personal, isn't directed specifically against me. But I did run away and, I suppose, all refugees carry with them a small burden of guilt. And I miss the children. Perhaps I should have stayed and fought on. But it was becoming a very public war. I'm not suited to the role of popular heroine of the more reactionary press. All I wanted was to be left alone to get on with the job I'd been trained for and loved. But every book I used, every word I spoke was scrutinized. You can't teach in an atmosphere of rancorous suspicion. In the end I found I couldn't even live in it.'
She was taking it for granted that he knew who she was; but then anyone who had read the papers must know that.
He said: 'It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve one's sanity.'
They were approaching the abbey now and the grass of the headland was becoming more hillocky. She stumbled and he put out his hand to steady her. She said: 'In the end it came down to just two letters. They insisted that the blackboard should be called the chalkboard. Black or chalk. I didn't believe, I still don't believe that any sensible person, whatever his colour, objects to the word blackboard. It's black and it's a board. The word black in itself can't be offensive. I'd called it that all my life so why should they try to force me to change the way I speak my own language? And yet, at this moment, on this headland, under this sky, this immensity, it all seems so petty. Perhaps all I did was to elevate trivia into a principle.'
Dalgliesh said: 'Agnes Poley would have understood. My aunt looked up the records and told me about her. She went to the stake, apparently, for an obstinate adherence to her own uncompromising view of the universe. She couldn't accept that Christ's body could be present in the sacrament and at the same time physically in heaven at God's right hand. It was, she said, against common sense. Perhaps Alex Mair should take her as patron of his power station, a quasi-saint of rationality.'
'But that was different. She believed her immortal soul was in jeopardy.'
Dalgliesh said: 'Who knows what she believed? I think she was probably activated by a divine obstinacy. I find that rather admirable.'
Meg said: 'I think Mr Copley would argue that she was wrong, not the obstinacy, but her earthbound view of the sacrament. I'm not really competent to argue about that. But to die horribly for your own common-sense view of the universe is rather splendid. I never visit Alice without standing and reading that plaque. It's my small act of homage. And yet I don't feel her presence in Martyr's Cottage. Do you?'
'Not in the slightest. I suspect that central heating and modern furniture are inimical to ghosts. Did you know Alice Mair before you came here?'
'I knew no one. I answered an advertisement by the Copleys in The Lady. They were offering free accommodation and food to someone who would do what they described as a little gentle housework. It's a euphemism for dusting, but of course it never works out like that. Alice has made a great difference. I hadn't realized how much I was missing female friendship. At school we only had alliances, offensive or defensive. Nothing 'ever cut across political divisions.'
Dalgliesh said: 'Agnes Poley would have understood that atmosphere too. It was the one she breathed.'
For a minute they walked in silence hearing the rustle of the long grasses over their shoes. Dalgliesh wondered why it was that, when walking towards the sea, there came a moment when its roar suddenly increased as if a menace, quiescent and benign, had suddenly realized and gathered up its power. Looking up at the sky, at the myriad pinpricks of light, it seemed to him that he could feel the turning earth beneath his feet and that time had mysteriously come to a stop, fusing into one moment the past, the present and the future; the ruined abbey, the obstinately enduring artefacts of the last war, the crumbling cliff defences, the windmill and the power station. And he wondered whether it was in such a disorientating limbo of time, listening to the ever-restless sea, that the previous owners of Martyr's Cottage had chosen their text. Suddenly his companion stopped and said: 'There's a light in the ruins. Two small flashes, like a torch.'
They stood still and watched in silence. Nothing appeared. She said, almost apologetically: 'I'm sure I saw it. And there was a shadow, something or somebody moving against the eastern window. You didn't see it?'
'I was looking at the sky.'
She said, almost with a note of regret: 'Well, it's gone now. I suppose I could have imagined it.'
And when, five minutes later, they made their way cautiously over the humpy grass into the heart of the ruins there was no one and nothing to be seen. Without speaking they walked through the gap of the east window and on to the edge of the cliff and saw only the moon-bleached beach stretching north and south, the thin fringe of white foam. If anyone had been there, thought Dalgliesh, there was plenty of opportunity for concealment behind the hunks of concrete or in the crevices of the sandy cliff. There was little point and no real justification in attempting to give chase, even if they had known the direction in which he had disappeared. People were entitled to walk alone at night. Meg said again: 'I suppose I could have imagined it, but I don't think so. Anyway, she's gone now.' 'She?'
'Oh yes. Didn't I say? I had the distinct impression it was a woman.'
By four o'clock in the morning, when Alice Mair woke with a small despairing cry from her nightmare, the wind was rising. She stretched out her hand to click on the bedside light, checked her watch, then lay back, panic subsiding, her eyes staring at the ceiling while the terrible immediacy of the dream began to fade, recognized for what it was, an old spectre returning after all these years, conjured up by the events of the night and by the reiteration of the word 'murder' which, since the Whistler had begun his work, seemed to murmur sonorously on the very air. Gradually she re-entered the real world, manifested in the small noises of the night, the moan of the wind in the chimneys, the smoothness of the sheet in her clutching hands, the unnaturally loud ticking of her watch and, above all, in that oblong of pale light, the open casement and the drawn curtains which gave her a view of the faintly luminous star-studded sky.
The nightmare needed no interpretation. It was merely a new version of an old horror, less terrible than the dreams of childhood, a more rational, more adult terror. She and Alex were children again, the whole family living with the Copleys at the Old Rectory. That, in a dream, wasn't so surprising. The Old Rectory was only a larger, less pretentious version of Sunnybank – ridiculously named since it had stood on level ground and no sun ever seemed to penetrate its windows. Both were late Victorian, built in solid red brick, both had a strong, curved door under a high, peaked porch, both were isolated, each in its own garden. In the dream she and her father were walking together through the shrubbery. He was carrying his billhook and was dressed as he was on that last dreadful autumn afternoon, a singlet stained with his sweat, the shorts high cut, showing as he walked the bulge of the scrotum, the white legs, matted with black hair from the knees down. She was worried because she knew that the Copleys were waiting for her to cook lunch. Mr Copley, robed in cassock and billowing surplice, was impatiently pacing the back lawn seeming oblivious to their presence. Her father was explaining something to her in that over-loud, careful voice which he used to her mother, the voice which said: 'I know you are too stupid to understand this but I will talk slowly and loudly and hope that you won't try my patience too far.'
He said: 'Alex won't get the job now. I'll see that he doesn't. They won't appoint a man who's murdered his own father.'
And as he spoke he swung the billhook and she saw that its tip was red with blood. Then suddenly he turned towards her, eyes blazing, lifted it, and she felt its point pierce the skin of her forehead, and the sudden spurt of blood gushing into her eyes. Now wide awake, and breathing as if she had been running, she put her hand up to her brow and knew that the cold wetness she felt was sweat not blood.
There was little hope of falling asleep again; there never was when she woke in the early hours. She could get up, put on her dressing gown, go downstairs and make tea, correct her proofs, read, listen to the BBC World Service. Or she could take one of her sleeping tablets. God knew they were powerful enough to knock her into oblivion. But she was trying to wean herself off them and to give in now would be to acknowledge the potency of the nightmare. She would get up and make tea. She had no fear of waking Alex. He slept soundly, even through the winter gales. But first there was a small act of exorcism to be performed. If the dream were to lose its power, if she were somehow to prevent it recurring, she must face again the memory of that afternoon nearly thirty years ago.
It had been a warm autumnal day in early October and she, Alex and her father were working in the garden. He was clearing a thick hedge of brambles and overgrown shrubs at the bottom of the shrubbery and out of sight of the house, slashing at them with a billhook while Alex and she dragged the freed branches clear ready to build a bonfire. Her father was under clad for the time of year but was sweating heavily. She saw the arm lifting and falling,
