Everything in Its Place

The gate hut was the size of a confessional and about as warm. Gil Tanner sat inside it with a flask, a paraffin lamp and a gate log he had never been asked to read, a long, fussy, beautifully kept record in pencil. He was seventy and had been the night watchman for thirty years, and he had the placid air of someone who had seen most things come through that gate and been surprised by almost none of them.

“Pickets stood off at dusk,” he said. “Mr Rudd’s rule. Nobody laid a finger on the gate.” He turned the log round. “Mr Penhale came in the side way at eight minutes to ten, with the chapel key. Mr Crane at five to. I heard shouting after, something about a calling, something about flats. Then nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Rain,” said Gil. “Only rain.” He sipped his tea. “Mr Penhale left at twenty past. Hands in his pockets. Walked like a man who’d put something down.” He looked into the lamp. “I told the constable.”

“And?”

“He wrote down confused.” Gil shrugged, a small, patient movement of the shoulders. “I’m seventy. When you’re seventy, the world’s stopped asking what you saw and started asking how you’re feeling.”