“Goodbye, Mr. Melton. Take care,” she said.

“You too, my dear. I mean that. Take real care. You’re exploring dangerous territory. The door to the past opens north. The devil lives there.”

She went down the short garden path, out of the little wicker gate, and crossed the road. On the other side she paused and looked back.

He was still on his threshold. With his head cocked on one side and his lurid waistcoat, he resembled a robin scanning its territory for insects or intruders.

She gave him a wave. He didn’t wave back but turned and went into the cottage. It was like losing sight of a friend as you embarked on a long and perilous voyage.

As Sam approached the great iron gate of St. Ylf’s she saw it stood open and there was a vehicle parked outside. She’d only seen it once before but she was sure it was the Gowder twins’ old pickup.

At the gateway, she hesitated. Though still without concrete evidence that one of the twins was responsible for her fall beneath the tower, she didn’t relish the prospect of running into them again without witnesses. But she needed to talk to Rev. Pete. If he wasn’t in the church, she’d do a quick turnaround and head back out, she promised herself.

She set out up the path. There was no sign of Gowders in the graveyard. When she reached the church door, she made sure its gothic groan came out at full pitch, and called as she pushed, “Hi there. Rev. Pete. It’s me, Sam Flood.”

No reply came, but there was something in the silence which gave notice of a listener as much as any words.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside.

The gloom wasn’t anywhere near as deep as she’d expected. The reason lay straight before her.

The Devil’s Door stood open.

Through it she could see the Wolf-Head Cross. Before it crouched a man.

Or perhaps, because she saw at once it was the vicar, and because it was the sacred symbol of his religion that towered above him, perhaps what she meant was knelt a man.

But what she thought was crouched.

She moved toward him, again saying, “Hi” as she passed through the Devil’s Door.

He reacted to her voice, half glancing round, and by the time she got close to him he was pretty definitely kneeling.

She heard the sound of a rackety engine starting up and, looking back through the two open doors to the churchyard gate, she saw the Gowder pickup moving away.

Swinebank struggled to his feet. Sam noticed his knees were stained with grass, the price you expected to pay for outdoor praying. But to get your left shoulder and thigh in the same state required a devotional contortion not usually undertaken by Protestants.

“Miss Flood,” he said, rather tremulously.

“Sorry to disturb your praying, Vicar, if that’s what you were doing…?”

She let the question hang.

He tried a smile and said, “You must think me eccentric, but it is a cross, after all…”

She looked up at the towering artifact and the wolf grinned back down at her.

“Maybe,” she said. “Though to me it looks the kind of thing you’re more likely to slit a goat’s throat in front of than do a Christopher Robin. You OK?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Is there something I can help you with?” he said in a peremptory tone which sounded more affected than real.

She shrugged. If his sermons were so bad his parishioners beat up on him, it was none of her business.

She said, “I wanted to ask you something about what happened a long time ago. More than forty years. The day my namesake, Sam Flood the curate, topped himself.”

She admitted she might have phrased it better, but his reaction seemed over the top. There was anger on his face, and loathing. It took her a moment to realize they weren’t directed at herself.

She said, “I’m sorry if I’m bringing back bad memories. I know all about them, how they can hurt. There’s just something I need to clear up… about Mr. Flood…”

“I killed him, you know,” he said abruptly.

Jesus! she thought. Not another one taking on responsibility for Saint Sam’s death!

“I don’t think so,” she said gently. “He was on the edge and he went over, no one’s fault, certainly not yours.”

“What do you know about it?” he demanded.

“Not much, but at least I’m trying to bring stuff to light,” she retorted.

He stood stock-still for a moment then said, “You’re quite right. Light, it’s time for light. Keeping things hidden never does any good. Like Sam’s memorial. All that grows up as cover is filthy weeds!”

He went to the wall behind the cross and started dragging out the briars and nettles. Soon his hands were red and bloody, but he didn’t stop till the inscription was clear.

“There,” he said, standing back. “It’s been too long. I’m glad you came back, Miss Flood. When I heard you’d gone away, I felt relieved. But I knew it was only a respite. Like a calm patch in the middle of a storm. You take a deep breath and you think, well, that wasn’t so bad. But you know inside that the storm’s only taking a breather too and will be back at you before you know it. Shall we go into the church and sit down and talk?”

His voice was calm, the calm of acceptance, of submission even. But Sam recalled Melton’s warning not to take risks.

“Out here and standing suits me fine,” she said.

While she was pretty certain most of Swinebank’s anger was directed at himself, you never knew precisely where you were with these religious guys. Except maybe Mig. OK, perhaps she was silly to make an exception just because she liked the guy and had slept with him, but somehow she was pretty sure he wouldn’t hear the voice of God telling him, It’s sacrifice time, and if you don’t have a goat, a redheaded girl will do!

Rev. Pete she wasn’t so sure about. Pretty sure, but not enough to want to go into that dark scary church with him. Out here she reckoned she could leave a guy in skirts for dead from a standing start.

“Very well. Before our Wolf-Head Cross. That may be fitting.”

She followed his gaze.

There it stood, packed full of messages from the past, maybe messages for the future. She thought on the whole most religions were crap, but religion wasn’t the same as belief. They called this a Viking cross. She didn’t know a lot about Vikings but she had a picture of them as large bold-faced men, doers not dreamers, undaunted by ferocious storms and mountainous seas, always ready for a scrap. What they believed in must have derived from what they were, and when they settled here they’d decided this cross would make a necessary statement of that belief. So there it was, paying lip service to the rules and repressions of this new intangible god who’d crept up from the south with the insidious inevitability of global warming, but at bottom making a plain statement of things as they were, an assertion of their own individuality, as true and uncompromising as a mathematical proof.

Her heart jolted in her breast at the feeling that finally the time of truth was close.

But her voice was calm as she said, “Pete, let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Couple of questions first to get you going. Why didn’t you tell the police that Edie Appledore had been visiting Sam the day he died? And what was it you went to his room to talk about?”

He turned to look at her almost with exasperation, as if she were interfering in some well-ordered, perfectly thought-out scheme.

“Oh no,” he said. “The day Sam died wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was when little Pam Galley, your grandmother, was orphaned and came to live with the Gowders. Or maybe it was when Madge Gowder was diagnosed with cancer. Or maybe it was the day she gave birth to the twins.”

“They were here when I arrived, weren’t they?” said Sam. “What were they doing? Threatening you?”

Some certainties just arrive, and then you spend days at the blackboard working out where they came from.