Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'Tell 'em there's an emergency meeting tonight. Put it round. Seven-thirty. Assembly Rooms. Now they've made a decision they won't hang around. It'll be bulldozers and chainsaw-gangs on every horizon before we know it. Still, you know how you could help.'

'Mmm?'

'Well don't sound so excited, my love.'

'I'm sorry. Lot on my mind.'

The idea of putting Rankin in the frame for murder seemed less straightforward than it had last night. You could never be sure what Diane was going to say, how much of her statement would include what she might consider normal but the police would see as the ravings of a certifiable psychiatric case.

'The Avalonian, I mean,' Woolly was saying. 'You get The Avalonian on the streets, we'd at least have a reliable mouthpiece to counter all the propaganda.'

'I have to tell you, Councillor,' Juanita said severely, 'that The Avalonian isn't going to be anybody's mouthpiece'

'Well, yeah, I accept that, but…'

'But it will be fair and maybe consider certain viewpoints that the regular Press would be a touch queasy about.'

'Fair enough, fair enough. What's your schedule?'

'I don't know. February maybe. Things are moving. As it happens, I've just sent Diane to the print-shop to get acquainted with Sam Daniel. She's a little nervous, having heard that Sam thinks all upper class people should be placed against a wall and shot.'

'He's a good boy, is Sam. You only got to listen to his old man to know that.'

'I thought Griff Daniel hated the ground Sam walks on.'

'Exactly,' said Woolly. 'A good boy.'

In the square entrance hall, he stood on the flagstones, under one of the high, deep-sunk windows either side of the front door, and nodded approval.

'See, Verity, the old Tudor guys built this place, they had it right. They understood the importance of luminary-control. Hence the restrictive fenestration. Everybody says this was down to defence, but that was only part of the calculation.'

Dr Pel Grainger wore a formal black jacket over black jeans and black trainers. In daylight, he looked shorter and rather less imposing. As she supposed he would, given that the night was his chosen environment. Seeing him at the door so early had been quite a shock, rather like seeing an owl perching on one's bird table.

'Verity, you are just so lucky to have this place to yourself.' Dr Grainger smiled, showing small, rather stumpy teeth, their whiteness enhanced by the blackness of his close-mown beard. 'Which is how you got to look at the situation from now on in. Lucky.'

Cornered by Wanda last night, Dr Grainger had expressed – to Verity's dismay – immediate interest in Meadwell. It sounded the kind of place, he said, where just being there could virtually put you into Second-stage Tenebral Symbiosis.

When Verity had tried to explain to Dr Grainger that even in her time here Meadwell had not always been as dark as this, the American had nodded indulgently; he could explain this. Or maybe, he told her, when his therapy programme began to take effect, she wouldn't need to have it explained.

Well, perhaps it would work. Perhaps, after tenebral therapy, there would be more than the usual few precious moments of clarity when she first awoke, before her thoughts began to contract under the pressure of the house.

Dr Grainger moulded his body to one of the oak pillars, ran his hands up and down it. Verity had heard, at the Assembly Rooms, of people who liked to hug trees to share their life-force. But hugging centuries-old long-dead oak?

'And here's another thing…'

He stepped away, giving the oak a fraternal sort of pat, as if they had already established a rapport.

I have been horrified, since I came here, to see how many owners of old houses kind of bleach their beams, to make them lighter. Can you believe that? See, oak is wonderful wood because it absorbs darkness so well. So… three, four centuries of storing the dark and these people want to take it all away. Can you believe that?'

'Perhaps they…' Verity swallowed. 'Perhaps they just want to make it more… cheerful.'

Dr Grainger almost choked on his own laughter. 'That's a joke, right?'

'Right,' said Verity weakly.

'You know. Verity, I could really use this house. It's hard to find one of these late medieval homes that hasn't been tampered with – windows enlarged, all this. Maybe I could hire it? Maybe a weekend seminar here in the summer, or around Christmas?'

He stood on tiptoe and slipped a hand into a dim space between the Jacobean corner cupboard and the ceiling.

'Yeah,' he said with satisfaction but no explanation. 'Tell me, why's it called Meadwell?'

Verity explained about the well in the grounds, is old as the Chalice Well and similarly credited with great curative powers. But unfortunately sealed up now because of a possible pollution problem.

'Uh huh.' A knowing smile. 'Uh huh. Now I begin to understand your problem here.'

How could he? This was utterly ludicrous.

'Seems to me that what may have happened is the house has become repressed because people have been afraid of it. Yeah? So what we got to do. Verity, I' we got to alter the house's self-image. And yours. Remember, when you learn to embrace the dark, the darkness will embrace you back.'

'Yes,' said Verity. 'Thank you. You've made me feel better about it.'

But he hadn't. He'd made her feel worse. And when they went upstairs and Dr Grainger began to peer into the bedrooms in search of deeper and denser shadows, Verity could almost hear the voice of Major Shepherd, Oh Verity, Verity, why didn't you tell me about this?

Dr Grainger was crouching in a comer of the landing, both hands moving in empty air, trying to locate what he called 'the crepuscular core' of the house. 'This is commonly the place where most shadows meet. The repository of the oldest, the least disturbed darkness, you following me?'

I don't want to know. Verity almost panicked. I don't want to know where this place is.

And she was so grateful when there was a rapping from below. 'The front door. Excuse me, please, Dr Grainger.'

She almost ran downstairs to the hall, where a little light pooled on the flagstones. Probably the postman; it was his time. She unbolted the door.

'Oh.'

It was not the postman.

'Well, well. Miss Endicott.'

A deep, educated voice and there was something strikingly familiar about it that made her feel both afraid and strangely joyful.

She stared at him. A tall and slender man, in his late thirties or early forties. His face lean, his jawline deep. His eyes penetratingly familiar. When he smiled she noticed that he did not have a moustache.

Does not have a moustache. She caught herself thinking this and wondered why.

'You don't remember me, do you. Miss Endicott?'

'I'm so sorry.' Verity blushed. Something about him. Something so painfully known.

'But I was only a boy. When we last met.' He put out a hand. 'Oliver,' he said. 'Oliver Pixhill.'

One of the huntsmen – what appeared to be a savage snarl on his face – was beating a hound away from a dead stag. Too late; its head was awfully messed up and one of its antlers looked broken. It was very important to huntsmen that the head should be unspoiled.

Diane winced.

Across the bottom of the scene was pasted a page-heading from a holiday guide. It read: THE QUANTOCKS: A REAL HAVEN FOR WILDLIFE.

The photo had been blown up, all grainy. The caption had a serrated edge, what Diane had learned on the paper in Yorkshire to call a ragout. It made a pretty devastating poster and it hung uncompromisingly just inside the door.

'Sometimes we go out at night, a bunch of us,' Sam Daniel said. 'Paste 'em on a few tourist offices, show the visitors what it's really like in the pretty countryside. Plus, it shows blood sports aren't what you'd call compatible with a tourist-based economy.'