The Shadowy Horses

We all of us felt it, I think. David, freshly showered but still unshaved, sat silently across from me, head lowered, deep in thought. And even Fabia, who'd arrived home in a relatively good mood just as we sat down to eat, showed signs of growing restlessness.

"I'll give him a hand," she said, suddenly, and Peter glanced up distractedly from his papers.

"Give who a hand?"

"Adrian. With the report. I'm much quicker on the keyboard than he is, it'll take him an age to type all that into the computer."

"Oh, right." Her grandfather nodded his assent. "A good idea."

That opinion was shared, predictably, by Adrian himself, who wasted no time in finishing his own coffee. His face, as he guided Fabia from the room, put me in mind of an indolent cat who'd just been handed the keys to the canary cage.

David leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, awaiting instructions. "And what can I do?"

"You, my boy," said Peter, glancing at his watch, "can drive me into Berwick, if you'd be so kind. I promised your mother I'd look in on her this evening. We can take the Range Rover, if Fabia's left any petrol in it."

"Aye, all right." David pushed his chair back, looked at me. "You're welcome to come, if you like, but be warned. My mother hates being in hospital, especially Berwick hospital."

Peter commented that Berwick hospital was, in his opinion, rather nice.

"Aye, but if you die there," David said, "you die in England. That's a terrible fate for a Scot. So my mother's been giving them hell, all the nurses and doctors, in hopes they'll send her home. And unless they've shot her with a tranquillizer dart," he told me, "I'm not sure that she'll be fit for you to meet."

I smiled. "That's all right. I should probably stay here, anyway. I've plenty of work to do myself, before tomorrow."

But when everyone had gone, I couldn't find a single bit of really useful work that needed to be done. I had no desire to wander up to the Principia, not in the dark, and anyway,

I knew it was more than my life was worth to spoil Adrian's seduction scene. I would have cleared the dishes from the dining room and done the washing up, only Jeannie wouldn't hear of it.

So, thwarted in my efforts to be useful, I retreated to the red-walled sitting room, where Peter kept his television.

The cats, at least, were glad of my company. They'd been ignored for most of the day, while Peter worked on his report, and as usual they'd been banned from the dining room during our evening meal. I found them sulking on the sofa, curled like serpents around each other with their eyes shut tight, deliberately shunning humanity. But when I sat beside them. Murphy strolled over to settle himself on my lap, and Charlie stretched her graceful form out full length, purring like a motorboat, while I searched the television channels for something watchable.

My best bet seemed to be the nine o'clock news, followed by a supposedly suspenseful film that proved a disappointment. It was an American film, with a murky plot and a pace that dragged intolerably. Pure tosh, about some man who'd programmed his computer to commit the perfect murder ...

Computers ...

I sat upright. That was it. That's what had niggled at my brain last night, when I'd rung off from talking with my sister Alison. She'd mentioned Philip Quinnell, and the fact that, in the book she'd bought, he'd used computers to enhance his photographs. And since he'd passed his photographic skills onto Fabia, presumably she'd also learned a bit about computers. But had she learned enough, I wondered, to tamper with the system here at Rosehill?

The credits of the film began to roll, and Murphy yawned. "I know," I said, and switched the television off. "I'm only being paranoid." Practically everyone used computers in their work these days—it wasn't any crime. And just because somebody had the knowledge, didn't mean that they would use it. I might not like Fabia, I told myself, but that hardly gave me reason to believe she'd want to sabotage the dig.

Puttering through to the kitchen, I made myself a cup of tea, and then, since there was still no sign of anyone returning, I went upstairs to bed. At least one of us, I reasoned, ought to have a good night's sleep, so as to be alert for Dr. Connelly tomorrow.

My bed looked different, sheets and coverlet pulled up unevenly, as though someone had turned it down and made it up again. And then I realized that was exactly what had happened. David hadn't used the spare bed, by the window, to take his nap. He'd used mine. Not that he'd have any way of knowing which bed was which, I reasoned—they looked identical. And not that I really minded, come to that.

There was a certain sinful pleasure in knowing he'd been sleeping in my bed; in sliding between sheets that his body had recently warmed, and pressing my face to the pillow that still smelled faintly of his hair, his aftershave. I tugged the blankets up and rolled to switch the light off, feeling drowsy and at peace.

The cats, curled at my feet, slept soundly, deeply, silently. And if the horses came that night, I didn't hear them.

XXIV

It was the birdsong that woke me, as the first pale rays of sunlight crept across my windowsill and spread their gentle shadows through my room. Smiling, I nudged aside the sleeping cats and rose and stretched and went to greet the day. Through my window I could see a cloudless sky arched wide above a world of brilliant green; the distant edge of blue that was the sea; the scattering of primroses beneath the dancing branches of the chestnut tree; and Peter, leaning on the stone fence with his back toward me, watching the empty field.