“I was to ask if you’d care for anything before you turned in, sir. Some biscuits, or a nightcap?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Calder. “Not after that lovely dinner. Did you cook it yourself?”
Stokes looked gratified. “It wasn’t what you might call hote kweezeen.”
“It was excellent. Tell me, don’t you find things a bit quiet down here? Dull?”
“You see, sir, I’m used to it. I was born here.”
“I didn’t realize that,” said Mr. Calder.
“I saw you looking at the smithy this afternoon. Enoch Clavering’s my first cousin. Come to that, we’re mostly first or second cousins. Allens and Stokes and Vowles and Claverings.”
“It would have been Enoch who cut down the fence at Snettisham Manor?”
“That’s right, sir.” Stokes’s voice was respectful, but there was a hint of wariness in it. “How did you know about that, if you don’t mind me asking? It hasn’t been in the newspapers.”
“The Colonel told me.”
“Oh, of course. All the same, I do wonder how he knew about Enoch cutting down the fence. He wasn’t with us.”
“With you,” said Mr. Calder. “Do I gather, Stokes, that you took part in this — this enterprise?”
“Well, naturally, sir. Seeing I’m a member of the Parochial Church Council. Would there be anything more?”
“Nothing more,” said Mr. Calder. “Good night.”
He lay awake for a long time, listening to the owls talking to each other in the elms.
“It’s true,” said Colonel Faulkner next morning. “We are a bit inbred. All Norfolk men are odd. It makes us just a bit odder, that’s all.”
“Tell me about your rector.”
“He was some sort of missionary, I believe. In darkest Africa. Got malaria very badly and was invalided out.”
“From darkest Africa to darkest Norfolk. What do you make of him?”
The Colonel was lighting his after-breakfast pipe and took time to think about that. He Said, “I just don’t know, Calder. Might be a saint. Might be a scoundrel. He’s got a ‘touch’ with animals. No denying that.”
“What about the miracles?”
“No doubt they’ve been exaggerated in the telling. But — well, that business of the bells. I can give you chapter and verse for that. There is only one key to the bell chamber. I remember what a fuss there was when the key was mislaid last year. And no one could have got it from Penny’s cottage, opened the tower up, rung the bells and put the key back without someone seeing him. Stark impossibility.”
“How many bells rang?”
“The tenor and the treble. That’s the way we always ring them for an alarm. One of the farmers across the valley heard them, spotted the fire, and phoned for the brigade.”
“Two bells,” said Mr. Calder thoughtfully. “So one man could have rung them.”
“If he could have got in.”
“Quite so.” Mr. Calder was looking at a list. “There are three people I should like to meet. First, a man called Smedley.”
“The rector’s warden. I’m people’s warden. He’s my opposite number. Don’t like him much.”
“Then Miss Martin, your organist. I believe she has a cottage near the church. And Mr. Smallpiece, your village postmaster.”
“Why those three?”
“Because,” said Mr. Calder, “apart from the rector himself they are the only people who have come to live in this village during the past two years — so Stokes tells me.”
“He ought to know,” said the Colonel. “He’s related to half the village.”
Mr. Smedley lived in a small dark cottage. It was tucked away behind the Viscount Townshend pub, which had a signboard outside it with a picture of the Second Viscount looking remarkably like the turnip which had become associated with his name.
Mr. Smedley was old and thin and inclined to be cautious. He thawed very slightly when he discovered that his visitor was the son of Canon Calder of Salisbury.
“A world authority on monumental brasses,” he said. “You must be proud of him.”
“I’d no idea.”
“Yes, indeed. I have a copy somewhere of a paper he wrote on the brasses at Verden, in Hanover. A most scholarly work. We have some fine brasses in the church here, too. Not as old or as notable as Stoke d’Abernon, but very fine.”
“It’s an interesting village altogether. You’ve been getting into the papers.”
“I’d no idea that our brasses were that famous.”
“Not your brasses. Your rector. He’s been written up as a miracle worker.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Oh, why?”
Mr. Smedley blinked maliciously and said, “I’m not surprised at the ability of the press to cheapen anything it touches.”
“But are they miracles?”
“You’ll have to define your terms. If you accept the Shavian definition of a miracle as an act which creates faith, then certainly, yes. They are miracles.”
It occurred to Mr. Calder that Mr. Smedley was enjoying this conversation more than he was. He said, “You know quite well what I mean. Is there a rational explanation for them?”
“Again, it depends what you mean by rational.”
“I mean,” said Mr. Calder bluntly, “are they miracles or just conjuring tricks?”
Mr. Smedley considered the matter, his head on one side. Then he said, “Isn’t that a question which you should put to the rector? After all, if they are conjuring tricks, he must be the conjurer.”
“I was planning to do just that,” said Mr. Calder, and prepared to take his leave. When he was at the door his host checked him by laying a clawlike hand on his arm. He said, “Might I offer a word of advice? This is not an ordinary village. I suppose the word which would come most readily to mind is — primitive. I don’t mean anything sinister. But being so isolated it has grown up rather more slowly than the outside world. And another thing—” Mr. Smedley paused. Mr. Calder was reminded of an old black crow, cautiously approaching a tempting morsel and wondering if he dared to seize it. “I ought to warn you that the people here are very fond of their rector. If what they regarded as divine manifestations were described by you as conjuring tricks — well, you see what I mean.”
“I see what you mean,” said Mr. Calder. He went out into the village street, took a couple of deep breaths, and made his way to the postoffice. This was dark, dusty, and empty. He could hear the postmaster, in the back room, wrestling with a manual telephone exchange. He realized, as he listened, that Mr. Smallpiece was no Norfolkman. His voice suggested that he had been brought up within sound of Bow Bells. When he emerged, Mr. Calder confirmed the diagnosis. If Mr. Smedley was a country crow, Mr. Smallpiece was a cockney sparrow.