‘Thank you, Marcus.’
Alec made to take her arm to find that Marcus had beaten him to it and was guiding her up the steps. Completely unnecessary, Alec knew. She and Napoleon could manage just fine, but it was a natural reaction on his behalf and, he supposed, on that of Marcus as well.
It struck him, not for the first time, that he should have brought her to visit Rupert. His uncle would have loved her and adored the dog.
He found that he felt a terrible guilt. That this man had evidently thought so much of Alec and Alec done so little in return, though he had cared deeply for Rupert and genuinely grieved at his death.
He followed Marcus and Naomi into the dining room of the hotel. Noting the plush and rather overblown decor, all dark wood panels and deep red carpet, but the staff seemed friendly and the menu, when he remembered to look at it, was varied if not deeply imaginative.
Solid, country fare as Rupert might have said.
Marcus was reading the options to Naomi and discussing the merits of the various dishes he had sampled there. Alec could hear him promoting the merits of the steak and kidney pudding.
It all felt faintly surreal.
‘Alec, you’ll feel better if you eat,’ Naomi said gently and he nodded, knowing she was right. He had skipped breakfast, never a good move and now she had drawn his attention to it he realized that his gut churned emptily just adding to the hollow feeling at the centre of him.
‘The salmon,’ he said, falling back on the familiar. ‘And the soup for starters. Thank you.’ He waited until the waitress had departed. ‘Marcus?’
‘Yes, Alec.’
‘Time to talk, I think.’
Marcus nodded. He took his napkin from the table and unfolded it then spread it carefully on his lap. The wine arrived and, once Marcus had approved it, Alec accepted a glass.
‘Alec?’ Naomi was surprised. Alec rarely drank at lunchtime.
‘If I have more than one we’ll get a taxi back to Fallowfields,’ he said.
‘OK,’ she sounded dubious, anxious even.
‘Nomi, it’s been a strange couple of days and an even stranger morning. Frankly, I think I could do with a drink.’
‘OK,’ she said again then reached for her glass and sipped. ‘Mmm, nice.’ She smiled suddenly in Alec’s direction. ‘I think in that case we should order another bottle.’
Marcus laughed softly and then sobered. ‘Rupert,’ he said. ‘Of course, you will want to know everything I can tell. Truth is, Alec, it’s mostly suspicion and conjecture but, believe me, I know something is wrong about it all.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s knowing where to start.’
‘Well,’ Naomi prompted. ‘How about you start with when you noticed something was wrong with Rupert. When his behaviour changed?’
Marcus nodded. He played with the stem of his wineglass, frowning at the deep red liquid. ‘It’s hard to know,’ he said, ‘but I think, the first time I really noticed something odd was about three weeks before Rupe died.’
‘I live in the flat over our shop. I’m not like Rupert; never felt the need for a garden, and the isolation of a place like Fallowfields would drive me mad, I think. Anyway, this one particular morning I heard someone banging on the shop door long before we were open, so I looked out of the window to see who it was and there stood this teenager – a boy, really – banging on my door and shouting for Rupert.’
‘You didn’t recognize him?’
‘No. Not at all. And he wasn’t the kind of customer I’d expect in our shop even during opening time. He wore those baggy trousers young people seem to like these days and a hoodie, I think they call them, don’t they?’
Alec nodded.
‘Anyway, I called down and asked what he wanted and he said he had to talk to Rupert. So, I told him Rupert wouldn’t be in until ten and to come back then, to which he said he couldn’t, he must see him now. I gained the impression that he thought Rupert lived at the shop and he seemed very put out when I told him otherwise.’
‘Did you tell him where Rupert lived?’
‘No.’ Marcus shook his head emphatically. ‘That I’d never do without Rupert’s permission and, besides …’
‘You didn’t like the look of him?’ Naomi asked.
Marcus hesitated. ‘It wasn’t that, dear. I’d be the last to hold the way someone looks against them. My dear, I recall some of the so-called fashions I indulged in my youth and besides, he was polite enough in his own way. No, it was more that he seemed afraid. Kept looking over his shoulder all the time I was talking to him. It was as if he didn’t want to be discovered asking for Rupert. That he was afraid of the consequences should he be found out.’
‘And when you told him Rupert wasn’t there?’
‘Oh, he took off down the road as if the devil himself was chasing him. He didn’t come back again either.’
‘And what was Rupert’s reaction? Did he recognize the boy?’
‘He said not, at first. Then, as though it had just occurred to him, he said it might be one of the people he’d been interviewing that had sent the boy. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t press the matter. I really, truly wish I had.’
‘Interviewing?’ Alec questioned.
The first course arrived and they all fell silent until once more they were left alone.
Marcus played with his soup. ‘He collected local tales, you knew that, I suppose?’
Alec nodded. ‘He sent me copies of the little books he wrote. He was a member of the Folklore Society or something, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh yes. For years and he must have published a dozen of his pamphlets. We sold them in the shop and the local galleries and tourist places took them as well. He even had an account of the Fen Tigers published by a major publisher some years ago. I believe it was well received.’
‘Fen Tigers?’ Naomi asked. ‘Surely there were never big cats around here. Or was it something like the Beast of Bodmin?’
Marcus laughed. ‘No, my dear. Not big cats as such. They were protesters. Guerrilla fighters you could say almost, back in the eighteenth century when the drainage of the fens took place. They attacked the workers, destroyed the workings, tried to stop the whole process.’
‘Why?’ Naomi wondered. ‘Surely the creation of new farmland was a good thing.’
‘For the landowners, perhaps,’ Marcus agreed, ‘but the drainage destroyed an entire way of life for many, to say nothing of an ecosystem we are only just beginning to value. And worse, so far as the locals were concerned, the engineers were foreigners from the Netherlands. But I think what interested Rupert the most was the way the drainage destroyed the … what you might call the supernatural ecology.’
‘The what?’ Alec was confused.
‘Don’t let your soup go cold. It’s very good.’
Alec glanced down and belatedly began to eat. Marcus, he noted, had all but cleared his plate, and that despite the fact that he had barely ceased his talk. How, Alec wondered, did he do that?
‘Anyway, as I was saying. Boggarts, bogles, tiddymen, black dogs, they had them all in plenty to say nothing of the various water sprites and Lord knows what else. Rupert loved all that stuff, went about collecting the residual tales and adding them to the established ones. He said it was amazing just what oral history could preserve.’ Marcus chuckled fondly. ‘I think it actually troubled him that these mythical beings had been displaced. In fact I think it troubled him almost more than the displacement of the actual people.’
Derek Reid had wandered out into the barn to check the car. He’d brought a gallon container of petrol to top up the tank, or at least provide enough for an emergency. His little red car was economical, but Sam’s bloody great Ford Granada was thirsty. Derek reckoned it was an odd choice of car. Not even one of the newer models – newer, he laughed, hadn’t they stopped making them ten years or so ago? It was a big black thing with electric everything, the sort Sam would have owned back in the eighties.