The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

formal occasion, everyone in evening dress. A sign on the empty chair simply read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Jean was seated next to it — though she admitted she didn’t expect to turn round and see him.’

‘Shucks.’

‘However, Estelle Roberts began the proceedings by describing several spirits present in the hall, and their identities were confirmed by members of the audience.’

‘Plants, Benjamin.’ Antony sniffed. ‘Mediums work with more plants than Alan bloody Titchmarsh.’

‘Antony, I’m not making a case for the veracity of it, I’m simply applauding the clever building of dramatic tension. Sure, a few dozen people were unconvinced, and some of them just walked out — to the evident dismay of Mrs Roberts, who started complaining that she couldn’t work under these conditions. Then somebody started playing the organ to drown out the, ah, sounds of dissent. And then, just when it looked as if it might all be falling apart, the medium suddenly shouted out’ — Ben raising his voice against the buffeting air — ‘He is here!’

They rounded a bend in the bypass, and the wooded face of Stanner Rocks was up ahead, with those knobs of stone projecting like crumbling body parts.

‘And there was old Arthur in the chair,’ Antony said, ‘placidly smoking his pipe.’

‘Well, the medium claimed to have seen him. She described him as being in full evening dress, and striding with his old vigour across the stage to take his reserved seat.’

‘Always keep ’em waiting.’

‘Mrs Roberts said Arthur gave her a message for Lady Jean, which she promptly passed on. Unfortunately it was drowned out by a dramatic fanfare from the organist and nobody in the audience — don’t, Antony, do not say a word — nobody in the audience heard it. But Jean maintained for the rest of her life that she was utterly convinced by its content that the message had come from her husband. Make of that what you will.’

‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ Antony said as they slowed for the hotel drive. ‘Doesnae matter at all.’

‘Not a toss.’

They glanced at one another and they both smiled.

‘Well, I think I’m coming, Ben,’ Antony said. ‘I think I’m nearly there, pal.’

‘Not in front of Jane, Antony.’ Ben pushed the MG between the grey gateposts topped by damaged hounds. ‘Wait till you get to your room.’

And they both started laughing, big mates again, schoolboys. His room? Was this some in-joke? She was not unaware that Ben had never mentioned the room where Antony had slept or asked him if he’d experienced anything — at least not in her hearing.

Jane leaned back against the hard rear seat and wondered why she wasn’t joining in. Ben glanced very briefly back at her and then at Antony, and she knew that look from a long time ago. It was like, pas devant les enfants. She looked quickly away from them, up through the strobing of light and pines to the turreted profile of Baskerville Hall.

‘And then I’ll tell you the rest,’ Ben murmured to Antony. ‘And that’ll really bring you off. Pal.’

10 Serious Requiem

‘You sound like you badly need to talk,’ Sophie Hill had said when Merrily phoned.

Jeavons was right, she was an open book.

The lights were on in the gatehouse when she drove under it. Alongside, the sandstone Cathedral was crouching like a big ginger cat in the rusting remains of some late sunshine. In the office, Sophie had the kettle on. Most Saturday afternoons she’d go into the gatehouse office to sweep up the remains of the week.

‘What was he like?’

‘Bewildering.’ Merrily sat down at the desk by the window. ‘Enigmatic. Worryingly perceptive.’

‘You liked him?’

‘He has… charm.’ She gazed through the window into Broad Street, where the street lights were coming on, along with chains of coloured bulbs newly hung across the road, although Christmas was still no more than a threat.

Sophie poured boiling water into the white teapot. ‘I did some research. So far this year, six ministers in the diocese have made inquiries about the possibility of holding healing services. I spoke to three of them. One said, “I think we should be seen to be doing something.” Another stressed he wanted nothing to do with Deliverance.’

‘Figures.’ Merrily’s attempt to set up a Deliverance Advisory Group was still in the tray marked ongoing. Some of them quite obviously didn’t want to know because she was a woman. A month ago, after consulting her over the phone about certain technicalities, one rector had gone off and set up his own small group — all male — to deal with an alleged presence at a village shop. They’d never told her what had happened.

‘Another one,’ Sophie said, ‘volunteered to be involved in any healing initiative if there was someone else to lead it. And as long as it wasn’t — and I quote — “anyone like Jeavons”. Sometimes one has to acknowledge that the clergy, as a profession, can be rather dispiriting.’

Sophie wore her mauve twinset. Her hair was white. In a dog collar she would cut a reassuring figure, but it would never happen; Sophie knew too much about the Church.

Merrily got out her cigarettes. ‘There were some things I hadn’t realized about Jeavons. It came out when he told me about the death of his wife, and why he couldn’t heal her… and yet might have, if he’d known then what he knows now.’

Sophie turned off the main ceiling lights, switched on the desk lamp and set the teapot down between Merrily and herself.

‘Go on.’

They actually went upstairs together, Ben and Antony — up the red carpet that Ben had bought instead of rewiring or a damp-proof course. Jane thought they looked like two kids who’d found a porn cache.

She found Natalie putting up Christmas lights in the cocktail bar, a room not yet fully Victorianized. It had pale green walls and colonial cane tables and fake oak beams across the ceiling, supporting nothing.

‘So how long have you known about Mrs Pollen?’ Jane said.

Nat was standing on the bar itself, arranging the lights between steel hooks projecting from the oak beam over it. ‘Why are these bastards not coming on?’

‘Maybe the fittings need tightening,’ Jane said. ‘Stay there.’ She climbed up from a stool to the bar and picked up the end of the string of miniature bulbs.

‘Beth Pollen found you, then?’ Nat said.

‘At the church.’ Jane started turning the first pea-bulb in its plastic holder. ‘She seemed OK. Surprisingly.’

‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ Nat had her reading glasses on the end of her nose, and she peered over them at Jane. Nat looked good in glasses, would have looked good in a neck brace. ‘She got into it the way most of them do. Bereavement — husband. They’re not all cranks.’

‘I just can’t imagine ever wanting to contact someone who’s dead.’

‘Can’t you?’

Jane thought about it. ‘The thing is, I knew a girl at school who thought she could do it. And there was this other girl with problems who got involved, and she was like unhinged, mentally disturbed, and the whole thing pushed her over the top. It was… unpleasant, in the end. Horrible.’

‘And your mother wouldn’t like it, would she? Spiritualism.’

Jane looked up. ‘That’s nothing to do with it. I’m not exactly intimidated by the Church.’ She tightened a