Crybbe

CHAPTER VII

Asleep in his armchair, Canon Alex Peters dreamed he was asleep in his armchair. Tucked up in a soft blanket of sunbeams, he awoke in time to watch the wall dissolve.

It began with the fireplace. He was aware that Grace's dreadful see-through clock and the gilt-framed mirror were fading, while the black, sooty hole of the fireplace itself was getting bigger.

Gradually, the hole took over, becoming darker and wider and then spreading up through the mantelpiece, almost as far as the ceiling, until the whole chimney breast dissolved into a black passageway.

There formed a filigree of yellowish light, and then, dimly at first, Grace appeared in the passageway. Standing there, quite still.

'What happened to your wheelchair?' Alex asked. He was glad, of course, to see her back on her feet.

'No you're not,' Grace said. Her lips did not move when she spoke but her body became brighter, as if the spider web of lights was inside her, like glowing veins. 'You were glad when I died, and you'll be glad to know I'm still dead.'

'That's not true,' protested Alex. But you couldn't lie to the dead, and he knew it.

Grace turned her back on him and began to walk away along the passage. Alex struggled to get up, desperate to explain.

But the chair wouldn't let him. He shouted to the spindly, diminishing figure. 'Grace, look, don't go, give me a hand, would you?'

The chair held him in a leathery grip.

'Grace!' Alex screamed. 'Grace, don't go! I want to explain!'

Just once, Grace glanced back at him over her shoulder, and there was a pitying smile on her face, with perhaps a shadow of malice.

Goff did not, of course, have any immediate plans to live in Crybbe Court itself, Rachel Wade said. Good God, no.

Well, perhaps one day. When it was fully restored.

'You mean,' Fay said as they walked out into the sunlight, restored to what it would've been like if the Elizabethans had had full central heating and ten-speaker stereos.'

'You're getting the general picture,' Rachel confirmed, and showed her the place where Max actually would be living within the next week or so.

It was an L-shaped stone stable-block behind the house. It already had been gutted, plumbed and wired and a giant plate-glass window had been inserted into a solid stone wall to open up a new and spectacular view of the hills from what would be the living-room.

At least, the view would have been spectacular if it hadn't been semi-obscured by a green mound, like an inverted pudding basin or a giant helmet.

'His beloved Tump,' Rachel said. And there wasn't much affection there, Fay thought, either for the mound or for Max Goff.

'Is it a burial mound or a – what d'you call it – castle mound

… motte?'

'Probably both. Either way it's pretty unsightly, like an overgrown spoil-heap. And decidedly creepy by moonlight. I mean, who wants to stare out at a grave? Whoever built this place had the right idea, I think, by putting a blank stable wall in front so it wouldn't frighten the horses.'

Fay realized the Court itself was built in a hollow, and the Tump was on slightly higher ground, so that it seemed, from here, higher than it actually was. It loomed. The stone wall which surrounded it had partly fallen down on this side, revealing the mesh of dense bushes and brambles at the base of the mound.

'Poor Mr Kettle,' Fay said, reminded by the wall.

Rachel fingered a strand of pale hair, the nearest she'd come in Fay's presence, to a nervous gesture. 'The bitter irony is that Max plans to move that wall. He calls it a nineteenth-century abomination. Some experts think it's older than that and should be preserved, but he'll get his way, of course, in the end.'

Rachel stepped on a piece of soft plaster and ground it in the newly boarded floor.

'He always does,' she said.

It was clear now to Fay that this was not the same Rachel Wade who, a week ago, had briskly swept her down the steps of the Cock with vague promises of an interview with Goff when his plans were in shape. Sure, on that occasion, she'd had a tape recorder over her shoulder. But even if she'd carried one today, she felt, Rachel's attitude would not have been markedly different.

Something had changed.

Fay said cautiously, 'So when is he going to talk to me? On tape.'

'Leave it with me,' Rachel said. 'I'll fix it.' She spread her arms to usher Fay back towards the wooden framework evidently destined to be a doorway.

'I hate having to ask this sort of question.' Fay stopped at the entrance. 'But he isn't going to be talking to anyone else, is he, first?'

'Not if I can help it. Listen, we've been walking around this place for the last forty-five minutes and I've forgotten your name.'

'Fay. Fay Morrison.'

'Would you like a job, Fay?'

'Huh?'

'Quite ludicrous salary. Seductively fast company car. Lots of foreign travel.'

Fay stared at her.

'Silly expenses,' Rachel said. 'Untold fringe benefits.' She'd turned her back on the big window. From the far end of the room, the hills had been squeezed out of the picture; the window was full of Tump.

'How long have you been doing this?' Fay asked. 'As Goff's