Crybbe

The woman with too much make-up and a too-tight blouse opened her red lips at him. 'Oh. Mr Preece, isn't it? I'm so terribly, terribly…'

'Madam!' Mr Preece, his heart wrapped in ice, had seen in the gloating eyes of the yellow-haloed man in the picture that the accident to Jack and the drowning of Jonathon were only the start of it. This was what they'd done with their meddling and their New Age rubbish.

'That picture in the window. Where'd 'e come from?'

'My husband brought it back from Devon. Why, is there…?'

'Did 'e,' Mr Preece said heavily. 'Brought it back from Devon, is it?'

Couldn't stop himself.

'Devon…? Devon…?'

Saw the woman's lips make a colossal great 'O' as he raised a hand and brought it down with an almighty bang on the thick smoked-glass counter.

The cremation was at twelve, and Powys was late. He felt bad about this because there was barely a dozen people there. He spotted Henry's neighbour, Mrs Whitney. He noted the slight unassuming figure of another distinguished elder statesman of dowsing. And there was his old mate Ben Corby, now publishing director of Dolmen, newly acquired by Max Goff.

'Bloody minister never even mentioned dowsing,' Ben said.

It had been a swift, efficient service. No sermon. Nothing too religious, nothing psychic.

Powys said, 'I don't think Henry would have wanted to be wheeled in under an arch of hazel twigs, do you?'

'Too modest, Joe. All the bloody same, these dowsers. Look at old Bill over there – he wouldn't do me a book either.'

Powys smiled. 'Henry left me his papers.'

'In that case, you can do the book. The Strange Life of Henry Kettle, an official biography by his literary executor. How's that? Come and have a drink, my train back to Paddington's at ten past two.'

Ben Corby. Plump and balding Yorkshireman, the original New Age hustler. They went to a pub called the Restoration and sat at a window-table overlooking a traffic island with old stone cross on it.

'Golden Land Two,' said Ben. 'How long? A year?'

Not the time, Powys thought, to tell him there wasn't going to be a book.

'Seen Andy lately?' he asked.

'Great guy, Max,' Ben said. 'Best thing that could've happened to Dolmen. Been burdened for years with the wispy beard brigade, wimps who reckon you can't be enlightened and make money. Give me the white suit and the chequebook any day. The New Age movement's got to seize the world by the balls.'

'Andy,' Powys said patiently. 'You seen him recently?'

'Andy? Pain in the arse. He wouldn't write me a book either. He's always been an Elitist twat. Hates the New Age movement, thinks earth mysteries are not for the masses… but, there you go, he knows his stuff; I gather he's giving Max good advice.'

'Maybe he's just using Max.'

'Everybody uses everybody, Joe. It's a holistic society.'

'How did Andy get involved?'

Ben shrugged. I know he was teaching art at one of the local secondary schools. Had a house in the area for years, apparently.'

That made sense. Had he really thought Andy was living in a run-down woodland cottage with no sanitation?

But why teaching? Teaching what?

'Andy's hardly short of cash.'

'Maybe he hit on hard times,' said Ben. 'Maybe he felt he had a duty to nurture young minds.'

Young minds. Powys thought of the girl at the stone. And then a man leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder.

'Excuse me, Mr Powys, could I have a word? Peter Jarman, Mr Kettle's solicitor.'

Peter Jarman looked about twenty-five; without his glasses he'd have looked about seventeen. He steered Powys into a corner. 'Uncle Henry,' he said. 'We all called him Uncle Henry. My grandfather was his solicitor for about half a century. Did you get my letter?'

Powys shook his head. 'I've been away.'

'No problem. I can expand on it a little now. Uncle Henry's daughter, as you may have noticed, hasn't come back from Canada for his funeral. He didn't really expect her to, which, I suspect, is why he's left his house to you.'

'Bloody hell. He really did that?'

'Seems she's done quite well for herself, the daughter, over in Canada. And communicated all too rarely with Uncle Henry. He seems to have thought you might value the house more than she would. This is all rather informal, but there are formalities, so if you could make an appointment to come to the office.'

'Yes,' Powys said faintly. 'Sure.'

'In the meantime,' said young Mr Jarman, 'if you want to get into the cottage at any time, Mrs Whitney next door is authorised to let you in. Uncle Henry was very specific that you should have access to any of his books or papers at any time.'

'You told me,' Jocasta Newsome said, suppressing her emotions, but not very well, 'that you hadn't managed to buy much in the West Country, and you proceeded to prove it with that mediocre miniature by Dufort.'

Hereward nervously fingered his beard. Now that it was almost entirely grey, he'd been considering shaving the thing off. As a statement, it was no longer sufficiently emphatic.

The black beard of the dark-eyed figure in the picture seemed to mock him.

'Where did it come from, Hereward?'

'All right,' he snapped, 'it wasn't from the West. A local artist sold it to me.'

Jocasta planted her hands on her hips. 'Girl?'

'Well… young woman.'

'Get rid of it,' Jocasta said, not a request, not a suggestion.

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Take it back. Now.'

'What the hell's the matter with you? It's a bloody good painting! Worth eight or nine hundred of anybody's money and that's what Max Goff's going to pay!'

'So if Goff's going to pay the money, what's it doing in our window upsetting everybody?'

'One man!' He couldn't believe this.

'The Mayor of this town, Hereward. Who was so distressed he nearly cracked my counter.'

'But.. Hereward clutched his head, 'he's the Mayor! Not a bloody cultural arbiter! Not some official civic censor! He's just a tin-pot, small-town… I mean, how dare the old fuck come in here, complaining about a picture which isn't even… an erotic nude or

… or something. What's his problem?'

'He calmed down after slapping the counter,' Jocasta admitted. 'He apologized. He then appealed to me very sincerely – for the future well-being of the town, he said – not to flaunt a picture which appeared to be heralding the return of someone called Black Michael, who was apparently the man who built Crybbe Court and was very unpopular in his day.'

'He actually said that? In the year nineteen hundred and ninety-three, the first citizen of this town – the most senior elected member of the town council – seriously said that?'

'Words to that effect. And I agreed. I told him it would be removed immediately from the window and off these premises by tonight. I apologised and told him my husband obviously didn't realise when he purchased it – 'in the West Country' – that it might cause offence.'

For a moment, Hereward was speechless. When his voice returned, it was hoarse with outraged incredulity.

'How dare you? How bloody dare you? Black bloody Michael? What is this… bilge? I tell you, if this gallery is to have any artistic integrity…'

'Hereward, it's going,' Jocasta said, bored with him. 'I don't like that girl, she's a troublemaker. I don't like her weird paintings, and I want this one out.'

'Well, I can't help you there,' Hereward said flatly. 'I promised it would stay in the window until tomorrow.'

Jocasta regarded him as she would something she'd scraped from her shoe. It occurred to him seriously, for the first time, that perhaps he was something she'd like to scrape from her shoe. In which case, the issue of his failed trip to the West, his attempt to recover ground by buying this painting on the artist's eccentric terms, all this would be used to humiliate him again and again.