Caroline Minuscule by Andrew Taylor Page B

well, but Dougal had opposed this, strongly and successfully. She was far too valuable to be risked and in any case he preferred to go alone. If he had to be afraid, he would rather be so without witnesses. She would dine at the hotel, keep an eye out for Lee and, if necessary, explain his absence by saying that he had succumbed to Nausea in F-sharp Minor.
    He passed the marketplace – the violin-playing vagrant had gone; Dougal had dropped some change into his cap while out shopping in the afternoon. He imagined the man snug in a public bar, his overcoat open to the warmth and a pint glass in front of him. But the glow of philanthropy which this image conjured was shortlived. It left him as he walked down River Hill towards Bridge Street – the least conspicuous way of reaching the Canons’ Meadow. He passed a pub; he was tempted to go in for a drink or two and then return to Amanda with the lie that Bleeders Hall had been impossible to break into.
    He forced himself onwards –
how mature of you
, commented the mocking, inner voice of unreason. No, it’s not, he thought, if I were mature I wouldn’t be here in the first place. Maturity was a stage you were always going to reach in a couple of years. Dougal rather doubted he would ever get there. Perhaps maturity wasn’t so much a state as an illusion – a condition of social beatitude which had its only reality in the minds of other people.
    The wind hit him as he turned into Bridge Street. He huddled into his duffel coat and felt like a character in one of those French films whose charm resided in the fact that you never knew quite what was happening but you did know it must be extraordinarily meaningful.
    The meadow was protected by a wall of roughcast stone topped with broken glass. Dougal walked along until he came to the gate – a grandiose, mock-Gothic erection which looked as if it had strayed into the Fens from a pantomime version of Robin Hood.
    He plodded into the field, his pace slowing automatically as the ground began to rise and the street lighting receded. It was suddenly very dark. He knew the cathedral was up there in front of him, though he found it difficult to tell which of his senses was supplying the information. Gradually he began to pick out lights in the nave and choir windows – probably dim at the best of times and filtered through paint and a film of dirt on the glass. Several of the visible windows of the houses in the close were alight, including two in Infirmary Lane. The patch of darkness between them must be Bleeders Hall.
    He tripped over a fallen branch on the ground and swore. He made himself go more slowly. It was unexpectedly eerie out here in the open, though the feeling decreased as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
    The wall which ran along the backs of the gardens gradually unscrambled itself from the shadows. Dougal stretched out his right hand and felt the rough surface of the door in the wall; the old paint flaked beneath his touch. He congratulated himself with disproportionate fervour. It seemed very important that, although he was as scared as ever, he was still capable of finding his way in the dark.
    The evening was reassuringly quiet; the only sounds were remote, emphasizing rather than punctuating the overall impression of silence. A train was clattering along the railway on the far side of the river; car engines grumbled like urban indigestion in the center of Rosington; and the wind provided a gentle background, as undefinably present as the background hiss on a record. Dougal could hear nothing, human or otherwise, which qualified as a risk for him. He told himself firmly that, if the worst came to the worst, one of the three exits from Canons’ Meadow should give him an escape route.
    He pulled himself slowly up to the top of the wall, the surface of the mortar crumbling slightly beneath his touch. He sat on the top for a moment, listening and peering down at the