A Finer End

by Deborah Crombie

  “You mean like ghosts? Or a séance?”

  Wincing, Montfort said, “Not necessarily. It could be the person’s subconscious seeking … well, I suppose you could call it an unusual outlet.”

  “Is that what you think happened to Mr. Bond—whoever he was?”

  “It was Bond’s friend who actually did the writing,” Simon said tersely. “So whether the information came from Bond’s subconscious or another source, he still had to transmit it in some way to Bartlett. Unless, of course, the two were total charlatans, and that I don’t believe.”

  “It seems odd, don’t you think,” Montfort mused, “that the one question no one ever asked was ‘Why John Bartlett?’ Bond’s connections to the Abbey were obvious—was Bartlett chosen simply because of his friendship with Bond, or was there something more? Bartlett was retired military, an intelligent and fairly well-educated man, but there was nothing to indicate a natural facility for automatism.”

  “When you say Bartlett was ‘chosen,’ I take it you favor the collective-memory hypothesis?”

  “I’m inclined to, yes,” Montfort answered with what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “Speaking from my own experience, I find anything else highly improbable.”

  There was a moment of surprised silence, then Garnet said, “Your own experience? Do you mean you’ve done automatic writing?”

  Montfort hesitated, then with a glance at Winifred, pulled a folded sheaf of papers from his inside jacket pocket. “All these since March. And I knew very little about the history of the Abbey, just the ordinary schoolboy stuff.”

  Curiosity battling against disbelief, Simon reached for the papers. He had always been intrigued by the story of Bligh Bond’s experience—what if he’d been wrong in assuming that Bond himself was the source? He read, fascinated, from the first halting script. As he finished each page Garnet reached eagerly for it, then passed it in turn to Faith.

  As he read, a strong sense of personality began to emerge. Simon glanced at Jack Montfort, who sat cradling his drink in his hands. Montfort seemed an unlikely candidate for a hoax, nor could Simon imagine that some repressed part of Montfort’s personality sought expression as a medieval monk. And as an architect, the man certainly had nothing to gain by revealing such a thing—it could, without a doubt, seriously damage his career.

  Simon felt the beginnings of an excitement he hadn’t experienced in years. Suppose there was the remotest possibility that these communications were genuine, that it was somehow possible to establish a living link with the past. What would that mean for his own studies, to have direct access to history? There could be a book in this that would take his career in an entirely unexpected direction.

  He had reached the last page. Seek one goal and ye shall win, began the monk who signed himself as Edmund. Work at that which comes. Take others as ye find, for the task is great, ere ye shall join the Company. We are those who watch, and we are ever with you.

  Garnet took the sheet from him almost before he’d finished reading it. She skimmed it, then read it again more slowly, her lips moving. Wide-eyed, she looked up at Montfort and breathed, “The Company of Watchers. They’ve chosen you.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Winifred. “Who—or what—is the Company of Watchers?”

  “The Watchers are those who are tied to Glastonbury by a bond not even death could sever. They guard the spiritual heart of Britain—Logres—and some even say they watch over King Arthur, waiting for the day when he will rise again.”

  “Britain’s hour of greatest need?” scoffed Simon. “Surely no one believes that old chestnut?”

  “Six months ago I wouldn’t have given it the time of day,” Montfort answered slowly. “But now … after all this …”

  Garnet fingered the Celtic pendant she wore at her throat. “This is a time of conflict, so near the Millennium—”

  “Your paranoia’s showing, my dear,” Simon said sharply. Then he looked at the pages gathered in Faith’s slender hand and wavered.

  “And the task?” asked Faith.

  “I don’t know,” answered Montfort. “That’s one of the things I hoped to learn when I came here today.”

  “Take others as ye find,” Faith read, then she looked at each of them, her gaze intent. “Don’t you see? We are the others. Whatever it is, it can only be accomplished if we work together.”

  “All for one and one for all,” said Simon, still half mocking, but finding himself strangely drawn to the idea. “What do you think, Winifred? I doubt the Church would approve of your dabbling in the paranormal.”

  “They didn’t much care for Bond’s methods, either, and yet he gave us invaluable information about the Abbey. Can’t we judge the material on the basis of its historical validity, rather than its source?” She looked at Jack Montfort, as if for confirmation; with an unpleasant jolt it dawned on Simon that they were a couple.

  Garnet’s face was alight. “That’s why we’re here tonight, Simon. And that’s why Faith came to me. We were all drawn together for this purpose. I’m sure of it! You could interpret the material in historical terms—”

  “And you have the resources and the skills to trace any possible connection Jack might have with Edmund,” Nick Carlisle interrupted. “Perhaps we all have something to offer, even if we’re not sure what it is at this point.”

  Simon read dismay in Winifred’s expression. It was that, as well as the thought of his own possible gain, that prompted him to say, “Just how exactly would we go about this … investigation?”

  Perhaps they had been brought together for a purpose, and if that meant Winnie Catesby would have to put up with seeing him on a regular basis, then it bloody well served her right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The water meadows are of that emerald green only to be seen where the subsoil water is near to the surface. Travelling through parched lands at midsummer, one knows that Avalon is near by the greenness of the earth.

  —DION FORTUNE,

  FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

  KINCAID COULD NOT imagine a more perfect day. The heat and mugginess that so often characterized late August days in the south of England had been swept away by a westerly wind that cleared the sky and brought a hint of autumn crispness to the air. Strangers passing in the street nodded, smiled, said, “Fine day,” and, for once, the English obsession with talking about the weather seemed justified.

  He and Kit had spent the morning battling the machines in the Leicester Square video arcade, and by the time they emerged into daylight the temperature had climbed into the region of shirtsleeve comfort. “Ready for lunch?” Kincaid suggested, knowing the question was rhetorical.

  “Um … do you think we could go to the Hard Rock Café?” Kit asked with the tentativeness that still marked most of his requests.

  “Why not? I think I could manage to eat a tourist or two for lunch. Tube?”

  Kit hesitated, watching the crowds surging across the pavement in the bright sunshine. “Could we walk?”

  In Kincaid’s opinion, walking through the heart of the West End on a Saturday in August was akin to forcing one’s way through the mob at a football match in riot gear, but he nodded. “Go for it, sport.”

  They set off towards Piccadilly Circus, picking their way through the warren of streets. Kit dodged oncoming pedestrians in order to stay beside him, his shoulder brushing Kincaid’s arm in comfortable contact. Kincaid thought of the time just a few short months ago when the precariousness of their relationship had made every word or touch a potential hazard. There was still the occasional minefield, but they’d come a long way.

  As he looked down at his son’s fair head, he realized that one day soon he would no longer be able to look down at Kit, full stop. As yet, Kit had not outgrown childish things, and for that Kincaid was eminently grateful. Kit’s friend Nathan Winter had given the boy a microscope for his birthday, and their agenda for the morrow was collecting pond-water samples on Hampstead Heath. Girls and
rock music would intervene soon enough; in the meantime, Kincaid had a lot of making up to do.

  His marriage to Kit’s mother had ended stormily and abruptly, and it was not until a few months ago that Kincaid had learned Vic had been pregnant when they separated. She’d been having an affair with one of her professors and had subsequently married him, passing the child off as his. It must have been obvious to her very early on that the boy was not Ian McClellan’s son, but Kincaid’s. Whether she’d meant to confess as much when she’d contacted him last spring, Kincaid would never know.

  She had been killed just a few weeks after she’d asked his help in the investigation of another death, leaving him with the sense of much unfinished between them.

  Now as he looked at Kit matching him stride for stride, he realized it no longer shocked him to see a younger version of himself. Nor did the boy’s resemblance to Vic—her smile, her gestures, her mannerisms—cause him as much pain as it had in the first weeks after her death.

  In due course, they reached Piccadilly Circus and from there made their way down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park. As they walked, some of Kit’s excitement infected Kincaid and he remembered how glorious he’d found the city when he’d first come to London two decades earlier. Kit met his eyes and they shared a smile of sheer delight in the bustle and color of it all.

  By the time they reached the Hard Rock Café, they were warm and ravenous. They emerged from the café an hour later, replete with cheeseburgers, French fries, and chocolate milkshakes, and with Kit in possession of a much-coveted T-shirt proclaiming the London Hard Rock as the Original.

  Across Piccadilly, Green Park beckoned, and they soon found a choice spot to stretch out in the grass. People sprawled on blankets or in awning-striped deck chairs, making the most of summer’s end. Although Kincaid usually found it difficult to relax in a public place, the sun soaked into his skin like a drug and his eyelids began to droop.

  He came awake with a start when Kit rolled over on his stomach and declared, “I wish we could have brought Tess.” Kit gestured at the number of dogs walking or trotting beside their masters, chasing Frisbees or just panting happily in the sun.

  “We couldn’t have done the videos, then,” Kincaid reminded him, rousing himself.

  “I know. I’m not complaining. It’s just nice here, that’s all.” Kit chewed a blade of the springy grass meditatively. “It’s sort of like wanting it to be just the two of us, but at the same time missing Gemma and Toby.”

  “That’s why Zen philosophers teach concentrating on the moment. Otherwise you miss now because you’re too busy wanting other things.”

  “Are you good at that—what did you call it?”

  “Concentrating on the moment? I don’t do it half as well as I’d like. But you’ve helped me be better.”

  “Me?”

  “When I’m with you, I don’t want to think about stuff like work. So when something niggly crops up in my head, I just think, Go away. And usually it does.”

  “But it doesn’t stop you missing Gemma, does it?”

  The question caught Kincaid like a punch. He stared at his son. Kit usually approached emotional issues with crablike self-protectiveness. “No,” he said, surprised into honesty. “It doesn’t.”

  “I don’t understand why she had to go away.”

  “She’s off on a training course, Kit. You know that.”

  “But why’d she have to put in for a promotion? Why couldn’t she just leave things the way they were?”

  Why indeed, Kincaid thought bitterly. Oh, he knew all the rational arguments—he had even given them lip service—but in his heart he felt as abandoned and unhappy as Kit. She had left him, and days on the job without her company seemed interminable. The succession of temporary assistants only made him more irritable. At least when Gemma returned from Bramshill they’d have some off-duty time together, depending on her posting, but there would be no replacement for their partnership. “It’s something she needed to do,” he said, hearing the lack of conviction in his voice.

  Kit scowled at him, unmollified. “So why can’t you just get married, and we could be like a … you know, a regular family?”

  “That’s not in the cards,” Kincaid said, more sharply than he’d intended. Gemma had made that quite clear, and he’d done his best to be content with what they had. Neither of them, after all, had made a success of marriage the first time round, and now that Gemma had separated herself from him so deliberately, he felt even less certainty about their future.

  But what had got into Kit? Their relationship as father and son was still a touchy subject, and this was the first time he’d heard Kit directly acknowledge that they were—or could possibly be—family. “Is something going on with Ian, Kit?” he asked, studying the boy’s averted face. Kit spent the week with the man he had known for almost twelve years as his father, Ian McClellan, and most weekends with Kincaid.

  Kit chewed his lip, his eyes half shielded by the wayward lock of hair that fell across his forehead. “I’m not supposed to know. But I saw the letter, and I’ve heard him talking on the phone.”

  “What letter?”

  “The one from the university in Quebec. Offering him a job. ‘… his academic career, more opportunities, blah, blah …’ What they mean is more money.”

  “And you think Ian means to accept?”

  “He’s been dropping little hints. ‘Wouldn’t you like to learn to ski, Kit? How’s your French coming, Kit?’ ”

  Kincaid felt a rush of panic. After everything that had happened, all that they had been through, he would not lose Kit now. As calmly as he could, he said, “You don’t want to go?”

  Kit glanced at him, then away, with studied nonchalance that didn’t quite come off. “I want to stay here. With you.”

  “It would mean leaving Grantchester and living here in London.”

  “I know. Would the Major mind Tess having a run in the garden sometimes?”

  Kincaid smiled. “I think you might persuade him.” Trust Kit to think of the ragamuffin terrier first, rather than new schools, friends, and all the other logistics that boggled the mind. And nothing, of course, would be possible without Ian’s consent; he was still Kit’s legal guardian.

  Ian McClellan’s behavior had never been predictable. First he had left Kit’s mother to run off to France with a graduate student; after Vic’s death he’d refused to take any responsibility for Kit. Then, a few months ago he had come back from France, determined to make amends, and moved Kit back into the cottage in Grantchester. Now it seemed the man was itching to be off again. How would Ian feel about leaving Kit behind?

  For that matter, how would he fare as a single parent? It would further complicate things with Gemma, he could see that, but he knew Kit had to come first.

  “Would you … You wouldn’t mind, would you? If I came to stay with you.” This time Kit met Kincaid’s eyes.

  “There is nothing,” Kincaid answered truthfully, “that I would like more.”

  Winnie made it a point to have lunch with Fiona Allen at least once a month, sometimes at the Vicarage in Compton Grenville, sometimes at Fiona’s home on Bulwarks Lane, below the Tor. Today they’d chosen Fiona’s house, due to Winnie’s commitments in Glastonbury, and Fiona had set out a salad Niçoise in her pale Scandinavian kitchen.

  “I hate August in Somerset,” groaned Winnie, sliding into a chair and pulling her sticky blouse away from her damp skin. “It’s like living in soup.”

  “You can’t fuss as long as you insist on riding that bike,” admonished Fiona as she laid plates on the table.

  “You sound just like Jack. At least I get a breeze on the bike. The car’s a traveling oven.”

  “You’re incorrigible.” Fiona shook her head, smiling. “How is the supposedly delicious Jack? I’m beginning to think you’re conspiring to keep me from meeting him, so that I can’t judge for myself.”

  “I’ll give a dinner party. Soon, I promise. It’s just that all
our spare time seems to vanish these days.”

  “The automatic writing? How is that going?” Fiona was the one person outside the group in whom Winnie had confided.

  “It’s fascinating—the material itself, I mean.”

  “This can’t be comfortable for you.”

  “Ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night?” Winnie teased in a fair parody of Fiona’s Scottish brogue. Then she continued more soberly. “You know, it’s odd, but somehow Edmund seems too real to be a ghost. Too human. And I suppose I’ve got used to it.”

  Fiona raised an eyebrow. “Then what’s giving you the pip?”

  “Too much experience with committees gone sour, I suppose,” Winnie said with a sigh. “The group dynamics seem to be changing, and that doesn’t bode well.”

  “I thought it was all sweetness and light and save-the-world enthusiasm.”

  “It was, in the beginning. But we’ve not had any luck finding out just what it is that Edmund wants, so all that energy is finding other outlets. Nick—the young man from the bookshop—is besotted with Faith—”

  “Your pregnant teenager.”

  “Right. Faith, on the other hand, seems totally oblivious. The girl has something about her that inspires devotion. She’s quite self-contained in a way I’ve never seen … and yet there’s something vulnerable about her.”

  “Family trauma?” mused Fiona.

  “I don’t know. I’d like to help her, but I haven’t been able to find a chink in her armor.”

  “There’s more,” Fiona prompted, nibbling on a shiny black olive.

  “Nick is terribly jealous of Simon—understandably so. I think Nick saw himself as a necessary part of the equation; then he introduced Jack to Simon Fitzstephen—”

  “And now Jack’s spending more time with Fitzstephen than Nick, and Nick feels abandoned.”

  “Classic, isn’t it? Damn Simon. I suspect he’s playing up Jack partly out of spite towards me and you can bet that whatever other motives he has aren’t unselfish. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. And then there’s Garnet—”