want with me? Hadn't I done enough?'
Jean put on her knowing look.
'Yes,' Alex said, 'guilt again, you see. A most destructive emotion. Was she a product of my obsessive guilt – a lifetime of guilt, perhaps?'
Jean nodded.
'Poor old Fay. I think she thought I'd finally slipped into alcoholism. Anyway, she sent me to the doctor's, he sent me for tests and they discovered the artery problem. Everything explained. Poor old buffer's going off his nut. Can't be left alone. And that was how Fay and I got saddled with each other.'
'And do you feel you need her now?'
'Well, I… No, I'm not sure I do. Wendy, this… this Dr Chi business… Look, I don't mean to be offensive…'
'Of course not,' said Jean solemnly.
'But this renewed, er, sprightliness of mind… It's just that I don't honestly feel I'm the most worthy candidate for a miracle cure.'
Jean stood up, went over to the window and drew the curtains on the premature dusk, bent over to put on the lamp with the parchment shade, showing him her neat little gym- mistressy bum. Came back and sat down next to him on the settee, close enough for him to discover she was wearing perfume.
'There are no miracles, Alex, surely you know that by now.'
She didn't move an inch, but he felt her coming closer to him and smelled the intimacy of her perfume. He felt old stirrings he'd expected never to feel again. And yet it was somehow joyless.
'Dr Chi and I have done almost all we can for you, Alex. You've been here more than a day. Intensive treatment.'
'It seems longer.'
Jean nodded. 'You feel well now?'
Alex cleared his throat. 'Never better,' he said carefully.
'So why don't you go home?'
'Ah,' said Alex.
Jean looked steadily at him in the lamplight, unsmiling.
He said, 'What time is it?'
'Approaching eight. She'll be there soon, Alex.'
'Will she?'
'Only one way to find out,' Jean said gently, 'isn't there?'
'Oh now, Wendy, look…'
'Perhaps…' She stood up and went to lean against the mantelpiece, watching him. 'Perhaps it worries you that once you leave this house, your mind will begin to deteriorate again. And when you face her once more, the guilt will return.'
He squirmed a little.
'You might not be responsible for actually bringing her spirit back.' Her eyes narrowed, 'I think we can blame Crybbe for that. But you do seem to have made her rather more powerful in death than she was in life. You've projected upon her not only the portion of guilt to which she may or may not have been due, but all the guilt due to your wife and, no doubt, many other ladies and husbands and whatnot… and, bearing in mind your rather poor choice of profession, perhaps your God himself. Is that not so, Alex?'
'I…'
'You've been feeding her energy, Alex. The way I've been feeding you. A kind of psychic saline drip. So I'm afraid it's your responsibility to deal with her.'
Alex began to feel small and old and hollow.
'When you leave here…' Jean said regretfully. 'This house, I mean. When you do leave, 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.'
Alex stared at her, feeling himself withering.
'No Dr Chi?'
Jean smiled sadly, 'I never did like scientific terms.'
'I'm on my own, then.'
'I'm afraid you let her get out of hand. Now she's become quite dangerous. She won't harm you – you're her source of energy, you feed her your guilt and she lights up. But…' Jean hesitated. 'She doesn't like Fay one bit, does she?'
'Stop it,' Alex said sharply.
'You've known that for quite a while, haven't you? You would even plead with Grace not to hurt her. It didn't work, Alex. She appeared last night to your daughter in a rather grisly fashion, and Fay fell and cut her head and almost put out an eye.'
Alex jerked as though electrocuted, opened his mouth, trying to shape a question with a quivering jaw.
'She's all right. No serious damage.' Jean came back and sat next to him again and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Don't worry, Alex, it's OK. You don't have to do anything. I won't
send you away.'
Alex began quietly to cry, shoulders shaking.
'Come on,' said Jean, taking her hand away. 'Let's go to bed. That's what you want, isn't it? Come along, Alex.'
Jean Wendle's expressionless face swam in his tears. She was offering him sex, the old refuge, when all he wanted was the cool hands.
But the cool hands were casually clasped in her lap and he knew he was never going to feel them again.
He came slowly to his feet. He backed away from her. She didn't move. He tried to hold her eyes; she looked down into her lap, where the cool hands lay.
Alex couldn't speak. Slowly he backed out of the lamplight and, with very little hope, into the darkness.
CHAPTER III
The Crybbe dusk settled around them like sediment on the bottom of an old medicine bottle.
'Thank you, Denzil,' Powys said to the closed door of the Cock. 'That was just what we needed. Of course it's not crap. Can't you feel it?'
He started to grin ruefully, thinking of New Age ladies in ankle-length, hand-dyed, cheesecloth dresses.
Not energy. Not life energy, anyway.
'Fay, where can we go? Quickly?'
He was aware of a picture forming in his head. Glowing oil colours on top of the drab turpentine strokes of rough sketching and underpainting. Everything starting to fit together. Coming together by design – someone else's design.
'Studio,' Fay said, opening her bag, searching for the keys.
'Right.'
He didn't need the gavel. Didn't need even to call for silence, in fact, he rather wished he could call for noise – few murmurs, coughs, bit of shifting about in seats.
Nothing. Not a shuffle, not even a passing 'Ow're you' between neighbours. Put him in mind of a remembrance service for the dead, the only difference being that when you cast an eye over this lot you could believe the dead themselves had been brought out for the occasion.
Been like this since Goff and his people had come in and the cameraman had left: bloody quiet. Sergeant Wynford Wiley, in uniform, on guard by the door as if he was expecting trouble.
No such luck, Col Croston thought. Not the Crybbe way. No wonder the cunning old devil had stuck this one on him.
Thanks a lot, Mr Mayor.
