A Finer End

“Have you called someone to fetch you?”

“Yes,” she lied outright this time, forcing a smile. “I’ll wait outside.”

She slipped on her cardigan and went out into the light drizzle that had kept the climbers away. There was nothing for it but to walk, so she turned resolutely uphill and began.

The pavement grew slicker and the rain heavier as she climbed. By the time she reached the farmhouse she was gasping, and a dull, heavy pain had taken root at the base of her spine. But she had done it! No one had passed her on her way up the hill, but still she looked round furtively as she ducked under the blue-and-white crime-scene tape that had been stretched across the gate.

She picked her way across the yard and unlocked the back door with her key. All three cats trotted hopefully out from the shelter of the barn and she stooped to stroke them as they rubbed about her ankles, purring. “Are you hungry, poor dears?” she said, and sang the silly little dinner song she had made up for them as she let them in the house.

Every surface in the kitchen was covered with a fine black dust, and the room looked as if a hurricane had raged through it, littered throughout with the objects from the shelves and cabinets. Faith grimaced as she lit the lamp and put food in the cats’ bowls, trying to touch as little as possible. The sight of the casserole Garnet had made the day she died almost undid her.

The evidence of the police search was even more overwhelming in Garnet’s office. There was fingerprint powder everywhere, and the room was a sea of papers. The drawers of Garnet’s desk had been pried open, and all but one drawer was empty.

Lighting the lamp on the desk, she looked at the contents of the drawer they had left intact. It held a half-dozen spiral notebooks, and as Faith opened them, she saw that each was filled with technical notes on tile making. No wonder the police hadn’t found them useful.

Garnet had been secretive to the point of paranoia concerning the recipes she used in the glazes on her tiles. She’d insisted that they were what made her work unique, and her restoration techniques possible. In a talkative mood, she had once told Faith that she used only natural materials available to medieval craftsmen, creating the authentic colors that made her tiles so prized.

But it seemed Garnet’s secrets had not died with her. The journals held not only extensive notes, but accounts of formulas and experiments, failures and successes.

Faith was so fascinated that she forgot the time, until a glance at the darkening window reminded her that she must keep on. She had meant to be finished and back at the café when Duncan came to collect her, although what she would tell Buddy she had yet to figure out.

She put the journals back and thought for a moment. The office was a dead end. If there had been anything useful the police would have found it. Slowly, she returned to the kitchen. This was the heart of the house, where Garnet had spent her time when she was not working. Here she had sung while she cooked, she had read, she had rocked in the well-worn rocking chair.

Faith lowered herself into the rocker. Here she would have rocked her own child, if Garnet had not died. She looked round, trying to see the kitchen from Garnet’s point of view. Garnet hadn’t owned many things, but among her most treasured possessions had been her books, especially her cookbooks. They sat in the small nook above the cooker, apparently untouched by the police maelstrom.

With a grunt of effort, Faith stood and pulled out one book, then another, swiftly thumbing through them.

It was in a vegetarian tome Faith had seldom seen Garnet use that she found the papers tucked inside the flyleaf: several sheets of foolscap filled with Garnet’s spiky handwriting, pages torn from a book, and a newspaper clipping, yellowed and brittle with age.

First she unfolded the printed sheets, her eyes widening with shock as she read. The pages had obviously been torn from a primer on ancient magic, but these were not the gentle ceremonies Garnet had taught her—these were rituals that called the darkest and oldest powers up from the depths, rituals celebrating the Tor as the entrance to the Underworld, the home of the Great Mother. Participants began by walking the ancient spiral maze, the physical manifestation of the vortex of energy that would suck them up to the summit, and then down into the very heart of the Tor. Those who passed through chaos and death would emerge reborn, filled with the power of the Mother.

As she read, Faith knew with certainty that it was this force that had brought her to the Tor, and that Garnet must have known it too. With unsteady fingers, she opened the handwritten pages.

She might have been my daughter. She has come to me, a gift from the gods, redemption contained in her innocence. I will bring her child into the world … in return for the child lost, a life for a life.… If only I can protect her from the power that awaits this birth.

So that was why Garnet had watched over her with such fierceness! She had known the thing that pulled and tugged at Faith for what it was; she had meant somehow to shield her from it. Fingers trembling, Faith opened the clipping, peering at the faded newsprint. A photo of a child, a little girl, then a headline: TRAGEDY ON THE TOR, beneath which ran an all-too-brief story. Four-year-old Sarah Jane Kinnersley was struck and killed yesterday evening in a hit-and-run accident on the slopes of Glastonbury Tor. The tragedy occurred at dusk in Wellhouse Lane, just below the Kinnersley farm. Sarah’s parents realized something was amiss when Sarah did not—

Faith looked up. A sound—she’d heard a sound. The clipping fluttered to the floor as she strained her senses to catch the sound again. But there was nothing but the spattering of rain against the windowpane, and she saw that the lowering sky had obliterated all but the last vestiges of daylight. She felt a rush of panic—was she late? Had she missed Duncan?

Looking at the clock above the stove, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was not yet five o’clock. She was all right. She would go down the hill and she would try to make sense of what she had read. But just now all she wanted to do was get out of the house, so empty without Garnet’s presence, and back to warmth and light.

Her hand was on the kitchen lamp when the sound came again, this time unmistakable—a footstep, the groan of weight on the bottom step. Had Duncan discovered her missing from the café and come looking for her?

But surely she’d have heard the swish of the car on the wet pavement, and the squeak of the gate. There was another creak, and a shadow against the curtained window.

The fear that gripped her was deeper than thought. She looked round wildly for a place to hide, but it was too late. The door swung open and the last voice she had expected to hear said, “Hello, Faith.”

Gemma had slept fitfully, waking several times to check on Toby, tossing and turning in between. When the dull light that presaged dawn began to filter through her blinds, she gave up trying to sleep.

She sat at the half-moon table in the quiet flat, looking out at the garden, as the sky grew brighter. As she watched the familiar lines of tree and shrub take shape, she thought again about her conversation with Erika Rosenthal.

Dr. Rosenthal was a rational woman, a scholar, and yet she had spoken of Old Gods and elemental powers without reservation. If she were right, Gemma’s perceptions had been more than an overactive imagination, and Faith had indeed been in danger. Yet Faith had been drawn to the Tor before Garnet even knew of her existence; had the danger not been Garnet herself, but something else that had not yet run its course?

That thought made Gemma so uncomfortable that she stood and began to get ready for her day, but she worried at it restlessly throughout the morning. No matter how much she tried to rationalize it, she couldn’t shake the instinct that Faith was still at terrible risk.

At noon, she called in her sergeant and informed him that she would be out for the rest of the day. Her guv’nor was away on a training course—she’d have to explain herself to him when she came back. And Hazel! She would have to ask Hazel to keep Toby for the night.

But first, she rang Kincaid at Jack’s.

“Andrew! What are you doing here?” Faith stared at the apparition in the doorway. His thin anorak glistened with rain, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked different somehow, younger, and she realized he’d taken off his glasses.

“I’ve come to see you.” He stepped into the kitchen and shut the door. “You’re looking well.”

“Well?” She looked down at her distended abdomen, then back at him. “Is that all you can say?”

“What should I say? That you’re blooming? Or one of those other euphemisms people use to get round the fact that pregnant women resemble beached whales?”

His cruelty was shocking. Nor was there any trace of tenderness in his voice. What had she seen in him, all those months ago?

He had been impressed with her performance in his history classes, and with her knowledge of music. And she had been so flattered by his interest, intrigued by his boyish good looks and his air of vulnerability. When he’d begun asking her to stop by his office, she’d felt singled out, special. And then had come the casual touch, the hand on her shoulder, the stroking of her hair—so different from the fumbling of boys her own age.

The thrill of it had made her giddy with excitement, and when he’d said, oh, so nonchalantly, “If ever you’re walking up Wirral Hill, stop by my house for a cup of tea,” she had gone.

There had been a few charmed weeks of regular visits, of feeling so grown-up, sleek with her secret and her superiority to the other girls in her class.

Then reality had struck—a missed period, the worry, the sickness, the inevitable acknowledgment of the truth. When she’d told him she was pregnant, he had wept in her arms like a terrified child, and she’d sworn to him she would never tell anyone the truth. And she’d believed that, once the baby was born and she was on her own, perhaps they could be together again.

Now she saw that she had been mad to think she had meant anything to him—or that she had ever been more than a dreadful mistake in his eyes.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“This can’t go on, you know,” said Andrew, coming a step closer. “This wondering, waiting for the ax to fall. I can’t bear it anymore.”

“I haven’t told anyone!”

“Not Garnet?”

“No. I swear.” But she had confessed to Garnet, when Winnie had urged her to see her mum—and learned to her horror that Winnie was Andrew’s sister! She had been introduced to Winnie only by her Christian name, and so had never made the connection.

“And you haven’t told my sister?”

“I wouldn’t tell Winnie!”

“I never expected that,” Andrew said dispassionately. “That you would make friends with my sister. Did you think it would give you some hold over me?” He shook his head. “You should have known that was the one thing I would never tolerate.”

Too late, Faith realized her mistake. But if she had lied and told him Winnie knew, would it have made a difference? “I’ve protected you. All these months. I had to leave home, because my dad would have killed you if he’d found out.”

“That doesn’t matter now. But my sister … You have to understand. Winnie mustn’t ever know. I can’t take any more chances. I’m sorry.”

He was on her before she could move, his hands round her throat.

Faith felt the searing pressure of his thumbs, heard the rasp of his breath in her ear. She struggled, trying to pull his hands away, but she couldn’t loosen his grip.

Even through the suffocating fog of her fear, she knew that if she lost consciousness she would be finished. She kicked at his ankles, but he merely tightened his grip on her throat. His face was contorted with purpose, unrecognizable. He pushed her backwards until she felt the cooker press against the small of her back.

Her vision blurred, sparking with luminous blue spots. In a last effort, she stopped scrabbling at his hands and reached behind her, groping for something, anything, that might hold him off.

Her fingers closed on the handle of Garnet’s cast-iron frying pan. She lifted it, vaguely aware of a tearing in her wrist from its weight, then swung it with all her strength.

The blow caught Andrew in the temple.

She saw the flare of astonishment in his eyes, then his hold on her throat gave way and he crumpled, toppling back against the table. He grasped at it, pulling himself up; Faith swung the frying pan again.

Andrew slumped to the floor.

Faith stood over him, panting and trembling. There was no blood. If she moved, would he come at her again?

Then she gasped as pain gripped her, doubling her over, squeezing at her, and a gush of warm liquid ran down her legs. When she could stand upright again, she inched round Andrew’s still form, whimpering in terror.

She had to get out, away from the house. Away from him.

Stumbling out the door and down the steps, she ran through the downpour across the mud-slick yard to the back gate, and, once through it, onto the rocky slope of the Tor.

Up. She must go up. Blinded by the rain, sliding and falling, then picking herself up again, she began to climb straight up the side of the hill, towards the ancient contours cut into the rock, the maze that led to the summit of the Tor.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

History may tell us that Christianity came to these islands from Ireland, but legend, which enshrines the spiritual heart of history, declares that the Light of the West came to us straight from the place of its rising, and that we were indebted to no intermediaries for its transmission.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

“HULLO, LOVE. GOOD journey?” Kincaid eased the car into the traffic exiting Bath station as rain began to spatter on the windscreen.

“Any luck with your search this morning?” Gemma asked.

“This has been a wild-goose chase if I ever saw one. We’ve not turned up anything remotely resembling a lost Gregorian chant. I’m beginning to think we’ve all gone a bit soft in the head.”

“You won’t be able to stay much longer.”

“No.” He concentrated on his driving for a few moments, then said, “DCI Greely is still sifting through the material from Garnet’s house, but there are no phone records, no computer, no Caller ID—there aren’t even any personal letters that he’s been able to find, just business records.”

“And no help from those?”

“Only in the negative sense. He’s checked with those customers who had tile-work commissions pending, but she made no deliveries on the night of Winnie’s hit-and-run.”

“What about forensics?”

“No evidence of an assault or an abduction in the house, and although they did find a few of Nick’s prints, they can all be accounted for by his story. The only other identifiable prints are Faith’s and Garnet’s, and there’s nothing to indicate that prints were wiped, as they were on Garnet’s van.”

“Not Jack’s?” Gemma asked.

“Not a smudge,” he said with relief.

“Garnet Todd led a remarkably isolated life,” Gemma mused. “Most of us have an accumulation of flotsam from our connections, our relationships. Faith told me that Garnet had been a midwife, so she gave up a job where she had regular, intimate contact with people for tile making, a solitary occupation.”

“She did have a few close friends. Buddy Barnes, for one.”

“Faith’s boss?”

“I had a chat with him yesterday. It occurred to me afterwards that he’s extremely fond of Faith, and that if there should be anything to Nick Carlisle’s theories about Garnet preparing Faith for some sort of bloody ritual on the Tor, and Buddy found out about it—”

“You think Buddy might have murdered Garnet?”

“I’ve asked DCI Greely to run a check on him, at least.”

“Then what about Winnie? What reason could Buddy have possibly had for hurting Winnie?”

“I haven’t got that far. Did you realize they all knew each other, years ago? Garnet and Buddy, Bram and Fiona Allen. Buddy and Fiona were an item, apparently.”

“Well, perhaps it would all make sense if Buddy had murdered Fiona—”

“A long-simmering unrequited love?” Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “At this point I’m open for anything.”

“What if”—Gemma gave him a sly glance—“what if Garnet found out something about Nick that would ruin his chances with Faith for good?”

“Do I see cream on your whiskers? You’ve found something. Out with it,” Kincaid demanded.

“I told you I discovered that Nick’s mum is the novelist Elizabeth Carlisle. This morning the constable in her Northumbrian village rang me back. It seems that our Nick left behind a baby he refused to acknowledge or support. His mum has done right by the girl, apparently, but Nick’s name is mud.”

“And then he came to Glastonbury and fell in love with a girl pregnant with another man’s child?” Kincaid snorted. “Sounds like someone’s idea of a cosmic joke. But I doubt Faith would find it amusing.”

“That might explain why Nick would kill Garnet, but not why he would have struck Winnie. Unless”—Gemma frowned—“unless we’ve got it the wrong way round. What if it was Winnie who found out about Nick—isn’t that more likely, with her connections?—then Garnet saw Nick hit Winnie. So he was forced to silence her.”

“You’re leaving out one thing,” Kincaid objected. “Nick doesn’t have a car. His bike could not have caused Winnie’s injuries.”

“Perhaps he borrowed a car—or stole one.”

“That’s a possibility we should check.”

The rain fell in sheets now, and the traffic ground to a halt behind a long tailback. Kincaid glanced uneasily at his watch.

“What is it?” Gemma asked.

“We’re not going to make Glastonbury by five, in this downpour. But I asked Jack to pick Faith up at the café, if we weren’t in time.”

“But she was expecting you—”

“Jack promised he’d be there at the stroke of five. She’ll be fine.”

But as the minutes passed, Kincaid could sense Gemma’s growing tension. She sat quietly, eyes fixed on the road, as if she could hurry the car. As they neared Glastonbury, the rain fell even more heavily and the sky grew black. He drummed his fingers on the wheel as they crawled behind a lorry.

But at last they zigzagged their way through the village of Pilton, and the final clear stretch of road lay before them.

Then his cell phone rang.

It was Jack on the line, sounding frantic. “She’s gone. Faith’s gone. She told Buddy she didn’t feel well earlier this afternoon, that she was coming home. Then he began to worry about her, and rang me. No one’s seen her since she left the café.”

“Where are you?”

“At the house. I rang Nick at the bookshop, but he hasn’t heard from her either.”

“Wait there. She may ring you, or show up at the house any minute. And you don’t want to leave Winnie alone. We’re almost in Glastonbury—we’ll find her.”

“It’s Faith, isn’t it?” Gemma said as he disconnected.

“Missing since midafternoon. Told Buddy she was going home.” He swore under his breath, but he knew it was his own lack of foresight he was cursing. Why the hell hadn’t he been more careful? “Where could she have got to?”

“The farmhouse.” Gemma said with certainty. “Duncan, she’s gone to Garnet’s farmhouse.”

As Kincaid pulled the car over, Gemma grabbed her torch from the door pocket and jumped out. Fumbling open the gate latch in the rain, she ducked under the crime-scene tape and ran across the muddy yard. The sight of the kitchen door standing ajar made her blood run cold. She stepped inside and looked round, fearing the worst.

The butter-colored cat sat on the kitchen table, blinking at her, and then, beyond that, in the midst of the chaos left by the police, she saw a huddled form on the floor.

“It’s Catesby!” Kincaid exclaimed, behind her. “Dead?”

Andrew Catesby had fallen on his back, half under the table, but even in shadowed light Gemma could see the ugly swelling on his temple. A heavy frying pan lay on the floor nearby, as if it had been dropped.

She could hear his breathing, raspy and labored, and when she felt his wrist his pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips.

Kincaid was already dialing 999, and once he’d requested medical help he left a message with Control for DCI Greely.

“Faith must have been the connection all along, not Garnet,” he said as he squatted beside her. “Jack said she’d gone to public school—Andrew must have been her teacher. And the father of her baby. That day you found him here, he must have been looking for Faith.”

“She protected him all this time. Was it Andrew who tried to kill Winnie, then, because she’d guessed? And then murdered Garnet in case Faith had told her?”

“We may never know,” Kincaid said grimly. “Unless Faith can tell us. Where the hell is the girl? If Andrew attacked her, she could be hurt. You stay with him. I’ll search the house.”

Gemma glanced at the open door, thinking furiously. She knew with unshakable certainty that Faith was no longer in the house. She knew, too, where she had gone, and that she must go after her.

She also knew that she could never explain her conviction to Kincaid, and that he would forbid her to make that climb alone in the dark. But they couldn’t both leave Catesby. “Right,” she replied. “You have a look.”

It would take Kincaid a very short time to search the small house, and Andrew Catesby’s breathing had not worsened. When Kincaid disappeared down the corridor, she slipped quietly out the back door.

The rain had diminished to a fine mist, a soft touch against her face. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, realizing Kincaid must have the car keys. Looking up at the Tor’s black bulk rising behind the house, she considered going straight up the hill, then dismissed the plan as more foolhardy than the one she was already contemplating. The lane it must be, then.

She jogged until cramp seized her, but pressed on to the Tor’s north entrance. The path was undemanding at first, a fairly straight and gentle incline across a field, leading to a few stone steps and a narrow way through a copse of trees. Gemma breathed a sigh of relief as she came out the other side. Then she saw what lay ahead.

Jack prowled restlessly over the worn Aubusson carpet. “Why would she do such a thing? I just don’t understand it.” He stopped in front of the fire and warmed his hands automatically, not feeling the heat. “If anything happens to that girl … I got her into this whole bloody mess—”

“Jack,” Winnie interrupted from the sofa, “that’s not true. Faith had met Garnet before you came in contact with either of them, and Faith has always made her own decisions, whatever her reasons.”

He knew she was trying to calm him—and perhaps herself—but he could tell from the pallor of her face how worried she was. “I’m sorry, darling. You’re right. She’s managed well enough on her own until now. I’m sure she’ll show up any minute wanting to know what all the fuss was a—”

The doorbell cut him off. He and Winnie stared at one another, but before he could move they heard Nick Carlisle’s voice.

“In here!” Jack called, and Nick appeared in the doorway, disheveled, his dark hair beaded with raindrops.

“Has she come back?”

“No. No word.”

“They’ve got Wellhouse Lane blocked off. They wouldn’t let me through—”

“Who has it blocked off?”

“The bloody police. Something’s happened. I’m going to see if I can get round on foot—”

“Nick. Duncan will ring if there’s news. It might not have anything to do with—”

“That’s bullshit. It’s Faith, and you know it. I’m going up there. They can arrest me if they don’t bloody like it.” The front door slammed a moment later.

Jack started after him, but Winnie put a restraining hand on his arm. “Let him go. He’s got to do something.”

Sinking down on the ottoman, Jack felt as if his bones had dissolved. “Faith—” he began, but he couldn’t go on.

Winnie had paled, but took his hand in a strong grip. “She’s fine, I’m sure of—”

The bell rang again. This time Jack stood and left the room without speaking.

He had feared the police, bearing bad news, but he was wrong. “Jack?” There was a concerned expression on Fiona Allen’s freckled face. “Is everything all right? I just saw a man run away from your house like the hounds of hell were after him.”

Jack ushered her in, explaining what had happened.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Fiona murmured. “Listen, I can come back another—”

“No, don’t go,” Jack and Winnie said in unison.

“There was something I wanted to tell you both,” Fiona said urgently. “Last night, after I stopped painting, I had a dream.

“I heard the same music I heard the night of Winnie’s accident, and I saw a painting of the Abbey. Seventeenth or eighteenth century, I’d guess, a watercolor. And the oddest thing was that there was a man in the painting who looked remarkably like you, Jack. And then there were Garnet’s tiles—”

“A watercolor, did you say?”

“Yes, of the Abbey ruins, with cows in the foreground. Very nicely done too.”

Jack stood. “I’ll be back.”

But where the hell was the painting Duncan had found, he tried to remember as he took the stairs two at a time. He had only glanced at the thing, and had no recollection of what Duncan had done with it.…

It proved easy enough to find, however, set carefully off to one side with the portrait of the spaniel Duncan had wanted for Gemma. Breathing a sigh of relief, he carried both paintings back down the stairs.

“That’s it! That’s exactly what I saw in my dream!” Fiona exclaimed as he held out the view of the Abbey.

“That is remarkable.” Winnie examined the small figure in the foreground of the watercolor. “It could be you in farmer’s togs.”

“Look—there.” Fiona reached out to touch the bottom corner. “Is that a signature? Have you a magnifying glass?”

Jack fetched the old glass from his mother’s writing desk, and Winnie held it carefully over the small squiggle.

“It is a signature. Matthew—is that Matthew?” Jack heard the quick intake of her breath. “Matthew Montfort. It says Matthew Montfort!”

“But what does it mean?” Jack asked. “We’re looking for a manuscript, not a painting.”

“May I?” Fiona asked, and Winnie handed her the watercolor.

First, Fiona examined the front, and the frame, then she turned the painting over. The heavy paper neatly covering the back was discolored, and had a spattering of water or liquid stains, but otherwise it was intact. Fiona ran her fingertip round the edge, checking the seal, then she smoothed her palm across the paper.

Once more, she repeated the motion, stopping at the same point. “Have you a penknife? I think there might be something under the backing.”

Jack handed her his pocketknife, not trusting himself to speak.

Carefully, Fiona ran the tip of the knife under two of the edges. “Yes, there is something. I can see it.” She loosened the third side and lifted the flap of paper away.

A sheet of paper covered in a graceful, but old-fashioned hand lay beneath the watercolor’s backing.

“Jack, I think this belongs to you,” Fiona said, awe in her voice as she transferred the painting to him.

He lifted the sheet, his heart thudding with excitement. Beneath it lay a flat, paper-wrapped package, tied with a faded silk ribbon. “This appears to be a letter,” he said, struggling to decipher the handwriting. He read aloud haltingly:

“These papers have been passed from father to son in my family for seven hundred years, and we have preserved them to … our ability. But sadly, the original wrappings have disintegrated beyond my power to restore. I have devised a new place of safekeeping, as I have been instructed, in the hopes that this gift from Our Lord may be treasured and kept as it deserves.

“It is said that this is the Holy Chant of Glastonbury, brought by Joseph of Arimathea and his followers from the Holy Land in the First Century after the Crucifixion of Our Lord, perpetuated by twelve anointed choristers, as it had been since the days of the Faithful in Egypt. Thus when the Norman, Abbot Thurstan, sought to impose the form of worship practiced in France upon the monks of our Abbey, they rose in protest against him and he shed their blood upon the Altar of the Great Church. So it is that this most holy of praises to Our Lord vanished from the sight and hearing of mankind, but was not lost.

“This I entrust to the care of”—Jack squinted at the script—“descendants—I think he says descendants, and may the Blessings of Our Lord Jesus Christ be always upon you.

Matthew Montfort, 1759.”

Jack looked up; Winnie’s face was rapt. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “So it was true. I didn’t really believe it.…”

“I can’t bear it,” Winnie breathed. “Go on. Open the package.” When he hesitated still, she said gently, “It’s your right, Jack. This is what Edmund wanted.”

Fingers trembling, he untied the ribbon and folded back the wrapping from the tissue-thin folio beneath.

The path that had begun with such deceptive gentleness now switched back and forth up the steep north side of the Tor. The drop-off was sheer, the clay between the viciously sharp stones was slick as glass, and there was no railing.

Gemma made the mistake at first of trying to use her torch, but she found that while the circle of light lit the terrain immediately beneath her feet, it blinded her to the turns of the path and the nearness of the precipice.

She fell once, hard, cutting her hands and knees. She lay there a long minute, feeling the cold dampness seep through her clothing, letting her heart slow. It didn’t matter that she was afraid of heights, she told herself, as she couldn’t tell how far up she’d climbed.

After that, she used her hands as much as her feet, trying always to feel the rising ground on her right.

Still, she misjudged a turn in the path: her left foot slid over the edge, sending pebbles echoing down the hillside. She stood gasping, gathering her courage, but the prospect of the return journey was so terrifying she knew that even if it weren’t for Faith, she could only continue upwards.

At last, her right hand reached into space, and as she moved gingerly in that direction she felt the ground level out beneath her feet. She had reached the summit. For an instant moonlight rent the clouds, illuminating the tower before her. Then the clouds blotted out the moon again, but the dark, squat shape remained imprinted on her brain.

How had she ever thought to find Faith in this desolate place?

She used the torch now as she inched forward, but it lit only the sparse turf, and once a startled sheep. When she called out Faith’s name, the wind snatched the word from her mouth. She halted a few yards from the tower, unwilling to go any closer. Despair washed through her.

Then, in a lull in the wind, she thought she heard a cry.

“Faith!”

This time she was certain she heard a response—a moan? Or a sob?—and it came from the far side of the tower. Gemma hurried forward, stumbling.

As she rounded the tower, she saw a shape crouched against the base.

“Faith!” she called again, and heard something between a groan and a scream in reply. Gemma knew that sound, and the primal pain that prompted it. Faith was in labor.

The girl sat with her back pressed against the side of the tower, her feet spread apart, her knees up. Gemma knelt beside her and touched her cheek.

Faith turned her head towards Gemma’s hand like a blind thing and whispered, “Garnet?”

“No, love, it’s Gemma. I’ve come to help you. Let’s get you up and I’ll take you down the hill.” But as she tried to raise the girl, Faith screamed again.

Panic bubbled in Gemma’s throat. It had been less than a minute since the last contraction. They weren’t going anywhere. Faith was going to have her baby right here, and soon. She was panting now.

“Breathe with it. Breathe with the pain,” Gemma urged. “Remember what Garnet taught you.”

For a moment, she thought Faith hadn’t heard her, then the girl obeyed.

“Good girl. Now just relax. Breathe again. That’s brilliant.”

As the contraction eased, Faith whispered. “I can’t—without Garnet—They mean to take my baby.… the Old Ones … I can’t … I can’t stop them by myself.”

“No one is going to take your baby. I’m here, and I’m going to help you. We’re going to have this baby together. And the first thing we’ve got to do is get you out of these trousers.” The girl’s clothes were sodden and she was shaking with chill—their removal could scarcely make her colder.

A litany of lack ran through Gemma’s mind as she scooted Faith up the wall into a standing position. No towels, no gloves, no knife to cut the cord … and as her hand brushed against the tower she felt a numbing cold. She bit her lip to stop her teeth from chattering as the vicious wind scoured her back.

But there was no alternative, and at least she had done a brief midwifery course as part of her training.

She had the trousers down to Faith’s ankles when the next contraction began and Faith slid into a squat, pressing against the wall.

“That’s good, now. Breathe,” Gemma coached as she scrabbled for her temporarily forgotten torch. But it was useless and Gemma flicked it off with a mutter of frustration. She was going to have to do this by touch alone.

She reached down, feeling Faith flinch as her hand made contact. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m just checking the baby’s progress. I won’t hurt you.” Oh, God, was that the baby’s head she felt, crowning already? Then the contraction eased. The baby receded, withdrawing into the safety of its mother’s warmth.

Faith sagged against the wall, eyes closed.

“All right, love. You’re almost there. Next time I want you to push, bear down with the contraction as hard as you can.” She pressed her palm flat against Faith’s abdomen, breathing with her, and she felt the ripple of the muscles even before Faith moaned.

“Okay, here we go. Wait for the crest, then push.” She felt for the baby’s head again as Faith bore down. There it was, the crown, then the entire head emerged as the contraction slacked off. “Breathe,” she urged Faith. “That’s a good girl. The next one will do it.”

Gemma felt the groan resonating through the girl’s body as the next contraction began. She tried to ease the baby’s passage, but still Faith yelped at the unexpected pain of the baby’s shoulders—and then Gemma held the infant in her hands.

It was wet, and warm … and still. “Oh, dear God …” Desperately, she cleared the mucus from the tiny nose, then used the tip of her little finger to clear the child’s mouth.

Silence.

Oh, God, please, Gemma prayed. What else had they taught her to do? Stimulate the baby’s reflexes—that was it. She scraped her fingernail across the sole of the tiny foot. And again—

A cry split the air. Weak with relief, Gemma clasped the tiny form to her as a second wail followed the first.

“It’s a girl. Oh, Faith, you have a little girl.”

“Let me—I want to hold her,” Faith whispered.

As Gemma inched forward, transferring the infant to her mother’s arms, she felt a warm patch beneath her knee. She touched her fingertip to the spot, felt the dark pool in the grass. Faith was hemorrhaging.

She would not, could not, panic now. “Faith,” she said quietly, “you’ve got to get the baby inside your blouse, for warmth. Put her to your breast, let her suckle. And I need you to lie down, love. Now, put your knees up. There. Like that. Good girl.” Taking off her jacket, she covered mother and baby.

She had read somewhere that the mother’s uterus would contract in response to the baby’s nursing, a natural reaction that might slow the bleeding. She had no other recourse, and no means to warm them other than her own body.

Nor did she have any way to call for help, she realized as the dreadful enormity of her folly sank in. She had left her phone in her handbag, in the car.

Huddling against Faith to protect mother and infant as best she could from the wind, Gemma pointed her torch at the sky and began to flick it on and off.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Some of those who make the Glastonbury pilgrimage come to do reverence to the dust of saints in the serene green nave of the Abbey; some come to open their souls to the fiery forces going up like dark flames from the Tor. Who shall judge between them?

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

WHEN KINCAID FIRST returned to Garnet’s kitchen and found it empty, he assumed that Gemma had gone out to meet the ambulance. A look out the door, however, showed the yard deserted and quiet, the only vehicle Gemma’s Escort parked in the lane. He crossed the yard and pulled open the gate, tearing the crime-scene tape loose.

But a look down the lane revealed no sign of activity. He went back into the house and knelt by Andrew Catesby. The man’s skin had taken on an unhealthy tinge. Swearing, Kincaid rang 999 again and was assured by the dispatcher that help was on the way.

Standing, he called out for Gemma. There was no response. He checked the loo and the other downstairs rooms, fetching a rug from the sitting-room settee in passing. As he covered Andrew Catesby, he saw a scattering of papers on the floor beneath the table.

Gathering the sheets, he lifted them into the light of the oil lamp. He read Garnet’s notes, then the book pages, with growing fascination. When he reached the newspaper clipping, he paused. Kinnersley … Where had he heard that name, and recently? It had been Buddy who’d mentioned that Garnet had bought the old Kinnersley place. The accident had happened here, then, outside this house. He read on.… Sarah Kinnersley’s body was discovered by a neighbor, Charles Barnes, who informed her parents before ringing the police. No trace of the child’s assailant has been found.

Charles Barnes? Buddy, of course. Buddy … Garnet … two hit-and-run accidents, all connected somehow, if he could only see it. That didn’t rule out the possibility that Garnet had seen Andrew strike Winnie with his car, but he was beginning to think that Andrew and Faith had played out a separate drama.

He was still puzzling over it when he heard the pulse of sirens.

• • •

“You didn’t by any chance see Gemma down the way?” Kincaid asked, as he and DCI Greely watched the paramedics load Andrew Catesby into the ambulance. He was now seriously worried.

“What, have you lost her, then?” Greely sounded amused.

“I thought she might have gone down to guide the ambulance,” Kincaid answered curtly.

“And you say the girl is missing as well? It would be my guess your partner saw, or heard, something, and went to have a look.”

“I’m very much afraid you’re right.” With dismay Kincaid glanced round at the impenetrable darkness outside the farmyard. “But how—”

A shout came from the officers in the lane; a moment later they appeared at the gate with a struggling and swearing figure between them.

“Let him go,” Greely ordered. “How’d you get up here, lad?”

Nick Carlisle shook himself free and snarled, “Across the foot of the Tor. Is she here? Is she all right?”

“Faith’s not here, Nick,” Kincaid replied. “But we found Andrew badly injured. And now Gemma’s disappeared too.”

“I saw a light at the summit of the Tor, just one flash as I came across the field—”

“You think they’ve both gone up the blasted Tor, in the dark, in this weather?” Greely shook his head.

“Gemma had her torch,” Kincaid remembered. “We’ve got to go after them. Have you a trained rescue unit? Faith may be hurt—”

“The baby,” interrupted Nick. “It was due any day. She couldn’t make that climb—”

“But if she did, it’s very likely we’ve got another complication to consider. What about a stretcher?”

It seemed an eternity before Greely was running them down the hill in his own car, followed by his men in a panda. Leaving the cars near the bottom of the lane, they took the path that led up the southern face of the Tor, Greely having vetoed the north side as insane in the dark. The DCI dispatched officers to search the lane leading to the north entrance and instructed them to go as far along the path as they deemed safe, and he had sent one constable to Chalice Well.

Nick, Greely, and Kincaid led, Greely having found torches for them all, while the three officers carrying lights, ropes, and the folding stretcher brought up the rear. Although the southern slope was considerably more gentle than the northern, it was still a difficult climb. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, improving the visibility if not the footing.

Although none of them had much breath for conversation, Kincaid heard Greely mutter, “Mad. Bloody mad,” more than once.

“Likely as not they’ll find the girl curled up somewhere along the lane again, like a bloody hedgehog,” Greely grumbled, when they stopped for a breather at the first plateau. “And then I’ll have a hell of a time explaining this”—he gestured at the officers—“to my guv’nor.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kincaid said. What had Gemma been thinking, going off without telling him? He knew she wouldn’t have done such a thing lightly: that knowledge worried him even more.

They set out again, strung out single-file on the treacherous path. Suddenly Nick, who was in front of Kincaid, came to an abrupt stop and Kincaid teetered as he tried to avoid crashing into him.

“Look!” Nick exclaimed. “A light. There it is again.”

Kincaid saw it then, a faint but regular flash from the summit in an SOS pattern. It could only be Gemma.

The sight spurred them to climb with renewed energy, Greely no longer grumbling. Kincaid shouted Gemma’s name.

“Here!” As they reached the summit, she came running towards him. Kincaid gathered her to him, the fierceness of his hug part anger and part relief.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I had to find her. The baby’s fine, a little girl, but Faith’s bleeding—badly, I think.”

Greely was on the radio, calling for another ambulance, and Nick had dropped to his knees by Faith’s head, murmuring her name as the officers readied the stretcher. Kincaid squatted beside them and stroked her cheek with his fingertip. “You should have waited for me. I’d have given you a much smoother ride home.”

Faith attempted a smile. The baby was nestled against her chest, her tiny rosebud mouth just showing beneath the edge of Faith’s shirt. Kincaid found himself moved by the sight.

“We’ll have you down this hill in no time,” he promised, stepping back, but Faith clutched at him.

“Andrew …”

“Shhh. Don’t worry about that now. It’s fine.”

The officers stepped in and strapped mother and infant on the stretcher, and they were soon caravanning back down the hill.

This time Kincaid and Gemma brought up the rear. He noticed that she was limping, and when he stopped to help her over a particularly difficult spot, he saw that her hands were cut and swollen. In the light from the torch, her face looked as pale as Faith’s.

The ambulance was waiting when they reached the lane. To Kincaid’s surprise, Bram Allen paced nearby, his brow furrowed with worry. “What’s going on?” he demanded, hurrying towards them. “They said an accident, someone badly hurt at the old Kinnersley place.”

“Andrew Catesby,” Kincaid replied.

“But the girl …” Bram’s gaze followed the stretcher, now being loaded into the ambulance.

“Chose an odd place to have her baby.”

“I don’t understand,” Bram said, a tremor in his voice.

“Neither do we, yet. She—”

“Duncan!” Gemma called to him from the rear of the ambulance.

“Sorry,” he murmured to Bram, then ducked through the milling officers to Gemma’s side.

“Faith wants to speak to you before they go.”

He stepped up into the ambulance. “You rang, princess?”

Faith’s lips moved and he leaned closer. “I wanted you to know …” Her voice was a thread of sound. “Andrew … I didn’t mean to hurt him. He—he said he couldn’t bear for Winnie to know.…”

“You did the only thing you could,” Kincaid assured her firmly. “You protected yourself and your daughter.”

“Is he …”

“Don’t think about that.”

“We’re ready to go,” the paramedic urged.

Turning back to Faith, Kincaid said, “You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. We’ll see you at the hospital.” He backed out and stood beside Gemma as the ambulance pulled away.

“She’s so weak,” Gemma murmured. “There was so much blood.… And she’s so very, very cold.…”

The illuminations took Winnie’s breath away. So rich were the colors, so intricate the details of the minute paintings that adorned the folio’s alternate pages, that she could scarcely tear her eyes from them to look at the music itself.

The manuscript consisted of sixteen pages of tissue-thin, almost translucent vellum, folded to make a large, flat book. On the right-hand pages, the paintings filled the upper left corners, taking almost a quarter of the page, with the decoration continuing down the left-hand side and across the bottom. The text was in Latin, and above the text, the red, four-line staffs bore the ancient, square notation of chant, drawn in black.

“It is in twelve parts,” she said. “But I don’t recognize the sequence. It’s not an ordinary mass.…”

“The Divine Office?” suggested Jack.

Winnie explained for Fiona’s benefit. “Traditionally, the Divine Office was made up of the services celebrated throughout the day in a monastery. Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. The chant repertory might have included recited Psalms.…” Looking back at the manuscript, she struggled with deciphering the ornate text, murmuring the words as she translated—then the pattern clicked. “It is a Psalm. Number 148! Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. It goes on, all the birds and beasts and creeping things are here too.”

“And look at the illuminations.” Fiona pointed with a fingertip, but didn’t touch. “There’s the sun and the moon, and the stars, and here on the next page the birds.… But look at the background in this one. It’s Glastonbury. That’s the Abbey, and that’s the Tor behind it.”

“This is Edmund’s work,” Jack told them. “I’m sure of it. Look. That’s Glastonbury again. And here. And this one, with the water flowing from the hillside, that’s Chalice Well as it was then, where he met Alys.”

“But in the last days it shall come to pass,” read Winnie, “that the mountain of the House of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and people shall flow unto it. That’s Micah.” Turning several pages, she said, “And after that, Revelation. It’s Jesus’ commandment to the Philadelphians. Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem.… Glastonbury … the new Jerusalem …”

“Can you sing any of it?” asked Fiona. “Do you know how to read the notation?”

“Yes, but … it needs a choir. I suppose I could try.…” Winnie studied the new Jerusalem passage for a moment, then, hesitantly, sang a few syllables.

“Go on,” Jack and Fiona begged when she stopped.

Winnie sang another line of the verse, and as her confidence grew, she felt the power of the music welling up within her, reverberating throughout her body. When she glanced up, the expressions of her audience told her its effect on them was as profound.

Fiona’s eyes sparkled with tears. “Just for a moment, I thought …”

“Was that the music you heard?” Jack asked Fiona.

“An echo of it, perhaps …”

“This”—Winnie’s hands cupped the air round the folio—“oh, Jack—how could this have been allowed to disappear?”

Jack went to the bookcase, returning with a worn Bible. “This was my great-grandfather’s, but he recorded as much as he knew of the generations before him. I think I remember seeing Matthew’s name when I was copying the genealogical information for Simon. Here it is. Matthew John Montfort, died 1762—just three years after he wrote the letter. I suspect he never had the chance to pass the knowledge of the chant on to his son.”

“And by placing the manuscript in the painting, Matthew meant to take extra precautions. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that his actions caused it to be lost? Unless … You don’t suppose … where he says, ‘… as I have been instructed.’ ”

“Edmund? Well, why not? There’s no reason I should have been the only—” Jack stiffened.

They heard a murmur of voices, and a moment later Duncan and Gemma came into the room.

Winnie knew immediately that something was dreadfully wrong. “Faith? Is she—”

“She’s on her way to hospital,” soothed Gemma. “With her baby, a little girl.”

“How—what happened?” asked Jack, but Winnie saw that Duncan and Gemma were looking at her. She braced herself for a blow. If not Faith, then …

Duncan sat down beside her. “Winnie, I’m sorry, but it’s Andrew. He’s been quite badly hurt. They’ve taken him to hospital in Taunton.”

“Oh, no, please. Not …” Searching his face, she said, “There’s more, isn’t there? And worse. Faith—” The fragmented memory came back to her. “We were talking, in the café, Faith and I … she said something about her archaeology class. It was only when I was walking up the hill afterwards that I realized she must have known Andrew—she was a Somerfield student—and in that case why had she never mentioned it, in all the time I’d known her? And Andrew, when I told him about the girl who had left school because she was pregnant, he never said he knew her … Fiona! That’s why I was coming to see you. I needed to talk.” Winnie met Kincaid’s eyes again. “You said Andrew was badly hurt—how?”

“A head injury,” Duncan said reluctantly.

“Andrew tried to hurt Faith.”

Kincaid could only nod.

Winnie’s face became expressionless. “I must see him. Will you drive me to hospital, please?”

Gemma and Kincaid found Nick Carlisle haunting the corridor outside Faith’s room. He hurried towards them.

“How is she?” asked Gemma.

“They think they’ve got the bleeding stopped, but she’s awfully weak. She’s resting now.”

“And the baby?”

Nick’s smile lit his face. “She’s fine. Perfectly healthy, they say. Gemma … The doctor said you probably saved Faith’s life—and the baby’s. If there’s anything—”

“You’d have done the same,” Gemma told him. “I just got there first.” Somehow she understood that his gratitude was mixed with envy. He had wanted to be Faith’s savior, the hero of the day. “Perhaps it’s just as well, you know, that things worked out the way they did. Gratitude is a burden you’d not want to come between you two. You’ve a clean slate now.”

“I wish I did,” Nick said softly, his expression bleak, and Gemma recalled what she had learned of his past.

“Will they let us see her?” she asked.

“I’ll find out.” Kincaid went to the desk, leaning over to speak to the dark-haired nurse. Gemma saw him flash his most effective smile, then he returned to them.

“Just one of us, for five minutes, and that’s a special dispensation. You go in, Gemma. I’ll stay with Nick.”

She eased open the door. The girl lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed, her dark lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. The baby lay in a cot beside her, only the top of her fuzzy head visible beneath a teddy-bear blanket.

Just as Gemma started to turn away, unwilling to wake her, Faith opened her eyes. Going to the bedside, Gemma murmured, “She’s lovely. Have you decided what to call her?”

“Bridget.”

“Bridget … wasn’t she a local saint?”

“Andrew … he always liked the story about St. Bridget’s Chapel at Beckery; that all who passed through the hole in the chapel’s side would be forgiven their sins.…”

“It suits her,” Gemma said softly. “And you were very brave, you know.”

“Was I? I was so scared. I didn’t know—”

“You can’t know, until you’ve been through it. The nice thing is, you forget quickly.” Gemma smiled. “Now, you get some rest—”

“I wanted to thank you. If you hadn’t … Garnet knew what was going to happen, didn’t she? On the Tor. Do you think somehow she knew about Andrew too?”

“I think Garnet loved you,” Gemma told the girl gently, “and that’s all that matters.”

• • •

Andrew had been rushed into surgery; there the hemorrhaging caused by the blows to his temple had been surgically evacuated to relieve the pressure on his brain. Now, his doctor had informed Winnie, they could only wait.

She had insisted that Jack stay behind in Glastonbury. Her undivided attention seemed a small penance for what she owed her brother. How could she have been so blind, so self-absorbed, that she had not seen his peril? As she sat beside Andrew’s bed, her heart was gripped with fear for her brother—and for herself.

Could she bring herself to forgive him for what he had done? Even more difficult, could she find the strength to love him, knowing the secrets he had kept from her?

And if Andrew survived this, would he be able to live with his own terrible knowledge?

He stirred, his eyelids fluttering open. To her profound relief, he knew her instantly, and smiled. Then she saw the shadow of returning memory in his eyes and, with it, a recoil of horror and shame.

“Andrew, it’s going to be all right, I promise. We’re going to work through this together.”

He turned his face away.

Gemma and Kincaid found their way back to the ICU visitor’s area and sat down to wait for Winnie. Kincaid fidgeted, frowning abstractedly as he studied a bright print on the wall.

“What is it?” Gemma pressed. “Surely you don’t think Faith is to blame for hurting Andrew—”

“Of course not. It’s just that Greely’s inclined to consider the case tidily wrapped up. Convenient for him, but I don’t like it.”

“He assumes Garnet saw Andrew in the lane the night of Winnie’s accident, and later confronted him.”

“Right. And that would fit nicely—except for the fact that Andrew’s alibi for the time of Winnie’s accident checked out. And if he were willing to kill Faith to keep his sister from finding out about their relationship, why would he have tried to hurt Winnie?”

Gemma thought for a bit. “Andrew’s affair with Faith must have started after Winnie met Jack, an act of emotional desperation, perhaps. When he discovered Faith was pregnant he cut her off, making her promise to tell no one. What a terrible irony that his rejection of Faith drove her to leave home, and led her to become friends with his sister.”

“If his motive in murdering Garnet was to keep her from telling Winnie, why would he kill Garnet the night after Winnie’s accident, when he didn’t know if Winnie would ever regain consciousness? Nor would it explain where Garnet drowned.”

“Bathtub? Kitchen sink?” Gemma offered.

“Then he cleaned up afterwards without leaving a trace? I suppose it’s possible. But something’s not right about this. Gemma, what happened up there on the Tor tonight? Was there something—” Kincaid broke off as the ICU door swung open.

Winnie came out and sat beside Gemma. Her face was bleak with exhaustion, and she closed her eyes briefly, seeming to gather strength.

“How is he?” Gemma asked.

“Resting comfortably, the doctor says. It’s too early to know if the swelling will return, but they think the prognosis is good.”

“He’s conscious? Did he—”

“No.” Winnie’s eyes filled with tears. “No, he didn’t tell me anything.”

They drove back to Glastonbury in silence. Glancing at Nick, Winnie wondered if it had been loyalty to Andrew that had made Faith impervious to Nick’s determined assault on her affections. Perhaps now she would be able to truly see this young man.

“Faith!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t even ask. Is she all right? And the baby?”

“She’s doing fine,” Gemma answered. “And the baby’s lovely. Faith’s called her Bridget.”

“St. Bride,” Winnie said softly. It was a good name, and fitting. My niece, she realized for the first time, and that brought the tears she had held in abeyance. She let them slip unchecked down her cheeks, the salt on her lips tasting like blood. Something good had come of all this, and that thought comforted her.

But as they crossed over the River Brue, she said suddenly, “I want to go to the Abbey.”

“But it’s closed,” Nick protested.

“Take me to the Silver Street gate, then. Please. I can’t explain—”

Duncan glanced back at her. “It’s all right. Just tell me where to go.”

“Past the Assembly Rooms, on the High Street. There’s a turning to the right.”

The gate at the bottom of Silver Street was kept locked, but as it was made of wrought iron, it was the one place you could see easily into the Abbey grounds. Duncan pulled up next to the rubbish bins and Winnie was out of the car before it had come to a full stop.

She stood at the gate and looked through. The sky had cleared, and in the moonlight the ruined church cast a shadow on the greensward. Why had she come here? What had called to her so powerfully?

Closing her eyes, she saw a different vision. She’d stood there in the sunlight, beneath the great stone transepts, and she had heard the music rising round her. The chant … she had heard the chant, and she had known it for what it was. The elation and the certainty of her experience filled her once again.

Without turning, she said, “Out of all the Grail mythology entwined with Glastonbury over the centuries, there is one legend that says the Grail is not an object—not a cup or a chalice—but a transcendent state of being, brought about by ritual and prayer. This chant that the monks of the Abbey were willing to sacrifice their lives for, that Edmund devoted himself to saving for future generations, is a part of that complex of rituals.

“I was here.” She turned to the others. “On the day of the accident. I remember now. I saw everything, and I felt I would burst with the joy of it.”

“And afterwards?” Duncan asked.

She frowned. “I went—I think I went to the Galatea. Then I rode to Pilton to make a bereavement call—Suzanne told me that. And then”—the scene flashed before her … the green of shimmering leaves and the sparkle of water—“why, I stopped to visit Simon. We had tea in his cottage garden, by the river. But why didn’t he say, when I couldn’t remember?”

“Simon lives by a river, and no one bothered to mention it?” Aghast, Gemma exchanged a look with Duncan.

Nick said, “But Jack’s gone to see—”

Duncan quelled him with a glance. “Let’s get back in the car, shall we?”

He stepped away and made a call on his mobile phone. After a moment, he hung up with a mutter of frustration and climbed in with them. “There’s no answer at Jack’s. Winnie, give us directions to Simon Fitzstephen’s cottage.”

Kincaid caught a glimpse of the tower of the medieval church as they passed, then Nick instructed him to make a left into a steep lane that dead-ended after a hundred yards. Jack’s blue Volvo was pulled up on the verge just past the cottage Nick and Winnie identified as Simon Fitzstephen’s.

As Kincaid parked behind Jack’s car, he told himself Jack was in no real danger; it was Winnie who was at risk. He debated whether to insist she stay behind with Nick, or to keep her in his sight, and decided on the latter.

The damp fronds of a willow brushed his face as he got out of the car, and in the darkness the rushing of the stream was as loud as a roar.

Kincaid rang the bell, then immediately opened the door and called out, not wanting to give Fitzstephen a chance to do anything rash—although there was no reason for the man to get the wind up. He had, after all, been in and out of Jack’s house the last few days as calmly as you please: he had probably decided that Winnie was not going to recover any inconvenient memories.

Fitzstephen appeared in the hall and, when he saw them all gathered on his doorstep, made a gesture of surprise. “What is this, a delegation? Jack, look who’s here.” His ascetic face seemed flushed, his hair more unruly than usual. “This is delightful. Come in, come in.”

“Winnie! What are you doing here, darling?” Jack exclaimed.

“Do sit down,” said Simon. “Jack and I were having a celebratory Scotch, if anyone would care to join us.”

The chant manuscript lay open on the sitting-room table, their glasses beside it.

“We haven’t come to celebrate, Simon. There are some things we need to talk about.”

“Oh?”

“Everyone has been very ready to blame both Winnie’s accident and Garnet Todd’s death on Andrew Catesby,” continued Kincaid. “A convenient solution, at least until he’s able to defend himself.”

“If I know anything, it’s that Andrew would never have tried to hurt me,” said Winnie.

“No,” Kincaid agreed. “I don’t believe he would have either. In fact, I don’t think your accident, or Garnet’s death, had anything to do with Andrew or Faith. I think it was something else entirely.”

Simon sat down and reached for his glass. “Surely, Winifred’s accident was just that, an accident,” he said reasonably.

“No. Jack’s suspicions were quite valid. Someone deliberately struck Winnie that night. It was a daring move, and a foolhardy one, but there were tremendous stakes. You see, Winnie had realized that this chant”—Kincaid gestured towards the manuscript—“was quite special indeed. And she had shared that knowledge with only one person.

“Don’t you think it rather odd, Simon, that you neglected to mention to anyone that Winnie had come to see you that afternoon?”

“Why should I have mentioned it?” Simon sounded bewildered. “She’d come to pay a visit in the neighborhood, and stopped in afterwards for a cup of tea. What was so odd about that?”

“We talked about the chant, Simon.” Winnie stepped forward. “The twelve-part perpetual chant.”

“What on earth is going on here?” Jack asked. “What are you all talking about? Winnie—”

“I told Simon that I thought the chant was one of the rituals that makes up the Grail—”

“But the Grail is a myth,” protested Jack. “And even if it were true, how could a chant be a cup?”

“I don’t think the Grail was a cup. I think it was—is—a state of grace, and that this chant was one of the things used to create that state. When I asked Simon, as a fellow priest, what this meant for us, and for the Church, he said”—Winnie closed her eyes, as if trying to recall the exact words—“ ‘it wasn’t a valid construct, because our society was no longer theocentric.’ And then he suggested that I might be suffering from some sort of emotional hysteria as in, ‘middle-aged women in love have a tendency to become deranged.’ ”

Watching Simon’s face, she added softly, “Oh, yes, I remember it all, now. You thought you could put me off it, but after I left, you must have realized that wasn’t enough. So you came after me. You waited for a chance to make sure I wouldn’t spread my theories any further.”

Fitzstephen lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “Winifred, I don’t know what to say. We did talk about the chant, yes, but I never dreamed it was any more than a flight of fancy on your part. I can’t imagine you think I’d—”

“Did you think that if this came out it would ruin your reputation as a Grail scholar? Destroy all your well-researched theories? Or did you think you’d somehow manage to take credit for the discovery? You’ve always been unscrupulous, Simon, willing to use other people’s work as it suited you, but—”

“Has everyone forgotten Garnet Todd?” Kincaid asked. “You and Garnet went back a long way, didn’t you, Simon? Friends—maybe even lovers at some time?”

“What has my relationship with Garnet to do with this?”

“I believe that Garnet knew—or at least suspected—that your motives might not be in line with the rest of the group. Perhaps she’d followed Winnie that night, wanting to talk to her about Faith, or perhaps she just happened to see you coming out of Lypatt Lane, and once she learned of Winnie’s accident she put two and two together.

“Did she come to see you the next night, determined to confront you about the attempt on Winnie’s life? Did you have drinks in the garden? And when you realized what she knew, did you ask her to look at something in the stream? Did you—”

“No, wait,” interrupted Jack. “I’ve just remembered! We were looking for Faith that evening. I rang you and asked you to check the farmhouse, as Garnet didn’t have a phone, and you said you would go.”

“I did.” Simon had stiffened in his chair. “There was no one there, and I came home again. As for the evening of Winifred’s accident, I had a speaking engagement in Bristol, in front of two hundred people, if anyone bothered to check. I left shortly after Winifred’s visit and didn’t return until midnight. You are all mad, utterly mad.”

“But—” Kincaid stared at him. “Simon, when you went to the farmhouse that evening, was Garnet’s van in the yard?”

“Yes, but there was no one in the house. I knocked and called out.”

“Bloody hell. I’ve been a fool. Simon, forgive me. Gemma—we’ve been blind. It was never Winnie who was in danger.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

On more than one occasion, we who live upon [the Tor’s] flank have been called upon to minister comfort and consolation to those who have actually seen what they went to look for.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

IT SEEMED TO Gemma that she had never been so tired. She had listened to Kincaid’s exchange with Simon Fitzstephen with a growing sense of unreality, as if she were becoming physically detached from her body. Now, as they sped back towards Glastonbury, she was having difficulty following Kincaid’s logic. “Are you saying you think Fiona Allen’s husband might hurt her?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But I do think Bram fits into this and somehow that it’s connected to the death of little Sarah Kinnersley. When I saw her photo in that news clipping, I knew she seemed familiar—and then tonight at Simon’s it came back to me: it was the face of the child in Fiona’s painting.”

“The painting … it seemed almost as if the beings—angels?—were protecting the child.…”

“Bram and Garnet were lovers at the time Sarah was killed. The Kinnersleys were so devastated by their loss that they walked away from their property—Buddy mentioned Garnet bought it ‘for a song.’ Buddy also said that after little Sarah Kinnersley died, everything changed. Bram left Garnet. He married Fiona.”

“Left Garnet because she knew the truth? Was Garnet an accessory in Sarah’s death?”

“In the notes she left in the kitchen, she wrote that Faith was her redemption, and that bringing Faith’s baby into the world would be a child’s life for a child’s life. But I think she came to feel that wasn’t enough, that in order to counteract what was happening to Faith she needed to take some kind of direct action.”

“She confronted Bram—”

“I’d guess she told him she wouldn’t keep his secret any longer, that it was time for him to make retribution by telling the truth.”

“And Winnie?”

“Garnet told Faith she had an appointment that evening. I think she’d set a meeting with Bram, perhaps at the very spot where Winnie was struck.”

“And at the last minute Garnet found she couldn’t go through with it—and Winnie just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Gemma finished. “The next day, when Garnet learned of the accident, she guessed who had been responsible.”

“Then did she go to him? Or did he come after her? Simon said that when he went to Garnet’s that evening, her van was still in the yard. I’m guessing that Bram went to the farmhouse sometime after Nick left.”

“You think he drowned her in the house? But there was no sign.”

“No.… Do something for me, would you? Ring directory inquiries, get the number for Buddy—Charles Barnes.”

Gemma complied and, when the number began to ring, handed the phone to Kincaid.

“Buddy? It’s Duncan Kincaid. You know the spring on Garnet’s property? Is there any standing water? A pool above the house. Right. Oh, and Buddy, one more thing: On the night Sarah Kinnersley was killed, do you know where Garnet was? Did she have a car?” He listened a moment longer, then said, “Okay, thanks. I’ll explain later,” and disconnected.

“She was with Bram Allen,” stated Gemma.

“And he would have been driving. Garnet had no car at the time.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re worried about Fiona …”

“Because I think that, like Andrew with his sister, there’s one person Bram would do anything to protect from the knowledge of his crime.”

The lights still shone in the Allens’ house, and when Kincaid rang the bell, Fiona opened the door immediately. “Bram,” she said, “—have you seen him?”

“He’s not here?”

Fiona shook her head. “When I came back from Jack’s, I found him in the studio. He was—I’ve never seen him like that. My painting—he had my painting, the one of the Abbey, with the child. He’d cut it with his knife. And then he—he—”

“Slow down,” Kincaid said gently. “What happened then?”

“He said things I didn’t understand, something about stopping it once and for all, and he took the painting.”

“Bram left with the painting?”

Fiona nodded. “Stop what? What did he mean? Where has he gone? Bram—”

Kincaid took the north path. More treacherous, yes, but faster, and if Gemma had done it, so could he. The setting moon provided enough illumination that he climbed without mishap, driven by fear of what he would find at the top.

Once at the summit he stopped, letting his breathing ease. Then he went forward quietly, scanning the silvered turf for a shadow of movement.

He found Bram Allen on the far side of St. Michael’s Tower, in the spot where Faith had lain. Bram sat huddled against the wall, Fiona’s painting clutched to his chest, the knife in his right hand visible against the canvas.

“Bram,” Kincaid called softly, coming to a halt a few feet away.

Bram stood, looking at him without surprise. “I’ll give them blood, if that’s what they want,” he said clearly. “But not that girl and her baby. Not again.”

“Who wants blood?” Kincaid stood motionless.

“Old Ones. Garnet knew. Garnet always knew about them. That night we danced, here, in the grass. It was Samhain, the time when the veil is thinnest. We called them and they came. We were wild with it, invincible, we possessed the world. But they wanted more—a life—and we were just the instruments.”

“Sarah.”

“I saw her face, for only an instant, above the windscreen. I’ve seen it every day of my life since. How did Fiona know?”

“The child in the painting.” Kincaid inched closer, aware of the glimmer of the knife.

“Why? Why did she come to Fiona?”

“That must have been terrible for you, when Fiona began to paint little Sarah.”

“Fiona didn’t understand why I couldn’t bear the sight of them. Then when she wanted to hang them in the gallery, I couldn’t refuse.”

“But why kill Garnet, Bram?”

“It was building again, the old power. Garnet believed she could stop it—that we could stop it if I told. She came into the gallery. When she saw Fiona’s paintings she said it was a divine judgment, that Fiona was my retribution. Fiona.…” The despair in his voice chilled Kincaid to the heart. “All these years I thought I could make amends by loving her, being part of her goodness. The only thing I couldn’t do was give her a child.… I hoped that grief might be punishment enough.”

“Did you agree to meet Garnet that night in the lane?”

“A customer came into the gallery. I had to get rid of her somehow. And then, waiting in the darkness, I thought how easy it would be.… I didn’t know it was Winnie until it was too late.”

And he had left her to die, Kincaid thought, when he could so easily have called for help.

“But Garnet knew, didn’t she? So the next night you went to her house, and you convinced her to walk up to the spring.”

“I think she knew what was going to happen, at the last. Perhaps she thought her life would finish it. But it wasn’t enough.”

“Bram, let’s go home. It’s over now. Your wife is frantic with worry about you.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I know that Fiona will love you no matter what you’ve done—”

“No. I won’t have her stained with this … this evil—” His gesture with the knife took in the Tor. “Can’t you feel it? Once it begins, only blood will satisfy their hunger.”

“Bram, there’s nothing here. Let’s go home to your wife. We’ll get warm. Have a drink. In the morning, nothing will seem so terrible.” He shifted his weight, judged his distance from the weapon.

“I can’t. Fiona—”

“Garnet was right, Bram. The only way to end this is to tell the truth. Give Fiona the chance to forgive you. She loves you—you owe her that.”

“I—”

“Give me the knife, Bram.” He stepped closer, held out his hand.

“But they—”

“It’s over, Bram, the cycle’s finished. They don’t need your life.” Kincaid tensed, ready to lunge for the weapon.

“I—” Bram put his hands to his face and sagged against the wall. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Kincaid took the knife from his unresisting fingers. “Let’s go home.”

He guided Bram away from the tower, leaving Fiona’s mutilated painting abandoned against the cold stone.

They began the descent, Kincaid staying as close to Bram as the narrow path allowed. To one side was a sheer drop; mud and loose stones made the footing treacherous. The wind tore at them, tugging at their clothing like invisible hands.

At the first hairpin bend, Bram turned back. He spoke, but the wind snatched the words from his mouth. Then a shower of stones fell from above, striking him. Jerking away from the blows, Bram lost his footing and plunged over the edge.

“Bram!” Kincaid shouted, reaching for him, but his fingers grasped only air. He called out again and again, but no reply came from the impenetrable darkness below.

At last, exhausted, he continued downwards, towards the help he knew would be futile.

It seemed that Bram had been right, after all. The Old Gods had been satisfied with no less than payment in blood.

All the way to Wells, huddled in the back of the car, Gemma could only think of how it had felt to hold Faith’s baby in her arms. And she found herself making a mute entreaty, again and again, that she would not lose what she had been given.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

… I often wonder whether the life of Avalon will ever stir again, or whether we shall be no more than a tourist show and a market town. Will these dead bones come together, bone to bone, as they did at Buckfastleigh? There is talk of a great new abbey to rise under the shadow of the old … and I … impenitent heathen though I am, [hope] that I shall hear Angelus from my high veranda.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

KINCAID WAITED ALONE outside the cubicle in the emergency ward for news of Gemma. When the doctor emerged at last, he stood. “Is she—”

“She’s fine,” the doctor informed him with abstracted cheerfulness.

“But what happened? Is she ill?”

“Um, not exactly. Why don’t you go in and see her yourself.”

He found Gemma draped in a lilac-flowered hospital gown, her hair loose about her shoulders. Going to her, he sat on the edge of the bed and said only, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her smile was tremulous. “There’s nothing exactly wrong. It’s just that I’m pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“It is a fairly common occurrence, you know, if you do the sort of things we’ve done.”

“But—how long?”

“Eight to ten weeks, the doctor thinks. I should have told you sooner. Only I wasn’t sure … and I didn’t know how you would feel … or quite how I felt.”

“The baby—is it going to be okay?”

“There’s a bit of placental tearing, but it’s not too severe. I’ll have to see a specialist, and the doctor says I may have to take it a bit easier than I’m accustomed. No more climbing mountains in the rain, or delivering babies, for a while.”

Gemma, pregnant? With his child? Kincaid shook his head, trying to take in the wonder of it. But what had she meant when she’d said she wasn’t sure how she felt about it? “Gemma—your job. I know how much it means to you. How will you—?”

“I don’t know,” she said pensively. “But tonight, when I thought I would lose this baby, I realized what mattered to me most.”

Unable to speak, Kincaid took her hand in both of his.

• • •

On the threshold of Faith’s hospital room, Winnie hesitated. Kincaid had told her that Faith adamantly refused to press charges against Andrew, leaving the police powerless to prosecute him for his assault on her. Yet if her brother felt any gratitude, he had not expressed it—in fact, he’d refused to talk to her about Faith at all. He remained silent and unresponsive during her visits.

The doctors told her his physical recovery might be slow; Winnie suspected his emotional recovery would be even more difficult—if it were possible at all. But she must hope, and she had to begin by setting things right with Faith.

Taking a breath, she pushed open the door and went in. Faith greeted her with a smile, and Winnie gave silent thanks for the entry of this remarkable girl into her life.

When she had duly admired little Bridget, she asked, “Your parents—how did it go?”

“Okay. They thought Bridget was gorgeous, didn’t they, sweetheart?” Faith cooed to the baby at her breast. “But I can’t go back. I don’t know how we’ll manage, Bridget and I, but I know I don’t fit in that life anymore. Winnie—When I found out you were Andrew’s sister, I was afraid you’d guess somehow about the baby, and I had promised no one would ever know—”

“It’s all right, Faith. We have to think about the future now, and I have a proposal for you. I could use some help in the Vicarage. And even when Jack moves in—”

Faith’s face lit up. “You’re getting married?”

“As soon as we can arrange it,” Winnie admitted. “But even then, there will be plenty of room in the Vicarage, drafty old pile that it is, until you get on your feet. And we are, after all, family—”

“Andrew. He wouldn’t—I mean I couldn’t—”

“Of course you can. Andrew has no say over who lives in my home.”

“But—”

“My brother owes you a debt he can never hope to repay. But he can begin by providing support for little Bridget, and by getting used to the idea that we are all going to have to get on together.”

Faith slept after Winnie’s visit, deeply and dreamlessly, and when she woke she knew what she was going to do. Garnet’s legacy should not be allowed to vanish. She, Faith, with Winnie’s help, could carry it on. She would learn to make tile.

She was still mulling over the details of her plan when Nick knocked. He fussed over her and Bridget, but she sensed an awkwardness in his manner, and an unfamiliar chasm between them.

“Nick, what is it?”

He hesitated, then met her eyes. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“What do you mean, good-bye? I’ll be going home tomorrow, to Jack’s, that is. And then Winnie’s asked me to come and stay with her at the Vicarage.”

“I know,” Nick replied. “She told me. But I’m leaving Glastonbury. I have to go back to Northumberland, Faith, and take care of some things.”

Faith stared at him. She suddenly realized that she’d foolishly assumed Nick would always be there, as constant as the sun and the moon.

“But … you’ll come back, right?” she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

“I don’t know yet. But if I can get things sorted out, I think I may try to get into theological college. I thought—I thought that no one who had screwed up as badly as I have could possibly be a priest, but Winnie says you can’t understand other people’s mistakes if you haven’t made some yourself. Seasoning, she called it.” He smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s what I’ve always wanted; it just took me a while to figure it out.”

“But … Father Nick?” She studied him as if seeing him for the first time. Nick, a vicar like Winnie? “Well …” she said slowly, “I suppose I could get used to it.”

Gemma and Kincaid had turned over all their information on the murder of Garnet Todd and Bram Allen’s suicide to DCI Greely. His team had already found Garnet’s missing earring near the pool above her house, and a strand of Garnet’s long salt-and-pepper hair snagged on a button on the jacket Bram Allen had worn the night she died.

Now, they sat in front of the fire in Jack’s parlor, drinking tea and sorting through the events of the past days. Andrew’s dog Phoebe, brought temporarily from the house on Hillhead, had curled herself up against Gemma’s feet.

“Will Fiona be all right?” asked Kincaid.

“She’s very strong,” answered Winnie. “But this … I don’t know. I’ve seldom seen two people love each other more.”

“Even though Bram wasn’t what she thought?”

“I’m not sure,” Winnie said slowly, “that it matters. And are any of us ever entirely honest about ourselves?”

Gemma thought of her own failure to communicate with Duncan about what lay closest to her heart. “What about Edmund? Do you think he knows now that his and Alys’s child survived?”

“I hope so,” answered Jack. “He deserves peace, after eight hundred years.”

“As does little Sarah Kinnersley,” Winnie said softly.

“What will you do with the manuscript?” Kincaid asked.

“Study, first,” Jack replied instantly. “Consult with some of the experts on chant, and with conservators. The manuscript itself is remarkably well preserved, and we want to keep it that way.”

“You won’t try to keep it hidden any longer?”

“I think almost a millennium is long enough, don’t you? People should hear this—who knows what good might come of it?”

“It’s quite a responsibility, isn’t it, though?” mused Gemma. “If it’s what you suspect it is.”

“But there have always been caretakers in Glastonbury,” Winnie pointed out. “Think of the monks, and Bligh Bond, and the Chalice Well Trust.… We’ll be following a well-established tradition. I think Edmund would have wanted that.”

“What about Simon?” Kincaid asked. “I’m afraid we did him a disservice, regardless of any past indiscretions.”

“Perhaps …” Winnie smiled faintly. “Although I did learn he’d contacted someone about publishing Edmund’s communications, without consulting Jack.”

“So there’s still a wolf under the sheep’s clothing, after all.”

“I’m sure he meant to tell me,” Jack replied stubbornly, making it clear that he and Winnie would have enough differences of opinion to make life interesting.

“London is going to seem extremely dull compared to Glastonbury,” Kincaid said with a grin, “but I suppose we’d better be getting back.”

“Wait.” Jack rose. “I have something for Gemma.” He left the room, returning with a flat, paper-wrapped package.

“For me?” Gemma took it, curious. When she undid the twine and pulled back the paper, she found herself looking at an oil portrait of a hunting spaniel, who gazed back at her with eyes as soulful as Phoebe’s. “Oh …” she breathed. “It’s lovely.”

“See, I didn’t forget,” Jack told his cousin.

“But he’s not half as lovely as you, is he, darling?” whispered Gemma, who had leaned over to stroke Phoebe’s silky ears. She thought of her flat, not big enough to swing a cat in, much less a dog. Owning a dog had seemed an impossible proposition, in spite of Toby’s constant pleading. But now she faced challenges much more daunting than that, and she felt suddenly liberated, as if anything were possible, alight with excitement at the prospect of the inevitable changes to come. What had happened to her?

Could it be, she wondered, that Glastonbury worked its magic in more ways than they had imagined?

They stood beneath the great stone transepts of the Abbey Church. It was a perfect November afternoon, but the sun was sinking and the first hint of evening’s chill had crept into the air. It was near closing and the precinct was deserted; soon they would have to leave as well.

“Here,” Winnie told Jack, moving through the nave into the Choir. “I think it should be sung here, where it was meant to be sung.”

“And where the monks shed their blood to preserve it,” agreed Jack, gazing at the spot where the altar had once stood. “Is that possible? Could it be done?”

“I don’t see why not. There are choirs all over England—all over the world, for that matter—that would jump at the chance. But …”

“What?” he pressed, seeing her frown.

“I think the chant should be sung in Glastonbury, by ordinary Glastonbury folk. It’s not perfection that matters, but intent.”

Jack pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had brought to show her. “I wrote this today, at the office.”

“Edmund?”

He nodded and started to hand it to her, but she shook her head. “No, read it to me, please. I always imagine that his voice would have sounded like yours.”

Peering at the faint script in the fading light, Jack began to read haltingly. “There is much rejoicing among the Company. The Spirit liveth still, and that which we dreamed we pass on to you, a Symbol of the great Truth which is to come.

But ye must be ever vigilant, for although ye have closed the door, the balance is ever in question, and the fall is perilous. Doubt not your worth, for this task is given you in good faith, and fear not, for we will Watch with you. May you grow in spirit and in joy.”

Jack looked up from the page. The western sky was washed with the rose and gold of the setting sun, and for an instant, he could have sworn he heard an echo of voices raised in song.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEBORAH CROMBIE has received international acclaim for her first six mysteries, as well as nominations for the Edgar and the Agatha Awards. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and later lived in Edinburgh and in Chester, England. She travels to Great Britain yearly to research her books. She now lives in a small north Texas town with her family, where she is at work on the eighth book in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series, And Justice There is None. Dreaming of the Bones was named one of the 100 Best Mysteries of the Century by The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the Macavity for Best Novel of 1997.

If you enjoyed Deborah Crombie’s A FINER END, you won’t want to miss any of the exciting novels from a writer who “gets better with every book.”*

Turn the page for a tantalizing preview of AND JUSTICE THERE IS NONE, available from Bantam Books.

AND

JUSTICE

THERE IS

NONE

DEBORAH

CROMBIE

*The Plain Dealer, Cleveland

CHAPTER ONE

Portobello took on a different character once the shops closed for the day, Alex Dunn decided as he turned into the road from the mews where he had his small flat. He paused for a moment, debating whether to go up the road to Calzone’s at Notting Hill Gate for a celebratory pizza, but it wasn’t the sort of place one really wanted to go on one’s own. Instead, he turned to the right, down the hill, passing the shop fronts barred for the night and the closed gates of the café run by St. Peter’s Church. Bits of refuse littered the street from the day’s traffic, giving it a desolate air.

But tomorrow it would be different; by daybreak the stallholders would be set up for Saturday Market, and in the arcades, dealers would sell everything from antique silver to Beatles memorabilia. Alex loved the early-morning anticipation, the smell of coffee and cigarettes in the arcade cafés, the sense that this might be the day to make the sale of a lifetime. As he might, he thought with a surge of excitement, because today he’d made the buy of his lifetime.

His step quickened as he turned into Elgin Crescent and saw the familiar façade of Otto’s Café—at least that was how the regulars referred to the place; the faded sign read merely Café. Otto did a bustling daytime business in coffee, sandwiches, and pastries, but in the evening he provided simple meals much favored by the neighborhood residents.

Once inside, Alex brushed the accumulated moisture from his jacket and took a seat in the back at his favorite table—favored because he liked the nearness of the gas fire. Unfortunately, the café’s furniture had not been designed to suit anyone over five feet tall. Surprising, really, when you looked at Otto, a giant of a man. Did he ever sit in his own chairs? Alex couldn’t recall ever seeing him do so; Otto hovered, as he did now, wiping his face with the hem of his apron, his bald head gleaming even in the dim light.

“Sit down, Otto, please,” Alex said, testing his hypothesis. “Take a break.”

Otto glanced towards Wesley, his second-in-command, serving the customers who had just come in, then flipped one of the delicate curve-backed chairs round and straddled it with unexpected grace.

“Nasty out, is it?” Otto’s wide brow furrowed as he took in Alex’s damp state. Even though Otto had lived all of his adult life in London, his voice still carried an inflection of his native Russia.

“Can’t quite make up its mind to pour. What sort of warming things have you on the menu tonight?”

“Beef and barley soup; that and the lamb chops would do the trick, I think.”

“Sold. And I’ll have a bottle of your best burgundy. No plonk for me tonight.”

“Alex, my friend! Are you celebrating something?”

“You should have seen it, Otto. I’d run down to Sussex to see my aunt when I happened across an estate sale in the village. There was nothing worth a second look in the house itself, then on the tables filled with bits of rubbish in the garage, I saw it.” Savoring the memory, Alex closed his eyes. “A blue and white porcelain bowl, dirt-encrusted, filled with garden trowels and bulb planters. It wasn’t even tagged. The woman in charge sold it to me for five pounds.”

“Not rubbish, I take it?” Otto asked, an amused expression on his round face.

Alex looked round and lowered his voice. “Seventeenth-century delft, Otto. That’s English delft, with a small “d,” rather than Dutch. I’d put it at around 1650. And underneath the dirt, not a chip or a crack to be found. It’s a bloody miracle, I’m telling you.”

It was a moment Alex had lived for since his aunt had taken him with her to a jumble sale on his tenth birthday. Spying a funny dish that looked as if someone had taken a bite out of its edge, he had been so taken with it that he’d spent all his birthday money on its purchase. His Aunt Jane had contributed a book on porcelain, from which he’d learned that his find was an English delft barber’s bowl, probably early-eighteenth-century Bristol ware. In his mind, Alex had seen all the hands and lives through which the bowl had passed, and in that instant he had been hooked.

The childhood passion had stayed with him through school, through university, through a brief tenure lecturing in art history at a small college. Then he had abandoned the steady salary for the much more precarious—and infinitely more interesting—life of a dealer in English porcelain.

“So, will this bowl make your fortune? If you can bear to part with it, that is,” Otto added with a twinkle born of long association with dealers.

Alex sighed. “Needs must, I’m afraid. And I have an idea who might be interested.”

Otto gazed at him for a moment with an expression Alex couldn’t quite fathom. “You’re thinking Karl Arrowood would want it.”

“It’s right up his alley, isn’t it? You know what Karl’s like; he won’t be able to resist.” Alex imagined the bowl elegantly displayed in the window of Arrowood Antiques, one more thing of beauty for Karl to possess, and the bitterness of his envy seeped into his soul.

“Alex—” Otto seemed to hesitate, then leaned closer, his dark eyes intent. “I do know what he’s like, perhaps more than you. You’ll forgive my interfering, but I’ve heard certain things about you and Karl’s young wife. You know what this place is like—” his gesture took in more than the café “—nothing stays secret for very long. And I fear you do not realize what you’re dealing with. Karl Arrowood is a ruthless man. It doesn’t do to come between him and the things he owns.”

“But—” Alex felt himself flushing. “How—” But he knew it didn’t matter how, only that his affair with Dawn Arrowood had become common knowledge, and that he’d been a fool to think they could keep it hidden.

If the discovery of the delft barber’s bowl had been an epiphanic experience, so too had been his first glimpse of Dawn, one day when he’d stopped by the shop to deliver a creamware dinner service.

Dawn had been helping the shop assistant with the window displays. At the sight of her, Alex had stood rooted to the pavement, transfixed. Never had he seen anything so beautiful, so perfect; and then she had met his eyes through the glass and smiled.

After that, she’d begun coming by his stall on Saturday mornings to chat. Shed been friendly rather than coy or flirtatious, and he’d immediately sensed her loneliness. His weeks began to revolve around the anticipation of her Saturday visits, but never had he expected more than that. And then one day she’d shown up unannounced at his flat. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she’d said, ducking her head so that wisps of blonde hair hid her eyes, but she had come inside, and now he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

“Does Karl know?” he asked Otto.

The other man shrugged. “I think you would know if he did. But you can be sure he will find out. And I would hate to lose a good customer. Alex, take my advice, please. She is lovely, but she is not worth your life.”

“This is England, for heaven’s sake, Otto! People don’t go round bumping people off because they’re narked about … well, you know.”

Otto stood and carefully reversed his chair. “I wouldn’t be so sure, my friend,” he replied before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Bollocks!” Alex muttered, resolved to slough off Otto’s warning, and he ate his dinner and drank his wine with determination.

His good humor somewhat restored, he walked slowly back to his flat, thinking of the other find he’d made that day—not a steal as the delft bowl had been, but a lovely acquisition just the same, an Art Deco teapot by the English potter Clarice Cliff, in a pattern he had seen Dawn admire. It would be his Christmas gift to her, an emblem of their future together.

It was only as he reached the entrance to his mews that a more disturbing thought came to him. If Karl Arrowood learned the truth, perhaps it was not his own safety about which he should be concerned.

Bryony Poole waited until the door had closed behind the last client of the day, a woman whose cat had an infected ear, before she broached her idea to Gavin. Sitting down opposite him in the surgery’s narrow office cubicle, she shifted awkwardly, trying to find room for her long legs and booted feet. “Look, Gav, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Her boss, a bullet-headed man with shoulders that strained the fabric of his white lab coat, looked up from the chart he was finishing. “That sounds rather ominous. Not leaving me for greener pastures, are you?”

“No, nothing like that.” Gavin Farley had taken Bryony on as his assistant in the small surgery just after her graduation from veterinary college two years ago, and she still considered herself lucky to have the job. Hesitantly, she continued. “It’s just, well, you know how many of the homeless people have dogs?”

She had his full attention now.

“Is this a quiz?” he asked skeptically. “Or are you hitting me up for a donation to the RSPCA?”

“No … not exactly. But I have been thinking a good bit about the fact that these people can’t afford care for their animals. I’d like to do some—”

“Bryony, that’s extremely admirable of you, but surely if these people can afford a pint and a packet of ciggies they can bring a dog in for treatment.”

“That’s unfair, Gavin! These people sleep in the street because the night shelters won’t take their dogs. They do what they can. And you know how much our costs have risen.”

“So what can you possibly do?”

“I want to run a free clinic every week, say on Sunday afternoon, to treat minor ailments and injuries—”

“Does this have something to do with your friend Marc Mitchell?”

“I haven’t discussed it with him,” Bryony replied, her defenses rising.

“And where exactly did you think you’d hold this clinic?”

She flushed. “Well, I had thought Marc might let me use his place …” Marc Mitchell ran a soup kitchen for the homeless—“rough sleepers” the government liked to call them, as if they had voluntarily chosen to take a permanent camping holiday—down the bottom end of the Portobello Road. Of course there was the Sally Army further up, but in the business of providing for the needy there was no such thing as competition. There was never enough to go round. Marc gave them a hot lunch and supper, as well as whatever basic medical supplies and personal items he could get. But perhaps most important was his willingness to listen to them. There was an earnestness about him that encouraged the baring of ravaged souls, and sometimes that in itself was enough to start a person on the road to recovery.

“And how exactly did you intend to pay for the supplies and medications?” Gavin asked.

“Out of my own pocket, to begin with. Then maybe I could ask some of the local merchants for donations.”

“You might get a bob or two,” he conceded grudgingly. “I don’t imagine having mange-ridden dogs hanging about outside one’s shop draws in the customers. But say you can get this off the ground. What are you going to do once you form a relationship with these people, then they begin to show up here with a badly injured dog, or an animal with cancer?”

“I—I hadn’t thought …”

Gavin shook his head. “We can’t cover catastrophic care, Bryony. We just survive as it is, with the increase in rents and your salary. There’s no room for noble gestures.”

“I’ll deal with that when I come to it,” she answered firmly. “If nothing else, I can always offer them euthanasia.”

“And pay the cost out of your own pocket? You’re too noble for your own good,” Gavin said with a sigh of resignation as he finished the chart and stood. “I suspected that the first time I saw you.”

Bryony smiled. “But you hired me.”

“So I did, and I’ve not regretted it. You’re a good vet, and good with the clients, too, which is damn near as important. But …”

“What?”

“It’s just that we walk a fine line in this business between compassion and common sense, and I’d hate to see you cross it. It will eat you up, Bryony, this feeling of never being able to do enough. I’ve seen it happen to tougher vets than you. My advice is, you do the best job you can, then you go home, watch the telly, have a pint. You find some way to let it go.”

“Thanks, Gav. I’ll keep that in mind. Promise.”

She mulled over his words as she walked the short distance from the clinic to her flat in Powis Square. Of course she knew where to draw the line; of course she realized she couldn’t help every animal. But was she taking on more than she could manage, both emotionally and financially? And how much was she motivated by an unacknowledged desire to impress Marc Mitchell?

They’d become good friends in the past few months, often meeting for dinner or a coffee. But he’d never displayed what Bryony could really interpret as romantic intentions, and she thought she’d convinced herself that she didn’t mind. Marc, unlike Gavin, had not learned to draw the line between work and home. His work was his life, and she suspected there was no room left for anything more demanding than friendship.

The pang of disappointment that thought caused her was so intense that she shied away from it. She just wanted to help the animals, that was all, and if it so happened that it brought her a bit closer to Marc, so be it.

Inspector Gemma James left the Notting Hill police station at six o’clock on the dot, an occurrence unusual enough to cause the desk sergeant to raise his eyebrows.

“What’s up, guv?” he asked. “Got a hot date?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she replied, grinning. “And for once I’m determined not to be late.”

Kincaid had rung her from the Yard an hour ago and asked her to meet him at an address a few blocks from the station. He’d given her no explanation, only insisted that she be prompt, and that alone had been enough to arouse her curiosity. A superintendent leading Scotland Yard’s murder inquiries, Duncan’s schedule was as demanding as hers, if not more so, and they were both accustomed to working long hours.

Of course she had been trying to cut back, due to what Kincaid only half-teasingly referred to as her “delicate condition,” but without much success. She had no intention of announcing her pregnancy to her superiors until she absolutely had to, and then she’d be even less inclined to beg off work.

And if an unplanned pregnancy weren’t disastrous enough for the career prospects of a newly promoted detective inspector, Gemma suspected her unmarried state would garner even less favor with her superiors. At least when Toby had come along she’d been married to his dad.

Checking the address she’d scribbled on a scrap of paper, she walked down Ladbroke Grove until she reached St. John’s Gardens, then turned left. The old church stood sentinel on the summit of Notting Hill, and even on such a dreary evening Gemma loved the calm of the place. But Kincaid’s directions sent her onward, down the hill to the west, and after a few blocks she began checking the house numbers.

She saw his MG first, its top buttoned up tight against the damp, and then across the street the address he had given her. It was the end house of a terrace, but faced on St. John’s rather than the cross street. Porch light and street-lamp illuminated dark brown brick set off by gleaming white trim, and a front door the vivid color of cherries. Through the trees that grew between the house and the pavement, she glimpsed a small balcony on the second floor.

Duncan opened the door before she could ring. “What, are you clairvoyant?” she demanded, laughing, as he kissed her cheek.

“Among my many talents.” He took her damp jacket and hung it on an iron coat rack in the hall.

“What’s this all about? Are we meeting someone here?”

“Not exactly,” he answered, with a grin that made her think of her four-year-old son concealing a surprise. “Let’s have a look round, shall we?”

The kitchen lay to the left, a cheerful, yellow room with a scrubbed pine table and a dark blue, oil-fired cooker. Gemma’s heart contracted in a spasm of envy. It was perfect, just the sort of kitchen she had always wanted. She gave a lingering look back as Kincaid urged her into the hall.

On the right, the dining and sitting rooms had been opened into one long space with deep windows and French doors that Gemma presumed must lead to a garden. The dining furniture had an air of Provençal; in the sitting room, a comfortably worn sofa and two armchairs faced a gas fire, and bookcases climbed to the ceiling. In her imagination, Gemma saw the shelves filled with books, the fire lit.

“Nice, yes?” Kincaid queried.

Gemma glanced up at him, her suspicions growing. “Mmmm.”

Undeterred, he continued his tour. “And here, tucked in behind the kitchen, a little loo.” When she had dutifully admired the facilities, he took her into the last room on the left, a small study or library. But there were no books on these shelves, just as there had been no dishes in the kitchen, no personal possessions or photographs in the dining and sitting area.

“I’d put the telly here, wouldn’t you?” he went on smoothly. “So as not to spoil the atmosphere of the sitting room.”

Gemma turned to face him. “Duncan, are you giving up policing for estate agenting? I’m not going a step further until you tell me what this is all about.”

“First, tell me if you like it, love. Do you think you could live here?”

“Of course I like it! But you know what property values are like in this area—there’s no way we could afford something like this even if we pooled our salaries—”

“Just wait before you make a judgment. See the rest of the house.”

“But—”

“Trust me.”

Following him up the stairs to the first floor, she mulled over her situation. She must make a change, she knew that. The tiny garage flat she rented was much too small for another child, and Kincaid’s Hampstead flat was no more suitable—especially since it looked as though his twelve-year-old son would be moving in with him over the holidays.

Since she had told Kincaid about the baby, they had talked about living together, combining families, but Gemma had found herself unwilling to face the prospect of such momentous change just yet.

“Two good-sized bedrooms and a bath on this floor.” Kincaid was opening doors and turning on lights for her inspection. They were children’s rooms, obviously, but again the walls bore pale patches where pictures and posters had been removed.

“Now for the pièce de résistance.” Taking her hand, he led her up to the top floor.

Gemma stood riveted in the doorway. The entire top floor had been converted to a master suite, open and airy, with the small balcony she’d seen from the street at the front.

“There’s more.” Kincaid opened another set of French doors and Gemma stepped out onto a small roof garden that overlooked the treetops. “That’s a communal garden beyond the back garden. You can walk right into it.”

Gemma breathed out a sigh of delight. “Oh, the boys would love it. But it can’t be possible … can it?”

“It very well might be—at least for five years. This house belongs to the guv’s sister—”

“Chief Superintendent Childs?” Denis Childs was Kincaid’s superior at the Yard, and Gemma’s former boss as well.

“Whose husband has just accepted a five-year contract in Singapore, some sort of high-tech firm. They don’t want to sell the house, but they do want it well looked after, and who better than two police officers vouched for by the Chief Super himself?”

“But we still couldn’t afford—”

“It’s a reasonable rent.”

“But what about your flat?”

“I’d lease it for a good deal more than the mortgage, I imagine.”

“What about child-minding for Toby? Without Hazel—”

“There’s a good infants’ school just down the road from the station. And a good comprehensive for Kit not too far away. Now, any other objections?” He grasped her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

“No … it’s just … it seems too good to be true.”

“You can’t hold the future at bay forever, love. And we won’t disappoint you. I promise.”

Gemma let herself relax into his arms. Perhaps he was right … No! She knew he was right. When Toby’s father had left her, alone with a new infant and no support, she had resolved never to depend on anyone again. But Kincaid had never failed her in any way—why should she not trust him in this, as well?

“Blue and yellow dishes in the kitchen,” she murmured against his chest. “And a bit of paint in the bedrooms, don’t you think?”

He nuzzled her hair. “Is that a yes?”

Gemma felt herself teetering on the edge of a precipice. Once she committed, the safety of her old life would be gone. There could be no turning back. But she no longer had the luxury of putting off the decision until she had exorcised the very last smidgen of doubt. With that realization came a most unexpected flood of relief, and an unmistakable fizz of excitement.

“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

Moisture ringed the streetlamps along Park Lane as the December dusk faded into dull evening. The air felt dense, as if it might collapse in upon itself, and the smattering of Christmas lights made only a pallid affront to the gloom.

Bloody Friday traffic, thought Dawn Arrowood. Suddenly claustrophobic, she cracked the window of her Mercedes and inched into the long tailback at Hyde Park Corner. She’d known better than to drive into the West End, but she hadn’t been able to face the thought of the crowded Tube, with the inevitable pushing and shoving and the too-intimate exposure to unwashed bodies.

Not on this day, of all days.

She had armored herself as best she could: a visit to Harrod’s before the doctor, tea with Natalie at Fortnum & Mason’s afterwards. Had she thought these distractions could cushion the news she feared, make it somehow easier?

Nor had her old friend Natalie’s ready comfort changed things one jot.

She was pregnant. Full stop. Fact.

And she would have to tell Karl.

Her husband had made it quite, quite clear, before their marriage five years ago, that he did not want a second family. Twenty-five years her senior, with two unsatisfactory grown children and a troublesome ex-wife, Karl had declared he’d no intention of repeating the experience.

For a moment, Dawn allowed herself the weakness of imagining he would change his mind once he heard her news, but she knew that for the fantasy it was. Karl never changed his mind, nor did he take kindly to having his wishes ignored.

The traffic light changed at last, and as she swung into Bayswater Road, she shook a cigarette from the packet in the console. She would quit, she promised herself, but not yet … not until she’d worked out a plan.

If she insisted on having this child, what could Karl do? Turn her out with nothing? The thought terrified her. She’d come a long way from her childhood in a terraced house in East Croydon, and she had no intention of going back. That Natalie had understood, at least. You have legal recourse, Natalie had said, but Dawn had shaken her head. Karl kept a very expensive lawyer on retainer, and she felt certain neither he nor his solicitor would be deterred by the small matter of her legal rights.

And of course this was assuming she could somehow convince him the baby was his.

The shudder of fear that passed through her body was instinctive, uncontrollable.

Alex. Should she tell Alex? No, she didn’t dare. He’d insist she leave Karl, insist they could live happily ever after in his tiny mews flat off the Portobello Road, insist that Karl would let her go.

No, she would have to cut Alex off, for his own sake, somehow convince him it had only been a passing fling. She hadn’t realized when she’d begun the affair with Alex just how dangerous was the course upon which she’d embarked—nor had she known that she’d chosen the one lover her husband would never forgive.

The traffic picked up speed and too soon, it seemed, she reached Notting Hill Gate. The crush of evening commuters poured into the Tube station entrance like lemmings drawn to the sea, newspapers and Christmas shopping clutched in their arms, rushing home to their suburban lives of babies and telly and take-away suppers. The image brought a jab of envy and regret, and with it the too-ready tears that had plagued her of late. Dawn swiped angrily at her lower lashes—she wouldn’t have time to do her makeup over. She was late as it was, and Karl would expect her to be ready when he arrived home to collect her for their dinner engagement.

Appearances were Karl’s currency, and she now knew that she’d been acquired just as ruthlessly as one of his eighteenth-century oils or a particularly fine piece of china. What she’d been naïve enough to think was love had been merely possessiveness, she the jewel chosen with the setting in mind.

And what a setting it was, the house at the leafy summit of Notting Hill, across the street from the faded elegance of St. John’s Church. Once Dawn had loved this Victorian house with its pale yellow stucco, its superbly proportioned rooms and beautiful appointments, and for a moment she mourned the passing of such an innocent pleasure.

Tonight the windows were dark as she turned into the drive, the blank panes mirroring her car lights. She had managed to beat Karl home, then; she would have a few minutes’ respite. Turning off the engine, she reached for her parcels, then paused, squeezing her eyes shut. Damn Karl! Damn Alex! In spite of them, she would find a way to deal with this, to keep the child she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything.

She slid out of the car, keys in one hand, bags in the other, ducking away from the wet fingers of the hedge that lined the drive.

A sound stopped her. The cat, she thought, relaxing, then remembered she’d left Tommy in the house, despite Karl’s strictures to the contrary. Tommy had been ill and she hadn’t wanted to leave him out unsupervised, in case he got into a scrap with another cat.

There it was again. A rustle, a breath, something out of place in the damp stillness. Panic gripped her, squeezing her heart, paralyzing her where she stood.

Forcing herself to think, she clasped her keys more tightly in her hand. The house just across the drive suddenly seemed an impossible distance. If she could only reach the safety of the door, she could lock herself in, ring for help. She held her breath and slid a foot forward—

The arms came round her from behind, a gloved hand pressing hard against her mouth. Too late, she struggled, tugging futilely at the arm pinning her chest, stomping down on an instep. Too late, she prayed for the flicker of Karl’s headlamps turning into the drive.

Her attacker’s breath sobbed raggedly in her ear; his grip tightened. The carrier bags fell unnoticed from her numb fingers. Then the pressure on her chest vanished, and in that instant’s relief, pain seared her throat.

She felt a fiery cold, then the swift and enveloping darkness folded round her like a cloak. In the last dim flicker of consciousness, she thought she heard him whisper, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Contents

Map

Part IChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter Seven

Part IIChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-one

About the Author

Preview of And Justice There is None