The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

second loose bulb; the lights still didn’t come on. ‘You do know what they’re planning, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. I was just wondering if you did or if you were fishing. Pollen sounded me out during the murder weekend, so when The Baker Street League went down…’

‘She told you then — at the murder weekend — that the White Company wanted to, like, seek confirmation from Conan Doyle that this was the source of the Baskerville thing?’

‘No, that seems to have occurred to them later. Pollen’s late husband worked in the archive department at Powys County Council, and he was interested in Stanner. She has copies of various deeds and documents, so she knows a lot about this place. She said, how did I think Ben would feel about hosting the Company, and I said, why don’t you ask him?’

Jane said, ‘He’s like a little kid over it.’

‘It fits in nicely, doesn’t it?’

All the lights had come on, a garish string of alternating sour lemon and livid blue. Natalie stared at them in clear disbelief. ‘Do you think Ben got them from the County Highways Department? They look like fucking warning lights.’

Jane let go of the bulbs but didn’t get down from the bar.

‘Nat… Just now, in the car, Ben said there was something he had to tell Antony that would like… you know, really clinch things. What’s that about?’

‘Huh?’

‘He gave Antony a look like, not in front of the kid. And when they came in he took him upstairs.’

‘Oh.’

‘You do know what it’s about, right?’

Natalie frowned. ‘Possibly. But he wouldn’t have been bothered about you hearing it, he’d have been—’ She shut up as the door opened, and then she turned and smiled and made a ta- da flourish towards the grim Christmas lights. ‘Well… we got them working, Amber. We’re just not sure if we’re glad or not.’

Amber, in jeans and a mohair sweater, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She looked horrified.

‘For God’s sake, they’re awful! Switch them off!’

Natalie tweaked a bulb but the lights didn’t go out. ‘Where’d he get them?’

‘I don’t really care. Let’s just get them down. I think that pipe’s burst, Nat. I think the whole heating system’s all to cock.’

‘Oh hell,’ Nat said. ‘Listen, has he told you? We have a mass booking.’

Amber’s eyes widened. Jane saw a certain fear there.

‘I think I’m going to let Ben tell you about it himself,’ Nat said. ‘Not for me to pinch his glory.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Entertaining Mr Largo, somewhere or other. Don’t panic, lovie, it’s a week or so off yet. We’ll get some more lights by then. We’ll get the plumber. We’ll make this place look almost festive. Well, the bits we allow them to film…’

‘Film?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ Nat jumped down. ‘Good, eh?’

And when Amber had edged anxiously away, Nat smiled and shook her head, and Jane said, ‘Why don’t you want to pinch his glory? It’s all down to you.’

‘Just that she may not thank me when she finds out,’ Nat said. ‘He’ll maybe want to choose his time, Jane. She hates this place enough already. If she knew there’d been a murder, it might not—’

Jane came down from the bar top in a hurry. ‘You’re kidding…’

‘Long time ago — before World War Two. Pollen told me, and I checked it out with that guy Sampson who played the Major. And then I told Ben.’

‘What happened?’

‘He decided to keep it to himself for a while. Just a domestic thing, Jane. One of the Chancery women killed her husband. No big mystery, no need to gather the suspects in the drawing room. She was pissed at the time, apparently.’ Natalie started to bundle the alleged Christmas lights together on the bar top, and they sent blue and yellow stripes flaring across her face. ‘On the one hand it adds to the atmosphere of the dump, on the other… might put some people off. You don’t know, do you?’

Jane said, ‘Erm… did it happen in one of the bedrooms?’

‘I think it was outside, actually. In the gardens.’

Merrily told Sophie that sometimes she wished she was a Catholic or belonged to some hardline Nonconformist sect with strict liturgy and rules instead of guidelines.

‘Just it would be nice to meet two Deliverance ministers who operated to the same rules.’

‘Is Jeavons a Deliverance minister?’ Sophie asked.

‘Not strictly. But… yeah, of course he is. In the cause of healing the sick, he actually goes further into it than most of us. This is where Deliverance meets Healing — the healing of the dead.’

‘His wife?’

‘Catherine.’ Merrily watched her cigarette end smouldering in the ashtray. ‘This cool, fiercely intellectual, academic theologian.’

Jeavons had said that he and Catherine had been married in New York, where he was a priest and she was lecturing. As she was English and he’d lived here too, he wanted them to marry in England, but Catherine wouldn’t hear of it. Nor would she invite her parents to the ceremony. And when the Jeavonses did eventually come back, as a married couple, she didn’t even notify them.

‘Whatever she told Jeavons about her background, it wasn’t the truth. Some years later, Catherine’s father made contact with Lew. Someone had sent him a local newspaper picture of the Reverend and Mrs Jeavons when Lew became rector of a parish in Lincolnshire. The old man said he and his wife had parted and he’d very much like to get in touch with Catherine again.’

Jeavons had been surprised to discover that Catherine’s father was a fairly well-known Cambridge theologian, H.F.H. Longman. Longman told Jeavons there’d been a row about an unsuitable boyfriend while Catherine was at university. But Catherine still refused to see her father and became very agitated that he knew where she was — so much so that Jeavons had to negotiate a parish-swap, which was how they’d wound up in Worcestershire.

Merrily looked down into Broad Street: nearly dark now, the lights misting. Sophie poured more tea, and Merrily told her about the second time Catherine’s father had been in touch — when he was terminally ill, begging Lew to persuade his daughter to see him one more time before he died. Jeavons had told her she’d regret it if she didn’t, and perhaps something would be lifted if she did.

Although in the end she gave in, Catherine had refused to have Jeavons with her at the Cambridge hospice, where Longman was in his final coma.

Sophie leaned back into the shadows behind the desk lamp.

‘When she got home,’ Merrily said, ‘Jeavons was leaving for an international conference in Cape Town. When he got back, about three weeks later, she’d lost weight, her hair was unwashed, she’d been drinking. He found bottles of whisky under the sink. And she was… distant. Didn’t want to talk to him. And then she moved her stuff into a separate bedroom — a temporary thing, she said. She just needed time on her own. A few weeks later, she had a minor heart attack.’

I took my eye off the ball, was how Jeavons had put it. And he’d done it again, after the doctors had given Catherine a tentative all-clear and the situation between her and Lew was gradually restabilizing. Took his eye off the ball, because this was when he was being courted by both the Church and politicians. He’d thought she’d secretly like the idea of him in episcopal purple.

When Catherine had the second heart attack, Lew had thrown himself into three desperate days of prayer and hands-on. Rarely left her bedside, never slept, the bitterness and self-recrimination lasting long after Catherine’s funeral and the memorial service and Lew’s rejection of the purple.

‘He’d located Catherine’s mother to ask if she wanted to be at the funeral, and she hadn’t even replied but, some months later, he tracked her down. He said he was in a rocky mental state himself by then — could often feel Catherine’s presence in the rectory. He… said he awoke one night and saw her in the doorway of his bedroom. But