The Prayer of the Night Shepherd Read Online Free PDF

they’d all come staggering down, the Major had been standing at the foot of the stairs, his back to the door of the study which all yesterday had been kept locked. Oh Lord, something terrible appears to have happened! Please, madam, you’d best not look. At this point, the study door had swung ajar behind him and you could see the bare lower legs of the corpse, pale as altar candles, receding into shadow. That had worked, too. Christ , Jane had thought, for that one crucial moment.
    ‘So.’ The man in black cleared his throat. ‘We know why you murdered her, and now we know how. There remains only—’
    ‘The question of proof. Of which you have none.’ The Major waved a dismissive hand and turned away, gazing towards the long window. Headlamps flashed on it, tongues of creamy light distorting in the rainy panes. It was probably the Cravens, reversing out to go home. Oh, hell , Jane thought, I was supposed to have drawn the curtains . At least Ben had his back to the window, so he wouldn’t have noticed. Jane put up a hand to her white, frilly headband, making sure it hadn’t slid off again.
    ‘Proof, Major?’ A faint sneer, a languid hand reaching down by the side of the chair. ‘If we’re looking for proof—’
    ‘Leave that alone! How dare you, sir!’
    ‘—Then we need hardly look very far.’
    The man in black had found a walking stick, ebony, with a brass handle in the shape of a cobra’s head. As he weighed it in his hands, you could hear the distant visceral scraping of a solo violin. Should have sounded naff, but it was somehow exactly right, timed to underscore the tension as the stick was proffered to the man in the chair.
    ‘If you please, Major... or shall I?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘Then we shall waste no more time!’ Snatching back the stick and holding it over the table, next to the oil lamp, so that everyone could see him twist the cobra’s head.
    No! The Major sat up. ‘That—’
    The snake head came off, the hollow shaft of the walking stick was very gently shaken. The man in black was somehow manipulating the light so that everyone’s attention was on his hands, and on the stick... and on this big red stone that rolled out and lay there glowing on the very edge of the table.
    ‘Hmm. The Fontaine Ruby, I imagine.’
    The Major half rose from his chair, as though he was about to make a break for it. Several spontaneous gasps wafted out of the shadows, from people who had spent most of the afternoon searching for this paste ruby – with the walking stick conspicuously propped up in the hallstand the whole time.
    The man in black didn’t even glance at it. Gems, in themselves, clearly held no big fascination for him; even his interest in the Major was waning now that guilt was proved. They both glanced towards the door, which had opened to reveal this guy bulked out by a huge tweed overcoat. The Major slumped back.
    ‘I think this is all the evidence we require,’ the man in black said mildly. ‘You may arrest him now, Lestrade.’
    Silence. And then the electric lights came up and the applause kicked in: genuine appreciation, a couple of actual cheers. A triumph. You couldn’t fault it.
    When the lights came fully on, everything seemed duller and shabbier, the country-house drawing room reverting to hotel lounge, the oil lamp dimming into history. And Sherlock Holmes was Ben Foley again, closing his eyes in relief.
    Afterwards, when the bar was closed, Jane went down to the kitchen to collect mugs of bedtime hot chocolate to serve to the twelve guests. Earlier, she’d heard Ben saying that twelve was barely enough to make the weekend pay for itself, and they were all too old, and the whole thing was an embarrassment.
    The kitchen had flagged floors and high windows and room for a whole bunch of servants, but it was dominated by the new island unit that Ben had assembled from the debris of a bankrupt butcher’s shop in Leominster. If most