The Prayer of the Night Shepherd Read Online Free PDF Page A

grow up?’ Jane said.

2
     
Game Afoot
     
    ‘A ND LEFT HER there... her lifeblood oozing into the rug.’
    Pausing for a moment, lean and elegant in his black suit, he stared right through the faces watching him out of the shadows. The table lamp with the frosted globe put shards of ice into his eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ a woman whispered.
    Jane was thinking, Grown people .
    Now he was spinning back, sighting down his nose at the man in the wing-backed, brocaded chair. And the man was shifting uncomfortably. And the stiff white cuffs were chafing Jane’s wrists.
    ‘... And then you crept up to your room and waited until the entire household was silent. What time would that have been? Midnight? A quarter-past? Yes, let us say a quarter-past – twelve-seventeen being the precise time of the full moon... which I suspect would appeal to your sense of drama.’
    With the log fire down to embers, the globe-shaded oil lamp was the only light in the drawing room, more shiveringly alive than electricity, spraying complex shadows up the oak panels. Jane dropped her resistance. She was part of the whole scam now, anyway.
    ‘Piffle,’ said the man in the wing-backed chair.
    ‘Oh, I think not, Major. I think that, barely half an hour after the murder, you crept back down the stairs and into the study, where you began to overturn chairs and pull out drawers, making as much noise as you possibly could. Finally, with the handle of your stick, you smashed not one, but two windows, in swift succession, so that the sound might be mistaken for a single impact.’
    ‘Sir, your imagination is, I would suggest, even more hysterical than your abominable fiddle-playing.’
    A thin hand disdainfully flicked away the insult. ‘And then you moved silently, up the back stairs this time, and immediately re-emerged onto the main landing, dragging on your dressing gown, shouting and spluttering.’
    Jane remembered it well. It had been seriously startling. She must have been in bed about twenty minutes and was half asleep when this huge roar went up. Who’s there? Who’s making all that damn noise? What the hell’s going on?
    When she’d grabbed at the switch of the bedside lamp, it hadn’t come on. And then, when she got out of bed, she’d found that the ceiling light wouldn’t work either. She’d gone to open the door but remembered, just in time: Never be seen outside your room in your normal clothes, no matter what happens . Anyhow, her jeans and stuff were in the case under the bed, so she’d thrown on the awful, stiff black dress – Edwardian maid’s standard issue – before venturing out into the cold and musty darkness of the upper landing, flicking switches to find that none of the electric lights was functioning. Feeling her way to the top of the stairs under this eerie green glow from the smoke alarm, peering down to see most of the guests stumbling onto the main landing which was dim and full of shadows but a little brighter than upstairs because it was lit by – wow, cool – an incandescent thimble on a bracket. She’d noticed several of these gas mantles around the place but never imagined that they might actually work. This was like totally disorientating, a time-shift, a sliding century. She recalled a woman saying faintly, Is this real?
    ‘You roused the entire household, Major.’ A raised forefinger. The Major tried to rise but fell back into the wings of the chair. ‘But you made very sure that you would be the first one to re-enter the study – this sombre room of death where poor Lady Hartland lay cooling in her own congealing blood. And you had to be the first one to enter . Is that not so?’
    ‘Fairy-tale nonsense, sir.’ But the Major’s voice was slurred with guilt. Was he really a major? He’d been chatting in the bar an hour or so ago, explaining that he’d been based at Brecon until his retirement. Was that all made up?
    The lamplight wavered. Jane felt bemused. It was working .
    Last night, when