‘It’s my only chance, Jenny. ‘He tapped the scans. ‘This proves that my father was telling the truth. He did sell my soul. Tomorrow night at midnight a devil is going to come to claim it and I’m damned if I’m going to let that happen.’ He smiled without warmth. ‘Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Now, will you help me or not?’
66
Alice Steadman was dusting a display of crystals when Nightingale walked into her shop. She smiled brightly when she saw him. ‘Mr Nightingale, so nice to see you,’ she said. ‘Did everything go all right with Mr Wainwright?’
‘Everything went perfectly,’ said Nightingale. He took an envelope from his jacket pocket and gave it to her. ‘I wanted to drop by and give you your commission. I hope a banker’s draft’s okay.’
She took the envelope from him and opened it. She slid out the cheque and her eyes widened. She gasped and leaned against a display case. ‘Mr Nightingale, this is a fortune. I can’t accept it. I really can’t.’
Nightingale waved away her objections. ‘It’s the commission we agreed.’
‘But this is… this is… I never expected…’
‘It’s fine. If you hadn’t put me in touch with Mr Wainwright I wouldn’t have sold the book, so you’ve earned that.’
She blinked at him. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Mr Nightingale,’ she said. She looked up from the cheque. ‘If there’s anything I can ever do for you, please, just ask,’ she said.
‘Actually, there is,’ he said. ‘I want to draw a magic circle on a wooden floor. Is there a special chalk or something I should use?’
‘Of course, and I have it in stock,’ she said. ‘I use it myself for making sacred circles.’
She went over to a display of Tarot cards. Next to it were a dozen or so boxes about the size of cigarette packets, but instead of government health warnings they were adorned with stars and moons. ‘On the house,’ she said, and handed him one.
‘And consecrated salt water,’ said Nightingale.
‘This is a protective circle, is it?’
Nightingale nodded. ‘I’m told that a chalk circle reinforced with consecrated salt water is the strongest defence.’
‘Defence against what, exactly?’ she asked. ‘What are you planning to do?’
Nightingale ignored her questions. He took a list from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘There are a few other things here that I’m told I need to open and close the circle.’
She took the list from him and ran her eyes down it. Her lips tightened. ‘Oh dear, Mr Nightingale. Are you sure about this?’
‘I’m sure. Can you sell me those items?’
‘Oh, yes, they’re all very straightforward. But I do hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘So do I, Mrs Steadman. So do I.’
67
Nightingale was mopping the wooden floor of the main drawing room when Jenny walked in with her briefcase. She smiled. ‘That’s a first.’
‘It’s got to be clean,’ he said. ‘Any dirt will compromise the circle. That’s what Mitchell wrote.’
‘You’re really not going to go through with this, are you?’
‘Tonight’s the night,’ he said. ‘I spent all yesterday getting everything. I’ve got the special chalk and the consecrated salt water, and the herbs you said I needed. Mrs Steadman sells all that sort of stuff.’
‘Did she ask what you were planning to do?’
‘I think she sort of guessed. Can you do me a favour? Can you go down into the basement and bring up five of the church candles, the really big ones?’
Jenny handed him a small padded envelope. ‘It came in the post this morning,’ she said. ‘From the Hillingdon Home.’
As Jenny headed down to the basement, he opened the envelope. Inside was his mother’s crucifix and a handwritten note from Mrs Fraser, repeating what she had said in her office, that she was sure his mother would have wanted him to have it. He put the chain around his neck. The crucifix nestled at the base of his throat.
Nightingale continued washing the floor until Jenny returned with the candles. She put them by the door and watched as he got down on his hands and knees and dried it with paper towels. Jenny opened her briefcase and took out her A4 notebook. ‘Mitchell says you can outline the circle with chalk, but for it to be really effective you need to inscribe it with a sword,’ she said.
‘There are swords in the basement,’ said Nightingale, ‘lots of them.’
‘It has to be a magic sword,’ said Jenny. ‘That’s what it says here. Veneficus mucro. Magic sword.’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know which of them are magic?’ asked Nightingale. He gathered up the used paper towels and put them into a rubbish bag.
Jenny ran her finger down the page of her notebook. ‘He says you can use the branch of a birch tree.’
‘Now that’s more like it,’ said Nightingale. ‘We’ve got our own forest out there. Now, please tell me you know what a birch tree looks like.’
‘I’m a country girl, remember?’ She laughed.
Nightingale put the rubbish bag by the door. ‘One of these days I’m going to have to read your CV,’ he said.
68
Nightingale used the chalk he’d bought from Alice Steadman’s shop to draw a circle in the middle of the room, about twelve feet in diameter. ‘Are you sure it doesn’t have to be a particular size?’ he asked.
Jenny looked up from her notebook. ‘Mitchell says it can be as big or as small as you want,’ she said.
Nightingale grinned at her. ‘Funny, that,’ he said, ‘because before you said size was important.’ He straightened and used the birch branch they’d taken from a tree in the garden to outline the circle.
‘Once you’ve gone around it with the branch, you draw the pentagram. A five-pointed star. Make sure there are two points at the top of the circle and one at the bottom.’
‘Which is the top and which is the bottom?’ said Nightingale.
‘That’s up to you,’ said Jenny. She frowned as she read her notes. ‘Okay, here it is. You have to draw a triangle around the circle. Once the devil has been summoned, it will be confined to the area between the circle and the triangle. And the apex of the triangle has to point north.’
‘Okay,’ said Nightingale, hesitantly.
‘So you make the apex of the triangle point north, and two points of the pentagram should point north, with one pointing south.’
Nightingale looked through the windows and across the lawn, trying to visualise the way he’d driven to the house. He gestured across the grass. ‘London is that way, so that’s north,’ he said.
‘I think we should be more accurate than that,’ said Jenny. ‘I saw some compasses downstairs. I’ll get one.’
As she headed back down to the basement, Nightingale sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle.
Jenny returned with a brass compass. She stood at the edge of the circle and showed Nightingale which way was north.
