Dead Men's s Boots

Not really silence: Lionel Palance’s breathing was hoarse and hesitant and clearly audible, and the two nurses were bustling off to one side of me, Kim stacking the medications back in the right places on the table while the male nurse bundled up the old man’s soiled pyjamas and put them in a plastic laundry bin. Something beeped in a vaguely emergency-room tone, but I couldn’t see what or where it was.

Not really silence: but then I wasn’t really listening, at least to any of that stuff. I was listening to Lionel: to the rhythm of his soul and self, the music I’d play if I ever wanted to summon him or send him away.

It was very faint, but it was there. More to the point, it was right: the key and the tone and the chords and the pace and the nuance all felt like they belonged there. He was himself: not a ghost riding flesh it had no claim to; not a demon playing with a meat puppet. Just a frail old man living out his last days in a second childhood, surrounded by all the luxuries that money could buy.

And yet he was part of all this: part of whatever was happening at Mount Grace. How could he not be, when he was the owner of the place? Covington had said that Palance hadn’t had anything to do with the crematorium for more than a decade: but we were looking at events that had played out over more than a century, so a few years more or less were no more than a drop in» th fo the ocean.

I couldn’t question Palance, obviously, and it looked like I’d got all I was going to get from Covington.

I backed quietly out of the room and rejoined Covington on the landing. There was nothing in his face or manner to indicate that he’d been moved or upset a few minutes earlier: he was cold and functional now, almost brusque.

‘What do you think you’ll do?’ he asked me, as we walked back down the stairs. ‘I mean, you came here for a reason, didn’t you? You’re looking into this, and it’s not just because you want John’s widow to have closure.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I came here for a reason. Too many people have died, Covington. And the body count its higher now than it was this time yesterday.