And through that dark, through the dead, dangling branches intermingling above the drive, he could just make out the ruin of the abbey in the distance: “the broken wedge of a chapel wall, the slanting monuments of its ancient churchyard.”

Storm straightened and took a breath, trying to clear his head. He turned to the house again.

Sophia had crossed the threshold. Sir Michael was holding the door open for him.

Well, he thought, he had come to England to find a ghost story, hadn’t he?

And, forcing a smile, he walked into Belham Grange.

2

Detective Inspector William Pullod stood in the church round and watched the old woman. She was moving slowly among the stone effigies of dead crusaders. Prodding them with that freaky dragon stick of hers as if she half expected them to come to life. Frowning and muttering under her wide-brimmed hat, darting glances here and there from behind her goggly spectacles.

DI Pullod sluiced the air from one cheek to another, rolled his eyes.

He was a small, quick, sinewy man, a balding weight-lifter with shoulders that seemed ready to burst the seams of his raincoat. He hated wasting time and he hated dead ends. And he hated churches too, if it came to that. He found them creepy, lonesome and yet weirdly alive—like a house where all the clocks have suddenly stopped ticking.

This one, the Temple Church, was bright enough with its big doors open to the noonday sunlight. Busy enough with a group of Japanese tourists chattering as they examined the stained-glass windows down at the other end. Here in the round, though, there were disturbing, distorted faces sculpted on the columns of the arches. They stared down from every side at the stone knights lying twisted on the floor. And it was creepy. Like the old darling herself.

Still, Pullod thought, there was definitely something about her. Nutter that she was. With her Saint Iago who never lived, and her Argentinian cult that never existed. Supernatural conspiracy theories. Little gray men and such. She ought to work for ITV, he thought. Still. Her eyes were sharp as a needle, smart. And she looked like she’d been alive forever. Sounded like it too with her gruff, grave voice. Not to mention the fact that she’d identified Lester Benbow from his photofit, and Pullod would’ve given his teeth to catch up with that scar-lipped assassin.

He strolled over to the woman now, his hands in his overcoat pockets.

“Everything look in order, love?” he asked her. He kept his voice low. Churches had that effect on him.

“Yes,” murmured Harper Albright after a moment. “Yes.” She went on prodding the dead crusaders with her stick.

Pullod ran his eyes over the gibbering faces on the walls. He could not restrain a weary sigh. “You’re sure this is where you saw him last, this Iago fellow?”