The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (44 page)

‘And the breakthrough... would be what?’

‘Always the same one with these people: final, undeniable proof of life after death. Kept Conan Doyle in transatlantic lecture tours for over twenty years.’

‘Matthew implies that the real reason the Church is opposed to spiritualism is not, as
you
might say, because people might let in something dangerous, but because it would undermine your power base. I mean... don’t you ever wonder?’

She stood there with Jane’s fleece hanging open and her pectoral cross swinging free. Of course she wondered.

Lol said, ‘Like, if these people were, suddenly, out of the blue to happen upon absolute, undeniable evidence of an afterlife?’

‘The atheists and the physicists would still deny it.’

‘What about the Christians?’

‘Ah well, even if we had to accept it as fact, it would still only be the beginning for us. However far it went, it would be the beginning. But look, they won’t, will they? They won’t find it. Because apart from anything, I don’t believe truth is ever going to come out of terror. Portents of death, the Hounds of Annwn?’

Bang, bang, bang
. Front door. Ethel springing up on the desk.

Merrily flinched. ‘If this turns out to be Dexter and Alice again, I don’t think I can face it.’

Lol stood up. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘No, best if—’

She watched his face fall. Another test failed. Dammit, they had to get over this stupid concealment of the obvious.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you would.’

The kitchen was empty, every surface clean, as if the house was being vacated for a while. Amber stood next to the stove, which was something French and steely grey. The smell of rich chocolate seemed inappropriate tonight. The lights in here made Amber look ill.

‘As soon as they found out what your mother actually did, they thought it would be a good... friction point.’ The size and the emptiness of the kitchen made her voice sound forced and full of fissures, like a student teacher on day one.

Jane still wasn’t getting it. ‘Friction?’

‘If the Diocesan Exorcist jumped in with some dire warning about the risks of messing with spirits, they thought that would be a nice touch. Then they’d try and get her to express decent Christian reservations on video. And even if she wouldn’t play, it would still be a nice twist. Friction, you see, Jane. Friction’s sexy.’

‘Amber, I’m not—
They?
’

‘Ben. And Antony.’

If it’s sexy, shoot it
.

‘They wanted to—’

‘Ben knew I wasn’t happy about the spiritualism angle from the start. He suggested I give your mother a ring and ask her advice. Pretend I was doing it behind his back. And if she reacted badly and tried to stop you coming here as a result, that would make another good twist. Twists are important. Conflict and friction and twists.’

Jane sagged. ‘They’d have used us... as
a twist
?’

‘Jane, love, don’t get this wrong – they never think of it as any kind of betrayal. It’s just television. It’s feeding the monster. TV’s this awful, voracious predator; if you get too near, you inevitably get eaten. I’m not saying I totally
didn’t
want to ring your mother – it would’ve been nice to get some objective advice from someone with expertise. And if she managed to step in and stop you coming, well, I suppose that was something else I didn’t have to worry about. Ben’s going, “Oh, don’t worry, Jane will have told her by now, we can expect another visit.” ’

‘But I didn’t. I
wouldn’t
. I work here, I wouldn’t—’

‘I know. I said you wouldn’t.’

Jane unslung the camera, very much mistrusting it now, and placed it on the island unit, backing away from it. ‘Why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me now?’ Trying to stay calm, work out the extent of Ben’s duplicity, but aware of breathing faster.

‘I was going to call you tonight,’ Amber said, ‘and warn you that all the roads would be blocked so don’t even think of coming tomorrow. But with your youthful enthusiasm and your obvious desire not to miss anything interesting, you bloody well turned up tonight.
That
’s why I’m telling you.’

‘But, like, why would you... why would you not want me here? I’m shooting the
video
. And if Antony doesn’t make it—’

‘He may very well not get through, that’s true,’ Amber agreed. ‘Which would be leaving the lunatic in charge of the asylum.’

‘Ben?’

I’m a drama man. It’s about using real people and real places...

‘I don’t know whether Antony
not
being here will make him more sensible or even more irrational. All I know is, he’s been busily shooting material all week – interviewing Hardy and Mrs Pollen and a man in Kington who used to work—’

‘Hang on.’ Jane stiffened. ‘You’re saying he’s got a video camera?
Ben?
’

Amber sighed.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Jane, you—’ Amber’s face crumpled with this terrifyingly maternal kind of sympathy. ‘You didn’t
really
think they’d leave it all to you, did you?’

Jane stepped back and stared at the camcorder on the island unit like it was contaminated with anthrax.

‘Well, I...’ She felt this acute burning behind her eyes.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Amber said. ‘I should’ve told you days ago.’

Jane swallowed hard. No wonder Matthew had been laughing at her. They were
all
laughing at her. All of them laughing up their sleeves at the smart-arse schoolkid prancing round with her professional video camera. All of them: Ben, Antony... the White Company... Ben... Antony...

Don’t worry, it’s gonnae be fine. It’s gonnae be riveting, Jane.

‘Antony set me up?’

You’re my number one girl
.

‘Jane, it’s— He really wouldn’t see it like that. These little Sonys are so comparatively cheap, they can scatter them around like throwaway pens. And if you thought you were the only person with a camera, you’d try all the harder to get good material. You’d start seeing your name in lights. Obviously, he’ll use some of what you’ve done, of course he will...’

‘He
set me up
!’

‘He also set Ben up. And Ben set Antony up. And you and I, between us, were supposed to set your mother up. Television, Jane – everybody at some time gets set up, the end invariably justifying the means. When it’s all over, Ben and Antony’ll watch the results together and get pissed, and that’ll be that. Television.’

‘It’s despicable.’

‘No, Jane.’ Amber did this brittle little laugh. ‘It’s art.’

‘And what do we do now? Just go along with it?’ Jane snatched up the camera with no reverence.

Amber said, ‘If you
were
thinking of hurling that thing to the flags in rage, please don’t. There’s been too much rage.’

Jane shook her head, letting the camera dangle from her hands on its strap. ‘What should I do?’

‘I think you should do what you were supposed to do in the first place. Tell your mother. Everything.’

‘And what’s
she
going to do?’

Amber said, ‘Look, I’m only a cook, but—’

‘Christ, Amber, if you say that
again
— I mean, I’m only a
schoolkid
, and if
I
can see it—’

‘See what?

‘That if Conan Doyle, the John the Baptist of Spiritualism, kept quiet about what happened here – even if it was evidence of survival after death – then there must have been something fairly unpleasant.’

‘Though obviously not unpleasant enough to prevent you grabbing the chance to film something similar, if you got the chance.’

Jane put the camcorder back on the island unit.

‘I’m not a very nice person, am I?’

‘You’re a
young
person, that’s all.’

‘OK, I’ll phone Mum. What then?’

Amber folded her arms, staring at the flags. ‘Realistically, I think your mother ought to talk to the only one of them I’ve had much to do with. Mrs Pollen.’

‘When was that?’

‘Earlier today. She came looking for me. Would hate to cause offence, et cetera. Old-fashioned country woman – Women’s Institute, cakes for the fête, jolly dinner parties, two golden labradors. And she’s the only one of them who got into this through personal loss. And she was a churchgoer.’

‘All the reward you get for suffering Victorian hymns and dismal sermons,’ Jane said. ‘He pinches your husband before his time.’

‘You must have stimulating discussions, you and your mother,’ Amber said.

‘Keeps her on her toes.’

‘Mrs Pollen now thinks that she was somehow directed here by her husband.’ Amber shrugged, looking uncommitted either way. ‘My feeling is that she believes that if they can get through, she’ll be... rewarded.’

‘Get some contact with him? That really doesn’t happen.’ Jane looked up at the high window, through which, by daylight, you could see the top of Stanner Rocks. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘On the surface, she’s very breezy and sort of earthy about it, but underneath she’s mixed up. In a way, it’s rekindled her faith, but she’s aware that the Church thinks it’s wrong, and there’s clearly some guilt about that. Anyway, I think she’d like to talk to your mother, and that wouldn’t do any of us any harm at this stage.’

‘Except possibly Ben.’

‘Not my problem,’ Amber said, and Jane looked at her, recalling what Nat had said about her calling it quits, moving out.

Amber said, ‘They call it the Stanner Project, Ben calls it the Hook. The contemporary events from which they can hang a century of conjecture. As far as he’s concerned whatever kind of answer they get, if any, is entirely irrelevant. What’s important is that the question gets posed, on television. Did
The Hound of the Baskervilles
begin
here
? Any extra spooky bits would be a nice bonus, but the programme doesn’t depend on that, now he knows what happened when Conan Doyle was here.’

‘He does?’ For a moment, Jane almost forgot her own humiliation. ‘You mean someone finally traced the missing document?’

‘Oh, Ben did better than that.’ Amber’s smile was twisted. ‘He traced someone who was working here. Well, not then, obviously, not at the
time
. But someone who worked here sixty-odd years ago and so talked to people who
were
here at the time.’

‘Wow – who?’

Amber said the contact had come through the guy who played the Major in the murder thing, Frank Sampson. When Dacre was trying to stop people talking to Ben, it had worked in reverse in some cases, and Frank had phoned on Tuesday to say an old man called Leonard Parsonage, who used to be the butler here, would be happy to talk to Ben.

‘Seems Dacre’s father got him sacked years ago,’ Amber said. ‘You know what it’s like around here for old feuds.’

‘Leonard.’ Jane was remembering Gomer’s account of the death of Hattie Chancery.
Took a while ’fore one of ’em was up to going up them stairs. Ole Leonard, the butler, it was, my mam said
.

‘He lives in a sheltered bungalow now, in Kington. He’s over ninety, which still means he must have been in his twenties when he was here.’

‘Amber, he was the person who found Hattie’s body. He’s talked about all that?’

‘Better than that, he’s talked on videotape.’ Amber bent and opened a cupboard in the base of the island unit. ‘Do you want to go and watch it? You can tell your mother all about it.’

‘You’ve got it
here
?’

Amber rose, clutching a Maxell VHS videotape in a light blue case with a gold stripe. ‘This is a copy that Ben ran off for Antony to look at. I pinched it from his desk. You can take it up to our bedroom, there’s a video machine in there.’

‘Have
you
seen it?’

‘You know which our bedroom is, don’t you, Jane?’

Jane accepted the tape. ‘You sure you want me to see it?’

‘Jane, you’re
gagging
to see it.’

Lol came back into the scullery with Gomer Parry, cap in his hands, squeezing it like a sponge as he fought for breath, ignoring the chair Merrily was offering.

‘Know you en’t gonner mind, vicar. I got the truck out front. Had a call from Danny Thomas, see. You recalls Danny Thomas, of Kinnerton?’

She stared at him, puzzled, assembling the image of a bearded man with grey hair over his shoulders, a flat cap on top. ‘You mean the one who’s also your partner now?’

Gomer’s glasses had clouded. He snatched them off, wiped them savagely on his sleeve.

‘Gomer, let me get you some tea—’

‘
No!
No, thank you.’ He rammed his glasses back on. ‘Bloody stupid. ’Course you knows the boy.’ He stared at her defiantly. ‘En’t lost no marbles, vicar, I just—’

‘I know. You went dashing out into the cold and then back into the warm. It gets to us all.’ She took his cap gently, unrolled it and hung it on the waste-paper bin near the electric fire. ‘He’s OK, isn’t he? Danny?’