Authors: Susanna Kearsley
XIX
Somewhere in a shadowed recess of the dining room a mantel clock whirred softly and began to chime the hour: four o'clock. I shifted on my window seat and sighed. The house felt very lonely, with everyone asleep.
Fabia, having sensibly decided there was nothing she could do, had long since said goodnight and gone to bed. I'd expected Adrian, still worrying about his precious car, to wait up longer with me, but after comforting himself with a well-aged brandy from Peter's drinks cabinet, he had drifted off as well. I'd left him snoring in the sitting room, stretched out full length on the old sofa. Even Wally, who'd displayed no great desire to hurry home with the McMorrans, had eventually taken his leave, and the little cottage slumbered now in darkness at the bottom of the drive.
Which left me on my own, fretful and sleepless, wandering from room to room with only the cats for company.
And even the cats lacked a certain enthusiasm, I thought. Murphy had given up following me in favor of a warm seat in the kitchen, where he patiently waited for me to reappear as I made my restless rounds. Charlie, more persistent, had begun to gently protest my constant movement by simply flopping onto my lap whenever I sat. This time, as I prepared
to leave the window seat, the little gray cat tested her claws on my knee and let out a plaintive meow.
"Sorry, love." I scooped her up and held her while I stood, turning away from my reflection in the tall glittering window.
In the kitchen, I set Charlie down on the chair beside the big black torn, and put the kettle on for yet another pot of tea. The two cats exchanged a rather long-suffering glance, and I rather fancied Murphy sighed before he began to clean himself. I was disrupting their nightly schedule, and I knew it. Ordinarily at this hour they would be peacefully asleep on my bed, or on Peter's.
But Peter wasn't here, and after what I'd experienced out in the field, I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep. To go upstairs to bed would prove a total waste of time. Even with the light left on, I'd be aware of every tiny seeping draft within the room, of every creaking floorboard, and of every slanting shadow.
A month ago, I reminded myself, I hadn't believed in ghosts. Now I heard them breathing in the silent air behind me, and felt the cold slow crawl of fear along my neck.
It wasn't the Sentinel himself that made me jumpy. It was the
idea
of the Sentinel—the knowledge that beyond the window, in the blackness, something walked, and watched, and waited ...
The kettle boiled. I turned from the window and forced my trembling hands to make the tea.
Don't be such a coward,
I reproved myself.
Fabia's upstairs, and Adrian's only a couple of rooms away, and Peter will be back soon.
The thought of Peter was a welcome distraction. Frowning, I glanced up at the kitchen clock to check the time again. Four-twenty. More than three hours now since Peter and David had roared away from Rosehill, and still no word from either of them.
"I'm sure she'll be all right," I told the cats out loud, in an attempt to reassure myself. "She seemed like such a strong woman."
But my brave thoughts failed to convince me, and worrying about David's mother only led to worrying about David, which was rather worse than thinking about the ghost. I sat heavily at the table and Charlie slipped onto my lap with a weary yawn, rolling and stretching in an effort to find comfort.
The cats, at least, were quiet. They hadn't once looked out toward the field, or arched their backs, or hissed, so I felt fairly sure the Sentinel was not pressed up against the window, peering in. But far off, fading in and out between the mournful moanings of the wind, I swore I heard the hoof-beats of a lone horse, galloping.
I'd searched the fields around Rosehill for horses, and found Peter had been quite right—there were none. Only a small herd of mild-eyed cows, grazing drowsily down by the river, and a disgruntled-looking black pig in a fenced yard further up the road. But the horses came anyway, out of the darkness, galloping over the high waving grass.
I listened again, straining my ears to catch the rhythm of the running hooves. More than one, now, surely. /
hear the Shadowy Horses
... I summoned the line of the Yeats poem that Peter had quoted, wishing my imagination wasn't working overtime. After all that had happened tonight, I could almost believe in those Irish sea-horses, the horses of Manannan, coming to carry the living away. It gave me the creeps, sitting there in the old house and hearing that sound drawing steadily nearer.
By the time I'd finished my second cup of tea, my nerves were so completely frayed I chose a desperate remedy—I dragged the kitchen telephone off its stand and dialed the number of my London flat.
My sister Alison answered on the third ring, her voice clear and coherent despite the fact that she had, I knew, just woken from a sound sleep.
"How can you do that?" I asked her, skipping the preliminaries.
"Do what?"
"Sound so bloody alert when you've just woken up?"
"It's a gift. Are you all right?"
"Just having trouble sleeping."
"Ah. Wanted to share it, did you?”
"Brat." Feeling better already, I settled back and poured another cup of tea. "How are you getting on down there?"
"Marvellously, thanks. Your flat's brilliant. I'm never going to leave."
I smiled. "Well, it won't want me back, after you. I'm sure the place has never been cleaner."
"Dusting things," my sister told me loftily, "does make a difference, Verity. Oh, and your African violet's in bloom. Remember how you said you couldn't ever..."
"How on earth did you get it to bloom?"
"I watered it."
"Ah." I smiled again, feeling much less lonely. "That's the secret, is it? And how is school?"
"Less brilliant," Alison admitted, "but not bad. Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you—what is the name of the man you're working for?"
"Peter Quinnell."
"Oh right. That was my mistake, then."
"What was?"
"Well, I knew it was Quinnell, but I couldn't remember the first name, and last week in Waterstones I saw this book by a man named Quinnell, so I bought it, thinking it might be your boss, you see." She paused for breath. "But anyway, once I got it home and took a proper look, I saw it couldn't have been
your
Quinnell, because the man who wrote the book is dead, according to the dust jacket."
"Ah." I digested the information. "It was thoughtful of you to buy it, at any rate."
"Yes, well, I ought to have known that it wasn't the sort of thing an archaeologist would publish. It's just a lot of photographs . .. you know, a coffee-table book. But Quinnell's not a common name, and I thought—"
"Photographs?" I cut her off. "The author wouldn't be a Philip Quinnell, by any chance?"
"Hang on, let me check, I've got the thing right here. Yes, that's it... Philip. Who is he, then?"
"He was Peter's son."
"Really? Well, his photographs are deeply weird," was her pronouncement. "They're those awful computer-
enhanced things, all distorted. But the man himself looks gorgeous, in his photograph. Does his father look like that?"
"Peter? Yes, he's very handsome."
"Is he nice to work for?"
"Wonderful."
"Then it must be Adrian."
I frowned, uncomprehending. "What?"
"Making you unhappy. And don't tell me you're not, because you never ring me at five in the morning unless you're unhappy. You're not involved with him again, are you?"
"With
Adrian'!
Don't be absurd."
"Then who—?" She broke off, paused, and shifted gears subtly. "Who else is in your field crew, did you say?"
The Spanish Inquisition, I thought, could have used someone like Alison. Once she hit on something she was like a terrier with a rat; she never let go.
"You're way off beam," I told her, trying to sound convincing. "It's nothing to do with a man. It's just... well, we had rather a crisis here, tonight. Someone's mother had a heart attack, and we don't know yet how she is, and I'm just on edge, that's all. Waiting."
"Oh," said my sister.
"Honestly."
"I believe you," she said.
"Look, I probably ought to go, come to think of it. Keep the line clear, in case someone's trying to ring."
"Right. Shall I keep this book, then? The one by Philip Quinnell?"
"Please. I'd rather like to see it."
Something was nagging at me as I rang off—some minor point that I'd just heard, but couldn't quite remember. Closing my eyes, I replayed the conversation, trying to recall what Alison had said ...
No, it was gone. Whatever it was, it was gone.
I sighed again, with feeling. Charlie the cat showed me a weary eye as I gently lifted her for the umpteenth time. "Sorry, darling," I apologized. "It's time to move."
Peter's sitting room was out, I thought, since Adrian was still asleep in there. But across the hall, the posh sitting room
offered warmth and light and a glowing gas fire. I drew an armchair up to the hearth and stretched my legs out, coaxing the cat to settle down once more. With a less than trusting look at my face, Charlie lay down and fell instantly asleep, her small sharp claws hooked neatly through the fabric of my jeans. Time crawled.
I leaned my head back, counting off the minutes on the mantel clock, a great gilt clock with a soporific tick. Another half-hour had passed before I saw the gleam of headlights curving up the drive, and heard a car door slam above the unrelenting wind. The front door opened and closed. Soft, measured footsteps crossed the entrance hall; paused in the doorway behind me.
"My dear girl," Peter Quinnell said, his low voice mingling faint surprise and weariness. "You ought to be in , bed."
j I twisted around in my chair, gently so as not to disturb
the slumbering cat. "I couldn't sleep." He looked gray, I thought, and frightfully old, and I asked my next question with some hesitation. "How is she?"
"Nancy? Resting comfortably, the doctors say, but doctors always say that, don't they?" Rubbing the worry from his forehead with a tired hand, he crossed to the drinks cabinet. "Can I get you something? Brandy? It's good medicine, for sleepless nights."
He poured one for himself as well, and lowered his long frame into the chair next to mine, staring at the hearth. "You've got the fire on," he said, after a long moment. "Yes. I was cold."
"Were you? It's the house, I expect. Old houses," he informed me, "feel the cold more. Like old bodies." He sat back, eyes half closed, and let the silence stretch until I killed it with a cough.
"David found you all right, then, did he?”
“What?" His eyes slid sideways, not really seeing me at first, and then he seemed to pull himself together. "Oh, yes. Yes, he did. He's a great help, that lad. A good son. He'll stay all night with her, I shouldn't wonder."
"It must have been a frightful scare for him." I looked at his face and amended my statement. "For both of you."
"Yes, well, it's not the first time." Quinnell swirled his brandy, turning back to the fire. "This is her third attack, you know. She never did like listening to doctors. For years now they've been telling her she ought to be more careful, have some help around the house; but she's a bloody-minded woman, Nancy Fortune. She still thinks she can do it all herself." He smiled faintly, shook his head. "We used to call her Henny, in the old days, after the Little Red Hen in the fairy story. 'I'll do it myself, that's what she'd say. And she'd do a damned fine job of it, too. Always mastered anything she put her mind to."
I heard the ring of pride in his voice, and glanced at him with interest. “It must have been a great loss, when she left you."
"A terrible loss," he agreed. "Terrible. But of course, she had her reasons.'' "David's father."
"Yes." He smiled again, a little sadly. "I'm afraid I was rather ungracious about the whole affair. I never quite forgave her for leaving, but in time I understood. Time," he told me, "gives us all the gift of perspective."
Of course, I thought, he'd lost much more since then. His wife, presumably ... she must be dead, since Peter never mentioned her. His son. He'd lost them both. How tragic.
I tried to think of something suitable to say, but nothing came to mind.
Behind us, in the hall, the floorboards creaked. My shoulders tensed in sudden, foolish fear, and then relaxed again when Adrian said sleepily: "Ah, here you are. I thought I heard voices."
He shuffled over to the drinks cabinet, smoothing back his rumpled hair. The gesture didn't help. He looked like he'd been romping through the sheets with someone, barefoot and bare-chested, his shirt slung on loosely as an afterthought, his jeans unbuttoned.
Quinnell arched an elegant eyebrow in my direction and I hastened to explain, not wanting him to get the wrong idea.
"He stayed to keep me company, and fell asleep on the sofa."