The Sin Eater(42)

The best thing was to continue as if nothing had happened. She unwrapped the chess piece and set it on a small table, against a plain section of wall. Studying it again, she thought she might have been wrong about the eyes being jet; there was a distinct crimson glow to them. Rubies? Surely not.

She switched on the overhead light. In its glare, the chess piece threw its own shadow on the wall; the shadow was several times larger than the actual piece, and the outlines were sharply defined. Nell moved round the table so as not to pick up the shadow on the photos. She took half a dozen shots, some of them close-ups of the details, some using the flash. The chess piece’s eyes glittered – they were red. I don’t like you, said Nell, pausing for the flash to recharge. I don’t know how old you are – you might be anything from a hundred years old to five hundred. I don’t care if you’re a thousand years old and worth ten thousand pounds, I still don’t like you.

She squared the camera’s viewfinder again, and as she did so something happened that made her heartbeat skip with fear. The shadow had moved. Nell took a step back, still holding the camera. The shadow could not have moved, of course; it was only that she had moved around to get shots of the details from all angles.

But as she stared at it, the shadow’s head began to turn, very slowly. It’s turning away from the light, thought Nell, one hand going to her throat in the classic gesture of fear and defence. It doesn’t like the light. There was a glint of crimson from the eyes, and then Nell gasped and almost laughed aloud in relief. The shadow had not moved at all; what she had seen was the mirror on the near wall picking up the light when she moved. Your trouble, my girl, said Nell severely, is that you listen too much when Michael starts spinning his romantic tales. She was aware of a sudden longing to hear Michael’s voice. Would he have eaten yet? He had tentatively suggested they have a bite to eat somewhere, but she had declined because of wanting an early night. Should she phone him to suggest he came over to share a meal? No, she would not be such a wimp.

She locked everything away, and went across the small walled garden. There was a small annexe at the rear; a previous owner had fitted it out as small, but perfectly adequate living accommodation. Nell would have preferred to live separately from the shop, but although she had sold her Shropshire antique premises quite profitably, property prices in Oxford were terrifyingly high, so for the time being she was compromising.

She was unlocking the annexe door when the sounds she had heard earlier in the court came again. It’s nothing, thought Nell. Just the footsteps of someone crossing the court.

But there are footsteps that it’s sometimes better not to hear . . .

The whispering faded, but before it did so, the words came again.

The eighteenth . . . Don’t forget . . .

Nell half fell into the tiny hall, slamming the door and turning the lock. Imagination, that was all it had been. She drew a shaky breath, switched on the light, and went into the low-ceilinged sitting room. Everywhere felt safe and ordinary, and the rooms which she and Beth had arranged so carefully were welcoming and familiar. Brad’s photo regarded her quizzically from its place on the bookshelves and Nell experienced an uncharacteristic spurt of anger towards it. ‘Why aren’t you here to stop me being frightened to death by shadows?’ she said to his image. ‘If you were here I wouldn’t take any notice of peculiar shadows or whispering voices. Or of scaly hands clasping mine . . .’ On that thought she went into the kitchen and spent several minutes washing her hands and scrubbing the nails. Then she put some pasta to heat, and poured a glass of wine while it did so.

After food and drink she felt better. There would be a logical explanation for what had happened. Simple tiredness even – it had been quite a long day. The feeling of that sinisterly small hand would be cramp or muscle spasm, and the sounds could have had any number of innocent causes. Sounds travelled in a peculiar way late at night, and the court might be some kind of freak echo chamber.

The eighteenth . . . The words whispered through her mind again.

I won’t go, of course, thought Nell. I will have to go back to Holly Lodge and I’ll have to do that fairly soon, but I’m blowed if I’ll go on that particular day.

But she knew she would.





THIRTEEN


Benedict knew that when Michael Flint had made that offer of help, he had not meant with the criminology essay. He knew Dr Flint had somehow sensed Declan’s presence.

Of course he didn’t. Don’t be stupid, Benedict.

‘I’m not,’ said Benedict. ‘But I’m not listening to you any longer. You don’t exist.’

Don’t I? Can you be sure? Can you be sure you know the truth about me?

‘What is the truth?’ said Benedict, softly.

Ah, truth. “What is truth, asked Jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.” Francis Bacon said that. I could probably quote the whole section if you wanted to hear it. You wouldn’t have me marked as a scholar, would you, but we had to learn a fair amount of the classics when I was a boy. The monks taught us – they thought it prepared us for the big bad world, although I’d have to say they’d have done better to give us a few clues about how to deal with the temptations lying in wait for the innocent.

Benedict said impatiently, ‘Stop showing off. I know exactly what you’re doing – you’re rummaging around in my mind as if it’s a—’