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All Hallows' Eve (novel)All Hallows� Eve is the last of the seven novels of the supernatural written by Charles Williams. Published by Faber and Faber in 1945, it went through three impressions that year and another in 1947. In 1948 it was published in the US by Pellegrini & Cudahy with an introduction by T. S. Eliot. There were two later translations into Italian and Spanish.

Plot
In October 1945, the 25-year-old Lester Furnival finds herself alone on Westminster Bridge in a becalmed city. She had been on the way to meet her old school friend Evelyn when both were killed by a crashing aeroplane. Later they wander the deserted streets while Evelyn keeps up a gabble of complaint, refusing to face the fact of her predicament.

Meanwhile, in the world of the living, Lester's former husband Richard goes to visit his close friend, the painter Jonathan Drayton. Jonathan asks for Richard's opinion of two paintings on which he is working. One is a blitzscape of London with novel light effects; the other is of the ambiguous Simon Leclerc, a charismatic religious figure who has recently come from America. Jonathan is engaged to Betty, another of Lester's former acquaintances from school, while Betty's mother, Lady Wallingford, is a member of Father Simon's inner circle. But Lady Wallingford finds the painting of Simon and his beetle-like congregation repellent when she comes to view it and storms out of the studio, forbidding Betty to have anything more to do with Jonathan.

Simon is in fact a Jewish magician, born in Paris at the end of the 18th century, with an urge to master the world. Betty is Simon's daughter by Lady Wallingford. She had been engendered to carry out Simon's purposes � in the present case to travel forward in time, read the newspapers a few weeks into the future, then return and repeat what she has learned. Though this takes its physical toll on her, Betty feels happy during the period she is liberated from her body. Now, however, she is in love with Jonathan and calls out his name while she is still in the twilit world through which she moves and in which Lester and Evelyn are trapped. Hearing Betty's call and recognising her, the two women locate the house in Highgate where she lives, but only Lester enters. She is present when the exhausted Betty disembodies again and the two meet in a healing reunion.

Curiosity sends Richard to visit Simon's Holborn headquarters, where the magician lives surrounded by an adoring community of people he has healed miraculously. During a 'Relaxation' session he attends with them all, Richard is disturbed by seeing Evelyn enter through the walls and exchange a smile with Simon. Now distrusting the man, Richard goes to fetch Jonathan and the two visit the Wallingford's house in Highgate and interrupt Simon at the moment he is attempting to make Betty's discorporation permanent. Lester lends her the strength to resist but the invisible City, sustained by millennia of fellow-feeling, had also entered the battle now to thwart the foreign body of self-seeking in its midst.

Earlier in his career, Simon had divided himself into three and sent the two others to evangelise Russia and China with the same message of love that he preaches. With the coming of peace, he was orchestrating a demand for the three charismatic teachers to be invited to draw up a blueprint for world governance. As a means of neutralising further interference with his plans, Simon summons Evelyn and gets her to bring Lester to him. Having created a female homunculus, he persuades Evelyn and Lester to enter it and experience again the world they have lost. But Lester only does so in order to defeat Simon. Telephoning Jonathan, Richard and Betty, she persuades them to go out to Holborn together and confront Simon as All Hallows� Eve approaches.

Simon has been planning to kill Betty magically with the aid of her mother by creating a simulacrum and stabbing it with a steel needle, but he is interrupted by the arrival of Betty's friends and then by the return of his emanations. As he loses personal power, he is absorbed into primal matter and his former cures among his community are reversed. Lester now departs into the light of eternity, leaving the task of healing the sick again to Simon's child.

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