The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

face like some old warrior, and she—’ The tears were like spikes behind Jane’s eyes. ‘Every time she went out, Nat, she wore this… bloody poncho.’

Nat said nothing. There was silence in the vast kitchen, except for a slow bubbling from the stove and the squeak of Clancy’s fibre-tip. Clancy always pressed down too hard, as if the words might fade otherwise.

Jane clasped her hands together, squeezing tightly. ‘Do you think he took her out of my mind? Stole the memory? You see, I can’t believe that even if she… I can’t believe Lucy would talk to a tosser like that. I feel he’s been into my mind. I feel like he’s extracted her, like some computer hacker can get into your hard disk and pull out some ancient, buried file. It’s like a kind of rape.’

‘I doubt that, Jane,’ Nat said.

‘That he took it from my mind?’

Natalie didn’t reply. There were footsteps on the stone stairs, and then Alistair Hardy was standing there with Harry Potter. Hardy had his jacket off. He wore a pair of those archaic expanding armbands around his shirt sleeves. He peered at Jane, his face shiny.

‘All right now, are we, my love?’

‘We’re fine. Just I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I felt sick earlier. That’s all it was. I feel fine now.’

‘Good,’ Hardy said. ‘Mind if we come in?’

Natalie stood up. ‘Well, I think you ought to—’

‘Won’t take a moment. This is the kitchen, is it?’ He blinked. ‘Or servants’ quarters once, I suppose.’

‘That’s right,’ Harry Potter said. ‘I’ve seen the Victorian plans.’

‘Where’d you get those?’ Jane stood up. She was half afraid her legs would give way again, but she was OK. Plans? They had plans of the house? Did Ben know about this?

‘Where’s Ben?’ Natalie said.

‘Oh, he’s gone outside.’ Harry Potter pulled a slick of hair from his concave forehead. ‘We were out near the entrance, and there was some shooting going on in the grounds, and he said it was coming through on the soundtrack and ruining everything. He was really annoyed. He’s gone out to — you know — remonstrate with them.’

Hell, the shooters…

‘Oh Christ.’ Natalie jumped up, pushed between Alistair Hardy and Potter, almost colliding with someone moving slowly down the stone steps.

Amber. She stood at the foot of the steps for several seconds after Nat had gone. Jane wanted to go after Nat, but…

Amber. Those people will not go into my fucking kitchen.

Jane saw Alistair Hardy walking in his measured, deliberate way across the flags until the island unit the size of Australia was between him and Amber.

‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mrs Foley,’ he said.

19 Nancy Boy

Amber said, and it was almost a wail, ‘This is the kitchen. This is the heart—’

‘Of the house. Yes. Precisely.’

Alistair Hardy was leaning forward over the enormous island unit, his hands splayed on the oiled hardwood: the bank manager at his desk, laying down the options.

But he and Amber weren’t coming from the same direction at all, Jane knew that much. Amber meant that the kitchen was the heart of her own shrinking world. This woman was probably all that was truly professional and worthwhile about the Stanner Hall Hotel, and this was her refuge, where what remained of her confidence was located, while the rest of the house faded and dripped and crumbled and rotted and soaked up money. This was her place. Whereas Hardy…

‘It’s on a lower level than the rest,’ Harry Potter explained. ‘They had to build the foundations into the rock. This part of the house is sunk into some of the oldest stone in the country — over six hundred and fifty million years—’

‘So what?’ Amber was arching from the hips in furious incomprehension. ‘I mean, six hundred million, four thousand million — all rock’s pretty bloody old compared with the human race. I don’t see the point of this.’

She backed off a little, maybe realizing that, she was shouting at the people who would be paying for Christmas.

‘Mrs Foley…’ Beth Pollen was stepping down on to the flags. ‘Oh golly, what a mess. All my fault. I assumed you were au fait with everything. If I’d known you were at all worried, I live just a few miles away, I could easily have—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Amber said.

For Jane, the vast kitchen had taken on a cavern-like feel: the purply-greyness, the uneven lighting, the high windows like enlarged slits in the stone. Perhaps some of that very ancient stone was in these actual walls — Amber’s kitchen sanctuary formed out of Stanner Rocks. In the corner, Clancy sat watching from her card table, the pen still in her right hand.

Amber must have touched a switch somewhere because the small bank of halogen lights came on, turning Hardy’s face bright pink.

He didn’t move. ‘Mrs Foley, I knew as soon as I came down the steps. This is where it happened.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Amber said.

‘It’s in the records.’ The Harry Potter guy, Matthew, strolled into the centre of the room. He seemed older now than Jane had first figured, probably even thirtyish, not much younger than Amber. ‘We know that the textile magnate, Walter Chance, who built this house, had a vague interest in spiritualism, as did a lot of people at the end of the nineteenth century. It was fashionable, state of the art — except that to them, of course, it was very much a science, with lots of gadgets. The scientific advances and the technological developments during this comparatively short period were mind-bogg—’

‘We know all that,’ Jane said, and was gratified when Matthew looked at her, irritated.

‘Who is this girl?’

‘Kitchen-maid.’ Jane did a tight smile. ‘With attitude.’

‘Let him finish, Jane,’ Amber said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘Walter retired here with his new young wife.’ Matthew looked at Amber. ‘I expect you know all this.’

It was clear to Jane that Amber didn’t. But had Ben known? Were there aspects of this that he’d hidden? Because if there were, he was going to be in some deep trouble tonight.

‘Mrs Bella Chance — or Chancery as they were known by then — was from London,’ Matthew said, ‘and Walter wanted to give her the kind of social life she was used to. He’d throw these big house parties, no expense spared. Hence a kitchen this size — loads of servants. He’d invite minor aristocracy, and some of them even turned up. But Walter Chancery was generally regarded as pretty crass and vulgar, and they were never really accepted either by the local people or by the gentry.’

Jane thought she could hear raised voices from outside, hoped to God, after what Clancy had told her about the bad attitude of the shooters at Jeremy’s, that Ben wasn’t chancing his arm with them. Especially while she wasn’t there, with her video camera. Christ, what if he still had it with him? What if it got broken?

Nothing she could do. Couldn’t walk out now. Besides, this was becoming interesting, stuff worth knowing, for a student of the Border. If you could put up with the anorak drone.

‘So when Walter discovered that Conan Doyle had friends and relatives nearby and sometimes stayed in the area… You see, we just don’t have authors now as celebrated as Conan Doyle was then. If the Strand was publishing a new Holmes story, there’d be endless queues for copies.