Ancient Images (30 page)

    "Better than whoever needs this bed, I guess. And it's cheaper for your health service to lend me crutches."

    "Are you going to be able to write?"

    "I would if I had anything ready," he said, wriggling his fingers to show they didn't make him flinch. "Maybe I can hobble into the British Museum and get some use out of my reader's card while I'm waiting for the ideas to come back, if there's any research you need me to do."

    "The history of Redfield and any report of Giles Spence's death."

    "Sure, why not? No need to look as if you're asking me to break my other leg. I want to get something definite as much as you do."

    "And when you're more mobile we'll go looking for Spence's film, shall we?"

    "You bet. While I've been lying here it occurred to me that the Redfields may not have sewn up the American rights. If they can't stop me showing it over there you can blame me for resurrecting it if you like."

    "So you're planning on going back to America."

    "Not for a while," he said, and squeezed her hand, holding on as they saw his father approaching. The conversation became more general, but his grasp stayed with her, even when she left the hospital. It felt like a companion in the sparsely populated streets and in the Underground, where someone unseen was pacing, heels clicking clawlike. It felt like a promise that she wouldn't be spending many more nights by herself.

    

    

    She walked home around the outside of the wood, eating fish and chips out of a copy of the
Daily
Friend:
no danger of putting on weight today. She must phone a few friends to let them know she was back in town and to introduce Roger. She let herself into the house and tramped upstairs. She switched on the lights in her flat and made herself a drink of Horlicks, sipped and then downed it as she watched the end of a comedy show on television. She undressed, washed, brushed her teeth. By the time she'd finished brushing her hair she felt pleasantly tired. She wandered into the bedroom and switched on the bedside lamp, and went to the window. She grasped the curtains and was about to draw them when a movement in the wood made her look down. Her body jerked, almost dragging the curtains off the rail. Propped against the railings at the end of the garden, its vague blotchy greenish face upturned toward her window, was a scarecrow.

    She felt as if she might stand there until the sun came up, stand there afraid to loosen her grip on the curtains and step back, afraid to let the scrawny figure at the railings out of her sight for even a moment, afraid to think why. All she seemed able to think was that scarecrows didn't have hands, and so the scarecrow couldn't be holding on to the railings with whatever was at the ends of its arms, however it looked. If she switched on the main light in her bedroom it would illuminate the edge of the wood where the figure was. The light from the bedside lamp stopped at the window and obscured more down there than it showed, but the little she could see was keeping her at the window, unable to run to the light cord.

    The figure at the end of the garden was rocking slightly back and forth under the swaying trees as though it was preparing to leap. Something like hair streamed back from its overgrown face. Perhaps the figure was dancing in the wind as if celebrating Sandy's helplessness, and wasn't part of its bunched face moving, writhing? She was struggling to open her hands, willing them to shove her away from the window and let her reach the cord, when the phone rang.

    She cried out, flung the curtains away from her, sprawled across the bed. The phone was on the bedside table. She seized the cordless receiver and pressed it to her cheek. "Hello?" she gasped.

    "Miss Allan."

    It was a man's voice, one she felt she ought to know. In diving for the phone she'd knocked the light cord out of reach. She grabbed at it as it swung back, missed, caught it at last and tugged. "Yes, of course it is," she said wildly. "Who'm I speaking to?"

    "We spoke recently, you may recall."

    He sounded offended that she hadn't recognized him. For a moment she thought he was Lord Redfield, and found that her instincts were framing a plea to him: "Call it off." That was several kinds of irrational, she thought, pushing herself away from the bed: it wasn't Redfield, and even if it had been, how did she imagine he could help? "Spoke about what?" she demanded.

    "About my father," the voice said, and paused before adding resentfully, "My father, Norman Ross."

    "Norman Ross, oh yes." He'd been the assistant editor on Spence's film, the first of the names from Graham's notebook she had succeeded in contacting, except that she had spoken to his irritable son then too. These thoughts seemed distant, for she had reached the window and was peering down, peering harder. There was no scarecrow at the railings, nothing at all. "You wouldn't let me talk to him," she said, hardly aware of speaking.

    "I told you why at the time. I didn't want him troubled more than he already was."

    Whatever she'd seen at the railings, it couldn't be on its way into the house. It must have been a large stray dog, she told herself. It had looked as much like that as like a scarecrow, not that she had been able to see it at all clearly. No wonder she was seeing things when she needed to catch up on her sleep, but she had to concentrate on the phone call. "I'll be able to talk to your father now, will I?" she said.

    "I'm very much afraid not. He died several days ago."

    "Oh dear," she said, feeling inadequate and also bitter that she had been denied the interview. She was still peering down into- the wood, where she could see no movements that might not be of trees or undergrowth. "My condo lences," she said, wondering why the son had bothered to phone her at all.

    "I won't apologize for standing in your way. My father's nerves were bad enough. You may as well know it was those and his heart and his imagination that killed him."

    "I'm sorry to hear it, but why are you telling me?"

    "I'm trying to suggest that I may have been wrong to prevent you from obtaining what seems to have obsessed both of you. Perhaps if I hadn't, my father might still be alive. Shortly before he died he asked me to contact you, and so I have."

    Sandy scanned the wood once more, then backed away from the spectacle of so much dark restlessness to sit on the bed. "I'm sorry, I'm not clear why."

    "Because he had the film you're so anxious to find."

    She closed her eyes and took a breath. "Had?"

    "In his strongbox at the bank. You understand I had no reason to suspect this."

    She clenched her fist and punched the mattress hard. "And where is it now?"

    "Why, still at the bank. Under the circumstances I hope you will collect it as speedily as possible."

    "Forgive me, I've forgotten whereabouts you are."

    "Near Lincoln."

    "I remember." Not too far from Redfield, she thought, and suppressed the thought that it wasn't as far as she would have liked. "Let me write down the details," she said, and when she had: "I may not be able to get off work until the weekend. Will Saturday be all right?"

    "Presumably it will have to be if you can't make it sooner. The bank closes at twelve."

    "I'll be early." She hoped she wasn't about to sound impolite; he clearly still resented having to talk to her. "Do you mind if I ask whether anyone else knows you have the film?"

    "I haven't got it. The bank has. I want nothing to do with it, I assure you," he said, and even more peevishly, "My father asked that only you should be informed, and I've respected his wish, obviously."

    "I'm very grateful. I'll look forward to seeing you on Saturday."

    "Yes," he said with an attempt at warmth, and left it at that. When he'd rung off, Sandy gazed at the phone in delight at his message, and threw herself back on the bed, her arms and legs splayed wide. She wished Roger were already home so that she could tell him the news. She lay for a while, relaxing, then strolled to the curtains and drew them tight. She was feeling so pleased with herself that she didn't even bother to glance down into the dark.

    

    

    She slept dreamlessly, and wakened when the curtains began to glow. She stumbled to them, pulled them apart and looked down. Long shadows of branches were dancing slowly and haphazardly in the undergrowth, but the railings were deserted. She had known they would be, she needn't even have bothered to look. Having looked made her feel spied upon, until she ignored the impression. Nobody except Norman Ross's son and possibly his family could be aware that she knew where the film was, and they wouldn't be telling anyone.

    Before she left for work she called the hospital and asked for Roger. "Can he hop to the phone?"

    He was there unexpectedly quickly. "I was just heaving myself up and down the ward to try out my extra legs. I'm being let loose in an hour or so."

    "Don't fall over yourself, but here's another reason to get well. It's a secret between us, all right? I know where to find the film."

    "You're sure? Gee, that's- Hold on, I'm dropping this."

    She heard a clatter as he attempted to hang on to the receiver while keeping himself propped on his crutches. Eventually he said, "I guess you could hear how bowled over I was. That's great news. Don't tell me over the phone where it is, but you're sure it's safe?"

    His warning annoyed her, because it revived her sense 245

    of being overheard. "Absolutely. It's locked away in a bank."

    "Will you be able to get to it today?"

    "It's not that close, and I can't take the day off," she said, smiling at his boyish eagerness. "It'll have to stay locked up until the weekend."

    "If I weren't in this state I'd pick it up for you." He sounded furious with himself. "Maybe I'll be fit to travel with you."

    "Fine, if you are. So where will you be today?"

    "I'll take my leg where the rest of the mummies are, and use my reader's card. If you want to meet me in the lobby when you finish work we could load me into a cab and go for dinner."

    She edited deftly and satisfyingly all day, with a token break for lunch, and didn't once look behind her. She wanted to be sure of finishing work on time, so as not to leave him standing in the lobby of the museum. But someone had provided him with a folding chair, on which he sat just inside the entrance, his plastered leg stretched out like a primitive version of a visitors' book, awaiting signatures. "You look as if you've donated yourself to the museum," she said.

    "I wouldn't be the first, if the company I had today was anything to go by. I'll swear the librarians must go around after hours and dust some of them off."

    "You had a quiet day then at least."

    "Quiet? If a mime had gone in there the readers would have started shushing him. This leg didn't meet with much approval, I can tell you. I opened a book too loud and I thought I was going to be marched out, the stares I got."

    He was levering himself to his feet. "Seems like there are different rules for the staff," he said. "Some guy who works in the museum kept wandering back and forth where I couldn't see him properly. He must have been something to do with masks, he kept going past with one-in front of his face. I guess you get used to him. He didn't seem to bother anyone but me."

    "Let's get you out of here and then you can thump along as much as you like," Sandy said, and helped him down the steps outside. "Would you rather we went to a restaurant or back to your place? I'd take you to mine, except we'd never maneuver you up the stairs."

    "Let's go to mine so I don't trip up any waiters, and I'll buy us a takeout. Just you and me," he said. "My father went back home."

    She propped Roger by the gates of the museum while she hailed a taxi, and helped him flounder onto the seat. "So did you find out much today?" she said as the taxi sped off.

    "Nothing too important, and nothing too pleasant."

    She had to be content with that, for the taxi driver began a monologue about broken limbs, injuries in sports, horses injured during races, horses injured by hunt saboteurs, people meddling with traditions they didn't understand, trying to destroy everything English… The taxi reached Roger's at last, and Sandy went ahead with the key and switched on the lights so that he could make straight for the sofa and sit like a victim of gout. He phoned through their order for dinner while she poured wine and then sat next to him. "Let's hear the gory details, then," she said.

    "There are more of those than you may like, particularly when we're about to eat. I don't know if you even need to hear them."

    "You might let me decide."

    "Okay," he said reluctantly. "The librarian did find a report of Spence's death. He crashed into a tree at the edge of Redfield and must have gone through his windshield. According to the paper he crawled maybe a mile toward Redfield before he died."

    Spence would have been heading for the Ear of Wheat, for help. He would have bled across a mile of Redfield land.

    His wounds must have resembled those suggested by the inscriptions in the Redfield graveyard. She managed not to shudder. "Well, I can cope with that. What else?"

    "Nothing to confirm what you were saying about Redfield."

    "What are you saying I was saying?"

    "Why, that the place needed some kind of regular bloodshed, weren't you?"

    She didn't think she had said that, but it had undoubtedly been at the back of her mind. "I've heard of people acting on that kind of belief," she said.

    "Me too. You're thinking of the Aztecs and their cereal gods, are you? And in India some tribes reared people just to be sacrificed to the fields, until the British stopped them. And way back in Ireland they used to sacrifice children to make the land fertile, and not too long ago the Pawnee Indians would sacrifice a girl to Morning Star for the good of the fields, but I'd rather not go into that before dinner. Let's just say I read about various rituals like those today, and one thing they had in common was they were supposed to be practiced every year. There wasn't one that happened only every fifty years."