Their road now climbed onto the moors, and they began to draw closer to a desolate kind of civilization. Little factory towns which had sprung up when direct water-power was in demand, and continued a precarious existence perched on those barren slopes now that water-power had been displaced by steam, were the mile-stones of their route. They were jolted on a pavement of villainous sets; the air grew dim with a smoky haze and the moorland blackened with their approach to the haunts of men. At last tram-lines met them, announcing the outskirts of Pullford. “I’m getting the needle rather about this interview,” confessed Bredon. “What does one do by way of making one’s self popular with a Catholic Bishop?” he demanded of Angela, who was convent-bred.
“Well, the right thing is to go down on one knee and kiss his ring. I don’t think you’d make much of a show at it; we ought to have practised it before we left Chilthorpe. But I don’t suppose he’ll eat you.”
Bredon tried to rearrange his ideas about Bishops. He remembered the ceremony of being confirmed at school; a long, tiresome service, with an interminable address in which he and fifty of his compeers were adjured to play for their side. He remembered another Bishop, met in a friend’s rooms at Oxford, a hand laid on his shoulder and an intolerably earnest voice asking whether he had ever thought of taking holy orders. Was that the sort of thing? Or was he rather to expect some silken-tongued courtier, in purple and fine linen, pledging him in rich liqueurs (as in the advertisements) and lying to him smoothly (as in the story-books)? Was he to be embarrassed by pietism or to be hoodwinked by a practised intriguer? Anyhow, he would know the worst before long now. They drew up at the centre of the town before a vast, smoke-grimed hotel which promised every sort of discomfort; and Bredon, after asking his way to the Catholic Cathedral, and steadying himself with a vermuth, went out to face the interview.
The Cathedral house proved to be a good specimen of that curious municipal Gothic which is the curse of all institutions founded in 1850. The kind of house which is characterized by the guide-books as fine, by its inmates as beastly. The large room into which Bredon was shewn was at least equally cheerless. It was half-panelled in atrocious pitch-pine, and it had heavy, ecclesiastical-looking chairs which discouraged all attempts at repose. There was a gas-stove in the fireplace. Previous occupants of the See of Pullford lined the walls, in the worst possible style of portraiture. A plaster Madonna of the kind that is successively exiled from the church to the sacristy and from the sacristy to the presbytery at once caught and repelled the eye. In point of fact, the room is never used except by the canons of Pullford when they vest for the chapter mass and by the strange visitor who looks a little too important to be left in a waiting-room downstairs.
A door opened at the end of the room, and through it came a tall man dressed in black with a dash of red whose welcome made you forget at once all the chill of the reception room. The face was strong and determined, yet unaffectedly benevolent; the eyes met you squarely, and did not languish at you; the manner was one of embarrassed dignity, with no suggestion of personal greatness. You did not feel that there was the slightest danger of being asked whether you meant to take orders. You did not catch the smallest hint of policy or of priestcraft. Bredon made a gesture as if to carry out Angela’s uncomfortable prescription; but the hand that had caught his was at once withdrawn in obvious deprecation. He had come there as a spy, expecting to be spied upon; he found himself mysteriously fitting into this strange household as an old friend.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Brendan.” (The Chilthorpe post-office is not at its best with proper names.) “Come inside, please. So you’ve come to have a word about poor old Mottram? He was an old friend of ours here, you know, and a close neighbour. You had a splendid morning for motoring. Come in, please.” And Bredon found himself in a much smaller room, the obvious sanctum of a bachelor. There were pipes about, and pipe-cleaners; there was a pleasant litter of documents on the table; there was a piano standing open, as pianos do when people are accustomed to strum on them for mere pleasure; there was a quite unashamed loud-speaker in one corner. The chair into which the visitor was shepherded was voluminous and comfortable; you could not sit nervously on the edge of it if you tried. Instinctively, in such a room your hand felt for your tobacco-pouch. Would Mr. “Brendan” take anything before dinner? Dinner was due in three quarters of an hour. Yes, it was a very sad business about poor Mottram. There was a feeling of genuine regret in the town.
“I don’t really know whether I’d any right to trespass on My Lordship’s—on Your Lordship’s time at all,” began Bredon, fighting down a growing sense of familiarity. “It was only that the landlady told us this morning you were expected to join Mottram at Chilthorpe just on the morning when he died. So we naturally thought you might have known something about his movements and his plans. When I say ‘we,’ I mean that I’m more or less working in with the police, because the Inspector down there happens to be a man I know.” (Dash it all, why was he putting all his cards on the table like this?)
“Oh, of course, I should be only too glad if I can be of any use. The newspapers have just mentioned the death as if it were an accident, but one of my priests was telling me there is a rumour in the town that the poor fellow took his own life. Well, of course, I don’t think that very probable.”
“He was quite cheerful, you mean, when you last saw him?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say cheerful, exactly; but, you see, he was always a bit of a dismal Jimmy. But he was in here one evening not a week ago; very glad to be going off for his holiday, and full of fishing plans. It was then he asked me to come down and join him just for the day. Well, there was a tempting hole in my engagement book, and there’s a useful train in the morning to Chilthorpe, so I promised I would. Then the Vicar General rang me up the last thing at night and told me about an important interview with some education person which he’d arranged behind my back. So I gave it up—one has to do what one’s told—and was meaning to telegraph to Mottram in the morning. And then this sad news came along before I had time to telegraph after all.”