'Always the practice at a time of crisis,' said Ernie Dawber. 'I remember, not long after I became a teacher at the school, Walter Boston, who was vicar then, he shuffled in one fine morning and called me out of class. I was to go and present myself to Old Ma at once. Well, I wasn't entirely sure in those days of Old Ma's role in the community, but I knew enough not to argue, so it was "class dismissed" and-off I went.'
Ernie Dawber was sitting in a stiff-backed chair, his hat on his knees and a cup and saucer balanced on the crown of it.
'So, in I go, and there's Old Ma, sitting like you, Milly, cats on knees. And our Ma was there, too, still known as Iris in those days, although not for much longer. Anyroad, they said I was to go back and talk to each of the children in turn and find out if any of them had had ... dealings ... with Jack.'
Macbeth said, 'We talking about what I think we're talking about?'
'Depends,' Milly Gill said. 'Nowadays what they call ritual child-abuse is mostly just a cover for paedophile stuff. For Jack, the abuse was incidental, the ritual was the important bit.'
'Let's put this in context,' Ernie Dawber said. 'The Bridelow tradition is very much on the distaff side, and most of us accept this. It's a gentler, softer kind of, of...'
'Witchcraft?' Macbeth said.
Milly said, 'We don't like that word, Mungo. It implies you want to use it to do something. All we wanted was to keep a balance. It's more like, you know, conservation. That's why women have been best at it; not got that same kind of aggression, not so arrogant as men.'
'In general.' Ernie Dawber sniffed once. 'But what I wanted to say was that you don't get a tradition carried on this long unless there's a certain ...'
'Power,' Milly said. 'Immense power.'
'... concentrated here,' said Mr Dawber.
'Power?' Macbeth was still sitting at the gateleg table. There was a small amount of whisky left in his glass. 'What kind of power we talking about?'
Milly rearranged the cats. 'Let's just say that if you wanted to do something you'd do it a lot better in Bridelow than you might elsewhere.'
Willie said, 'For most of the lads here it's no big deal. We used to say it were women's stuff - back in the days when you were allowed to talk like that. So it were a while before anybody realized that Jack ... Stanage, I'll call him that, though that's just an invented name he writes under ... that Jack Stanage had been, like … studying.'
'He always had a girl,' Ernie said. 'Any girl. Any girl - or woman - he wanted. This'd be from the age of about thirteen. Bit more precocious in those days than it might seem now.'
'Yes,' Milly said, and they all looked at her. Milly looked down at the cats and said no more.
'I didn't notice that so much,' said Willie hurriedly, 'him being a few years older than me. What I noticed was the money. He always had lots of money. He was generous with it too, if you went along with what he wanted you to do. He could show you a good time, could Jack.'
Milly didn't look up. 'Not when you're ten years old,' she said.
'Uh ... yeah.' Macbeth reached over to his slicker, pulled out the paperback, Blue John's Way. Ernie Dawber picked it up with a thin smile.
'You read it?'
'Leafed through it. In light of what I just heard, I wondered if maybe...'
'Not so much an allegory, Mr Macbeth, as …'
'Mungo.'
'When I know you better, Mr Macbeth. Not so much allegory as a case of "only the names have been changed".'
'So let me get this right...' Macbeth was cautious. 'This is a guy who gravitates towards the, uh, arcane. A guy who might like to try and harness other people's powers, maybe.'
Willie looked up. 'What are you thinking about?'
Macbeth finished up his whisky. It made him feel no better. 'I'm thinking about Moira Cairns,' he said soberly. 'And I'm thinking about a comb.'
To Joel Beard, former teacher of physical education, the issue had always seemed such a simple one. If good was to triumph over evil then good required strength. Good needed to work out regularly and get into condition. Indeed, he found a direct correlation between the heavy pectoral cross and the powerful pectoral muscles needed to support it.
But he couldn't find the pectoral cross.
He'd found the wooden lectern, one of the owl's wooden legs missing, smashed up against the Horridge family tomb.
Now he was down on his hands and knees in the sodden grass, the rain pummelling his back.
Not that he felt powerless without the cross, not that he felt like a warrior without his sword; he could stand naked and know that his spiritual strength came from within, but ...
'Mr Beard ... are you here?'
Joel stopped scrabbling in the grass, felt his back stiffen. The fluid, tenor voice had curled with ease around the tumult of the night. It was, he realized suddenly, the voice of a man who might have been a priest.
It's all around you, Mr Beard ... you'll see the signs everywhere ... in the church ...
Joel stood and was drawn towards the voice and the question which had tormented him for so many months.
'Who are you?'
They stood opposite each other at the porch door, Joel thought he was the taller, but only just. He couldn't see the man's face under his black umbrella.
The man stepped inside the porch and lowered the umbrella. 'You don't know me?'
'I've never seen you before,' Joel said, water cascading down his face. Sweet, refreshing rain? Rain out of darkness was not so sweet.
The man waited, languid, in the doorway under the porch lantern. He wore a loose, double-breasted suit of black or charcoal grey.
'It's many years since I was here, Mr Beard. It's changed, thankfully. Otherwise I simply wouldn't have been able to come in.'
Joel said, 'I took it upon myself to remove certain offensive artefacts.'
'Well done, m'boy.' The man's face split into a sudden grin, revealing large teeth, unexpectedly yellow in his candle-white face.
'Who are you?' Joel said. 'Why are you doing this?'
'My name,' said the man, extending a long, slender, white hand, 'is John. And I was born here.'
Joel took the hand firmly. He had developed a manly handshake which some recipients apparently found crushing.
This hand, he found when his fingers closed on it, was not crushable; it was like high-tensile steel.
He recognized strength.
'May I come in?' he asked politely.
'M' dear boy ...' The man called John stepped to one side. 'Interesting weather, have to say that. Washes away the murk of the past, perhaps.'