A Finer End

by Deborah Crombie

  How could he take such music for granted? Had he not felt that the glory of it was almost beyond bearing? The gap between their perceptions seemed immense.

  “I—I promised Toby I’d be home for bath and story time tonight.” But she lied. The truth was she needed time to absorb what she’d heard, and that she felt too burdened by what she hadn’t brought herself to tell him to make small talk. “I’ll take the tube,” Gemma said. “You wait for the Major. Give him my best.”

  “You’re sure?” Kincaid asked, his disappointment visible for an instant before he schooled his expression into pleasant neutrality.

  “I’ll see you at the Yard in the morning.” Slipping her hand round the back of his neck, she kissed him quickly, a silent apology. Before she could change her mind, she turned and strode away.

  But before crossing Heath Street to the Underground station, positioned at the very top of Hampstead High Street, she paused. The view from these upper reaches, south over the rooftops of London, never failed to inspire her. She loved to imagine Hampstead as the village it had once been, a green and leafy retreat, its air free of the noxious fumes and fog that choked London below.

  That vision made a startling contrast to the bowels of Hampstead tube station, the deepest in London. Gemma found a seat on the crowded train and did her best to ignore the hygienic deficiencies of the man next to her, letting the echo of the choir reverberate in her head. So intense had been the demands of the past few months that even half an hour on a train was welcome time to gather her thoughts.

  The death of Kincaid’s ex-wife two months before had left him with an eleven-year-old son whose existence he had not previously suspected. His struggle to deal with the complexities of that relationship, as well as the guilt he felt over the death of the boy’s mother, had put considerable strain on his relationship with Gemma. Then, just when she’d begun to think they’d regained their equilibrium, she’d been faced with a particularly difficult case and her deep sense of connection to one of the suspects.

  In the end, she’d been unwilling to give up the bond she and Kincaid had forged, but the episode had left her feeling unsettled. She sensed change in the offing, and it made her want to dig her heels into the present and hang on.

  She left the tube at Islington, walking slowly through the familiar streets towards her garage flat as the summer evening faded towards twilight. Hazel, her landlady, looked after Gemma’s son, Toby, and the arrangement had given Gemma as idyllic a year as a single, working mum could possibly wish.

  Letting herself into the garden by the garage gate, Gemma thought she might find her son and Hazel’s daughter, Holly, still playing outside. But the flagged patio showed only signs of hastily abandoned toys, and from an open window she heard a squeal of laughter.

  “Am I missing a party?” she teased, peeking in the kitchen door.

  “Mummy!” Toby slid from his chair at the table and darted to her, throwing his arms round her thighs.

  She picked him up for a hug and a nuzzle, noticing that it seemed to take more effort than it had a week ago. “I do believe you’ve been eating stones,” she teased, pinching him and setting him down with a make-believe groan.

  “We made play-dough,” Hazel explained, coming in from the sitting room. “Flour, water, and food coloring. Nontoxic, thank goodness, as I think they’ve eaten more than they’ve modeled. Supper? There’s cheese soup and fresh-baked bread.”

  Hazel Cavendish was one of those women who made everything look effortless, and Gemma had long ago given up envy for unadulterated admiration. “Cheese soup’s my favorite,” she said, “but”—she glanced at the children, Toby insisting that his mottled green lump was a dinosaur, Holly claiming just as adamantly that it was a cat—“they seem content enough for a bit. Would you mind if I practiced my piano first?”

  “Take a glass of wine with you,” commanded Hazel, pouring her something chilled and white from the fridge.

  Glass in hand, Gemma made her way into the cluttered sitting room. The piano stood at the back, amid the scattered games and toys and squashy, well-worn furniture. It was old, and not in terribly good condition, but Gemma was grateful just to have something to play. There was certainly no room for an instrument in her tiny flat, even had she been able to afford one.

  She slid onto the bench, pushing a strand of hair from her cheek, and poised her fingers over the keyboard. In some small way, she could attempt to reconnect with the feeling she’d had in the church. Her music book stood on the rack—Bosworth’s The Adult Beginner, or “the green book,” as she thought of it—open to Prelude in C. She played each note carefully—right hand, left hand … louder, softer—then the last two staves, both hands together. Coordination was still a struggle, but each time she practiced it got easier. Her teacher was pleased with her progress, and Gemma guarded her Saturday lesson time fiercely.

  She continued through her exercises, stretching out the brief minutes in which her mind held nothing but the order of the notes and the way they resonated in the air. But all too soon she’d finished, and she knew she’d only been avoiding thinking about the problem she’d been wrestling with for months.

  In the two years since she had become Superintendent Duncan Kincaid’s partner, their personal relationship had sometimes strained their working relationship. But it had also enriched it—they knew each other, could anticipate one another’s ideas and reactions, and their partnership had evolved into a finely tuned and creative entity, the sum greater than the parts.

  All this Gemma realized, and she also was aware of how much it had meant to both of them to spend their days together, to share their lives so intimately.

  But she hadn’t joined the force to be a career sergeant. She was due for promotion, and if she didn’t make a move soon, she’d be considered a nonstarter. Sidelined, her career shot before her thirtieth birthday, all her ambitions come to naught.

  A simple enough conclusion, put in those terms. But promotion to inspector would mean a new duty assignment, possibly with another force, and the end of her partnership with Kincaid. And she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him what she’d decided to do.

  She stood, closing the lid on the piano keys with a thump. It wouldn’t get easier, so she might as well stop making excuses and get on with it. Tomorrow, first thing, she would take him aside and say what she must. And then she would face the consequences.

  From where Andrew Catesby stood, on the summit of Wirral Hill, he imagined he could just make out the estuary of the River Brue, the slight dip in the land that marked the gateway to the sea. To the north rose the Mendips, to the south the lesser Polden Ridge, and to the west, between him and the sea, stretched the wide, flat expanse of the Somerset Levels. Just when, he wondered, had he lost all joy in the prospect? Was there nothing safe from the anger that seemed to seep from him, staining all it touched?

  Beside him, Phoebe, his spaniel, tugged at her lead, and Andrew freed her for a brief run before the light faded altogether. He turned, looking down at the lights of the Safeway on the Street Road, and beyond it the rising flank of the town itself, and behind that, the ever-present shadow of the Tor. Glastonbury was not really an island, of course; it had not been one within the span of human memory. It was a peninsula, linked to the higher ground to the east by a neck of layered limestone. But there had been many times when Glastonbury must have seemed an island to those travelers arriving from the west—even now, with the sea-water contained by extensive seawalls and deep-cut rhynes, heavy rains could bring the waters lapping once more at the foot of Wirral Hill. Andrew much preferred that appellation to the more commonplace Wearyall Hill, a direct reference to the Joseph of Arimathea myth. Below him on the slope grew the famous Glastonbury Thorn—a dubious tourist attraction, in his opinion.

  After the Crucifixion, according to legend, Joseph brought twelve companions by sea to Glastonbury. The long, humped back of the hill proved the travelers’ first sight of land, and as a grateful and weary J
oseph climbed ashore, he planted his staff of hawthorn in the earth of the hillside. The staff took root and a flowering tree burst forth, a sign to Joseph and his companions that here they should build a temple, the first Christian church in England.

  Of course, the original thorn had long since died, replaced by a spindly, windswept shrub Andrew had difficulty believing could inspire awe in the most gullible pilgrim. But then, he dealt in facts, not fiction; he preferred things that could be measured, sampled, and recorded.

  It seemed to him that the history of Glastonbury was so rich that it needed no embellishing with myths and questionable fables, and that the archaeology of the area provided an endless—and verifiable—source of discovery. The casual way his students accepted the blatant rubbish circulated about Glastonbury infuriated him. If it was drama they wanted, he’d give them the savage execution of the last abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, hanged on the Tor by Henry VIII’s henchmen. As soon as Whiting was dead, his head was struck off and his body cut into quarters, one to be displayed at Wells, one at Bath, one at Ilchester, and one at Bridgwater. His severed head the king’s men placed over the great gateway of the Abbey itself.

  Whiting had been a kindly old man, an unlikely candidate for fate to choose as a martyr to a king’s greed, but the abbot had gone to his death with quiet dignity. Andrew never climbed the Tor without thinking of Richard Whiting’s execution, and he resented bitterly those who would make a theme park of one of Glastonbury’s most sacred spots.

  In this he had his sister Winifred’s support. As an Anglican priest, she found the New Age marketing of Glastonbury as difficult to deal with as he did. Of course, both town and Abbey had a long history of embellishment, ending with the scam of all time, the digging up in 1191 of King Arthur’s and Queen Guinevere’s supposed bones from the Abbey churchyard.

  Winnie, always one to see the best in people, insisted that the Abbey monks had acted in good faith, but Andrew was more cynical. After the devastating fire of 1184, the Abbey had been in dire need of funds for rebuilding. The “newly” discovered relics meant pilgrims—and therefore revenue. Human nature had not changed that much in eight hundred years, he thought grimly.

  Realizing it was almost fully dark, Andrew whistled for Phoebe and reclipped her lead as he turned to retrace their path down the hill. Phoebe picked her way through the tussocky grass, and as Andrew followed he considered the lecture he needed to prepare for tomorrow’s sixth-form history class. Sixth-formers were always difficult—full of their own importance as they neared freedom and university—but he had hopes for one girl in particular, a scholar with an interest in archaeology, but then he had been disappointed before. It didn’t pay to invest oneself too deeply in adolescents.

  Winnie teased him about his students, saying he’d been born in the wrong century. According to her, he’d have made a perfect nineteenth-century gentleman archaeologist, surrounded by rapt disciples, but Andrew thought it unlikely that the coterie of scruffy graduate students who usually staffed his digs could be described as “rapt.”

  He and his sister had enjoyed an unusual rapport since childhood. Having lost their parents quite young, they’d become particularly close and when, after five years in London, Winnie had been given a parish near Glastonbury, he had felt his life complete. He supposed he’d taken for granted that things would go on as they were indefinitely—in fact, he’d even considered selling his house on Hillhead and moving into the Vicarage with Winnie. They had always shared interests, particularly their love of music, and it had been their custom to spend their free time together.

  But all that had changed since Winnie had become involved with Jack Montfort last winter.

  In Winnie’s company, Andrew had been content—with his teaching, his archaeological work, and his activism in the community—but now these once-beloved things seemed pointless.

  The Thorn loomed ahead of him, its twisted silhouette a darker shadow against the dusk, and soon afterwards he reached the stile where the path intersected his street. Winnie loved the house on Hillhead, with its sweeping vista of the Somerset Levels, and she had helped him decorate it in a spare style that enhanced the view. Here they had spent many a winter evening in front of the fire, and in summer had lingered past dusk on the terraced patio.

  As Andrew entered the house, its emptiness seemed to mock him. He hung Phoebe’s lead neatly on the hook beside the door, then scooped her evening portion of kibble into her bowl. But after a quick perusal of the fridge, he lost any enthusiasm for the preparation of his own meal.

  Instead, he poured himself a solitary glass of red wine and took glass and bottle into the darkened sitting room. Through his uncurtained windows, he could see faint lights twinkling in the plain below, as remote as the stars pricking through the velvet expanse of the southern sky.

  His life seemed as if it were collapsing around him, forming a dark, cold weight in his chest that gnawed at him like a tumor. He’d tried seeking solace elsewhere—a mistaken attempt with consequences so disastrous he strove to put the incident from his mind.

  Never had he dreamed that anything—or anyone—could separate him from his sister, or that he would find her absence so devastating. If ever he had shared Winnie’s faith, this blow would have shattered it—how could any god inflict such loss upon him, after what he had suffered? Nor would any god right it, he thought as he poured another glass of wine. That, he could see clearly now, was entirely up to him.

  Fiona Finn Allen had awakened that morning with the smell of her childhood lingering from a half-remembered dream. Crisp and piney-green as the air of a summer morning on Loch Ness, the scent stayed with her throughout the day, tickling the edge of her awareness. It filled her with a deep, almost physical longing to paint, but she resisted the impulse.

  In the past few months, whenever she’d touched brush to canvas, she had painted the same thing—a child’s face, a little girl perhaps four or five years old. Where the image came from, or why it persisted, she did not know, but its occurrence left her feeling headachy and ill, and she’d begun to suspect that something was terribly wrong.

  Kneeling in the heavily mulched rose bed, she ruthlessly deadheaded the spent blooms and tried to shake off her malaise. Soon she’d go in and put the last touches to her vegetable soup. Her friend Winnie Catesby was coming to lunch.

  It was an odd friendship. She had never been able to accept the primary tenets of the Christian faith and Winnie was an Anglican priest, but their relationship was one Fiona had come to treasure in the year since she and Winnie had met at a council meeting. Winnie had the rare gift of making others feel as if they truly deserved her attention, and the time spent in her company had helped Fiona deal with the grief that had colored her life for so long.

  That pain not even her husband had been able to heal, although he had given her much joy in other ways. Sitting back in the sun-warmed earth, she thought of how beautiful Bram had been when they had first met, and she smiled.

  Even now, with the once-golden locks cut short and thinning, and the inevitable slight softening of the fine features, she found him irresistible.

  How fortunate she was that fate had seen fit to bring them both, like ancient pilgrims washed ashore, to the first Pilton Festival—Glastonbury Fayre. She and Bram had found their destiny in Glastonbury, and had never looked back. Bram had sold her first few canvases on the street. Their success had enabled him to find gallery space for her work. It was not long before he owned the gallery, and in the years since, he’d developed an international clientele for her work and that of other painters he had taken on.

  They’d made a good life for themselves, she and Bram, built on their mutual efforts and their love for each other. But sometimes in her dreams she saw that life for the fragile thing it was, and she would wake with a start of fear.

  Jack stood, hesitating, before the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, an ugly square block of a structure built in the 1860s, partly from stone salvaged from the Abbey prec
incts. Nor was the alleyway that led from the High Street to the building prepossessing in the dusk—it smelled of damp and cat urine, and the tattered shreds of posters pasted to its doors made a sad collage.

  But the poster advertising that evening’s event had not yet suffered the ravages of time and weather. Simon Fitzstephen’s ascetic face was familiar—Jack had seen it often enough on Fitzstephen’s book jackets since he had started browsing in Nick Carlisle’s New Age bookshop. An Anglican priest who had given up active ministry to pursue his studies, Fitzstephen’s books were on the more conservative end of the shop’s offerings—the author was a local man, and a respected authority on the early Church and on Grail mythology. What would Fitzstephen think, Jack wondered, if he knew about his correspondence the past few months with a dead monk?

  Like a jewel set in the greensward the Abbey lay … a city sufficient unto itself. We entered through the eastern gate … gone now … all gone.…

  My father, always sharp in his dealings, meant to make one less mouth to feed and yet cheat the Abbey of his gift, for I was a sickly child and he foresaw I would not reach my manhood. My mother lamented, but my father would not hear her.…

  The Abbot blessed me, his hands upon my head. Then they stripped me, washed me, clothed me in the rough brown habit. I was pledged to God, yet I knew nothing.…

  So today’s script had read, the first in several weeks. Although it had been almost three months since the strange writings had begun, Jack had yet to tell Winnie about the communications from Edmund of Glastonbury. He feared she’d be appalled by something that smacked of spiritualism—and he felt guilty over the fact that he’d been unable to silence the nagging hope that somehow, sometime, this strange gift would put him in touch with his dead wife.

  Tonight, he told himself he had come here merely to satisfy his curiosity—to ask, for instance, when the Abbey’s east gate had fallen into disuse; or when the Church had discontinued the practice of accepting children into the Order as gifts.