Phil Rickman - The Chalice

He gave Diane a candid sort of look, as though defying her to report him to the police. Another test. People were always testing her, as though you couldn't expect automatically to trust anyone whose name was prefixed by The Honourable.

'Your old man done any of that? Stags?'

'Foxes,' Diane said. 'We haven't got many stags in our part of the county.'

Sam pulled on his earring. 'Ah, well, you know, I figured maybe he'd done a bit as a guest of one of the hunts over Exmoor way. They like to involve as many nobs as they can get, those bastards. Social cred.'

'I don't think so.'

'Or maybe you didn't like to ask him?'

'You don't,' Diane said. 'You don't ask my father anything like that. Or if you do, you don't expect to get a reply. Anyway, what about your father – doesn't he shoot?'

Like Griff, Sam Daniel was stocky, but not so heavy. He grinned through quarter-inch stubble, I don't ask him anything either. Mainly on account of we don't talk.'

The print-shop – the sign just said SAMPRINT – was on the corner of Grope Lane. Quite a central location. Diane didn't know much about computers and laser-printers, but it all looked jolly impressive. There was also a young boy called Paul, sixteen, his first job. Computer-whizz, Sam said.

Sam was about thirty and not so notorious nowadays, Not since he'd been dismissed from the County Planning department after his conviction for assault while sabotaging a hunt. The Beaufort Hunt, as it happened, the one Prince Charles sometimes rode with. Diane seemed to remember Sam had got off with a conditional discharge, but it still made all the papers, in the very week Griff Daniel had been installed as chairman of the district council.

Diane looked around the room at the equipment which must have cost, well, thousands. I thought you must have sort of made it up with your father.'

'What? Him invest in me?' Sam swept his buccaneer's hair back off his shoulders and rolled his head.

Juanita had said it was no secret in Glastonbury that Griff blamed his subsequent electoral defeat on the publicity over Sam's court case – despite his celebrated No Son of Mine statement to the Gazette.

'Business loan, this was,' Sam said. 'Achieved after a lot of grovelling and blatant lying. So if there's a chunk of the Ffitch fortune going spare, I can give you an immediate directorship, how's that sound?'

'Super.' Diane said. 'But, as my father likes to remind me every so often, my personal position is sort of, you know, what's the word? Destitute.'

Sam grinned and shook his head. He clearly didn't believe that; nobody ever could, quite.

'I've got a van,' Diane said, if that's any use. For deliveries and things.'

With pink spots and holes in the side. Just what he needed to boost his image within the business community.

'Can you write, is the main thing,' Sam said. 'Can you make this thing read like a proper paper, instead of the usual old hippy shit?'

She imagined huge stacks of The Avalonian piling up by the door, under the anti-blood sports posters. The image was quite exciting and Sam did seem like the sort of person who could help make it happen. She knew Juanita had sent her along here in the hope that she would become inspired.

And also to take her mind off that trip to the police station. And Headlice. I could have saved him.

'Actually, I'm really not very good,' she said a little breathlessly, in Yorkshire I was always forgetting to ask people's ages and all that. My spelling isn't terrific either.'

Sam slowly shook his head. 'Ah 'tis the usual problem with you aristocrats. 'Always so arrogant and full of yourselves.'

A shadow fell across the window of the print-shop, accompanied by a thump on the glass, and Sam looked up sharply and then made a dive for the door. 'Hey! Piss off, pal!'

Something had been stuck to the outside of the window.

'Bloody Darryl Davey, that was.' Sam came back into the shop, holding a yellow printed sheet he'd torn from the glass. 'About all he's fit for, fly-posting. Thick bastard.'

He unrolled the yellow paper.

GLASTONBURY FIRST

A public meeting to bunch a new initiative for the promotion of Priorities in the town and its environs will be held

Tonight Nov. I6 at the TOWN HALL

7.30 p.m.

Sam Daniel sniffed the paper suspiciously.

'The old man,' he said. I can smell the old man all over this.'

Verity was at once horribly anxious.

Oliver Pixhill. It must be thirty years since she'd seen him, and on that occasion she'd chased him angrily away.

'I hope it isn't inconvenient.'

'No.' She felt an awful blush coming on. 'Not at all. Besides…'

It had been not long after she'd taken over as housekeeper, Oliver and his mother having moved into the town. The boy had returned with his schoolfriend, Archer Ffitch, and an air pistol, both of them far too young to have such a thing in their possession.

'Old place doesn't change, does it?' Oliver Pixhill stooped to enter. 'Doesn't it frighten you, being here alone in the winter?'

Verity had found the dead bullfinch on the path, near the back door, the boys sitting on the wall, grinning at her, their legs swinging.

'I… I'm used to it,' she stammered, thinking of the American poking around upstairs looking for the heart of the darkness, wondering how he might alter the house's self-image. Oh lord, what was she going to do? How was she going to explain this? Oliver Pixhill was a member of the Trust; it would get back to Major Shepherd.

'I expect you're wondering why I'm here.' Oliver was soberly attired in a business suit. He was, Verity understood, some sort of corporate lawyer. In the City. Silly to judge him on that one incident from his childhood.

'You have every right to be here. That is, I'm very glad to see you, Mr Pixhill.'

There was the sound of footsteps overhead. Oliver glanced up briefly but didn't question it. Verity was struggling to put together an explanation in her head. About a man who was very interested in old, dark houses and…

'My father would never allow me to visit him here, you know.' Oliver walked languidly over to the stairs but didn't look up. He looked unnervingly like the Colonel as Verity first remembered him. Perhaps a little taller, sharper in the jaw.

'He'd come to my mother's flat two or three times a week and sometimes take me for walks. But he would never let me come here. Wasn't that odd. I used to think he was trying to protect me from something.'

'I suppose he simply thought it was a rather gloomy old place for a boy to grow up in,' Verity said lamely. 'Certainly your mother did.'

'That's what you were told, was it?' An eyebrow rose. 'I see.'

'I…' What could she say? How could she even start to explain?

But she didn't have to. Black trainers appeared on the stairs.

'Verity, I found it.' Moving quickly and lightly for a man of his bulk, Dr Pel Grainger padded down the last few steps and arrived next to her, looking fulfilled, like a cat with a bird. 'The crepuscular core. A slight misnomer, but I like the phrase. Oh. Good morning.'

'Dr Grainger, this…' Verity held the oak pillar to steady herself. 'This is Mr Oliver Pixhill. The son of my late employer.' Her voice was small and dead. Like the bullfinch.

'Mr Pixhill, this is…'

'Hi' Dr Grainger was already shaking hands with Oliver.

'Dr Pel Grainger.'

Oliver Pixhill shook hands, said nothing. He tilted his head enquiringly.

And did not have to wait long Within a minute, to Verity's mounting distress, Dr Grainger had identified himself as a therapist specialising in Tenebral Psychosis, which, he explained, was not entirely dissimilar to Seasonal Affective Disorder, only all-year-round, more intense and usually connected to a particular dwelling.