Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [74]
‘I know. You haven’t heard my story yet. I’ve seen Gwinnett since he told you that.’
‘I myself have not seen Gwinnett, but keep your story just a moment longer. Gwinnett, in fact, seems to have disappeared, perhaps left London. Murtlock, on the other hand, has been in touch with me.’
‘Did he appear in person, wearing his robes?’
‘He sent a message through Fiona.’
‘I see.’
‘Fiona arrived on my doorstep one evening. She knew the flat from her Etienne days.’
Delavacquerie lived in the Islington part of the world, not far from where Trapnel had occasionally camped out in one form or another. I had never seen Delavacquerie on his own ground.
‘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