‘Yes.’ Merrily watched the dawn. It didn’t seem like a dawn. ‘Mrs Villiers… do they know what happened to her?’
‘You gonna tell me about that?’
But she couldn’t.
‘Well,’ Bliss said. ‘Only time and Billy Grace will tell. Gorra be off, Merrily. Thought we should touch base for a few minutes, but I’ve gorra big day ahead. Trying to pull something together. Avoid gerrin Brent’s knife in me back.’
‘You need rest, Frannie. You know you do.’
Bliss grinned.
‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.’
69
Spirit rising
WINDOWS WOUND DOWN for the birdsong, cow parsley waist-high on the verge of an empty road, she steered stiffly into the driveway at The Glades at not long after six-thirty. Because of the horse-chestnut trees on either side, a dull lantern was still ambering the Victorian dressed-stone of the porch when Mrs Cardelow let her in.
‘She’ll refuse to come down, Mrs Watkins. Far too early.’
‘Mrs Cardelow, I saw her curtain twitch as I drove up.’ She hadn’t, but it was worth a try. ‘Could you tell her I have just one question. Which is, who killed—?’
‘Cardelow – out!’
Miss White was standing at the top of the stairs in a long, tubular quilted dressing gown that made her look like a carnivorous caterpillar.
‘Clearly, I was wrong,’ Mrs Cardelow said. ‘Would you like tea or coffee with your copy of the Official Secrets Act?’
‘My room,’ Miss White said.
As usual, no books were on show but the floor-to-ceiling cupboards spoke for themselves. An occult library in every sense.
Merrily was allowed to sit on the bottom of the bed, twisting to face Miss White who was lodged in what looked like a reconditioned barber’s chair, the Zimmer within reach.
‘I had several phone calls either side of midnight, Watkins. Was able to make a useful response to virtually none of them. For which I blame you.’
‘I’ve never seen you without make-up before,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m shocked. Close up, you look almost innocent.’
‘What happened to your arm?’
‘Glassed. By a woman who then used it on herself to avoid answering questions about some deaths, one of them a young policewoman.’
‘You seem unusually bitter,’ Miss White said.
‘I’ve been trying to work out whether that’s a sin. Also…’ Merrily leaned forward ‘… how much lower the casualty count would be… if you’d told me the truth.’
Miss White sniffed.
‘I did tell you the truth. Just not all of it. Couldn’t, anyway. Be in breach of the terms of the bequest. These deaths – are we still talking about neo-Nazis?’
Merrily sighed, starting to feel very tired.
‘You know what, Athena? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know where the fantasy starts or where it ends. There’s a man called Seymour Loftus – don’t even know whether that’s his real name.’
‘It is. And he’s a practising magician of some long standing.’
‘You know him?’
‘I don’t know him. Know very few people now.’
‘What about Sir Charles Brace?’
Miss White made a sound like dirty water in a blocked drain. ‘Oh dear, oh lord, yes. We all knew him.’
‘We?’
‘The people I don’t talk about. Brace was a foolish blimp of a man. Always planning some military coup with a bunch of gammy-legged old colonels. Lived in a dreadful fake castle with an alleged pair of Himmler’s specs in a showcase. Became more or less insane in his later years.’
‘What about his children?’
‘Disowned most of them for lack of backbone. Despaired of finding a suitably cranky heir and was forced to skip a whole generation after one of them made away with himself.’
‘Jerrold Brace?’
‘The names escape me.’
‘What about his grandchildren? One called George. Known as Gore. The son – and partner – of the woman who did this?’ Merrily lifted the bandaged arm. ‘Brought up – allegedly – at Sir Charles’s expense, in some kind of right-wing survivalist commune in Mid Wales. Your colleagues investigate any of those?’
‘They may have existed. And Loftus may have served as an instructor, if you like, at one or more. Loftus is an unimpressive man, but he knows his stuff. They were taking existing magical systems and modifying them to serve their political and philosophical ambitions. Which are mostly doomed in the short term, but they seldom think short term. They think in terms of aeons. Imagining they’ll still be around, in some etheric sense, to watch the cosmic revolution. Could never be arsed with people like that.’