The Sin Eater(25)

The door opened all the way, and the figure stood on the threshold, the light from the lower landing and the street lamp behind it. Even so Nell recognized him. It was the man she had seen earlier – the man who had been bending over Benedict Doyle. The man with the vivid blue eyes.

He did not come into the room: he remained on the landing, three-quarters in the shadows. Nell tried to calculate whether she could get past him and down the stairs without getting too close. No. Then the best thing to do was act as if there was nothing wrong.

She said, ‘Thank goodness it’s you. You’re Declan, aren’t you? Benedict said so. I’m Nell West. I didn’t realize you were still here – I thought you had gone with Benedict in the ambulance.’ She thought she would have to get downstairs, even if she had to push him down two flights.

‘I’m about to leave,’ she said. ‘I haven’t managed to make any notes for the inventory, but I can come back another day. After New Year.’

‘When?’ His voice was soft and muffled.

‘Probably the week after. Say the eighteenth,’ said Nell, more or less at random, but thinking that Hilary Term would have started at Oxford, and life would be more or less back to normal.

‘Yes. Come on the eighteenth.’ The words were as insubstantial as if someone had breathed the letters on to a misted glass, but as they died away, Nell stopped feeling frightened. There was nothing alarming or threatening about the man after all. If he would step a little more into the light he would probably turn out to be rather nice-looking, in fact.

She said, ‘The eighteenth. Yes, all right.’

His face was still partly in the shadows, but Nell could see the glint of blue from his eyes. She thought he smiled briefly, then he was gone.

Nell thought she would not tell Michael about the man or the meeting on January 18th, although she would tell him about Holly Lodge and Benedict. He would want to hear what the house was like and whether the contents had been interesting or valuable. Beth was spending the night with a school friend who was having a Christmas party, so Michael had offered to cook supper for himself and Nell. She was pleased about this; she liked Michael’s rooms at Oriel College – she liked the untidiness of the books he always had strewn around and the way the window of his study overlooked a tiny quadrangle which was sun-drenched in summer and crusted with icing-sugar frost in winter.

She suspected, though, that they might end up ordering pizzas for their meal, because the last time Michael had tried to cook he had ended in blowing all the fuses on the entire floor, and Wilberforce the cat had decamped in disgust to the buttery where he had disgraced Michael yet again by eating an entire turbot, intended for an Oxford Gaudy lunch.





EIGHT


‘It was a trick of the light,’ said Michael Flint, seated opposite Nell in his rooms in Oriel College. ‘People’s eyes don’t change from blue to brown in the . . . well, in the blink of an eyelid.’

‘It wasn’t a trick of the light. When I first found him, Benedict Doyle had the most vivid blue eyes I’ve ever seen.’

Nell was curled up in her favourite chair, sipping wine with apparent composure. But there was still a faintly scared look around her own eyes and, seeing this, Michael was glad he had suggested cooking supper. He had laid the small drop-leaf table and had opened a bottle of sharp white wine which they were sharing. The meal would be ready in about half an hour; he thought it was as foolproof as it could be. He had bought salmon steaks, which he had wrapped in foil with a sliver of butter and lemon juice, and had bought salad ingredients to go with them. This surely could not go wrong, although it was remarkable how often cooking did. If things did not burn they came out nearly raw, or something fused or blew up within the cooker itself.

Michael had once tried to make vichyssoise and had put a number of ingredients in a blender, which had exploded halfway through the process, showering half-mushed potatoes and leeks everywhere. Unfortunately, Wilberforce had been sitting on the window sill at the time and had received most of the contents. He had been so disgusted he had vanished for two days, but, as Nell’s Beth had said afterwards, this would be a really cool thing to include in the new book about Wilberforce, didn’t Michael think so? So Michael had dutifully written a chapter in which Wilberforce, wearing a chef’s hat slightly too big for him, attended a series of cookery lessons, until the mice, with whom Wilberforce waged ongoing and unsuccessful battles, gleefully tipped the pepper pot into the stew.

At the moment, the real Wilberforce was in the kitchen, keeping a watchful eye on the cooker, where the salmon was cooking according to schedule. The bowl of salad was in the fridge, and Michael could give his attention to Nell’s odd experience in Benedict Doyle’s house.

‘Will you go back to the house to draw up the inventory?’ he asked. He liked seeing Nell here; he liked the way she always kicked off her shoes and curled her feet under her in the deep armchair by the fireplace. She still had on the jacket she had worn for London – it was golden brown and it brought out the copper lights in her hair.

‘Yes, I think I’ll have to. Apart from anything else, there’s this,’ said Nell, producing the chess piece.

‘That looks valuable.’ Michael did not say he didn’t much like the slightly sneering face on the carved figure. He set it down on a low table and considered it.