The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘He almost certainly did… but whether it was accidental is open to debate. Would a local man, aware of the dangers, go for a stroll along Stanner Rocks in these conditions? If he was contemplating suicide, death would be far from a foregone conclusion — it’s not all that high, is it?’

‘Maybe he went up to see what the fire was?’ Jane said.

‘It’s a thought, Jane. Or did he start the fire? Or did he catch someone else starting the fire?’ Bliss stretched his arms luxuriously above his head, yawning pleasurably. ‘It’s a complete mystery, isn’t it, girls? I do love a mystery.’

Except that he didn’t. There was nothing, in Merrily’s experience, that real detectives hated more than a complete mystery.

Which meant that Bliss knew what he was looking for and that it was only a matter of time.

On the village square, the Christmas tree lights had gone out, and the security lamps outside the Black Swan were fogged and feeble, like the hopeless eyes of someone bound up tight in white bandage.

Standing by the landing window, Lol felt helpless. He was stranded.

Canon Jeavons had been most disturbed to hear Jane’s theory about Merrily and the Vaughan exorcism. A dangerously unpredictable situation. Give him some time to investigate this, think things out, and he’d be back.

In the meantime, Jane had called again.

The police are here now. Blue lights, I can see the blue lights out of the window. Or maybe more firemen. I’m up in my room. I’ve been sick again. I just ran straight up here to be sick in the toilet. Plus I didn’t want to talk to any of them. I don’t trust any of them. I want out of here. When you talk to Mum, just tell her… tell her I want to go home.

The phones went off in stereo, from upstairs and downstairs — bleeps and bells all over the vicarage, like the phones were crying out to each other. Lol ran down the stairs, through the hall, plucking the cordless from the kitchen wall.

‘Hope I’m in time, son,’ Lew Jeavons said. ‘You wanna make some notes?’

‘Hold on.’ Lol moved to the scullery door, shouldered it open. ‘I’ll go in the office.’

The scullery was lit solely by the orange bars of the electric fire. He moved to the desk. The lemon sleep- light on the computer was swelling like something medical. He found a pen, sat down.

Sprang up again. ‘Oh!’

‘You OK, Lol?’

‘Yes, I… Could I call you back?’

‘Sure.’

‘Right.’ Through the window, Lol could see the snow-slumped apple trees and the flattened face of Dexter Harris, his jug-spout lower lip squashed up against the glass. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

36 First Snow Casualty

When Jane realized how close she was to losing it, she backed away into the corner of the bedroom farthest from the window.

‘Mum, he couldn’t. He’s gentle, he’s entirely harmless. He’s the only farmer round here doesn’t even have a shotgun.’

‘Look, I don’t want it to be the truth either—’

Mum was sitting on the side of the bed, her face as grey as death. The two of them up here, with the lights out, exchanging information. Like spies, Jane thought, inside an enemy fortress. What she’d learned had, at first, just blown her away: the revelation that Natalie was the daughter of Hattie Chancery’s child. Natalie Craven was Hattie Chancery’s granddaughter.

That she was Sebbie Dacre’s cousin. Jeremy’s landlord.

And that she was in fact called… Brigid?

So it looks like she’s still doing it. They can’t stop. It’s a physical need. HOWARD. I have been dreaming about her for about 20 years. she still makes me swet. GAVIN

The implications would connect, at intervals, in a disjointed kind of way, and Jane would hug herself, the nylon parka crackling electrically.

‘We should go home. We know too much.’

Meaning she didn’t want to learn any more, not tonight, couldn’t handle it. But Mum didn’t want to go home. You could sense it in the way she was sitting — the duffel coat untoggled, hands on her thighs, resisting cigarettes only because it was such a small room and Jane was in it, too, and this was no night for opening the window. In some ways, Mum in the middle of something was no better than Bliss.

Avoiding the Foleys, Jane had brought her up two flights of stairs, along underlit passages, to this poky fridge, not imagining that things were going to get worse.

‘You’re a priest. You don’t have to tell Bliss anything. It’s like the sanctity of the Confessional. They can’t make you. Not even in a court of law.’

‘I don’t actually think that applies in this situation. Anyway, that’s not the point. God, it’s freezing in here, Jane. Has it always been like this?’

‘They can’t afford luxury accommodation for the servants.’

They’d been talking about the camper van. The one that Nat and Clancy had arrived in, like gypsies. The van in which, according to Mum, Nat was said to have been seen, with a man. At first, Jane had refused to believe it. Stood to reason that when someone as good-looking as Nat arrived in a place like this, women would resent her on sight. When she had the brass nerve to hook up with an unmarried local farmer, the gossip machine would be white-hot, and all gossip machines manufactured disinformation.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said irritably, ‘I wish I didn’t even have to think about any of this. He’s been in love with her for most of his life, even I could see that. Be nice to think love never had any negative side effects.’

‘He wouldn’t.’ Jane pressed herself into the corner in despair. ‘I don’t know him well but I know he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Clancy says he won’t even send stock to market, because they have to suffer in pens, so they go direct to the slaughterhouse. He’s an honourable farmer. He actually cares about living things.’

‘He tried to hang himself.’

‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

‘It poses questions.’ Mum stood up and went to the window. A row of white-capped conifers stood like a primitive rood-screen between the hotel grounds and the long, pale altar of Hergest Ridge. ‘And the other one is, where’s your friend Natalie?’

Jane said, ‘The last time I saw her, she was telling Ben she had to take Clancy to a neighbour’s because the track to The Nant was blocked. Which it obviously isn’t, so…’ Jane felt sick. Somebody was lying.

‘We know she took her to Danny Thomas’s, but where did she go then?’

‘All I know is she didn’t come back here.’

‘If she went to meet someone at the van—’

‘Dacre? You’re saying she was having sex with her cousin, right?’

‘I’m not saying anything, flower, except that Jeremy and Dacre are not exactly mates, and if Jeremy happened to catch Dacre at the van with Natalie, then you don’t know what might happen.’

‘But she knows, right, and that’s why she’s keeping out of the way?’ Jane felt her brain flailing around. ‘A lot of people hated Dacre.’

‘So it seems.’

‘OK, listen — suppose she’s having a thing with Ben? Don’t look like that, Amber thinks it could be happening. She was like… she said to me the other night, kind of throwaway, that Ben would… that he’d be better off married to Natalie. Maybe seeing if she got a reaction, seeing if I knew.’