The Sword of Straw (The Sangreal Trilogy, 2)

Parents and Children


Bartlemy Goodman was home the night the burglars came. He usually was at home. For a man who had seen so much, and done so much, he now led a very tranquil life, or so it appeared, visiting the village of Eade mainly to see Annie Ward, who was widely thought to be his niece, and rarely venturing beyond Crowford. He was known to own the bookshop where Annie and her son lodged, and believed to be a collector, though no one was quite sure of what. The villagers accepted his unspecified eccentricities, and respected him for no particular reason, except that he appeared worthy of respect. It was a part of his Gift that he could pass almost unremarked in the local community, giving rise to no gossip, awakening no curiosity, though he had lived at Thornyhill, the old house out in the woods, since the original Thorns had sold up and all but died out generations before. Without really thinking about it, people assumed that the house had been bought by Bartlemy's grandfather, or some other elderly relative, and had passed on from Goodman to Goodman until it reached the present incumbent. They never wondered why each successive owner should look the same, or remain apparently the same age, around sixty; indeed, had anyone been asked, they would have sworn to little differences among the Bartlemys, to periods of absence following the death of one when another must have been growing up somewhere abroad. Nor did they ever wonder about the dog.

Every Goodman had had a dog, a large shaggy creature of mixed parentage and universal goodwill, with bright, intelligent eyes under whiskery eyebrows, and a lolling tongue. This one was called Hoover, because he devoured crumbs, and indeed anything else that came his way. The most wonderful cooking smells in the world would forgather in Bartlemy's kitchen, and the generosity of the leftovers made it canine heaven. Hoover had no reputation for savagery, welcoming every visitor, even the postman, with amiable enthusiasm, yet perhaps because of him the house had never been burgled before, except for the strange incident the previous year, and in that case the stolen object--which had belonged to someone else--had eventually been returned by Bartlemy himself, though no one knew how he retrieved it. The house was isolated, unprotected by alarms or security, and with the vague rumors that Bartlemy "collected" it should have been an obvious target, yet until that night in late April the criminal fraternity had left it alone.

The burglars were two youths, as the newspapers would have called them, an Asian boy from Crowford who was only seventeen, and his sixteen-year-old sidekick, who was big and ginger-haired and not very bright. Getting in was easy: they broke a window, which was stupid, because the back door wasn't locked, and were just checking out the sitting room when the dog pounced. He didn't bark: it would've meant wasting time. Bartlemy came downstairs, wrapped in an enormous dark blue dressing gown with stars on it, to find the ginger-haired sidekick shivering in a corner while the other boy lay on his back with Hoover standing over him. He wasn't growling--he never growled--but the boy could see, behind the panting tongue and doggy grin, two rows of large yellow teeth that wouldn't have looked out of place on a wolf. There was a knife lying on the rug a little way away. Bartlemy picked it up by the blade. Afterward, the boy puzzled over how the house owner had known to come down, when neither the intruders nor the dog had made much noise.

"This is--this is assault," the youth stammered, keeping his voice to a whisper. "I can sue."

"I haven't assaulted you," Bartlemy pointed out in his placid way.

"The dog--"

"He hasn't assaulted you, either." Yet, said the ensuing pause.

"We didn't mean no harm," offered Ginger, between sullenness and fright.

"I'm sure you didn't. I'll telephone the police, and then you can sit down with me, and have a cookie, and while we wait you can tell me what you did mean."

The call was made, and somehow the boys didn't argue, perching nervously on the edge of Bartlemy's sofa and nibbling homemade cookies while Hoover stood by, watching them in a proprietary manner. Ginger was known for beating up older boys, and the little Asian--his name was Ram--made up in aggression what he lacked in size, but they sat as quiet as if they were at a vicarage tea party, and God was waiting with a thunderbolt for one of them to burp.

"Someone sent you here, didn't they?" said Bartlemy. "What were you looking for?"

Mouths opened and shut, and Ginger choked on a cookie crumb, but this time it was Ram who looked most afraid.

"No one sent us," he said at last.

"It was your own idea?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm the one with the ideas."

"Do you think it was a good idea?"

"No."

"Are you sure no one sent you?" Bartlemy persisted.

Ram turned pale, and his mouth closed tight, and he looked almost relieved when the police arrived. He knew just how not to talk to the police. He'd sat through many interrogations, he was still underage, and insofar as it concerned himself he knew the law as well as any solicitor. But this man with his unruffled manner, and his alarming dog, and his calm blue gaze that seemed to see straight into your mind--this was something far more demoralizing than any bullying copper. Ram had a horrible feeling that given time--and a few more cookies--he would have been telling Bartlemy things even his mother didn't know. He was secretly thankful to settle for the more familiar option.

Watching them go with a sigh, Bartlemy surmised that if they had been sent, Ginger, at least, knew nothing of it. He returned to bed, and in the half hour before sleep considered possible lines of inquiry. A few days later, he telephoned an acquaintance in the CID.


Some months had passed since their last meeting, and Inspector Pobjoy had become chief inspector, helped by his recent arrest of a serial killer when most of his colleagues hadn't believed any murders had actually taken place. Bartlemy had been involved in that affair, which had been vaguely connected to the former theft at Thornyhill, and Pobjoy still darkly suspected that he knew many facts that had never emerged. There had been too many loopholes in the case, too many loose ends. Not that Bartlemy had ever been a suspect, though perhaps he should have been, caught as he was in the middle of things. However, Pobjoy was curiously glad to hear from him, and intrigued at the news of the attempted burglary, and he agreed instantly to come to Thornyhill for a cup of tea and an informal chat.

"You should lock your back door," he suggested when they met.

"But if I did that," Bartlemy said, "people wouldn't be able to get in." It was unanswerable. "Anyway, they broke a window. That's the kind they were: crude, not very clever. The sort who would always break a window, if there was a window to break. I was rather surprised to find them so unsubtle. Kids like that usually give this place a miss. I would've expected any burglar who came here to be more . . . sophisticated."

"Apart from that business last summer," Pobjoy said--carefully, since he felt the subject required care--"I notice you haven't really had any trouble here." He added: "I checked our records."

"Naturally," Bartlemy said. "I assumed you would. No, we haven't had much trouble at Thornyhill. I prefer to avoid it, if I can." He didn't say how, but Pobjoy, who was not a fanciful man, found himself wondering if the house had some intangible form of protection. Apart from...