A Finer End

by Deborah Crombie

  “Then I suggest sherry in the drawing room, when I’ve collected Faith. Maybe among us we’ll come up with something.”

  Faith stood watching for him outside the café, hands deep in the pockets of her cardigan. She waited until they had almost reached Jack’s before she asked Kincaid, “Any luck?”

  “Some interesting things, but not what we’re looking for.”

  “No. I meant Nick. Did you find him?”

  “I tried the caravan, and the cafés you suggested. No joy, but the woman at the Assembly Rooms says he’d been in earlier. If he doesn’t show up this evening, I’ll run out to the—” The sight of the car in Jack’s drive instantly derailed his train of thought. A slightly battered white Vauxhall, unmarked. DCI Greely’s.

  “Ah … perhaps we’d better see what’s up before we make plans. It looks as though Inspector Greely’s come to call.”

  “They won’t put me in jail, will they?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Greely stood in front of the cold fireplace, hands behind his back as if warming them. Nodding, he said, “Superintendent. Miss Wills.”

  Winnie was still ensconced on the sofa, with Jack standing protectively by her.

  “Inspector Greely,” Kincaid replied pleasantly, but it occurred to him that he was getting a good taste of being on the receiving end of things. “What can we do for you today?”

  “I just wanted to clarify a few things with Mr. Montfort here.” Greely’s smile was not reassuring.

  Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  Greely turned pointedly towards Jack, making it clear that he didn’t intend to let Kincaid serve as intermediary this time. “Mr. Montfort, what time did you say you left the hospital last Thursday night?”

  “I think it was about half past ten, but I really wasn’t paying attention. Why?”

  “The ICU nursing staff put it closer to ten o’clock. And it seems you told me it was near midnight when you arrived home and found Miss Wills on your doorstep. Is that right?”

  “As far as I can remember. Look, what is all this about?”

  “Well,” Greely drawled, “it occurred to me that two hours was a very generous amount of time to make the drive from Taunton to Glastonbury, late at night with no traffic. And it also occurred to me that it takes a very short amount of time to drown someone—say three or four minutes.”

  Jack gaped at him. “Surely you’re not accusing me of murdering Garnet? Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

  Winnie reached up and took Jack’s hand.

  “Perhaps Miss Wills communicated her fears about Miss Catesby’s accident to you. At that time, I believe, Miss Catesby was still unconscious, her recovery quite uncertain. In such circumstances, you’d have wanted some answers very badly. Perhaps you merely meant to talk to Miss Todd, and it escalated into something much more serious—murder, in fact. And in that case, Miss Wills’s story of coming back from her ‘walk’ and finding the house empty is so much poppycock, and she either participated in the crime, or she acted as an accessory after the fact.”

  Kincaid tried to catch Jack’s eye, to caution him to say nothing, but Jack’s gaze remained riveted on Greely.

  “Number one,” his cousin shot back furiously, “the first time I knew anything about Faith’s suspicions was when she showed up on my doorstep around midnight. Second, the reason it took me longer than usual to drive from Taunton was that I was exhausted, and I had to stop several times in order to stay—”

  “Give it up, Inspector,” Kincaid broke in. “You’re fishing. You’ve no evidence. And I’ve instructed my cousin to retain a lawyer.”

  Greely rocked back and forth on his heels, placidly surveying them. “I thought you might be interested in hearing my ideas, but as it seems you’re not, I’ll let you folks get on with your evening. Oh, by the way, Miss Catesby—I’m glad to see you making such a speedy recovery.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.” She gave him a forced smile.

  Kincaid gestured towards the door. “I’ll see you out, shall I?”

  Greely nodded his farewells, then followed Kincaid into the hall.

  “Do I take it no new evidence has presented itself, Inspector? Hence the stirring-ants technique?”

  For once, Greely’s smile looked genuine. “Well, you know, Superintendent, when you stir an anthill with a stick, you generally get results.”

  Kincaid returned the smile as he opened the door. “Yes, Inspector, you do. But sometimes you get stung in the process.”

  Andrew had rung the hospital, only to be told by a toffee-voiced receptionist that Winifred Catesby was no longer a patient there. After that he’d rung the Vicarage again and again, hanging up when the answering machine came on. He couldn’t bear to hear her voice, and yet every time he felt he must.

  After a while he took out the car, but the house on the Butleigh Road was dark, lifeless.

  She was at Montfort’s, then.

  He knew Montfort’s house, of course, he’d looked up the address in the telephone directory months ago. Now he could find it in his sleep, so often had he driven slowly by. Well, he would wait, and watch—he was good at waiting, and at watching—until the time was right.

  When his own phone rang, he sat and stared at it until the ringing stopped.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Tor is indeed the Hill of Vision for any whose eyes have the least inclination to open upon another world.… There are some who, visiting Glastonbury for the first time, are amazed to see before them a Hill of Dreams which they have already known in sleep.… Many times the tower is reported to have been seen rimmed in light; a warm glow, as of a furnace, beats up from the ground on wild winter nights, and the sound of chanting is heard from the depths of the hill.

  —DION FORTUNE,

  FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

  ON THE TRAIN from Bath to London, Gemma fell instantly into a heavy sleep, in which she dreamed jumbled, disjointed dreams, threaded throughout with the clicking and clacking of the train. When she woke, groggily, she felt there had been something she must do, but she could not remember what it was.

  The memory nagged at her as she took the tube from Paddington to Islington, and as she rang her parents from the flat and asked them to run Toby home in their car.

  When her parents arrived an hour later, Toby scrambled out of the car in a pair of brand-new, bright green Wellies, shouting, “Mummy, Mummy! I made sausage rolls! And we made special cakes for Halloween!”

  Gemma swooped him up in a bear hug. “You’re going to take after your granddad, are you?”

  “I’m a baker,” he announced proudly, wriggling until she put him down. “Can I show Holly my boots?”

  “All right. But knock first, okay?” She watched until he had closed behind him the gate that led to Hazel and Tim’s garden, then ushered her parents into the flat.

  “Has he been going nonstop all weekend?”

  “More or less,” her mum answered, laughing. “Cyn had her two over earlier, so he hasn’t really touched down from that.”

  Gemma rolled her eyes. Her sister’s children were utterly undisciplined terrors, but if she complained, her mother would surely remind her of the things she and Cyn had got up to at that age. “Stay for tea?” she asked instead.

  “We’d best be getting back. I had ours just about ready when you rang. You look better. You should get away more often. How’s Duncan?”

  It was a loaded question. Her parents didn’t approve of her unmarried state—or her “pigheadedness” as they called it. Once, in a fit of temper, Gemma had retaliated, accusing them of not minding if she married an ax murderer, as long as they could tell their friends she was “settled.”

  “Depends on whether or not he was a good-looking chap,” her mother had rejoined promptly.

  Now, Gemma smiled and answered, “Duncan’s fine. And his cousin’s very nice.” She had told them only that they were making a social visit, and didn’t intend to el
aborate.

  “Well, bring Duncan to see us. And let us know if you need us to mind Toby.”

  When they had kissed her and gone on their way, Gemma wandered over to Hazel’s, intending to practice her piano lesson while the children played. She filled Hazel and Tim in on the details of the weekend, then accepted a cup of tea and sat down at the piano and, with a sigh, attempted to concentrate on her music. But as she picked her way through Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the immersion she sought refused to come.

  Instead, her mind held an image of the worn stones of the Abbey rising from the emerald grass of the precinct … and the rocky flank of the Tor behind Garnet Todd’s house on Wellhouse Lane, the broken tower on its summit like a finger stabbing at the sky.

  Gemma sank back into her normal Monday-morning routine like a stone slipping into a pool, and yet there was an unreality to it, as if the hustle and bustle of her London life was merely surface noise. Wading through the accumulation of reports that had materialized on her desk over the weekend, she kept in mind the background checks she’d promised Kincaid, and when she had a free moment she put them in motion.

  By late afternoon, information began to trickle in.

  Garnet Todd had a record, for what it was worth. She had resisted arrest during an antiwar protest in London in the sixties and been found in possession of illegal hallucinogens. No surprise there. Garnet had always chosen the unconventional path.

  Nick Carlisle, as Greely had mentioned, had been arrested and fingerprinted as a result of a pub brawl in Durham four years previously—a typical adolescent escapade. What surprised her was that his mother, into whose custody he had been released, was the famous North Country novelist Elizabeth Carlisle. Why would Elizabeth Carlisle’s son choose to live in relative squalor in a Somerset backwater, working for practically nothing, when his connections would have guaranteed him a prestigious starting job? Principle? Or some sort of family trouble?

  She put in a call to Durham CID and requested the number of the constable in Elizabeth Carlisle’s small village. There was no answer when she rang, but she left her name and number on the constable’s answerphone.

  Kincaid had rung last night and brought her up-to-date on the negative results of their search for the manuscript, as well as Nick’s apparent disappearance and DCI Greely’s sudden interest in Jack.

  “What did the Super say when you rang him?” she’d asked.

  “Officially, to keep my nose clean and be prepared to levitate back to London if anything breaks on this murder in Camden Passage. Unofficially, he was at school with the Chief Constable and will have my arse if Greely complains I’m interfering in his case.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I know. I hope I don’t bugger this up.” Then, as he rang off—“Oh, and by the way, I miss you.”

  Gemma smiled at the memory, then went back to mulling over what he’d told her. It struck her that Faith had talked about Garnet’s knowledge of Goddess worship, and now Nick Carlisle was looking up friends of the dead woman who had the same interest. Was it possible that Garnet’s murder could be connected to her involvement in some sort of cult? Could her death have nothing to do with Winnie or Jack?

  She typed “goddess worship” into the search engine on her computer. The results were overwhelming, but she started through them resolutely, scanning articles and pagan sites. A name caught her eye. She ran the cursor back, highlighting a monograph on “The History of the Goddess in Celtic Mythology,” by a Dr. Erika Rosenthal.

  She had met an Erika Rosenthal a few weeks ago in the course of an investigation—surely the name was not that common. An elderly woman in Arundel Gardens had been burgled, and, concerned about the professional quality of the break-in, Gemma had gone herself to view the scene and interview the victim.

  Erika Rosenthal had turned out to be in her nineties, sharp as a tack, and highly incensed at the theft of several valuable antiques. Gemma had been immediately taken with her—and with her home, a lovely place, filled with books and beautiful paintings and, most temptingly, a baby grand piano.

  Today Gemma only had time to skim part of Dr. Rosen-thal’s article before she was interrupted, and it was half past five by the time she cleared her desk for the day. On an impulse, she stuffed the report in her briefcase and rang Hazel, telling her she might be a bit late.

  There was a fine mist in the still air and the wet pavement gleamed. She loved this weather, as she loved autumn in all its guises, and she took greedy breaths of the cool dampness as she walked to Arundel Gardens.

  Erika Rosenthal’s house wore its age gracefully. Its pale-gray stucco was comfortably faded and it did not boast satellite dish or alarm system … though it was probably the lack of the latter that had contributed to Mrs. Rosenthal’s loss.

  The old woman answered Gemma’s ring, her face lighting up in recognition.

  “Inspector James. You’ve found my things.” She was a tiny woman, with white hair swept into a smooth twist and bright shoe-button eyes in her finely wrinkled face.

  “No, I’m sorry to say we haven’t. I’ve come about something else entirely, Mrs. Rosenthal, if you have a minute.”

  “Of course. Come in, dear, and warm yourself by the fire.”

  Gemma stood in front of the electric fire and looked round with pleasure. She resisted the temptation to go over to the piano, but for a moment she let herself imagine living in such a house. Then she chided herself for being unrealistic, and said, “Thank you, that’s lovely,” as she accepted a glass of sherry.

  “Now, what can I do for you?” asked Mrs. Rosenthal, lowering herself into an armchair. There was a book open on the table beside her chair, an account of Mallory and Irvine’s ill-fated expedition to Everest. Seeing Gemma’s interest, she added, “I’ve become an armchair adventurer, now that I no longer feel guilty for not attempting such things myself.”

  “Are you the Dr. Erika Rosenthal who wrote a monograph on pagan Goddess worship?”

  Mrs. Rosenthal chuckled. “That I am. But why on earth would you want to know about that?”

  Gemma noticed, as she had not on their first meeting, that Dr. Rosenthal had the faintest trace of an accent—German or Eastern European. “I’ve been, um … assisting in an investigation of a murder in Glastonbury. The victim seems to have had some knowledge of Goddess worship, and we’re not certain whether this has any bearing on the case.”

  “So you started researching and ran across my name. Clever girl. Or young woman, I should say,” the doctor apologized with a twinkle. “But from my perspective, anyone under seventy is a girl.”

  “I had the impression from your article that you were quite a respected authority on paganism,” Gemma said.

  “I’m an historian, my dear, and I’m not sure that anyone is ever entirely respected in academe. But, yes, I have devoted a good deal of my life to the subject.”

  “It seemed to me, from the things I read this afternoon, that for the most part Goddess worship is a fairly harmless—even positive—thing. All that getting-back-in-touch-with-the-earth stuff. And I can’t say that men have done a terribly good job of running the world, so maybe the matriarchal society is not a bad idea either.” Gemma left the fire and sat in a small chair across from Dr. Rosenthal. “What I don’t understand is why those beliefs could have motivated someone to kill this woman.”

  “Ah, well, even the most benign aspects would provide motive enough. ‘Getting in touch with the earth,’ as you put it, usually evolves into actively opposing those who abuse our natural resources for their own ends, and there you encounter great greed. And there are men—and a few women—who cannot abide the idea of women in power. But I’m certain you know that from your own experience.” Dr. Rosenthal studied her shrewdly. “Paganism, like any system of belief that is world shaping, can easily inspire fanaticism. You could say that Christianity is a basically benign belief, and yet it has been responsible over the centuries for enormous suffering in the world.

  “But the worship
of the Old Gods can go further. It has a dark side to it, an element of chaos, and there are those who aspire to tap that, to release it again into the world. And there are those who are caught up in it unawares. You say this murder happened in Glastonbury?”

  “Yes, very near the Tor.”

  Dr. Rosenthal frowned. “Glastonbury has always been a pivotal point, an energy focus. Dion Fortune understood that. Have you read her books? You should. Fortune was a practical woman with the soul of a poet, and she understood that the balance between the old forces and the new was quite a delicate thing. Some believe that the old powers give the earth its vitality, but that those powers must be kept in check, or chaos would overwhelm us.”

  “But if that were true, why would anyone want to upset the balance?”

  “Just as there are children who cannot keep their hands from the hot stove, there are always those who court the flames. It may be that your victim was one of them.”

  Gemma thought of what Faith had told her about Garnet—and of the power she herself had sensed in the Tor. “Do you believe such things are possible, then?”

  “I am a Jew, my dear. During the war, I lost every member of my family to the camps. If you ask me what I believe, I can tell you that those atrocities were an incontrovertible example of the power of chaos, magnifying and abetting a very human evil.”

  Kincaid was waiting outside the bookshop a half hour before opening time on Monday morning, having dropped Faith at the café on his way.

  After ten minutes of watching the passersby, he saw Nick go past on his motorbike, then turn the corner into Benedict Street. A moment later, Nick came round the corner on foot, walking fast, but when he glimpsed Kincaid, his stride broke for an instant. Recovering, he came on, a determined expression on his handsome face.

  Kincaid pushed away from the wall when Nick reached him. “We need to talk.”

  “I have to open the shop.”

  “Then I’ll come in with you.”

  Nick hesitated, then shrugged and unlocked the door. Kincaid followed him in and Nick turned the “Open” sign face-out.