‘This without warning?’
‘No, she called me up first, saying she had something to tell me. I asked her in for a drink. I had forgotten that none of them drink, owing to the rules of the cult, but she came at drinks time of day.’
I thought — as it turned out quite mistakenly — that I saw how things were shaping.
‘May I interpolate another question?’
‘Permission is given.’
‘You remain still living single in your flat?’
Delavacquerie laughed.
‘You mean did the combined trip to the Antilles have any concrete result? Well, purely administratively, it was decided that Polly and I would remain in our separate establishments, anyway for a short time longer, on account of various not at all interesting pressures in our professional lives. Does that answer the substance of your enquiry?’
‘Yes. That was what I wanted to know. A further query. Had Fiona more or less invented an excuse for coming to see you again?’
Delavacquerie smiled at that idea. It seemed to please him, but he shook his head. On the face of it, the suggestion was reasonable enough. If Delavacquerie had taken what he called an interest in Fiona, when she had frequented the house, she herself was likely to be at least aware of something of the sort in the air, an amitié, to use his own term. She could have decided later, if only as a caprice, that she might experiment with his feelings, see how far things would go. Delavacquerie stuck to his uncompromising denial.
‘No, she was sent by Murtlock all right. I’m satisfied as to that. Murtlock’s motive for wanting to get into communication with me was an odd one. Not a particularly pleasant one.’
‘He is not a particularly pleasant young man.’
‘Nevertheless people are attracted to him.’
‘Certainly.’
‘They come under his influence. They may not even like him when they do so. They may not even be in love with him — naturally they could be in love with him without liking him. My first thought was that Fiona was in love with Murtlock. I’m not sure now that’s correct. On the other hand, she’s certainly under Murtlock’s influence.’
It sounded a little as if Delavacquerie was explaining all this to himself, rather than to me, establishing confidence by an opportunity of speaking his hopes aloud. He had, after all, more or less suggested that as his aim, when he broached all this.
‘Does Murtlock hope to rope you into his cult? Surely not? That would be too much.’
‘It wasn’t me he was after. It was Gwinnett.’
‘They met, I suppose, when Gwinnett went down to see Widmerpool.’
‘That hadn’t happened, when Fiona came to see me.’
‘Murtlock knew about Gwinnett already.’
‘It appears that Gwinnett has won quite a name for himself in occult circles — if that is what they should be called — by having allegedly taken part in an act of great magical significance — in modern times almost making magical history.’
‘You mean — ’
‘By release of sexual energy in literally necromantic circumstances — if we are to accept Gwinnett did that — in short, direct contact with the dead. In performing a negative expression of sex, carried to its logical conclusions, Gwinnett took part in the most inspired rite of Murtlock’s cult.’
‘I knew that, according to Murtlock doctrine, pleasure was excluded. There is no reason to suppose Gwinnett himself believed that.’
‘You are right. Such an attitude seems even to have shocked Gwinnett. At the same time he felt that, as a scholar, he should study this available form of the gothic image of mortality. I do not think Gwinnett exactly expected that the theme would be, so to speak, played back to himself by Murtlock when he paid his visit to Widmerpool. I understand that the reason for Murtlock’s interest in him was never put — the metaphor is appropriate — in cold blood. How much Gwinnett himself guessed, I do not know.’
‘You learnt all this from Fiona?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it time to tell my story yet?’
Delavacquerie laughed. He looked at me rather hard.
‘You knew some of this already — I mean in connexion with Fiona?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He hesitated, perhaps more tormented than he would admit to himself.
‘Let me say one thing more. What I have been talking about is not quite so simple as the way I’ve told it. There is another side too. You imply that you know for a fact that Fiona was involved — physically involved — in some of these highly distasteful goings-on. Do you know more, Nicholas, than that she has been for quite a long time a member of the cult, therefore they would inevitably come her way?’
‘Yes. I do know more.’
‘Involved without love — even in the many heteroclite forms of that unhappy verb.’
‘Yes.’
‘My first thought — when Fiona came to me with Murtlock’s message that he wanted to know Gwinnett’s whereabouts — was to have nothing to do with the whole business. That was more on grounds of taste than morals. As Emily Brightman is always pointing out, they are so often hopelessly confused by unintelligent people.’
‘Murtlock knew Gwinnett was in England?’
‘He’d already found that out somehow.’
‘He finds out a lot. I’m surprised, having got so far, he hadn’t traced Gwinnett’s whereabouts.’
‘He may, in any case, have preferred a more tortuous approach. I felt it an imposition on the part of this young visionary — whatever his claims as a magician — to force his abracadabras on an American scholar, engaged over here on research of a serious kind, however idiosyncratic Gwinnett’s own sexual tastes may be. Would you agree?’
‘Besides, as you’ve said, so far as we know, Gwinnett pursues these for pleasure, rather than magical advancement.’
‘Exactly. Love and Literature should rank before Sorcery and Power. There was, however, an additional aspect. That was why I was not speaking with absolute truth when I denied that Fiona was in some degree playing her own game, when she came to see me. On the other hand, that possibility did not possess quite the flattering slant you implied.’
‘She told you in so many words why Murtlock wanted to meet Gwinnett?’
‘Certainly. No embarrassments at all about that. More so regarding the ulterior motive for her visit. That emerged while we were talking. The fact was that Fiona was getting tired — more than that, absolutely desperate — about the life she has been living for a long time now.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘Of course.’
Delavacquerie paused again. He did not sound quite so enthusiastic about Fiona cutting adrift from Murtlockism as might have been expected. The chronological sequence of when these things happened — Fiona come to Delavacquerie, Gwinnett gone to visit Murtlock and Widmerpool, the period between — was not very clear to me. I was also uncertain as to Delavacquerie’s present feelings about Fiona. Whatever she had said to him did not appear to have affected her doings at The Devil’s Fingers. I fully believed what Delavacquerie had described as his attitude towards Fiona as his son’s girlfriend; I believed, more or less, that he later put her from his mind; but this new Fiona incarnation remained undefined. It was quite another matter. Also there was Polly Duport in the background. More must be explained. When he spoke again it was in an altogether detached tone.
‘Fiona more or less broke down while we were talking. Even then she was unwilling to say she would give up the whole thing. This was at our first meeting.’
‘There were subsequent ones?’
‘Several. Murtlock wouldn’t accept no for an answer, so far as Gwinnett’s whereabouts were concerned.’
‘You had refused to reveal them?’
‘Yes.’
‘That showed firmness.’