Ken McClure - Pestilence

“I saw you arrive from the window,” said Jill as she swung her stockinged legs into the car.

Saracen made an appreciative sound.

Jill smiled and said, ‘I thought I’d better make the effort; don’t know what the opposition is going to be like.’

‘I’ve never met her before,’ confessed Saracen. ‘She might be a twenty stone dumpling.’

‘With my luck she’ll be a Dior model,’ said Jill. “And there’s me with St Michael stuck all over me.’

‘You look great,’ said Saracen and meant it.

Jill’s prediction proved to be a good deal more accurate than Saracen’s, for Claire Tremaine was no dumpling. She turned out to be a slim, confident, elegant woman in her mid twenties who proved to be as witty and entertaining as she was attractive. She was not however slow to point out the failings of Skelmore as a place to live, a view that Saracen happened to agree with, although he did feel a little irritated that an outsider should be so forthright so quickly.

But such considerations had long since ceased to be important enough for him to take issue with. Throughout the course of the evening he smiled and laughed in all the right places. Jill might have been goaded into some kind of defence of her home town but she was kept fully occupied by Alan Tremaine who was having difficulty keeping his eyes off her cleavage and kept repeating — due to over-indulgence in Cotes du Rhone — that he hadn’t realised what delights had been lurking beneath the drab blue cotton of a Skelmore nurse’s uniform. Jill was well able to handle the situation for, at twenty seven, she had seen a lot of randy housemen come and go.

‘So why have you come to Skelmore Claire?’ asked Saracen.

‘My first job,’ replied Claire. ‘I’ve been doing a PhD at Oxford in archaeology and my supervisor is leading the search for the site of Skelmoris Abbey. He took me on despite the fact that I haven’t written up my thesis yet.’

‘Why the sudden interest in Skelmoris Abbey?’ asked Saracen. ‘No one has ever bothered to look for it before, have they?’

‘Not in recent times,’ agreed Clare but that was because no one really had any idea where the site was.’

‘And now?’

‘A few months ago a librarian in Oxford was leafing through the pages of some old books that had been bequeathed to the university and he found a map. It was very old and very yellow’

‘How exciting,’ said Jill.

‘Just like Treasure Island,’ added Tremaine.

‘It included a plan of Skelmoris Abbey and it contained information about the surrounding area. A lot has changed of course in six hundred years but we now think we have a reasonable chance of finding the actual site.

‘There was something about this in the local paper,’ said Saracen. ‘The abbey was supposed to have been destroyed by fire wasn’t it?’

‘The fire is fairly well documented,’ said Clare.

‘And the legend?’ smiled Saracen.

Clare smiled and said, ‘Legends are legends.’

‘So the curse doesn’t bother you?’

‘What curse?’ asked Jill.

Claire said, ‘According to the story, the abbey was entrusted with the safe-keeping of a chalice. Anyone attempting to remove the chalice would incur the wrath of God and pay with his life. Legend has it that a lot of people did.’

‘Creepy,’ said Jill.

‘What the story in the paper didn’t say was that the fire was deliberate,’ continued Claire. ‘After the deaths of the original Abbot and brothers the church tried several times to re-open the abbey. Although the new monks were God-fearing and had no intention of removing the chalice they met with the same fate as the others. In the end the church gave up and burned the place to the ground.

‘What an awful story,’ said Jill with a shiver. ‘I think if it was up to me I would let well alone.’

Claire smiled and said, ‘The plan is that I dig during the day and write up my thesis in the evenings.”

‘Sounds like a full life,’ said Saracen.

‘I think the idea is that there won’t be too many distractions up here in the sticks so here I am as an uninvited guest of little brother.’

“Consider yourself invited,” said Tremaine, leaning across and kissing his sister on the cheek.

“I wish I had a brother like that,” said Jill. “Keith and I fight like cat and dog whenever we are together!”

Tremaine made a rather unsteady attempt to kiss Jill on the cheek too. “I’ll be your brother,” he grinned.

Jill laughed it off and expertly avoided Tremaine’s advance. In another person his behaviour might have been considered offensive but, from Alan Tremaine it was accepted with good humour. If anyone was upset by it was his sister. Saracen noticed her occasionally betray her impatience with an unguarded look.

The party broke up around midnight for both Saracen and Jill were on duty in the morning but, before she left, Jill invited Claire to cal her whenever she got too bored with writing. They could arrange an evening out for girl talk.

Saracen passed his own apartment on the way back to the Nurses’ Home. “Nightcap?” he asked. Jill agreed.

“Brrr. The place is like a morgue,” said Saracen as he fumbled in the darkness for the light switch. He lit the gas fire, drew the curtains and put some music on before pouring the drinks. “Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” he asked Jill.

“It was a nice evening,” Jill replied.

“What did you think of Claire?”

“I hated her,” said Jill with disarming honesty that made Saracen splutter. “Why?”

“She is good looking, bright, self-assured, confident, totally at ease. Is that enough to be going on with?”

Saracen laughed and said, “You had nothing to worry about. You held your own beside her.”

“You’re too kind sir,” said Jill. “But I felt like a country bumkin beside Claire Tremaine. I could feel the straw falling out of my ears.”

“Nonsense,” insisted Saracen. “Besides you were a big hit with Alan.”

“Boys will be boys,” smiled Jill and returned to thoughts of Claire. “God, I wish I had that kind of confidence.” she said.

“Maybe it’s an act.”

“Do you think so?”

“It often is. Even the most outrageous extroverts insist on being basically shy.”

“They’re usually mistaken” argued Jill. “They misconstrue selfishness as sensitivity, ‘believe they’re ‘basically shy’ because they once managed to have a thought without telling the whole world.”

“That’s astute of you,” said Saracen quietly. “I came to the same conclusion many years ago.”

“Then maybe we both know people.”

“Maybe,” agreed Saracen.

They finished their drinks.

“I’d better get back,” said Jill looking at her watch.

“Of course, I’ll drive you.”

As they got to the door Jill turned and said, “Thank you James.”

“For what?”

“Not sticking your hand up my skirt.”

Saracen smiled and said, “I won’t say the thought didn’t occur to me.”

“Good. I would have felt insulted if it hadn’t. Incidentally…why didn’t you?”

“We don’t know each other well enough.”

Jill smiled and seemed pleased at Saracen’s reply.

Saracen looked at the green digits on the alarm clock and saw that it was thirteen minutes past four in the morning. It was third time he had looked at the clock in the past hour. Three hours of sleep was not much of a basis to begin a long period of duty on but that thought just made matters worse. There was no way that he was going to fall asleep again and it was all due to Myra Archer and the pricking of his own conscience.

The explanation that a short delay in deciding which hospital Myra Archer should go to as being all that was wrong in the case was attractive and convenient because it trivialised the incident and absolved him from further involvement. In fact, there was only one thing against it, thought Saracen as he lay in the dark; it was wrong. Of that he was certain. There had to be more to it to have warranted such a cover-up and falsification of records.