The Chalice (35 page)

      
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.

      
'Actually, I'm really not very good,' she said a little breathlessly,
in Yorkshire I was always forgetting to ask people's ages and all that. My
spelling isn't terrific either.'

      
Sam slowly shook his head. 'Ah 'tis the usual problem with you
aristocrats. 'Always so arrogant and full of yourselves.'

      
A shadow fell across the window of the print-shop, accompanied
by a thump on the glass, and Sam looked up sharply and then made a dive for the
door. 'Hey! Piss off, pal!'

      
Something had been stuck to the outside of the window.

      
'Bloody Darryl Davey, that was.' Sam came back into the shop,
holding a yellow printed sheet he'd torn from the glass. 'About all he's fit
for, fly-posting. Thick bastard.'

      
He unrolled the yellow paper.

      
Sam Daniel sniffed the paper suspiciously.

      
'The old man,' he said. I can smell the old man all over this.'

Verity was at once horribly
anxious.

      
Oliver Pixhill. It must be thirty years since she'd seen him,
and on that occasion she'd chased him angrily away.

      
'I hope it isn't inconvenient.'

      
'No.' She felt an awful blush coming on. 'Not at all. Besides
...'

      
It had been not long after she'd taken over as housekeeper,
Oliver and his mother having moved into the town. The boy had returned with his
schoolfriend, Archer Ffitch, and an air pistol, both of them far too young to
have such a thing in their possession.

      
'Old place doesn't change, does it?' Oliver Pixhill stooped to
enter. 'Doesn't it frighten you, being here alone in the winter?'

      
Verity had found the dead bullfinch on the path, near the back
door, the boys sitting on the wall, grinning at her, their legs swinging.

      
'I… I'm used to it,' she stammered, thinking of the American
poking around upstairs looking for the heart of the darkness, wondering how he
might alter the house's self-image. Oh lord, what was she going to do? How was she
going to explain this? Oliver Pixhill was a member of the Trust; it would get
back to Major Shepherd.

      
'I expect you're wondering why I'm here.' Oliver was soberly
attired in a business suit. He was, Verity understood, some sort of corporate
lawyer. In the City. Silly to judge him on that one incident from his childhood.

      
'You have every right to be here. That is, I'm very glad to
see you, Mr Pixhill.'

      
There was the sound of footsteps overhead. Oliver glanced up
briefly but didn't question it. Verity was struggling to put together an explanation
in her head. About a man who was very interested in old, dark houses and ...

      
'My father would never allow me to visit him here, you know.'
Oliver walked languidly over to the stairs but didn't look up. He looked unnervingly
like the Colonel as Verity first remembered him. Perhaps a little taller,
sharper in the jaw.

      
'He'd come to my mother's flat two or three times a week and
sometimes take me for walks. But he would never let me come here. Wasn't that
odd. I used to think he was trying to protect me from something.'

      
'I suppose he simply thought it was a rather gloomy old place
for a boy to grow up in,' Verity said lamely. 'Certainly your mother did.'

      
'That's what you were told, was it?' An eyebrow rose. 'I see.'

      
'I ...' What could she say? How could she even start to explain?

      
But she didn't have to. Black trainers appeared on the stairs.

      
'Verity, I found it.' Moving quickly and lightly for a man of
his bulk, Dr Pel Grainger padded down the last few steps and arrived next to
her, looking fulfilled, like a cat with a bird. 'The crepuscular core. A slight
misnomer, but I like the phrase. Oh. Good morning.'

      
'Dr Grainger, this ...' Verity held the oak pillar to steady
herself. 'This is Mr Oliver Pixhill. The son of my late employer.' Her voice
was small and dead. Like the bullfinch.
      
'Mr Pixhill, this is…'

      
'Hi' Dr Grainger was already shaking hands with Oliver.

      
'Dr Pel Grainger.'

      
Oliver Pixhill shook hands, said nothing. He tilted his head
enquiringly.

      
And did not have to wait long Within a minute, to Verity's
mounting distress, Dr Grainger had identified himself as a therapist
specialising in Tenebral Psychosis, which, he explained, was not entirely
dissimilar to Seasonal Affective Disorder, only all-year-round, more intense
and usually connected to a particular dwelling.

      
He identified Verity as his 'patient'.

      
Verity burst into tears.

      
'Oh, have I been indiscreet?' Dr Grainger turned to Oliver
Pixhill. I guess you knew nothing of this, right?'

      
'I certainly did not.' Oliver's deep voice was full of surprise
and concern. He guided Verity through to the dining hall, hands on her quaking
shoulders. I did not indeed.'

      
Oliver pulled out a chair for her at the long table. At which
she hadn't sat since the Abbot's Dinner. He took the chair next to hers.

      
'Miss Endicott, this is utterly dreadful. None of us knew about
this. I feel absolutely devastated. And guilty.'

      
'Please… it's my fault. I'm so…'

'I've been back in this
house, Miss Endicott, for less than ten minutes and already I'm finding the
atmosphere decidedly oppressive. We shall have to get you out.'
      
'No! You don't und—'

      
'Mr Pixhill,' Grainger said from the head of the table, where
the Abbot sat. I can help this lady. I have got this...'

      
'I'm sure your therapeutic techniques are entirely creditable.
What I'm saying is she should never have been left here alone and that is the
responsibility of the Pixhill Trust. I'm going to make it my business to find
Miss Endicott fully furnished accommodation in the short-term and then ...'

      
'You don't understand!' Verity gripped the edge of the table.
'This is
my
responsibility. I made a
promise to your father.'