A Finer End (40 page)

She was still mulling over the details of her plan when Nick knocked. He fussed over her and Bridget, but she sensed an awkwardness in his manner, and an unfamiliar chasm between them.

“Nick, what is it?”

He hesitated, then met her eyes. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“What do you mean, good-bye? I’ll be going home tomorrow, to Jack’s, that is. And then Winnie’s asked me to come and stay with her at the Vicarage.”

“I know,” Nick replied. “She told me. But I’m leaving Glastonbury. I have to go back to Northumberland, Faith, and take care of some things.”

Faith stared at him. She suddenly realized that she’d foolishly assumed Nick would always be there, as constant as the sun and the moon.

“But … you’ll come back, right?” she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

“I don’t know yet. But if I can get things sorted out, I think I may try to get into theological college. I thought—I thought that no one who had screwed up as badly as I have could possibly be a priest, but Winnie says you can’t understand other people’s mistakes if you haven’t made some yourself. Seasoning, she called it.” He smiled. “Don’t
look so shocked. It’s what I’ve always wanted; it just took me a while to figure it out.”

“But … 
Father Nick
?” She studied him as if seeing him for the first time. Nick, a vicar like Winnie? “Well …” she said slowly, “I suppose I could get used to it.”

Gemma and Kincaid had turned over all their information on the murder of Garnet Todd and Bram Allen’s suicide to DCI Greely. His team had already found Garnet’s missing earring near the pool above her house, and a strand of Garnet’s long salt-and-pepper hair snagged on a button on the jacket Bram Allen had worn the night she died.

Now, they sat in front of the fire in Jack’s parlor, drinking tea and sorting through the events of the past days. Andrew’s dog Phoebe, brought temporarily from the house on Hillhead, had curled herself up against Gemma’s feet.

“Will Fiona be all right?” asked Kincaid.

“She’s very strong,” answered Winnie. “But this … I don’t know. I’ve seldom seen two people love each other more.”

“Even though Bram wasn’t what she thought?”

“I’m not sure,” Winnie said slowly, “that it matters. And are any of us ever entirely honest about ourselves?”

Gemma thought of her own failure to communicate with Duncan about what lay closest to her heart. “What about Edmund? Do you think he knows now that his and Alys’s child survived?”

“I hope so,” answered Jack. “He deserves peace, after eight hundred years.”

“As does little Sarah Kinnersley,” Winnie said softly.

“What will you do with the manuscript?” Kincaid asked.

“Study, first,” Jack replied instantly. “Consult with some of the experts on chant, and with conservators. The manuscript itself is remarkably well preserved, and we want to keep it that way.”

“You won’t try to keep it hidden any longer?”

“I think almost a millennium is long enough, don’t you? People should hear this—who knows what good might come of it?”

“It’s quite a responsibility, isn’t it, though?” mused Gemma. “If it’s what you suspect it is.”

“But there have always been caretakers in Glastonbury,” Winnie pointed out. “Think of the monks, and Bligh Bond, and the Chalice Well Trust.… We’ll be following a well-established tradition. I think Edmund would have wanted that.”

“What about Simon?” Kincaid asked. “I’m afraid we did him a disservice, regardless of any past indiscretions.”

“Perhaps …” Winnie smiled faintly. “Although I did learn he’d contacted someone about publishing Edmund’s communications, without consulting Jack.”

“So there’s still a wolf under the sheep’s clothing, after all.”

“I’m sure he meant to tell me,” Jack replied stubbornly, making it clear that he and Winnie would have enough differences of opinion to make life interesting.

“London is going to seem extremely dull compared to Glastonbury,” Kincaid said with a grin, “but I suppose we’d better be getting back.”

“Wait.” Jack rose. “I have something for Gemma.” He left the room, returning with a flat, paper-wrapped package.

“For me?” Gemma took it, curious. When she undid the twine and pulled back the paper, she found herself looking at an oil portrait of a hunting spaniel, who gazed back at her with eyes as soulful as Phoebe’s. “Oh …” she breathed. “It’s lovely.”

“See, I didn’t forget,” Jack told his cousin.

“But he’s not half as lovely as you, is he, darling?” whispered Gemma, who had leaned over to stroke Phoebe’s silky ears. She thought of her flat, not big enough to swing a cat in, much less a dog. Owning a dog had seemed an impossible proposition, in spite of Toby’s constant pleading.
But now she faced challenges much more daunting than that, and she felt suddenly liberated, as if anything were possible, alight with excitement at the prospect of the inevitable changes to come. What had happened to her?

Could it be, she wondered, that Glastonbury worked its magic in more ways than they had imagined?

They stood beneath the great stone transepts of the Abbey Church. It was a perfect November afternoon, but the sun was sinking and the first hint of evening’s chill had crept into the air. It was near closing and the precinct was deserted; soon they would have to leave as well.

“Here,” Winnie told Jack, moving through the nave into the Choir. “I think it should be sung here, where it was meant to be sung.”

“And where the monks shed their blood to preserve it,” agreed Jack, gazing at the spot where the altar had once stood. “Is that possible? Could it be done?”

“I don’t see why not. There are choirs all over England—all over the world, for that matter—that would jump at the chance. But …”

“What?” he pressed, seeing her frown.

“I think the chant should be sung in Glastonbury, by ordinary Glastonbury folk. It’s not perfection that matters, but intent.”

Jack pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had brought to show her. “I wrote this today, at the office.”

“Edmund?”

He nodded and started to hand it to her, but she shook her head. “No, read it to me, please. I always imagine that his voice would have sounded like yours.”

Peering at the faint script in the fading light, Jack began to read haltingly.
“There is much rejoicing among the Company. The Spirit liveth still, and that which we dreamed we pass on to you, a Symbol of the great Truth which is to come
.

But ye must be ever vigilant, for although ye have closed the
door, the balance is ever in question, and the fall is perilous. Doubt not your worth, for this task is given you in good faith, and fear not, for we will Watch with you. May you grow in spirit and in joy.”

Jack looked up from the page. The western sky was washed with the rose and gold of the setting sun, and for an instant, he could have sworn he heard an echo of voices raised in song.

DEBORAH CROMBIE has received international acclaim for her first six mysteries, as well as nominations for the Edgar and the Agatha Awards. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and later lived in Edinburgh and in Chester, England. She travels to Great Britain yearly to research her books. She now lives in a small north Texas town with her family, where she is at work on the eighth book in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series,
And Justice There is None. Dreaming of the Bones
was named one of the 100 Best Mysteries of the Century by The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, as well as a
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the Macavity for Best Novel of 1997.

Portobello took on a different character once the shops closed for the day, Alex Dunn decided as he turned into the road from the mews where he had his small flat. He paused for a moment, debating whether to go up the road to Calzone’s at Notting Hill Gate for a celebratory pizza, but it wasn’t the sort of place one really wanted to go on one’s own. Instead, he turned to the right, down the hill, passing the shop fronts barred for the night and the closed gates of the café run by St. Peter’s Church. Bits of refuse littered the street from the day’s traffic, giving it a desolate air.

But tomorrow it would be different; by daybreak the stallholders would be set up for Saturday Market, and in the arcades, dealers would sell everything from antique silver to Beatles memorabilia. Alex loved the early-morning anticipation, the smell of coffee and cigarettes in the arcade cafés, the sense that this might be the day to make the sale of a lifetime. As he might, he thought with a surge of excitement, because today he’d made the buy of his lifetime.

His step quickened as he turned into Elgin Crescent and saw the familiar façade of Otto’s Café—at least that was how the regulars referred to the place; the faded sign read merely Café. Otto did a bustling daytime business in coffee, sandwiches, and pastries, but in the evening he provided simple meals much favored by the neighborhood residents.

Once inside, Alex brushed the accumulated moisture from his jacket and took a seat in the back at his favorite
table—favored because he liked the nearness of the gas fire. Unfortunately, the café’s furniture had not been designed to suit anyone over five feet tall. Surprising, really, when you looked at Otto, a giant of a man. Did he ever sit in his own chairs? Alex couldn’t recall ever seeing him do so; Otto hovered, as he did now, wiping his face with the hem of his apron, his bald head gleaming even in the dim light.

“Sit down, Otto, please,” Alex said, testing his hypothesis. “Take a break.”

Otto glanced towards Wesley, his second-in-command, serving the customers who had just come in, then flipped one of the delicate curve-backed chairs round and straddled it with unexpected grace.

“Nasty out, is it?” Otto’s wide brow furrowed as he took in Alex’s damp state. Even though Otto had lived all of his adult life in London, his voice still carried an inflection of his native Russia.

“Can’t quite make up its mind to pour. What sort of warming things have you on the menu tonight?”

“Beef and barley soup; that and the lamb chops would do the trick, I think.”

“Sold. And I’ll have a bottle of your best burgundy. No plonk for me tonight.”

“Alex, my friend! Are you celebrating something?”

“You should have seen it, Otto. I’d run down to Sussex to see my aunt when I happened across an estate sale in the village. There was nothing worth a second look in the house itself, then on the tables filled with bits of rubbish in the garage, I saw it.” Savoring the memory, Alex closed his eyes. “A blue and white porcelain bowl, dirt-encrusted, filled with garden trowels and bulb planters. It wasn’t even tagged. The woman in charge sold it to me for five pounds.”

“Not rubbish, I take it?” Otto asked, an amused expression on his round face.

Alex looked round and lowered his voice. “Seventeenth-century delft, Otto. That’s English delft, with a small “d,”
rather than Dutch. I’d put it at around 1650. And underneath the dirt, not a chip or a crack to be found. It’s a bloody miracle, I’m telling you.”

It was a moment Alex had lived for since his aunt had taken him with her to a jumble sale on his tenth birthday. Spying a funny dish that looked as if someone had taken a bite out of its edge, he had been so taken with it that he’d spent all his birthday money on its purchase. His Aunt Jane had contributed a book on porcelain, from which he’d learned that his find was an English delft barber’s bowl, probably early-eighteenth-century Bristol ware. In his mind, Alex had seen all the hands and lives through which the bowl had passed, and in that instant he had been hooked.

The childhood passion had stayed with him through school, through university, through a brief tenure lecturing in art history at a small college. Then he had abandoned the steady salary for the much more precarious—and infinitely more interesting—life of a dealer in English porcelain.

“So, will this bowl make your fortune? If you can bear to part with it, that is,” Otto added with a twinkle born of long association with dealers.

Alex sighed. “Needs must, I’m afraid. And I have an idea who might be interested.”

Otto gazed at him for a moment with an expression Alex couldn’t quite fathom. “You’re thinking Karl Arrowood would want it.”

“It’s right up his alley, isn’t it? You know what Karl’s like; he won’t be able to resist.” Alex imagined the bowl elegantly displayed in the window of Arrowood Antiques, one more thing of beauty for Karl to possess, and the bitterness of his envy seeped into his soul.

“Alex—” Otto seemed to hesitate, then leaned closer, his dark eyes intent. “I do know what he’s like, perhaps more than you. You’ll forgive my interfering, but I’ve heard certain things about you and Karl’s young wife. You know what this place is like—” his gesture took in more
than the café “—nothing stays secret for very long. And I fear you do not realize what you’re dealing with. Karl Arrowood is a ruthless man. It doesn’t do to come between him and the things he owns.”

“But—” Alex felt himself flushing. “How—” But he knew it didn’t matter how, only that his affair with Dawn Arrowood had become common knowledge, and that he’d been a fool to think they could keep it hidden.

If the discovery of the delft barber’s bowl had been an epiphanic experience, so too had been his first glimpse of Dawn, one day when he’d stopped by the shop to deliver a creamware dinner service.

Dawn had been helping the shop assistant with the window displays. At the sight of her, Alex had stood rooted to the pavement, transfixed. Never had he seen anything so beautiful, so perfect; and then she had met his eyes through the glass and smiled.