The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

family. Alice swallowed it, anyway. Maybe she didn’t see much of Darrin.’

‘But Roland’s death — accidental? Engineered? How good a driver was Dexter?’ Merrily remembered Bliss’s re — construction.

Unfortunately, Dexter panics, stands on the brakes and the Fiesta stalls on the kerb, directly in the path of the oncoming lorry.

‘Try not to think too hard about it,’ Lol said.

‘Where does it come from, then?’ Merrily said. ‘What was feeding his imagination?’

‘Your guess may be better than mine.’

She slid down to the rug, next to him. Although the snow was almost gone, he hadn’t left Ledwardine since Dexter’s death. She hadn’t yet asked him what the estate agent had told him before the office had closed for Christmas, an hour or so ago.

‘I kept wanting to confess to Annie Howe.’ Lol looked at her, his glasses faintly misted. ‘Maybe it’s something about her that withers your resolve. But then I hadn’t got much resolve anyway.’

‘Much more than you used to have, sunshine.’

‘I mean, I did it. I killed him.’

‘Why do people keep throwing false confessions at me? You didn’t touch him.’

‘Which makes it worse. Like hiring a hit man.’

‘You didn’t hire the beam.’

‘Every time I walked under it, I instinctively ducked,’ Lol said, ‘although I knew I could walk under it upright, with three or four inches to spare.’

He’d followed Gomer’s advice, told Howe that Dexter was coming after him and he just ran upstairs. In fact, Lol had sat on the stairs and insulted Dexter, building up Dexter’s fury to the point where…

‘But if he’d suspected there might have been a low beam there,’ Merrily said, ‘he’d have bent his head, and then he’d have…’

‘Taken me apart.’

‘And you didn’t know the beam was going to kill him.’

‘Well, that’s the point. I didn’t care.’

‘Lol, look at me,’ Merrily said. ‘With Alice lying there, I wouldn’t have cared.’

Prayer and cleansing in the inner hall. Some savage scrubbing of the floor. She’d offered to conduct Dexter’s funeral at Hereford Crematorium, but the Bishop didn’t think it was wise under the circumstances.

‘I wonder where he got his inhalers.’

‘I think he or Darrin would know people who did chemists’ shops. Not that Dexter would personally associate with that kind of low life…’

In the village — this made him feel even more uncomfortable — people smiled at Lol now. ’Ow’re you, Mr Robinson?

Scary.

‘Do you think I should ask Jeavons over for Christmas lunch? I know it’s a bit late, now, and with Eirion coming over…’

‘Lew’s going to his mother-in-law’s.’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘You’ve become very friendly with Jeavons…’

‘I don’t understand it either. Normally I don’t get on with priests at all.’

‘All right,’ Merrily said, ‘what did the estate agent say?’

She knew the agents had been trying to get hold of him because Prof Levin had called to pass on the message.

‘It’s not necessarily good news,’ Lol said. ‘The people who were buying the house called yesterday to pull out. The husband said he was very annoyed that nobody had told them. He’s a lawyer in London. He said there’d been a precedent and someone had received a considerable out-of-court settlement as a result of a similar failure to disclose a problem of this nature.’

‘Huh?’

‘They have a five-year-old son, and he was playing about upstairs and he came down in tears and said he wanted them to have their own house. Said the same thing the next time they came. They got it out of him that he kept meeting an old woman on the landing. In a cloak.’

Merrily sat up.

‘The wife went into Jim Prosser’s shop and asked him a few meaningful questions. The agent said Jim told them about Lucy, the poncho. He said she was well known as a witch.’

‘Jim said that?’

She thought, ’Ow’re you, Mr Robinson?

‘The agent said normally this sort of thing didn’t put people off any more. Kind of added to the charm of a house. She said, “Of course, I know you were a friend of the late Miss Devenish.” ’

‘Meaning it wouldn’t bother you…’

‘It wouldn’t have bothered these people either except that the kid suffers from…’ Lol hesitated. ‘He’s got asthma.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Merrily said.

‘I knew you wouldn’t. I asked for some time to think about it.’

‘If I told Huw Owen about this, he’d say it was some kind of occult trap.’

‘He’s away, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to consult Jeavons?’

She looked at him in his Gomer Parry sweatshirt, his spare pair of glasses, a bruise around his left eye.

She leaned her head back against the sofa.

‘Nothing’s bloody simple in this job, is it?’

Early evening, she had a phone call from Beth Pollen, calling from the Stanner Hall Hotel where she and Jane were helping out. Jane said the atmosphere there was definitely better, although that might be psychological. Amber, she said, was usually cheerful; Ben was quiet and contemplative.

‘I went to Stanner Rocks this afternoon,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘Martin Booth, who’s in charge of the botanical survey, took a group of us up there — the first since the police removed their tapes and things. The naturalists were jolly worried about damage done to the site by all that activity. Have you heard of the Early Star of Bethlehem?’

‘Is that the unique…?’

‘The plant that’s unique, in this country, to Stanner Rocks. It’s just flowered.’

‘Oh.’

‘Despite the name, this doesn’t normally happen until February. Personally, I’m taking it as a sign of something. Jane thought you’d want to know. She wanted to bring you a sprig, but they wouldn’t let her touch it.’

Merrily smiled. ‘I should think not. Erm, have you spoken to Alistair Hardy?’

‘At length.’

‘Right. Well, about the twelve priests…’

‘I’m sorry?’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Oh. Well.’ Merrily watched Lol playing with Ethel the cat. His sweatshirt had ridden up. An area above his waist was still purple and black. ‘Well, I hope you have a good Christmas,’ she said.

Afterword

Allowing the paranormal limited access to a mystery novel is a perilous business. All I can say is, I’ve lived not far from all of this for a long time, and there are some aspects of it that nobody in the area even tries to explain away.