The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Right.’

Oh well… Up the steps into the lobby, which now merged with the hall. Up the baronial stairs…

And when you got to the top of the first flight and turned right, through the fire doors, into the ill-lit passage towards the west, it was clear why this part of the house — although it probably had the best rooms — had been set aside by the Foleys as staff quarters.

The problem was, it had been dragged into the 1960s or 1970s and left there. The walls were lined with woodchip, probably to hide the damp, and it was dim and dusty, a languid light drifting from a tall, narrow window at the bottom of the passage. This area of the house needed a lot of money spending on it. Money they probably thought they’d have to spare, but now it had gone, on the basics: keeping the damp out and the heat in. Or trying to.

The first room, convenient for the stairs, was Ben and Amber’s own. What must it have been like when they first arrived here, and they were the only people sleeping in this huge house? This was Mum’s problem with Ledwardine Vicarage magnified about four times. A lot of the time, even now, Ben and Amber would be alone here during the week. Most of the part-time staff — cleaners and waiters — came in daily during the summer, or when there were guests.

‘Jane!’ The fire doors clicking together. It was Ben. ‘Forgot to give you the key.’

He strode ahead of her down the passage, near to the end, unlocking the last door on the right. Actually, she was quite glad to have him here with her. Stupid, huh?

Inside the door, there were steps up into the actual tower, and then another door. When Jane had first started work here, she’d been flattered and excited to be given the room under the witch’s-hat tower. OK, it was big, cold, needed redecorating, but it was, like, you know… the room under the witch’s-hat tower.

Ben put on the light. The room had gloomy maroon flock wallpaper, pretty old, and less than half as much furniture as a space this size needed to look vaguely comfortable — the three-quarter divan, the wooden stool serving as a bedside table, the mahogany wardrobe with the cracked mirror.

The aim, apparently, was to create an en-suite bathroom at one end, and this was actually essential before you could legitimately charge anyone for spending a night here and experiencing those incredible views across Hergest Ridge into Wales.

With the light on, all you could see through the triple windows now was a thin slash of electric mauve low in the sky, like the light under a door. Ben stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his hands.

‘Couldn’t take it, then, Jane?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You wanted out.’

‘Well, you know… look at it. It’s like sleeping in… in somewhere too big.’

‘That’s all?’

‘All?’

‘No other reason?’

‘Should there be?’ Sod this; she was giving nothing away — she was going to make him say it.

Ben leaned over his folded arms, rocking slightly. ‘So you had a perfectly untroubled night’s sleep.’

‘Don’t people usually?’

‘One of the builders — when we were having the partition wall taken down, between the hall and lobby — he stayed in here, and he didn’t want to spend a second night.’

‘Oh?’

‘He thought it was haunted.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh… noises, he reckoned. Breathing. And he said he thought he saw a woman’s shape outlined against the window. Next morning, he was not a happy man. Said he thought we’d set him up.’

Jane struggled to bring up a smile. ‘Did you set me up?’

‘I thought… well, you’re quite interested in this sort of thing, aren’t you? Weird stuff.’

‘So-so. Ghosts are a bit… I mean, they’re usually just imprints, aren’t they? Emotional responses trapped in the atmosphere. Nothing to worry about.’ She was furious — the bastard. ‘I mean, I wish you’d told me…’

‘You’d have been expecting something then. Pointless exercise. So you wouldn’t mind moving back sometime, if necessary?’

‘Look, Ben, I wouldn’t mind spending a night in a sleeping bag on a station platform, but I’d rather have an ordinary-sized room, thanks.’

Ben grinned. ‘Ah, Jane.’

‘What?’

‘I should’ve realized the most important thing for you would be retaining your cool.’

‘Look, my mother’s—’

He lifted an eyebrow. Did he know? She thought not.

‘My mother’s a vicar. They’re not bothered by this sort of… you know.’

‘Right,’ Ben said.

That was close. She didn’t want Mum involved in anything here. This was her separate thing.

‘So you’re going to try this guy, erm… in here.’

‘Antony Largo. If you think you’re cool…’

‘I don’t!’ Jane said, smarting, going to turn down the bed clothes.

Ben smiled and shook his head and wandered out.

Left alone, Jane shook out the duvet, remembering how, when she’d come up here to dump her case that first night last weekend, and then gone down to get something to eat, she’d returned at bedtime to find the duvet had been roughly thrown back, as if someone had started to make the bed and then abandoned it.

That could’ve been Ben, couldn’t it? Setting her up.

Otherwise, just an imprint. Just an emotional response trapped in the atmosphere.

Jane sorted the bed and didn’t hang around.

5 Drink Problem

They’d moved the bed so that it faced the window and the lights of West Malvern. From this position, on a dark night, it looked as though the lights were away in the sky, big stars. And you could feel safe, for a while.

Lol said thoughtfully, ‘Does this mean you get your own cult?’

Merrily sat up. The lights of West Malvern were now quite clearly just tall, narrow buildings on a hill.

‘All the lanes around Ledwardine full of crutches and sticks abandoned by the roadsides,’ Lol said.

‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’

And then she started to laugh, and it was one of those laughs that you could feel in your toes and the tips of your fingers and the pit of your stomach. Therapeutic, probably — a healing laugh. Oh God. Not two hours ago, she’d fed Ethel, the cat, left a second cat-meal in the timer bowl for the morning and then driven quietly away. Driven over to the granary at Prof Levin’s recording studio in the Frome Valley, for the healing — Van Morrison sang that. Such an easy, guiltless word.

The granary was a two-room tower house reached by exterior stone steps. Lol’s temporary home. Romantic. The trysting place.

He was watching Merrily, an elbow propped on the pillow to lean on. He had his little round brass-rimmed glasses on.

‘Sorry. The last time we talked about this, you were a bit nervous, but it didn’t seem like anything you couldn’t handle.’ He sat up beside her. ‘What happened?’

Where to start? She told him about Alice Meek and her nephew. And about a letter this morning from a