Good Omens

IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK ON SUNDAY.

For the last decade Sunday lunch in Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell’s world had followed an invariable routine. He would sit at the rickety, cigarette-burned table in his room, thumbing through an elderly copy of one of the Witchfinder Army library’s57 books on magic and Demonology—the Necrotelecomnicon or the Liber Fulvarum Paginarum, or his old favorite, the Malleus Malleficarum.58

Then there would be a knock on the door, and Madame Tracy would call out, “Lunch, Mr. Shadwell,” and Shadwell would mutter, “Shameless hussy,” and wait sixty seconds, to allow the shameless hussy time to get back into her room; then he’d open the door, and pick up the plate of liver, which was usually carefully covered by another plate to keep it warm. And he’d take it in, and he’d eat it, taking moderate care not to spill any gravy on the pages he was reading.59

That was what always happened.

Except on that Sunday, it didn’t.

For a start, he wasn’t reading. He was just sitting.

And when the knock came on the door he got up immediately, and opened it. He needn’t have hurried.

There was no plate. There was just Madame Tracy, wearing a cameo brooch, and an unfamiliar shade of lipstick. She was also standing in the center of a perfume zone.

“Aye, Jezebel?”

Madame Tracy’s voice was bright and fast and brittle with uncertainty. “Hullo, Mister S, I was just thinking, after all we’ve been through in the last two days, seems silly for me to leave a plate out for you, so I’ve set a place for you. Come on … ”

Mister S? Shadwell followed, warily.

He’d had another dream, last night. He didn’t remember it properly, just one phrase, that still echoed in his head and disturbed him. The dream had vanished into a haze, like the events of the previous night.

It was this. “Nothin’ wrong with witchfinding. I’d like to be a witchfinder. It’s just, well, you’ve got to take it in turns. Today we’ll go out witchfinding, an’ tomorrow we could hide, an’ it’d be the witches’ turn to find US … ”

For the second time in twenty-four hours—for the second time in his life—he entered Madame Tracy’s rooms.

“Sit down there,” she told him, pointing to an armchair. It had an antimacassar on the headrest, a plumped-up pillow on the seat, and a small footstool.

He sat down.

She placed a tray on his lap, and watched him eat, and removed his plate when he had finished. Then she opened a bottle of Guinness, poured it into a glass and gave it to him, then sipped her tea while he slurped his stout. When she put her cup down, it tinkled nervously in the saucer.

“I’ve got a tidy bit put away,” she said, apropos of nothing. “And you know, I sometimes think it would be a nice thing to get a little bungalow, in the country somewhere. Move out of London. I’d call it The Laurels, or Dunroamin, or, or … ”

“Shangri-La,” suggested Shadwell, and for the life of him could not think why.

“Exactly, Mister S. Exactly. Shangri-La.” She smiled at him. “Are you comfy, love?”

Shadwell realized with dawning horror that he was comfortable. Horribly, terrifyingly comfortable. “Aye,” he said, warily. He had never been so comfortable.

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness and placed it in front of him.

“Only trouble with having a little bungalow, called—what was your clever idea, Mister S?”

“Uh. Shangri-La.”

“Shangri-La, exactly, is that it’s not right for one, is it? I mean,

two people, they say two can live as cheaply as one.”

(Or five hundred and eighteen, thought Shadwell, remembering the massed ranks of the Witchfinder Army.)

She giggled. “I just wonder where I could find someone to settle down with … ”

Shadwell realized that she was talking about him.

He wasn’t sure about this. He had a distinct feeling that leaving Witchfinder Private Pulsifer with the young lady in Tadfield had been a bad move, as far as the Witchfinder Army Booke of Rules and Reggula