Jan Siegel - The Traitor’s Sword - The Sangreal Trilogy Two

Some months had passed since their last meeting, and Inspector Pobjoy had become Chief Inspector, helped by his recent arrest of a serial killer when most of his colleagues hadn’t believed any murders had actually taken place. Bartlemy had been involved in that affair, which had been vaguely connected to the former theft at Thornyhill, and Pobjoy still darkly suspected that he knew many facts which had never emerged. There had been too many loopholes in the case, too many loose ends. Not that Bartlemy had ever been a suspect, though perhaps he should have been, caught as he was in the middle of things. However, Pobjoy was curiously glad to hear from him, and intrigued at the news of the attempted burglary, and he agreed instantly to come to Thornyhill for a cup of tea and an informal chat.

‘You should lock your back door,’ he suggested when they met.

‘But if I did that,’ Bartlemy said, ‘people wouldn’t be able to get in.’ It was unanswerable. ‘Anyway, they broke a window. That’s the kind they were: crude, not very clever. The sort who would always break a window, if there was a window to break. I was rather surprised to find them so unsubtle. Kids like that usually give this place a miss. I would’ve expected any burglar who came here to be more … sophisticated.’

‘Apart from that business last summer,’ Pobjoy said – carefully, since he felt the subject required care – ‘I notice you haven’t really had any trouble here.’ He added: ‘I checked our records.’

‘Naturally,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I assumed you would. No, we haven’t had much trouble at Thornyhill. I prefer to avoid it, if I can.’ He didn’t say how, but Pobjoy, who was not a fanciful man, found himself wondering if the house had some intangible form of protection. Apart from the dog. He noted Bartlemy said ‘we’, perhaps including Hoover in the personal pronoun.

The canine hero of the recent burglary attempt was currently sitting with his chin in Pobjoy’s lap and the classic please-feed-the-starving expression on his face.

‘Which is why,’ Bartlemy was saying, ‘I was a little … disturbed by what happened. I can’t help feeling there must have been something – some one – behind it. On the surface, there is nothing to steal here but books, some old but unremarkable furniture, and my collection of herbs for cooking.’

‘The paintings?’ Pobjoy asked, glancing up at a landscape in oils which seemed to consist mostly of gloom and a framed drawing so crowded with detail it was almost impossible to distinguish what it portrayed.

‘Generally done by friends or acquaintances,’ Bartlemy said blandly. ‘That drawing, for instance, is unsigned. Richard wasn’t satisfied with it. Later, he went mad. People have sometimes been curious about my pictures, but their curiosity always seems to fade in the end.’

‘You said “on the surface”,’ Pobjoy resumed, his narrow eyes narrowing still further, dark slits in the lean pallor of his face.

‘I have a certain article concealed here,’ Bartlemy explained after a pause. ‘It was entrusted to me.’ He didn’t say I am telling you this in confidence. Pobjoy already knew that.

‘The article which was stolen last year,’ the inspector surmised. ‘The so-called Grimthorn Grail.’

‘Of course, it was never authenticated,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Technically, it’s valueless. But I am concerned. I have lived here a long time, and no one has ever broken in until now.’

‘Is it secure?’

Bartlemy smiled. ‘No burglar would ever find it, I assure you,’ he said. ‘No ordinary burglar.’

Pobjoy let that pass. ‘You think those boys were put up to it,’ he summarized, ‘by someone interested in the Grail.’

‘It’s a possibility I would like to check. You would know if there were any likely collectors in the market for such items.’

‘Those kind of gentlemen don’t usually have a record,’ Pobjoy said with a trace of bitterness. ‘Too rich, too influential. But – yes, I should know. I might know. I’ll ask around.’

‘Thank you.’ He poured more tea. ‘By the way, how is our murderer?’

‘What? Oh – I don’t know.’ Pobjoy looked startled. For him, once a villain was convicted and imprisoned, that should be the end of the matter. ‘We never found any trace of his accomplice – the woman who masqueraded as his wife.’

‘I suspect,’ Bartlemy said, ‘she wasn’t the kind of person who would allow herself to be traced.’ He was remembering a malignant water-spirit who had poured herself into the shape of a dead actress – a spirit now returned to the element from whence she came.

Pobjoy, who hated loose ends and didn’t believe in phantoms, fretted at the recollection. ‘Do you think she could be involved in this latest affair?’

‘Hmm … I doubt it. Still, it is an idea.’

As he drank his tea, Pobjoy seemed to become abstracted. Once, he asked: ‘How is … Mrs Ward?’, hesitating over the inquiry as if it embarrassed him.

‘She’s very well,’ Bartlemy said. ‘You should go and see her.’

‘I don’t think … she wouldn’t want …’ Pobjoy’s excuses faltered and failed; he looked around for a change of subject, but didn’t find one.

‘It’s up to you,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Annie doesn’t bear grudges.’

At one time, Pobjoy had wanted to arrest Nathan.

The inspector retreated into silence and stayed there, until Bartlemy began to talk of something else.

Nathan and Hazel Bagot had been friends from infancy, closer than brother and sister; they used to tell each other everything, but now they were getting older they needed their own secrets. Nathan didn’t tell Hazel about the city and the princess (not yet, he said to himself, not till it becomes important), and Hazel didn’t tell Nathan about the boy she was keen on at school. When they got together at the weekends and during the holidays, they talked about music and television and lessons, and feuds or allegiances with their classmates, and how parents never understood what it was like to be a teenager, because it must have been different for them. Hazel’s bedroom had evolved into a kind of nest, lined with prints and posters, cushioned with discarded clothing, floored with crisp packets and CDs, where she and Nathan could curl up and listen to her latest musical discovery – usually something twangy and foreign-sounding and faintly bizarre – while she related how her father, who had left last year, wasn’t allowed to come home any more because he’d tried to hit her mother again, and how her mother had a new boyfriend who was rather old and a bit dull but nice.

‘They met through an ad in the paper,’ Hazel said. ‘Lots of people do that now. Has your mum tried it?’

‘I don’t think she’s too keen on dating,’ Nathan said. ‘There was you-know-who last year – I’m not sure if he ever asked her for a date, exactly, but – well, obviously it didn’t work out.’ He didn’t need to say any more. Hazel knew what he was alluding to.

‘She must’ve loved your dad a lot,’ she remarked. Nathan’s father had died in a car accident before he was born, or so he had always been told. ‘I mean, she’s not forty yet and really pretty, but she hasn’t had a proper boyfriend for years, has she?’

‘No.’

‘You wouldn’t mind though, would you?’ They’d been over this territory before, but Hazel thought it was worth checking.

‘Of course not – as long as he was kind, and loved her. What about your mum’s new man? Do you think it’s serious?’

‘’Spect so. He brings her flowers, and that’s always a sign, isn’t it? She says he’s dependable, which is what she wants, after dad. He’d never knock her about, or get drunk, or anything. He’s sort of boring, but that’s okay for her. She likes boring.’