The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Merrily sat down at the desk, glimpsing a dispiriting image of her own faith as a small, nutlike core inside a protective shell: too small, too shrivelled, to absorb the concept of miracles.

Jane rang from the hotel, just before ten. The same Jane who should have been home by now.

‘Erm, I told Gomer I wouldn’t need a lift back tonight, OK?’

‘I see,’ Merrily said.

‘Don’t be like that. There’s no problem about going straight to school from here in the morning. As it happens, I’ve got the clobber in my case.’

‘How prescient of you, flower.’

‘It’s as well to be prepared, you’re always saying that. It looked like snow earlier. It comes down heavily up here, when it starts.’

‘Being at least seven miles closer to the Arctic Circle.’

Jane’s weekend job had altered the format of both their lives. It was good that she had a job, not so good that it involved overnights on Saturdays, because all they had left, then, was Sunday, Merrily’s Working Day. Which left Sunday night, and now that was gone, too.

And it was the fact that Jane was working in a hotel and spending nights there. This was really stupid, but Merrily kept thinking about Donna Furlowe, daughter of the woman Huw Owen had loved. At Jane’s age, maybe a little older, Donna had been working at a hotel — holiday job — and had gone missing and been found murdered, possibly one of the Cromwell Street killings. Of course that was in Gloucestershire and this was on the edge of Herefordshire, where it hardened into Wales. It wasn’t even a coincidence, just paranoia.

‘You all right, Mum?’

‘Why do you want to stay there?’ It came out sharper than she’d intended. ‘Sorry. Do they want you to stay?’

‘They could use the extra help, yeah.’

‘Mmm.’ It was wise, in this kind of situation, not to ask too many questions, to convey the illusion of trust.

‘Of course, if you’re lonely,’ Jane said insouciantly, ‘you could always give Lol a ring.’

‘Jane—’

‘Oh no, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? Mustn’t risk having a man seen sneaking into the vicarage… on a Sunday. And not leaving until — wooooh — Monday.’

Merrily said nothing.

‘When are you two going to, like, grow up?’ Jane said

2 Game Afoot

‘And left her there… her lifeblood oozing into the rug.’

Pausing for a moment, lean and elegant in his black suit, he stared right through the faces watching him out of the shadows. The table lamp with the frosted globe put shards of ice into his eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ a woman whispered.

Jane was thinking, Grown people.

Now he was spinning back, sighting down his nose at the man in the wing-backed, brocaded chair. And the man was shifting uncomfortably. And the stiff white cuffs were chafing Jane’s wrists.

‘… And then you crept up to your room and waited until the entire household was silent. What time would that have been? Midnight? A quarter-past? Yes, let us say a quarter-past — twelve-seventeen being the precise time of the full moon… which I suspect would appeal to your sense of drama.’

With the log fire down to embers, the globe-shaded oil lamp was the only light in the drawing room, more shiveringly alive than electricity, spraying complex shadows up the oak panels. Jane dropped her resistance. She was part of the whole scam now, anyway.

‘Piffle,’ said the man in the wing-backed chair.

‘Oh, I think not, Major. I think that, barely half an hour after the murder, you crept back down the stairs and into the study, where you began to overturn chairs and pull out drawers, making as much noise as you possibly could. Finally, with the handle of your stick, you smashed not one, but two windows, in swift succession, so that the sound might be mistaken for a single impact.’

‘Sir, your imagination is, I would suggest, even more hysterical than your abominable fiddle-playing.’

A thin hand disdainfully flicked away the insult. ‘And then you moved silently, up the back stairs this time, and immediately re-emerged onto the main landing, dragging on your dressing gown, shouting and spluttering.’

Jane remembered it well. It had been seriously startling. She must have been in bed about twenty minutes and was half asleep when this huge roar went up. Who’s there? Who’s making all that damn noise? What the hell’s going on?

When she’d grabbed at the switch of the bedside lamp, it hadn’t come on. And then, when she got out of bed, she’d found that the ceiling light wouldn’t work either. She’d gone to open the door but remembered, just in time: Never be seen outside your room in your normal clothes, no matter what happens. Anyhow, her jeans and stuff were in the case under the bed, so she’d thrown on the awful, stiff black dress — Edwardian maid’s standard issue — before venturing out into the cold and musty darkness of the upper landing, flicking switches to find that none of the electric lights was functioning. Feeling her way to the top of the stairs under this eerie green glow from the smoke alarm, peering down to see most of the guests stumbling onto the main landing which was dim and full of shadows but a little brighter than upstairs because it was lit by — wow, cool — an incandescent thimble on a bracket. She’d noticed several of these gas mantles around the place but never imagined that they might actually work. This was like totally disorientating, a time-shift, a sliding century. She recalled a woman saying faintly, Is this real?

‘You roused the entire household, Major.’ A raised forefinger. The Major tried to rise but fell back into the wings of the chair. ‘But you made very sure that you would be the first one to re-enter the study — this sombre room of death where poor Lady Hartland lay cooling in her own congealing blood. And you had to be the first one to enter. Is that not so?’

‘Fairy-tale nonsense, sir.’ But the Major’s voice was slurred with guilt. Was he really a major? He’d been chatting in the bar an hour or so ago, explaining that he’d been based at Brecon until his retirement. Was that all made up?

The lamplight wavered. Jane felt bemused. It was working.

Last night, when they’d all come staggering down, the Major had been standing at the foot of the stairs, his back to the door of the study which all yesterday had been kept locked. Oh Lord, something terrible appears to have happened! Please, madam, you’d best not look. At this point, the study door had swung ajar behind him and you could see the bare lower legs of the corpse, pale as altar candles, receding into shadow. That had worked, too. Christ, Jane had thought, for that one crucial moment.

‘So.’ The man in black cleared his throat. ‘We know why you murdered her, and now we know how. There remains only—’

‘The question of proof. Of which you have none.’ The Major waved a dismissive hand and turned away, gazing towards the long window. Headlamps flashed on it, tongues of creamy light distorting in the rainy panes. It was probably the Cravens, reversing out to go home. Oh, hell, Jane thought, I was supposed to have drawn the curtains. At least Ben had his back to the window, so he wouldn’t have noticed. Jane put up a hand to her white, frilly headband, making sure it hadn’t slid off again.

‘Proof, Major?’ A faint sneer, a languid hand reaching down by the side of the chair. ‘If we’re looking for proof—’

‘Leave that alone! How dare you, sir!’