‘Yes, of course. I’ve finished anyway. Thank you again for the ticket thing.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said formally, and glanced at the leather-bound folios with their tarnished metal clasps. ‘Remarkable how soulless those old records can be, isn’t it? Do you have a particular interest in church history, Miss Weston?’
‘Not a particular one. It’s Latchkill Asylum I’m trying to trace.’ She caught a flicker of something behind his eyes. ‘Just a research project. Or were you wondering if it was a case of poacher turned gamekeeper?’
‘Not in the least. You clearly saw something yesterday that frightened you. I shouldn’t think you were normally an hysterical type.’
‘I’m not,’ said Antonia shortly, and then, ‘Could I buy you a cup of coffee by way of peace-offering for the hysterics?’ It came out awkwardly, because she had got out of the way of this kind of thing, and she fully expected a polite refusal.
But he said, ‘If you’d rather have something stronger than coffee we could walk across the square to the Rose and Crown.’
They ended up having cider and cheese rolls in the Rose and Crown–the boy from the library came in after them, and nodded politely, before seating himself near the bar, and becoming absorbed in a book and a plate of sandwiches.
Oliver Remus talked–a bit guardedly at first, and then more easily–about Quire House and Amberwood and the villages around it. Antonia was interested, but had to remind herself not to relax too much in case an awkward question was suddenly put to her. Are you here on holiday, Miss Weston? Where are you from? Do you have a job, or do you just make a career out of bizarre hallucinations?
But Oliver Remus did not ask any questions, and he did not volunteer anything about himself. Antonia, who had built her own barriers, was aware that he was deeply reserved, but by the time he had ordered two cups of coffee to round off their modest meal, she thought it was probably all right to ask how long he and Godfrey Toy had been at Quire.
‘Six years,’ he said, readily enough. ‘It was very neglected. After Thomasina Forrester–you’ve come across the lady, have you?–well, after she died there was no heir, and it got passed around various local authorities, none of whom were really responsible for its maintenance. Rather bizarrely the First World War saved it–it was requisitioned for a military nursing home and the army spruced it up quite well. We’re just starting to get it on the tourist map now. Along with the antiquarian books set-up.’
‘That must be rewarding.’
‘Yes, it is, but there’s not a great deal of money in it. Or were you cherishing a romantic view of antiquarian book dealers? Tracking down lost Shakespearean first folios or unpublished sonnets of Keats? Ransacking forgotten libraries and archives in remote corners of ancient cities, with sunlight picking out the tooled leather of calf-bound books—’
‘Trekking out to ancient houses whose owners have died, and haggling with greedy relatives,’ said Antonia caustically. ‘And flogging the results to collectors with money but no discernment or museums with discernment but no money.’
He smiled, and Antonia saw that he was younger than he had first seemed–perhaps early forties–and also that he was no longer so hostile. He said, ‘Godfrey is always expecting all kinds of priceless gems to turn up, but they rarely do.’
It was said with a kind of affectionate exasperation, but there was still an air of distance about him, as if he disliked the world and preferred to keep it at arm’s length. Antonia had the sudden impression that he had buried his real self so deeply that a kind of brittle ghost-fa?ade had developed and was called into service for public occasions. There had been a time when this would have attracted her professional curiosity and when she would have wanted to get behind the carapace and find out what had created it. But she only said, ‘Will your Trust buy up any of the other old buildings?’