'She'll keep quiet; she's on her own knife-edge. I'll tell you about that.'

Jane blinked. 'Young Alison? You cracked it?'

Merrily said, 'Make the breakfast, Jane. All right?'

Jane found some eggs. Put the toaster on. It was infuriating, but maybe, after what she'd said to Lol, this was not the best time to listen at the door.

And also, Mrs Leather's The Folklore of Herefordshire was still open on the kitchen table. It had fallen open at that page. Portentous, right?

Search was made for her and she appeared to her friends from time to time, but when they spoke to her she immediately disappeared.

But suppose the friends had known the score? Suppose the friends had it totally sussed?

Her mother was told (probably by the wise man or woman) ... for whom read Lucy Devenish ...

that if seen again she must be very quickly seized, without speaking, or she would never come back. So one day, a year after her disappearance, her mother saw her and took hold of her dress before she could escape. 'Why, Mother,' she said, 'where have you been since yesterday?'

Jane had this sudden, crazy image of grabbing hold of the shoulder of the freshly materialized Colette's sexy black dress, and Colette rounding on her, shrieking, 'What the fuck are you playing at Janey? This is my poxy party!'

Jane laughed.

But why not? Why the hell not? OK, if it was all airy-fairy nonsense, total cobblers, if Colette had actually gone off with some smooth crack dealer from Hereford, then what was lost? Who was hurt?

The plain fact is, nobody, but nobody, apart from me, is ever going to try it.

OK. Practicalities. She couldn't simply keep taking walks through the orchard on the off chance Colette would show. There had to be method in this. She thought back to the night it all began. The apple tree, the little golden lights.

Another element, though, if you followed Lucy's logic, was crucial.

Cider.

'Does she know what she's playing with here?'

Merrily had a clear picture of Alison in the church that morning. Black shirt, gold pendant, knowing smile. James is full of shit.

Oh yes, Alison knew precisely what she was playing with.

And Lol, who'd been used and discarded, seemed to be able to live with that, now that he knew the circumstances, now that he understood. He was either a natural-born Christian or a natural-born sucker.

'It's good, at least, to have explanations,' he said. 'Looking back, my life's been pretty short on explanations.'

'It's horrifying. What's she want out of it? Half the hall? The farm? Half the debts?'

'Goes deeper than money.'

'Obviously. But this is a very old-fashioned guy. I really hate to imagine how he's going to react when he finds out he's been f-'

Merrily glanced at the door. They'd been whispering, but the kid had good ears and no scruples.

'... and that his father may have killed someone. There's certainly enough ground there to bury a body in.'

'I don't think,' Lol said, 'that Bull-Davies is under any illusions about his family. Last year, he apparently spent a lot of money on the only copy of some unpublished, handwritten addendum Mrs Leather had written to her folklore book. It was going to be auctioned; he got in first. It was all about apple orchards. With special reference to Wil Williams.'

'Lucy know about it?'

'Found out too late, presumably. Maybe she doesn't have friends in auction houses. Alison came across it a few weeks ago. Not on the bookshelves. Rotting in the attic'

'It shows the Bull family in a bad light?'

'All it shows is how flimsy the evidence against Williams was. The farmer who accused him of bewitching his orchard ... according to Mrs Leather, all that amounted to was that it had been a very bad year for apples, except in the Ledwardine orchard, where the crop was very acceptable. The orchard, at that time, belonging entirely to the Church.'

'So? God looks after his own. That was it? He bought the thing purely because it suggested his ancestor accepted iffy evidence of witchcraft in the year sixteen sixty-whatever?'

Lol shrugged. 'Just, you know, an illustration of the level of James's paranoia about his family. According to Alison.'

'She's got to be hard as nails.'

'Hardened by circumstance.'

'You are too generous, Lol. This is her brother.'

'Half-brother.'

The sun had gone in. Another capricious spring day.

'Lol, did she mention anything about another document? The Journal of Thomas Bull?'

'There're some volumes of it in a bank in Hereford.'

'Which is where, I suppose, they're destined to stay,' Merrily said.

Breakfast was a muted meal.

Jane produced boiled eggs and toast. Nobody mentioned Alison or Bull-Davies or the deaths of Lucy and Karl Windling or little golden lights or the Nighthouse. They talked like ordinary people with ordinary lives and only ordinary undercurrents. Like a family, thought Lol, who'd forgotten what a family was like.

They discussed how Merrily was going to spread the word about the personal appearance in Ledwardine Parish Church that night of its former incumbent, the Reverend Wil Williams, without attracting unwelcome publicity.

'It's a village thing,' Merrily said. 'And it has to stay that way. That's why I want it done quickly. Done, finished with, everybody gets their say. The issue decides itself. That's the theory, anyway. It would be good to get the Women's Institute out in force. They'll all fall for Stefan in a big way, lots of tear-filled hankies.'

'What about the Press?' Lol said. 'You can't keep them out.'

'The way I see it, the search for Colette will overshadow everything. I really don't think the Press would be interested. Unless someone told them.'

'Dermot Child,' Jane said. 'The Goblin.'

'I'm going to deal with that.' Merrily bit decisively into a slice of crisp toast.

From mid-morning, she hung around the churchyard, under apple trees, listening to the leaden, Victorian hymns, feeling redundant and rejected. She should be in there, today of all days, offering prayers for Colette Cassidy and her family, holding the community together, siphoning God's comfort from the chancel to the nave.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hadn't thought of the implications of not being there today. But Ted presumably had, the machiavellian bastard. It had taken her rather too long to see Ted, not as an uncle, but as the worst kind of country solicitor, a man who'd spent his adult life smoothing over, glossing over, planing off rough edges. Female priest? A nice idea that failed. Too soon, my friends, too soon.

And there he was, as the main doors opened, fawningly attendant upon the imposing figure of the Rev. Norman Gemmell tall, stooping, pointed beard, gravely patriarchal. Presiding in the porch, dispensing cordial clerical aftercare. Bowing over hands, tilting his head with concern, as though he'd known these rusticized city folk for many, many years, followed their family heartaches and triumphs through the generations. A true professional.

The worst moment came when the Cassidys emerged the Cassidys, who rarely attended morning worship because of the Sunday lunch stampede. Norman Gemmell held Caroline's fingers tenderly, led her a few yards away from the porch, bent his head to her pale, tight face. Spoke with earnest sincerity, and then patted Terrence on the shoulder as Caroline began to cry and two press photographers recorded the moment in a discreet chatter of motordrives.

Seemed like a good time, before the saintly Gemmell returned to the vestry to change into his civvies. Merrily crept from under her apple tree and made for the small rear door which led to the Bull chapel and the organ.

Pushed open the small, Gothic door and stopped.

There he stood, in his friar-like organist's robe, pensive by the effigy of the Bull. Looking up an initial shock at seeing her, plumped up in a second into the charming, old Dermot.

'Why, Merrily, I thought ...'

'We need to talk.'

'Ah, if only I'd known, I should have rearranged my lunch appointment.'

'You know now,' Merrily said coldly.

'Perhaps this evening? A table at the Swan?'

'Dermot,' Merrily said, 'get your chubby little arse through that door before I rip my sweater and make allegations.'

'Merrily!'

'Calling as a witness, Mr Watts, the organ repair man ... among others.'

'Merrily, what are you saying?'

She looked him steadily in the eyes and slowly lifted her sweater, exposing her midriff and the base of her bra.

Then she screamed.

'All right!' Dermot scowled and scurried after her out of the church, hitching up his robe.

41.

Home Cooking AT THE BOTTOM of the churchyard, where apple trees in bloom overhung the graves, Dermot Child sat, legs crossed, on a nineteenth-century tombstone, looking very affronted and disturbingly very much like a goblin. A poisonous loser. Man's so embittered he doesn't care who goes down.

And Merrily, gripping a gravestone, had cold feet. Supposing they were wrong about him? Suppose he was just a funny but basically harmless little man with a perfectly harmless, perfectly natural, perfectly healthy ...

... about a hundred buttons down the front, and you imagine yourself undoing them all, very slowly, one by one. Oh God. White collar, pink body, brown nipples ...

... lust for female clergy.

'Let's be frank with each other, shall we, Dermot?'

His button eyes arose to level on her. No smile, possibly the beginning of a sneer. 'Let's do that, Ms Priest-in-Charge. Oh yes, I'm all for that.'

Merrily thought she could see, behind the blossom on the apple trees, the first small swellings of the embryo Pharisees Reds.

'What do you know about the posters scattered around the village? The ones we discussed yesterday.'

The eyes were still. 'A poor joke, as I said. Not terribly funny.'

'Except there wasn't really time for subtlety?'

'Wasn't there?'

She took a chance. 'I gather they were done on the festival office printer.'

The eyes flickered. 'Really?'

'You supervise that?'

'The printer or the production of the posters? Yes to the printer. And the posters ... well, indirectly, who knows? Do you know, Merrily?'

'And the Sunday Times. Did you, perhaps, speak to them?'

There was nothing prominent in today's Sunday Times, as it happened. At least, not the edition she'd picked up on the way to the church. The story had evidently been judged insufficiently strong at this stage, which was fine.

'Oh yes,' Dermot said. 'Of course. I've spoken to all the quality papers. I have to try to interest them in our lovely festival. Part of my function, in the absence of poor, dear, tragic Terrence.'

'And told them about the storm-in-a-teacup over Coffey's play?'

'More than that, surely, Merrily. A storm, at least, in a hogshead of cider. Old cider. A dark storm fermenting for many years. Centuries. Let's not make light of these things.'

'And you told the Sunday Times about it.'

He shifted on the tomb, uncrossed his legs under the thin robe. 'Did I?'

'Did you?'

He giggled. 'Did I?'

She gritted her teeth.

'Did I?' Dermot said gaily. 'Did I? Did I? Did I? Oh, Merrily, my dear, you don't know a thing, do you? You're fishing in the dark with a twig and a bent safety-pin, and you don't know a thing about our ways, any more than poor old Hayden did, but he, at least, was content with that and went his bumbling way, the very model of a genial, faintly tedious country cleric. Ghastly, though not everyone agreed. Oh Lord, how I wanted you as his replacement, a jolly little dolly of a clergyperson with nice legs and dinky titties, oh what fun.'

Merrily cut off a shocked breath. Don't react. She stayed very still, tried not to look away from his eyes, although Dermot had certainly looked away from hers, blatantly lowering his sardonic gaze to her breasts.

'What fun,' he said coldly. 'But don't dare imagine that you, any more than Cassidy, any more than the obnoxious Coffey, could ever know the essence of our quaint little village ways.'