with her parents. And when a concerned mother came looking for her daughter and found the girl with Eliot, she kicked up something of a fuss around here. Who could blame her?
'But Beth's obsession was now Eliot. He and his unseen world had become her world. There was nothing anyone could do. She was old enough to make her own choices.
'We did not know a great deal about Beth before this time, save the fact that she was generally regarded as something of a loner. Very withdrawn. Maybe shy or perhaps even a little disturbed. The worst kind of girl for Eliot to become entangled with. If she had been more outgoing, more independent perhaps, and sure of her own mind, none of this may have happened. She may not have allowed herself to have been led.
'And again we tried to reason with our friend and again he refused to listen. His work had reached what he called "a significant stage" to which Beth was vital. And she was out there at his cottage, living with him, when one of the student papers got hold of Banquet for the Damned. An expos茅 of his use of drugs in the sixties circulated. Mescaline experimentation may have been nothing more than an affectation of his youth, but no one seemed ready to think so now the girl was in the picture. Things were very tense here.
'He only broke his silence at the end of the semester, to deliver a long-overdue paper at Cambridge. Harry and I travelled down with a coachful of the students, who still thought him "cool". Quite touching really, but the silence on the coach's return journey was absolute.
'His paper was billed as a discussion of Scottish witchcraft as a cultural phenomenon in pre-Reformation belief systems. But instead of delivering the expected paper, Eliot revealed the rather dramatic findings of his paranormal group's work.
'He was laughed off the stage.
'He claimed to have made some manner of direct contact with a notorious coven, and its unwholesome familiar, from the sixteenth century. He suggested the most preposterous ideas about their existing influence in St Andrews. He claimed a tradition of ghostly sightings and unexplained events was the direct result of their continuing manifestations. Tape recordings of Ben and Beth speaking as go-betweens were played during the seminar.
'I'll never understand what tempted him to play those recordings. Did he have no idea as to how people would react? I think Harry and I both realised then just how far removed he'd become from reality. One couldn't help pitying him.
'Still, Eliot was lucky in one respect. Bloody lucky the police never made inquiries. The voices of the students were awful. And as for the other sounds that one could hear in the background . . . Well, they were rather more disturbing.
'Eliot was furious with the reaction. I suppose it took him back to the personal attacks from critics he endured over Banquet for the Damned. But who could blame his audience? People had gathered from all over the country to hear him speak about witchcraft in a historical context, and here he was spouting the most ridiculous claptrap about the existence of spirits in St Andrews, before shocking his audience with those recordings.
'He disgraced himself. And the university. On his return to St Andrews, his position was cut right back to a rather tenuous consultancy role. There was only one year left on his contract and it was generally believed he would go once this period had concluded. He was finished. Ruined. And he brought it all upon himself.
'His drinking worsened after Cambridge. He was never the same again. And there was little more we could establish as to what exactly he was doing with Beth and Ben out at the cottage now. All three of them had withdrawn from any outside contact. It was at this point that Harry and I decided to intervene more forcibly than in any of our previous attempts. It was hard to imagine the situation worsening since the time of the paranormal society, but it was. Now, even we came to believe that students were in danger. Grave danger.
'As a last resort, we thought that what remained of our former friendship could be used to make him see reason. As Hebdomidar, I also have a responsibility for student welfare, and had a right to investigate his relationship with Ben while the young man was still matriculated as a student here. So, we visited his home.
'In Harry's