by Jan Siegel
‘He must have been killed by the same person who drowned Mrs Carlow,’ Nathan said, ‘but I don’t quite see how it fits in. She was a witch who was interested in the Grail – he was the owner – the two murders have to be connected, but … The dwarf might have attacked Von Humboldt, thinking he had the cup on him, but not your great-gran. We know she …’ He stopped. He still hadn’t told Annie they had seen Bartlemy draw the circle, and he wasn’t meant to know about the water-spirit.
But Annie was following her own train of thought. ‘Was he wet?’
‘Von Humboldt? Of course. It had been raining.’
Hazel, too, had thoughts of her own. ‘He was hit on the head,’ she said. ‘We saw the blood.’ There was a shudder in her voice, even though they’d been through it before. ‘That was what killed him.’
‘The dwarf couldn’t have done that,’ Nathan announced abruptly, an arrested look on his face.
‘Why not?’
‘Too short.’
‘He could have been up a tree,’ Hazel said.
Woody might know, Nathan was thinking. He sees everything that goes on around Thornyhill, and I did ask him to keep a lookout. I must go and talk to him.
‘Anyway,’ Annie said, reverting to a grievance already thoroughly aired, ‘you shouldn’t have been there. If you hadn’t been spying on the meeting, you wouldn’t have fallen over the body. You had no business –’
‘It was our business,’ Nathan reiterated, also for the umpteenth time. ‘Hazel’s great-grandmother was killed first, and I’m the one who keeps dreaming of other worlds. We’re involved. On a need-to-know basis, we need to know everything.’
‘I hate it when you get smart,’ Annie sighed.
‘George wants to go to the wood to look for clues,’ Nathan pursued, ‘but I said we should leave that to the police.’ He evidently felt he was being generous, trusting Pobjoy with the investigation. ‘They’ve got the area cordoned off anyway.’
‘George is a twit,’ Hazel muttered, feeling an obscure need to pick on someone, even if he wasn’t there.
‘And,’ Nathan resumed, ‘if we hadn’t spied on the meeting, we wouldn’t have been able to chase the dwarf, and we wouldn’t have known what he did with the Grail. Uncle Barty was pretty pleased with us.’
‘Running after criminals is dangerous.’ Annie’s voice lacked conviction, and she knew it. Everything that was happening right now was dangerous, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She produced strawberries and cream and noted that Nathan’s appetite, at least, was unimpaired. ‘Try not to worry about it,’ she said to Hazel, feeling inadequate and clumsy. ‘I know it’s distressing when you first see a dead body, but … it’s just like old clothes. Cast-offs. The spirit leaves behind what it doesn’t need any more.’
‘His spirit didn’t have much choice, did it?’ said Nathan.
Later that night he climbed up to the skylight and looked at the star. Did its range reach as far as the woods? he wondered. Had that pale mask looked down from another world and seen, perhaps with indifference, the killer of Dieter Von Humboldt? The star that wasn’t a star gleamed on noncommittally. Nathan went to bed eagerly, hoping to dream – of the chamber of crystals, and the aerial view of this world, of Kwanji Ley in Deep Confinement, in a white cylindrical pit – but hope cheated him, and he only slept.
The next morning Pobjoy went to Thornyhill to talk to Bartlemy. He didn’t take Belinda Hale since he wanted to keep the conversation informal. He hadn’t called to say he was coming, but his host seemed unsurprised, proffering coffee and biscuits as if he had been expecting a visitor. To the inspector, a biscuit was something that came out of a packet, tasting like slightly sweetened sand. He had never eaten biscuits like these. Interviewees sometimes offered him alcohol, which he always refused, in case it affected his judgement; it hadn’t occurred to him that his detachment could be undermined by a biscuit. Until now. As it was, it occurred to him for perhaps a few seconds, until the biscuit took hold, and his taste-buds succumbed to its blandishments.
‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if you could fill me in on a few things.’ He was going to add that it was merely a matter of routine, but then remembered that line had been done to death in detective fiction and no one believed it any more.
‘What kind of things?’
‘Starting with the robbery, whose idea was it to bring the cup down from London, and why here? If the various claimants wanted to meet on neutral territory, what was wrong with a hotel room? This house isn’t secure – they found that out the hard way – and you weren’t involved in the business except in an advisory capacity. So – why here?’
‘It was Mrs Thorn’s idea,’ Bartlemy explained. ‘I assumed she would have told you. This house, as I think you know, once belonged to her family; it was the home of the Grail. She wanted, I imagine, to impress Birnbaum and Von Humboldt with the whole tradition of Thorn ownership – to get the weight of history on her side. It worked with Birnbaum. I never met Von Humboldt, but from what I’ve heard I doubt if it would have had the same effect on him.’
‘And that was why the cup was brought here? So Birnbaum would see it in its setting, be overcome with remorse for daring to aspire to it, and back off?’
‘Nicely put.’ Bartlemy smiled, and nudged the plate of biscuits towards his guest. ‘Mrs Thorn, I believe, used precisely that argument with Von Humboldt to persuade him to bring the cup here. But I suspect her real motives were more complex. She feels very strongly that by selling it her ancestors failed in some way, and it’s up to her to put things right. A question of family honour, you might say. Returning the cup to its original home, if only for an afternoon, was a significant step. A gesture showing her commitment to the cause.’ He didn’t mention Eric’s role in the affair. The introduction of an alternative universe into the case would only complicate matters.
Pobjoy thought: That sounds like pseudo-psychological nonsense … But the biscuits had softened his normal hard-edged clarity of mind, and he didn’t dispute it.
He asked: ‘Could she have engineered the robbery?’
‘I suppose so – any of them could – but I don’t think it’s likely. Mrs Thorn is in a strong position to reclaim the cup legally. If it was found in her possession illegally, I should imagine that position would be seriously affected. Remember, she doesn’t want to sell it, so if she had it, she’d keep it.’
‘Unless she lied about her intention.’
‘She didn’t lie,’ Bartlemy said with quiet certainty, and Pobjoy found himself accepting that.
‘Who else knew the cup was being brought here?’
‘The people at Sotheby’s, obviously – but you’ll have checked that out. I don’t know if Birnbaum or Von Humboldt told anyone else. I only discussed it with Annie Ward, who stands to me in the relation of a niece, and it would be ludicrous to suspect her.’
‘Yes,’ Pobjoy agreed, with a warmth which surprised him. ‘It would.’
‘The children knew because children always do,’ Bartlemy pursued, ‘but I don’t think word got around the village. Annie might have mentioned it to Michael Addison: he’s a friend of hers, and a historian, so the subject would be of interest to him. You’ve met him, I believe. But remember, the value of the cup is still in doubt, so it must have been stolen for what it is, not for what it’s worth. That severely limits the range of possibilities.’
‘What about this dwarf?’ Pobjoy demanded. ‘Did you see it?’
‘No – I was out of the room. But there was a storm, the lights went out, it was unnaturally dark in here. I expect people’s imaginations were on overtime.’
Although that was what Pobjoy had been thinking himself, he felt an irrational urge to argue. ‘What about the children?’ he said. ‘Could it have been one of them?’
‘You’ve met them,’ Bartlemy said. ‘They’re teenagers. Hazel isn’t tall, but she’s far too tall for a dwarf, and Nathan’s growing by the hour. Besides, they would�
��ve been recognized.’
In a Halloween mask? Pobjoy wondered, but he didn’t say it. The idea had come to him in the small hours, and he thought it might fit, with the robbery if not the murder. The children would probably have believed they were helping Rowena Thorn. In his experience, crime and teenagers went together like bacon and eggs. If it hadn’t been for the biscuit effect, he would have pressed on with the subject. But …
‘An unusual name, Pobjoy,’ Bartlemy was saying. ‘There can’t be many of them.’
A joke of a name, the inspector reflected. They had tried to make a joke of him, mocking him, caricaturing. From his earliest schooldays, his personality had tightened and hardened against his name, until the joke was no longer funny, and people forgot it.
‘My father mentioned a Pobjoy,’ Bartlemy went on, in a tone of gentle reminiscence. ‘In the war.’
‘My grandfather was in the SOE,’ the inspector said, caught off guard. He remembered belatedly that Annie had said something about a connection. ‘Special Operations Executive.’
‘Yes,’ said Bartlemy. ‘That would be him. Working with the resistance, just before the invasion. They gave him a medal of some kind, didn’t they?’
‘I still have it.’
‘He was a brave man. I saw – a photograph – once. You have a look of him, in a certain light.’
‘What did your father do?’ Pobjoy asked, thrown completely off course.
‘Oh … he was a cook. He’d been in France some time, off and on: the home of great cuisine. He spoke French like a native, as they say. He was working for a rather high-profile Nazi during the occupation: that’s how he met your grandfather.’
‘He was in Intelligence too?’
‘Good heavens, no. Nothing so dramatic. Walter Pobjoy was a hero. My father was just a cook. He passed on titbits, from time to time. Culinary titbits. And … recipes, so to speak. He made himself useful: that was all.’
‘Cooking runs in the family, doesn’t it?’ said Pobjoy, giving up on robbery and murder, at least for the moment.
Bartlemy smiled his placid smile. ‘All sorts of things run in families,’ he said. ‘Did they call you Walter, after your grandfather?’
‘It’s my middle name,’ the inspector admitted. ‘James Walter Pobjoy.’ He wanted to say: Call me James, but caution, reserve, inhibition got in the way. After all, Bartlemy was a witness, a potential suspect …
‘It’s a pleasure to meet the grandson of so distinguished a man,’ Bartlemy said.
‘We were an army family,’ Pobjoy found himself saying. ‘My father too – he was killed in Ireland, when I was very young – and then the money ran out. I was sent to a state comprehensive instead of Marlborough and Sandhurst, and I didn’t want to go down the same route as my family. So I joined the police.’ He broke off abruptly, shocked to find himself in the midst of revelation.
‘Have another biscuit,’ said Bartlemy.
When his visitor had gone the old man sat for a while without moving, lost in thought. Hoover, who had been a mute witness to the preceding interview, scrounged the last biscuit and waited hopefully. ‘So he suspects the children,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I should have anticipated that. But he can prove nothing without evidence, and the evidence, as we know, is out of reach.’ His mind dwelt on the dwarf, trying to fit him into the pattern. There are two kinds of dwarfs, those who are merely small humans, and the true dwarf race, who are werefolk. The latter tend to be hairier, less humanoid, exceptionally strong for their size, preferring to live underground, with the indefinite lifespan of the werekind and the ability to do without sustenance for long periods. The fragmentary stories of Josevius Grimthorn often credited him with an assistant, a hunchback, or a goblin, or, of course, a dwarf. But there was no hint as to why that assistant should have been imprisoned, or why he might wish to return the Grail to its place of origin. However, true dwarfs, Bartlemy knew, were by nature obsessive, brooding on one idea sometimes for centuries, usually concerning treasure. A lost jewel, a cursed hoard – whose curse was often aggravated by dwarfish mischief – a ring with obscure powers. And dwarfs, like most werefolk, incline neither to evil nor good, but their vindictive nature, and an inbuilt resentment of the taller races, makes them more easily drawn to the dark side, and influenced by evil men.
Our friend the inspector must hunt for his clues in the wood, and unpick them in the forensic laboratory,’ Bartlemy remarked. ‘But we have our own ways of searching. It is time to light the spellfire, and look in the smoke for glimpses of the past. And it may tell us nothing, Rukush: magic is always unpredictable. Then we will have to summon a seeress, who will complain that we didn’t ask the right questions last time, and tell us, no doubt, that the past is veiled, and she is forbidden to gaze back so far. I would so much rather stick to cooking.’ He added, idly: ‘I liked the inspector, though. Rather more intense than his grandfather. A man who will get hold of the wrong idea and hang on to it with the persistence of a dwarf … but I liked him. What do you think?’
Hoover put his head on one side, and thumped his tail.
Nathan was in the woods, searching. He had avoided the police cordon, concentrating initially on the area between the house and the valley, then moving into the Darkwood, calling softly as he went: ‘Woody! Woody!’ Twigs snapped, leaves crunched, midges swarmed, but of the woodwose there was no sign. He would have liked to have brought Hoover, but he was afraid the presence of the dog would deter his friend. He must have seen something, Nathan thought. He sees everything in the woods. Perhaps he ran away, because he was frightened. He saw the murderer, maybe he saw the murder itself, and now he’s hiding somewhere, shivering and alone … I must find him.
Nathan called and called, whispering encouragement, but no one came, and eventually he went home, anxious and frustrated.
Woody was still on his mind when he went to bed, and slipped over the borders of sleep without speculating on whether he might dream. And so, of course, he dreamed.
Once again, he felt the transition: the whirling tunnel, on a collision-course with stars and planets, the sudden plunge into blinding light. And then – reality. A different reality. He was leaning against a wall, a curving wall, in a pale, hollow place. The Pit. In front of him, Kwanji Ley sat staring at him with widening eyes. She was altered, he thought, in some indefinable way – thinner, edgier, more tense. Time must have passed (how much time?). At first, perhaps, the Pit had offered a kind of relief, the respite after interrogation; but now her sense of peace had gone and she was fighting, uselessly, with no visible enemy, no focus for her resistance, no witness to her struggle – fighting the terrible sameness, the nothing closing in on her, holding her like a fly in amber – fighting the creeping onset of despair. The struggle had worn her down; her face was all bones now, bones and shadows, though in that diffuse light it was difficult to see where the shadows were supposed to lie, or what was casting them. Maybe they were shadows under her skin, in her soul.
She said: ‘Who are you?’ Her voice, too, was altered. It was the voice of someone who hasn’t spoken to another human being in a long while.
‘My name’s Nathan.’ It sounded very similar to the way he would have said it in English, except that the th had become t, and in his mind he knew it would be spelt Naithan.
‘Why did you come back? How did you come back? You’re real – I know you’re real. There’s been no one else. No holocasts, no visions, no wereghosts sent to trap me. Touch me. Please.’
He took her hands, and her grip was tight and strong. Like a man dangling from a cliff-edge, clutching at a tree-root to save himself …
‘I’m real. I told you, I dreamed my way here. Because I wanted to.’
‘Why did you take so long?’
‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t long for me. Just a few days. But I don’t have control over it. The dreams come when they will.’
She said: ‘Aaaah,’ and released his hands, but her gaze still held him.
‘Will you tell me a
bout the cup?’ he asked at last. ‘I know it’s part of a spell, but they say even the Grandir doesn’t know it, or not all of it … but if you were trying to steal it, you must have some idea how the spell works …’
‘If you’re from another world,’ she said, scorn and disappointment in her face, ‘how do you know this?’
He told her about some of his other dreams, and about time, and when he had finished the scorn was gone, and there was a glitter in her eyes like twilight on a purple sea.
‘You saved him,’ she said, talking of Eric. ‘You pulled him out of the sea, out of this world – into yours.’
‘Yes.’ He knew what was coming.
‘Then you can do it with me. Not to your world – just out, somewhere here, anywhere. Get me out, and I’ll tell you what you want to know. You can do it – you said so. Get me out!’ She caught his hands again – her face looked feverish, lit from within with the freakish gleam of desperation, panic, returning hope and recurring fear.
‘I’ll try,’ Nathan said unhappily, ‘but it may not work, and if it does, it’s dangerous. I can’t guarantee to keep you in this world; you could end up in any universe, anywhere.’
‘The power is in your mind,’ said Kwanji Ley. ‘Use it. Think.’
‘I’ll try,’ he repeated. ‘But you must talk to me first. When I pull you out of here – if I do – I’ll probably lose track of you. I did with Eric; it took me ages to trace him. I need to know about the Grail now.’
‘So it’s a trick.’ She sat back, the freak-light dying out of her gaze.
‘No.’
‘Then prove it.’
‘I can’t. I would if I could, but – you just have to believe me. Or not. It’s up to you.’
She breathed deeply, and stared at him, into him, with eyes that sought to read his mind – but failed. He was still a child in years, and a child’s thoughts are on the wrong wavelength for adult telepathy. Eventually she said: ‘What the hell. I don’t suppose I can tell you anything that the Grandir doesn’t know already. It’s just – there are things I am not meant to know. Do you understand?’