The Triple Goddess (77 page)

‘This really takes the biscuit,’ blustered Effie; and her hand hovered over another plate as she tried to decide between Bourbon, Garibaldi, gingersnap, and ladyfinger. She plumped for more shortbread.

‘I’m a little offended myself,’ Ophelia ventured, not wishing to compound Effie’s outrage. ‘Mrs Diemen seems determined to find an excuse to sink her teeth into us.’

Effie bit into the shortbread. ‘It’s hardly surprising,’ she said, spraying crumbs; ‘we’re dealing with a woman who has an arrow-tipped tail.’ She finished her tea and Ophelia topped up her cup. ‘But we are made of sterner stuff that either of them think, aren’t we?’ Brandishing the half-eaten shortbread, ‘“
Aux armes, citoyens
!” Plenty of people have responded to my appeal for them to write letters to the Bishop, and the only reason we haven’t heard anything back yet is that he’s on holiday. Mrs Barstow’s cousin, as you know, is a friend of the Bishop’s secretary and she told her he was in Torremolinos.’

‘It would seem that he’ll have plenty on his plate when he gets back.’

Effie reached for a Garibaldi. ‘Strange place, Torremolinos, for our bishop to go on a bargain break, don’t you think? Aren’t they all Roman Candles there?’ She dabbed up a loose raisin and verified that it was fruit rather than insect before popping it into her mouth.

Ophelia pursed her lips. ‘Spain is predominantly a Catholic country. I hope the plan doesn’t backfire. You usually say it’s to our advantage, the Bishop ignoring us. Being only a bishop suffragan, and ambitious, he’s hoping for promotion. Until that happens he’s stuck with three-hundred-odd parishes in Harrumphshire of which ours is the smallest. I also got it from Mrs Barstow a while back that our file is the fattest of all of them, and not just because of everything you had to do on my behalf to get me appointed here. If you stir things up too much, Effie, outside of the kitchen, the Bishop might make an official Visitation, and that could as easily be the end of me as Mrs Diemen.’

‘Oh, that was yonks ago, and as to the other stuff…well, d’you remember the dirty pictures of the Archdeacon I used to get you appointed, the ones I bought off the madam in Helmston of him prancing around in his underwear with that girl…what was her name?’

Ophelia’s jaw tightened. ‘That’s not quite how…I would like to think that…I don’t…you assured me that you’d burned those pictures.’

‘I did, reluctantly. But I may be getting more.’

‘More? What more?’

‘Of the Bishop this time. The Helmston madam was in touch last week, business still going strong, she’s mostly turned it over to her daughter to run now…anyway, she asked if I was interested. I…’

‘Effie!’

‘I told her I’d think about it. Him being a bishop makes them a deal more expensive, and it’s been an inflationary market.’

‘Effie! No!’

‘Tiffanie, that was her name.’

‘Whose name?’

‘The Archdeacon’s bit of fluff. The Bishop favours a girl called Jody, takes her to restaurants, tells people she’s his niece. For all I know Jody’s on the Costa del Sol with him right now.’

‘Oh!’

Effie frowned at a compilation of brownies and reduced the assembly by one. ‘It could be a good investment. There’s the fluorescent lighting at the church that Mrs Bulbuss agreed to pay for. Church House nixed that. And there is the still unfinished business of the toilet block, for which we’re flush with funds thanks to Mrs Isor, which I want built where that tumbledown gardener’s shed was that finally tumbled down without assistance from the wind. Church House stalled on the toilets too, said we would need a Faculty, or official permission, which won’t be granted because a few illegible gravestones would have to be moved so the bog can be connected to the sewer.’

‘Effie, really…’

Effie picked up a ladyfinger and wagged it at her. ‘All I’m saying, Ophelia, is that if the cake cuts both ways into halves, and we have the evidence before us that it does,  there’s no reason why one can’t have it and eat it too. Given the right incentive, namely the return of those photographs and his usual table for two at the Curry Mahal, the Bishop can knock Church House on the head and tell it to approve everything we want if I come down on him hard enough.’ Effie popped the ladyfinger into her mouth.

‘Everything
you
want. Those gravestones, Effie, may I remind you, include those of our Victorian benefactor Dr Brough, the gentleman who is responsible for our one and only stained-glass window, and his extended family. His will had a provision in it that the fund he created, the one that pays for maintenance of the churchyard, is to be given to a rest home for donkeys in the event we don’t use it for the designated purpose.’

‘There’s more’n a few asses I know’ll be happy to know that.’

I don’t think building toilets over the Broughs’ final resting place complies with the spirit of the bequest.’

‘There are no Broughs alive around here now that I know of to do anything about it, and none deceased that comes to church. So far as I’m aware all the Broughs are still comfortably tucked up six feet under...mostly, there’s a femur poked up last year, little Suzy was playing with it until I told her to go home and get her beach bucket and spade and bury it again.’

Ophelia felt a headache coming on.

Effie swallowed the last of the brownie, and used a finger to prise loose a morsel from behind a molar. ‘Actually, I’ve figured out a way we can bodge the toilet block design and get around the problem by only cutting Jack Boniface’s head off. I’ve spoken to Jack and he said that’s OK with him because he’s had no use for his head since 1851, and it’ll be good for a laugh in church and a terrific bride-scarer. It’ll mean a rather modernist, more angular, elevation and involve stealing a yard, perhaps four feet, closer to the porch, and losing the view of the downs from the Ladies’, but it’s doable.

‘You know, it’s a complete mystery to me how people’ve managed without toilets at churches over the centuries, ’specially in the days when women dressed up more. Maybe they wore nappies instead of corsets, or ran catheters down their legs into glass bottles tied round their ankles. These days half the congregation has its legs crossed by the end of Service and some don’t stay for coffee because they’re bursting. I miss out on gallons of gossip from the teeny-weeny bladder club as a result.’

Ophelia looked grim. ‘Can we change the subject? You seem still to be eating…’—Effie was evening up the chocolate sponge—‘…and the only thing that really matters right now is this letter and what to do about it. You’re supposed to be responsible for my correspondence, it was a condition of my being appointed on the strength of dirty pictures.’

‘Well, for starters we’re not going to answer the letter, it doesn’t come from any authority we recognize. What we have to do is act. We absolutely have to find a way ASAP of sending Mrs Diemen packing with that tail of hers firmly between her legs. Question is how, and I haven’t had time to think properly yet. Of course she thinks we don’t stand the ghost of a chance against her. But chins up, never say die, that’s my motto, and…Eureka!’

Ophelia’s headache arrived just as Effie’s fist thumped the table hard enough to make the plates and what was left on them jump. ‘What is it, Effie?’

‘That’s it! Diemen and Dark don’t know about them yet!’

Ophelia felt a
frisson
of foreboding. ‘Who is them?’

‘The ghosts, of course. We must mobilize the ghosts. It’s high time they made themselves useful, and there’s a ton of pent-up energy there.’

‘Effie, no!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I forbid it.’

‘Well, we’ll see, shall we? Anyhoo, ease up for a bit on encouraging them to trickle up to the Light, Ophelia, will you? Please?’

Chapter Seventeen

The devil lady was depressed.

As a symptom, it seemed, of her state of mind, the black hell cats that had appeared and disappeared during the remodelling of the Rectory were back. She came across them all over the house, and under the furniture, and during the daytime she often found several of them curled on her bed where they shed so much hair on the counterpane that the DL, who was allergic to cats, kept waking up at night itching and sneezing uncontrollably and having to go to the bathroom to put drops in her eyes that were as red as those of the intruders. Wherever she was about the house they sought her out and rubbed up against her even though with their sixth sense they must have known that she did not like them. They gave birth under the stairs and in dark corners, and had the facility to open and unlock doors with the rough pads on their paws and prehensile tails.

The smell of smoked salmon, kippers and anchovies drove the cats to ecstasies of distraction, and although the manservant was under orders to chase them out of the house with a broomstick before serving breakfast and tea, there were always one who eluded him by hiding and let the others back in.

Another annoyance was the manservant himself: ever since his pioneering expedition to the pub, he was strutting about Hell’s half-acre with his nose in the air and neglecting those of his duties that he considered beneath him, such as vacuuming and dusting.

Making an inhuman effort, the devil lady tried to reason to herself that these were minor problems in the context of everything she had to deal with at the moment. On the dark side—no thanks to Hell for mercies small or big—as of yet HQ had not issued any complaint against her on the strength of anything that the demons in the fireplace or the sneaking manservant might have furnished it with. No certifiable evidence had surfaced that a soul had been unnecessarily lost to the Other Camp, which was a rateable offence.

Thank Lucifer, she thought: Infernal courts martial were career-destroying ordeals. In cases of suspected incompetence or unprofessionalism, first one was placed on probation, and a Stasi-like Specialist was dispatched to monitor one’s every activity on site. Having a Specialist looking over one’s shoulder was only a precursor of the humiliation and pain to come. If the individual was able to establish a pattern of negligence, a filing for prosecution would be made with the Infernal Attorney’s office, and when the case was brought to court one had to supply one’s own defence, without legal representation. Pleas of mitigating circumstances were taken by the panel of judges with all the salt remaining in Siberia.

If pronounced guilty, a disgraced field-devil would be recalled to boot camp for retraining and redeployment in a much degraded capacity, usually involving manual labour, and a trusted replacement sent to serve in his or her stead.

A poor devil had no choice but to obey a Specialist. Those that the DL had encountered lecturing at seminars had been nasty sneering sorts, sadistic bullies. They took full advantage of their privileged positions, and the wide scope of their authority meant that they could act as unreasonably as they wanted with impunity; and Specialists were never inclined to be reasonable. A Specialist on assignment would move into one’s home and micromanage one’s life-in-death, in the process turning everything topsy-turvy, interrupting schedules and upsetting plans at whim. If one was accustomed to rising at ten o’clock in the morning, they would delight in singing in the bath at seven and using all the hot water.

The invasion of privacy and disruption was almost impossible to bear...almost, because one had no choice but to put up with it. Specialists never lost an opportunity to criticize one’s handling of a case, and on principle never paid a compliment even when it was deserved. The self-congratulatory memoranda that they sent back to the HQ for review by, of course, other Specialists made every difficulty sound worse than it was, and they took credit for every success. If they were comfortable and enjoying themselves on a case they would fabricate reasons for remaining
in situ
for as long as possible.

The DL chided herself for anticipating trouble before it could be demonstrated that anything had gone awry. To cheer herself up she decided to have a whisky and soda, and was about to help herself from the decanter on the sideboard when she remembered to ring and order her uppity manservant to do it for her. The rules of discipline applied to him as much as they did her, and he needed to be kept in his place. The man entered the room wearing his surliest expression but did as he was told, not wanting to appear insubordinate in front of the fireplace delegation. Then, holding her amber tumblerful with only a splash from the soda-siphon in it and no ice—devils could not tolerate anything frozen—she made herself comfortable in the wing-chair before the fire and watched the demons as they whispered to each other and tried to look professional, typing notes into their handheld computers.

She was gratified to see that they were not at all proficient at this, and laughed in her sleeve at the frustration on their faces.

Downing her drink and holding the glass out to be refilled before her man stalked from the room, the DL fell to contemplation of her current posting to a location where the pickings were supposed to be easy.

In the perverse way that things worked in Hell, the devils who got the most credit were those who corrupted and rendered into damnation the most highly valued souls: those which had not previously manifested any conviction-worthy propensities and who therefore had the furthest to fall.

Such virgin virtue was wrongly presumed to be rife in supposed Arcadias such as this: earthly paradises surrounded by rolling green baize hills where the seeds of hatred, jealousy, dissent, ambition, and greed had not sprouted to choke the bumper crops of wheat, barley, oats, and rye; where church buildings hosted the forgiveness of peccadilloes rather than hair-shirted sinners flagellating themselves to purge deadly sins from their breasts: a bucolic land filled with thatched and red-peg-tiled farmhouses occupied by peasants who worked from dawn to dusk ploughing the land, stooking the reaped harvest in sheaves, and building haystacks; flailing and milling produce into flour; shepherding sheep and herding cattle, and milking cows, and tending horses; smithing, thatching, wattling and daubing, hedge-laying, coopering, basket-weaving, growing vegetables, churning butter, and making preserves and jam; and affable apple-cheeked innocents who, in their rose-arboured homes behind lace curtains, operated cottage industries and spent their evenings telling folktales around scrubbed and polished hearths.