“A cherished feel,” said Aziraphale desperately.
“Nope. Can’t sense a thing,” said Crowley with forced jolliness. “You’re just oversensitive.”
“It’s my job,” said Aziraphale. “Angels can’t be oversensitive.”
“I expect people round here like living here and you’re just picking it up.”
“Never picked up anything like this in London,” said Aziraphale.
“There you are, then. Proves my point,” said Crowley. “And this is the place. I remember the stone lions on the gateposts.”
The Bentley’s headlights lit up the groves of overgrown rhododendrons that lined the drive. The tires crunched over gravel.
“It’s a bit early in the morning to be calling on nuns,” said Aziraphale doubtfully.
“Nonsense. Nuns are up and about at all hours,” said Crowley. “It’s probably Compline, unless that’s a slimming aid.”
“Oh, cheap, very cheap,” said the angel. “There’s really no need for that sort of thing.”
“Don’t get defensive. I told you, these were some of ours. Black nuns. We needed a hospital close to the air base, you see.”
“You’ve lost me there.”
“You don’t think American diplomats’ wives usually give birth in little religious hospitals in the middle of nowhere, do you? It al
l had to seem to happen naturally. There’s an air base at Lower Tadfield, she went there for the opening, things started to happen, base hospital not ready, our man there said, ‘There’s a place just down the road,’ and there we were. Rather good organization.”
“Except for one or two minor details,” said Aziraphale smugly.
“But it nearly worked,” snapped Crowley, feeling he should stick up for the old firm.
“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction,” said the angel. “It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.”
Crowley considered this. “Nah,” he said, at last. “For my money, it was just average incompetence. Hey—”
He whistled under his breath.
The graveled forecourt in front of the manor was crowded with cars, and they weren’t nun cars. The Bentley was if anything outclassed. A lot of the cars had GT or Turbo in their names and phone aerials on their roofs. They were nearly all less than a year old.
Crowley’s hands itched. Aziraphale healed bicycles and broken bones; he longed to steal a few radios, let down some tires, that sort of thing. He resisted it.
“Well, well,” he said. “In my day nuns were packed four to a Morris Traveller.”
“This can’t be right,” said Aziraphale.
“Perhaps they’ve gone private?” said Crowley.
“Or you’ve got the wrong place.”
“It’s the right place, I tell you. Come on.”
They got out of the car. Thirty seconds later someone shot both of them. With incredible accuracy.
IF THERE WAS ONE THING that Mary Hodges, formerly Loquacious, was good at, it was attempting to obey orders. She liked orders. They made the world a simpler place.
What she wasn’t good at was change. She’d really liked the Chattering Order. She’d made friends for the first time. She’d had a room of her own for the first time. Of course, she knew that it was engaged in things which might, from certain viewpoints, be considered bad, but Mary Hodges had seen quite a lot of life in thirty years and had no illusions about what most of the human race had to do in order to make it from one week to the next. Besides, the food was good and you got to meet interesting people.
The Order, such as was left of it, had moved after the fire. After all, their sole purpose in existing had been fulfilled. They went their separate ways.