The Magus of Hay(112)

‘Attitudes were different, back then.’

‘But… I was retired now. I said – without promising anything – that I’d go back and review the case. They wanted to pay me, but I thought it was the least I could do. And it also gave me a reason to… feel worthwhile again. Every couple of weeks, I’ve been giving him a ring and going over a few things. Even tracked down a couple of former members of the Convoy – one of whom liked the area so much he came back, to live, with his family. Has a plumbing business now. One thing I was able to harden up was the evidence of Mephista’s relationship with Brace, which I now know to have been a close one.’

‘How close?’

‘Extremely close. She had what used to be called a crush on him. Which developed. He’d bring her back to Hay in his vehicle.’

‘She couldn’t have been here when he died if he lay undiscovered for so long.’

‘Couldn’t she? What if she didn’t want to go back to her parents? Or be called to give evidence at the inquest?’

‘But if Brace was dead… where could she go? She was just a kid.’

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

‘With the older girl, Cherry Banks?’

‘Cherry’s role in this… is uncertain. No mention of her again.’

Merrily watched the clouds breaking up over the vicarage chimneys. Going to be a clear night.

‘You learn anything from Mephista’s father that you didn’t learn at the time?’

‘Not a great deal. The truth is that it was not possible to pick up Mephista’s trail without access to the Brace family.’

‘Sir Charles? The old Mosleyite? How does that work?’

Sir Charles is indeed central to this. I, ah, went to his funeral.’

‘Where?’

‘Hereford Cathedral. As any detective will tell you, funerals can be… revelatory. Who’s shedding tears, who isn’t. Who’s shedding tears to an implausible extent. I finally struck pay-dirt, as they say, that evening, in discussion with a nephew of Sir Charles who, I think it’s safe to say, did not share his politics and was not expecting to receive anything in the will. He only came out of curiosity, to see who turned up.’

Merrily kept quiet. Gwyn Arthur evidently wasn’t taking her fully into his confidence. What had given him reason to think the Braces would know what had happened to Mephista?

He told her Sir Charles’s nephew had decided to skip the finale at the crematorium, to spend a couple of hours with him in the bar of the Castle House Hotel. Obviously some resentment here. Gwyn Arthur had learned how Sir Charles’s estate had been depleted by the arrival of a grandson.

‘Seems that not long after the death of their son, Sir Charles and Lady Brace were made aware of a young woman who insisted she was carrying Jerry’s child.’

‘Ah… And did he believe her?’

‘Might have been more resistant had she not been accompanied by someone he knew and trusted – and one can only assume this was in a political context. Perhaps someone who was a regular customer of Jerrold Brace and had got to know Mephista. Anyway – the upshot – he took her in.’

‘Adopted the child?’

‘This is where it gets interesting. My new friend, the nephew, believes both mother and child spent some time in London, at a hotel owned by friends of Sir Charles, who provided employment for the mother until what may have been her first marriage. The boy gets sent away to a series of famously tough boarding schools. Spending his holidays at one of the farms or communes we were discussing earlier. Where there’s a regime of fitness, self-sufficiency.’

‘But wasn’t Mephista resistant to all that?’

‘Hippy self-sufficiency is not the same, is it? This was not benign. It did not involve peace and love. And, anyway, it appears she didn’t go with him. Mephista seems to have spent most of her time in London, whoring around, in the words of Sir Charles’s disgusted nephew. He may have exaggerated. But as far as Sir Charles was concerned, it seems, her role, essentially, was over.’

‘So Brace’s grandson is taken from his mother at an early age… brought up as…’

‘As a warrior, I suppose.’

‘Sounds almost Spartan. In the original sense.’

‘Oh, it was. I was directed to specific websites where I read of young people being turned out into the hills for whole days and nights to live on what they could find, what they could kill or steal. Discovering their inner resources.’

‘What the hell kind of man was Sir Charles?’

‘I’d say a man who was ashamed at his son failing to live up to the Aryan ideal. Deserting his fitness programme, descending into drug use, sexual adventures with unsuitable women of uncertain origins.’