Candlenight

ended at the front door and some narrow stairs. So which way was the back entrance? There were more doors on either side of him. so he tried one and found himself in a room where the light was rationed by drawn curtains. The judge's study.

'Christ.' Berry said.

It could have been a homely room: fireplace, book-lined walls, low ceiling with beams. Place where you could come and put your feet up. have a TV dinner, glass or two of beer. Warm your ass by the fire.

Except the fireplace was Victorian, an ugly iron thing, cold and dead, and the black beams seemed to press down like the fingers of a gloved hand.

And the books. Well, as Berry saw it, there were basically two kinds of books. There were warm, friendly books with bright dust-jackets that gave you the come-on, brought a room alive.

And there were books like these.

Thousands of them. The shelves ran floor-to-ceiling, taking up most of two walls, dark oak shelves of dark old books, heavy, black-spined books. The kind of books you felt it would be a breach of protocol to take down without you were wearing a tie.

It was a coldly austere room, this study, like… what? Some old-fashioned classroom? Air of discipline. Severity.

The window, quite small, was set uncommonly high in the wall, faded grey curtains pulled across as if for a passing funeral. Opposite the window was a huge old desk, like a monument; behind it a chair, thronelike, with a tall back and carved spindles. Heavy, dour, forbidding.

No, not a classroom. Berry thought suddenly. A courtroom. It's like a very small courtroom. Is this what happens when old judges retire and have no lowlife scum to send to jail anymore? They have to bring with them that ambience of old-fashioned judicial disdain?

Above the fireplace was a single picture, a framed photograph of what he took, at first, to be a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, everybody in long white robes. Then underneath he saw the words Eisteddfod Genedlaethol 1963. Ah. the annual Welsh festival of poetry and song and stuff where all the head guys dressed up like Druids. Was Judge Rhys one of the men in white?

Berry stood in the middle of the floor, which was stone-flagged, a single rug beneath his feet, on it a threadbare red dragon spitting faded fire.

He hesitated, then crossed to the shelves and pulled down one obese volume, expecting a small dust storm. It didn't happen. Even the damn books were still being cared for. In case the judge came back from the grave and had nothing to read?

When that thought— a typically trivial, facetious thought— occurred to Berry Morelli, he felt a chill that came and went, like the door of a freezer opening and closing with a hiss. A cold hiss, like the hiss in ice… iiiiiice. Did he hear that, or did he imagine it?

He opened the book, and that hissed too, tissue-thin pages whispering secrets denied to him… because every word was Welsh. He quickly pulled down three more fat, black books at random — and they were all in Welsh too. Hard to imagine so many books being published in a language spoken by so few. But then it was, according to Giles, supposed to be the oldest language in Europe. And these were real old books.

As he returned the book to the shelf, he fell suddenly guilty. And furtive, like a kid who'd left sticky fingermarks on the school Bible. He thought, somebody's watching, and he spun around and there was nobody. But in his mind the freezer door opened and closed again. With a hiss…iiiiice…

It was darker, too, he was sure the air itself had got darker. And yet there was a sunset out there (so why are the damn curtains washed with grey?)

Berry's gaze travelled across the patchy gloom, from the ranked books, to the drab lumps of furniture, to the picture of the procession of men in white. He felt the weight of something old and hallowed.

He didn't care for it.

In the room, and yet beyond the room, he felt kind of a coiled malice. And the air was too thick. How could the air be thick in a room with no dust?

The air came in shifting shades of black and grey and a poisonous off-white, like dirty milk. And it hissed, short gasps, like bellows. He felt, with an astonishing wrench of panic, that if he stayed in here much longer. Judge Thomas Rhys would materialise, fully robed, in the tall gothic chair, his eyes giving off dull heat, a bony finger pointing, trembling with a focused fury.

'Sice!' he'd breathe, the word coming out in a short, hideous rasp, like a cobra rearing to strike.

And the air hissed, the bellows, the freezer door opening and closing. The air said, 'SICE!'

'Fuck this,' Berry said, suddenly very scared. He stepped back into the hallway and closed the door of the study firmly behind him. then backed off, afraid to look away in case it should open by itself, releasing the air, the wafting hate.

Chapter XVII

The door hung ajar.

Aled Gruffydd stepped back quickly, as if afraid something would reach out and snatch him inside.

'I will not go in there with you,' he said. 'You do understand?'

The tall man with white hair only smiled.

'Did not happen immediately, see,' Aled said. 'Quiet it was, for more than three days after Dai took the Englishman's body away.'

It was gloomy on the landing, the day closing down.

'We cleaned out the room and stripped the bed,' Aled said. Gwenllian said to bum the sheets, but I said no, isn't as if he had anything contagious.'

The tall man looked at the opening and did not move. He was very thin and his greasy suit hung like leaves blackened by a sudden overnight frost.

'So she took off the sheets for washing and brought clean ones and put them on the bed. And as she is tucking in the sheets, it flew off the bedside table. The vase. She had sweet peas in it, to sweeten the air, see.'

The white-haired man silently put out a forefinger to the door but did not quite touch it.

'Flew off the table, flew within an inch of Gwenllian's head. Smashed into the wall. Gwen came tearing down the stairs, almost falling over herself.'

Aled looked over his shoulder, down the stairs. His companion said, 'And then?'

'I came back with her and we picked up the pieces of the vase and the flowers. All quiet. No disturbance. I would not doubt her, though. I shut the door and locked it, and we came downstairs and did not go in again until this morning.'

With a small coughing sound, the bedroom door moved inwards, revealing a slice of while wall. Aled recoiled.

'There — can you smell it?'

The Reverend Elias ap Siencyn remained motionless. His pale eyes did not blink. His long nose did not twitch at the stench, which included, among other odours, the smell of hot decay.

'We have not been in since.' Aled said. 'We've left it the way we found it this morning.'

'Only this room? He has not come to you in the night? Or to Gwenllian?'

Aled gripped the banister. 'Oh, good God.' He was shaking at the thought. 'No. Nothing like that.'

'I doubt if he knows, you see.' the rector said. He had a surprisingly high voice, though with a penetrating pitch, like organ pipes. 'Sometimes it takes quite some while before they can fully accept their condition.'

'I don't want him, Reverend. I don't want him here.' Aled tried to make a joke of it. 'Not as if he's paying me now, is it?'

The rector had not taken his eyes from the door. 'Tell me again. What you found.'

'Oh Christ — sorry Reverend. But can't you smell it?'