Bones and Silence

'I'm glad,' smiled Pascoe.

'Dorothy! Did you hear what I said? The drawing-room. At once. I have a great deal I want to say to you.'

The Canon looked more animated than Pascoe had ever seen him.

His wife said thoughtfully, 'And I have something I want to say to you, dear. Chung said the time would come and I didn't really believe her. But she was right, I think. She's truly marvellous, isn't she, Mr Pascoe? Without her, I might indeed have been writing letters, if not to Mr Dalziel, certainly on the same subject as that poor woman.'

'Dorothy, do you hear me? I forbid you to go on talking to this man!'

It was the last desperate cry of a shaman who begins to suspect his magic staff has got dry rot.

Dorothy Horncastle wrinkled her nostrils like an animal testing the wind for danger. Then she smiled joyously.

'I hear you, Eustace,' she said. 'But I'm afraid I can no longer obey. Let me see; what was it that Chung said? Oh yes ... I remember. Eustace, why don't you go and screw yourself?'

It was a magic moment but it was flawed for Pascoe by being the moment also when any last scintilla of doubt vanished. Dorothy Horncastle was not the Dark Lady. Which meant if the threat of that last letter were serious that he had failed.

He wasn't even permitted to watch, the final collapse of the Canon whose self-image was fracturing like a cartoon cat running into a brick wall. Wield was pulling at his arm and saying urgently, 'I think there's something you ought to take a look at. I dare say it's nowt as you must've seen it already, only after reading them letters, well, it fits so well...’

He was thrusting the Evening Post souvenir edition into Pascoe's hands.

Pascoe read, impatiently at first, and then incredulously; and for a while the disbelief on his face brought relief to Wield's.

Then he seized the Dark Lady file from Wield's hands and began to riffle through it.

'No, it can't be,' he said. 'It can't.'

He took out the last letter and scanned it despairingly.

'Mrs Horncastle,' he said. 'These words, not for all the world, tower and town, forest and field, do they mean anything to you?'

'They sound familiar,' said the woman. 'Let me see. Yes, I'm pretty sure they are from one of the Mystery plays. That's right. The Temptation. The Devil takes Christ up to the top of the Temple and first of all tells him to prove his godhead by jumping. Then he claims to have all the world to wield, that is to rule, tower and town, forest and field, and offers this to Christ in return for his homage.'

'The top of the Temple, you say? Oh God,' cried Pascoe. 'Oh God.'

CHAPTER THREE

Once more they were running, forcing their way through the dense-packed crowds and across the narrow street up which a roar came funnelling like a tidal bore to signal the passage of the procession through the old gateway into the close.

The cathedral steps were crowded and the great oak doors with their double frieze of intricate carving in which the sacred was embraced by the profane, were firmly shut. Wield split off to the left, Pascoe to the right, and for once the symbols proved correct for within a few seconds of leaving the crowds behind as he explored behind the view-defying buttresses along the side of the building, he found a small low door which yielded to his touch.

Inside, it was dark and still, with an impression of something waiting and listening, as though the great old church was straining to catch the sound of the approaching procession which it had not heard for over a hundred years.

No time for fanciful reflection, none for respect either. He sprinted with sacrilegious haste down a side aisle through a disapproving forest of columns till he reached the doorway to the Great Tower.

This too was open, and from vast space filled with vibrations of infinity, he moved into the stifling confines of a spiral stair filled only with the heat and harsh rasp of his own breathing.

It was a totally enclosed stairway with no lucent points of reference, and after a couple of moments Pascoe felt as if he were running on a treadmill, ever aspiring, ever low. But his mind was fuelled with fragments of thought which kept his legs pumping away.

. . . her father was a Scot who went to Malaya as a young padre during the troubles of the post- war era ... for a serving officer to marry a Chinese girl at this time, perhaps at any time, was an act of social self- destruction . . .

Self-destruction. He knew all about self-destruction! Why hadn't he shown more interest in Ellie's article? Why hadn't he encouraged her to talk about it?

. . . the family moved to the UK after Malaya achieved independence ... the Reverend Graham obtained a sprawling parish in west Birmingham . . . what his parishioners thought when they first met their new vicar's wife and young daughter is not recorded . . .

Suddenly there was light. The spiral broke on a narrow landing at the furthermost point of which was a small lancet window, scarcely more than a loophole really, but it admitted the blessed gold of the sun. He staggered to it, sucking at the fresh air. It was too narrow and the wall too thick to let him look down, but he could see straight out over the roofs of the town and so gauge how disappointingly low he still was. He turned his back on the light and plunged again into the timeless spaceless hopeless helix.

... at boarding-school she started acting . . . her greatest joy was in the holidays when she went on camping trips with her parents in the Border country which had been her father's birthplace . . .

It was he decided a nightmare. He was not really here, he was safe in bed at home, and one last thrust of his aching legs would drive him through the surface of this awful dream into the familiar world of the warm duvet, the white curtains with the blue flowers silhouetted by the first rays of dawn, and by his side, Ellie, soft-breathing, as neat and orderly in sleep as she was loose-limbed and sprawling awake, as though all her natural rebelliousness vanished when she closed her eyes and some deep-seated longing for order and conformity took over. Ellie, whose