They followed Roscoe along the path at the side of the house. You could see the hulks of chicken sheds to the side, and a fence.
‘Where do you grow the herbs, Mrs Morningwood?’
‘Garden at the back, where the chickens can’t get in. Pick quite a lot from the wild. Keep your voice down.’
They came to a glassed-in porch, and Mrs Morningwood squeezed past Jane and went inside, picking up a torch. The beam showed that the back door inside the porch was already open, Roscoe surging through the gap as Jane said something stupid.
‘Do you, like, usually keep it open?’
‘He’s been in.’
‘The door’s been forced?’
‘Spare key in one of the chicken houses,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Nobody would know that, unless they’d been watching me for quite some time. He’s telling me he could come back any time. Whenever he likes.’
She went in briskly, but breathing hard, flicking switches, rooms springing out at Jane as the lights came on. She looked at Mrs Morningwood, her cracked Barbour and her cracked face, and knew that, for her, this wasn’t like coming home any more.
‘This is where you were attacked, isn’t it? This is where it happened. That’s why Mum brought you—’
‘Yes, Jane.’
‘Was it someone you know?’
‘Didn’t then.’
Jane looked down at Roscoe who was prowling, sniffing in corners, his tail well down.
‘And he’s been back,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Bastard’s been back. Wants me to know.’
They were in the kitchen. There were some jars on a dresser. They had screw tops. The tops had been taken off and laid next to the jars. Mrs Morningwood stood and looked at the jars but didn’t touch them. Jane felt a stirring of fear.
‘He’s not—?’
‘He’s not here now. Dog would know. Besides …’
‘I thought you had people looking after the house.’
‘Dawn and dusk. See to the chickens.’
‘What … what are you going to do?’
‘Going to get all the rest of the herbs in the house, all the preparations, put them all in a bag, take them away and get rid of them, bottles, everything.’
‘You think they’ve been tampered with?’
Mrs Morningwood turned, took Jane by both arms, looked into her eyes.
‘Go home, Jane.’
‘Now?’
‘Shouldn’t’ve done this. Big mistake. Get in your car, go home. Give your mother my apologies. Drive carefully.’
‘What about you?’
‘Got my Jeep.’
‘But I can’t—’
‘Go.’
‘Mrs Morningwood, what’s going on here?’
‘Be careful at the entrance to the track. Visibility’s not good at the best of times.’
‘You’re coming back, though? To Ledwardine?’
Mrs Morningwood didn’t reply, following Jane along the path to the Volvo, wet mist shivering in the lights from the house, and Jane knew she ought to ask her to give back the key to the Master House.
‘Tell you what?’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘Take the dog.’
She opened one of the rear side doors, pointing. Roscoe looked at her and growled.
‘In,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘You too, Jane.’
Jane got in and started the engine, watching Mrs Morningwood walk back to the house, not turning around, stumbling once. Jane thought that Roscoe had whimpered, realizing a moment later that the small noise of distress had been in her own throat. She took in a deep breath, started the car, drove to the entrance of the track, just out of sight of the house and stopped, keeping the engine running.
Up ahead, the mist had closed in again, pale and shiny in the headlights like the doors of a big fridge.
Jane got out the mobile to call Mum, because there really was no alternative now to a confession. But there was no signal.
58
Excellent in Fields
BEVERLEY WENT TO answer the door, and Merrily stared into the dregs in the coffee cup, and there was no question of disbelief. For a proportion of priests, being a good and altruistic person was always going to be the price you had to pay to maintain the buzz.
Merrily remembering, as usual, the first time she’d felt it: period of personal crisis, stumbling into a tiny, unexpected Celtic church, watching the light on the walls, the blue and the gold and the lamplit path. A safety in stone, but also transcendence. The path opening up from there.
But there were different paths and different kinds of light.
Staring into the brown dregs, thinking about the Roman Catholic priest, Alphonse Louis Constant, who had made friends with a teenage girl and become Eliphas Levi, conjurer of spirits, fan of Baphomet … while still, if she was remembering this correctly, stressing the importance of God in magic and the magic in God.
And the spark of it that some of them fed and nurtured within themselves. Gnostic fire. The growing of the god inside.
She felt Teddy Murray at her shoulder under the gaze of Garway Church. I suppose, seen from above, it does look rather as though its neck has been broken. Like a chicken’s.
When Beverley came back into the dairy, Lol was with her, looking worried, saying to Beverley, whom he’d never met before, ‘The Turning? What would she mean by The Turning?’
‘Where?’ Merrily said, spinning. ‘Where is she now?’
Looking wildly in different directions from the rim of the parking area, where the tarmac crumbled into dirt and weeds and signs indicated two separate footpaths.
‘She doesn’t know exactly,’ Lol said. ‘Don’t panic. She had to drive up the hill to find a signal. Down by the church, mobiles don’t work. None of them, apparently.’
Merrily remembered putting 999 into the screen, entering Mrs Morningwood’s house after the attack. It wouldn’t have worked. They might both have been dead.
‘But she thinks she can find her way back to The Turning,’ Lol said.
‘On her own.’
‘Apart from the dog, apparently. We’ll wait for her there.’
Lol bleeped open the truck, Merrily jumped in.
That bloody woman.
They parked in the church entrance, the truck taking up most of it, and walked to the top of the lane where it met the slightly wider country lane which served as Garway’s main highway. Merrily had suggested that maybe Lol could drive up and down, looking for Jane, but he wouldn’t leave her. He told her what Bliss had said about Felix’s killer.
No great shock. Not really.
‘What’s Bliss doing about this?’
‘Probably nothing,’ Lol said. ‘They have a result … likely to stand up at an inquest … the cops are overstretched …’
‘Clean-up rate.’
‘Target figures. What counts. There’s no evidence, anyway. No more than a feeling backed up by Bliss’s professional experience of what kind of murders women do and don’t do.’
‘Why did he call, then?’
‘He wants you to be aware of it. Just in case you …’
‘Stir something up in my fumbling way.’ Merrily stepped into the roadway. ‘Where the hell is she, Lol?’
‘Driving very, very slowly. Just have to hope the traffic cops are too overstretched to be patrolling Garway.’
‘Please God.’
Merrily stood there in the middle of the road, the mist torn into rags by a wet breeze, the tarmac shining.
Work it out.
Freemasonry. Sycharth. And Stourport – who couldn’t finger a fellow Mason but said this is his voice.
Wished she’d heard him in church. Praying and preaching, mens’ voices changed. Actors. The Church is a faded but still fabulous costume drama. Mick Hunter had said that, her first ambitious, duplicitous, womanizing bishop.