Dr Grainger moulded his body to one of the oak pillars, ran his hands up and down it. Verity had heard, at the Assembly Rooms, of people who liked to hug trees to share their life-force. But hugging centuries-old long-dead oak?
'And here's another thing…'
He stepped away, giving the oak a fraternal sort of pat, as if they had already established a rapport.
I have been horrified, since I came here, to see how many owners of old houses kind of bleach their beams, to make them lighter. Can you believe that? See, oak is wonderful wood because it absorbs darkness so well. So… three, four centuries of storing the dark and these people want to take it all away. Can you believe that?'
'Perhaps they…' Verity swallowed. 'Perhaps they just want to make it more… cheerful.'
Dr Grainger almost choked on his own laughter. 'That's a joke, right?'
'Right,' said Verity weakly.
'You know. Verity, I could really use this house. It's hard to find one of these late medieval homes that hasn't been tampered with – windows enlarged, all this. Maybe I could hire it? Maybe a weekend seminar here in the summer, or around Christmas?'
He stood on tiptoe and slipped a hand into a dim space between the Jacobean corner cupboard and the ceiling.
'Yeah,' he said with satisfaction but no explanation. 'Tell me, why's it called Meadwell?'
Verity explained about the well in the grounds, is old as the Chalice Well and similarly credited with great curative powers. But unfortunately sealed up now because of a possible pollution problem.
'Uh huh.' A knowing smile. 'Uh huh. Now I begin to understand your problem here.'
How could he? This was utterly ludicrous.
'Seems to me that what may have happened is the house has become repressed because people have been afraid of it. Yeah? So what we got to do. Verity, I' we got to alter the house's self-image. And yours. Remember, when you learn to embrace the dark, the darkness will embrace you back.'
'Yes,' said Verity. 'Thank you. You've made me feel better about it.'
But he hadn't. He'd made her feel worse. And when they went upstairs and Dr Grainger began to peer into the bedrooms in search of deeper and denser shadows, Verity could almost hear the voice of Major Shepherd, Oh Verity, Verity, why didn't you tell me about this?
Dr Grainger was crouching in a comer of the landing, both hands moving in empty air, trying to locate what he called 'the crepuscular core' of the house. 'This is commonly the place where most shadows meet. The repository of the oldest, the least disturbed darkness, you following me?'
I don't want to know. Verity almost panicked. I don't want to know where this place is.
And she was so grateful when there was a rapping from below. 'The front door. Excuse me, please, Dr Grainger.'
She almost ran downstairs to the hall, where a little light pooled on the flagstones. Probably the postman; it was his time. She unbolted the door.
'Oh.'
It was not the postman.
'Well, well. Miss Endicott.'
A deep, educated voice and there was something strikingly familiar about it that made her feel both afraid and strangely joyful.
She stared at him. A tall and slender man, in his late thirties or early forties. His face lean, his jawline deep. His eyes penetratingly familiar. When he smiled she noticed that he did not have a moustache.
Does not have a moustache. She caught herself thinking this and wondered why.
'You don't remember me, do you. Miss Endicott?'
'I'm so sorry.' Verity blushed. Something about him. Something so painfully known.
'But I was only a boy. When we last met.' He put out a hand. 'Oliver,' he said. 'Oliver Pixhill.'
One of the huntsmen – what appeared to be a savage snarl on his face – was beating a hound away from a dead stag. Too late; its head was awfully messed up and one of its antlers looked broken. It was very important to huntsmen that the head should be unspoiled.
Diane winced.
Across the bottom of the scene was pasted a page-heading from a holiday guide. It read: THE QUANTOCKS: A REAL HAVEN FOR WILDLIFE.
The photo had been blown up, all grainy. The caption had a serrated edge, what Diane had learned on the paper in Yorkshire to call a ragout. It made a pretty devastating poster and it hung uncompromisingly just inside the door.
'Sometimes we go out at night, a bunch of us,' Sam Daniel said. 'Paste 'em on a few tourist offices, show the visitors what it's really like in the pretty countryside. Plus, it shows blood sports aren't what you'd call compatible with a tourist-based economy.'
He gave Diane a candid sort of look, as though defying her to report him to the police. Another test. People were always testing her, as though you couldn't expect automatically to trust anyone whose name was prefixed by The Honourable.
'Your old man done any of that? Stags?'
'Foxes,' Diane said. 'We haven't got many stags in our part of the county.'
Sam pulled on his earring. 'Ah, well, you know, I figured maybe he'd done a bit as a guest of one of the hunts over Exmoor way. They like to involve as many nobs as they can get, those bastards. Social cred.'
'I don't think so.'
'Or maybe you didn't like to ask him?'
'You don't,' Diane said. 'You don't ask my father anything like that. Or if you do, you don't expect to get a reply. Anyway, what about your father – doesn't he shoot?'
Like Griff, Sam Daniel was stocky, but not so heavy. He grinned through quarter-inch stubble, I don't ask him anything either. Mainly on account of we don't talk.'
The print-shop – the sign just said SAMPRINT – was on the corner of Grope Lane. Quite a central location. Diane didn't know much about computers and laser-printers, but it all looked jolly impressive. There was also a young boy called Paul, sixteen, his first job. Computer-whizz, Sam said.
Sam was about thirty and not so notorious nowadays, Not since he'd been dismissed from the County Planning department after his conviction for assault while sabotaging a hunt. The Beaufort Hunt, as it happened, the one Prince Charles sometimes rode with. Diane seemed to remember Sam had got off with a conditional discharge, but it still made all the papers, in the very week Griff Daniel had been installed as chairman of the district council.
Diane looked around the room at the equipment which must have cost, well, thousands. I thought you must have sort of made it up with your father.'
'What? Him invest in me?' Sam swept his buccaneer's hair back off his shoulders and rolled his head.
Juanita had said it was no secret in Glastonbury that Griff blamed his subsequent electoral defeat on the publicity over Sam's court case – despite his celebrated No Son of Mine statement to the Gazette.
'Business loan, this was,' Sam said. 'Achieved after a lot of grovelling and blatant lying. So if there's a chunk of the Ffitch fortune going spare, I can give you an immediate directorship, how's that sound?'
'Super.' Diane said. 'But, as my father likes to remind me every so often, my personal position is sort of, you know, what's the word? Destitute.'
Sam grinned and shook his head. He clearly didn't believe that; nobody ever could, quite.
'I've got a van,' Diane said, if that's any use. For deliveries and things.'
With pink spots and holes in the side. Just what he needed to boost his image within the business community.
'Can you write, is the main thing,' Sam said. 'Can you make this thing read like a proper paper, instead of the usual old hippy shit?'
She imagined huge stacks of The Avalonian piling up by the door, under the anti-blood sports posters. The image was quite exciting and Sam did seem like the sort of person who could help make it happen. She knew Juanita had sent her along here in the hope that she would become inspired.
And also to take her mind off that trip to the police station. And Headlice. I could have saved him.