An Act of Evil Read Online Free PDF

resigned to waiting through the entire interview before he could start work.
    “ I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are,” the young man began with commendable frankness.
    “ I’m actually Canon Cowan’s brother-in-law, but I know quite a lot about this. My name’s Augustus Maltravers.”
    “ Oh, the writer,” said the reporter and Maltravers acknowledged his cognizance. “I’m going to write a book one day.”
    “ Most of your tribe are,” said Maltravers. “Some of my best friends in Fleet Street want to be writers; in fact most of them have been talking about it for years. Now, what do you want to know?”
    The information was gathered in an eccentric mixture of scribbled longhand and shorthand outlines unknown to Pitman, although the questioning was impressively thorough. The photographer, who appeared to have mastered the art of silent, and hopefully profitable, meditation, lumbered to life when the question of a picture was raised and Maltravers despatched them to the cathedral, mendaciously assuring them that the Canon had indicated approval of their activities.
    “ Oh, and how old are you?” the reporter asked as they were leaving.
    “ I can’t see that’s of the slightest relevance,” Maltravers told him. “However, Canon Cowan is sixty-eight and carries his years remarkably well. You may quote me on that. Goodbye.”
    Grinning ridiculously to himself, Maltravers went to the living-room where Diana and Tess were expressing increasing amazement and dismay at the varying fortunes of their contemporaries.
    “ You’re joking!” Tess was exclaiming as he entered the room. “He could only have landed a part like that by sleeping with somebody and I don’t dare think who it was.”
    “ This is no conversation for a cathedral city,” said Maltravers. “You will corrupt the Godly. Anyway, we must go and look at the Chapter House.”
    The building was closed to the public for the day while a low circular wooden stage was set in its centre, surrounded by tiered rows of chairs. The work had been finished by the time they arrived and they had the place to themselves. Diana stepped onto the temporary platform and gazed all around her.
    “ Augustus, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.
    “ Well, I tried to describe it, but it’s one of those places you have to see to believe,” he said. “The only thing to exceed it is probably Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster which was built around the same time. More to the point, the acoustics are very good, although they probably didn’t plan that.”
    “ Can we run through part of it?” Diana asked.
    “ Yes. I assumed you’d want to. Let’s try the opening and the end. We’ve got plenty of time and nobody is likely to come in because they’ve put signs up.”
    Maltravers and Diana had rehearsed the performance previously in London with only Tess for an audience. She and Maltravers sat in silence for half an hour watching the final result.
    “ What do you think?” asked Diana as she finished.
    “ What I’ve thought for a long time,” said Tess. “You won’t just do this on one night in Vercaster.” She turned to Maltravers. “Why don’t you write things like this for me?”
    “ Because, my love, you are not Diana. And you know it. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the geography.”
    They left the Chapter House and walked down a short passage to another door which opened onto a covered corridor running at right angles. Facing them was a series of stone arches which looked onto the quadrangle of the cloisters.
    “ This, you will be fascinated to learn, is the slype,” said Maltravers. “It’s a passage linking the south transept up to the right there with the Chapter House and the cloisters. I would impress you with the derivation of the word, but I don’t know it. Now we go this way.” He turned to the left.
    They walked down the slype and went through the left door of two facing them in the end wall. It led into a small, plain,