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A Prospect of
Vengeance
ANTHONY PRICE
PROLOGUE:
Old Mrs Griffin's cottage
The children had spotted the ruin of old Mrs Griffin's cottage that very first morning, years before, and from the one place in the farmhouse where it could be seen through the trees: a little low window, cobwebby and covered with dead flies, halfway down the narrow twisty back stair to the kitchen.
And then there had been no holding them.
Rachel and Laurence had known about it already, of course.
The estate agents' man had explained that it was part of the property, as a more-or-less unwanted appendage to the farmhouse plot below the orchard, also dead on the line of the motorway and not part of the fields which had been already sold to the adjacent farms. At the time this had rather aroused Rachel's curiosity, so that when Laurence had embarked on a second tour of their dilapidated (but, as they dummy2
then thought, strictly temporary) new home, she had gone exploring for herself.
Actually, she had never quite reached old Mrs Griffin's cottage then. But she had seen enough, because what she had seen she had disliked even in the safety of the bright sunshine. Indeed, although long afterwards she maintained that her dislike — even then, even then — had been instinctive, or intuitive, it had also been something fiercer than mere dislike: it was in reality strictly practical and maternal, primarily safety-conscious. The children were still little then, but no longer restrictively little. Rather, they were adventurously active, and she knew from bitter experience that Melanie would surely follow where Christopher led; and Christopher, having once glimpsed that little brick chimney and gable-end rising up out of the mossy ruin of fallen thatch, would somehow penetrate the great tangle of brambles and briars and seven-foot tall stinging nettles which had conquered old Mrs Griffin's little garden, and which utterly barred her own progress, but had not prevented her glimpsing the pond.
It was a foul place, she had thought, even in the sunshine: foul, because she could see beastly things in the water —
rotting branches and vegetation, and even an old saucepan breaking the surface of the water with a circle and a handle, over which a cloud of insects buzzed and skittered; foul also, because, although by the standards of her town-bred, traffic-accustomed ears its silence was absolute, it was somehow dummy2
deafeningly noisy, with the low buzz and hum of all those insects hunting and fighting and dying and eating ceaselessly around her; and foul, finally, because she could smell all this activity, of plants and insects and invisible animals competing with each other, and winning and losing — a sweet-rotten smell, the like of which she had never encountered before, a world away from the carbon monoxide and Indian take-away smells which had occasionally invaded their London flat on hot evenings.
'That's a horrible place, down there, darling,' she had said eventually to Larry, when she'd found him again, in the barn beside the farmhouse, staring up at the chinks of sunlight high above.
'Just one or two displaced tiles, Dr Groom,' the estate agents'
man had been saying. The structure itself is absolutely sound
— the timbers, and so on. In fact, as I've said, it's also a listed building — Grade Three — like the house. Late fifteenth century . . . perhaps early sixteenth . . . the expert witnesses at the public inquiry argued about that.' He had given Rachel a quick smile then, acknowledging her presence, if not her words. 'In other circumstances we'd be thinking about a barn conversion, splitting the property into two, rather than about a few displaced tiles. It really is a great tragedy . . . Do you see that main beam, up there? Five hundred years old, that beam is. And — '
'What's horrible, darling?' Larry had overridden the salesman's automatic spiel.
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'The old Griffin place?' The estate agents' man had been quick then, scooping up his error with another smile which embraced them both. 'Awful, isn't it? It hasn't been lived in for years, of course. But it's amazing how quickly those little places fall to pieces once they're untenanted. And, of course, nobody wanted to live there, after old Mrs Griffin died. It's too far off the main road. In fact —
Rachel had ignored him. 'It smells as though something had died in it.' She had addressed the bad news to Larry alone.
The children will be into the pond there for sure.'
Her husband's expression had hardened then. And she remembered too late that he was a country boy, country-dummy2
bred, and she had known then that resistance was in vain.
'Well, darling — ' For an instant he had looked up at the ancient beam above him, with a mixture of love and bitterness, because his ownership of it was to be so brief ' —
well then . . . they'll just have to do what they're told, and keep away from it. It can't be more dangerous than London, any day of the week, anyway.'
That had made it certain, even though they were a partnership of equal partners. But then he had made it easier by twisting one of his smiles at her, which she could never resist. 'I'll talk to Chris, darling — don't worry. And . . . while we're here . . . you can look for another place, without a pond
