She spoke the words quietly, but they hung in the room for what seemed an uncomfortably long time. Kate sat still, her eyes on the fire. ‘I wonder what he did to her.’
‘It must have been something pretty awful,’ Greg said softly.
‘Murder. I think he murdered her. Her dress is covered with blood.’
‘And it’s her grave Alison has uncovered in the dunes.’
Anne shivered. Pulling one of the cushions from the end of the sofa she threw it down in front of the fire and sat down on it, hugging her knees just as her sister was doing. ‘Just supposing you are right,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘What are we assuming here? That Alison’s excavation has uncovered a long-dead crime? That a murdered woman is still crying out for vengeance after two thousand or so years and that for some reason she and the man who murdered her are attacking everyone in sight. That they are capable of clubbing a man to death, burning down a barn, throwing a car into the sea, cutting off the phone, manifesting soil and maggots and perfumes and physically threatening anyone foolish enough to go outside?’
‘It sounds a pretty grim scenario, put like that,’ Roger commented wryly. ‘But for want of a better theory, and because it is more or less midnight, which is traditionally the witching hour, and because whatever has happened has scared the daylights out of a fairly large, responsible group of people, most of whom are otherwise sane adults, I would say it sounds fairly convincing for now.’
‘Perhaps Kate is right and we should pray,’ his wife put in tentatively. ‘I appreciate your intellectual opposition to prayer, darling, but it would seem to be the only option left, and traditionally, to use your word, it is the only sensible response.’
‘It’s the only possible response,’ Patrick muttered.
‘Rubbish,’ Roger retorted. ‘The sensible response is for us all to get some sleep. In the morning we will have some breakfast and some of us will walk up the track with Joe and call the police. There has, after all, been a murder committed. If there is anyone out there, and I doubt if by now he is still there, my judgement is that he is human. Some kind of maniac on the loose from somewhere. Poor Bill happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police will get him. But for the rest of us to end up basket cases because of what has happened is insane in itself. I am sure we will find a concrete explanation. You do what you like. I am going to bed.’ He stood up.
No one else moved. ‘There aren’t enough beds for everyone, Roger,’ Diana put in absent-mindedly.
‘Then whoever wants to can stay down here by the fire. There are lots of rugs. No one need be too uncomfortable.’ Roger stooped and threw a couple of logs onto the fire. It roared up the chimney in a shower of sparks. ‘Joe. I suggest you take my son’s bed as he shouldn’t climb the stairs. Kate, you and Anne – ’
‘We’ll stay down here, Roger, thank you. I’m very comfortable by the fire.’ Kate smiled at him.
‘Me too.’ Patrick put in.
Kate glanced up at Greg. ‘You go and lie down in the study, Greg. Rest your foot. We’ll keep watch. If anything happens we can call you.’
He reached down and put his hand on her shoulder again. The touch was only light, a brush, no more. ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll stay here. I’m too comfortable to move.’
When the elder members of the group had gone upstairs, Anne seated herself on the chair Roger had vacated. ‘Have any of you heard the weather forecast?’ she said quietly. ‘It’s unbelievably bad. I don’t know whether being near the sea makes it better, but they are predicting blizzards for tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy to go for help.’
‘You think we should try now, before it gets too bad?’ Greg leaned forward.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think. I just wanted to warn you.’
‘I don’t think we should go out again,’ Kate put in. ‘We’ve been lucky so far.’ Her eyes strayed down to Greg’s foot. ‘But I don’t think we should risk anything else.’
‘I think we should open a bottle of wine.’ Greg levered himself to his feet. ‘If we’re going to stay awake we may as well enjoy ourselves, and if it helps us sleep that would be no bad thing.’
He hobbled across to the kitchen. Then he stopped suddenly. ‘Where are the cats?’
Paddy shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen them.’
Greg frowned. ‘Are they upstairs?’
‘If they’re like C.J. they will be in the middle of the best bed,’ Anne commented. ‘No cat is going to be anywhere else in this kind of weather.’
‘They don’t usually go upstairs.’ Greg bent down and hauled a bottle out of the wine rack in the corner. ‘It’s too cold most of the time. The cosy places are all in here round the fire or the Aga.’ He took the corkscrew out of the drawer and tearing the foil seal off the bottle, he began to wind into the cork. ‘We’re all used to fifteen blankets and duvets each and night storage heaters and things but that is hardly up to feline standards. Here, Paddy, carry this for me, there’s a good chap and we need some glasses.’ He hopped back to the fire and sat down again with a groan. He put his hand on Kate’s shoulder again, more firmly this time, and he let it rest there. ‘Cheer up, we’re all safe now.’
She shook her head. ‘I keep thinking of poor Bill in the cottage, all alone.’
She accepted a glass from Paddy and took a sip. ‘I can’t believe any of this has happened. It’s ridiculous. It’s not possible. Things like this don’t happen to people in real life.’ Greg’s hand was still on her shoulder. Without thinking, she reached up and grasped his fingers. They were warm and reassuringly strong as they returned her grip.
‘I’m afraid they do happen to ordinary people,’ Anne put in. She smiled at Patrick as he gave her a glass. ‘But I’m glad to say there is usually a mundane explanation for even the strangest phenomenon. I’m inclined to think that most of your weird goings on here have been a combination of ordinary things. Cars skid in bad weather; they crash on steep icy lanes. People imagine they see things when the weather is bad. Oh, yes they do, Kate. And people infect one another with something like hysteria very easily when they’re scared and you’ve had something real to be scared about. A man has been murdered.’
‘But before he was murdered. When I phoned you. All the things we discussed.’ Kate shifted slightly to lean against Greg’s good knee.
‘Poltergeists.’ Anne nodded. ‘Centred on Alison. I think that is very possible. She seems to be emotionally very disturbed at the moment.’ She glanced at the two girls who appeared to be sleeping soundly on their makeshift bed in the corner.
‘So you consider poltergeists to be real?’ Greg asked.
‘Yes. I do, in that they are an outward manifestation of inward conflict; the energy created by the brain is quite astounding, you know.’
‘Astounding enough to throw a large car out into the saltings? Astounding enough to set fire to a barn?’
‘The latter could easily have been a prowler, Greg.’ Kate had accepted the loss of her car with astonishing calm; after everything else that had happened it seemed almost unimportant on the scale of things.
Paddy was half way through his own glass of wine when he looked up suddenly. ‘The cats couldn’t have been in the barn, could they?’
‘Of course not. They never went there except bird-nesting in the summer. They can’t get in when the door’s locked anyway.’
‘Of course they can. There are – or were – loads of holes they could get in through.’
‘They won’t have been there, Paddy, don’t worry,’ Anne put in, hearing the panic so near the surface in Patrick’s voice. The boy was very near the end of his strength. ‘The first hint of trouble and they would have been away. Cats are psychic about these things.’
There was a moment’s silence then Greg let out a short bark of laughter. ‘Not entirely a happy choice of words under the circumstances.’
She grimaced as she hauled herself to her feet. ‘Sorry. Listen, is there a loo downstairs? I don’t want to disturb anyone who’s asleep.’
‘Just across the passage, behind the study.’ Kate gestured towards the door. ‘Here, take this candle.’
The passage was very cold after the heat near the fire. Sheltering the flame with her hand, Anne pushed past the coats and boots, past the closed study door. She could feel the draught from the front door on her neck. They should have a curtain for it. The passage was cluttered with things: carefully she held the candle up, trying not to trip over baskets and shoes, walking sticks, a box of cat food, an old electric fire – heating this house was obviously a problem – a box of what looked like stones, some rolls of Christmas paper and a box of decorations, obviously
