'Good.' Making for the door. 'Good…'
Diane was sure he'd been about to say 'Good Man.'
He turned at the door. Lord Reasonable. 'Look, Diane, you've been a damn trial to us all your life, but you're not stupid. No money to speak of, no job. And I should imagine you've seen enough of life with these scavengers, haven't you?'
She gripped the edge of' her shawl. He simply couldn't absorb the idea of people wanting more from life than money and property and power and influence. Especially when, in his case, one of these – money – was less plentiful than it might be.
A corner of his mouth made a brief excursion towards a cheek – the closest he ever came to smiling. He got rid of it quickly, as if it was a nervous twitch.
'Jennifer's prepared your old room. If you want to see me in the morning, I'll be here until eleven. Train you want leaves…'
'I'm not going!' Realising, to her horror, that she'd stamped her foot. 'How can you? My God, it's unbelievable! I'm a grown woman, you send your man to… to kidnap me. And you expect me to meekly get out of town, get out of your hair… it… Where's Archer?'
'This has nothing to do with Archer,' he snapped.
She knew that Rankin or Wayne would be loitering in the passage to make sure she went up the right stairs. She knew the hidden alarms would be activated to make sure she didn't leave in the night. She felt outraged, humiliated, but, as usual, defeated, and said in a despicably small voice, 'You haven't even asked me why I left Patrick.'
Lord Pennard paused, hand on the doorknob. He looked pained.
'Diane, had I wished to know that, I should have asked Patrick. Goodnight to you.'
'You see. Verity, I…' Major Shepherd's voice was swamped in a torrent of coughing from which it seemed he would not recover. Finally, he said, 'This must sound awful, but for some years you have been our little canary.'
Cuddling her cup of camomile tea. Verity recoiled when she saw it was streaked with blood.
'Miners,' the Major said. 'Miners used to take a canary in a cage into the shafts, as a test for poisonous gases. If the canary…'
'I know,' Verity said tightly.
'Of course, I don't mean it quite like that. We knew nothing would happen to you. That little woman, George used to say, is the strongest human being I've ever met. You know what he meant, don't you?'
'He meant I was not sensitive. Not in that way.'
Verity wanted to protest. Just because she did not See, that didn't mean she was without insight or intuition. The Spiritual had become her life. And healing. All those years studying the Bach Flower Remedies. And dispensing them here, in the ancient sanctity of Glastonbury. Even if being here meant living at Meadwell.
'It's always been dark in this house. Major. And it's growing darker. I mean quite literally. I don't know why that is.'
The Major sighed.
'But until tonight, I have never felt the nearness of…'
She could hardly bring herself to utter the word. It was not a Glastonbury word. In the town's mystical circles, people spoke of positives, negatives and mediators, never of…
'… evil. If this was the Abbot, then the Abbot was evil. Is evil. I'm so sorry, Major Shepherd.'
There was a long pause. His wheeze was like the bellows one used to use on a dying fire.
'Verity, listen to me. I know you're on your own. And that no mere wage is recompense. That George warned us to expect problems. As the Millennium approaches. Now listen…'
'If you're going to mention retirement. Major,' Verity said at once, 'I couldn't think of deserting.'
She held on bleakly while Major Shepherd went into another agony of coughing, '… am trying to get you some help. Stronger than me. Younger. If you could just bear… bear to hold on. If you can't, I'll understand.'
'I shall not desert my post,' Verity said, and felt so cold. 'Even though…
Even though the house hated her. It did. It threw darkness at her. It turned everyone against her.
And everything.
She'd heard the creak of the Abbot's chair and dared not move. Everywhere had been utterly, utterly dark. Verity had scrabbled about in the darkness, found her way to the wall where she knew the light switches were, moved her flattened palms from side to side and in circles and still could not find them. The wall had felt as rough and cold as it must have been in the sixteenth century. The electric switches simply were not there.
She'd panicked, naturally, pulling herself up just short of hysteria when her hand alighted on a box of matches, the ones she'd used to light the candle. But when she struck a match it was dead. All of them were. Little sticks which would not light, only snapped.
'This thing,' Major Shepherd said soberly. 'It must remain at Meadwell. Do you know what I'm saying?'
'I think so.' Did she?
When the lights had conic on, slowly and blearily, revealing an empty chair, a sad salmon steak, a scattering of spent matches and all the switches on the walls. Verity had accused herself of being a weak, stupid old woman. She'd cleared the table, placed the Abbot's chair neatly against the wall. In the kitchen, she'd scraped the salmon steak into the wastebin; giving it to the cat, if the cat had still been here, would have seemed disrespectful.
Not that the creature would have deserved it. When Verity had opened the door of the cupboard by the yawning fireplace, to return the candlestick to its place for another year, she'd had a terrible shock. Out had come a whizzing, spinning, slashing Stella, leaving smears of blood over Verity's arms and hands before hurling herself out of the room and streaking out of the house with a violent snap of the kitchen catflap.
The greasy, tobacco-coloured oak pillars supporting the doorway had looked on, like the sour, sardonic, menacing old men who haunted the street corners of her youth.
Putting down the telephone, Verity wept for many minutes, tears mingling with the blood on her bony arms.
Everyone against her. Everything.
A little, old canary, and gases filling the house: who could really say how noxious they were?
THIRTEEN
He'd finished off all the whisky in the flask. What could she say to that, after all that had happened? He gave the flask a final glance – sorrowful or contemptuous, too dark for her to tell – before stowing it away in an inside pocket of his overcoat.
'Erm… before we over react, are you quite sure about this?'
This was the first time he'd spoken since they got into the car. Juanita spun the wheel, letting out the clutch as gently as her mood allowed, feeling the ageing Volvo lurch and slide back, the rear wheels whirring uselessly in the mud.
Over-react? Jesus Christ, he was accusing her of over-reaction!
'Look, it was Diane. And it was a cream-coloured Range Rover. Who else do we know who has cream Range Rovers? There was a gloved hand over her mouth, did I tell you that? To stop her screaming.'
When she said that, Juanita tasted oil – someone trying to stop her screaming Her throat was swollen and her bottom lip felt like a slashed tyre.
'Look, would you mind giving me a push?' She hauled on the handbrake, still not looking at him. 'Please?'
He got out without a word. By the time they were free of the rut, he was creaking like an old bulldozer.
'Rankin. He'd have sent Rankin. Jesus, he sent the staff to snatch his daughter, can you believe that?'
'This is not the night,' Jim Battle said, 'to ask me what I can or can't believe.'
It was still hard to categorise her emotions when they'd come down from the Tor. Anger? Shame? Embarrassment?
Appalled relief was close. The others came later, were still coming, in waves, like a never-again hangover.