The Luminaries

Nilssen still further to be dismissed. ‘The part about the deed,’ he said. ‘It’s just—if you’re going to mention it to the Reverend—’
    ‘I imagine that I will, yes.’
    ‘Well—can you leave my name out of it?’ said Nilssen, with a look of pure misery on his face. ‘You see: I can tell you where he’s keeping it—the deed, I mean—and that way you can come upon it yourself, and there’s no bridges broken on my end. Will you do that?’
    Shepard studied him without pity. ‘Where does he keep it?’
    ‘I won’t tell you until you give your word,’ said Nilssen.
    Shepard shrugged. ‘All right.’
    ‘Do you give your word?’
    ‘Upon my honour, I will not speak your name to the chaplain of the gaol,’ Shepard snapped. ‘Where does he keep it?’
    ‘In his Bible,’ said Nilssen, very sadly. ‘In his Bible, between the Old Testament, and the New.’

    Since the construction of the gaol-house had begun in earnest Cowell Devlin and George Shepard had not seen a great deal of one another, save for in the evenings when Shepard returned from the construction site at Seaview to write his letters and tally his accounts. Devlin, who found the atmosphere of the temporary Police Camp much improved in Shepard’s absence, had not pursued a deeper intimacy with the other man. Had he been pressed to pass judgment on the gaoler’s character, he might, after a long pause, have conceded that he pitied Shepard’s rigidity, and mourned the evident displeasure with which Shepard seemed to regard the world around him; after another pause, he might have added that he wished Shepard well, but did not expect the relations between them to develop beyond their present capacity, which was strictly professional, and none too warm.
    That day was a Sunday, however, and construction on the terrace had halted for the day. Shepard had spent the morning at chapel, and the afternoon in his study at the Police Camp, from which place Harald Nilssen was now very rapidly departing; Devlin, who had recently returned from the Kaniere camp, was in the temporary gaol-house, preaching to the felons on the subject of rote prayer. He had brought his battered Bible with him, as healways did whenever he left his tent, though the nature of that day’s sermon was such that he had had no cause to open it that afternoon ; when Shepard stepped into the gaol-house it was lying, closed, upon a chair at Devlin’s side.
    Shepard waited for a lull in the conversation, which came about within moments, owing to his imposing presence in the room. Devlin turned an inquiring face up at him, and Shepard said, ‘Good afternoon, Reverend. Hand me your Bible, would you please?’
    Devlin frowned. ‘My Bible?’
    ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
    The chaplain placed his palm over the book. ‘Perhaps you might simply ask me what it is you seek,’ he said. ‘I pride myself that I do know my scriptures rather well.’
    ‘I do not doubt it; and yet browsing is a pleasure to me,’ Shepard replied.
    ‘But of course you have a Bible of your own!’
    ‘Of course,’ Shepard agreed. ‘However, it is the hour of my wife’s devotions, and I do not like to disturb her.’
    For a moment Devlin considered extracting the purloined deed himself—but its charred aspect would surely not escape the gaoler’s comment, and in any case, he was surrounded by felons; where would he hide the thing?
    ‘What is it that you are looking for, exactly?’ he said. ‘A verse—or an allusion—?’
    ‘You are very chary of your Bible, for a man of God,’ Shepard snapped. ‘Heavens, man! I only wish to look through the pages! You will deny me that?’
    And Devlin was obliged to surrender it. Shepard, thanking him, took the book back to his private residence, and closed the door.
    Devlin’s sermon on rote prayer was perversely applicable to the ensuing half hour, for it was with a ritual circularity that his attention kept straying to the gaoler’s study, where the man would be seated behind his desk, turning the thin pages of the book in his great white hands. Devlin did not guess that Shepard might have known about the deed that he had concealed between the testaments, for his nature was not a suspicious one, and he did not take pleasure, assome men did, in believing himself to have been betrayed. He hoped, as the minutes dragged by, that Shepard would restrict his reading to the more ancient parts of the text; he hoped that the book would be returned to him