Streaking (12 page)

“Yes—do you want me to fetch Mummy?”

Lord Credesdale tried to shake his head, but he couldn't do it. “No,” he said. “You're the one with the luck, after all. If a miracle's on the cards, I'll need you here. If not...we've always been in this together, Can. Always.”

Canny waited until his father's eyes had closed before he murmured: “Not any more, Daddy”—and even then, he said it too quietly to be heard.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Bentley woke Canny at six-thirty on the following morning to tell him that his father had died during the night—peacefully, in his sleep.

“I'll need a few minutes alone with him,” Canny told the butler, when he got to his father's room and saw the dead man lying on the bed.

“Yes, sir,” Bentley replied. “I've called Dr Hale—he's on his way, but he won't arrive for at least a quarter of an hour. I'll wait a few minutes before I wake your mother.”

“Thanks,” Canny said. He completed the first phase of the rituals he'd promised to observe without any difficulty, and still had time to stand back and look down at the old man for a few minutes more. There was nothing to see; it was just a lifeless body. When his mother came to join him, she was steadfastly stoical. No tears were shed; life had to go on. The doctor, who had anticipated the moment, was equally businesslike.

The funeral plans were already in place; all that remained was to set the ball rolling—and once it did start rolling, it moved with irresistible momentum.

The time was set; the invitations were mailed; the coffin was installed in the chapel of rest in the village.

The thirty-second Earl of Credesdale eased into his inheritance as comfortably as he could have been expected, and the flow of condolences consumed his attention so completely that he hardly had time to ask himself whether there was any evidence as yet that the supernatural component of his luck had all-but-vanished from his existence, as prophesied by legend and secret scripture alike.

The routine of public grieving was so rapidly established, and so insistent in its claims, that Henri Meurdon's second phone call—which came through as he was about to set out for the church—seemed a bizarre bolt from the blue.

“There have been developments, Monsieur,” Meurdon informed him, while he stood in the drawing-room in mourning-dress. “Rumor has reached me that two of the four individuals who appear to planned your kidnap are now deceased. What became of the other two, I cannot tell; if they are wise, they have returned to their own country. My associates recovered some, but by no means all, of the money—some fifteen thousand Euros. It is not much, I know....”

“It doesn't matter, Henri,” Canny said. “Please ask them to keep it, with my compliments, as some small compensation for their trouble. I thank them for their efforts, but I was the one who was careless. I'd rather the matter were closed now, if honor is satisfied on all sides. My father is dead, and I'm about to go to his funeral service; I regret now that I was moved by the news of his illness to place the bet.”

“If that is your wish, Monsieur,” Meurdon said. “I'm sorry to have disturbed you at an inconvenient moment. Please accept my condolences.”

“That's my wish,” Canny confirmed. “And thanks. I don't know when I'll be able to get to the Riviera again, but you can be sure that I'll call in if and when I do. Thanks for letting me know what the situation is.”

“You are welcome, Monsieur.”

Well
, Canny thought, as he hung up,
if it was all a pack of lies and you're now forty-seven thousand Euros richer, I wish you well of it
.

“Canny?” his mother called, from the hallway. “The car's here.”

“I'm coming, Mummy,” he said.

There was, of course, no real need for a car. St Peter's Church was within easy walking distance, in the nearer outskirts of the village—but the Kilcannons had abandoned the old-style procession in the nineteenth century, at the behest of the Industrialist Earl, and it was the recent custom that they now followed. Canny travelled with his mother; there were two spare seats in the car but they would be occupied on the return journey.

St Peter's had been remodeled in the 1820s, with enough wooden benches fitted to accommodate the entire population of Cockayne and a few to spare for special occasions. That population had actually declined somewhat in the interim, owing to the fact that the villagers had fewer children nowadays. Even so, the church was full to overflowing because of the vast influx of outsiders—to the extent that many of the villagers had to wait meekly outside during the service.

Canny knew that four hundred formal invitations had been sent out, which must have drawn in a thousand people once spouses and children were added to the total, but he estimated that there were at least fourteen hundred people gathered in and around the church, almost all of them keeping a respectful distance from the family pews and the graveside stations. He nodded to a great many people as he moved through the crowd to take his place, but spoke to no one. The service was brief, according to his father's instructions.

Everything remained stiff and formal until the burial ceremony was completed, but everything then became utterly hectic as the meeting and greeting began in earnest.

Canny didn't realize that Lissa Lo was present until the crowd had gathered round him, and he knew when he spotted her in the distance that he wouldn't be able to speak to her for quite some time. She wasn't alone; she had apparently thought it politic to travel with a companion as well as her usual minders, and Canny was only momentarily surprised to observe that she was side-by-side with Stevie Larkin. There was a certain symmetry to the arrangement that made him smile wryly.

At the time, he was being introduced to a man and a woman he couldn't remember ever having seen before, although the woman was quick enough to say: “It's good to see you again, Canny. It's been a long time.” When he hesitated, she was quick to add: “I'm Alice—the youngest of the Proffitt sisters—you were in the same class as our Ellen at the primary, but by the time I started school you were about to move on to Ampleforth.”

Recognition was then immediate, as he connected the slender, dark-haired woman who stood before him with an even skinnier, bespectacled child. He knew immediately that he shouldn't have forgotten her, even though they he hadn't seen her for at least fifteen years, at which time she must have been thirteen or thereabouts—fourteen at the most. She had always been the most clamorous, though not the most glamorous, of the three sisters.

“I remember,” he said. “You were the brat—the one who was always insulting me.”

The woman blushed. “I was the youngest,” she said, apologetically. “I had to try twice as hard to be noticed. I was the clever one too—you might have remembered that—and they weren't insults, as such, just witty remarks of an unusually frank nature.” She blushed again. “Oh hell,” she murmured, before raising her voice to begin again: “This is my husband, Martin Ellison.”

Canny had shaken the man's hand and murmured “pleased to meet you” before the implications of the name struck home. Even then, he took a second look, to make absolutely sure that this was a Martin Ellison who might plausibly hold a post in a university psychology department. The man was younger than he would have expected—surely no more than thirty—and he was built like a rugby-player, but there was a certain gravitas in his manner. “The Martin Ellison who wrote
The Personal and Historical Implications of the Oedipus Effect?
” he asked, uncertainly.

“Why, yes,” Ellison said, his astonishment palpable. “Do you really keep track of the people in your village to that extent? Even the ones who leave to go to university and never come back?”

“Oh no,” Canny said. “I had no idea where Alice went, or who she married—but I'm interested in psychological probability. I've read your work.”

“I'm flattered. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Very kind,” Canny aid, reflexively. “Look, if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to talk to you about your work some time, when all this has blown over. Will you be coming up to the house? It'll be just as crowded, I fear, so we'll be mostly in the garden, and just as busy—but we might be able to have a brief word later, to fix up something.”

Martin Ellison seemed to have been taken completely by surprise, and was obviously flustered—but Alice was quick to accept the invitation. “That's very nice of you,” she said. “Actually, we were hoping to have a word with you ourselves.” There was a momentary pause, and then she hurried on: “You must be quite overwhelmed by all this—when I was a kid we always thought Lord Credesdale was a bit of a recluse, but look at all these people! That's Stevie Larkin over there, with some model in tow! How on Earth did your father know a footballer?”

“Actually,” Canny told her, “It's me that Stevie knows—not well, but he happened to be there when the news of Daddy's relapse reached me. He and Lissa Lo aren't an item—they're just flocking together, the way celebrities do when they're confronted by a crowd.”

“Try telling that to
them
,” Alice said, pointing at a gaggle of avid paparazzi positioned on the slope outside the cemetery. They were armed with telescopic lenses, but there were no barriers holding them at bay; they were keeping their distance for diplomatic reasons. “We mustn't take up your time now, though,” Alice added. “See you later, I hope.”

Ellen Ormondroyd and her husband were a dozen places further back in the queue of people waiting to offer their condolences. It was difficult to believe that she was Alice's sister; she was two inches taller and a great deal more voluptuous, although she didn't yet qualify as fat in spite of the temptations inherent in her vocation.

“I'm truly sorry, Canny,” Ellen said, after her husband had mumbled something incoherent. “We all thought—hoped—he was getting better.”

“He let us all think that,” Canny said. “Even Mummy. It's the kind of man he was. You never mentioned that your little sister had married Martin Ellison.”

“Alice?” Ellen look surprised. “I didn't think you even knew Alice—she was just a kid when you went to university. She went herself not long after, and moved down south. She was always the clever one. Martin's some kind of professor now, but he was hardly more than a lad when she met him at university in Bristol. They were in Canterbury for years, but he's just got a job at Leeds. Lydia's here somewhere, with her Ken—you must remember her. They're in Manchester now.”

Canny remembered Lydia well enough to picture her at the age of seventeen—but that memory must also have been at least fifteen years old; her present whereabouts were of little interest. He wondered, instead, whether the word that Alice and Martin Ellison wanted to have was about the possibility of moving back to the village. The elders didn't usually approve of commuters, but if Alice were to say that she'd like to work at the Mill they'd probably overlook the fact that Martin was working in Leeds, especially if Canny put in a good word for them.

“Jack reckons you ought to turn out for the team before the season ends,” Ellen said. “All the Earls have played, he reckons—and he's got scorebooks going back to World War One to prove it.”

Jack seemed deeply embarrassed by this revelation, or at least by the unsuitability of the occasion—but Ellen Proffitt had never been intimidated by Canny Kilcannon, and Ellen Ormondroyd was only making it clear, in her own fashion, that she wasn't about to be intimidated by the thirty-second Earl of Credesdale either.

“Thanks for letting me know,” Canny said. “I'll call in at the fish shop if I fancy a game.”

The queue moved on and Canny did his best to remember as many faces as he could: mill workers and tradesmen from the village, bank managers and brokers from Leeds, aunts and cousins from Tadcaster and York, gentry from Harrogate and Selby. There didn't appear to be any Eastern Europeans present, though.

The churchyard slowly emptied, but Canny's head was buzzing with the confusion of it all. He saw no streak, but he certainly felt the kind of disorientation that usually accompanied one.

Lissa Lo waited until everyone else was done before she came to greet him, bowing politely to the dowager Lady Credesdale before introducing her to Stevie Larkin.

“I think you're attracting some attention,” Canny observed, nodding in the direction of the not-so-distant photographers, who all had their equipment aimed and ready.

“Sorry about that, mate,” Stevie said. “Bloody vultures. My fault, I suppose. I told a few people where I was going.”

“It's nobody's fault,” Canny assured him. “An England midfielder, a supermodel and a newly-elevated Earl all in the one shot is too tempting a prospect. If the pros weren't here, some lucky amateur from Leeds would be seizing his chance to strike it rich”

“I could ask the sergeant to get rid of them,” his mother put in. “Technically, they're trespassing.”

“Mention it to the butcher's lads and you won't need to trouble the police,” Canny said. “No—only joking. Best let them be, unless they try to get into the grounds of the house. At that point, we can point out to them, very reasonably, that they've already got something saleable and really ought to give us some privacy. I'll warn Bentley.”

“I can ask my people to help with security at the house, if you like,” Lissa said. “I didn't realize that our coming here would cause you any difficulty.”

“It hasn't,” Canny assured her. “You and Stevie will be the ones denying the rumors tomorrow—but I expect you're used to that.”

“Oh aye,” said Stevie. “No probs. Won't do Lissa's image any good, though, to be seen with a clown like me.” He blushed as he said it, obviously feeling that his own image could obtain nothing but benefit from the imagined association.

“You'll both come to the house, of course,” Canny said. “There'll be a bit of a jamboree out on the lawns, but once we're inside it won't matter where they stand with their telescopic lenses.”

“With any luck,” Stevie said, “they'll park themselves on top of that skull-shaped rock and lean over a bit too far.”