A Finer End

Well, then, he would talk to Faith again, convince her to see reason.

When the sputter of the bike’s engine died away, the yard was hushed except for the squeaking of a flock of blackbirds passing overhead. A butter-colored cat lay curled against the doorsill, as if it had given up seeking entrance. As Nick climbed the steps and rapped on the door, the cat gave him a baleful glance and slunk away.

There was no response, but he could see the glow of an oil lamp through the curtained kitchen window. He knocked again.

The door swung open and Garnet Todd stared at him without speaking.

“I want to see Faith,” Nick said.

“She’s not here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you, she’s not here.” Garnet started to close the door.

Nick stepped forward, jamming it with his shoulder. “Where else would she be? The cafe’s closed, and she never goes anywhere else, does she? You can’t stop me seeing her.”

“You’re trespassing. This is my house,” protested Garnet, but gave way a step.

Nick’s anger surged with his small victory. Why had he let this witch bully him—and Faith—for so long? “What are you going to do, ring the police? You don’t have a telephone.” Another step and he was in the house, shutting the door behind him. He looked round the kitchen for some sign of Faith, then called out her name.

“I’ve told you, she’s not here.”

“Then where is she?”

“I don’t know!” There was an edge of panic in Garnet’s voice. “When I went to fetch her from work she was gone, and she hasn’t come home.”

“You’re sure she’s not in the house?”

“Why don’t you look, then, if you don’t trust my word.”

Nick turned away without replying and left the kitchen, but once in the corridor he realized the folly of his gesture. There was no electricity, and dusk had invaded the house. Well, he bloody well wasn’t going back to ask Garnet for a candle or a lantern—he’d just have to navigate the shadows as best he could.

Downstairs, first. He went through the dark corridor into the parlor at the front of the house, a musty, disused room, filled with tatty furniture. There was no sign that it had been recently disturbed.

Next, the room that served Garnet as an office, with its rolltop desk and ancient wooden file cabinets. A glass- fronted case against the far wall held a collection of dusty bird’s nests and shells … relics of Garnet’s childhood hobbies, perhaps, now long forgotten.

Returning to the corridor, he found the cold and primitive bath beneath the stairs. In the dim light, he made out a bottle of shampoo on the shelf beside the tub—Faith’s. When he opened it, the pear scent evoked her so strongly that she might have been standing beside him.

What if she had come home and confronted Garnet over Winnie’s accident? Would Garnet have silenced her?

But he’d sensed a real fear behind Garnet’s assertion that Faith hadn’t returned to the farmhouse—and if that were true, where could she possibly have gone?

Home to her parents in Street? Not likely. Or—and this was the thorn that Nick never quite managed to dislodge—had she gone to the baby’s mysterious father? For all Faith had given away about him in the past months, the child might as well be the result of immaculate conception. But could Faith have been driven to seek the father out?

Suspicions roiling, Nick climbed the straight flight of stairs. First, he tried the bedroom on the left, immediately recognizable as Garnet’s. An open wardrobe held her gypsy clothes; a dressing table, a collection of combs, brushes, hair slides, and a pretty etched-glass oil lamp. With the matches he kept in his pocket for lighting candles in the bookshop, Nick lit the lamp. Shadows danced on the walls and ceiling as the light illuminated a carved, four- poster bed draped with a lace coverlet. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder if Garnet had ever shared it with anyone.

He took the lamp into the bedroom on the right. This room held little other than a narrow iron bedstead, and beside it a plain deal table. Pegs on the wall organized Faith’s few clothes. A white nightdress and a worn plush rabbit were arranged tidily against the pillow. On the bedside table lay the copy of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King he had brought her. There was nothing to indicate where she might have gone.

Returning the lamp to the bedroom, he went back downstairs to the kitchen. Garnet sat in the chair by the woodstove, rocking slowly, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the chair arms.

“Satisfied?” she demanded.

“I’ll find her. And if anything’s happened to her—”

Leaving the threat unspoken, Nick let himself out the door.

The night creatures had begun to venture out of their burrows, but Faith lay still, curled in a nest of leaves beneath the hedge. At last, a bird shrieked nearby and she woke, conscious at first only of the cold and of the stiffness of her limbs. As she moved, a branch scratched her face and awareness seeped back.

At Buddy’s insistence, she’d left work early. A customer had given her a lift up the hill and dropped her at the farmhouse gate. Immediately, Faith saw that Garnet was home—the van stood in the yard, its wheels mud caked.

She hadn’t meant to look. But she couldn’t avoid passing the van on her way to the house, and before she could stop herself she’d swiveled round and stared. The fender was smudged and smeared, with one wide swipe that could have been made by an impact with a large, solid object—a body?