Spider Light(84)
‘I think there’s restricted access to those particular books,’ said the librarian, who was a youngish boy with a face that for some reason reminded Antonia vaguely of Raffles. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
Restricted access. It sounded more like something you would encounter in a traffic system. Antonia said, ‘I don’t want to take anything away. Just to look at it and make some notes. If they’re the original records, I’ll be careful with them.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said the boy, sounding genuinely so. ‘But you’d need what we call a private research card.’
‘Well, could I get one?’
‘I can give you an application form, and you can fill it in now, but then we’d have to send it to our County headquarters. And they’re inclined to be long-winded. It could take at least a fortnight for it to come through.’
Antonia said, ‘Oh, but—’ when a man’s voice broke in.
‘Put Miss Weston’s request on my research card, would you, Kit?’
Antonia looked round sharply.
‘Have this one on me, Miss Weston,’ said Oliver Remus.
The annoying thing was that the professor merely scribbled a signature, nodded an acknowledgement, and appeared to consider the matter closed. Antonia managed an awkward, ‘Thank you very much,’ to which he responded with a brusque nod, and then went to sit at a distant table, appearing to become instantly immersed in some research of his own.
Well, bother him and his cool disapproval.
But the records from St Michael’s Church, when they were brought, were disappointing. There were columns of births and marriages and baptisms, all recorded in a clear, graceful hand, which Antonia found rather depressing. When it came to the reckoning, was this the sum total of a life? Neat lists of names and dates? Daniel, thought Antonia, if you’re somewhere in here, I’m not finding you, and I’m not finding Latchkill either.
There were several references to the Forrester Benevolent Trust being administered, but on closer inspection these were little more than lists of payments made, or dates of meetings. These entries were in a thin spidery hand, with a signature at the foot of each page–the Reverend Arthur Skandry, who had, it seemed, been the incumbent of St Michael’s Church from 1896.
Arthur Skandry, had visited Latchkill Asylum quite frequently. He had recorded these visits diligently–so diligently that Antonia, who half an hour earlier would have traded, Faust-like, with the devil for anything about the place, found her attention wandering, until an entry for September 1899 snapped her concentration back into place. Skandry had spent time in something called Reaper Wing, ministering ‘to the poor unfortunates incarcerated there, bringing a little calm to their agitation after a recent thunderstorm, to which most of them had assigned the old pagan beliefs…’
But other that this, there was nothing of much interest. Antonia was closing her notebook, when a shadow fell across the table and Oliver Remus said, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work, Miss Weston, but the library closes for lunch and they’ll need to lock everything away.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve finished anyway. Thank you again for the ticket thing.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said formally, and glanced at the leather-bound folios with their tarnished metal clasps. ‘Remarkable how soulless those old records can be, isn’t it? Do you have a particular interest in church history, Miss Weston?’
‘Not a particular one. It’s Latchkill Asylum I’m trying to trace.’ She caught a flicker of something behind his eyes. ‘Just a research project. Or were you wondering if it was a case of poacher turned gamekeeper?’
‘Not in the least. You clearly saw something yesterday that frightened you. I shouldn’t think you were normally an hysterical type.’
‘I’m not,’ said Antonia shortly, and then, ‘Could I buy you a cup of coffee by way of peace-offering for the hysterics?’ It came out awkwardly, because she had got out of the way of this kind of thing, and she fully expected a polite refusal.
But he said, ‘If you’d rather have something stronger than coffee we could walk across the square to the Rose and Crown.’
They ended up having cider and cheese rolls in the Rose and Crown–the boy from the library came in after them, and nodded politely, before seating himself near the bar, and becoming absorbed in a book and a plate of sandwiches.
Oliver Remus talked–a bit guardedly at first, and then more easily–about Quire House and Amberwood and the villages around it. Antonia was interested, but had to remind herself not to relax too much in case an awkward question was suddenly put to her. Are you here on holiday, Miss Weston? Where are you from? Do you have a job, or do you just make a career out of bizarre hallucinations?
But Oliver Remus did not ask any questions, and he did not volunteer anything about himself. Antonia, who had built her own barriers, was aware that he was deeply reserved, but by the time he had ordered two cups of coffee to round off their modest meal, she thought it was probably all right to ask how long he and Godfrey Toy had been at Quire.
‘Six years,’ he said, readily enough. ‘It was very neglected. After Thomasina Forrester–you’ve come across the lady, have you?–well, after she died there was no heir, and it got passed around various local authorities, none of whom were really responsible for its maintenance. Rather bizarrely the First World War saved it–it was requisitioned for a military nursing home and the army spruced it up quite well. We’re just starting to get it on the tourist map now. Along with the antiquarian books set-up.’