The Poisoned Crown: The Sangreal Trilogy Three. Jan Siegel
on the shabby Persian rugs and worn furniture. And in the middle Bartlemy, fat and placid and silver-haired, with eyes as blue as the sky. There were more biscuits, but Hazel didn’t take one, not yet, though his dog sat looking hopefully at her – a huge shaggy dog of questionable ancestry, known as Hoover, whose age was as indeterminate as his master’s. Suddenly, it seemed to Hazel that the world was complex and baffling beyond her understanding, and magic and reality were no longer separate but part of the same puzzle, tiny fragments of a jigsaw so vast and intricate that its billion billion pieces could never be fitted together, not though she had a hundred lifetimes. Her thought was too small, and infinity was too big, and she felt crushed into littleness by its immensity, its multiplicity, by the endless changing patterns of Chaos. Bartlemy asked her: ‘What troubles you?’ and she tried to explain, groping for the words to express her diminishment, her confusion, her fear.
Bartlemy smiled faintly. ‘We all feel that way sometimes,’ he said, ‘if we have the gift of perception. Embrace your doubts: if there is such a thing as wisdom, they are part of it. I’ve had my doubts for more than a thousand years. Actually, I’ve always believed that the answer to everything must really be very simple.’ And he added, unconsciously echoing Annie on Irish history: ‘The problem is finding out the question.’
‘So Riverside House is sold at last,’ Annie said to Lily Bagot in the deli. No one had lived in Riverside House since the tragedy, though rumours of new tenants had circulated from time to time, only to fade as another sale fell through. ‘Do you know when they’re moving in?’
‘They’re already there,’ Lily said. ‘Came down last week. Some family from London.’ All the newcomers in the village were from London these days, big-city types in search of a rural paradise, bringing with them their big-city lifestyle and their big-city needs – and their big-city income. ‘I daresay they’ll be coming into the bookshop soon.’
Annie managed a second-hand bookshop, owned by Bartlemy; she and Nathan lived in the adjacent house.
‘I hope so,’ she said. She couldn’t help being a little curious. She had been so closely involved in the events at Riverside, two years ago now. She wondered what kind of people would buy a house with such a well-publicised history of disaster.
A few days later, she found out.
A woman came in to browse among the books, a woman with a frizz of dark hair and a thin body that grew wide around the hips, dressed in antique shoulder-pads, hand-printed scarves, carved jewellery from the remoter parts of Asia. She studied the shelves for a while, enthused over an early edition of Mrs Henry Wood, then seemed to make up her mind, and pounced.
‘You’re Annie Ward, aren’t you? I know: I asked around. I’m Ursula Rayburn. We’ve just moved in to the oast house down by the river. Of course, I expect you’ve heard, haven’t you? – gossip travels so fast in a village. Such an intimate little community – I can’t wait to get to know everyone. Although Islington is really just a village enclosed in a city … Anyway, I’ve been dying to meet you. I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself like this.’
‘Not at all …’
‘You see, I did my homework. I know you’re the one who found the body …’
Slightly at a loss, Annie said: ‘Yes.’
‘Was it awful? I gather she was there for months, slowly decaying, while her husband lived on in the house with his mistress, who was pretending to be her. I suppose he’s in an asylum now … and they never caught the mistress, did they? I expect it was all her idea. Mind you, I don’t really see the necessity – I mean, everyone gets divorced these days, it’s as normal as eating your dinner. I’ve had two and Donny’s had one and the kids are totally well adjusted. They say more parents mean more presents at Christmas and birthdays! Are you divorced?’
‘Widowed,’ Annie said.
‘Oh dear. And then to have to go through all that … you poor child. You must have been in therapy for months. Bereavement and then post-traumatic stress …’
‘My husband died fifteen years ago,’ Annie said. She and Daniel hadn’t been married, but she’d taken his name anyway. ‘And I don’t have post-traumatic stress.’
‘But … you did find the corpse, didn’t you? You found Rianna Sardou?’
‘Oh, that.’ Annie was unable to resist lapsing into nonchalance. ‘Of course, it was rather unpleasant, but …’
‘Unpleasant? I heard she was lying in the bed, little more than a skeleton, with her hair all spread out – it goes on growing, doesn’t it? – and—’
‘In a village,’ Annie said serenely, ‘you learn to take these things in your stride. Part of the great cycle of life and death, you know. I expect it’s much the same in Islington.’
‘Well …’ Disconcerted by Annie’s composure, Ursula’s gush of words ran down. ‘Not – not exactly …’
Annie took pity on her. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
While the contents of the cafetiére were brewing, Ursula Rayburn filled in the details of her extended family. Her two exes, plus new wife/girlfriend/offspring, all on very good terms – ‘We wanted a big place where everyone could come and stay’ – and Donny’s ex and mother, ‘frightfully bitter, even after four years – they bossed him around all the time, and now they’re like two cats without a kitten.’ There were five resident children, all Ursula’s by previous fathers: Jude, Liberty, Michael, Romany and Gawain.
‘Michael?’ Annie queried, before she could stop herself.
‘His father insisted,’ Ursula explained, more in sorrow than in anger. ‘His first name is Xavier – I always called him that when he was little – but now he’s a teenager he’s gone so peculiar, he won’t answer to anything but Michael. Or Micky, which is almost worse. And the psycho’s name was Michael, wasn’t it? I told him – I said it’s ill-omened – but he refuses to go back to Xavier, no matter what I say.’
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Annie said. ‘Lots of people are called Michael, and they don’t go around committing murders.’
‘Of course not. But in this house, with the atmosphere …’
‘Frankly,’ Annie said, ‘I never thought it had any. It’s an old building, but the renovations made it so bland inside, all shiny new paint and unused furniture. Rianna was dead, her husband was so busy pretending to be normal his personality never made any impact, and the – the mistress was hardly ever there. I’m sure, with so many of you, you’ll find it easy to change the feel of the place.’
‘Oh, but you can’t wipe out the past,’ Ursula said. ‘I don’t believe in the kind of ghosts that come with clanking chains, naturally, but there are vibrations. I won’t use the tower room till it’s been purified – I’ve got crystals hanging there now – and Melisande wouldn’t even go through the door. She’s my cat, pedigree Burmese, so sensitive. I know it’s a cliché but animals do feel things, don’t they? They’re so much more telepathic than people.’
Annie said something noncommittal and dispensed the coffee.
‘They never found out her name, did they?’ Ursula went on. ‘The mistress, I mean.’
Nenufar, Annie thought. Nenufar the water-spirit, the primitive goddess from the dark of the sea …
‘No,’ she said.
‘Strange, that. Nowadays they seem to have files on everyone – d’you know the police keep your personal details even if you were just caught smoking dope twenty years ago? It’s an abuse of human rights. I’m a member of the campaign for civil liberties, of course … But it’s curious they couldn’t even find a name for her. Names are so significant, don’t you think? We’re not going to stay with Riverside House. It’s really a bit ordinary.