Death in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope Read Free Book Online

convinced that it really did have some very special features. The way it was usually expressed was to talk about the blurring of boundaries between two realms. The thinning of the walls, the porosity of the divide between here and there . Since Pullman’s book The Subtle Knife had been published, this idea was easier to grasp. The ‘curtain’ became more flimsy and we could glimpse other realities.
    It had happened to me when I hadn’t been expecting it: when I had seen a ghost. An apparently three-dimensional person who ran through a dense hedge as if it wasn’t there at all. I found it thrilling, conferring on me some kind of privilege that I felt no need to talk about. I nursed my warm secret, bringing it out every October to remind myself that there was something right and true about my pagan beliefs, regardless of the materialistic world around me.
    Samhain is the time of death and sex, where ordinary individuals glimpse something of the relation between these two. Human babies tend to be conceived at Beltane or Lammas – the spring and summer festivals where inhibitions are quelled by music and drink and the weather impels them to excess. But this is not the way animals operate. They resist the farmer’s knife, surviving the cull triumphant, copulating to express their survival. Die or procreate – the eternal option.
    This is all perfectly ordinary stuff. So obvious it ought not to need stating. But people have a tendency to create dramas and conflicts out of ordinary matters, and some of the antics committed in the name of paganism glory in the nastier side of our natures.
    It might be merely the power of suggestion, but when a person knows a curse has been put on him, he’s liable to react strongly. It will haunt him,making him swagger defiantly, while using whatever strategies he can to forget. And the person imposing the curse doesn’t escape, either. We fear those we hurt, and it becomes curiously difficult to look our victim in the face.
    I should know. I’ve been there and done that.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The weather was persistently grey, with a hint of drizzle in the air. Twilight came early, as it had the day before, and I could see the yellow glow of candlelight coming from the windows of Greenhaven, and no let-up in the smoke surging from the chimney. What were they doing in there, I wondered. No television or hi-fi. Possibly a battery radio, but I doubted it. They’d be cuddled together on Helen’s leather sofa, talking sweet nonsense, hour after hour, until drifting entwined to bed. They’d eat bread and cold ham, drink wine and finish with fruit and chocolates.
    I’d kneaded my dough, and left it to rise. Early in the morning, I would put it in to bake, ready for breakfast. Probably I’d take a loaf across the street. They’d be impressed.
    Then, half an hour before people were due to arrive for the moot, Phil came knocking on my door again. This time I recognised who it was from the rhythm of the raps.
    ‘Me again,’ he said when I opened the door.
    I kinked an eyebrow at him but said nothing.
    ‘I’ve been back up to the attic. We can’t just ignore it or leave those things there. I’ve got to decide what to do about it.’
    ‘Why tell me?’
    He took a step forward, barging into my living room without being invited. He was holding the cardboard box from the attic. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is a very odd assortment. Nothing to suggest a Master or even a Past Master, except for this.’ He held up the blazing star medallion. ‘But it’s not quite right – see?’
    I didn’t even pretend to examine it. ‘Phil, I’m not that familiar with the intricacies of Masonic symbolism,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m surprised you remember so much detail.’
    He grimaced. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But seeing all this stuff takes me right back.’
    I could see he was hating the whole thing. He wouldn’t meet my eye, worried perhaps that I’d remind him of the drama that his resignation from