Pestilence Read Online Free PDF Page B

proved right. “A couple of days,” he said.
    “Of course you mustn’t come back until you feel absolutely well again. I’m sure sick leave can be arranged.”
    “I’m not taking sick leave Nigel; I’m due a couple of days off anyway.” Saracen left out the ‘at least.’
    “Oh absolutely old chap, no question about it. It’s just that, well you know what A&E is like. Having you off will be an added strain on all of us…”
    “A couple of days.”
    “Right, well then, look after yourself and of course, if you do happen to feel better in the morning…”
    Saracen put the phone down, swore once and went back to his newspaper. He skipped through the advertisements that comprised eighty percent and found the weekly feature on the history of Skelmore and surrounding district that he particularly liked. This week’s offering was entitled ‘The Curse of Skelmore’ and recounted the legend of the Skelmoris Chalice, a vessel reputed, like so many others over the course of two thousand years, to have been the Holy Grail, the dish Christ had eaten from on the occasion of the Last Supper.
    According to the story the chalice had been brought to Skelmoris Abbey, a Dominican monastery, which, in the fourteenth century, had occupied the site where the town of Skelmore now stood. The vessel had been brought there from London for some unrecorded reason and handed over to the Abbot, one Hugo Letant, for safe-keeping.
    Unknown to the Church authorities Letant and the brothers of Skelmoris could hardly have been a worse choice for they were, in fact, evil men who preyed on travellers unwise enough to seek food and shelter at the abbey. The story went that God, in his anger at having seen the chalice fall into the hands of such villains, had struck them all dead and, in the years that followed, a similar fate had befallen any other mortal who had approached the abbey in search of the vessel. In the end the place had been destroyed by fire. The legend of the chalice had died with the abbey and only the story had survived the mists of time.
    The Chronicle reported that interest in the abbey had been awakened recently with the arrival in Skelmore of an archaeological team from the University of Oxford to begin exploratory excavations. Saracen smiled and had to put down the paper as the phone rang again; this time it was Alan Tremaine.
    “I checked out the PM room. I didn’t find any broken formaldehyde bottles I’m afraid.”
    “Just a thought,” said Saracen.
    “It’s funny; I thought the place actually smelled of ammonia not formaldehyde.”
    Saracen felt his pulse rate rise a little. He had been right. It had not been his imagination after all. “Really?” he said non-committaly.
    “God knows what they’d want with ammonia in the PM room,” said Tremaine.
    Saracen agreed but somewhere in the back of his mind a vague memory had begun to stir, there was something he could not quite recall, some kind of a connection between formaldehyde and ammonia, if only he could remember…”
    “Garten was up looking for you,” said Tremaine.
    “Yes, he called me.”
    “Asking if you would be back tomorrow?” asked Tremaine.
    “Something like that,” agreed Saracen.
    “I hope you told him what to do.”
    “I said I would be taking a couple of days off.”
    “That man is incredible. Do you think he ever worked himself?”
    “I’m on leave. I don’t want to think about him,” replied Saracen.
    “Enjoy the break. You deserve it,” said Tremaine.
    Saracen put down the phone and stared thoughtfully out of the window. There was something decidedly odd about the whole affair at the mortuary, something that tales of thieves in the night did not answer satisfactorily. Apart from the unexplained chemical smells there was another detail that had begun to bother him. The man who had opened the door at the mortuary could not have picked the lock with the speed he had. He must have had a key and that implied an inside job, someone