Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (88 page)

   
'Right,' he said. 'You can wait
in the porch, by yere, but you don't go out. You don't open that door until the
bell's finished, you understand?

   
'I want to come up with you.'

   
'We goes up alone,' he snapped.
'Now you remember what I said, you keep that door
shut
. Understand?'
   
'Yes. Look . . . Mr Preece . . .'
   
'Make it quick, Miss, make it very
quick.'

   
She was remembering how
controlled he'd been in the hall, how sure that the killer had left the building.

   
'You know who did this ... to
Jonathon, don't you? . . .you know who killed Max Goff when the lights were
out.'

   
He turned his back on her and
mounted the first step.

   
'Don't you?'

   
He didn't look back, and a turn
in the spiral staircase took the light away.

   
'Is
that
a Crybbe matter, as well?' she yelled. 'Or is it . . .?'

   
God, she thought, as the
darkness in the church became for a while, absolute, I can still smell it.
Still smell Jonathon.

   
And she put her hands over her
face.

   
Is it a
family
matter? was what she'd almost said.

   
Because it ought to be Warren
he was bringing up here tonight.
It ought
to be Warren.

   
She heard the Mayor stumble on
the steps.

   
'Are you all right, Mr Preece?'

   
She heard another footstep, and
his ratchet breathing starting up again, like a very old lawn-mower.

   
Quietly, she began to ascend
the steps, until she could see his wavering torch beam reflecting from the
curved stonework. And then the beam was no longer visible and she climbed two or
three steps until the stairway curved round and she could see the weakening
glimmer once more.

   
The footsteps above her stopped.
There was a long silence and then,

   
'Get
back,
you . . .'

   
He began to cough, and she
could hear the fluid gathering in his lungs and throat, like thick oil slurping
in the bottom a rusty old can.

   
'All right, I'm sorry, I'm
going back . . .all right.'

   
Clattering back to the foot of
the stairway, thinking, anything happens to him now, am I going to have the
guts to go up there, drag him out of the way or climb over him and pull on the
rope a hundred times?

   
Have I the strength to pull a
bell-rope a hundred times? (There's a kind of recoil, isn't there, like a gun,
and the rope shoots back up and sometimes pulls large men off their feet.) God
almighty, will I have the strength to pull it
once
?

   
Leave him. He knows what he's
doing. He won't stumble and break his ankle. He won't have a stroke. He won't
have a heart attack. He's a Preece.

   
Like Jack, mangled by his own
tractor, under intensive care in Hereford.

   
Like Jonathon, putrefying in
his coffin just a few yards away.

   
But was there, at the heart of
the Preece family, something even more putrid?

   
She stood at the bottom of the
steps, waiting for the blessed first peal which only a few nights ago, walking
Arnold in the old streets of this crippled town, she'd dreaded.
   
Presently, she saw the light hazing
the stones again and heard his footsteps.
   
Don't understand.
   
He's
coming down.

   
She heard his rattling breath,
then there was a clatter and the light was all over the place as she heard the
lamp rolling down from step to step.
   
It went out as she caught it.
   
'Mr Preece . . . are you . . .?'

   
He stood before her breathing
roughly, breathing as though he didn't care if each breath
was
his last.

   
Fay flicked frantically at the
switch and beat the lamp against the palm of her left hand until it hurt. It
relit and she shone it at him and reeled back, almost dropping the thing in her
shock, and the beam splashed across the nave.

   
She held the lambing light with
both hands to stop it shaking and shone it at the wall to the side of Mr Preece
so it wouldn't find him and terrify her with the obscenity of it.

   
It was wrapped around him like
a thick snake.

   
'What is it?' Fay whispered, and
as the whisper dried in her throat she knew.

   
Perhaps it was winding itself
around his neck, choking out of him what little life remained.

   
Mr Preece let it fall to the
stone floor.
   
He said hoarsely, 'It's the bell-rope,
girl. Somebody cut the bell-rope.'

   
And even Jonathon, with his
putrid perfume and his post-mortem scar, hadn't scared her half so much as the
s face of his grandfather, an electric puzzle of pulsing vessels, veins and
furrows.

CHAPTER X

GRACE PETERS
I928-I992
Beloved wife of
Canon A. L. Peters

White letters.

   
Cold, black marble.

   
Pressing his forehead against
it, he thought, A. L. Peters. That's me, isn't it? But it isn't my grave. Not
yet, anyway. Only one of us is dead, Grace.

   
What am I doing here?

   
He remembered now, walking in a
dignified fashion through the darkened streets, arm in a crook parallel to his
chest. In his best suit, of course, with his dog-collar; she would not be seen out
with him if he were attired in anything less.

   
Certainly not a faded T-shirt
with the flaking remains of Kate Bush across his chest.

   
Peered down at it. Too dark to
read the words, not white and gleaming like the letters on the grave. But he
remembered the name, Kate Bush. Who the hell
was
Kate Bush, anyway?

   
Ought to know that.

   
Or maybe not. He could hear somebody,
a woman, saying:
   
'There's
a chance you'll lapse quite soon into the old confusion and you'll have that to
contend with, too. I'm sorry.'
   
Sorry. Well, aren't we all? Hmmph.
   
Cold black marble.
   
Cool hands.

   
What was all that about?
   
Alex shook his head.

   
Well, here I am, sitting on Grace's
grave at the less-fashionable end of Crybbe churchyard at God knows what time
of night. Haven't the faintest idea how the bloody hell I got here. Not exactly
a cold night, but this is no place to spend it.
   
Wonder if I simply got pissed? And a
bit maudlin, the way I do. Stagger along to pay your respects to the little
woman. Sorry if I dislodged some of these dinky chippings that your will was so
insistent we should use to make this end of the churchyard look like a bloody
crazy-golf course. No wonder Murray had you shoved out here - probably hoping
the wood would overgrow the thing. And the sooner the better, stupid cow, no
taste at all, God knows how I ever got entangled with you.

   
Guilty? Me? Bloody hell, you
ensnared
me, you conniving creature.

   
Alex clambered to his feet. Chuckled.
Don't take any notice of me, old girl, I'm rambling again.
Must
have been on the sauce, I could certainly do with a pee.

   
He stumbled into the wood and
relieved himself with much enjoyment. There were times, he thought, when a good
pee could be more satisfying than sex.

   
Consideration for the finer feelings
of his late wife, who - let's get this in proportion once and for all -
did not deserve it,
had taken him deeper
into the wood than he'd intended, and it took him a while to find his way back
to the blasted churchyard.

   
Emerging, in fact, several yards
away from Grace's grave, catching a foot on something, stumbling, feeling
himself going into a nosedive.

   
'Damn.' Alex threw out both
hands to break his fall. Bad news at his age, a fall, brittle bones, etc. -
and, worst of all, a geriatric ward.

   
Something unexpectedly soft
broke his fall. One hand felt cloth, a jacket perhaps.

   
'Oh gosh, terribly sorry.'
Thinking at first he must have tripped over some old tramp trying to get an
early night. This was before he felt all the wet patches.

   
'Oh dear. Oh hell.' It was all
very sticky indeed, and his hands felt as if they were covered in it already.
Tweedy sort of jacket. Shirt. And blood; no question of what the sticky stuff
was.

   
'Hello. Are you all right?'

   
Bloody fool. Of course the chap
wasn't all right. Wished he had a flashlight; couldn't see a damn thing.

   
Tentatively, he put out a hand
and found a face. It, was very wet, horribly sticky and unpleasantly cold, poor
beggar must be slashed to ribbons. He lowered his head, listening for
breathing. None at all.

   
There wasn't a clergyman in the
world who didn't recognise the presence of death.
   
'Oh hell.'

   
Alex's sticky fingers moved
shakily down over the blood caked lips, over the chin, down to the neck where
he felt . . .
   
Oh
God. Oh Jesus.
   
I've . . .

   
I've stumbled over my own body!

   
I was wrong. I
am
dead. I think I've been murdered.
Grace, you stupid bitch, why didn't you tell me? Is this how it is? Is this
what happens? Oh Lord, somebody get me away from here. Beam me up God, for
Christ's sake.

   
For the body wore a stiff,
clerical collar.

Crybbe Court in view again.
   
'Uh!'

   
Humble had prodded him in the
small of the back, presumably with the butt of the crossbow.

   
They were on the edge of the
Tump field, facing the courtyard. As Powys looked up at the black house, its
ancient frame seemed to tense against the pressure of the night. There was a small
sparkling under the eaves, like the friction of flints, and the air was faintly
tainted with sulphur.

   
Powys felt his anger rekindle.

   
In the moment of the sparks,
he'd seen the hole in the eaves that was the prospect chamber. Below it,
slivers of light had figured the edge of a piece of furniture halfway up the
pile of rubbish which had broken Rachel Wade's fall and her neck.

   
'We're going in,' Humble said,
picking up the lamp from the grass.

   
'You might be going in,' said
Powys, 'it's too spooky for me, quite honestly.'

   
Humble laughed.

   
'You must think I'm fucking
stupid,' Powys said. 'You want me to go up to the prospect chamber and kind of
lose my balance, right?'

   
It would, he knew, make perfect
sense to the police.

   
'Since you ask,' Humble said,
'that would be quite tidy, yeah, and it would save me a bit of trouble. But if
you say no, I get to use this thing on you, which'll be a giggle anyway, so you
can please yourself, mate, I ain't fussy.'

   
'How would you get rid of the
body?'

   
'Not a problem. Really. Trust
me.'

   
'None of this scares you?'

   
'None of what?'

   
'Like, we just saw a light flaring
under the roof. It wasn't what you'd call natural . . .'
   
'Did we? I didn't.'

   
Humble stood with his back to
the broken wall around the Tump, a hard, skinny, sinewy, ageless man. Powys
could run away and Humble would run faster. He could go for Humble,
 
maybe try and kick him in the balls, and
Humble would damage him quickly and efficiently before his shoe could connect.
He could sit down and refuse to move and Humble would put a crossbow bolt into
his brain.
   
Powys said, 'You don't feel a tension
in the air? A gathering in the atmosphere? I thought you were supposed to be a
countryman.'