XVI

The following day went pretty much as she’d anticipated. They passed an uncomfortable night in the car, parked just outside Scarinish, and at noon or thereabouts boarded the ferry for the return journey to Oban. Her only problem on the drive south was her own exhaustion, which she kept at bay with copious amounts of coffee. But it still crept up on her, so that by the time she finally got home, at four in the morning, she was barely able to keep her thoughts in order. For his part, Will remained in the same trancelike condition that had possessed him since the destruction of the house. It was plain to her he knew she was there beside him, because he could answer questions as long as they were simple (do you want a sandwich, do you want a cup of coffee?), but he wasn’t seeing the same world that she was seeing. He had to fumble to find the coffee cup and, even when he did, deposited half the contents over him as he drank from it.

The food she plied him with was eaten mechanically, as though his body was going through the motion without the assistance of his conscious mind.

She knew where his thoughts resided. He was still enraptured by the house, or by his memories of it. She did her best not to resent him for his detachment, but it was hard when the problems of the here and now were so demanding. She felt abandoned; there was no other word for it. He was inviolate in his trance, while she was exhausted, confused, and frightened.

There would be questions to answer when people realized she was back from her travels, difficult questions. She wanted Will there to help her formulate some answers to them. But nothing she said to him roused him from his fugue. He stared on into middle distance and dreamed his dreams of the Domus Mundi.

There was a worse betrayal to come. When she woke the following morning, having passed four grateful hours in her own bed, she discovered he’d vacated the couch where she’d put him to rest, and wandered out of the house, leaving the front door wide open. She was infuriated. Yes, he’d witnessed a great deal in the House, but so had she, and she hadn’t gone wandering off in the middle of the night, damn it.

She called the police after breakfast and made her presence known. They were at the house three quarters of an hour later, plying her with questions about all that had happened in the Donnelly house. Plainly they viewed her departure from the scene of Sherwood’s demise as strange, perhaps even evidence of mental imbalance, but not an indication of guilt. They already had their suspects: The two itinerants who had been seen in the vicinity of the Donnelly house for two or three days prior to the murder. She was happy to name them and to offer detailed descriptions; and yes, she was certain they were the same pair who had tormented Will, her brother, and herself all those years ago. What, they wanted to know, was the connection between Sherwood and these two, that he’d been there in the Donnelly house in the first place? She told them she didn’t know. She had followed her brother there, she said, intending to bring him home, and had discovered Steep in mid-assault. Then she’d given chase. Yes, it had been a stupid thing to do, of course. But she’d been witless with shock and anger, surely they understood that.

All that she had been able to think about was finding and confronting the man who’d murdered her brother.

How far had she tracked him, the detectives wanted to know. Here she told her direct lie. Only as far as the Lake District, she’d said; then she’d lost them.

Finally, the oldest of the detectives, a man by the name of Faraday, came to the question she’d been waiting to hear.

“How the hell does Will Rabjohns fit into the picture?”

“He came along with me,” she said simply.

“And why did he do that?” the man said, watching her intently. “For old times’ sake?”

She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, to which the detective replied that unlike his two companions, he was very familiar with what had happened here all those years ago; he’d been the man who’d tried to get the truth out of Will.

He’d failed, he admitted. But a good policeman—and he counted himself a good policeman—never closed a file while there were questions unanswered. And there were more unanswered questions in this file than any other on his shelves. So again, he said, what had been going on that she and Will had been together in this? She pretended innocence, sensing that Faraday, for all his doggedness, was no closer to understanding the mystery here than he’d been thirty years before. Perhaps he had some suspicions, but if they were anywhere close to the mark they were unlikely to be the kind he could have voiced in front of his colleagues. The truth lay very far from the usual realm of investigation, where a man like Faraday probably only ventured in his most private ruminations. Though he pressed his suit, she returned only the blandest answers, and he finally gave up on the business, defeated by his own reluctance to put the pieces in their true order. Of course he wanted to know where Will was now, to which Frannie truthfully answered that she didn’t know. He’d disappeared from the house this morning, and could be anywhere.

Stymied in his inquiries, Faraday warned that this interview would not be the end of the matter. There would be identifications to be made if and when the culprits were apprehended.

She wished him luck in finding them, and he departed, with his colleagues in tow.

The interview had taken up almost all of the day, but with what was left of it she set about the melancholy business of planning Sherwood’s funeral. She would go over to the hospice in Skipton tomorrow and find out from the doctors if they thought she should tell her mother the sad news. Meanwhile, she had a lot of organizing to do.

In the early evening, she answered the door to find Helen Morris, of all people, come to offer her condolences. Helen had never been a particularly close friend, and Frannie harbored the suspicion that the woman had come calling to garner some gossip, but she was glad of the company anyway. And it was comforting, in its petty way, to know that Helen, who was one of the most conservative women in the village, saw fit to spend a few hours with her. Whatever people were surmising about events in the Donnelly house, they would not find Frannie culpable. It made her think that perhaps she owed Helen and the rest of the folks puzzling over this mystery a helping hand. That maybe in a month or two, when she was feeling a little more confident, she’d stand up between the hymns at the Sunday service and tell the whole sad and wonderful truth. Maybe nobody would ever speak to her again if she did so; maybe she’d become the Madwoman of Burnt Yarley. And maybe that would be a price worth paying.