Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

‘Why?’

‘Because if Daddy’s getting up, Max will get up too. And when he runs down the stairs he won’t stop for anyone, and he’ll send you flying. He does it all the time.’ Her eyes filled with delight as the dog came thundering down like a huge black cannonball. ‘Here he comes!’

Leigh quickly stepped aside to avoid being bowled over. Clara jumped down from her chair and ran out of the room with the dog. ‘Come on, Maxy. I’ll get Sister Agnes to fix your breakfast.’ The door banged and she was gone. The cottage was suddenly much quieter.

‘Nice kid,’ Leigh said.

‘She’s great.’

‘She likes you.’

‘I like her.’

‘You never wanted kids, Ben?’

‘Wrong life,’ he said.

He made her coffee. Last night’s tension was gone, and she was smiling and relaxed. They sat and drank the hot coffee. They could hear Kinski thumping about upstairs.

‘Are you and he leaving today?’ Leigh asked.

Ben nodded. ‘Later, maybe in the evening.’

‘It’s going to seem strange without you around.’

‘It’s better this way.’

Leigh sipped her coffee. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘First port of call, the Meyer family.’

‘You think they’ll talk to you?’

‘I can only try. Hey, look at that,’ he said suddenly, looking up above the door. ‘I didn’t notice it before.’ A wooden rack over the low doorway cradled an old double-barrelled shotgun. He went over and lifted it down. ‘Nice,’ he said.

‘Looks old.’

‘Probably a hundred years. Good condition, though.’ He ran his eye along the elegant lines, the hand-checkering on the stock and the hammers. Modern weapons were brutish and functional. They did their job efficiently, but they lacked grace. This had been crafted with loving artistry and skill. Hand-finished wood and engraved steel, not hard black rubber and polymer plastic.

‘I wonder if it still works,’ Leigh said.

‘These things were built to last forever,’ he replied. ‘The old groundsman here probably used it to pot a rabbit now and then.’ He tested the action. The hammers clicked back with a sound like winding up an old clock. Three loud clicks. They locked back solid. There were two triggers, one set behind the other. He tried each one in turn. They had a light, crisp let-off, a little under two pounds. The action was well-oiled and the twin bores were smooth, unpitted and clean. He flipped the gun over in his hands. ‘I have to have a go,’ he said. He searched around, and soon found a box of cartridges in a drawer.

The sun was shining bright on the snow outside. ‘Mind if I come too?’ she asked.

‘Be my guest.’

Ben carried the gun over his shoulder as they trudged away from the convent in their snow-boots. The sky was clear and blue and the air smelled fresh. When the convent was sinking out of sight behind a snowy ridge, he looked back. ‘We should be OK here. I don’t want to give the nuns heart attacks.’ He looked up at the mountains in the distance. ‘I don’t think we’re going to start any avalanches.’ He propped the shotgun against the trunk of a pine tree. ‘Here, help me.’

‘To do what?’

‘Make a snowman.’ He crouched down and started gathering up armfuls of snow, heaping it in a pile. She joined him, clapping handfuls of snow onto the heap. ‘I haven’t done anything like this for years,’ she said, laughing. ‘I remember when Olly and I were kids and we used to lark about in the snow. But it always ended up with him shoving a load of it down my back and me clobbering him with the spade.’

Ben smiled and gathered up more snow.

Leigh watched him with a curious look. He saw her face. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘I still find it hard to believe,’ she said.

‘Find what hard to believe?’

‘You and Theology.’

He paused, rubbing snow off his hands. ‘Really?’

‘You studied it where?’

‘Oxford.’

‘Impressive. What were your intentions?’

He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. ‘You mean was I going to make a career out of it?’ He smiled. ‘Maybe. At the time, I thought about it.’

‘You were seriously going to become a clergyman?’

He clapped another handful of snow onto the growing snowman. ‘It was a long time ago, Leigh. Before I knew you.’

‘How come you never told me?’

‘That part of my life was already over. It didn’t seem relevant.’

‘Did Oliver know about it?’

‘Why should he?’

Leigh shook her head. ‘You, in a white dog-collar, living in a little ivy-fronted vicarage somewhere in the south of England, shepherding your flock. The Reverend Benedict Hope. What made you change your mind?’

‘Life happened,’ he said. ‘I drifted away from it.’

‘An angel,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘What?’

‘You didn’t drift that far,’ she said. ‘You just found a different path to do the same thing. You became an angel. You’re the guy who comes down and saves people, looks after the weak.’

Ben didn’t reply.

When the snowman’s body was about four feet high, Ben rolled him a head and stuck it on top. ‘We need a carrot for a nose, a woolly hat and an old pipe to stick in his mouth,’ Leigh said.

Ben stuck two finger-holes in the head for eyes. ‘That’ll do. Come away from him now.’

‘I get it,’ she said as they trudged back towards the tree where the shotgun was propped.

‘What do you get?’

‘You’re going to shoot him, aren’t you?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Honestly. You men.’

Ben loaded a cartridge into the right-side breech and snapped the action shut. He shouldered the old gun and pointed it at the snowman from thirty yards away. Leigh stood with her fingers in her ears.

He thumbed back the right-side hammer, pointed and fired. The stock of the gun kicked back against his shoulder and the booming echo rolled around the mountains.

Leigh took her fingers out of her ears. ‘An exterminating angel,’ she said.

Ben looked at his target. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘Looks like the snowman lives to fight another day.’ The shot had scooped a channel out of the side of the snowman’s head. He frowned at the shotgun. ‘Throws to the right a bit. Barrels could be slightly out of true.’

‘Let me try the next one,’ she said. ‘That looked like fun.’

‘I thought only immature men liked this kind of thing,’ he replied, handing her the gun.

‘Immature women do too. How do you work it?’

‘Like this.’ He showed her how to break open the action and eject the spent cartridge from the smoking breech. She loaded a second round and he placed her hands on the gun, making sure the stock was well pressed into her shoulder.

‘Does it kick a lot?’

‘Not too much. Go for it.’ He stepped back.

She clicked back the hammer, aimed, wavered a little, took a breath and squeezed the trigger. The snowman’s head exploded into a shower of powder snow.

‘Good shot,’ he said.

‘I got him!’ she yelled. She spun round, dropping the gun and hugging him. It had been so spontaneous, so natural, that she hadn’t even realized she was doing it.

Ben was caught off balance. They tumbled into the snow together. She was laughing. For a carefree instant they were back to the way they’d been fifteen years ago. She brushed her hair away from her face. Her cheeks were flushed and rosy and there were snowflakes on her eyelashes.

They stopped and looked at one another. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked softly.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. He reached up and stroked her face.

They came together slowly and their lips touched. Their kisses were uncertain and quick at first, then he put his arm around her shoulder and drew her nearer. They embraced for a long time. She ran her fingers through his hair, pressing her mouth hard against his. For a moment everything else was forgotten, and it was as if they’d never been apart.