The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

1 Without the Song

NORMALLY, SHE WOULDN’T think of fogging the air around non-smoking parishioners, especially so soon after a service. Tonight was different. Tonight, Merrily needed not only this cigarette but what it was saying about her.

The cigarette said, This woman is human. This woman is weak. Also, given the alleged findings on secondary smoking, this woman is selfish and inconsiderate. This is a serial sinner.

Only it wasn’t getting through. Brenda Prosser’s eyes were glowing almost golden now. Twice she’d tried to sit down at the kitchen table and been pushed back to her feet by the electricity inside her. She had to hold on to the back of the chair to stop her hands trembling, and then the joy would make her mouth go slack and she’d shake her head, smiling helplessly.

‘Gone.’ Maybe the fourth time she’d said that – Brenda relishing the hard finality in the word: gone, gone, gone.

‘Just like it never was there, vicar,’ Big Jim Prosser said. His light grey suit was soaked and blackened across the shoulders. He stood with his back to the old Aga in the vicarage kitchen, and the Aga rumbled sourly.

And Merrily smoked and wondered how she should be responding. But the inner screen was blank. Just like Ann-Marie’s scan.

‘This is a miracle, sure t’be,’ Jim said.

Oh Christ. Any word but that.

‘And, see, like I kept saying to Jim, hardly the first one, is it?’ Rain was still bubbled on Brenda’s forehead like the remains of a born-again baptism. ‘Not the first since you brought back the Evensong.’

‘Without the song.’ Merrily sat down, then abruptly stood up again and went to fill the kettle for tea. A dense curtain of rain swished across the dark window over the sink, as though it had been hosed.

They could have waited for her in the church porch, Brenda and Jim. But when the congregation was filing out, umbrellas going up, there they’d been, standing among the wet tombs and the headstones, both of them bareheaded, as though they were unaware of the sometimes-sleety rain. Like they were in some parallel dimension where it wasn’t cold and it wasn’t raining at all.

The truth was, Jim had said, as they followed Merrily to the vicarage, that they didn’t want to talk to anyone else, didn’t want to answer all the obvious questions about Ann-Marie. They thought it was only right that the vicar should be the first to know.

This was the first time that either Jim or Brenda had been to the Sunday evening service. They’d been among those older parishioners who were huffily avoiding it because they’d heard it was all changed, had become a bit unconventional, a bit not for the likes of us.

‘I pray we’ll be forgiven for ever doubting what you were trying to do, Merrily,’ Brenda said now.

So much for the experiment in Mystery.

Evensong.

As in most parishes, the Sunday evening service had been killed a while ago, by falling congregations.

And then Merrily had suddenly brought it back. Sunday evening in the church. Everyone welcome. Just that. Nothing about a service.

The truth was that, after what had happened with Jenny Box, she’d been feeling guilty. Deliverance work had been separating her too often from her own parish, from the day-to-day cure of souls. She’d been too busy to notice the anomalous buds in the local flower bed until they were bursting into black blossom.

When she’d put this to the Bishop, he’d waved it away. Congregations were in free fall; it was a phase. Or it wasn’t a phase, but something truly sinister – the beginning of the end for organized Christianity. What about children? the Bishop asked; the new Archbishop of Canterbury was particularly worried about the absence of children in churches. Merrily had raised this issue with Jane, who seemed to have been a child like yesterday, and Jane had wrinkled her nose.

‘Who needs kids in church, anyway? Look at it this way – kids are not supposed to drink in pubs until they’re eighteen, so pubs are slightly mysterious... therefore cool. So like, obviously, the best way to invest in the future would be to ban the little sods from the church altogether. That way, they wouldn’t turn out like me.’

‘So the monthly Family Service, with kids doing readings, the quiz...’

‘Totally crap idea, I always said that. It just makes the Church look needy and pathetic. You have to cultivate the mystery. If you don’t bring back the mystery, you’re stuffed, Mum.’

It was worrying: increasingly these days the kid was making a disturbing kind of sense.

OK, then. When she brought back the service, she didn’t call it Evensong because there was no song. No hymns, no psalms. And no sermon, definitely no preaching. It was an experiment with Mystery.

She didn’t even call it a service. She didn’t wear the kit – no cassock, not even a dog collar after the first time – and she sat on a car cushion on the chancel steps. The heating, for what it was worth, would be on full, and pews were pulled out and angled into a semi-circle haloed by a wooden standard lamp that she’d liberated from the vestry. It was a quiet time, a low-key prelude to the working week. The first time, only four people had turned up, which partly dictated the form. Five weeks later, it was a congregation of around twenty, and growing, although congregation was hardly the word.

It would begin with tea and coffee and chat, turning into a discussion of people’s problems. Sometimes solutions were arrived at before the villagers went home. Small difficulties sorted: babysitters found, gardeners for old people. Sometimes it would quietly feed notions into the village, and issues would be resolved during the following week.

The church as forum, the church as catalyst. The polish-scented air as balm. How it should be.

And the Mystery.

As early as the third week, more personal issues had started to emerge. The ones you wouldn’t hear discussed on the street, certainly not by the people involved: marital problems, anxieties over illness and fears over kids and what they might be getting into. There was a surprising focus to these discussions, and when prayer came into it – as it usually did, in the end – it would happen spontaneously, rising like a ground mist in the nave.

Real prayer... and somehow this was a seal of confidentiality. None of the problems raised in the church and distilled into prayer had ever drifted back to Merrily as gossip.

She was elated. It had been cooking. What she didn’t need at this stage was anything boiling over into myth-making.

Jim and Brenda Prosser ran the Eight till Late in the centre of the village. Their daughter, Ann-Marie, who last summer had been painlessly divorced, had moved into the flat over the shop, helping out there at weekends before going off clubbing in Hereford, with her mates. Ann-Marie’s illness had been a rumour for some weeks. Pasted-on smiles at the checkout, whispers about tests. On a Sunday night two weeks ago, Alice Meek, who had the fish and chip shop in Old Barn Lane, had said, Brenda won’t talk about it, but it don’t look good. En’t there nothing we can do?

‘Alice,’ Brenda said now. ‘You know what Alice is like.’

‘Calls a spade a bloody ole shovel,’ Jim said.

‘We met Alice when we were coming back from Dr Kent’s house this afternoon, and she seemed to know.’

‘Only by your face, love,’ Jim said with affection.

The kettle began to hiss, and Merrily put tea in the pot. Brenda sat down at last. She was in her early sixties, had lost weight recently – no surprise there – and her bleach-blonde hair was fading back to white. Periodically, a hand trembled. Brenda folded both of them in her lap and stared across the refectory table at Merrily, like she was seeing the vicar in a strange new light.

‘Alice told us about the special prayers you had for Ann-Marie.’

‘Well, not—’ Merrily looked down at the table top. Of course it was special; all prayer should be special.

‘Alice said she lost track of time. She said she felt as if everybody there was together. United, you know? And that was also some of the newcomers she didn’t know. All united and they were part of something that was... bigger. Said she’d never known anything like that before. Alice said.’

Emotion had brought up the Welshness in Brenda’s voice. The Prossers had moved across from Brecon about fifteen years ago. Merrily felt flushed and uncertain. Happy, of course – happy for the Prossers and Ann-Marie. It was luminously wonderful, and she’d been conscious of reaching an unexpected level of conscious worship, but...

‘What did Dr Kent say exactly?’

‘He phoned for Ann-Marie just after lunch,’ Jim said. ‘He admitted he’d known since Friday, but he was afraid to say in case it was wrong. In case they’d somehow got the wrong medical records or whatever. He said he didn’t think it was possible the new tests had drawn a blank, couldn’t like get his head around it. So he was trying to get the consultant on the phone all of yesterday, and it wasn’t until this morning, see, when he managed to reach him at his home. Couldn’t believe it. Neither of them.’

‘He definitely confirmed that the scan was...’

‘Clear. Nothing there. And it was hers, no question of that. No mistake here, Merrily.’

‘What did the consultant say about it?’

Jim shrugged. ‘You know these fellers.’

‘Maybe they...’ Merrily bit her lip. Made a mistake the first time.

‘See, to be frank, Merrily, I’ve never been what you’d call a real churchgoer,’ Jim said. ‘I’m a local shopkeeper, struggling to stay in business. Sometimes I’ve come because it seemed to be expected.’

Brenda sat up. ‘Jim!’

‘No, let me say this. I want to. It’s like being a social drinker. I was a... how would you put it?’

‘Social worshipper?’ Merrily smiled. ‘That’s perilously close to martyrdom, Jim.’

‘What I’m trying to say...’ He’d reddened at last. ‘Well, if this isn’t a bloody miracle, Merrily, I wouldn’t recognize one, that’s all.’

Merrily tried to hold the smile. ‘Big word.’

Brenda said quickly, ‘Alice said you also prayed for Percy Joyce’s arthritis and—’

‘Yes, but that—’

‘And now he’s come off the steroids. You’re healing people, Merrily.’

The words echoed once, clearly in her head as the kettle began to scream and shake, and the kitchen lights seemed too bright.

‘I...’ Merrily ground her cigarette into the ashtray, twisting it from side to side. ‘Sometimes, God heals people.’

Sometimes. It was a crucial word, because most times people were not healed.

Big Jim said gently, ‘We understands that. But He do need asking the right way, don’t He? What I’m saying, Merrily... something happened during that service, to concentrate people’s minds on it. Something a bit powerful, sort of thing. It’s a new kind of service, and you’re a new kind of vicar. Not what we was used to. Alice is telling—’

Everybody, probably.

‘Where’s Ann-Marie now?’

Brenda smiled. ‘In the pub, I expect, with her friends. She’ll be coming to thank you, have no doubts about—’

‘No... look...’ Merrily stood up. ‘I’m really, really happy for her and for you, and it does seem like a miracle. But the body’s a wonderful thing, and sometimes... I’d just be really glad if you didn’t say too much about that aspect of it, for the moment. For the time being. Until—’

Until when, exactly?

‘We’ll go now,’ Jim said.

‘You haven’t had your tea. I’m sorry...’

‘We never wanted to embarrass you, Merrily,’ Brenda said.

Most weeks, Lol would pull the property section out of Prof’s Hereford Times and toss it on the pile of papers they kept for lighting the stoves.

Wood-burners in a recording studio? Prof had been unsure about this, but the punters liked it. When the sound of a log collapsing into ash had filtered like a sigh into the mix of the final acoustic song that the guitar legend Tom Storey had recorded here last week, Tom had refused to lose it. Tom, who’d left yesterday, was superstitious about these things.

Tonight, Prof would be working in here, tinkering with Tom’s music perhaps until dawn. About eight p.m., Lol went out to the wood-shelter and packed a pile of blocks into a big basket, brought the basket into the stable that now housed the studio and bent to build a fire in the second stove.

Sometimes his work here amounted to little more than domestic chores and working on his own material. Prof didn’t seem to mind that, but Lol did.

He was crumpling the property pages to take the kindling when he noticed a small photograph of a tiny, tilting house with a white door. He stood up and carried the paper to the light over the mixing desk.

LEDWARDINE

Church Street – exquisite small, terraced

house, Grade Two listed, close to the centre

of this sought-after village. Beamed

living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and

bathroom. Open green area and orchards

to rear. Must be viewed.

He stood for a while by the mixing desk, then he tore out the page, folded it and pushed it into a back pocket of his jeans. While he was packing the rest of the property section into the stove and adding twigs, he saw himself walking in through that white door. Draped over the post at the foot of the stairs was an old woollen poncho, then you went through into the low-beamed parlour. You sat down at Lucy’s desk in the window overlooking Church Street, with two lamps switched on. You heard a movement, looked over your shoulder and saw Jane Watkins, fifteen, standing in the doorway, and Jane said, desolately, I thought she would be here. I really didn’t think she’d left us for ever.

Lucy Devenish: honorary aunt to Jane, mentor to Lol. Lucy had introduced him to the inspirational seventeenth-century Herefordshire poet, Thomas Traherne, and, indirectly, to Jane’s mother, the Rev. Watkins.

Lucy in her poncho, face like an old Red Indian, voice like a duchess: You have to learn to open up. Let the world flow into you again.

He could still see Jane standing in the doorway that night at Lucy’s – Lucy not yet buried after dying in the road, hit and run. Jane standing in the doorway, confused, and a pink moon hanging outside. Jane talking about her mother: She does like you. I can tell. I think, the way things turned out, you probably did the best thing not actually sleeping with her. It will stand you in good stead.

Getting to sleep with Merrily had taken more than a year. A year in which Lol had turned away from music, taken a course in psychotherapy and then turned away in disgust from psychotherapy and gone back to the music.

But neither he nor Merrily was all that young any more. They lived over half an hour apart and their lives were very different, but every day when he didn’t see her seemed like a wasted day, and there was nothing like the music business for teaching you about passing time.

Lol struck a match and put it to the paper. Ledwardine. He’d been living there when they’d first met, but circumstances had moved him away. Now he wanted to go back. He wanted that house and everything it once had promised.

When the Prossers had gone, Merrily lit a cigarette, feeling leaden and ungracious. She was thinking, miserably, about healing.

Thinking about the corrupted Bible Belt evangelism of the former Radnor Valley minister, Father Nick Ellis. About an event called the Big Bible Fest she’d attended with a crowd of other students at theological college, where there’d been speaking in tongues and calls to the disabled to have faith and rise up out of those wheelchairs. And if they didn’t rise up then their faith wasn’t strong enough. Tough.

She thought about a girl called Heather Redfern – seventeen, Jane’s age – who, despite prayers in at least six churches, had died of leukaemia less than a month after leading a twenty-mile sponsored walk around the black and white villages of North Herefordshire to raise money for Macmillan nurses.

And she thought about Ann-Marie Herdman – dizzy, superficial, often seen swaying across the square at one a.m., towing some bloke up to the flat over the Eight till Late. Some bloke who, in the morning, she probably wouldn’t even recognize. Ann-Marie: a woman for whom the church gate was just a convenient place to wait for your lift into Hereford.

Healing was like the bloody National Lottery; the good guys rarely hit the jackpot.

Merrily stood up and went, without thinking, into the scullery. Because what you did now, you phoned your spiritual director.

Or you would do that, if your spiritual director wasn’t wrestling with his own crisis in a place far away where no mobile phones were permitted – a primitive monastic community, not in the mid-Wales wilderness but on a concrete estate south of Manchester, where the police would raid flats and find guns, a place Huw Owen described as like an open wound turning septic. More suited to his condition, he said, than bare hills safe and sanitized by wind and rain.

Huw was running hard from his all-too-human emotions. He’d lost a woman, the love of his mid-life, because of a man of unfathomable evil, and the all-too-human part of Huw had sought closure through revenge. And, although – maybe because – this man was dead, it hadn’t happened; there had been no closure, and Huw was terrified that his faith wasn’t sufficient to take him beyond that.

Merrily sat down at the desk, glimpsing a dispiriting image of her own faith as a small, nutlike core inside a protective shell: too small, too shrivelled, to absorb the concept of miracles.

Jane rang from the hotel, just before ten. The same Jane who should have been home by now.

‘Erm, I told Gomer I wouldn’t need a lift back tonight, OK?’

‘I see,’ Merrily said.

‘Don’t be like that. There’s no problem about going straight to school from here in the morning. As it happens, I’ve got the clobber in my case.’

‘How prescient of you, flower.’

‘It’s as well to be prepared, you’re always saying that. It looked like snow earlier. It comes down heavily up here, when it starts.’

‘Being at least seven miles closer to the Arctic Circle.’

Jane’s weekend job had altered the format of both their lives. It was good that she had a job, not so good that it involved overnights on Saturdays, because all they had left, then, was Sunday, Merrily’s Working Day. Which left Sunday night, and now that was gone, too.

And it was the fact that Jane was working in a hotel and spending nights there. This was really stupid, but Merrily kept thinking about Donna Furlowe, daughter of the woman Huw Owen had loved. At Jane’s age, maybe a little older, Donna had been working at a hotel – holiday job – and had gone missing and been found murdered, possibly one of the Cromwell Street killings. Of course that was in Gloucestershire and this was on the edge of Herefordshire, where it hardened into Wales. It wasn’t even a coincidence, just paranoia.

‘You all right, Mum?’

‘Why do you want to stay there?’ It came out sharper than she’d intended. ‘Sorry. Do they want you to stay?’

‘They could use the extra help, yeah.’

‘Mmm.’ It was wise, in this kind of situation, not to ask too many questions, to convey the illusion of trust.

‘Of course, if you’re lonely,’ Jane said insouciantly, ‘you could always give Lol a ring.’

‘Jane—’

‘Oh no, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? Mustn’t risk having a man seen sneaking into the vicarage... on a Sunday. And not leaving until – wooooh – Monday.’

Merrily said nothing.

‘When are you two going to, like, grow up?’ Jane said.

2 Game Afoot

‘AND LEFT HER there... her lifeblood oozing into the rug.’

Pausing for a moment, lean and elegant in his black suit, he stared right through the faces watching him out of the shadows. The table lamp with the frosted globe put shards of ice into his eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ a woman whispered.

Jane was thinking, Grown people.

Now he was spinning back, sighting down his nose at the man in the wing-backed, brocaded chair. And the man was shifting uncomfortably. And the stiff white cuffs were chafing Jane’s wrists.

‘... And then you crept up to your room and waited until the entire household was silent. What time would that have been? Midnight? A quarter-past? Yes, let us say a quarter-past – twelve-seventeen being the precise time of the full moon... which I suspect would appeal to your sense of drama.’

With the log fire down to embers, the globe-shaded oil lamp was the only light in the drawing room, more shiveringly alive than electricity, spraying complex shadows up the oak panels. Jane dropped her resistance. She was part of the whole scam now, anyway.

‘Piffle,’ said the man in the wing-backed chair.

‘Oh, I think not, Major. I think that, barely half an hour after the murder, you crept back down the stairs and into the study, where you began to overturn chairs and pull out drawers, making as much noise as you possibly could. Finally, with the handle of your stick, you smashed not one, but two windows, in swift succession, so that the sound might be mistaken for a single impact.’

‘Sir, your imagination is, I would suggest, even more hysterical than your abominable fiddle-playing.’

A thin hand disdainfully flicked away the insult. ‘And then you moved silently, up the back stairs this time, and immediately re-emerged onto the main landing, dragging on your dressing gown, shouting and spluttering.’

Jane remembered it well. It had been seriously startling. She must have been in bed about twenty minutes and was half asleep when this huge roar went up. Who’s there? Who’s making all that damn noise? What the hell’s going on?

When she’d grabbed at the switch of the bedside lamp, it hadn’t come on. And then, when she got out of bed, she’d found that the ceiling light wouldn’t work either. She’d gone to open the door but remembered, just in time: Never be seen outside your room in your normal clothes, no matter what happens. Anyhow, her jeans and stuff were in the case under the bed, so she’d thrown on the awful, stiff black dress – Edwardian maid’s standard issue – before venturing out into the cold and musty darkness of the upper landing, flicking switches to find that none of the electric lights was functioning. Feeling her way to the top of the stairs under this eerie green glow from the smoke alarm, peering down to see most of the guests stumbling onto the main landing which was dim and full of shadows but a little brighter than upstairs because it was lit by – wow, cool – an incandescent thimble on a bracket. She’d noticed several of these gas mantles around the place but never imagined that they might actually work. This was like totally disorientating, a time-shift, a sliding century. She recalled a woman saying faintly, Is this real?

‘You roused the entire household, Major.’ A raised forefinger. The Major tried to rise but fell back into the wings of the chair. ‘But you made very sure that you would be the first one to re-enter the study – this sombre room of death where poor Lady Hartland lay cooling in her own congealing blood. And you had to be the first one to enter. Is that not so?’

‘Fairy-tale nonsense, sir.’ But the Major’s voice was slurred with guilt. Was he really a major? He’d been chatting in the bar an hour or so ago, explaining that he’d been based at Brecon until his retirement. Was that all made up?

The lamplight wavered. Jane felt bemused. It was working.

Last night, when they’d all come staggering down, the Major had been standing at the foot of the stairs, his back to the door of the study which all yesterday had been kept locked. Oh Lord, something terrible appears to have happened! Please, madam, you’d best not look. At this point, the study door had swung ajar behind him and you could see the bare lower legs of the corpse, pale as altar candles, receding into shadow. That had worked, too. Christ, Jane had thought, for that one crucial moment.

‘So.’ The man in black cleared his throat. ‘We know why you murdered her, and now we know how. There remains only—’

‘The question of proof. Of which you have none.’ The Major waved a dismissive hand and turned away, gazing towards the long window. Headlamps flashed on it, tongues of creamy light distorting in the rainy panes. It was probably the Cravens, reversing out to go home. Oh, hell, Jane thought, I was supposed to have drawn the curtains. At least Ben had his back to the window, so he wouldn’t have noticed. Jane put up a hand to her white, frilly headband, making sure it hadn’t slid off again.

‘Proof, Major?’ A faint sneer, a languid hand reaching down by the side of the chair. ‘If we’re looking for proof—’

‘Leave that alone! How dare you, sir!’

‘—Then we need hardly look very far.’

The man in black had found a walking stick, ebony, with a brass handle in the shape of a cobra’s head. As he weighed it in his hands, you could hear the distant visceral scraping of a solo violin. Should have sounded naff, but it was somehow exactly right, timed to underscore the tension as the stick was proffered to the man in the chair.

‘If you please, Major... or shall I?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Then we shall waste no more time!’ Snatching back the stick and holding it over the table, next to the oil lamp, so that everyone could see him twist the cobra’s head.

No! The Major sat up. ‘That—’

The snake head came off, the hollow shaft of the walking stick was very gently shaken. The man in black was somehow manipulating the light so that everyone’s attention was on his hands, and on the stick... and on this big red stone that rolled out and lay there glowing on the very edge of the table.

‘Hmm. The Fontaine Ruby, I imagine.’

The Major half rose from his chair, as though he was about to make a break for it. Several spontaneous gasps wafted out of the shadows, from people who had spent most of the afternoon searching for this paste ruby – with the walking stick conspicuously propped up in the hallstand the whole time.

The man in black didn’t even glance at it. Gems, in themselves, clearly held no big fascination for him; even his interest in the Major was waning now that guilt was proved. They both glanced towards the door, which had opened to reveal this guy bulked out by a huge tweed overcoat. The Major slumped back.

‘I think this is all the evidence we require,’ the man in black said mildly. ‘You may arrest him now, Lestrade.’

Silence. And then the electric lights came up and the applause kicked in: genuine appreciation, a couple of actual cheers. A triumph. You couldn’t fault it.

When the lights came fully on, everything seemed duller and shabbier, the country-house drawing room reverting to hotel lounge, the oil lamp dimming into history. And Sherlock Holmes was Ben Foley again, closing his eyes in relief.

Afterwards, when the bar was closed, Jane went down to the kitchen to collect mugs of bedtime hot chocolate to serve to the twelve guests. Earlier, she’d heard Ben saying that twelve was barely enough to make the weekend pay for itself, and they were all too old, and the whole thing was an embarrassment.

The kitchen had flagged floors and high windows and room for a whole bunch of servants, but it was dominated by the new island unit that Ben had assembled from the debris of a bankrupt butcher’s shop in Leominster. If most domestic island units were the Isle of Wight this was Australia. Amber, who didn’t have any staff to speak of, was on her own, bending over a corner of the unit, adding something herbal and aromatic to the cauldron of hot chocolate. She looked up.

‘Is he all right?’

‘Basking in adulation.’

‘Yes, he’s quite good at that,’ Amber said. No sarcasm there; Amber didn’t do sarcasm.

Last night, all wound-up before the guests came down for dinner, Ben had snarled that yeah, he might have done live theatre before, but that was over twenty years ago, and back then he didn’t have to work with school pantomime props and a bunch of crappy amateurs.

‘He was brilliant, Amber. Genuine massive applause – well, as massive as you can get from— Anyway, you’d have thought there was a lot more of them, to hear it.’

Amber was wearily rubbing her eyes, shoulder-length ash-blonde hair tinted pink by the halogen lights. She was probably about fifteen years younger than Ben, maybe mid-thirties, but more... well, more mature. She was wearing a big pink sweater and an apron with a cartoon cat on it.

‘Must’ve taken for ever to plan,’ Jane said. ‘Like the gas mantles – I didn’t even know they worked.’

Amber looked worried. ‘Some kind of bottled gas. I don’t like to think of the safety regulations he’s broken. Plus messing with the trip switches last night to make sure the normal lights didn’t work – I mean, what if one of those old women had fallen down the stairs?’

‘Well, they didn’t. It was brilliant.’ Jane liked Amber moaning to her; you only moaned to people you could trust. ‘Oh yeah – good news – only one of the punters correctly identified both the murderer and the motive, so that’s just the one bottle of champagne to give away.’

Amber blinked. ‘You did phone your mother, didn’t you?’

‘I did phone my mother. And there wasn’t a problem about staying over.’

‘Because I’d hate—’

‘There was no problem.’

‘It’s very good of you, Jane,’ Amber said. ‘The girl we had before wouldn’t do Saturday nights. They don’t seem to want weekend jobs any more.’

‘Jesus, Amber,’ Jane said, ‘this isn’t a job.’

A holiday, more like. A regular weekend break, and they gave you money at the end of it. Well, usually.

At first, Jane had thought Amber was a bit like Mum, but now she saw a clear difference. Amber’s modesty came out of this essential self-belief; she’d handled the food end of two significant London restaurants fronted by flash gits who treated customers like morons, knowing that she was the reason they could afford the arrogance. Flash gits faded fast, but Amber was never going to be out of work, Ben had remarked, talking about it to guests in the bar, naming names. I like to think I rescued her from that little scumbag. Can you bear to watch his crappy TV show?

To Ben, virtually everything on the box, including the news and weather, had become crap from the day he finally negotiated his severance deal with BBC Drama. A couple of weeks ago, a Face from Casualty or EastEnders – someone vaguely familiar from something Jane wouldn’t have watched if the alternative was the Open University – had come to stay overnight at the hotel, accompanied by a gorgeous-looking woman who sat propping up her smile while the Face and Ben got rat-arsed and ranted on for hours about the bunch of totally talentless twats who ran the Corporation these days.

‘So who was the winner, Jane?’ Amber started setting out empty mugs on the wooden trolley.

‘Oh – guy with white hair? Like Steve Martin without the humour?’

‘Dr Kennedy. He’s the serious expert. The others are just here for fun. Kennedy’s written books on Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. He knows a lot.’

‘I thought Ben knew a lot.’

‘Ben? All Ben’s ever done is produce The Missing Casebook for the BBC. You’re probably too young—’

‘No, I think I saw a couple.’

‘I’m sure you’re too young to remember the fuss.’

Apparently The Missing Casebook had not been adapted from the Conan Doyle stories. It was this semi-serious spoof, supposed to be about what Holmes was really doing after everyone thought he’d died at the Reichenbach Falls. The joke being – possibly for copyright reasons – that the central character in The Missing Casebook was incognito. He looked like Sherlock Holmes, he spoke like Sherlock Holmes, he played his violin in the night and shot himself up with cocaine, and everyone knew who he was really, but he was always called something else, a different name in every episode.

‘I don’t actually remember that,’ Jane admitted.

‘The second series was cancelled. The first one didn’t go down well, particularly in Holmes circles. The orthodox version’s sacrosanct to those people. They want the same stories done over and over again, as if it’s history, not fiction. And they don’t like people taking the piss.’

‘He wasn’t taking the piss this weekend, though, was he? OK, the story was invented, but you can’t have a murder weekend where everybody already knows who’s done it, can you?’

‘Murder weekends.’ Amber sighed.

‘No, but it worked, Amber. I was trying to be cynical, because, you know... But it was all beautifully done, given the—’

‘Tiny budget,’ Amber said.

‘I mean, he really dominated it. He was Holmes.’

‘Gave up acting when he was twenty-six,’ Amber said. ‘He didn’t think he was good enough to be one of the greats. It’s the way he is.’

‘He needs to be great?’

‘He needs to... succeed against the odds, I suppose.’ Amber dipped a wooden spoon into the chocolate and tasted it. ‘Anyway, the most important guest this weekend is Dr Kennedy, because he’s the Secretary of The Baker Street League, and we need their conference. They’re not the biggest or the oldest of the Holmes societies, but Ben knows a few members already, and obviously it would help for us to be linked with a group like that.’

Jane sniffed at the hot chocolate. You could pass out with longing.

‘Amber...’

‘What?’

‘Do you really need this Holmes connection to make the hotel work?’

Amber blew out her cheeks, the closest she ever came to scowling. Jane knew that Ben had spotted this place in a copy of Country Life at the dentist’s, making an impulse call and discovering that it was still on the market after five months. So there was Ben with what seemed like a decent amount of money to invest in a future out of TV... Ben who didn’t want to go crawling to any more witless tossers who couldn’t see further than cops and hospitals. Who didn’t want to have to watch any more projects crash after months of hassle. Who wanted something he was completely in control of. He kept saying that.

And here it was, in a beautiful, atmospheric and unspoiled area less than half a day from central London. A structurally sound country house – kind of – with the possibility of twenty bedrooms if you developed outbuildings. A house with a history that, although not extensive, included a literary connection of curious significance to Ben Foley. Surely this was some kind of—

‘I mean, I know he said it was an omen...’ Jane said.

‘Now he’s finding out that the concept of total independence is a myth, especially with limited funds, and he’s still having to crawl to people like Kennedy. And put on murder weekends, which he claims he does for fun, but which really are all we’ve got. Which isn’t good, is it, Jane?’

‘But this Conan Doyle thing...’ Jane looked around the vast kitchen, imagining a grandfatherly figure with a heavy moustache waiting politely for his mug of chocolate. The face she saw was very distinct. It was the face from a blown-up photograph framed above the fireplace in the lounge.

‘We don’t actually know if he stayed here regularly – or even once. But rumour and legend have always been enough for Ben. What he doesn’t know he’ll invent. Life’s like television – if it’s on the screen it must have happened. And that’s enough to build a business image around.’

‘Maybe he was just afraid you wouldn’t come if you thought he had an agenda.’

‘No,’ Amber said sadly, ‘I always go along with things.’ She began to pour the chocolate into a big earthenware jug. ‘I just wish it wasn’t so... Victorian. There’s something cold and... ungiving about Victorian houses. Everything’s bigger than it needs to be. Too many passageways.’

‘Mmm,’ Jane said. Ben had shown her the ‘secret passage’ under the stairs, where Lady Hartland, played by Natalie Craven, had waited to die.

‘Not so bad in the summer, but now I realize I don’t like the forestry, and those gnarled old rocks. The way they seem to be watching you. Watching everything crumbling around you, while they’ve been here for ever.’

‘Mmm,’ Jane said again, in two minds. As a weird person, she really liked Stanner Rocks, naturally. But this seemed like a good opportunity to bring up the thing that had been bothering her a little. ‘Er, while we’re on the subject of everything being bigger than it needs to be, my room certainly is.’

‘Sorry, Jane?’

‘The tower room – I mean it’s fantastic to have a room that size, but I feel a bit... Like, I’m not used to a room that big, that’s all.’

‘Oh, we thought—’

‘And I keep waking up in the night. Stupid, really. So like, I... just wondered if I could have my old room back.’

Jane felt deceitful and a bit ashamed. She’d been switched around twice over the past couple of weekends, as the Foleys continued their winter programme of refurbishing the bedrooms one by one. Amber looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Just... too big?’

‘Stupid, really,’ Jane said.

‘Well, if you don’t like that room, Jane—’

‘It’s not that I don’t like it—’

‘Then you can move your stuff back to the old one tonight if you like.’

Jane nodded, trying not to show her relief, which was kind of despicable, frankly. ‘Thanks, Amber.’

Back in the lounge, Ben helped her serve the chocolate. ‘Thanks, sweetheart, you’ve been terrific.’ His hair was wisping out of the Holmes grease-slick, the curls re-forming. He bent down to her ear and whispered, ‘Some of these old guys, seeing a little maid around the place in a starchy uniform, it gives them a delicious little frisson, you know?’

‘I don’t do frissons,’ Jane said primly, and Ben laughed and went to play Holmes again for two elderly ladies, the kind that it was nice to think still existed outside of old Agatha Christie films. A few of the people here were regulars at murder weekends all over the country. There was a network of them now.

The Major came over for his chocolate. ‘Terribly sorry, my dear, but I’ve been assuming you were Ben’s daughter.’

‘Just paid help... Major.’ It felt – this was stupid – a little weird talking to a guy who’d just been exposed as having beaten a woman’s brains out. It was surprising how the scenario crawled into some area of your mind and lodged there. Maybe something to do with the house. She shook herself. The maid’s headband fell off, and she caught it and laughed. ‘Are you really a major?’

He pushed his tongue into a cheek. He was stocky, sixtyish, and his tufty white moustache looked genuine. ‘Frank Sampson, AVAD.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Arrow Valley Amateur Dramatics.’

Jane grinned. ‘Had me fooled. Not like this area isn’t full of retired soldiers.’

‘Except the real ones tend to be ex-Regiment. Younger. Fitter. Not how you imagine them any more.’ Frank Sampson nodded towards Ben. ‘Fun, though, working with a pro. I’d like to see them make the place work. I remember the first time it was a hotel.’

‘Bad?’

‘Well, that was back in the sixties, when walking holidays were for the hard-up, so I suppose it was more of a hostel. After that, an old folks’ home, then some sort of specialist language school, then an old folks’ home again. Not for long, though. Elderly people hate to be dumped this far out. They want life around them, not dripping trees.’

‘So what was it when Conan Doyle stayed here?’

Frank Sampson shrugged. ‘Just a house, presumably. Quite a new one then, obviously. That’s a bone of contention, isn’t it? That’s a can of worms, Clancy.’

Jane smiled. ‘I’m Jane. Clancy’s gone home.’

‘Sorry!’ He covered his mouth. ‘Can’t seem to get anything right tonight. Can’t even get away with murder. Don’t suppose there’s any more of this incredible chocolate, is there? Not getting paid for this, but I’m buggered if I’m passing up the side benefits.’

The last of the logs collapsed in the grate behind them. Jane brought the earthenware jug and topped up Frank’s mug. ‘How do you mean, can of worms?’

‘Weeeeell, you know – did he spend time here or didn’t he? I don’t know. I don’t know anyone who does.’

‘Why would anybody think he did, then?’

The fake major blinked. ‘Well, that—’

‘Friends!’ Ben was in the middle of the room, clapping his hands together for attention. His Edwardian jacket was undone and his hair was flowing back from his shining dome. ‘In case I don’t see any of you in the morning, just want to say a big thanks. Thanks for being our guinea pigs.’

‘Great fun,’ one of the Agatha Christie ladies said. ‘Hope there’ll be more.’

‘Well, ah... we’ve certainly learned some things.’ Ben sank his hands into his jacket pockets, opening the coat out like wings, the way kids did. ‘For instance, quite a few people have said that they’d rather it had started on Friday evening, through Saturday, because they really needed to leave today, to get to work tomorrow. Sorry about that. As you can no doubt guess, we’re pretty much amateurs at the hotel game. But’ – he raised a forefinger – ‘we learn fast. Ah...’

He paused and looked across at the portrait over the fireplace, the blue-tinted blow-up photo of the kind-looking man with neat hair and a weighty moustache and eyes which seemed to be focused, with a glint of mild wonder, on something in the middle distance.

‘I know there’s still some controversy about whether Sir Arthur spent time here,’ Ben said. ‘But I feel he did. Sometimes, when I walk through these rooms late at night or early in the morning, I like to feel he’s perhaps... Well, we all know what an ardent spiritualist he was, so let’s not get into that. I just feel there are mysteries about Sir Arthur which might be solved here. I don’t know why I say that, I just... sorry... babbling.’ Ben wiped the air. ‘Apologies.’

‘No, go on,’ a woman said. Not one of the Agathas; this one was elegant, middle-aged, with long near-white hair and half-glasses, and Jane thought she’d come on her own. ‘Are we talking about The Hound of the Baskervilles? Because I was rather disappointed that none of this came up during the weekend.’

‘Ah, well.’ Ben looked put-out. ‘That deserves more than a single weekend. Can’t divulge all our secrets in one burst, darling.’

An Agatha chuckled. ‘Didn’t want to waste it on the likes of us, eh?’

Ben did this camp simper, not denying it. Jane looked at Frank Sampson, the erstwhile murderer. ‘Can of worms,’ Frank murmured.

Later, in the lobby, with its shabby flock wallpaper and Victorian-looking wall lamps, Jane heard Ben talking to the thin man with bristly white hair. Seemed this guy Kennedy was one of those who would have preferred to leave this morning. He was leaving now, with his bottle of champagne for solving the murder.

‘So we’ll be hearing from you,’ Ben said. ‘About your conference?’ He was carefully standing with his back to one of the places where the panelling had been poorly patched with stained plywood. Unfortunately, just above his head, an area of unpapered plaster was dark with damp, and he might as well have been pointing at it.

‘Well, I...’ Dr Kennedy hefted his canvas overnight bag. His voice was nasal and tinny, not a lot like Steve Martin. ‘I do need to talk to my colleagues on the committee. I’ll confirm my decision in writing by the end of the week.’

‘Wonderful,’ Ben said. ‘That’s marvellous, Neil.’ Not exactly rubbing his hands, but aglow with satisfaction as he followed Dr Kennedy to the main door. Jane moved ahead of them and held it open for Kennedy to pull his bag through after him. Ben and Jane stood under the big brass lamp in the conservatory-porch, its long Gothic windows streaming with rain, watching him run for his car.

‘Game’s afoot, Jane,’ Ben said.

‘Sorry?’ Oh yeah, Holmes-speak.

‘The game is finally afoot.’ Now he really was rubbing his hands, maybe just being deliberately theatrical.

The piece of carpet that they were standing on was soaked through. Jane hoped Dr Kennedy hadn’t walked into one of the pond-size puddles on the terrace or stumbled on the eroded steps down to the car park. There was no sign of him now, anyway. Beyond the car park you could see nothing but darkness, and all you could hear was the rain in the pines.

And then a shot.

Ben was standing in the doorway, and his head twisted sharply as if he’d been hit and was about to go down. It was that close. A blast, loud enough to blow a hole in the rain. Jane found that she’d backed away against one of the glass panels. She was momentarily frozen, half expecting Ben to fall, but he straightened up and breathed in hard.

‘Right.’ In the golden light of the brass lamp, his eyes were bright with rage. ‘That’s it. That’s fucking it.’ He stepped out into the rain and splashed across to the low stone wall at the edge of the terrace.

‘Ben?’

Jane followed him out, feeling her frilly headband falling off behind her. The car park was on a slope, bordered by pines and, through their tiered trunks, Jane thought she saw a blurry light moving. A car door slammed, an engine started up, and then the much brighter lights of Dr Kennedy’s car shone into her eyes, and she couldn’t see anything else.

This was the country. Shots happened. It was supposed to be illegal to let off a shotgun at night, and in weather like this it was seriously crazy. But it happened. It certainly happened here. Jane went tense, remembering last night.

‘Bastards!’ Ben climbed up on the wall, Dr Kennedy’s car passing below him, the rain thudding on the shoulders of his Edwardian jacket. His fists were clenched, his long face shining with fury. ‘Scumbags! Don’t think I don’t know who you are. I told... I warned you, not on my land! This time you’re fucking dog meat!’

Nobody replied. Ben stood for a moment longer, with his head bowed, his back to the Hall, with its mock-mullion windows and its witch’s-hat towers. Then he slammed his right fist into his left hand and came down from the wall. His hair was slicked flat to his head again, like Sherlock Holmes’s hair. He walked back towards the door, taking hold of Jane’s arm.

‘When do you ever hear of one being revoked?’

‘What?’ Jane had been dredging her headband from a puddle.

‘Shotgun licence. When do you ever hear of anyone’s shotgun licence being revoked for misuse of firearms, Jane? Never. Because all the bloody magistrates are farmers, like this guy Dacre, and they all stand together. Bastards. I said I didn’t want them on my land, disturbing my guests, killing my wildlife. I said no.’

‘Who are they?’

Ben steered Jane back into the porch. ‘Some kind of gun club. Think they can safely ignore me because I’ll be gone soon, like all the others. When it all goes down, when we’re declared bankrupt. It’s what this area does, you see, Jane. Ruins you eventually. Nothing creative ever thrives, because it’s a wilderness, a hunting ground. That’s what it’s always been, it’s the way they like it. But they don’t know me, Jane.’

‘They go out shooting in these conditions?’ She hadn’t heard about his row with the gun club.

‘I think they just saw the lights, the cars. It’s a gesture – you don’t interfere with us, we’ll leave you alone. They think I’m soft. Effete. Some arty bastard from London, here today, gone...’ Ben pushed his fingers through his wet hair, wiping his shoes on the sodden carpet. ‘They don’t bother me, why should they? Half of them aren’t even locals. Yobs, Jane. Thick, barbaric yobs. No subtlety.’ He suddenly flashed a big grin. ‘Where I come from, we have real hard bastards.’

‘Where’s that, exactly?’

‘Oh... the city. Country people think they’re tough because they can pull lambs out of ewes and have to walk further for the bus. Because they can shoot things and watch foxes get torn to bits without feeling pity. Is that tough, Jane? Is that what you’d call tough?’

Jane wrinkled her nose. ‘I think hunting’s totally psychotic, and a waste of time and money. But then, so do a lot of country people, on the quiet.’

‘Do they?’ Ben was either surprised or disappointed.

‘Nobody really likes having their land churned up and their cats killed, like, by mistake. Most of them keep it to themselves, because hunt people can turn nasty when they’re threatened. And country people don’t like confrontation.’

Ben did, though. Ben was into drama. And although he didn’t seem to be aggressive in a violent way, you got the idea that he actually needed to feel a lot of people were against him – needed this to fire him up, maintain his energy level. Needs to succeed against the odds, Amber had said.

Which, when you thought about it, made him a dangerous sort of person to be living here on the Border. Like actually on the actual Border. Jane had theories about the Border and what it meant, what it really was. This excited her most of the time, but now her cheap maid’s outfit was blotting up the wet, and she was clammy-cold and starting to shiver and actually wish she was in her apartment back at the vicarage – how wimpish was that?

‘You’re a smart girl,’ Ben said. ‘I’m awfully glad we’ve got you here. Amber’s a hugely talented woman and very... very decent. But she needs support. And because we can only afford part-time staff, you and Natalie, you’re...’

He didn’t finish. He smiled and turned away, opening the main door for Jane, who noticed the rain coming into the glass porch through the gaps in the putty.

‘They were very close last night,’ Jane said.

‘Who were?’

‘The gun club. There was one shot... sounded like it was just outside the window.’

‘Really,’ Ben said.

3 What Consultants Are For

ON THURSDAY MORNING in the church, the Holy Ghost was waiting.

Alice Meek, from the chip shop in Old Barn Lane, was doing the flowers on the altar. Dusty pillars of white light were dropping from the upper windows and Alice’s voice was carrying like a crow’s across the chancel.

‘My niece, the one in Solihull, she did one of them Alpha courses at her church, did I tell you? After the decree nisi come through, this was – big gap in her life, usual story.’ Alice was smoothing out the altar cloth, replacing the candlesticks. ‘This Alpha, she reckoned it d’creep up on you somehow. It don’t seem like much at first, but near the end of it she felt the Holy Spirit was in her heart like a big white bird, and you could feel its wings fluttering. That’s what she said, vicar. As if this big bird was trying to escape from her breast and’ – Alice spread her arms wide – ‘fill the whole world with love and healing.’

‘That’s nice.’ Merrily went on dusting the choir stalls, wondering where this was going. It was the first time she’d encountered Alice since the Prossers had told her about Ann-Marie.

‘But we prevents it happening, see.’ Alice came back to the chancel steps for the pewter vase that she’d filled with flowers. ‘We don’t let it out. It’s the way we are. We’re all scared to open up, so we keeps him in his cage, the poor old Holy Spirit. I never quite got that before, see.’ She scuttled back and set the pewter vase on the altar. ‘Nothing like freesias, is there? You en’t thought of having one of them Alpha courses yere, Vicar?’

‘Well, it’s—’

‘No. You’re dead right. It’s not necessary.’ Alice came stomping back down the chancel steps, a fierce-faced little woman in a pink nylon overall. ‘I yeard as how Jenny Driscoll, God rest her poor soul, used to say there was angelic light around Ledwardine Church, and now I know exac’ly what she meant. It’s crept up on all of us, it has. Like me – I only come to your Sunday night service because somebody said there wasn’t no hymns. Voice like mine, you don’t wanner do no singing if you can help it, do you? Scare the bloody angels off the roof.’

Alice cackled. Was there a new energy about her, or was that imagination? Merrily sat down in one of the choir stalls. As with most parishes nowadays, there hadn’t been a choir here for years. Some ministers even liked to condense their congregations into the stalls now. More intimate.

Alice came to sit next to her.

‘I’ll be honest, Vicar, some of us wasn’t too sure about you at first. Bit too nervous in the pulpit. Like you wasn’t too certain of what you was trying to say. But it en’t all about preaching, is it? And it en’t all about singin’ the same ole hymns and not hearing none of the words no more. It’s the quiet times, ennit? It’s the quiet times when things starts to happen.’

‘Things?’ Merrily grew nervous.

Alice winked, like there was a great secret floating in the dusty air between them. Brenda Prosser’s voice seemed to echo in the void: Alice said she lost track of time. She said she felt as if everybody there was together... and they were part of something that was, you know, bigger.

‘It’s prayer,’ Merrily said, ‘that’s all.’

‘Whatever you wanner call it’s all right with me,’ Alice said. ‘It’s like you being the exorcist. We wasn’t sure about that either at first. But when I was talking to Mrs Hitchin, works in the library at Leominster, she says it’s all part of the same thing.’

‘Oh.’

‘So anyway,’ Alice said, ‘I was planning to have a word with you about my nephew, works at the tyre place in Hereford.’

Merrily looked at her.

‘Asthma,’ Alice said.

Later, when the Ledwardine GP, Kent Asprey, phoned about next year’s village marathon, Merrily knew he wanted something else. This was how things were done in the sticks.

She took the call in the scullery, sitting at her desk next to the window overlooking the sodden, grey garden.

‘I see from my list that you haven’t entered your name,’ Asprey said.

‘It’s next April, isn’t it? Anyway, you wouldn’t either, if you had legs as short as mine.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘But you could put me down to be one of the people who pushes drinks at the runners.’

‘Righto,’ he said. She could hear him writing.

She waited, looking across the lawn to the ancient apple orchard which was creeping back into the churchyard so that the church and the vicarage were enmeshed again, in a skein of hoary branches. Apple trees were not graceful and not pretty once the fruit was gone. In the old days, the cider would have been made and stored by now. The cider would see the village through the winter. The cider and the church.

But no cider was produced here any more.

‘Ann-Marie Herdman,’ he said. ‘You’ll have heard, I suppose?’

‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it?’ Merrily began to draw an apple on the sermon pad.

‘At least you didn’t use the word “miracle”.’

‘Not one of my very favourite words, Kent.’

‘I... I know Ann-Marie pretty well...’

‘I’m sure.’ This was the man who, in the cause of preventative medicine, used to lead groups of women from Ledwardine and surrounding villages on fun runs. Until word reached his wife that, for a select few, the serious fun had begun after the run. ‘So your position on this would be... what?’

‘I’d say, let them all keep their illusions. Not often people in my profession get to impart that kind of good news. And if it helps you people fill your churches in these difficult times...’

‘That’s very generous of you, Doctor. We need all the crumbs we can get.’

‘Entirely off the record, it could be a medical anomaly, but it’s my suspicion that there was an error at the hospital with those first tests. Whether it was technical or a mix-up of names is a matter of conjecture, and we’ll probably never really know, but—’

‘You mean Ann-Marie Herdman never had a tumour.’

‘I can’t say that, obviously.’

‘But you must’ve had a reason to refer her to the consultant in the first place.’

‘It’s what consultants are for, Merrily. To take the heat.’

‘Of course.’

‘But mistakes do occur. It’s inevitable.’

‘And yet you told the Prossers you’d done some checks and you couldn’t find evidence of any mix-up.’

‘Merrily, in these litigious times...’

‘I see.’

‘Anyway,’ Asprey said, ‘I thought you ought to know. I realize it can be quite embarrassing for someone in your position when people latch on to something like this and blow it up into something it isn’t.’

‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘That was very thoughtful of you.’

When he hung up, she was looking at the moon over Paul Klee’s rooftops in the print opposite the desk. The moon was very faintly blue. She looked down at the sermon pad and saw that under the apple she’d printed the words SMUG and GIT.

At dusk, Merrily went to lock up the church, glancing, on the way out, at the prayer board on which parishioners could write the names of people for whom they’d like prayers to be said.

There were twice as many as usual. One had the final sentence underlined; it said: THIS IS FOR SUNDAY NIGHT.

Walking back through the churchyard, an isolated spurt of sleet hit her like grit from under lorry wheels, and she hurried under the lych gate.

What did you do here? What did you do about healing? How did you explain all those times when there was no cure, when the condition worsened? What did you say to them when, after the quiet times, after the unity, after the being part of something bigger... what did you say to them when, after all that, God appeared to have let them down badly?

Back in the scullery, with about twenty minutes before Jane’s school bus was due on the square, she prodded in the number for Sophie at the Hereford Cathedral gatehouse. Time to make an appointment with Bernie Dunmore.

‘Gatehouse.’ Male voice.

‘Bishop...?’

‘Merrily Watkins, as I live and breathe.’ Bernie sniffed. ‘Well, with slight difficulty at the moment, seem to be developing a cold. Sophie’s just popped across to Fodder to get me some herbal thing which she insists is going to deal with it.’

‘Echinacea?’

‘What’s wrong with Sudafed, I say.’

‘It’s a drug.’

‘And?’

‘Bernie,’ Merrily said, ‘where do we stand on healing?’

‘As in...?’

‘Spiritual.’

‘We brought out an extensive report,’ the Bishop reminded her. ‘It’s called “A Time for Healing.”

“A Time to Heal”. No, when I say we, I mean we, the Diocese. As distinct from we, the Church.’

‘Bugger,’ said the Bishop. ‘Have you no pity for a man with a cold? Your department we’re talking about here, isn’t it? Healing and Deliverance. Remember?’

‘Is it, though? My job description says Deliverance. Healing sounds like the C of E spin doctors softening it up. Less bell, book and candle, more touchy-feely caring.’

‘You have a specific problem with that?’

‘Possibly.’

The Bishop didn’t reply. He would know better than to quote St Mark’s version of Jesus’s parting message, pre-ascension; as well as the Church’s healing mission, it appeared to advocate picking up snakes, cause of many deaths in the US Bible Belt.

‘All right, I’ve been doing this slightly experimental Sunday-evening service,’ Merrily said. ‘Loose, open-ended. I thought it was working. I mean, it brought in some of the villagers who normally wouldn’t notice if the steeple fell off. Even Jane’s been a couple of times, when the weekend job allows. So... a modest success.’

‘What I like to hear.’

‘People actually saying they’re reaching something deeper in the way of understanding and awareness. And discovering you can actually learn meditation for free. But it wasn’t meant to be... I mean, it didn’t start out as a healing session. We did pray, though, as you would, for a woman who’d been told she had a malignant tumour. A week later she was told that she didn’t have a tumour at all.’

‘Congratulations,’ the Bishop said.

‘Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more delighted—’

‘But you can’t help wondering if it was an answer to your prayers, in the strictest sense.’

‘The local GP rang to point out that it was probably a misdiagnosis. Or a technological problem with the scanner. Or an administrative cock-up, or – at worst – one of those very rare medical anomalies. Now, he could be entirely wrong, or covering something up. And he’s massively out-numbered by all those people who would clearly like to think that something did happen...’

‘Obviously.’

‘But... Bernie, they’ve started to bring out their sick. They’re recalling lesser ailments prayed for and subsequently eased. This morning I was asked if I’d mind curing someone’s asthma, even though he doesn’t live in the parish.’

‘They believe you’re a latent healer?’

‘I stress that if it’s happening it’s not down to me, but I suspect there’s a feeling that the Deliverance minister has a hot line. Like the fourth emergency service? The nature of the Sunday-evening service has been... misrepresented.’

The Bishop breathed so heavily into the phone that it was like the germs were coming down the line.

‘You do have a more exciting ministry than most of us, don’t you, Merrily?’

‘Maybe I’m missing the humour here, Bishop. Young guy who gets acute asthma attacks and whose aunt is afraid that the next time it happens...?’

There was a long pause. Down the phone, she could hear the traffic in Broad Street, a door opening and closing, quick footsteps on the stone stairway to the gatehouse offices.

‘You know Jeavons is back,’ the Bishop said.

‘Jeav—? Oh.’

‘I mean, if you wanted to talk to someone about this. Someone who actually knows about it, as distinct from a knackered old admin bloke like me. I was only thinking, with Huw Owen being away...’

‘I’ve never met Jeavons,’ Merrily said.

The Bishop blew his nose. ‘You’re not the first to raise the question of healing lately. Healing groups is the normal approach. I think we all agree it’s better to share the burden. It also raises ecumenical possibilities, particularly with the Catholics, and I’m quite drawn to that. Ah... hold on one moment...’

She heard another voice. She heard the Bishop saying, ‘Well, I don’t know how to work the blessed thing.’ She thought about Catholic priests she knew and how they’d react to the idea of working with a woman.

Bernie came back on the line. ‘Sophie goes out for five minutes, place ceases to function. Did I mention Jeavons?’

‘He’s in Worcestershire, right?’

‘He’s been abroad. Semi-retired now, of course. Rather prematurely. Few years ago, there was a move to fast-track him into purple – view to Canterbury, one suspects. The little greaseball Blair was keen, for obvious reasons. Red faces all round when Jeavons tosses it back at them and says he’ll retire instead. What he wanted, we discover, was his freedom, to pursue his specialist interests, hover over psychic surgeons in Chile.’

‘At the Church’s expense?’

‘Dunno. My information is that he’s back in the country and available as a consultant to selected clerics – although I was once told it would be unwise to refer just anybody.’

‘Huw talked about him once,’ Merrily recalled. ‘Only—’

‘Because, if anyone’s on the edge of a crisis, Jeavons has been known to tip them over.’

‘Only, Huw reckoned he was mad,’ Merrily said.

Since the days when hundreds of medieval pilgrims had dragged their crippled limbs to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral, the Church had become increasingly uncomfortable about healing. You prayed for sick people, you might even light a candle, and if there was a cure you thanked God. Beyond that, a certain wariness crept in. Not strictly our thing.

In which case, what was the Church’s thing? The way congregations were crashing, it was clear that this was a question not going unasked. While Jane was changing out of her school gear, Merrily dug out the report: ‘A Time to Heal: A Contribution towards the Ministry of Healing’. In his introduction, George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, referred to ‘Our Lord’s injunction to heal the sick,’ and suggested that the report might be studied and reflected upon and considered for action ‘as appropriate in dioceses and parishes’.

As appropriate. Merrily smiled.

In relation to parishes, the report recommended that clergy involved in healing should consider combining their resources with those of doctors, community nurses and carers operating according to a ‘working theology’ of the Ministry of Healing.

Oh, sure. Like Kent Asprey and Lorraine Bonner, the district nurse, who maintained she’d seen too much of life to be anything but an atheist.

The report was sniffy about some healing services. Lack of preparation, misunderstandings, unjustified claims and emotionalism leading to subsequent disappointment. It was more supportive of what it called Intercessory Groups, in which a number of ‘instructed persons’ met regularly to pray for the sick.

Laying-on of hands, by the minister, in the context of a normal service or Eucharist was also accepted, as were Services of Penance, underlining the healing benefits of forgiveness.

Merrily looked up Canon Llewellyn Jeavons in the phone book. There was a Jeavons L.C.D. at Suckley.

Mad, Huw had said, without explanation.

She knew where Suckley was – a rambling hamlet not far over the Herefordshire border and not far at all, in fact, from the Frome Valley where Lol Robinson was still living out of suitcases in the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio.

Merrily sometimes caught a frightening image of herself in twenty years’ time. It was in sepia: this small, monklike person in the bottom left-hand corner of the huge old vicarage, hunched over the desk. Dark. Chilly. Cramped. Very much alone.

She saw it quite often these days. Sometimes it was so detailed, and yet so stark, that it was almost like an engraving.

That night, building a fire of apple logs in the sitting-room inglenook, Jane said, ‘You don’t make fires like this when I’m not here, do you? Like last weekend, for instance.’

‘I was busy.’

‘I think you probably didn’t come in here even once. I could almost smell the damp.’

‘Saturday night, I wrote the sermon. Sunday night, we had the service and then the Prossers came to tell me about Ann-Marie. Wasn’t really worth it afterwards.’

The paper and the kindling flared yellow. Jane, on the hearthrug in her jeans and an overstretched white sweater, looked like a little girl again. Seventeen now – scary.

‘It’s just...’ The kid positioned a small log over a mesh of thorny kindling. ‘I like this job. I like Stanner Hall. You get to meet people – different kinds of people. I just don’t like to think of you all alone here. Like everywhere dark, except the kitchen and the scullery.’

‘I’ve got the cat. And, of course—’

‘Let’s keep Him out of this,’ Jane snapped. ‘The point is, in under two years I’ll probably be gone, whether it’s university or... whatever. But I might be gone for like... for good. And you’ll be kind of lodged down in that scullery like the last Jelly Baby in the jar, writing your sermons into the empty night.’

Actually, it was going to bed that was the worst time: putting out the bedside light, knowing that the attic apartment directly above you was empty. Thinking of all the empty rooms and all the people who had been and gone. Jane’s dad, long gone. Jane’s dad – that was how she thought of Sean now, as though Jane was the best thing he’d done in his foreshortened, corrupted life.

Biting her lip, she stood over Jane and bent and kneaded the kid’s shoulders. ‘Two years is still a long time.’

‘I used to think that, but it isn’t.’ Jane looked up at her. ‘You’ll be nearly forty then. Have you even thought about that?’

‘Too old for sex?’

Jane pulled away. ‘Stop it.’

‘It was a joke. How are things at the hotel?’

‘Don’t change the subject. You’re here in this mausoleum, on your own every weekend, and Lol’s twenty miles away with no real home at all, and he can’t get near half the time because of appearances and the Church and all that hypocritical bollocks. I mean, if you were gay – if you were a lesbian – nobody would—’ Jane broke off, blushing, probably remembering a certain misunderstanding.

‘And there’s the question of restarting Lol’s career,’ Merrily said. ‘The album out in March, the chance of a tour...’

The kid smiled maliciously. ‘And groupies.’

‘Do they have groupies any more?’

‘Just trying to inflame the situation. Groupies and Lol doesn’t arise.’ Jane looked up again, an apple glow on her face. ‘But you have to do something soon. Face it, most people know about you and him now, anyway.’

‘Yeah, but cohabiting in the vicarage might just be a step too far. And I don’t think he’d want that anyway. Now that he’s finding his feet.’

‘You’re so... unimpulsive. You piss me off sometimes.’

‘It’s what I’m here for,’ Merrily said.

Later, just before nine, she left Jane in front of the TV and slipped away to the scullery. On the blue blotter on her desk, next to the sermon pad, was a folded copy of the property section of the Hereford Times. Just above the fold, an advert, encircled, said:

LEDWARDINE

Church Street – exquisite small, terraced

house, Grade Two listed, close to the centre

of this sought-after village.

It could be the answer. Tomorrow, she’d call the agent. Tonight, she lifted the phone and tapped in the number of Canon Llewellyn Jeavons.

So he was mad. Maybe she could use some of that.

4 The Room Under the Witch’s-Hat Tower

THE PINES WERE matt black against the blood-orange sky when Jane was walking up the hotel drive. Friday, late afternoon, and here it came again – that shivery anticipation, her senses honed as sharp as the air, as the cold tide of night swept in towards the Border.

The Border. It was right here. She could actually be standing on it now. The hotel was in England, but the rocks it was named after were in Wales. And here, where the track divided, was where it all coalesced in a burst of sunset.

Letting her school case and her overnight bag slip to the ground, Jane stopped at the fork. The independent working woman, on the Border.

Two witches’-hat towers were prodding up between the ragged pines. Stanner Hall was Victorian Gothic, therefore more lavishly Gothic than the original. And from this distance, at least, it looked like it belonged here, if only as a piece of skyline, on the Border. And the Border, like all borders, was more than just a political division; it was about magic and transformation, a zone out of time where things normally unseen might, for tiny, bright moments, become visible.

Some part of Jane felt this to be true and responded to it. Christianity would be like, Turn away from the dark... shun the numinous... take no pleasure in the nearness of other spheres. Which was why Jane reckoned that she was always going to be a pagan at the core. OK, maybe she’d mellowed a little towards Mum’s faith, but it didn’t go far enough. It had no sense of place. This was the holy land.

Looking up the left-hand stony track that led to the top of the mysterious Stanner Rocks, she stood for a moment, feeling the night beating in like heavy, downy wings. Then she picked up her bags and took the right-hand path between the gateposts of Stanner Hall, these sculpted stone buttresses against the trespassing woods. Most of a foxhound was preserved on the top of the left-hand post, its muzzle pointing rigidly at the sky as if it was about to begin howling. On the right-hand post only the paws remained. Nothing here was completely intact. The sign at the bottom still said STANNER HALL HOTE

Are we talking about The Hound of the Baskervilles? Voices from last Sunday. Rather disappointed that none of this came up during the weekend.

‘... That, ah, probably deserves more than a single weekend.’

Can of worms... can of worms...

Well, she’d read The Hound of the Baskervilles years ago when she was quite young. Hadn’t liked it much, always managed to avoid the films on TV. At school, when she’d raised the issue, Clancy had said, ‘Yeah, I think there’s some local connection,’ but she didn’t seem interested.

Tonight, Jane and Clancy had come off the school bus at the usual junction, at the end of the Kington bypass, but Clancy had gone off down the Gladestry road, to the farm. Clancy said her mum was coming down heavy on the subject of homework – like, it had to be done on Friday night or the kid didn’t get out on Saturday. Changing schools so often, she’d fallen behind, and this was her last chance to pull back. So Jane had been seeing more of Clancy’s mum than Clancy and now, when she lugged her bags into the courtyard of Stanner Hall, here was Natalie, leaning against the open kitchen door, massaging a mug of coffee.

‘Hi, Jane.’

This warm, pithy voice travelling easily across the darkening yard. It was a voice that Jane imagined blokes finding very sexy. Nat, too. She was quite tall and supple, with high pointy breasts inside her black jumper. She had dense, shaggy hair, the colour of dark tobacco, and she was... well, very beautiful, in this enviably careless way.

‘Clan has gone home, Jane?’

‘She was certainly heading that way.’

‘Hmm,’ Nat said doubtfully.

Clancy had shown up for the first time at the beginning of this term. She was only about a year younger than Jane, but actually two years behind her at school – which, not surprisingly, had left her isolated, with no real friends. Jane, who knew what it was like being the new kid, had realized that Clancy’s situation must be a whole lot worse, having to take lessons with little children. She’d gone out of her way to talk to Clancy at lunchtimes, and they’d become mates, kind of. Which was what had led, indirectly, to the offer of regular weekend work at the hotel where Clancy’s mother was receptionist, barmaid and the person who made this joint seem halfway professional.

Nursing her mug for warmth, Natalie came out into the yard, smiling in a bruised kind of way and raising her eyes to the purpling sky.

‘Like the Fall of fucking Troy in there today, Jane.’

The earthy talk was one of Nat’s contradictions. Treated her own daughter like a kid and was old-fashioned about stuff like bedtimes and homework and pubs, but she’d address Jane like a real mate, a colleague. Nat had clearly been around, and not only in hotels and restaurants.

‘Unexpected guests?’ Jane looked over at the car park and saw Jeremy’s old Daihatsu 4×4, which Nat must be using, and Ben’s MG, and that was all.

‘If only,’ Nat said.

The letter was crinkly and discoloured, and some of the print had smudged. Amber flattened it out on the baronial island unit, slid it across to Jane and switched on the halogen spotlights.

‘I had to dry it on the stove. Ben threw it in the sink on his way out.’

‘Oh.’ Jane looked at the letter but didn’t pick it up. ‘It’s OK to...?’

‘Please do,’ Amber said. ‘Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of the night wondering why he’s drinking too much and smashing things. Anyway, you’re one of us now.’

Jane felt a grateful blush coming on. She picked up the letter. It was printed on what she guessed to be very expensive, fine-quality vellum, and it was brief and kind of shocking.

The Baker Street League

Dear Foley,

As expected, the management committee of The League has confirmed my decision in regard to its annual conference and the Stanner Hall Hotel.

I was mildly diverted to hear of your intention to develop the link between the hotel, Doyle and The Hound. However, as the majority of my members firmly reject this theory, they did not feel it would be appropriate to associate the name of The League with your establishment.

Sincerely,

pp Dr N.P. Kennedy,

Hon. Secretary.

Jane let the letter fall to the island unit. ‘PP? And it’s not even signed by anybody. That’s like... deliberately insulting, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s... probably just careless.’ Amber’s doll-like face was squashed-in with strain, her hair pushed back over her high forehead.

‘Amber, the bastard blatantly led Ben to think you were going to get the conference. I heard him.’

Natalie pushed the letter away with a forefinger. ‘He was hardly going to say that to Ben’s face, was he?’

‘Yeah, but he...’ Jane felt personally hurt, remembering the way that Ben had forced himself to smarm the guy. That’s terrific, Neil.

‘Perhaps Kennedy had pressures we don’t know about,’ Amber said. ‘There’s nothing we can do, anyway.’

‘You did say Ben knew other members of this outfit, though, didn’t you? Maybe he can find out what the real reason is.’

‘That probably is the real reason, Jane. They don’t believe the story. They think we’re pulling some scam.’

Jane sat down on a wooden stool. ‘I don’t really understand what that’s about – The Hound of the Baskervilles. When I read the book, it was set in Devon.’

‘Dartmoor.’ Amber leaned over her corner of the island, elbows on a double oven glove with burn marks on it.

‘The Grimpen Mire.’ Jane shuddered. In the book, a wild pony had been sucked to its death in the bog; she’d hated reading that. She’d probably been about twelve. She’d hated what happened to the hound, too. She might have wept at the time. And, anyway, it was all a con. You were led to believe it was going to be supernatural, and it wasn’t. ‘So like, is there some suggestion that Conan Doyle wrote it here?’

Amber shook her head. ‘Not exactly. The story hangs on the legend of a ghostly hound which is a sign of death for the Baskerville family. So, OK, there was a Baskerville family in this area. Long-established, wealthy... They had a castle or something at Eardisley, which is only about six miles up the road. And there’s a pub called the Baskerville Arms over at Clyro, which is just over the other side of Brilley Mountain.’

‘And did they have a ghostly hound?’

‘No, but the Vaughan family did. They lived at Hergest Court, which is only a mile or so away from here, across the valley. There was a hound that was supposed to mean death for someone in the family if it was seen. And it has been seen. Apparently. Over the years.’

‘To this day?’

Amber shrugged. ‘There are no Vaughans left now. Anyway, Conan Doyle is supposed to have been related to either the Baskervilles or the Vaughans – maybe both, I don’t remember – and it’s believed that he stayed here, in this house, to research the story. Or he heard it while he was staying here. Or something.’

Jane was impressed. If this was true it was well worth all Ben’s efforts. ‘But why would Conan Doyle switch the story to Devon?’

‘We don’t know,’ Amber said. ‘As Kennedy says in his letter, a lot of Holmes enthusiasts reject the Welsh Border theory entirely, because there’s also a Devon legend that fits. Maybe Doyle liked the name Baskerville enough to want to use it but didn’t want to implicate the actual family, so he set the novel somewhere where there aren’t any obvious Baskervilles.’

Jane thought of the stone hounds on the Stanner Hall gateposts. ‘Did the Baskervilles have anything to do with this house?’

‘Not that we know of. It was built by a family called Chancery. It must have been fairly new at the time the book came out in 1902. But it was built to look historic, so maybe it gave Conan Doyle an idea of what he wanted. I mean, it certainly looks more like the Baskerville Hall he describes in the book than Hergest Court does. Just a farmhouse now.’

‘Honey, it’s how novelists work,’ Natalie said. ‘You take a bit of this, bit of that, and muddle it all up so that there are no comebacks.’

Jane recalled something else. ‘A woman brought it up at the murder weekend. She wanted Ben to talk about it, but he hinted he was saving it.’

‘Well, of course he was,’ Amber said. ‘He was saving it for the annual conference of The Baker Street League. The plan was that Ben would get The League to endorse the evidence that this place is quite possibly the real Baskerville Hall, and then we’d start publicizing it. And, at the same time, Antony—’

There was a loud clink and a muted splash. Natalie had tossed a soup ladle into one of the sinks. She stood with her hands on her narrow hips, annoyed.

‘It’s all my fault. If I’d bothered to check out Kennedy on the Net before Ben had invited him, we’d all have realized that, as he was born in bloody Tavistock, he might not have been an ardent supporter of the theory that The Hound had sod-all to do with Devon.’

‘How much does all this matter?’ Jane asked.

‘You can’t do all his thinking for him, Nat,’ Amber said. ‘He gets an idea and he’s off. Doesn’t do his homework. He didn’t even know Kennedy had scotched the Herefordshire theory in at least two of his own books.’ She turned to Jane. ‘Dartmoor gets a lot of Hound-related tourism – Americans, Japanese. It’s like King Arthur in Cornwall: they don’t exactly want to share it.’

Jane gazed around the vast kitchen. The high windows were full of pine tops and dark purple dusk. It wasn’t very warm in here.

‘What will you do now?’

Amber shrugged. ‘Ben’s still desperately trying to get hold of Antony, to put him off for a couple of weeks while he rethinks everything. He won’t give up. He can’t. We’ve very little money left, and if we sell up now we sell at a loss.’

‘Who’s Antony?’

‘What?’ Amber closed her eyes, opened them and blinked a few times, shaking her head despairingly. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Jane, I thought you knew about that. Antony Largo. Old mate of Ben’s from Beeb days. Independent producer, documentaries. There’s a series that his outfit’s putting together for Channel Four, called Punching the Clock, about successful people hitting hard times and having to make a new start in mid-life. So Antony approaches Ben, and Ben tells him to stuff it – I mean, he refuses to think of himself as being in mid-life, for a start. It’s always the beginning for Ben.’

Jane smiled. It was one of the aspects of Ben she most approved of.

‘But it started him thinking,’ Amber said, ‘and he told Antony about his plans to pinch a piece of the Sherlock Holmes tourist trade, and now he’s half-sold him on the idea of a separate documentary on all of that. Which would have launched the whole thing nationally – brought us a lot of publicity for the hotel and some sort of fee, presumably.’

‘Also,’ Nat said, ‘the crew would have to stay somewhere, so that would tide us over the lean period before Christmas.’

Amber looked doubtful. ‘Crews aren’t what they used to be. It’s usually one person with a Handycam from Boots. And they’d have been doing most of their filming during the conference of The Baker Street League, when we’d be full up anyway. But that... obviously doesn’t apply any more. We’re stuffed.’

She picked up the double oven glove and slid her hands into it and covered her eyes. Jane wasn’t sure if this was a comic gesture or concealment of actual tears. She imagined Ben telling Amber about the idyllic country-house hotel he’d found for them: open log fires, big, warm, traditional kitchen where she could work her magic. Cosy and romantic. Amber not realizing then that Ben’s idea of romance was a howling in the night and a fiery hound on the moors.

Natalie walked over and put an arm around Amber. The worldly big sister, taller and leaner and more together. ‘We can still do something. We can rescue something.’

‘We need more time, and we haven’t got it. Antony’s booked in for tonight, Ben can’t reach him on his mobile. He could turn up any time.’ Amber lowered the oven gloves; her eyes were dry. ‘Look at this place. It’s like some old workhouse.’

‘No, it’s cool,’ Jane said. ‘Really.’

‘It’s bloody freezing, Jane. I keep on at Ben to check out this damp patch under the stairs, and he avoids it. He thinks burst pipes mystically seal themselves. This makes it four leaks we’ve had since the autumn. Does that augur well?’

Jane looked up through the window, moving to her right so that one of the ridges of Stanner Rocks came into view. It was a proven scientific fact that Stanner Rocks were strange, because of the Standing Wave that altered the climate, the comparative darkness of the rock itself, holding the heat, and the thin soil where plants grew that you couldn’t find anywhere else in Britain. Jane felt that, in ancient times, Stanner Rocks would have been sacred, like some gloomy, miniature form of Ayer’s Rock in Australia.

‘I mean, until you live in a place like this you never realize what plumbing’s about,’ Amber wailed. ‘There’s miles of pipe – miles.’

‘I mean there’s an energy here,’ Jane said. ‘And it’s right on the Border. On the edge.’

‘We’re all on the edge,’ Amber said bitterly.

Ben, however, when he strode into the kitchen, seemed to have recovered – now apparently relishing the adversity, refocused.

‘I think... we’ll put Antony in the tower room.’

‘You couldn’t stop him?’ Amber said in dismay.

‘I stopped trying.’ Ben, in tight black jeans and a white shirt, was swaying like a tightrope walker re-establishing his balance. ‘The more I think about it, we don’t need the bloody Baker Street League. What we have is strong enough.’

‘Oh God,’ Amber said.

‘You don’t mind going back to your old room for a couple of nights, do you, Jane?’

‘She already has,’ Amber said. ‘Why do you want to put Antony Largo in the tower room?’

‘More of an atmosphere.’ Ben smiled at Jane. ‘Don’t you think?’

Jane must have blushed or something, because Ben smirked and said, ‘Nip up and open the windows, Jane, would you, and give the bedding a shake.’

‘Right.’

Oh well... Up the steps into the lobby, which now merged with the hall. Up the baronial stairs...

And when you got to the top of the first flight and turned right, through the fire doors, into the ill-lit passage towards the west, it was clear why this part of the house – although it probably had the best rooms – had been set aside by the Foleys as staff quarters.

The problem was, it had been dragged into the 1960s or 1970s and left there. The walls were lined with woodchip, probably to hide the damp, and it was dim and dusty, a languid light drifting from a tall, narrow window at the bottom of the passage. This area of the house needed a lot of money spending on it. Money they probably thought they’d have to spare, but now it had gone, on the basics: keeping the damp out and the heat in. Or trying to.

The first room, convenient for the stairs, was Ben and Amber’s own. What must it have been like when they first arrived here, and they were the only people sleeping in this huge house? This was Mum’s problem with Ledwardine Vicarage magnified about four times. A lot of the time, even now, Ben and Amber would be alone here during the week. Most of the part-time staff – cleaners and waiters – came in daily during the summer, or when there were guests.

‘Jane!’ The fire doors clicking together. It was Ben. ‘Forgot to give you the key.’

He strode ahead of her down the passage, near to the end, unlocking the last door on the right. Actually, she was quite glad to have him here with her. Stupid, huh?

Inside the door, there were steps up into the actual tower, and then another door. When Jane had first started work here, she’d been flattered and excited to be given the room under the witch’s-hat tower. OK, it was big, cold, needed redecorating, but it was, like, you know... the room under the witch’s-hat tower.

Ben put on the light. The room had gloomy maroon flock wallpaper, pretty old, and less than half as much furniture as a space this size needed to look vaguely comfortable – the three-quarter divan, the wooden stool serving as a bedside table, the mahogany wardrobe with the cracked mirror.

The aim, apparently, was to create an en-suite bathroom at one end, and this was actually essential before you could legitimately charge anyone for spending a night here and experiencing those incredible views across Hergest Ridge into Wales.

With the light on, all you could see through the triple windows now was a thin slash of electric mauve low in the sky, like the light under a door. Ben stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his hands.

‘Couldn’t take it, then, Jane?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You wanted out.’

‘Well, you know... look at it. It’s like sleeping in... in somewhere too big.’

‘That’s all?’

‘All?’

‘No other reason?’

‘Should there be?’ Sod this; she was giving nothing away – she was going to make him say it.

Ben leaned over his folded arms, rocking slightly. ‘So you had a perfectly untroubled night’s sleep.’

‘Don’t people usually?’

‘One of the builders – when we were having the partition wall taken down, between the hall and lobby – he stayed in here, and he didn’t want to spend a second night.’

‘Oh?’

‘He thought it was haunted.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh... noises, he reckoned. Breathing. And he said he thought he saw a woman’s shape outlined against the window. Next morning, he was not a happy man. Said he thought we’d set him up.’

Jane struggled to bring up a smile. ‘Did you set me up?’

‘I thought... well, you’re quite interested in this sort of thing, aren’t you? Weird stuff.’

‘So-so. Ghosts are a bit... I mean, they’re usually just imprints, aren’t they? Emotional responses trapped in the atmosphere. Nothing to worry about.’ She was furious – the bastard. ‘I mean, I wish you’d told me...’

‘You’d have been expecting something then. Pointless exercise. So you wouldn’t mind moving back sometime, if necessary?’

‘Look, Ben, I wouldn’t mind spending a night in a sleeping bag on a station platform, but I’d rather have an ordinary-sized room, thanks.’

Ben grinned. ‘Ah, Jane.’

‘What?’

‘I should’ve realized the most important thing for you would be retaining your cool.’

‘Look, my mother’s—’

He lifted an eyebrow. Did he know? She thought not.

‘My mother’s a vicar. They’re not bothered by this sort of... you know.’

‘Right,’ Ben said.

That was close. She didn’t want Mum involved in anything here. This was her separate thing.

‘So you’re going to try this guy, erm... in here.’

‘Antony Largo. If you think you’re cool...’

‘I don’t!’ Jane said, smarting, going to turn down the bed clothes.

Ben smiled and shook his head and wandered out.

Left alone, Jane shook out the duvet, remembering how, when she’d come up here to dump her case that first night last weekend, and then gone down to get something to eat, she’d returned at bedtime to find the duvet had been roughly thrown back, as if someone had started to make the bed and then abandoned it.

That could’ve been Ben, couldn’t it? Setting her up.

Otherwise, just an imprint. Just an emotional response trapped in the atmosphere.

Jane sorted the bed and didn’t hang around.

5 Drink Problem

THEY’D MOVED THE bed so that it faced the window and the lights of West Malvern. From this position, on a dark night, it looked as though the lights were away in the sky, big stars. And you could feel safe, for a while.

Lol said thoughtfully, ‘Does this mean you get your own cult?’

Merrily sat up. The lights of West Malvern were now quite clearly just tall, narrow buildings on a hill.

‘All the lanes around Ledwardine full of crutches and sticks abandoned by the roadsides,’ Lol said.

‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’

And then she started to laugh, and it was one of those laughs that you could feel in your toes and the tips of your fingers and the pit of your stomach. Therapeutic, probably – a healing laugh. Oh God. Not two hours ago, she’d fed Ethel, the cat, left a second cat-meal in the timer bowl for the morning and then driven quietly away. Driven over to the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio in the Frome Valley, for the healing – Van Morrison sang that. Such an easy, guiltless word.

The granary was a two-room tower house reached by exterior stone steps. Lol’s temporary home. Romantic. The trysting place.

He was watching Merrily, an elbow propped on the pillow to lean on. He had his little round brass-rimmed glasses on.

‘Sorry. The last time we talked about this, you were a bit nervous, but it didn’t seem like anything you couldn’t handle.’ He sat up beside her. ‘What happened?’

Where to start? She told him about Alice Meek and her nephew. And about a letter this morning from a woman in Hereford whose grandchild had cerebral palsy. Nobody she knew. The letter concluding: I said to my husband that the doctors were hopeless, so we ought to give the Church a last chance.

‘Last chance?’ Lol said. ‘Save my child or else?’

‘Show us some action, or you’re finished. And the point is, they can finish us. It’s like if you do a gig and only two people turn up... no more gigs. And gigs are what the Church is about. Hence Alpha, all the dynamic, youth-oriented stuff. A good gig. You gotta do a good gig.’

‘But isn’t that what you’re doing on Sunday nights?’

‘Well, I thought so. Only it wasn’t meant to be a healing gig. It was about, I dunno, helping people develop an inner life? But you discover that most people don’t want an inner life. They just want a good outer life, and you need to be fit and healthy for that, and if the Church can take away your ailments, hey, that’s cool. Magic. Like, if you look at the medieval Church, all those pilgrimages to the holy shrines with sick relatives on stretchers, hundreds of amazing cures attributed to St Thomas of Hereford. The Church works magic, so the Church becomes rich and influential.’

‘You’re still identifying more with Celtic hermits in caves?’

‘Maybe they were even worse. Nothing to be responsible for.’ Merrily’s head sank down into the pillow. ‘Healing’s about taking responsibility. How can you take responsibility for something that—?’

‘That you can’t totally believe is going to happen?’

‘God help me.’

‘What about this bloke?’

‘It can happen.’ She rolled away. ‘I mean, it can.’ She was sweating. ‘Jesus, am I ever going to be big enough for this job?’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Canon Jeavons. Llewellyn Jeavons. Llewellyn with two Ls, Canon with two Ns.’

‘As in loose?’

‘That’s what he said on the phone. He jokes around a lot.’

‘He doesn’t have a problem with it, then.’

‘Evidently not.’ She turned back to face Lol. ‘But then he’s a bloke.’

‘Crass and insensitive?’

‘Confident of his tradition.’

Lol said, ‘What’s basically wrong with this idea of a healing group? Responsibility shared with Catholics and Methodists and... whoever.’

‘Pentecostalists?’

Lol sighed. ‘If you must.’ His parents had been out on that fevered frontier, accusing him of amplifying the Devil’s music, then swapping his picture on the mantelpiece for one of Jesus Christ. This had been one of the principal milestones on the road to Victoria Ward and the syringe-wielding Dr Gascoigne, immortalized in the creepy, cathartic ‘Heavy Medication Day’, on the new album.

‘It’s probably the best solution,’ Merrily said. ‘But it’s got to be more than healing. I don’t want to run an all-singing, all-dancing medicine show.’

‘Sometimes healing’s a by-product. Like when you’re in love, you feel healthier.’

‘That’s a good point. Holistic.’

She felt better. More complete. It should always be like this. Yesterday, she’d thought it could be; she hadn’t told him why, and there didn’t seem much point now.

However, later, lying spooned on the rim of sleep, she heard Lol’s voice: hesitant, feeling his breath warm on her ear in the darkness.

‘There’s a house. In Ledwardine.’

A hollow moment.

‘For sale.’ Lol said.

‘Oh.’

‘A small, terraced house in Church Street. Did you know?’

‘Lucy’s house,’ she said. ‘No, I didn’t know, not until... it was in yesterday’s Hereford Times.’

‘And the week before’s. I found it while I was making a fire with the paper. It kind of leapt up at me.’

‘I only saw it yesterday. You’d think someone would have...’

But why should anyone have told her about it? For the past year, it had just been a weekend cottage for two solicitors from Luton. They never came to church; she’d met them, once, briefly. It was a small investment; they didn’t care whose house it had been, and because they weren’t there during the week no estate agent’s sign had gone up.

‘I’m never going to be a star,’ Lol said, ‘but it looks like I might make a living out of it for a while. Enough to cobble together a deposit. If I do the tour and the album sells a few. Can’t stay here indefinitely, Prof needs the space. Every time somebody comes in to record, I’m back in the loft over the studio. It’s not really convenient for anybody.’

‘Did you ring them up about it – the agents?’

‘I thought I’d better talk to you first.’

Lol was rebuilding foundations. He’d faced an audience again after many years, some of them spent on psychiatric wards. Circumstances had meant she hadn’t been there for him when the unforgiving lights came up; she never again wanted him to feel alone.

‘Lol...’ Her throat was dry. ‘It’s gone. It’s sold.’

‘The house?’

‘I’m so sorry. I rang the agents this morning.’

A cloudy silence. Across the room, the lights of Malvern blurred, and she realized that her eyes had filled with tears.

Lol said, ‘You rang the agents?’

‘Well, I... It just seemed like the answer to the problem. Separate houses, just two minutes’ walk away. I thought it must be meant. I thought how delighted Lucy Devenish would have been to have you living there. And I thought that if you couldn’t raise the deposit, maybe we could somehow do it jointly.’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Of course.’

Lol expelled a long breath and put both his arms around her.

Christ. She closed her eyes; the last thing she wanted was for him to feel grateful.

‘But it’s gone,’ she said.

Gone. In the paper for a whole week, and we never saw it. And then we both did, too late. Like it wasn’t meant to happen at all, and the point was being underlined for us.

‘It’s become a very desirable place, Ledwardine,’ Merrily said. She shivered slightly, unaccountably, in his arms. A goose walking over her grave.

For a time – just around the time he was realizing he wasn’t never going to make it as a rock star, or even out of farming – Danny Thomas had been into some serious drinking. Never quite an alky, mind, but his name was written in big, dripping letters on the walls of half a dozen pubs in Kington and the Radnor Valley.

It ended when he got banned for a year. Greta wasn’t up for ferrying him to and from the half-dozen pubs, so that was it: Danny stayed home. Cheaper than the Betty Ford clinic, and the music was better.

And it was during this period of near-abstinence that he’d come to realize that what he needed more than the booze was crowds sometimes – loud, mindless crowds. So when he’d got his licence back he’d rationed himself to two nights a week and made sure he didn’t go out until half an hour before closing time, when the pubs was packed and so many folks was pissed it was almost contagious.

Which was how come Danny missed all the action tonight, down at the Eagle in New Radnor, when Sebbie Three Farms had to be escorted to his Range Rover.

They was all still talking about it when Danny arrived at twenty past ten. All familiar faces in here tonight, from Gwilym Bufton, the feed dealer, ole Joe Cadwallader, from Harpton, young Robin Thorogood, the American from Old Hindwell, with his missus and his walking stick.

‘Moves like lightning, has him up against the wall, both hands round his neck, knee in his crotch,’ Gwilym said. ‘Never seen Sebbie move as fast – not after seven Scotches, anyway.’

‘So who was this?’ Danny asked, fetching his beer over. ‘Who was Sebbie having a go at?’

‘Tommy Francis, Felinfawr.’ Gwilym shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Tommy Francis! Been mates since Tommy had the hunt kennels. Only feller yereabouts dares take the piss out of Sebbie. Went too far tonight, mind. Oh hell, aye.’

‘Thought he was gonner kill him,’ Jed Begley said. Jed, who built scrambling bikes the other side of Evenjobb, did a fair impression of Sebbie. ‘ “Whadja mean by that, hey? Whadja mean?” ’

‘But what did he say?’ Danny asked him. ‘What did Tommy say?’

‘All he said—’ Gwilym looked round for support. ‘All he said was, “Must be frustratin’ for you, seein’ that boy comin’ home to this tasty piece, thinkin’ what’s he got that I en’t?” That right?’

‘Close,’ Robin Thorogood said. ‘Surprised the hell out of me, way the guy reacted.’

‘It’s about ground, it is,’ Gwilym said. ‘Always comes back to ground round yere. Sebbie won’t never be happy till he’s lord of all he surveys, and he can’t survey all his ground from any direction without he closes one eye to block out The Nant.’

‘And who in his right mind’s gonner close an eye, woman like that around,’ Jed Begley said, and people laughed.

Not Danny, though. He’d last seen Jeremy and this Natalie here at the Eagle, when he and his new partner, Gomer, had dropped in to grab some lunch, week or so back. This Natalie with a half of lager, Jeremy with his usual limeade – and this unmistakable stiff quietness around them. Well, Danny’d been in that situation himself enough times, him and Gret. But this kind of atmosphere so early in a courting boded no particular good. Jeremy’s face, for the first time ever, had seemed lined and creased and there was a brightness in his eyes that was like harsh sunshine in a leaden sky.

‘Been bloody strange lately, mind,’ Jed Begley went on. ‘Look at them gun-boys. Did Sebbie hire them boys, or en’t he?’

Danny had heard of this: shooters on the prowl. ‘Welshies, ennit?’

‘South Wales, aye. Hired to shoot foxes.’

‘Do that make sense?’ Danny said. ‘Sebbie’s the flamin’ hunt.’

‘Barry Roberts at the Arrow Valley Gun Club, he don’t get it neither,’ Jed Begley said. ‘And he en’t happy. ’Sides, you seen more foxes than normal lately? I en’t. No, see, what you got with Dacre is a drink problem. Plus, he’s mad.’

‘Got his own agenda, and he plays his cards close,’ Gwilym said. ‘Always has done. Danny knows.’

Danny nodded, said nothing. Sebbie Dacre, Sebbie Three Farms: magistrate, master of the hunt, robber baron of the Marches, with this fancy but phoney Norman coat of arms over his porch and his customized Range Rover. What passed for gentry these days – an apology for it, in Danny’s view, but Sebbie was influential, supported the local shops and the pubs and the feed dealers, and he employed local labour – well, normally he did.

Sebbie Dacre and Jeremy Berrows had lived side by side all Jeremy’s life, with no socializing but no real trouble... although if you stood on any one of Jeremy’s boundaries you could feel Sebbie glowering like storm clouds massing. This was because Sebbie’s ole man, having bought Emrys Morgan’s farm, had put in a good bid for The Nant that was wedged between Emrys’s farm and the Dacre estate, but the owners – Sebbie’s own relations – had sold it to the Berrowses instead, for no good reason except that they liked the Berrowses. Which was no reason at all, in Sebbie’s view.

‘En’t been the same since he got divorced,’ Jed said. ‘What’s that – ten years now? Not so much losin’ the wife and kid as what her cost him, plus the fees for Big Weale. Which is why he don’t let women get closer than a quick bang, n’more. And here’s Jeremy Berrows and this totally spectac’lar woman, delivered to his doorstep.’ Jed going back into Sebbie-speak. ‘ “What’s this, hey? What’s this about?” Should’ve seen him drive off, Danny, when we finally got him in his motor. Hunches over the wheel, crunching his bloody gears. You wouldn’t wanner be on the same road.’

‘Like his nan,’ ole Joe Cadwallader said suddenly, in his high voice.

Gwilym bent down to him. ‘Wassat, Joe?’

‘His nan. You’re all too bloody young, that’s the trouble. His nan, her used to go to the pub in Gladestry – ’fore the war, this was. Idea of a woman goin’ in a pub on her own, them days... unheard of. Idea of a woman drinkin’ pints... well! Idea of a woman goin’ to the pub, havin’ six pints then gettin’ behind the wheel of a big ole car...’

‘Jeez,’ Robin Thorogood said. ‘She never kill anybody?’

Ole Joe Cadwallader didn’t reply because Robin Thorogood was from Off. He just looked around – big smile, gaping mouth like an abandoned quarry.

‘Whoop, whoop,’ he said, and then he finished his Guinness.

The discussion died then, people drifting away. Last orders had been and gone. Danny drifted to the door and was sure he heard ole Joe Cadwallader, still sitting there behind him, going very quietly, like a whistling wind, ‘Whoop, whoop.’

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the wind came in from Wales and rattled the eaves and made the pines shiver.

Jane rolled out of bed, wrapped herself in her fleece and went to the window. Amber was right, it was freezing here, and it wasn’t even December yet. But that was OK; she wasn’t a guest, she wasn’t expected to be warm.

She’d spent two hours helping Amber finish redecorating another bedroom. Tarting the place up, Amber had said desperately, in case they ever needed to accommodate a conference, ho, ho. Well, it was more fun than cleaning lavatories and changing bedding, and Jane was starting to take the injustice of this situation personally now. These were good people who worked hard, even if Ben was inclined to mess people around like he was still working in TV.

In a way, she was drawn to his philosophy. Life’s like television – if it’s on the screen it must have happened. Well, why not? It was a way of actually making things happen. Or like amending reality. Amber had talked about it in a disparaging way, as though she didn’t understand why it was so intoxicating.

Jane understood. She’d been going out with Eirion for nearly a year now, and Eirion was obsessed with getting into the visual media. And she herself... well, only another year at school after this one. Decisions had to be made.

Through the window – there was a crack in the pane and a thin draught oozing through it – she could see a vague, orangey moon, and the clouds were sliding across it like they were on fast-forward.

This little room wasn’t quite an attic, and there were much better views from inside the witch’s-hat tower, but it was high enough to overlook some of the forestry, and you could see across to the long plateau of Hergest Ridge and the sombre conifers under the moon. And down to the Celtic Border, this seam in the earth, the secret snake which sometimes awoke and writhed. She experienced that familiar longing to feel the Border and all it represented: points of transition, cultures in collision.

But not from the tower room, thank you.

There was something about that room that was essentially mind-shrinking. Unpleasant, basically. Haunted rooms were fascinating, but not on your own. If Eirion was here – the irresistible smile, the allegedly puppy-fat spare tyre – well, that would be a whole different ball game. That could’ve been... almost fun.

Only she hadn’t seen him in a fortnight. And in a couple of weeks’ time, when they should be getting together for the Christmas holidays – intimate hours in candlelit corners – he would instead be on a plane with his wealthy Welsh family, bound for St Moritz or one of those other cheesy, overpriced, overcrowded playgrounds for bored tossers. It had been arranged months ago, before she had this job, and she could have gone with them – OK, so her mother was only a vicar on a pittance but they could have worked something out.

Sure they could. Could have applied for a Lottery grant.

Jane felt resentful and unsettled.

A tiny light was moving somewhere below the ridge. A white light, bobbing, as if someone was carrying it. Perhaps the shooters again. The shooters who Ben had ordered off his land. Men with guns at night: bad news.

Or maybe just Jeremy. Clancy said Jeremy would sometimes creep out in the night to check on his stock. Jeremy was married to his farm, Clancy had said, which didn’t hold out much hope for her mother. And Jane had thought, Huh? – wondering how Clancy managed to see it that way around. When you saw Natalie, this cool, careless beauty, with Jeremy, this stocky, hesitant little farmer with limited communication skills and hair like the fluff you found under the bed, you were like, What? However this unlikely liaison had come about, Jeremy must feel like it was his birthday every day it lasted.

The bobbing light went out, or it disappeared into the forestry or something. Shedding her fleece, Jane went back to her single bed, wishing Eirion was here. Like here, now. The ironic thing was that Eirion had admitted he’d rather be coming here, talking to Ben, meeting some of the telly people – not so much the stars as the producers – who, according to Ben, were likely to drop in over the festive season. Like, this documentary guy, for instance, Largo. Eirion could talk their language; he’d done work experience at HTV Wales – other kids got to hang around behind the counter in the NatWest bank, Eirion spent a fortnight with a documentary team.

Family connections, Daddy’s directorships.

A distant gunshot had her springing back from the bed, back to the window.

Nothing. No lights.

They were very close last night, she’d said to Ben last Sunday when they’d come in from the rain and he’d been raging about the gun club.

Yeah. So close, one of them was right inside her head. She’d awoken in the tower room – must have been about three in the morning – with this single colossal angry bang deep inside her head... this swelling, echoing explosion that awoke her instantly, absolutely cold with fear, immediately thinking – the way you always thought at three in the morning – of a brain tumour or something, and she’d felt just totally... sick. Nauseous, headachy and – considering the size of that room – so horribly claustrophobic that she’d rushed to open the window, sliding her head under the sash into the freezing night.

There. It was out. She’d relived it.

And it was, of course, probably something for Mum.

And Mum was the reason she’d said nothing. This was what she did separate from Mum. The Independent Working Woman on the Border did not go crying to her mum.

Jane wrapped herself in the duvet and lay on her back with her eyes wide open to the grey window. It was crap when something awoke you in the night. You wanted to be alive to the magic in life, but all you could see was the injustice of everything, and the fragility and the darkness beyond the glass.

6 Beastie

THE BREAKFAST TABLE was a battleground, and Ben was on his knees.

When Jane came in with the extra toast that nobody had asked for, Antony Largo, the independent producer, was saying. ‘No, no, that is a wee bit unfair, pal, I certainly wouldnae use the word shite.’

Largo must have got in very late last night. He didn’t look like he’d had much sleep – that room? – and he wasn’t eating much of the food that Jane was putting out for him and Ben. Breakfast was good for eavesdropping because you could make frequent trips to and from the kitchen with fruit juice and toast and coffee, and you could hang around a lot in the doorway.

Ben was in his jogging gear, hanging back in his chair, probably thinking he was looking fit and relaxed and glowing. In fact, he looked nervous, and he was laughing too much. Jane was wincing inside for him.

The dining room at Stanner Hall was long and chilly, its end wall encrusted with a chipped and faded coat-of-arms over the fireplace where unlit logs were piled into a dog-grate. Opposite was this church-size Gothic window, which still had some stained glass in veins of cold blue and blood red. The two men were sitting under the window, next to a flaking grey concertina radiator that made more noise than heat.

‘OK,’ Antony Largo said, ‘we’re mates, we go back, I can think aloud with you.’ He gave Ben this level stare, amusement in his eyes. ‘You tell me: where’s the contemporary dynamic? Where’s the now drama coming from?’

Bloodied sunlight flared on Ben’s forehead. He’d have done his usual run, down the drive in the early mist, up through the forestry and back into the gardens. Working up an excuse for the sweat.

‘Actors,’ Ben said.

Antony Largo studied the toast. The set of his shoulders said give me strength. He said patiently, ‘We talked about that. We said we could ship over a few famous faces from your illustrious past, old friends sampling the accommodation. That is no’ a difficulty.’

‘That’s not—’ Ben picked up the silver pepper-pot, and Jane thought for a moment that he was going to whizz it at Largo’s head, but he just brought it down again on the tablecloth to emphasize a point. ‘That’s not what I meant. If we have one fairly prominent actor playing Doyle, this would be the only speaking part. All the rest – Vaughan, Ellen – would be shadowy figures, half seen... in black and white or sepia, so that’s—’

‘Yeah, yeah, it’d be entirely workmanlike, and perfectly acceptable at seven p.m. on Channel Five. This is peak-hour Channel 4 and requires viscera. Sorry, pal, it still leaves me half a dozen good thrusts short of a decent climax.’ Antony Largo looked up at Jane and winked. ‘My apologies, hen.’

Jane grinned. Antony Largo leaned back and poured himself some coffee. With a name like that, you expected Armani and suave; what you got were faded old denims and this honed Glasgow scepticism. He was about thirty-five, and wiry, with oiled black hair. He had one ear-stud and a hard, blue-grey stubble. He looked like one of those guys who stayed fit without jogging and never put on weight – an honorary life member of the gymnasium of the street.

‘Antony.’ Ben laughed again, his anxiety lines deepening. ‘Why do you always, always start off by talking everything down?’

‘This is not tactics, pal.’ Antony leaned forward, shaking his head slowly. ‘Way back, when there was advertising coming out the networks’ ears, money falling from the sky, we just fenced around a bit, for appearances’ sake. But that was then, this is now – Independent TV drama belly-up and barely twitching.’

‘Yes, but drama-documentary—’

‘... Is the new drama, yeah. Doco is the new drama. But a doco with no contemporary propulsion, no plot line? OK. See it from my angle. I walk in there and I go, This is about where the Sherlock Holmes guy got his idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles, but hey, it’s not what you think. And they’re going, Why would we think anything? Why would we give a fart?’

‘Because...’ Ben looked up and saw Jane, who realized she must be standing there, blatantly listening, maybe with her head on one side and her mouth slightly open. She turned away and started rearranging things on her tray. ‘Thank you very much, Jane,’ Ben said, meaning Piss off. His laughter had gone tepid.

‘Sorry.’ Jane gave him an uncomfortable smile and slalomed away between tables that didn’t match. At one time, there would have been a single banqueting job down the middle of the room; now the small separate tables looked mean and utility, kind of cafeteria. Symptomatic of what was wrong with this place.

She didn’t hear Ben explaining to Antony how he thought the TV people could be made to care. Which would have been interesting.

Passing the foot of the main stairs, Jane could hear the bagpipe wheeze of Amber vacuuming up there – staying well out of it. Natalie was bustling in from the lobby, long legs in tight black jeans, red leather coat over her arm.

‘That the TV guy’s car, Jane? The old Lexus?’

‘Probably.’ Jane glanced over her shoulder. ‘Ben’s struggling. I don’t think he’s even got round to telling the guy there’s not going to be a Holmes conference.’

‘Oh.’

‘Essentially, they’re talking at cross purposes.’ Jane put down her tray on the second step; the upstairs vacuuming droned on, suggesting it was OK to talk. She brought her voice down. ‘Ben’s flogging his Hound line and this Largo’s trying to convey that he’s only interested in Ben’s struggle to revive Stanner.’

When she’d first gone in, with the fruit juice, Ben had been saying how well they were doing. He said he’d altered some bookings to keep the hotel empty so he’d have time to show Largo around. The guy would have had to be blind to fall for that. Where was all the staff, for instance?

‘The hotel trade looks like a pushover till you’re in it,’ Natalie said soberly. ‘I’ll be surprised if they can afford to heat this place through the winter.’

‘It’s that bad?’

Natalie waggled her fingers, suggesting borderline wonky. ‘When you’re full up in summer it feels like the escalator’s never going to stop. In winter, the outgoings mount up. They’ve got three women in Kington on standby for that conference who won’t be happy to stand by in the future.’

Ben ought to listen more to Nat; she had serious qualifications in catering and hotel management. Clancy said her mother had been running a big hotel at Looe, in Cornwall, before suddenly resigning (after a relationship with a man crashed). Then there’d been another admin job, at a motel near Slough, but Clancy had hated the school there and they’d moved on again. When the summer holidays came round, Nat had bought this old camper van and they’d just set off, looking for somewhere that felt right. Being gypsies, Clancy said.

Nat shifted her leather coat from one arm to the other. ‘So this guy’s not interested in The Hound at all?’

‘Only as one of Ben’s wild schemes to attract trade, in this Punching the Clock series. And that would depend on having famous faces – actors, people like that – come to stay. Like out of pity; that’s how it’ll look, won’t it?’

‘Humiliation’s big,’ Nat said. ‘We love to see people going face-down on the concrete. Especially arrogant bastards from glamour jobs.’

Jane nodded morosely, seeing it all now, like she was viewing the rushes – meaningful cutaway shots of damp patches and peeling flock wallpaper; Stanner Hall looking half-derelict under wintry skies; Ben striding around like some manic Basil Fawlty figure. She’d neither seen nor heard anything of Antony Largo until this weekend and, call her psychic, but she guessed that shafting his old mate wouldn’t leave him feeling over-gutted.

The vacuum cleaner cut out. Jane glanced up the stairs, which had a new red carpet – an important buy, according to Ben: make the punters feel special going up to their rooms.

‘She shouldn’t be doing that. I should be doing it.’

Nat eyed the tray. ‘She got you to serve breakfast instead, because she wants to stay in the background. Bloody shame, Jane. A class chef.’

And you’re an experienced hotel manager, Jane thought. Yet here you both are. But she didn’t say anything about that because Ben and Antony Largo had emerged from the dining room, Largo saying, ‘... Oh, right down the shitter, ma friend, no question there. I’m no’ saying you didn’t get out at the right time, I just think there might’ve been better ways of—’

He stopped. He’d seen Natalie, and he was looking at her the way male guests tended to. She was standing in a diagonal funnel of sun from the long window on the first landing. She looked typically gorgeous and typically unaware of it.

‘This is Natalie Craven.’ Ben took a step that put him between Nat and Antony. ‘Natalie’s my... house manager.’

Nat raised an eyebrow. Antony put his head on one side. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re no’ an actress by any chance?’ When Nat started to shake her head and he could see she wasn’t smiling, he went on hurriedly, with a thickening of the accent, ‘Wisnae meant to be an insult, Natalie, I just thought Ben might’ve called in some old... favour.’

‘She doesn’t owe me any favours,’ Ben said tightly.

‘Hey!’ Antony put up his hands. ‘No offence, pal.’

‘None taken.’ Ben was looking a little weary now. ‘Nat, if you see Amber anywhere, can you tell her I’m taking Antony to the church to, ah, meet the Vaughans.’

‘Or perhaps you’d like to join us,’ Antony said softly to Nat. ‘Be good to get another perspective. I, er, gather the Vaughans don’t have a lot to say these days.’

Nat smiled at him. ‘I’ve been there before. Also, there are people I need to phone. Bookings to make.’ She looked at Ben. ‘Like all the ones you put off this weekend?’ She threw her coat over the reception desk. ‘Why don’t you take Jane? Jane’s got a perspective on most things.’

Ben shrugged. Jane glanced at Natalie, thinking she ought to be upstairs with Amber, cleaning and redecorating. But maybe Nat wanted to find out how this situation worked out, come back with a report.

Cool.

‘Time for your break, surely,’ Nat said, confirming it. ‘And you’ve never met the Vaughans, have you, Jane?’

Kington Parish Church was alone on the edge of the town. From the road it looked like a country church, walled and raised up against the cold sky. Ben didn’t even glance at it, just drove straight past the entrance in his old blue MGB, with the top down. Antony Largo was beside him, Jane fleeced and huddled into the little seat behind them, her hair blown across her face.

‘That was a church, wasn’t it?’ Largo said. ‘The chunky grey thing with the wee spire we just passed?’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’ On the edge of the town centre, Ben had turned right, heading back into the country, raising his voice above the engine’s dirty growl. ‘I’m going to take the story in sequence.’

‘Can we no’ have the damn top up?’

‘It’s jammed, if you must know.’

‘Great.’

‘Do you good, a bit of air.’

‘I know what’d do me good, pal, but we left her behind.’ Largo leaned his head back. ‘That’s no offence to you, Jane, but I don’t think your mother would approve of me.’

‘I wasn’t looking for a new dad, anyway,’ Jane said.

‘Hmm,’ Largo mused. ‘Feisty.’

They came out of a shady lane with detached houses in it, and now they were in hilly countryside. Jane had never been down here before; she had no idea where the road led. The sun was pulsing feebly, a blister behind clouds like strips of yellowing bandage.

‘And you can keep your filthy paws off my staff, Largo,’ Ben said mildly. ‘Natalie’s in a relationship, and she’s bloody good at what she does.’

Largo turned to Ben. ‘How would you even know?’

‘What?’

Something fractured then, Largo bawling at Ben, raising himself up in the bucket seat. ‘Come on, what do you know about the hotel trade? I mean really? What have you done, you maniac? You could’ve found something in the independent sector, no problem, like every other bastard gets dumped by the Beeb. You could’ve gone to Kenny and Zoë Fitzroy. You could’ve come to me, for Christ’s sake! How naive is this? Find you can afford some Disneyesque mansion wi’ wee towers for the price of your Dockland penthouse, and you have to grab it like it’s now or never.’

Ben gripped the wheel. ‘I’ve remarried, in case you failed to notice. I have Amber to consider.’

‘Aye, and that—’

The wind made a grab at Antony Largo’s voice and the folded fabric of the car’s roof flapped violently behind Jane. She sank down in the little seat to hear the rest of the stuff he presumably hadn’t felt able to say inside the hotel.

‘—An artist and turned her into a skivvy. You had to prove you didn’t need any of us: “I’m gonnae show these bastards, I’m getting out of London and create a wee paradise and get m’self fit and youthful again and make them all as sick as pigs.” How naive is that? Truth of it is, you do need us, you arsehole.’

Ben hung grimly on to the wheel, slowing the car, breathing in deeply, swallowing something. ‘The building on your left,’ he said finally, through his teeth, ‘is Hergest Court.’

Disappointing.

Like, it should have been bigger. Must have been bigger once, seeing it was built on a motte, an obvious castle mound above unkempt grounds and what might have been an old pond, even a moat. It was about fifty yards back from the road, part stone, part timbered. The stone end had a sloping roof, the timbered end just stopped.

‘Like it’s been sawn off,’ Jane said.

‘This is only a fragment of what it used to be.’ Ben had reversed into a track of hard mud and turned the car to face the house.

It looked stark, the way buildings with timber framing rarely did. There ought to be wooded hills rising behind it, but there were only the cold fields and the waxy sky. On the sawn-off side were sporadic trees – a gloomy yew, a bent pine – and then some industrial-looking farm buildings.

‘Rather forlorn now, I admit,’ Ben said. ‘Been let out in recent years by the owners. Lived in usually by tenant farmers, and it was even a rural art gallery for a while. You can tell by the mound it’s built on that it used to be fortified, way back.’

‘How far back?’ Jane asked, interested now – more so than if it had been tarted up inside some mock-Elizabethan knot-garden.

‘Well, thirteenth century at least. That’s recorded.’

‘It’s no’ my idea of Baskerville Hall,’ Antony Largo said.

Ben switched off the engine, and the atmosphere between him and Largo seemed to tauten, like some invisible sheet of cellophane dividing the front seats. Jane hunched into a corner of the back seat and kept her hands in the pockets of her fleece. No other vehicle had passed since they’d arrived. No smoke was coming out of any of the three visible chimneys of Hergest Court.

‘By the fifteenth century, it had become the house of the Vaughans,’ Ben said. ‘The most important family in the history of Kington.’

Antony stretched his legs. ‘And they’re your prototype Baskervilles?’

‘There is a long-established Baskerville family in the area, which accounts for the name. But the Vaughans have the history. The central figure is Thomas Vaughan, who switched from the Lancastrian side to the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses. Killed at the Battle of Banbury in 1469. He was known as Black Vaughan.’

‘Naturally,’ Antony said.

Ben frowned. ‘Because of his black hair, apparently. To distinguish him from his brother who had red hair.’

‘Maybe you could just not mention that.’

Jane said quickly, ‘It was Hugo Baskerville in the book, wasn’t it? The guy who was supposed to have brought down the curse on the family?’

‘A wild, profane and godless man, according to Conan Doyle’s Baskerville manuscript.’ Ben turned around to face her. ‘Conan Doyle brings his legend forward almost exactly two centuries, to the time of the Great Rebellion – the English Civil War. So both the historical background and Doyle’s created one feature civil wars which tore the country apart. Doyle puts Hugo in the seventeenth rather than the fifteenth century. It’s exactly how an author would muddy the waters.’

‘And there was a girl, wasn’t there?’ Jane said.

‘A neighbouring yeoman’s daughter whom Hugo fancies and abducts. He drags her back to Baskerville Hall, but she escapes down the ivy from an upstairs room that night, while he and his cronies are getting pissed – the inference being that, hearing their ribald laughter, she suspects that they’re all going to come up and gang-rape her. When Hugo finds that she’s gone, his night’s pleasure denied him, he offers himself, body and soul, to the Powers of Darkness if he can be allowed to catch up with her again. Then he mounts his horse, orders the hunting pack to be unleashed and rides off furiously across the moor, with his hounds, to hunt her down.’

‘Across the moor,’ Antony looked around. ‘Do I see a moor?’

Ben frowned. ‘For which, if we were shooting the scene, we might substitute Hergest Ridge. Which begins’ – he jerked a thumb at where the land rose steeply behind the car – ‘just there. It’s wild, it has its curious features. And Stanner Rocks are surely as brooding as any Dartmoor tor.’

Antony smiled.

‘What happened to the girl?’ Jane asked. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Hugo’s companions go chasing after him,’ Ben said. ‘They’re scared of what he’ll do if he catches up with her. They encounter a night shepherd on the moor who’s in such a state of terror that he can hardly speak. He tells them he’s seen the hounds pursuing the hapless maiden, followed by Hugo on his black mare. And then, silently following Hugo, the worst thing of all.’

‘Another hound.’ Antony Largo laid on this melodramatically spooky Scottish voice, like Private Fraser in those old Dad’s Army episodes. ‘Only bigger... and meaner.’

‘They eventually find the girl in a clearing, dead of fatigue or fear,’ Ben said. ‘And then they find Hugo. And, standing over him, a great black beast, bigger than any hound—’

‘—Ever seen by mortal eyes,’ Antony Largo said.

Ben finally turned to him. ‘You’ve actually read it, then, Antony.’

‘Of course I’ve read it, you tosser, I’m a pro. I do my prep – even for this sh— So, here’s your beastie plucking at Hugo’s throat, and then it finally rips it all away.’ Antony clenched his teeth and growled until his own laughter began to choke him. ‘And it turns on these guys, with its jaws all dripping with blood and flesh and its eyes on fire. And they all shit themselves on the spot and leg it. End of legend.’

Ben didn’t laugh. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Yeah, OK. From then on, if the Hound is heard howling in the night or seen prowling the precincts, then it’s no’ what you’d call a fortunate omen for the Baskervilles.’

‘It means death,’ Ben said.

‘We know that,’ Jane said. ‘But, like, how closely does that match the story of this Black Vaughan?’

Ben didn’t reply. He put his shoulder against the driver’s door, crunched it open and stepped out onto the edge of the road.

‘Obviously, not that closely at all,’ Antony murmured.

Ben leaned against the car. ‘There are actually local people who won’t come down here at night. Don’t smile, Antony, this isn’t the city, this isn’t even the soft country. Vaughan was associated with a black hound, which some sources suggested was in some way satanic. Now, although the spectral black dog is a familiar motif in British folklore, the death connection is less common. But I can tell you that there are still some local people who just won’t come this way for fear of meeting it on the road. I have that on good authority.’

‘Say that on camera, will they, pal?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Jane glanced across at Hergest Court. Nothing was moving. ‘Have people seen something?’

‘It’s odd,’ Ben said. ‘You talk to people in town and they’ll say, “Oh, old so-and-so’s seen the Hound, he’ll tell you about it. And then, when you find old so-and-so, he looks blank, never even heard of it. Which is extremely unconvincing and, in my view, the denials prove the fact of it. As I understand it, what’s been seen is a big black dog that disappears into walls, solid things. And there are other related phenomena that I’ll explain about later.’

‘But in the book it was a fiery hound,’ Jane said. ‘Which turns out to have been phosphorous paint. Like, when the Hound starts appearing again in modern times – like, Victorian times – it turns out to have been an actual dog that was starved, therefore given a good reason to howl in the night. And painted with luminous paint.’

Ben nodded. ‘In the novel, the fiery hound is a scam.’

‘And in the end Sherlock Holmes just shoots it,’ Jane said. And it was all coming back now. ‘Why did he have to do that? The poor dog’s already been deliberately starved for weeks. I hated him for that.’ She was aware of both men looking at her with curiosity. ‘OK, I was young. I didn’t realize he needed a dramatic finale. I was just sorry for the dog, and that’s all I remembered. And that’s... that’s why I’ve always hated the book. Sorry.’

A Land Rover Discovery came around the bend quite fast, tyres skidding in a patch of icy mud, and Ben slid quickly back into the MG. ‘Jane actually makes an important point there. Why did Doyle give his novel such a prosaic ending? A real dog and a pot of phosphorous paint?’

‘It was a Sherlock Holmes story,’ Antony reminded him. ‘Sherlock Holmes disnae believe in ghosties.’

‘Yes,’ Ben hissed, ‘but Doyle did! This is the whole point: a medical man, a scientist... but, for the last twenty years of his life, also a spiritualist! The most famous proponent of spiritism on the planet! The guy was beyond fanatical – tours of Britain and the States, promoting what he considered to be the absolutely proven scientific fact of life after death. In fact, towards the end, Antony’ – Ben put his face to within six inches of Largo’s – ‘Doyle lived for bloody ghosties.’

Then something caught his eye and he straightened up, looking away, down the lane to where the Discovery had stopped to let two men out.

‘Ah,’ Ben said.

The two men both wore army-type camouflage jackets and baseball caps. One of them pulled open the back door of the vehicle, reached inside and then handed the other something that Jane thought at first was a spade.

‘Them,’ Ben said.

The rear door was slammed shut, and the Discovery moved on, leaving the two men standing in the road. They started walking up the lane towards the MG, heads down like they hadn’t noticed it was there.

Jane thought, Oh Christ.

Two men, one shotgun.

‘How very opportune,’ Ben said through his teeth. He stepped out into the road.

Antony Largo raised an amused eyebrow, half-turning and leaning back against the passenger door for a better view. Did he know the history to this? Probably not.

‘You know, one thing I’ve always admired about Ben,’ Antony said, ‘is his ability to move into a new situation and form instant and lasting friendships.’

He folded his arms, waiting to be entertained. Jane looked at Ben, already all worked-up and dismayed because he was fighting for his and Amber’s life, and everything he’d thrown at Antony had been deflected – Antony in his professional body armour and Ben bare-knuckled.

‘I’m just so much in the right mood for these scum,’ Ben said. He moved into the middle of the lane and stood there with his legs planted apart, rocking slightly.

7 The Healing of the Dead

IT WAS ONE of those cottages with very small windows and so few of them that it needed lamps on all day in winter. Merrily counted seven of them, on tables and in nooks, all low-wattage, white-shaded and strung out like a chain of beacons so that you navigated through the house from lamp to lamp. There was a dreamlike feel to this.

‘One day, when I’m really old...’ Canon Jeavons was leading her down a cramped passage, like a tugboat on a canal; he was balancing coffee cups and milk and sugar on a tin tray, ‘there gonna be a nice, plain bungalow, with windows so wide you think you living on the lawn.’

His voice was crisp and biscuity, like on high-quality FM radio. A cathedral voice, too big for a farmworker’s cottage that probably had not been much updated since the wattle first met the daub.

He ducked through a doorway. ‘You must be the first person in a long, long time I’ve never had to warn to keep their head low till they sitting down.’

They’d arrived in a room that needed no lamp. It had whitewashed brick walls, a square of white carpet and an uncurtained window, revealing a small, fenced garden, wide fields and a hoary, wooded hill. The room had a sloping ceiling, suggesting that it had begun as a lean-to. A black cast-iron flue pushed through the ceiling at a crooked angle, serving a glass-fronted, pot-bellied stove in which coals glowed agreeably. There was an earthenware coffeepot on the stove. Homely.

‘This place used to be for the family cow,’ Jeavons said, ‘or maybe the pig. Sometimes I see just one big pig snuffling around in here – raised like a member of the family, many tears shed at the parting of the ways. Sometimes I feel the presence of a single cow, but mainly the pig. What do you feel, Merrilee?’

Unrolling her name like ribbon. His accent was a carnival – lazy Caribbean towed by old-fashioned, fruity English clerical. She couldn’t decide how much of it was laid on.

‘Cows are good,’ she said carefully. ‘And, er... pigs are even better.’

‘Indeed!’ Jeavons beamed. ‘Take a seat.’

He scooped a huge grey and white cat from a fat lemon-yellow armchair and sank into it, transferring the cat to his knees. When Merrily took a matching chair on the other side of the stove, she found it was so overstuffed that her feet didn’t reach the floor.

‘Well now...’ Jeavons sat back, his chins on his chest. ‘Ms Deliverance. This is interesting indeed.’

‘It is?’ Merrily looked into the big, squash-nosed, grey-sheened face, wishing she knew more about his personal history. The established facts were that he’d been a canon attached to Worcester Cathedral; the legends told of a seeded tennis player cured of multiple sclerosis and a fire victim whose disfiguring facial scars had vanished within a week.

Canon Jeavons and the big cat both looked placidly back at her. ‘Because you’re still not quite sure how to handle it,’ Jeavons said, ‘are you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘All of this – the calling, the job. And, most of all, I would imagine, the complexities of Deliverance. It’s a problem of... I was gonna say confidence, but it isn’t that. You have a fear.’

‘Lots.’

Suspicious now. When she’d finally reached him on the phone she’d learned that Sophie Hill had already called on behalf of the Bishop, to make sure that he was still available for consultation. Sophie would have told him a little about her but nothing personal. Sophie didn’t do personal.

‘I’d say you have a horror of being considered’ – he looked at her sleepily through half-closed eyes – ‘pious?’

She thought she must have shaken, physically. ‘What makes you say that, Mr Jeavons?’

‘You must call me Lew,’ he said. ‘Now that I’m retired.’

She didn’t call him anything, she just stared. He wore a linen jacket with wide blue and light-grey stripes, like for punting. Under it was something you always guessed must be available somewhere, but not in any ecclesiastical outfitters: a high-necked black T-shirt with a white dog collar that was part of the design. Maybe he’d got it from a joke shop.

‘See, Merrilee, most of the female clergy of my acquaintance, they all very proud of what they achieved for their sex after all these centuries. They wear the dog collar and the clerical shirt on all possible occasions. Maybe they sleep in a clerical nightdress, I wouldn’t know about that. But always, when they come to see a male priest, that’s when it’s extremely important to them that they be seen as equals. You, by contrast – no collar, no shirt. Only a cross, so discreet it could even be an item of jewellery. And you’re not wearing too much make-up or a short skirt, either, so... You’re married?’

‘Widowed, for some years. There is... a man.’

‘Oh.’ His eyes went into a squint. The cat purred, the coffeepot burbled on the stove.

‘He’s a musician. He helps out at a recording studio in the Frome Valley. We see each other... not as often as we’d like, and I’m not sure what to do about that.’

‘Your people know about him? In the parish?’ His gut pushed out comfortably, like a flour sack, and the cat nestled into it.

‘Some must’ve guessed by now. He used to live in the village. We thought there might be an opportunity for him to move back, but it wasn’t to be.’

Wasn’t to be – had she conveyed some sense of foreboding in that phrase? Defensive now; this man could pluck away your secrets like specks of fluff.

‘What do your prayers tell you about this relationship?’ Jeavons asked.

‘I feel it’s the right thing. At this moment.’

Jeavons nodded. There was a movement outside the window – a cock pheasant on the lawn. Merrily blinked. There was something about the light in here, the white clarity of everything, after the dimness of the rest of the cottage. It was like snow-light; everything was lit. She had the curious feeling of emerging from an initiation.

She said slowly, feeling the words drawn out of her, ‘Martin Israel, in his book on exorcism, says that some degree of psychic ability is probably necessary to do this job – Deliverance.’

‘And you think you don’t have what’s necessary?’ Jeavons said.

‘How did you know about me and the word “pious”?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Sophie didn’t let it slip that “pious” was my most unfavourite word in the dictionary and that I have a fear of—?’

‘Sophie?’

‘Sophie Hill. The Bishop of Hereford’s lay secretary.’

‘Ah. A lady of evident discretion and diplomacy. No, she didn’t tell me that. But then she wouldn’t, would she? You, on the other hand...’ Canon Jeavons gripped the cat, and the cat purred fiercely. ‘Merrilee, you’re an open person. Aspects of you stand out as if you carrying a placard – it’s in your manner, the way you dress, that big old Volvo you drive. No doubt you’re capable of considerable discretion when it comes to the affairs of others, but about yourself... you drop sizeable clues, you know?’

‘The word “pious”...’

Jeavons rocked back, laughing. ‘You ain’t gonna let this go, are you? Listen, it dropped into my mind. Things do that sometimes. If we take the time to absorb what people are telling us about themselves, directly and indirectly, and we are in a suitable state of relaxation – a contemplative state – then the clues come together and a feeling or a word sometimes drops into our minds, just like... like a packet out of a cigarette machine.’

She frowned. ‘You can also see the nicotine on my teeth?’

‘Your teeth are like pearls.’

‘And it’s always right, is it, this thing that drops into your mind?’

‘Hell, no. Sometimes it’s so far out I feel like a horse’s ass. But when you get to my age, time’s too precious to keep it to yourself and sit and wonder. This, as it happens, is at the heart of spiritual healing: taking the time to know people, making small deductions. How many doctors have the time or the patience to do that now – talking and considering and leaving time for small leaps of inspiration. No, it’s, “Take two of these three times a day”, or, “I’ll make you an appointment to see a consultant... send the next one in on your way out.” One time, minor ailments were resolved without the need for pills, because pills were expensive and time was cheap. And doctors – country doctors, particularly – would often be spiritual people, capable of insight. From insight to inspiration is only a small leap, which may be divinely assisted. Are you following my reasoning?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. Let’s have some of this coffee.’ He eased himself around the cat and stood up.

Merrily said, ‘What happened to your wife?’

He raised an eyebrow, as if she’d turned the tables on him.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—’

‘God would not permit me to heal her.’ Jeavons lifted the coffeepot from the stove. ‘She died five years ago, around the time they wanted to groom me for bishop. Maybe if she lived I’d have gone for that, if only to see Catherine in a palace. Instead, a row. I said to them, You don’t know a thing about me, you just want me ’cause purple and black go so nice together in New Labour Britain. I said, I’m going away instead. I want to find out for myself why my wife was not healed.’

‘And did you?’

‘Maybe. Haw, you’re suspicious of me now. You thinking I’m some kind of old-time shaman out of a travelling medicine show. We should start again. Tell me what you want to know.’

‘You know what I want. I was appointed as Deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford. Suddenly, whichever way I turn, I’m finding the word “deliverance” linked with the word “healing”.’

‘And that would naturally scare you. It scares you like “pious”. Because it would mean people start to see you as wonder-woman.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Difficult,’ Jeavons said.

‘The names,’ Ben said. ‘Consider the names.’

Driving back into town, he seemed re-energized, setting out his case for Arthur Conan Doyle basing The Hound of the Baskervilles on what had happened in Kington, talking about the way the book and this area echoed each other in unexpected ways.

And the real clincher: the remarkable coincidence of names.

‘Key characters in the novel... look at the names. Baskerville – obviously, a prominent family in this area, as we’ve established. But then the others – Mortimer. Dr Mortimer is the local GP, the man who first consults Sherlock Holmes over the case. Now Mortimer – as Jane knows – is probably the most significant name in the middle-Marches. This was the core domain of the Mortimer dynasty of Norman barons. Commemorated in place names like Mortimer’s Cross, which is just a few miles from here, along the Border.’

Antony Largo said nothing.

‘All right,’ Ben said, ‘you might argue that’s not such an uncommon name. But what about Stapleton? Stapleton, the naturalist who turns out to know rather more about hounds than butterflies. Stapleton, Jane. Tell him where Stapleton is.’

‘Oh...’ Jane recalled a fragment of ruined castle on a hill, a farm, a few cottages. ‘It’s a hamlet. Just outside Presteigne. That’s right on the Border, too, isn’t it? Presteigne’s in Wales, Stapleton’s in England – just.’

‘Thank you, Jane.’ Ben nodded happily. ‘Baskerville, Mortimer, Stapleton. Key names strung out along the mid-Border. It could be coincidence, but would Holmes himself have bought that? I really don’t think so. Doyle’s delicately encoding the real history, the actual location of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’

Jane was impressed, but Antony said, ‘So what about the Cabell family of Devon? What about Sir Richard Cabell who’s supposed to’ve followed a spooky hound across the moor on his black mare after making a pact with the Devil?’

‘So?’

‘That story fits pretty damn well, and we know for a fact that Doyle went to Devonshire to research the terrain. We even know which hotel he stayed at.’

‘And?’

‘See, I found all this on the Net, very easily. Arthur went down to Dartmoor with his golfing pal, Fletcher Robinson, a Devonian. In fact, Robinson himself was said to have come up with the story – for which Doyle insisted on giving him a credit in the Strand Magazine, which serialized his stuff. Am I right?’

‘I’m not disputing that, Antony.’ Ben shook the wheel lightly. ‘However – and was this on the Net? – the then editor of the Strand said that he understood Fletcher Robinson obtained the original story from – and I quote – “A Welsh guidebook”. I can show you that reference in two biographies of Doyle. So while I couldn’t deny that he borrowed elements of the Cabell legend to flesh out the scenario, all the evidence still says it starts right here.’

‘And the small fact that the coachman Doyle and Robinson employed in Devon was one... Harry Baskerville? How does that equate, my friend?’

‘Oh.’ Jane was dismayed. ‘Is that true?’

‘Perfectly true,’ Ben confirmed. ‘And Baskerville himself assumed that his name had been borrowed. However, Stashower, in his biography of Conan Doyle, points out that Doyle mentioned the proposed title The Hound of the Baskervilles in a letter to his mother before he and Robinson went to Devon – before he even met Harry Baskerville. I can show you the reference.’

Antony didn’t reply. Jane was delighted. The awkward encounter with the shooters seemed to have given Ben a blast of confidence.

It had been almost funny – these two guys, with their South Wales accents, up from Ebbw Vale, claiming they’d been hired by a local farmer to get rid of foxes. Well, Jane had realized at once that this was bollocks; the usual situation with rough shooting was that guys like this paid the farmers for the privilege.

Anyway, the shooters had got totally the wrong idea, assuming that Ben, despite the jogging kit, was some local hunter warning them off his patch. And Ben, being Ben, hadn’t corrected the impression, he’d played to it – Jane could hear his voice changing, acquiring this military edge. Initially, he’d just been rescuing the situation, saving face, but in the end he’d had the Ebbw Vale guys backing defensively away, up the public footpath to Hergest Ridge, bawling after them, ‘Bloody cowboys! Your card’s marked in this area, believe it!’

He might not have been potentially one of the greats, as Amber had put it, but he was still a bloody good actor. And now he was on a roll, his argument flowing.

‘So, like, why did Conan Doyle transfer the whole thing to Dartmoor?’ Jane asked.

Ben shrugged, lifting his hands from the wheel. ‘Don’t you find that interesting in itself? Also, why did Doyle decide to rubbish the concept of a ghostly hound in the book when in real life he’d have pounced on it with all the enthusiasm he lavished nearly twenty years later on those patently faked photos of the Cottingley Fairies?’

‘Right.’ Jane knew those pictures: close-ups of innocent young girls’ faces with these archetypal Arthur Rackham-style fairies frolicking in front of them. Obvious fakes now, but convincing enough in the early days of photography. It wasn’t so much of an indictment of Conan Doyle’s gullibility.

Ben turned into the tarmac drive leading to Kington church. ‘What’s also interesting is that originally The Hound wasn’t going to be a Sherlock Holmes story at all. Doyle had already killed Holmes by then – dragged over the Reichenbach Falls in the arms of his arch-enemy Moriarty. And then he writes what’s become a famous letter to the editor of the Strand, announcing his plans for The Hound with the words, “I have the idea of a real creeper.” But you see it wasn’t, at that time, going to be a Holmes adventure at all. So when Holmes was brought in, Doyle wrote the story as if it was something that had happened pre-Reichenbach.’

‘And did he...?’ Antony eyed Ben thoughtfully – some respect at last, Jane thought. ‘I’m sorry, I know he was a fellow Scot, but my knowledge here is a wee bit scant... Did Conan Doyle write other stories that were essentially supernatural?’

Ben nosed the car into some bushes, where the ground was still furred with frost. He pulled on the handbrake with a fusillade of ratchet clicks and switched off the engine.

‘Yes, Antony. Of course.’

‘So when he decided to make it a Holmes tale, he knew that’d be an aspect going out the window, Holmes being the ultimate rationalist. If Holmes is gonnae solve the case, there has to be a rational explanation.’

‘Yes. And what I’m wondering... was Doyle specifically asked by the Baskerville family – or someone else – to put in some distance? There’s a traditional belief in this area that he was distantly related to the Baskervilles, who were in turn, way back, related by marriage to the Vaughans. Obviously, there’s still a lot of research to be done here. Hidden connections.’

‘He didn’t have to use the name at all, though, did he?’

‘Still, hell of a good name, isn’t it? Where would that title be without it?’ Still buzzing, like he’d been snorting coke or something, Ben stepped out onto the frosted grass. ‘Come and meet the Vaughans.’

There was no tradition of shamanism or the priesthood in Lew Jeavons’s family. He’d come to England from Jamaica as a teenager, his father working on the buses. As a young man he went to New York where he was ordained and met an Englishwoman, on attachment to Harvard, an academic.

‘And we found our way back here. Which I always felt was my home.’

‘You were... into healing in America?’

‘Well, I’ve always thought I was channelling healing.’ He nodded at the big cat on his knees. ‘Talk to Lucius about it. He was run over on the main road at Fromes Hill in the summer. The driver didn’t stop. I’m the next car along, and I pick him up, along with his exploded intestines. Take him along to the vet, who puts back the intestines, shakes his head, takes out his syringe. But I shake my head. Bring Lucius back here, to be my cat for whatever time he has left.’

‘He looks brilliant.’

‘He limps a little now, that’s all. Cats respond directly to love and hands-on. People are more complex. My wife... she should’ve recovered, that was the point. It wasn’t such a big heart attack, they didn’t think it was a bypass situation. I was convinced she was going to recover fully, and I took my eye off of the ball, and she had a second heart attack. I was leading a healing ministry in Oxford at the time, and we were all full of it: missionary zeal – hey, this is what the Church of England’s been lacking for so long! And in the middle of all this healing frenzy, my beloved wife, she just ups and dies. Happens within a month. What was that saying to me? What was He telling me?’

‘You must’ve been... bitter.’

‘And bewildered. I didn’t think I was arrogant, I didn’t think I needed bringing down – and there, you see, that proves I was arrogant, my first thought was that it was because of me that she was taken away – God telling the big healer, You are nothing, man!’

‘How old was she?’

‘Forty-nine. No age. Yes, I was bitter, sure I was bitter. What do they think – we can’t hate God because we’re priests?’

Merrily said, ‘The... problem I have with this is the obvious one: some people recover, some don’t. Some people who are prayed for – really, really prayed for, by many people...’

‘I know.’

‘So all the hopes build up and, in the end...’

‘It’s a lottery?’

‘Or it’s not our decision. Not a decision we can – or should – try to influence, despite what the Gospel—’

‘Oh boy,’ Jeavons said. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? We do it because it’s all we do. It’s fundamental: the care of bodies, the care of souls, the care of the living earth. It’s how we develop within ourselves – by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee. A doctor fails to heal someone, he says, Well, hell, I prescribed all the right drugs, I did what I could. But we must suffer. And that isn’t what you wanted to hear, is it?’

‘I... don’t know what I wanted.’

‘Maybe you just don’t understand about the nature of suffering, and that suffering can be a truly positive state. We should discuss this sometime.’

‘Why wasn’t your wife healed?’ Merrily said.

Jeavons lifted both hands from the cat, held them in the air. Sat there in the white room like a bare rock on a beach freshly washed by the tide. Was the answer one he couldn’t accept? Had he been forced to conclude, in his suffering, that her faith – her faith in him, Lew – had been insufficient? Was that it?

He opened out his hands, a candid gesture.

‘It was because I didn’t understand, at the time, that there was more than Catherine in need of healing in this particular instance. I didn’t know... I didn’t know about the healing of the dead.’

8 At Home With the Vaughans

JANE WAS KIND of tingling now. Antony Largo had demanded, Where’s the contemporary dynamic? Where’s the now drama? And now he had his answer: there was a totally worthwhile mystery here, deeper than the Grimpen Mire, subtler than phosphorous paint, and panting for telly. Jane carried the excitement with her, through the uncoloured, wintry churchyard to the door of the church of St Mary the Virgin.

There were quite a few churches hereabouts dedicated to Mary – a sign of Norman origins, according to Mum: the conquerors emphasizing to the conquered that they had the support of the spiritual big-hitters. From the plateaued churchyard, you had a wide view of the Welsh hills above the English town and the beginning of Hergest Ridge, a peninsula into Wales. The sky had closed in now, the clouds tightening around the sun, reduced to a hole at the end of a grey-walled tunnel.

‘Used to be a Norman castle up here,’ Ben said. ‘Soon abandoned, though. It’s thought the church itself was providing community defence against the Welsh by about the thirteenth century.’

‘People shut themselves up in the church?’ Jane looked up at the squat tower, with its stubby steeple.

‘The tower was separated originally from the main body of the church,’ Ben said. ‘It has walls a good six feet thick, apparently.’

‘Now I won’t have to buy the guidebook,’ Antony said, as they followed Ben inside. ‘Thanks.’

Jane had never been in here before; she’d been expecting stark and utility, and she was surprised at the size of it and the luminous, grotto-like darkness, the way the stained glass bestowed this old, rosy warmth. So different from the frigid dining hall at Stanner, although Ben said some of the stained glass had been put in around the same time. Heavy Victorian restoration, then, but it had worked: there was a big window with generous reds and oranges and warm blue and, opposite it, high up in the west, a tiny circular one with a white dove fluttering out of crimson.

The age of the place was underlined for visitors by a big modern white plaque listing all the ministers of Kington, beginning back in the days when parishioners would be putting the six-foot walls between them and the marauding Welsh.

Hugh Chabbenor ...........1279

Rhys ap Howell ..............1287

John Walwyn .................1313

Ben was strolling around in the tinted gloom with his hands behind his back. ‘All this was far more spectacular in the Middle Ages, we’re told. Wall paintings... ornate screens.’

Antony was shaking his head, slipping Jane a wry smile that maybe contained just a touch of affection for Ben. Perhaps he was at last getting into Ben’s groove, finding the motivation, feeling the dynamic.

There were only the three of them in here, or so it seemed as Ben led them back towards the door, past a table with guidebooks and magazines on it. He stood there facing them. Jane could tell that he was in Holmes mode again, a sheen on his domed forehead, the curly hair around it absorbed into the dark. Ben was excited.

‘Well... can you see them yet?’

‘Huh?’ Jane looked around.

‘Such a sense of drama,’ Antony murmured.

He and Jane were standing by the font, to the left of the entrance. Ben stepped to one side, extending an arm into the body of the church, to their right. From the side of the chancel nearest to them a different light, a colder light, was washing between the bars of a wooden screen from a stained window beyond. This window was full of blues and whites and a thin gold, and the light was hazy.

Jane was aware of a separateness – light, colour, mood – about that whole area, evidently a side chapel. And then she saw two heads together, from behind, an alabaster couple lying on a hard white bed, the wooden screen its headboard.

‘May I present Thomas,’ Ben said softly. ‘And Ellen.’

It was one of those still, hollow moments. The heads conveyed a superiority, an arrogance, an hauteur. Jane hadn’t noticed them before, and now they were all she could see: two effigies on a spectacular, off-white tomb, at ease with their backs to the pews and to the door, confident of their place in the medieval Church of St Mary the Virgin and in history.

‘At home with the Vaughans,’ Ben was saying. ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’

The double tomb came up to Jane’s chest. On the side nearest to her, eight anonymous carved figures, some of which might have been monks or even angels, stood behind their shields, to protect the remains inside.

Black Vaughan, in fact all white now, was nearest the altar, his effigy’s praying hands projecting from its alabaster chest, its face bland and clean-shaven.

Jane noticed right away that below the feet of the effigy was a dog.

It was a disappointment, however: too small to be any kind of hound, unless the fifteenth-century monumental mason had reduced the scale to make it fit onto the tomb. A life-size hound would have spread over the whole width of it and under the feet of the woman.

Jane thought Vaughan’s own feet seemed too big, like cartoon feet. ‘It’s like he’s wearing Doc Martens.’ She giggled. ‘For like giving the peasants a good kicking?’

Irreverence was compulsory in this situation – the way these arrogant bastards had always claimed the place nearest to God. Like they honestly believed God was naive enough to fall for it. But as soon as she’d spoken, she was sensing disapproval, unsure of whether it was coming from Ben or she was projecting it to Black Vaughan. Or his lady.

The lady might have been beautiful; it was hard to judge from a tomb. She wore a long gown with a girdle, her slender arms bared in prayer. On her pillowed head was a small cap. Fashionable? Probably. Coquettish? Maybe not. Her face was solemn, but what would you expect?

‘What does it mean that they’re praying?’ Jane said. ‘I mean, like, are they praying for mercy because of all the corruption in their lives, all the people they shafted? All the peasants they exploited?’

‘Comely wench, though,’ Antony observed. ‘Nice body. What’s her name again?’

‘Ellen.’ Ben stood at her feet, his hands clasped in front of him as if he was about to join the Vaughans in prayer. ‘Ellen Gethin. Also known as Ellen the Terrible.’

Antony tongued his top lip to conceal a smile. ‘I trust that disnae mean she was terrible in the sack.’

Jane grinned nervously. Ben frowned. ‘It was because she killed a man.’

Antony tilted his head. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘She came from a village called Llanbister, over the border in Radnorshire. Had a younger brother, David, of whom she was very fond. He was killed in a sword fight with his cousin, John Hir – a row over an inheritance. Ellen was shattered and bent on revenge. She was a strong woman. A formidable woman.’

‘Looks maybe taller than her man,’ Antony noted.

‘Described as having masculine strength.’

‘Sexy, though.’

‘Shut up, Antony,’ Ben said. Antony peered down at Ellen’s breasts, then looked up at Ben and grinned.

Jane said, ‘What happened?’

‘There was an archery contest at Llanddewi, near Llanbister. Ellen went along disguised as a man. John Hir was the champion archer and she challenged him. John put his arrow into the target, Ellen put hers into John.’

‘Feisty,’ Antony said. ‘Is it true or a legend?’

‘It’s believed to be entirely true, although it does rather correspond to a few classic myths about the vengeful-huntress figure. It’s said to have happened in 1430, after Ellen’s marriage to Thomas Vaughan. She must have been a very young woman at the time because Thomas was killed at the Battle of Banbury nearly forty years later.’

‘I like it,’ Antony said. ‘We could’ve used it.’

Ben turned to Jane. ‘Antony did a Channel 4 documentary series a few years ago about the psychology of women who kill. Women of the Midnight?’

‘Aw, I hated that title,’ Antony said. ‘It was imposed on me. What I had in mind was to call it My Milk for Gall. Something like that.’

‘Lady Macbeth?’ Jane said. ‘ “Unsex me here and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.” I... wow.’ She stared at Antony with new respect. This man was actually the producer of Women of the Midnight? ‘That was like... heavy stuff.’ Not admitting that she hadn’t actually seen it, having been only about ten at the time.

But she saw now why Ben was courting Antony so assiduously. She was fairly sure that Women of the Midnight had won some prestigious award for Channel 4, which must make Antony a seriously influential producer. Like, if he brought in an idea, people would listen to him, the people with money to hand out. So the main problem for Ben was convincing Antony himself, and perhaps this would be the only problem.

‘Too late now though, huh?’ Antony was looking down wistfully at Ellen Gethin again. Ellen’s eyes were shut.

‘Such a shame,’ Ben purred. Jane thought, Milk for Gall: Lady Macbeth, Myra Hindley... Ellen would probably have fitted nicely into the format.

Antony moved away from Ellen and stood at the feet of Thomas, with his Doc Martens and his little alabaster dog.

‘So what about this guy?’

Ben shrugged. ‘We don’t know very much about him. He was born in 1400, was initially a supporter of the Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses but for some reason changed sides. One version says he was on his way to the Battle of Banbury in 1469 when he was captured by the Lancastrians, accused of treason and beheaded. His body was brought back here.’

‘And was he like Hugo Baskerville? A bad guy, a tyrant?’

‘We don’t know. We don’t know what kind of man he was when he was alive. He’s better known for his activities afterwards. All the accounts say he made a very angry and destructive ghost, haunting the stretch of road between Hergest Court and Kington, often in broad daylight. Rearing up in front of women, and causing farm carts to overturn.’

‘What did he have to be mad about?’

‘Dunno, but it’s said the town was in terror. The road to Hergest was shunned. Taboo. Got so bad that Kington market began to suffer because nobody wanted to come. Vaughan could change shape, tormented horses as a fly. Appeared in this church as a bull, roaring through the pews during a service.’

‘But not a doggie.’

‘That came later,’ Ben said. ‘After the exorcism.’

Jane said, ‘What?’

Apparently, it had taken twelve experienced ministers to deal with Vaughan, all of them gathered inside a circle drawn on the floor at Hergest Court, each with a lighted candle. There was also a woman and a young baby, presumably newly baptized and presumably representing purity. When your mother was in the trade and left books lying around, you learned quite a lot about the history of dispensing with demons.

Ben said the story had been chronicled by the Herefordshire folklorist Ella Leather and, before that, collected by the Border diarist Francis Kilvert.

‘Hell of a struggle, candles going out, slanging match with Vaughan’s spirit. But they eventually reduced him to something small and manageable, and then they confined the spirit in a snuffbox.’

Snuffbox – this angle sounded familiar, and Jane figured she was bound to have read about it, at some stage, in Mrs Leather’s book. It was a big book, with thousands of stories, many of which you forgot because they weren’t strictly relevant at the time. She’d go back to it, check all this out.

‘Vaughan’s spirit had expressed an aversion to water,’ Ben said. ‘So they buried the snuffbox at the bottom of Hergest Pool.’

‘As you would,’ Antony said.

‘It would dramatize beautifully.’

‘And if you wanted some authentic stuff on exorcisms,’ Jane said, ‘my mother might be able to—’ She broke off, her hand touching Ellen’s white, shiny elbow – how broad and muscular that arm appeared now. Jane drew her hand away. Best, on the whole, not to say anything to Mum about this: she wouldn’t exactly be in favour of dramatizing an exorcism, however many centuries ago it had happened.

Ben and Antony were both looking at her.

‘Of course,’ Ben said, ‘your mother’s a vicar, isn’t she?’

‘Um... yeah.’

‘With a special interest in this... area?’

Jane sighed. Had he heard whispers? Was Mum’s name still mentioned at this end of the county in connection with her run-in with the creepy evangelist, Ellis?

Whatever, it was too late now.

‘She’s, erm, the Deliverance Consultant for the Hereford diocese. Diocesan exorcist, as was. But like, on second thoughts, I think it would be best if she didn’t know I was involved in anything like this. Dabbling? You know? They discourage it.’

‘How interesting,’ Ben said.

‘She just got pushed into it by a previous bishop, who thought it’d be cool to have a woman operating in that area. Look, I really don’t want to tell her about this, OK? If you want any information, we’ve got lots of books at home. I could get you anything you needed.’

‘Fine,’ Ben said. ‘Super.’

‘You really are a slippery bastard, Foley,’ Antony said.

Ben didn’t look at him. ‘Ah... We don’t know precisely when the Vaughan exorcism was, but the inference is that Vaughan was never seen again – not in person, anyway. However, as recently as 1987 two women were visiting this church when one of them distinctly saw the shape of a bull form in the atmosphere.’

‘In here?’ Jane glanced from side to side.

‘She said it seemed to coalesce, as if it was composing itself from dust motes in the air. She was from Solihull in the Midlands, a tourist. Oddly, her name was Jenny Vaughan. The bull didn’t do anything, it just formed and then presumably dissolved again. Like a show of strength.’

‘And the Hound?’ Antony said.

‘It’s known simply as the Hound of Hergest. It was said to appear before the death of a member of the Vaughan family. There were nine generations of Vaughans after Thomas and Ellen, and the last one to live at Hergest Court died childless at the beginning of the eighteenth century. But the phenomenon remained. Other people, over the years, are said to have seen the Hound in the lane leading to the Court. And a former tenant of Hergest used to speak of hearing what sounded like a large dog padding across the floor upstairs. This was quite recently.’

‘And folk died?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware. Though perhaps some Vaughan descendant somewhere...’

‘OK, it’s interesting,’ Antony conceded. ‘So, tell me – how important would it be to the Devon people to prove that the Conan Doyle connection here is a load of shite?’

‘Well, it makes them very angry indeed. I only need to show you the terse letter I’ve just had from this guy Kennedy, of The Baker Street League, who’s evidently poisoning a lot of people against me. It drives them crazy.’

‘And you’d take them on? I mean, I’m not sure this’d be enough, but if you really got them fired up...’

‘Look, this has become terribly important to me,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not just financial any more – I mean, not just a question of getting publicity and an image for the hotel. Sure, it’d be wonderful to be able to afford to fully re-Victorianize Stanner, down to the last gas mantle in the last lavatory. Which is how it started, I’ll admit, but it’s so much more than that now. It’s about winning the Border – Jane knows what I mean. The Border’s a hard place, a testing place. People fail here all the time, because they haven’t earned acceptance. They don’t have links with the past, they’re not part of a tradition. They don’t understand.’

He was standing beside Thomas Vaughan. Black Vaughan. The white, blue and gold light was behind him. He was giving Antony Largo his piece-to-camera, framing himself in the light, the way he’d done as Holmes in the final act of the murder-mystery weekend at Stanner.

‘Damn right I’d take them on,’ Ben said. ‘Me. And Thomas. And Ellen.’ He gazed into the two white faces. ‘I feel, in a strange sort of way, that we’re kind of a team now.’

Following this dramatic and – Jane thought – slightly unhinged assertion, there was silence in the chapel. Just as Ben had intended.

What he hadn’t intended was that it should be broken by a slow applause, the sound of two hands clapping.

Which was eerie enough, in this setting, to make Jane turn around very slowly.

9 Ask Arthur

SHE REALLY WASN’T spooky, that was the first thing. She had a well-worn sheepskin coat around her shoulders and a yellow silk headscarf and suede gloves. Jane didn’t recognize her until she pulled off the scarf.

‘Bravo, Mr Foley!’ She shook out her pale hair. ‘Golly, what a trek I’ve had. Your manager said you’d be down at Hergest Court by now, so of course I drove over there. Silent as the grave, as usual. Never mind, here we are. Yes, bravo. Awful man, Neil Kennedy, I’ve always thought – mean-minded and elitist. May I come in?’

Antony stepped aside to let her into the chapel, his head tilted, quizzical. Ben looked confused for a moment, and defensive, and then Jane saw his hands flick, as though he’d suddenly turned over the right page in some mental card-index.

‘Of course, you were on the murder weekend. Mrs...’

‘Elizabeth Pollen. Beth.’

‘Beth. Yes. And you’re... still here?’

‘I’m often here, Mr Foley. I only live at Pembridge.’

‘Good Lord,’ Ben said weakly, as though he was bemused that anybody who lived close enough to Stanner Hall to know what kind of dump it was would want to pay good money to stay there.

But Jane was placing Mrs Pollen now: the youngest of the Agathas – hanging out with them in the hotel bar in the evenings but clearly not a part of their weekend coach-party sleuthing scene. The only time she’d come out of the shadows was on that last night when she’d tried to persuade Ben to expand on the Hound reference and Ben had deflected it.

No way he could deflect it now.

Beth Pollen folded her silk scarf, like someone who didn’t have too many of them. Under the heavy coat she wore a pale grey dress, and she was very slim, mothlike. Probably in her late fifties, but it was hard to be sure.

‘Mr Foley, first of all, as a member of The Baker Street League, I’d like to apologize for the way Kennedy treated you over the conference. I was very much looking forward to that.’

‘Yes,’ Ben admitted. ‘Quite a blow.’

‘The membership wasn’t consulted, of course. We’re treated like geriatrics most of the time. I may forget to pay my subscription next year, after this. However... I’ve been speaking to your manager – Mrs Craven? – and I think we may have an alternative proposition to put to you.’

Ben blinked. ‘The League?’

‘Not The League, I’m afraid. Our coffers may not be as deep as The League’s, but I hope we can strike a deal.’ Mrs Pollen placed her folded scarf in the cleft between Ellen Gethin’s alabaster waist and her praying hands. ‘Isn’t she adorable? Isn’t she proud?’

‘She’s got something,’ Antony agreed.

‘Sorry – this is Antony Largo, an old colleague of mine.’ Ben’s expression had sharpened, Jane noticed, at the word proposition. ‘We’ve been discussing some TV possibilities.’

‘So I hear.’ Mrs Pollen wore this soft, knowing smile, and Jane realized that her surprise arrival at the church had to be down to Natalie, the professional hotelier, plotting efficiently behind the reception desk to retrieve a situation which could put her out of a job. People I need to phone. Bookings to make. It had to have been Nat who’d told this woman about Kennedy’s brutal cancellation.

Jane guessed that Ben, too, had worked all this out. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Beth, but with so much happening I’m afraid I’ve rather forgotten...’

‘You haven’t forgotten anything, Mr Foley. Don’t fuss.’

‘Ben.’

‘Ben.’ Her figure might be light and wafery but her voice was low and warm and soothing, like dark coffee. ‘All you really need to remember is that, while I might be a member of The Baker Street League, I have a much more meaningful role with the White Company. And no... you aren’t expected to have heard of them either.’

‘One of Doyle’s books, surely?’ Antony said.

‘It’s an historical novel, of which he was enormously proud, about medieval mercenaries. And I suppose it is rather good. Arthur, as I’m sure you know, considered Holmes to be very much a secondary creation and always hoped to be recognized as a great historical novelist. As far as we’re concerned, though, the White Company was simply a phrase that came through repeatedly to our Mr Hardy, and it stuck. Which gratifies Arthur, although I’m afraid most of us haven’t even read it.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t either,’ Ben said.

‘Mr Foley...’ Mrs Pollen placed a calming gloved hand on Ben’s arm. ‘That doesn’t matter.’

And the deal was done, more or less, right there in the cold blue Vaughan Chapel, silently witnessed by Ellen and Thomas. the White Company would hold their annual conference – or moot, as Beth Pollen called it – at the Stanner Hall Hotel in the week before Christmas, effectively replacing The Baker Street League’s original booking.

There would be more than twenty of them, including wives and husbands – not as many as The League and unlikely to spend as much on meat and drink, given that over half of them were vegetarians and too much drink was not encouraged, even over the festive season.

Like Ben cared, at this stage of the game – facing the cold-weather heating bills, the burst pipes and the need to keep the fridges stocked for the benefit of a handful of masochists who were into punishing winter walks and cold bedrooms. In the hollow of the night, he must surely have wondered if the Hound itself was out there somewhere, howling to herald the death of the Stanner Hall Hotel.

But now it was all turned around again. They discussed special terms, Ben meeting every suggestion with, ‘Absolutely – talk to Natalie about it.’ Knowing that Nat would organize the very best, most workable terms, leaving Ben to float around being entertaining and Amber to cook.

Antony Largo had been leaning against the wall between the tomb and the stained-glass window, arms folded, listening to the one-sided negotiations behind a foxy little smile which, it seemed to Jane, was fronting a deeper amusement.

‘So, Beth.’ Antony casually uncoiled from the wall. ‘the White Company... is what, exactly?’

Jane saw Ben throw him a look that said: Back off. She guessed that Ben, on the threshold of the bleak season, didn’t give a toss if the White Company was a society of rubber-fetishists, as long as they left a deposit.

Beth Pollen gave him a candid look. ‘I think you’ve already guessed, Mr Largo.’

‘But you could humour me.’

‘Well... the society was officially formed in 1980 – the fiftieth anniversary of Arthur’s passing.’

‘Arthur’s passing. Ah Beth, you’re dropping wee clues the whole time.’

‘Well, of course I am.’

Ben said, ‘Antony, would you please—’

‘No, no...’ Mrs Pollen lifted a hand. ‘It was originally called The Windlesham Society, after Arthur’s much-loved last home in Sussex. It wasn’t terribly well supported in the early days, and many of the members were rather elderly and found it increasingly difficult to get to meetings. After a few years, it faded virtually out of existence. And then, about six years ago, Alistair Hardy, of whom you might have heard...? A fellow Scot?’

‘Big country, Beth,’ Antony said.

‘I’m sorry. We do tend to think that because someone’s eminent in our particular field he must be a household name. Alistair’s a very well-known trance-medium from Edinburgh. His spirit guide, at the time, was Dr Joseph Bell, who, if you recall—’

‘Doyle’s tutor at Edinburgh University medical school. Impressed young Arthur with his incredible deductive skills, thus becoming the prototype for Holmes himself. Arguably a useful guy to have as your spirit guide.’

Ben whispered, ‘You’re spiritualists?’

Jane had to laugh.

Mrs Pollen said, ‘Approximately six years ago, Dr Bell communicated to Alistair Hardy that a friend and former student of his was most anxious to find an enlightened audience because he didn’t feel his work here was complete.’

‘Now, I wonder who that would be,’ Antony said.

Beth Pollen merely raised an eyebrow at him. ‘In the last years of his life, Arthur’s beliefs were derided. But let’s not forget that when it was introduced in the West in Victorian times, spiritism was considered a science and had enormous credibility. When Arthur first applied to join the Society for Psychical Research, in 1893, its president-elect was Arthur Balfour, who would later become Prime Minister.’

‘Did I know that?’ Antony wondered. ‘I don’t believe I did.’

‘New technology was rampant. If we could pull voices from the air into a radio set, capture images on film, how long before we would all be seeing and talking to the dead?’ Mrs Pollen made a wry face. ‘By the twenties, we had commercial aircraft, phones, cinema, but spiritism wasn’t felt to have come up with the goods, so it was considered a crank fad. Everyone’s idea of a medium was Madame Arcati from Noel Coward. So it’s quite reasonable to suppose that Arthur was biding his time.’

Jane thought, And she seemed such a balanced woman.

‘The way you always refer to him as Arthur,’ Antony said, ‘suggests...’

‘An affection. He’s our patron, after all.’

‘You’re all spiritualists?’

‘We’re all spiritists, but we’re not all mediums, if that’s what you’re asking – I’m not. Essentially, we’re a group of people committed to furthering the work which occupied a good twenty years of a fine man’s life.’

‘He was – how should I put this? – a somewhat credulous man,’ Antony said, avoiding Ben’s agitated gaze.

‘Not as credulous as his critics would have us believe, Mr Largo. He fought two elections. He campaigned on behalf of the wrongly convicted. He was a passionate, liberal-minded man who constantly questioned his own beliefs and fought against injustice the whole of his adult life. His only flaw – if that’s how you want to regard it – was a desire to offer hope.’

Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Mrs Pollen turned away and spread her scarf over Ellen Gethin’s face, as if she wanted to protect her from cold scepticism.

‘Aye, OK, I’ll buy that, Beth.’ Antony leaned back against the wall. ‘I’m just no’ gonnae ask, if you don’t mind, under what circumstances Conan Doyle became your patron.’

The short drive back to Stanner started in silence, Antony lounging against the passenger door of the MG, chewing his lip and watching Ben drive with one hand on the wheel and his hair flowing behind him. Ben’s expression was so bland that Jane knew there had to be frantic action behind it. Which was understandable because, like, Jesus...

Coming up to the bypass Antony said, unsmiling, ‘My friend, if this is a set-up, I think it would be wise if you were to tell me right... now.’

Ben didn’t look at Antony. Jane had the impression he’d been expecting this.

‘We go back, pal.’ The open cuff of Antony’s denim jacket rolled back along a muscular forearm and his forefinger came up like a knife. ‘But not far enough that I wouldnae—’

He grabbed at the dash as Ben spun the MG into the side of the road, then up onto the grass, hitting the brakes hard and tossing Jane all over the small back seat.

‘Sorry about that, Jane.’ Ben took both hands from the wheel and half turned, as if offering his heart to Antony’s blade. ‘Look, I’ll say this once. Until half an hour ago all the White Company meant to me was a Boys’ Own adventure story that I had no particular wish to read.’

‘You’ll forgive me,’ Antony said, ‘for thinking it was all a wee bit lucky from your point of view.’

‘It was quite awesomely serendipitous, but I’m telling you I knew nothing about it.’

This is Natalie, Jane thought, sliding back into the narrow rear seat, saying nothing, holding down her excitement. Nat arranged for all this to be unveiled in front of Antony, and whatever you’re paying her it isn’t enough.

‘You wanted a contemporary dynamic,’ Ben said. ‘Now you’ve got one... and some.’

‘And you think they’d play ball? All the way?’

‘You came bloody close to asking her, matey. I was nearly soiling myself with anxiety.’

‘I’m no’ quite that stupid,’ Antony said. ‘I realize that to appear too eager at this stage would not be the thing.’

‘No.’ Ben leaned back into his bucket seat. ‘Even I couldn’t have dreamed up a woman with both a personal axe to grind against Neil Kennedy and a desire to prove – if only because she happens to live in this area – that The Hound begins on the Border. And to set it up for us like— I mean, you can see it, can’t you? To think I was originally going to offer you, as a frame, the tired old Baker Street League debating the origins of The Hound. Jesus.’

‘When all you needed,’ Antony said, ‘was for someone to... ask Arthur.’

‘It’s what they do, Antony. It’s what they bloody well do.’

‘So we’re looking at this Alistair Hardy, who has the temerity to claim Dr Joseph Bell as his spirit guide?’

‘Seems like it.’

‘At Stanner.’

‘You heard what I heard.’ Ben slid the gearstick into second and drove back onto the bypass.

‘And you think they’d let us shoot it? All of it? Like, they’re no’ gonnae give us any of this privacy’s crucial to the success of the operation kind of bullshit?’

‘Are you kidding? Listen. Some months after Doyle’s death in 1930, more than five thousand people attended a memorial seance at the Royal Albert Hall, during which a chair was left empty for him – how private was that?’

‘And did he, um, manifest?’

‘They had a well-known medium called Estelle Roberts. And Doyle’s widow Jean was on the stage. Great formal occasion, everyone in evening dress. A sign on the empty chair simply read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Jean was seated next to it – though she admitted she didn’t expect to turn round and see him.’

‘Shucks.’

‘However, Estelle Roberts began the proceedings by describing several spirits present in the hall, and their identities were confirmed by members of the audience.’

‘Plants, Benjamin.’ Antony sniffed. ‘Mediums work with more plants than Alan bloody Titchmarsh.’

‘Antony, I’m not making a case for the veracity of it, I’m simply applauding the clever building of dramatic tension. Sure, a few dozen people were unconvinced, and some of them just walked out – to the evident dismay of Mrs Roberts, who started complaining that she couldn’t work under these conditions. Then somebody started playing the organ to drown out the, ah, sounds of dissent. And then, just when it looked as if it might all be falling apart, the medium suddenly shouted out’ – Ben raising his voice against the buffeting air – ‘He is here!’

They rounded a bend in the bypass, and the wooded face of Stanner Rocks was up ahead, with those knobs of stone projecting like crumbling body parts.

‘And there was old Arthur in the chair,’ Antony said, ‘placidly smoking his pipe.’

‘Well, the medium claimed to have seen him. She described him as being in full evening dress, and striding with his old vigour across the stage to take his reserved seat.’

‘Always keep ’em waiting.’

‘Mrs Roberts said Arthur gave her a message for Lady Jean, which she promptly passed on. Unfortunately it was drowned out by a dramatic fanfare from the organist and nobody in the audience – don’t, Antony, do not say a word – nobody in the audience heard it. But Jean maintained for the rest of her life that she was utterly convinced by its content that the message had come from her husband. Make of that what you will.’

‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ Antony said as they slowed for the hotel drive. ‘Doesnae matter at all.’

‘Not a toss.’

They glanced at one another and they both smiled.

‘Well, I think I’m coming, Ben,’ Antony said. ‘I think I’m nearly there, pal.’

‘Not in front of Jane, Antony.’ Ben pushed the MG between the grey gateposts topped by damaged hounds. ‘Wait till you get to your room.’

And they both started laughing, big mates again, schoolboys. His room? Was this some in-joke? She was not unaware that Ben had never mentioned the room where Antony had slept or asked him if he’d experienced anything – at least not in her hearing.

Jane leaned back against the hard rear seat and wondered why she wasn’t joining in. Ben glanced very briefly back at her and then at Antony, and she knew that look from a long time ago. It was like, pas devant les enfants. She looked quickly away from them, up through the strobing of light and pines to the turreted profile of Baskerville Hall.

‘And then I’ll tell you the rest,’ Ben murmured to Antony. ‘And that’ll really bring you off. Pal.’

10 Serious Requiem

‘YOU SOUND LIKE you badly need to talk,’ Sophie Hill had said when Merrily phoned.

Jeavons was right, she was an open book.

The lights were on in the gatehouse when she drove under it. Alongside, the sandstone Cathedral was crouching like a big ginger cat in the rusting remains of some late sunshine. In the office, Sophie had the kettle on. Most Saturday afternoons she’d go into the gatehouse office to sweep up the remains of the week.

‘What was he like?’

‘Bewildering.’ Merrily sat down at the desk by the window. ‘Enigmatic. Worryingly perceptive.’

‘You liked him?’

‘He has... charm.’ She gazed through the window into Broad Street, where the street lights were coming on, along with chains of coloured bulbs newly hung across the road, although Christmas was still no more than a threat.

Sophie poured boiling water into the white teapot. ‘I did some research. So far this year, six ministers in the diocese have made inquiries about the possibility of holding healing services. I spoke to three of them. One said, “I think we should be seen to be doing something.” Another stressed he wanted nothing to do with Deliverance.’

‘Figures.’ Merrily’s attempt to set up a Deliverance Advisory Group was still in the tray marked ongoing. Some of them quite obviously didn’t want to know because she was a woman. A month ago, after consulting her over the phone about certain technicalities, one rector had gone off and set up his own small group – all male – to deal with an alleged presence at a village shop. They’d never told her what had happened.

‘Another one,’ Sophie said, ‘volunteered to be involved in any healing initiative if there was someone else to lead it. And as long as it wasn’t – and I quote – “anyone like Jeavons”. Sometimes one has to acknowledge that the clergy, as a profession, can be rather dispiriting.’

Sophie wore her mauve twinset. Her hair was white. In a dog collar she would cut a reassuring figure, but it would never happen; Sophie knew too much about the Church.

Merrily got out her cigarettes. ‘There were some things I hadn’t realized about Jeavons. It came out when he told me about the death of his wife, and why he couldn’t heal her... and yet might have, if he’d known then what he knows now.’

Sophie turned off the main ceiling lights, switched on the desk lamp and set the teapot down between Merrily and herself.

‘Go on.’

They actually went upstairs together, Ben and Antony – up the red carpet that Ben had bought instead of rewiring or a damp-proof course. Jane thought they looked like two kids who’d found a porn cache.

She found Natalie putting up Christmas lights in the cocktail bar, a room not yet fully Victorianized. It had pale green walls and colonial cane tables and fake oak beams across the ceiling, supporting nothing.

‘So how long have you known about Mrs Pollen?’ Jane said.

Nat was standing on the bar itself, arranging the lights between steel hooks projecting from the oak beam over it. ‘Why are these bastards not coming on?’

‘Maybe the fittings need tightening,’ Jane said. ‘Stay there.’ She climbed up from a stool to the bar and picked up the end of the string of miniature bulbs.

‘Beth Pollen found you, then?’ Nat said.

‘At the church.’ Jane started turning the first pea-bulb in its plastic holder. ‘She seemed OK. Surprisingly.’

‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ Nat had her reading glasses on the end of her nose, and she peered over them at Jane. Nat looked good in glasses, would have looked good in a neck brace. ‘She got into it the way most of them do. Bereavement – husband. They’re not all cranks.’

‘I just can’t imagine ever wanting to contact someone who’s dead.’

‘Can’t you?’

Jane thought about it. ‘The thing is, I knew a girl at school who thought she could do it. And there was this other girl with problems who got involved, and she was like unhinged, mentally disturbed, and the whole thing pushed her over the top. It was... unpleasant, in the end. Horrible.’

‘And your mother wouldn’t like it, would she? Spiritualism.’

Jane looked up. ‘That’s nothing to do with it. I’m not exactly intimidated by the Church.’ She tightened a second loose bulb; the lights still didn’t come on. ‘You do know what they’re planning, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. I was just wondering if you did or if you were fishing. Pollen sounded me out during the murder weekend, so when The Baker Street League went down...’

‘She told you then – at the murder weekend – that the White Company wanted to, like, seek confirmation from Conan Doyle that this was the source of the Baskerville thing?’

‘No, that seems to have occurred to them later. Pollen’s late husband worked in the archive department at Powys County Council, and he was interested in Stanner. She has copies of various deeds and documents, so she knows a lot about this place. She said, how did I think Ben would feel about hosting the Company, and I said, why don’t you ask him?’

Jane said, ‘He’s like a little kid over it.’

‘It fits in nicely, doesn’t it?’

All the lights had come on, a garish string of alternating sour lemon and livid blue. Natalie stared at them in clear disbelief. ‘Do you think Ben got them from the County Highways Department? They look like fucking warning lights.’

Jane let go of the bulbs but didn’t get down from the bar.

‘Nat... Just now, in the car, Ben said there was something he had to tell Antony that would like... you know, really clinch things. What’s that about?’

‘Huh?’

‘He gave Antony a look like, not in front of the kid. And when they came in he took him upstairs.’

‘Oh.’

‘You do know what it’s about, right?’

Natalie frowned. ‘Possibly. But he wouldn’t have been bothered about you hearing it, he’d have been—’ She shut up as the door opened, and then she turned and smiled and made a ta-da flourish towards the grim Christmas lights. ‘Well... we got them working, Amber. We’re just not sure if we’re glad or not.’

Amber, in jeans and a mohair sweater, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She looked horrified.

‘For God’s sake, they’re awful! Switch them off!’

Natalie tweaked a bulb but the lights didn’t go out. ‘Where’d he get them?’

‘I don’t really care. Let’s just get them down. I think that pipe’s burst, Nat. I think the whole heating system’s all to cock.’

‘Oh hell,’ Nat said. ‘Listen, has he told you? We have a mass booking.’

Amber’s eyes widened. Jane saw a certain fear there.

‘I think I’m going to let Ben tell you about it himself,’ Nat said. ‘Not for me to pinch his glory.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Entertaining Mr Largo, somewhere or other. Don’t panic, lovie, it’s a week or so off yet. We’ll get some more lights by then. We’ll get the plumber. We’ll make this place look almost festive. Well, the bits we allow them to film...’

‘Film?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ Nat jumped down. ‘Good, eh?’

And when Amber had edged anxiously away, Nat smiled and shook her head, and Jane said, ‘Why don’t you want to pinch his glory? It’s all down to you.’

‘Just that she may not thank me when she finds out,’ Nat said. ‘He’ll maybe want to choose his time, Jane. She hates this place enough already. If she knew there’d been a murder, it might not—’

Jane came down from the bar top in a hurry. ‘You’re kidding...’

‘Long time ago – before World War Two. Pollen told me, and I checked it out with that guy Sampson who played the Major. And then I told Ben.’

‘What happened?’

‘He decided to keep it to himself for a while. Just a domestic thing, Jane. One of the Chancery women killed her husband. No big mystery, no need to gather the suspects in the drawing room. She was pissed at the time, apparently.’ Natalie started to bundle the alleged Christmas lights together on the bar top, and they sent blue and yellow stripes flaring across her face. ‘On the one hand it adds to the atmosphere of the dump, on the other... might put some people off. You don’t know, do you?’

Jane said, ‘Erm... did it happen in one of the bedrooms?’

‘I think it was outside, actually. In the gardens.’

Merrily told Sophie that sometimes she wished she was a Catholic or belonged to some hardline Nonconformist sect with strict liturgy and rules instead of guidelines.

‘Just it would be nice to meet two Deliverance ministers who operated to the same rules.’

‘Is Jeavons a Deliverance minister?’ Sophie asked.

‘Not strictly. But... yeah, of course he is. In the cause of healing the sick, he actually goes further into it than most of us. This is where Deliverance meets Healing – the healing of the dead.’

‘His wife?’

‘Catherine.’ Merrily watched her cigarette end smouldering in the ashtray. ‘This cool, fiercely intellectual, academic theologian.’

Jeavons had said that he and Catherine had been married in New York, where he was a priest and she was lecturing. As she was English and he’d lived here too, he wanted them to marry in England, but Catherine wouldn’t hear of it. Nor would she invite her parents to the ceremony. And when the Jeavonses did eventually come back, as a married couple, she didn’t even notify them.

‘Whatever she told Jeavons about her background, it wasn’t the truth. Some years later, Catherine’s father made contact with Lew. Someone had sent him a local newspaper picture of the Reverend and Mrs Jeavons when Lew became rector of a parish in Lincolnshire. The old man said he and his wife had parted and he’d very much like to get in touch with Catherine again.’

Jeavons had been surprised to discover that Catherine’s father was a fairly well-known Cambridge theologian, H.F.H. Longman. Longman told Jeavons there’d been a row about an unsuitable boyfriend while Catherine was at university. But Catherine still refused to see her father and became very agitated that he knew where she was – so much so that Jeavons had to negotiate a parish-swap, which was how they’d wound up in Worcestershire.

Merrily looked down into Broad Street: nearly dark now, the lights misting. Sophie poured more tea, and Merrily told her about the second time Catherine’s father had been in touch – when he was terminally ill, begging Lew to persuade his daughter to see him one more time before he died. Jeavons had told her she’d regret it if she didn’t, and perhaps something would be lifted if she did.

Although in the end she gave in, Catherine had refused to have Jeavons with her at the Cambridge hospice, where Longman was in his final coma.

Sophie leaned back into the shadows behind the desk lamp.

‘When she got home,’ Merrily said, ‘Jeavons was leaving for an international conference in Cape Town. When he got back, about three weeks later, she’d lost weight, her hair was unwashed, she’d been drinking. He found bottles of whisky under the sink. And she was... distant. Didn’t want to talk to him. And then she moved her stuff into a separate bedroom – a temporary thing, she said. She just needed time on her own. A few weeks later, she had a minor heart attack.’

I took my eye off the ball, was how Jeavons had put it. And he’d done it again, after the doctors had given Catherine a tentative all-clear and the situation between her and Lew was gradually restabilizing. Took his eye off the ball, because this was when he was being courted by both the Church and politicians. He’d thought she’d secretly like the idea of him in episcopal purple.

When Catherine had the second heart attack, Lew had thrown himself into three desperate days of prayer and hands-on. Rarely left her bedside, never slept, the bitterness and self-recrimination lasting long after Catherine’s funeral and the memorial service and Lew’s rejection of the purple.

‘He’d located Catherine’s mother to ask if she wanted to be at the funeral, and she hadn’t even replied but, some months later, he tracked her down. He said he was in a rocky mental state himself by then – could often feel Catherine’s presence in the rectory. He... said he awoke one night and saw her in the doorway of his bedroom. But he could only hear the sobs as echoes.’

At this stage, Lew had said, he was close to dumping his ministry, having been offered a teaching and community post back in Brooklyn. He’d had his letter of acceptance in his pocket, ready to post, when the mother-in-law he’d never met had arrived without warning at the rectory and he’d finally learned the truth about his dead wife’s relationship with her father.

‘Oh God,’ Sophie said irritably.

‘Intellectual sparks between a father and his brilliant daughter. Her mind excited him – Longman used to say that, apparently. When she was at Oxford, he’d visit her at weekends.’

Sophie snorted.

‘Jeavons said he’d often suspected there might have been someone else, someone she still thought about. Remembering the “unsuitable boyfriend”. Never imagining how unsuitable the boyfriend might actually have been.’

‘It’s more common than we might imagine among the so-called educated classes,’ Sophie said. ‘They encourage their children to be “liberal-minded”. Makes me sick.’

Merrily shook out a cigarette. ‘The reason Catherine’s mother had come to see him was that she also was experiencing problems. Maybe it was guilt at having walked away, or at her own resentment of Catherine. Understandable. It’s often hard to draw a line between mental unrest and... and the other thing. Lew brought in another minister, a friend, to bless the vicarage, sprinkle holy water around in the room where Catherine had slept. Then they held a Requiem Eucharist for Catherine, in the presence of her mother. Which, in normal circumstances, you might expect to resolve it.’

‘It didn’t?’

‘Got worse. He didn’t go into details. But he gave back word on the Brooklyn job and just spent a lot of time praying for an answer. Also, putting himself through a kind of ritual scourging – sleeping in the bedroom that Catherine had switched to, because he felt it was... their room, you know?’

‘The father?’

‘Jeavons felt that the fact that she’d been there, at the hospice, when the old man died, even if he wasn’t conscious – at least, she thought he wasn’t conscious – that this might have... created an opening. Maybe something had been reclaimed, something renewed. Her father had wanted her back with him. You know?’

Sophie’s face was hollowed behind the lamp. ‘That’s horrible, Merrily. Sick.’

‘Lew didn’t know what to do, or who to turn to for advice. Just kept on returning to that bedroom every night, with his Bible, and whenever he awoke – which was several times every night – he’d pray for help. He maintains that to heal we often have to suffer. A priest must go on suffering, without complaint, until something turns around. And you don’t have to look very far into the New Testament for his sources, do you?’

Sophie looked momentarily anxious and then stern. ‘I do tend to wonder if you really need this, Merrily.’

‘Tell a woman about the need for suffering and you touch a very deep seam. Anyway, it came to Lew one night that there should be a Requiem for this person he’d grown to hate: H.F.H. Longman. So... Lew Jeavons, his mother-in-law, his Deliverance friend and two other colleagues gathered in the bedroom. Lew doing the honours. Part of the suffering.’ Merrily paused.

‘And?’ Sophie said.

‘He told me he went to bed that night for the last time in that room. And he awoke in the night, as he always did, but this time he didn’t feel the need to pray. He simply turned over and... and the other side of the bed was warm. He got out of bed, pulled up the sheets and went back to their old room.’

Sophie leaned forward into the lamplight. Merrily felt the heat of her own tears and was irritated somehow.

‘He gave me a copy of a book called Healing the Family Tree by Kenneth McAll, who was a priest and a doctor. I knew about it, never read it. It argues that your mental and physical health is often conditioned by your ancestors. They fuck you up, your mum and dad, and their mums and dads and so on.’

‘Genetics.’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Maybe related – I’m no scientist. Jeavons spent about three years researching all this, here and abroad. Visiting societies where the placating of the ancestors is still considered all-important. Which was controversial, as some of them were more or less pagan.’

‘He thinks his wife was in some way destroyed by her father from beyond the grave?’

‘Lew thinks if he’d known what he was looking for, if the so-called maladjusted essence had been dealt with earlier, Catherine might still be alive. Like so much of this job, it’s hard to separate the spiritual from the psychological. He also talked about this tennis player, Kim Redmond, who was supposed to have been cured of MS. Jeavons said he spent a lot of time talking to Kim, and it came out that the kid’s father and his grandfather were both doctors. And the grandad was furious when Kim walked out of medical school with his tennis racquet – accusing him of betraying the family and his obligations to the sick.’

‘As if medicine was an ancestral obligation?’ Sophie said. ‘A tribal thing?’

‘Mmm. During Kim’s first Wimbledon, grandad dies. By the end of the week, just after the funeral, the kid’s having nightmares, beginning to feel his body is no longer his to control. His game’s shot to pieces, the doctors eventually start to suspect the worst. Jeavons’s solution was a serious Requiem for the old man, conducted at the church where the funeral had been held.’

‘And it obviously worked.’ Sophie followed tennis.

‘Or something did. The docs said it was probably an initial misdiagnosis. Which they would, wouldn’t they? Similarly, you could say that the Requiem – the emotional weight of this ancient, solemn ritual – had an immediate psychological effect on Kim, removing the burden of guilt and related symptoms. Anyway, Jeavons says we generally do half a job.’

‘Who?’

‘Us. Deliverance. Because most of us don’t take into consideration the true psychic weight of the family or tribe. And because we’re only concerned about the dead when they’re conspicuously haunting us. Jeavons’s view is that the dead always haunt us, whether we’re aware of it or not.’

Sophie sat up. ‘That’s untenable. He’s virtually saying every one needs deliverance.’

‘To a degree.’

‘And then, in no time at all you’ve become like that man Ellis, exorcizing everything from the demon drink to the demon—’

‘Tobacco,’ Merrily said. ‘Not as bad as Ellis, maybe, but it’s... perplexing.’

‘It’s the quickest way to a nervous breakdown, if you ask me,’ Sophie said. ‘My advice, for what it’s worth, is to avoid this man and all he stands for.’

‘He’s a very influential voice in Deliverance worldwide. He showed me his computer files. He’s in contact with more than three hundred priests, in the US, Canada, Africa, Australia... all submitting records of their work, building up this huge database on the healing of the dead. There are people out there who’ve been trying to heal... I dunno, Hitler?’

‘Stop.’ Sophie pointed at her, very calm, very stern. ‘Stop now. Don’t go near that man again, Merrily. Just don’t.’

11 Welshies

THE SMOKY DUSK was settling over Stanner Rocks when Gomer Parry picked Jane up in his truck, and she wondered if he could see some kind of glow coming off her.

‘Cold ole night, Janey. Gonner have at least one big snow before Christmas, I’d say.’ Gomer’s teeth were clenched like a monkey wrench on his ciggy.

With Antony Largo as the only guest, Amber and Ben didn’t need Jane to stay over, so she’d phoned Gomer and arranged for a lift home. But before she left, Antony had cornered her, and put this proposition to her and... it was like incredible.

‘Me and Danny, we falled this ole dead oak for Mrs Maginn, Cwmgaer,’ Gomer said. ‘Then we sets up the tractor and the sawbench, cuts him up for her stove.’

Gomer was now spending most days at Danny Thomas’s farm in the Radnor Valley, ten minutes from Stanner, while his yard was cleaned up after the fire and the big shed was being rebuilt. Danny was Gomer’s new partner in the plant-hire business – which made all kinds of sense, with Gomer’s nephew Nev dead and Danny having discovered how much he hated farming.

Rural serendipity.

In the dimness of the truck, with no dashboard lights working, Jane watched the tip of Gomer’s ciggy receding towards his mouth. He had to be over seventy now, not that anybody would ever prove it. Mum always maintained that Gomer had his own organic generator, and you could sometimes see light in his glasses when there wasn’t any around to be reflected.

Serendipity. Maybe Antony would change his mind. Maybe it wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t be holding her breath exactly. But, like... wow.

‘Hope that bugger’s still paying you, Janey.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Foley. Word is he en’t doing brilliant business. Danny’s Greta’s sister, she yeard as they wanted help in the bar over Christmas, and then when she gived ’em a call they said they was all right now. But there en’t been nobody else took on, otherwise her’d have yeard. Don’t miss a thing yereabouts, Gret and Gret’s sister.’

‘That’s bollocks.’ Jane was annoyed. It was sunk deep into the collective psyche of this area: the joy of failure. ‘In fact, things are really picking up. They’ve just had a major conference booked.’

‘From Off?’

‘Of course from Off. Off’s where the money is, Gomer.’

‘True.’ Gomer wasn’t parochial himself, he just mixed with people who were.

‘And Nat can handle the bar, anyway.’

Gomer slowed for the roundabout at the end of the bypass. ‘This’d be Miz Natalie Craven, Jeremy Berrows’s... friend.’

‘Why, what are they saying about her?’ Jane had often wondered, although she could probably guess.

‘Oh... hippy,’ Gomer said. ‘Not Danny, mind. He don’t call her that.’

That was probably because Danny was a real hippy, Jane thought, as Gomer cleared the roundabout and the sporadic lights of Kington were behind them, dark fields on either side.

‘There was plenty folks, see, wanted Jeremy to get back with Mary Morson, after this do with the plant feller from the Rocks – well, Mary’s ma, partic’ly, on account of Jeremy’s worth a bob or two. This plant feller, he was just on some Government work scheme. Gone now, and never even said he was off.’

‘I’m sorry, Gomer, I’m not getting this.’ She was interested, naturally: the enigma of Nat and Jeremy.

‘Mary Morson, her was engaged to Jeremy?’

‘OK.’

‘Two year or more, sure t’be. Then her goes to this rock music night at The Eagle, with some mates. Meets up with this smoothy plant feller.’

‘You mean one of the botanists working on the Rocks? For the Hereford and Radnor Nature Trust?’ There was a study project, Jane knew, centred on this rare plant, the Early Star of Bethlehem, found on Stanner Rocks and virtually nowhere else in Britain.

‘Sure t’be,’ Gomer confirmed. ‘Bit of a fling. ’Course, Mary Morson reckoned her could easy go back to Jeremy on account of Jeremy, he en’t going nowhere, is he? He don’t never go nowhere, that boy, won’t leave his stock no more’n half a day. But meantime this Natalie turns up sudden, with the kiddie, in this van. No accounting for circumstance, Janey.’

‘Served the bitch right, if you ask me.’

Gomer’s grin flashed in the gloom. ‘Exackly what Danny’d say. Danny reckoned her was good for Jeremy, this Natalie. Bring him out of ’isself.’

‘Quite right,’ Jane said. She stared at him. ‘Was good?’

Gomer clamped his teeth on about a millimetre of ciggy. ‘Boy en’t right, n’more, Janey.’

‘How do you mean?’

But he just shook his head and said nothing, and Jane didn’t push it. Maybe she ought to have pushed it, if only for Clancy’s sake, but everything else was looking too good tonight.

The heavy stuff started for Danny not long after he got in. It started with Greta pulling off the left-hand channel of his big old Wharfedale cans and booming down his ear like her was taking over lead-vocal.

Danny sat up. ‘Who?’

Greta said it again, slowly. ‘Jeremy Berrows. Needs help. At The Nant. Urgent. Won’t tell me n’more, but you just be careful what you takes on, Danny Thomas, because—’

‘Bugger.’ Danny blinked at the telly, the Foo Fighters still roaring somewhere in his brain. The telly was on, but Danny had been watching the wood-burner, like he always did when he had his music playing on winter nights, just gazing and gazing into the glass. They had these lovely barn-dried ash logs on there tonight, burning bright orange and molten gold, just coming up to perfection, and he could smell his tea, cheese toasting, and the curtains were drawn against the cold black night and... Bugger!

Danny laid the cans on the back of his armchair, where his head had been, and Greta shoved the cordless at him.

‘Yeah?’

‘Danny?’

‘Ar.’

‘They won’t go away.’

‘What?’

‘They won’t listen to me. It’s like I en’t yere. They’re all over the yard, all over the meadow...’

‘What you on about? Who?’ Danny had Greta leaning between him and the wood-burner, trying to hear what was coming down the line. He waved at her to get out of his heat.

‘Welshies,’ Jeremy said.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in the house. I come back in the house, see. En’t no way I can deal with all three of ’em, Danny. I got the kid with me, Clancy.’

‘Well, that—’

‘Don’t know whatter do. Don’t want no cops yere, they’d just turn it back on me or it’d get in the papers.’

‘They threatenin’ you?’

‘Danny, I en’t good in these situations, you know that.’

‘Lemme get this straight, Jeremy. Welshies. This would be a raiding party come over the bloody border, is it?’

‘Could say that.’ Jeremy’s voice had gone faint. ‘I dunno, Danny, basically. I dunno what’s gonner happen.’

When Jane walked into the kitchen, it was clear that Mum hadn’t been in long – coat over the chair, bag on the table. Jane placed her own overnight bag very carefully by the kitchen door; she’d need to get it upstairs as soon as poss. Tried not to keep looking at it as she helped Mum cobble a meal together.

‘It might snow,’ Mum said from the fridge.

‘Gomer said that. I bet it’ll all be gone by Christmas, though. I don’t remember a white Christmas.’

‘There was one when you were little.’ Mum came over and looked at her with evident suspicion. ‘Did something happen?’

‘No, why?’

‘You seem... strangely energized.’

‘It’s the wonderful world of work. Invigorating.’ Jane sawed hard at a farmhouse cob, keeping her head down over the bread knife. Hell, was it that obvious?

‘Are they... going to want you much over Christmas?’

‘Hard to say. I think there’s a conference of some kind coming off. So, um, you got over to Lol then?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘Good. T’riffic. Bit of a drag, though, driving all the way over the other side of the county every time you feel like a... proper chat.’

‘Actually, we thought there might have been something—’ Mum went to the sink to fill the kettle. ‘Well, Lucy’s old house in Church Street was for sale yet again, and we thought this time... Well, Lol thought he could raise the deposit.’

Jane dropped the knife, looked up in real delight. ‘Wow! Really? That would be... incredible!’

Lucy had been Lol’s mentor, had helped turn him around after Alison Kinnersley dumped him. It was what Lucy did: the nature-mystic, the keeper of the village’s soul, touching all their lives when they’d first arrived in Ledwardine. Becoming Jane’s fairy-godmother figure, kind of. Before dying, thrown from her moped on the road near the old Powell orchard.

‘Only, it was, erm, sold,’ Mum said. ‘Before the agents could even get a sign up.’

‘No!’

‘We should’ve seen it earlier in the Hereford Times. You don’t think, do you?’

‘Oh God, that would’ve been so totally perfect. Like, for both of you. Is there no chance?’

Mum shrugged.

‘Who’s got it?’

‘Looks like a weekend-cottage situation.’

‘Bastards!’ Jane snatched up the bread knife. ‘That is so... In a country this overcrowded, there is no excuse for anybody to have more than one home. It’s just like so totally unfair. Why don’t the sodding government bring in some kind of crippling second-home tax?’

‘Probably because most of the Cabinet seem to have three or four homes each. I think they’re lawyers, from London, these people. Well, you have to do something with all that money, don’t you?’

Jane shook her head in sorrow. ‘Mum, I’m so sorry. It would’ve been brilliant. And Lucy – she’d have wanted it, more than anything.’ She forced a smile. ‘Plus, it would’ve been somewhere for you to move into when I’ve left home and you finally come to your senses.’

‘A retirement home?’

‘Oh, it’s my firm belief,’ Jane said, ‘that you’ll be out of the Church within two years.’

‘You wish.’ Mum walked across the kitchen and scooped up the overnight bag. ‘I’d better get this lot in the washer, before—’

‘No!’

Mum turned, with the overnight bag dangling from her hand, Jane frantically aware of the bulge in the side of it. And of Mum’s eyes narrowing. She thought fast.

‘Put that down at once! Can’t you ever sit down and relax? I’ll do it in the morning, when... when you’re in church.’

There was this horrible, tense moment before Mum did her wry smile and dumped the bag.

‘Sounds like you’ve had a lousy enough day already,’ Jane said, snatching it up.

God, how close was that?

12 Night Exercise

DANNY REMEMBERED THE last time he’d had the call-out from Jeremy – a soft summer morning, the air full of warm scents, the brown-haired woman waiting in her caravan, sending out the secret siren calls that only Jeremy would hear.

Now, under an icy sky slashed by a thin moon, Danny backed Greta’s old Subaru Justy out of the barn. Little grey car, discreet – don’t make no Bank Holiday parade out of this. Greta was opening the galvanized farm gate for him, yowling the whole while.

‘You en’t called me in half an hour, I’m phoning the police! You got that, Danny Thomas?’

‘Whole bloody valley got it.’ Danny wound his window tight, shoving a random cassette into the player, turning up the sound cautiously, in case it was one of Gret’s Jackie Collins story-book tapes. Danny had his giveaway hair pushed up under his woolly hat: no need for the buggers to know who he was.

The Welshies: Sebbie Three Farm’s hired guns – here, according to the popular folk-tale put around by Sebbie, to reduce the fox population.

Which was bullshit, basically, because there was never enough, and never would be enough foxes around for Sebbie Dacre and the Middle Marches Hunt. And also, seeing there was a local gun-club that would be only too grateful to be viewed by somebody as a bit useful, why had Sebbie hired from Off?

The Subaru sloshed down the track, the tape on the stereo turning out to be the Creedence collection, starting with ‘Susie Q’, which was all right but, if it got as far as ‘Bad Moon Rising’ before he reached The Nant, Danny was gonner take it as an omen.

Truth was, nobody knew why Sebbie Dacre had hired shooters from South Wales to scrat about pretending to be after foxes. You didn’t go out of your way to fire hard questions at boys from Off with loaded guns. But when these boys was invading what was likely the only farm along the whole border that didn’t have no firearms of any description, that was seriously out of order, Danny’s view of it.

At the Walton turn-off, he could see all the way to Old Radnor church, jutting up like a castle on a horizon turned jagged by quarrying. Then, just as Creedence were unrolling ‘Proud Mary’, the forestry rose up darker than the night sky, making him feel like some insect crawling into a yard brush.

What you had to understand first about Jeremy Berrows, see, was that he was an only child. Normal thing was for a farming family to have a spare, but Eddie Berrows was killed outright in a tractor accident when Jeremy was still at school and his mother was pregnant at the time, and her lost it, likely due to the stress. And that was that – Jeremy growing up knowing he had Full Responsibility for The Farm.

There was still farm labour to be had cheapish in them days, so they got by till the boy was sixteen and could take over official. Meantime, it was like all his ole man’s know-how had come seeping into him from wherever his ole man was, and now Jeremy was truly part of his land, in the way Danny had felt part of the whole valley that time, way back, when he’d dropped acid in the Four Stones field. Except that with Jeremy, who didn’t even drink, this was a natural chemical thing, an organic thing, ditchwater in his veins. You’d see him standing there like a little thorn tree, bristling with the breeze, Stanner Rocks behind him and the ewes around his legs. If Jeremy had played music, this would have been his album cover, and it was something close to mystical.

He just wasn’t good with people, that was all. Boy was shy, and if folks thought he was just another thick-as-shit hill-farmer, that was all right with him. Let the other buggers do the talking, let Sebbie do the shouting and go on thinking he ruled the valley. Sebbie Three Farms: master of the hunt and all he surveyed – except for this thriving little holding, right in the middle of Sebbie’s three farms, that belonged to Jeremy Berrows.

Danny took the Gladestry turn. Always reckoned he knew this area as well as anybody, but he still needed full beams to find the entrance to The Nant. No sign, see. Used to be one, till Jeremy’s mam went into the sheltered bungalow in Kington, but Jeremy didn’t need telling what was his, so when the sign fell off it stayed off, and that was that.

Full beams was a bit of a giveaway, but the track was narrow and the ditches either side were four feet deep, sure to be. The headlights found some new trees that Jeremy and the woman must have planted, with strong stockades around them and chicken wire to keep the sheep off. How many farmers planted trees without there was some big environmental grant for it?

Jeremy Berrows: natural green-boy, firm custodian of the land, friend to all of—

‘Christ!’

Danny slammed on, both feet hard down, the Justy’s little tyres spinning and squealing like piglets in the mud.

The track had curved to the left and this big motor was blocking the whole of it like an outsize bull. No lights. Without his own headlamps, Danny would’ve been up the back of it, no question.

The Justy slurped and stalled, leaving Danny slumped over the wheel, breathing heavy. Must’ve stayed there about half a minute, getting hisself together, switching his lights off, before pushing his hair back under his woolly hat and climbing shakily out of the Justy. Close? Shit.

Danny staggered up to the big motor. It was a Discovery, metallic light green, with camouflage effects sprayed on. He hated this paramilitary crap, despised these bastards already. Still, he made good and sure there was nobody inside the Discovery before setting off to walk the last fifty or so yards to the buildings, keeping to the narrow grass verge beside the ditch, aware that he’d left the Justy blocking the way out.

Too bad. He was still shaking. In the country, the worst accidents happened on farms.

In his jolted-up state, he’d forgotten to bring a torch with him, but the place looked to be well lit up already. The track ended in the farmyard, with the black and white house to the left and the old stone barn on the right, and one wall of the barn looked floodlit like an old church.

The big bay doors were shut, but Danny noticed that the small one to the side was ajar and this was where most of the light was, and there were shadows moving, and he stood there on the edge of the yard, screwing up his eyes to try and make out what was there. Then calling out, in a friendly kind of way, ‘Hello there!’

This was just before the light went out and he heard footsteps coming at him from three directions, making him instinctively start whirling round, clawing at the blackness.

When the light came back on a few seconds later, it was full in his eyes, and he was near flattened by the violence of it.

Eirion’s voice, in the phone, said, ‘You total, insufferable bitch. How could you do this to me?’

Jane carried on unwrapping the package, the mobile wedged between ear and shoulder. She was smiling. She’d dug the big Jiffy bag out of her overnight case and brought it over to the bed. Mustn’t drop it on the floor, an expensive and complex piece of equipment like this.

‘Jane, you still—?’

‘Sure.’ She’d kept the overnight bag between her knees all the time she and Mum were eating, then said she’d just have to whizz upstairs to the apartment to freshen up and unpack.

‘Well?’ Eirion said.

‘Look, it’s the way it goes, sunshine. Nobody compelled you to go to the Alps with your creepy stepmother and a few corrupt members of the Welsh Assembly and their bimbos. I think it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens to other people while you’re busy shooting the piste with a bunch of inconsequential tossers.” Right, here we are...’

Jane released the camcorder from the bubblewrap and lay back on her bed with the phone.

‘I can’t stand it,’ Eirion said. ‘What’s it look like? What sort is it?’

‘Well, it’s a Sony.’ Jane held the camcorder over her face with one hand. She was going to have to cool this a little, or he wouldn’t play ball. ‘It says one-fifty and some letters. It’s kind of dinky.’

‘Sounds like the kind they hand out to people doing these video-diary pieces. The punter sets it up on a tripod in his room and whispers intimate thoughts at it. If it gets broken it doesn’t make a major hole in the budget. Has it got one of those flaps you unfold, like a wing, and you can see the picture?’

‘Hang on.’ Jane sat up. ‘Yep, there’s a flap. Can’t see anything in it.’

‘That’s probably because it’s not switched on. Sockets for external mike?’

‘Could be. Couple of those little pinhole things. In fact, there’s an actual microphone as well, separate. It’s longer than the camera.’

Eirion moaned.

‘Piece of crap, then, is it, Irene?’

‘No.’ Eirion sighed. ‘It’s a tidy bit of kit, for the money, and it’ll get very credible results on automatic setting. Jane, I’m gutted.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m sorry. I truly wish you were going to be there. You’d probably get much better stuff than me.’

‘Are you trying to make it worse? What’s he like?’

‘Antony? He’s quite funny. Very cynical. At first, you get the feeling he really couldn’t give a toss. But then he latches on to something, and you can see this steely intensity in his eyes. Of course I don’t know these guys like you do, and I didn’t realize he was that famous.’

‘He’s not famous, Jane. Pro doco guys are seldom famous. He’s respected, is what counts. Which is what brings the work in. And I mean, why would a guy... why would a guy of his stature allow an evil little bimbo like you to... shoot for television?’

They had him backed up against the farmhouse wall, battering him with white light.

‘... The fuck are you?’

Danny didn’t respond. Stood there with his head bent away from the raging light, knowing that they had him wedged in. Somebody pulled off his hat and his hair came down over his face, near-wringing with cold sweat.

‘Looks like one of them fuckin’ travellers,’ another voice said – higher, younger. Danny placed the accent in the Valleys, somewhere down where there used to be coal mines and jobs. A good fifty miles from local, anyway.

It was them.

The light veered away from him, and he looked down and saw the lamp – one of them items you could send for out of the glossy catalogues that dropped out of local papers: ten million kilowatts, guaranteed to throw a beam halfway to Rhayader.

‘Assed you a question, mun.’ Hot, soupy breath in his face. ‘Assed you a fuckin’ question!’

‘What I am,’ Danny said through his clenched teeth, ‘is a feller got hisself invited yere by the owner. Unlike some bastards.’

‘Bullshit!’ He’s just a fuckin’ tenant, is all. Scum, he is.’

It was blasted into his face along with some spit. The light hit him again like a big white fist, just giving him time, before he had to shut his eyes against it, to see two blokes in army-looking camouflage gear, one with the lamp, the other with something that was likely a rifle with a telescopic sight.

‘Try again,’ the Welshie said.

‘I’m a neighbour. Who’re you?’

‘On your own?’

‘You’ll mabbe find out just now,’ Danny said, and cried out as somebody grabbed his hair and hauled his head back, and they shone the light directly into his eyes, and when he shut them the night turned bright orange like the logs in his stove.

‘Danny!’ Jeremy. His voice coming from above, probably an open window.

‘Call the cops, Jeremy,’ Danny said, surprised how calm he sounded, still held by his hair with his eyes tight shut.

From behind, another bloke said, ‘OK, he’s on his own.’ Then they let go of Danny’s hair, and he couldn’t feel the heat from the lamp any more, and he risked opening his eyes a fraction.

The first thing he saw was the gun.

‘Oh shit,’ Danny said.

It wasn’t what he was expecting. It had a shortish single barrel and a skeleton butt, like the end of a crutch.

‘Look,’ he said, nervous as hell now, ‘what’s this about?’ If you didn’t know better, you might figure these blokes for the SAS on some night exercise. All the instructions shouted, rasped out, like soldiers and armed police did on TV. A performance, designed to put the shits up you.

And it was working. No bugger in these parts had a gun like that, not even—

Danny said, ‘Sebbie Dacre sent you, right?’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘Nathan!’ The younger voice, from a few yards away. ‘I can year the bastard movin’ about! Fetch the fuckin’ light!’

‘Now, you won’t move, will you, mun?’ the close-up Welshie said. ‘’Cause if we has to come and find you we gonner beat the shit out of you, no arguments.’

‘Where’m I gonner move to?’ Danny just hoping Jeremy had got over his suspicions of the police and was on the phone to them right now. Failing that, it was all down to Gret. This wasn’t normal, not by a mile.

‘He’s comin’ out!’ The younger voice – a shrill excitement there, you could almost hear the adrenalin crackling. Boys with guns – unstable. Danny saw one of them swing round, levelling his rifle at the half-open barn door, going into a crouch.

Behind Danny, back at the house, there was the sound of a door bolt being slammed back.

‘No!’ Jeremy. The boy bursting out of the farmhouse.

From inside the barn, there was a scuffling of straw, maybe the sound of something panting. Then a shadow was rising up in front of Jeremy, and he was going, ‘Errrrrrr,’ like all the breath had been punched out of him.

‘You don’t wanner get hurt, little man.’

‘That’s, that’s my...’ Jeremy, fighting for breath. ‘That’s my dog!’

Danny ran out into the yard. The barn doorway was fully exposed in the bright beam, two yellow bales on end inside. He saw the butt of the rifle go back hard into the crook of the camouflage feller’s shoulder. His own breath came in like ice. One of the Welshies ran over and kicked the barn door wide open and then threw hisself to the side, bawling.

‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot the fucker!’

The gun went off twice, these crisp, tight cracks, Jeremy screaming, ‘Noooo!’

Amid the echoes, Danny heard rapid footsteps and saw something else flitting across the yard through the lamp beam to the barn.

‘Stop her!’ The first Welshie striding out, the lamp snatched up, beam swinging all over the place like a bar of solid light.

And then Jeremy Berrows going, ‘No, Clancy, stop, Christ almighty, no!’

Jesus, it was the girl. Danny found himself moving fast towards the open doorway, aware of the feller with the gun coming up alongside him, his face shiny-white in the light, and Danny thinking Oh God, oh God, oh God, what they done?

A couple of yards from the barn, the gunman pulled ahead of Danny and twisted back, and Danny saw it coming, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. His head seemed to burst apart, and he went down clawing at the frozen shit on the cobbles.

13 Real Personal

SPIRITUALISM: THIS, ESSENTIALLY, was the problem. Spiritualism was the keyhole in the door to hell, and the Deliverance Ministry tended to take an inflexible line on it, so this was why Jane couldn’t tell Mum about the White Company.

‘Or, er... the camera.’

‘You mean she doesn’t know you’re doing this?’

Eirion disapproved too, naturally. Rigid Welsh Chapel ethic. OK, he didn’t actually go to Chapel, but it had seeped into the whole culture.

‘She trusts me these days, Irene. We’re into a new phase of mutual trust and support. Look, I’ll tell her... at some stage. Meanwhile, don’t be an old woman. Just give me a few, like, really basic hints, OK? Please, Irene.’

‘You don’t deserve it. You’re evil and duplicitous.’

‘Irene. I’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen to me, you know that. No father any more... dragged out to the sticks... adolescent crises... mother in a permanent state of spiritual angst...’

‘You’re not just economical with the truth, you’re parsimonious.’

‘Not with you.’

In fact, she’d told him virtually everything: the church, the Vaughans, the White Company... all the stuff she couldn’t talk about to Mum without risking the most God-awful row, which she, frankly, did not at this moment need.

‘How did Largo put it?’ Eirion asked. ‘What did he actually say?’

‘Well, it... it was after we got back from the church, and I’d been helping Nat with these awful Christmas lights, and Amber’s determined to talk to Ben, so Antony just wanders in and he’s like, “Jane, could I have a wee word?” ’

She told him how she’d made Antony some coffee in the lounge, and he’d said, ‘Sit down a minute, Jane,’ and started asking her questions: what did she think of this and that on TV, what did she have planned for when she left school?

‘I mean, it was dead casual, I thought he was just making conversation. We were getting on pretty well – better than when Ben was around. And like having a laugh about how serious Ben was getting over all this. And then he goes, “Tell me, Jane, have you ever used a decent video camera?” ’

‘And then when you said no... ?’

‘I didn’t exactly say no. As such. I mean, suddenly I was getting an incredible feeling of where this might be going. Which was just... wow. So I told him that my boyfriend... I said my boyfriend’s family was connected with television in Wales and I’d been on lots of shoots and, like, helped out... filled in... done a bit of this and that. You know?’

There was a silence. What she’d actually said was ‘my ex-boyfriend,’ wanting to keep whatever might be on the cards to herself, and she felt desperately guilty about that. Despicable. What kind of bitch did that to her guy? OK, he wouldn’t be able to be involved anyway, being out of the country, but it was still... well, not the kind of thing Eirion would ever do to her.

‘It just came out,’ Jane said.

‘You... lied to Antony Largo?’

Jane swallowed, realizing she was sweating.

‘You didn’t mention my name to him, did you?’ Eirion said. ‘Because when this is all over and your name is like something scraped off his trainers after jogging across the dog pound...’

‘Look, it’s no big deal!’ She stared at the silvery little camera, panic rising. ‘He’ll shoot the heavy stuff himself, the seance. He just wants me to keep track of stuff happening day-to-day when he’s not there. Just like point the thing at anything interesting going down around the place and especially at Ben. See, he can’t afford to spend whole days himself around Stanner when he hasn’t flogged the idea to anybody yet – which can take like weeks and weeks – and he needs to keep track of developments and he needs Ben to be in some of the pictures, so... Apparently, they’re always getting people to do it these days. Shoot bits of stuff. There used to be hassles with the unions, but all that’s—’

‘So why don’t you ask Ben for a few hints?’

‘Because...’ Jane shut her eyes. ‘Because Ben’s clearly not happy about me doing it. He’d rather shoot it himself and not be in shot. It’s all so confused. Antony’s idea of this project may not quite tie in with Ben’s. Like, they’re mates, but there’s artistic friction, you know? I think, what Antony’s got in mind, is that if it all crashes, at least it’ll make a funny episode for this Punching the Clock series, about mid-life crises launching new careers.’

‘And these spiritualists – the cranks who think they’re going to raise the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – they’re actually going along with this?’

‘Yeah, they’re cool with it. Maybe they’re hoping for something amazing. Irene, come on, even if nothing happens it could still be totally brilliant stuff.’

Eirion did this bitter sigh. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this, but the most basic piece of advice I can give you is to use the tripod whenever possible. You’ve got a tripod?’

‘Antony’s having one sent over to Stanner for me.’

‘Right, well, don’t get carried away with hand-held stuff. Unless you’ve got a lot of experience and really steady hands it looks awful. Unusable, right? Also, stick to auto at all times or you’ll just get in a mess.’

‘Won’t it look amateurish?’

‘The difference will probably be minimal, and Largo can get rid of any fluffs in the editing. And make sure your shots are long enough – remember you’re recording what might be a familiar scene to you for people who’ve never seen it before, so hang in there. Don’t pan unless it’s vital. Don’t get carried away with the zoom. And remember that the mike on the camera’s OK for ambient sound or when you’re tight, but... What’s the other mike like? Directional, or what?’

‘Well, it... I mean you can like point it. Look, when you said zoom...?’

‘Ration it severely. My advice is to pretend that every time you use the zoom it’s going to cost you a tenner.’

‘So the zoom... where is that exactly?’

‘Well, it’s... Oh, bloody hell,’ Eirion said, ‘suppose I just come over and show you.’

Jane fisted the air. ‘I love you so much, Irene.’

‘Prove it.’

‘Well, maybe,’ Jane said, low and sexy and exultant inside. ‘Maybe later.’

This greasy, low-wattage bulb over the door. Only a feeble light, coated with dust and cobweb and dead flies, but all light was pain.

Silence in here. The only sound was in his head: the buzzsaw of pain. Standing in the doorway, he was sick with the pain.

‘No. It’s a friend,’ Jeremy said. ‘A friend.’

Danny held on to the door frame. The girl in the straw didn’t move. Her hair was the same colour as the straw in the rancid butter light. She stared up at him and her eyes were full of fear and hate.

Jeremy said, ‘Oh Christ, they done that?’

Danny’s face and head were wet. He kept his hands away from it.

‘Gone?’ It was a tattered croak; he couldn’t believe the terror in his own voice. ‘All of ’em? You sure?’

On the flagged floor, a broken bale and the girl sprawled forward in the straw, looking up, covering the black and white dog with her body.

How much time had passed Danny didn’t know. His head felt like the time he’d been kicked by a horse. Jeremy was staring at him.

‘They was gonner shoot the dog, Danny. Clancy, she just hurled herself in front of ’em. Wasn’t no answer to that. They buggered off.’

‘They was gonner shoot the dog?’

‘What they hit you with?’

‘Butt of the gun, I reckon. Why the dog?’

‘Dunno.’ Jeremy was wearing baggy jeans and an old sweater with holes in it. He was quivering. ‘Dunno what they thought.’

‘Don’t you really, boy?’

‘I better get you an ambulance.’

‘Bugger off.’

‘Can you see out that eye?’

‘It missed the eye. You called the cops?’

‘You can’t drive home in that state,’ Jeremy said.

‘You called the police?’

‘No, I—’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t want no police, Danny. It’d all get twisted round. You know how it is.’

‘This is Dacre, ennit?’

‘They never said, not really.’ Jeremy ran his hands through his sparse fair hair, his face all screwed up. ‘They never... He’ll admit to hiring them, but he’s gonner deny responsibility for how they done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Shot the foxes.’

‘Foxes, balls. He’s the bloody hunt master. He don’t wanner see no foxes shot at night, or by day. He wants ’em all decently ripped in half by his hounds. The bloody Middle Marches Hunt looks like running out of foxes to chase, Sebbie’d have a couple crates of the buggers shipped over from the city, you know that.’

Danny leaned back against the door frame, breathing through his mouth. The effort of saying all that had left him feeling faint.

‘He en’t an easy man to deal with,’ Jeremy said.

‘He’s a total bastard of a man, Jeremy, we all know that.’

‘He phoned me earlier.’

‘Oh, did he?’

‘Said did I know what that feller Foley was doing over at Hergest. With another feller. And a girl.’

‘Why would you?’

‘Well, ’cause... ’cause Nat’lie, she d’work up at Stanner.’

‘Yeah, yeah. You tell him?’

‘Told him I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’ Jeremy looked down at the girl. ‘You best get inside, Clancy, ’fore your mam gets in.’ He smiled at her. ‘Take the dog in with you. You’re gonner need some tea, Danny.’

‘No, I’ll get off home, ’fore Gret calls in the bloody Armed Response Unit. Give her a call for me, will you, boy? Say I tripped on the cattle grid but I’m all right now.’

In the end, it was past midnight when Danny made it home, and Jeremy had to take him in his Land Rover.

What had happened, those bastards had rammed the Justy out of the way with the bull bars on the Discovery, heaving it into the ditch. The driver’s door was stove in, and Danny didn’t give a lot for the sub-frame.

Bastards! Couldn’t believe they’d done that. Couldn’t believe any of this.

Knowing for a fact that if he tried to make a claim against them – even if he could find out their names – they’d deny the whole lot. Anyway, Danny avoided lawyers the same way you didn’t drink sheep-dip.

‘I en’t fully sure what this is about,’ he told Jeremy out on the bypass. ‘But far as I’m concerned it just got real personal.’

‘Leave it, eh, Danny. En’t nothing to be done.’

‘En’t nothin’—?’

‘I’ll pay for the damage.’

‘You bloody will not, boy!’

‘Happened on my ground. Me as called you out. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have rung you. I just didn’t want nothing to happen to the girl.’

‘Right,’ Danny said. ‘What’s going on, Jeremy?’

‘Nothing’s going on.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Just some shooting yobs from—’

‘Not the Welshies, you... that girl. And her mam.’ Danny was talking through the pain now, so he didn’t care what he said, long as he could get it out. ‘What’s the score there, Jeremy? Where’s it goin’, you and her? What’s that about?’

Jeremy said nothing.

‘All right, why’d them Welshies say it wasn’t your ground? Sebbie Dacre still think he’s entitled, is it?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Jeremy staring straight ahead, driving slow. ‘En’t his. En’t never gonner be his. That’s all I know. I was born there, I’ll die there.’

Not just an expression of intent, Danny thought, it was like he knew it for a fact – that he would die at The Nant.

Above them, the wishy-washy moonlight shone damply on Stanner Rocks, and Jeremy never spoke another word, except for ‘goodnight’ – not much more than a clicking of the tongue – when he dropped Danny at his top gate.