“I didn’t know what to think, but I knew what they were here for. They’d come for me, like I thought they would, I bloody knew they’d come for me! I know about elves, they’re like that, they believe in eye for an eye, and they were going to have me because of yesterday…” I was not sure if this was true, that they believed in eye-for-an-eye-style retribution; this allegation was part of the dense soup of confusing folklore regarding the elves.
I explained to Dr Munz about yesterday’s incident. He said, “Bloody hell … That’s a bit unlucky. The car all right?”
Rutherford, in great distress, tried to tell us what had happened this morning. He’d climbed down from the car, and he tried again to apologise to the elves for what had happened yesterday, to little avail. “I was just trying to tell them, I was sorry, that’s all I could think of to say, that I was sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt their mate, it was an accident and, and … ” It looked like he was going to pass out again. I was glad he was still sitting.
Dr Munz prescribed a few days’ strict bed rest. He had nothing that would cure a case of profound guilt. Sally, Vicky and Ryan took charge of Rutherford and led him back into the house and upstairs to his quarters, reassuring him all the way. As he was going, Rutherford looked mortified, to have come undone like this, again, in front of his employer and everyone else.
After a moment, Dr Munz and I stood alone next to the car. I said to him, “What do you think I should do if they return?”
“I could recommend a shotgun,” he said, and he was only half-joking. “Failing that, of course, you could ring the coppers and get them off their fat backsides. You can’t live your life in fear, Mrs Black, you know that.”
I nodded. He was right about not living in fear, of course. After that an awkward silence hung between us in the cold air. Crows nearby cawed in a way that sounded mocking. “Could I offer you a cup of tea, perhaps?”
“Thank you, but I must be going. Let me just scribble out my bill.” He produced a notepad and pen and started writing out the details of his consultation, such as they were. I had my purse with me; we were able to settle up quickly. I think he preferred it that way, particularly when he had to deal with me. As he counted out the money I gave him, he asked, “And how’s your Auntie Julia doing?”
“Actually, I was just on my way up to Rockingham to see her. She’s had another nasty turn, I’m afraid.”
He raised his wispy white eyebrows. His blueish eyes looked watery and bloodshot. “She’s not having much of a holiday, eh?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said, not wanting to go into details. Munz’s yellowing false teeth were rattling around in his mouth, and, up close, he smelled like sour antiseptic.
“You might consider sending her back home,” he said as he was getting back into his car.
“I hardly think that’s warranted,” I said, starting to feel that a tide was beginning to turn against me.
Munz tipped his head to the side, conceding the point. “You know best, Mrs Black, I’m sure.”
“Thank you and good day.” I watched his car drive off, boiling inside, breathing hard.
15
Before setting out for the hospital, I needed coffee. I sat in the kitchen alone, attempting to collect my thoughts.
Out in the drawing room, the telephone rang. Vicky answered, saying simply, “Hello?” I sighed and made a loud coughing noise. She quickly said, “Oh! Sorry! Black residence. Good morning!”
I took my coffee into the drawing room, in time for Vicky to look at me, her eyes wide and worried. “It’s the hospital, ma’am … ” She held out the telephone for me.
“This is Ruth Black,” I said, once I put my coffee down.
“Mrs Black? This is Doctor Rainer. We spoke yesterday.”
“What’s happened?” I shooed Vicky out of the room.
There was a hesitation at the far end of the crackling line. “Er, well, this is rather hard to explain … ”
“What’s happened, Doctor? Tell me.” I was aware of gripping the telephone’s earpiece so hard it might have broken under the pressure. I could smell the warm bakelite.
“Well, your aunt is awake and she’s asking for you.”
I frowned, staring at the telephone. “I beg your pardon? Last night I was — ”
“Mrs Black, we’re as puzzled as you are. All I know is that she’s awake and lucid, but rather anxious. She wants to speak with you as soon as possible.”
Confused, I said, “Last night I was told she had fallen into a coma.”
“People do recover from comas. Meanwhile, we’re running tests and keeping her under observation.”
“Is she in any pain?”
“She says she’s not. She’s been awake for only twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I found Aunt Julia sitting up in bed in a small intensive care ward, enjoying a cup of tea. She also looked like she was bursting to talk to me. On seeing me she beamed, “Ruth! Ruth, I’m so pleased to see you, I’ve got ever such a lot to tell you!”
Still trying to overcome my great shock, I kissed her hello and dragged up a chair. “The doctor just called,” I said. “I came as soon as I could.” It was a clear, sunny day, the roads were not too bad. I made good time in the Tulip, but kept careful watch for wandering bands of elves. It was hard driving past the spot where yesterday we had killed that elf; I felt myself go cold and was still sick at heart. I thought again about Dr Munz’ advice to use a shotgun to deter future visits.
Julia said, “You didn’t bring Mr Duncombe?” She peered around, in case he had hung back to buy a bag of jubes or something. I said Gordon was recovering from a hard day.
At length I adjusted to the sight of my aunt sitting up and looking reasonably lively, despite not having bathed and so forth. It was hard to believe, looking at her, that only hours earlier she had been comatose, gravely ill, and faced with the prospect of brain surgery and worse. Instead, they were giving her tea. She looked like a nice cream biscuit would be welcome. Between this and the business earlier with Rutherford, I hardly knew which way was up.
“I’ve got so much I need to tell you, Ruth!”
Blinking at her, I said, “Oh?”
She looked mock-cross at me. “Ruthie, dear! I’m fine! Everything’s all right!”
I stared, and felt myself suddenly on the point of tears, of all things. I swallowed that back and tried to breathe my way back to self-control. “I just can’t believe … ” I said, working hard to control my voice, “… you’re just sitting there, after … what happened.” I used a handkerchief to dab at my eyes and nose.
“Oh that! Nothing at all to worry about. I tried to tell you while I was away, you know, but I couldn’t get through to you, you were so fast asleep.”
“Pardon?”
“During the night. I came to visit you during the night, to tell you I was all right.”
“Julia, you were — ”
“My dear Ruth, I was travelling all night!” She said this quietly, but with a certain familiar glee.
Travelling. Ah, I thought. “All right, then. Where did you go?”
“Well, since I had the opportunity, I thought I’d have a wander around town, to see if I might see who’s had the very poor taste to have it in for you. You know, just snooping here and there.”
I pinched my nose. “Right. Um. Listen, do you remember the note I showed you yesterday?”
“Oh yes, frightful business, absolutely frightful.”
“The attack you had after touching the note … ”
“Yes, dear?”
“Was that anything to do with why you fell into that coma?”
“Oh, I expect so, yes. I was quietly sort of sniffing around the edges of the feelings I remembered from touching the note, you see, and I seem to have got rather more of a sniff than I planned, as it were … ” She looked amused, as if it were a fine old jape on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
“So you inflicted the coma on yourse
lf? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Please, dear,” she said, frowning, and glancing about. “Keep that booming voice of yours down!” Fortunately she was the only occupant in the ward, but nurses and cleaners and other miscellaneous staff kept bustling about, stripping and making beds, cleaning everything in sight, and there was a sharp odour of carbolic acid.
I lowered my voice. “Well? Is that what you’re saying? That your coma was in some way self-inflicted?”
“In a manner of speaking, dear. “
“We were worried out of our minds last night!”
“Thank you, dear. But that’s why I was trying to contact you! I knew you’d be worried.”
“Worried …?”
Julia rang her nurse-call bell. Presently a young nurse appeared, and Julia asked if the nurse would be kind enough to fetch her another cup of tea. The nurse sighed and said yes, ma’am, of course. Won’t be a moment. After the nurse disappeared to bother the tea lady, Julia turned back to me. “The tea here’s very more-ish, isn’t it?”
I paused a moment to concentrate. “You said you had a lot to tell me, Julia. About your travels.”
“Yes, yes, of course I do. I found out the name of your demon, for one thing.”
A cold flash went through my belly. “Oh?”
“I sort of met him.”
Smiling the too-bright smile of a woman unable quite to believe what she was hearing, I asked, “And how do you go about ‘sort of’ meeting a demon?”
“Oh, well. In that state, things are less complex. You could say I followed my nose, as it were.”
“Your nose, Julia?” I said.
“Demons carry something of an odour about them, one might say.”
“Ah.”
Julia’s calm, jolly acceptance of such things was disturbing. I said, “So, you met the demon that’s been summoned to come and get me … What’s his name?”
“His name’s Ukresh Nor.”
“Sounds very exotic.”
“I tried to find out who was controlling him in our world, but he wouldn’t say.”
“Even though you knew his name? I thought once you knew something’s name, you — ”
“Ah, well, dear. The name he gave me is, if you will, it’s what’s known as his ‘work name’. Something of a code-name, one might say. So it’s not much use. Only his summoner knows his true name.”
“So that’s not very much use at all then, is it?”
“I did find out from Mr Nor, though, that he has nothing personal against you at all. He has no interest in the goings-on in our world.”
“Hmm. So this demon’s allowing himself to be ordered about so he can earn some extra pin money? Is that it?” I could not believe I was even having such a conversation. I did not know whether to be horrified or bitterly amused.
“No, silly. He’s allowing himself to be ordered about because the summoner knows his true name. He has no choice. He’s got as much choice as a hammer has when you want to bang in a nail.”
“I imagine Mr Nor is none too sanguine about this.”
“He said he’d be very interested in learning his summoner’s true name. But he doesn’t even know the man’s, er, regular name, as it were.”
“How about a physical description? Does he know the address where we might find that cellar?”
The tea lady rolled her rattling trolley into the ward. She was a thin but happy sort of lady, middle-aged, a volunteer, the sort of woman one can always rely on to muck in with everyone to get the job done. “A little bird tells me you’d like another cuppa, love?”
Julia switched from telling me about her supernatural travels to chatting with the tea lady with an enviable smoothness. “Yes, dear, that’d be lovely. One sugar, that’s right.”
“You can certainly put ’em away, eh?” the tea lady said, grinning as she prepared the fragrant tea. She looked at me. “Anything you’d like, ma’am?”
“Nothing for me, thank you. I’m fine.”
Julia flashed me a Look. I suspect she thought I was being unnecessarily curt. Soon she was set up with her tea once more and the tea lady was propelling her trolley elsewhere.
“You were saying, dear?” She smiled at me, looking every inch my eccentric Aunt Julia, despite her recent travails.
“Right. Yes. I was asking if Mr Nor the demon could give you a physical description of his summoner, or perhaps an address for the mysterious cellar.” It was difficult to keep a sarcastic edge out of my voice.
“Well,” she opened, looking away for a moment and thinking hard, “I could go back and see if I can find him again. It would be easy enough to ask, I suppose.”
“Why doesn’t he just kill you for bothering him?”
“Because it’s not done, dear. It’s not done. Besides, he hasn’t been told to harm me, so he and I can chat away.” She smiled again in that way which meant I should have realised this for myself. The other world was as much bound by elaborate codes of manners and customs as my world, it seemed. All the same, it was still hard to consider that my delightfully strange Aunt Julia was having mystical chats with otherworldly entities. But then, Aunt Julia could talk with anybody, it was a knack she had. Why should demons be immune?
Which gave me a thought. “How would it be if I were to meet this demon fellow? In the other world, that is, so he couldn’t just attack me. Would that work?”
Julia smiled at me again, this time looking as if I had just asked a very perceptive question at long last. “Of course, dear. It would require quite a lot of intensive preparation on your part, but a meeting could certainly be arranged, and you could certainly ask Ukresh Nor if he would kindly mind not coming to your house and killing you.” Now she was looking at me with the sort of ironic edge I might employ.
“But?” I asked, sensing a problem.
“But, Ruthie, whilst Mr Nor would be only too pleased to chat with you, he would also tell you that he has no choice about coming to kill you. As I say, it’s nothing at all personal with him, and in fact he would rather not be bothered with the whole thing. He finds it very disturbing and painful.”
“Poor lamb!” I said, annoyed. “All right, then. What’s the delay? Why hasn’t he come already? That would be nice to know. I could make sure I’m suitably attired and bathed. I could have the house straightened up. I could perhaps get my book finished!”
“Do try to keep your voice down, Ruthie. You’re in a hospital, for heaven’s sake!”
I tried to control my breathing; my heart raced. “This is just a very bizarre conversation to be having.”
“That is understandable, dear. It really is.”
“I deal with rational concepts. Logic and scientific method. Quantifiable results and inferences.”
“Of course you do,” she said, and managed not to sound patronising.
“Then there’s this prospect of my brutal murder coming up at some indefinite point in the future! How do I deal with that? How can I stop it happening, for instance? I take it I can’t simply wait for the chap to show up and then just shoot him with a gun?”
“I would say not. However … ”
“Julia?”
“However,” she said, thinking things over, “the obvious way to stop him coming would be by finding the summoner and stopping him. Or, perhaps, getting the summoner to unmake the spell. That would set Mr Nor free, you see.”
“So he can get back to pruning his roses, say … ”
“Better he prunes his roses than you, I would say, dear.”
I felt as though I carried a terrible weight. And besides all this supernatural nonsense, there was the business of that letter I received the day before, with its ominous question about my father’s death. I had not forgotten about that, nor had I forgotten that the problems with Julia’s health seemed linked to the letter’s author. The logical conclusion towards which I felt myself drawn was that the author of the card would send further such notes, intending that I would get increasingly agitated, perhaps, and
then, when things were at a suitable pitch of anxiety, he would send this Ukresh Nor around to visit me one night.
I remembered what Julia had said yesterday, that whoever it was hated me so much he could kill me with his bare hands, given half a chance. Such hatred, as I understood it, could take on a life of its own, and could be relished like a fine brandy. The man behind all this would want to savour the experience, draw it out, taste every subtle hint and nuance, before bringing the matter to a satisfactory close.
The thought that somewhere out there, perhaps someone in this town, felt so strongly against me was hard to accept, as hard as all of Julia’s peculiar insights combined. Hate I could comprehend; magic and the supernatural remained sealed books to me.
Besides which, I thought, what possible revelations could there be about my poor old father’s death? All right, so my father might have been killed in some mysterious bit of business. Men were murdered every day. Father, as a Cabinet Minister, no doubt had his enemies. I may well have even met his killer at the old family home, if it came to that. It was a chilling thought, but I grasped enough of the subtleties of high-level government intrigues to realise that sometimes such men had certain things done. One such thing had perhaps come home to roost, and Father got in its way.
I left Julia at lunchtime, and drove home, my head awhirl with disturbing thoughts.
When I arrived, Vicky told me Gordon had been by with the day’s post.
Another note from my secret correspondent had arrived. It said:
WHO IS REALLY BURIED IN YOUR HUSBAND’S GRAVE?
16
My husband Antony was killed in the War, in the Battle of the Somme. He was a civil servant attached to the British government’s War Office. He travelled extensively, usually throughout the various nations of Europe. He was often away for a month or six weeks at a time. When he returned, we would celebrate. We had marvellous celebrations. One day he told me he would have to go to France “on business”, which was the way he always spoke about his service. I knew never to ask any questions. I read all the latest reports of the fighting in France in the newspapers, and, during his absence, pored every day over the long, long lists of the killed and missing in action. The only thing that made life tolerable during his absences was the daily arrival of letters from him, usually telling me about places he’d seen, people he’d met or seen — and nothing at all about his official business, or even anything from which his official business might be inferred.
Black Light Page 12
