The Magus of Hay(153)

‘OK. I can visualize the temple under the barn made active. I can visualize people stationed at significant intervals along the Dulas Brook, from close to the source, up in the mountains… perhaps close to the stone circle on the Bluff or even the place where the Virgin was made manifest. People in deep meditation, all the way to the access points, in Hay… down by the sewage works… or even below St Mary’s Church… both linked by the wonderful River Wye, anyway. Which is hidden from the everyday business of the town… like the chancel from the nave.’

‘Not bad,’ Miss White said softly.

‘And, at the appointed time, when he feels himself psychically supported, I can visualize Mr Rector throwing his hat, symbolically, in the pool and… following it. His spirit rising to follow the brook’s energy down to the sacred Wye. And as it rises…’ Dear God… ‘as it rises, a strange light is cast over Cusop around the castle hill and Bryn-y-Castell farm so that the land itself becomes translucent. God, Athena, I think I’m going to cry…’

‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ Miss White said. ‘Now get out.’





70

An occasion


‘DOESN’T END, MERRILY,’ Gwyn Arthur Jones said.

She took his call in the picnic place – one of Herefordshire’s rare roadside gestures to the tourist – on the edge of Hardwicke.

‘Message on my machine to call Tim Wareham as soon as I got in, regardless of time. I call him back, intending to let it ring three times and then hang up, so as not to disturb his wife. But he picks up at once. Having heard on the radio that Tamsin had been found murdered.’

‘I’m trying to think how that would affect him. I mean personally.’

‘Well… it’s interesting. He never met Tamsin, but when he saw her parents on television, he was reminded of a holiday they spent on the Winterson farm. Years before Tamsin was born, this was, when her father had not long taken over the farm and was diversifying into tourism. Opened two fields as a campsite. The Warehams hired a pitch for a week.’

‘With Mephista?’

‘Mephista found the farm boring. Would walk around leaving gates open. Mr Winterson explained to her the problems caused by allowing animals into a potato field. Mephista left even more gates open, with predictable results, causing Mr Winterson to lose his temper with her. Not a girl, as you know, who appreciated admonishment. That night, a barn catches fire. Well, no proof. Fulsome denials. The Warehams invited to leave. Could you blame the farmer?’



‘Erm… no. What did you tell Mr Wareham? About Mephista.’

‘Told him a certain amount and left it to him to join the dots. I think he’ll choose to shiver alone rather than tell his poor wife.’

Merrily watched the sun explode through the dead flies on the windscreen.

‘You realize there are now three possible motives for a psychopath like Gwenda to kill Tamsin in Rector’s holy of holies. If you get inside her head, it has a horrific logic.’

‘Much of which,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘would be shredded by a defence counsel with half the skills of, say, Ms Claudia Cornwell.’

‘There’s ironic.’

‘But perhaps Gore had taken as much of this as he could stand.’

‘Bliss told you about Gore and Tamsin?’

‘The murder of Tamsin would surely bring about a fundamental change in a relationship very much dominated by Gwenda, in her dual role.’

‘He wanted to end it and get out? Do we really know why they came back to Hay?’

Explaining that, Gwyn said, might thrust them back into the world of the mystical and the symbolic. The King withdrawing from public life. The castle changing hands. Bookshops closing. The possibility of change and decay. A sense – to Merrily – of Rector’s magic breaking down. Gwenda nourishing an old hatred for both Rector and Hay itself.

Dualism, Merrily thought. The prospect of being there in the fading of the light, darkness rising.

‘I think,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘that after the murder of Tamsin Winterson, if Gore had made it to his motorbike last night, he might never have been seen here again. Amidst all the talk of blood legacy, blood sacrifice and ushering in a new aeon of violence… it’s small breath of possible humanity, isn’t it?’

‘How’s Robin?’

‘Bruised. Angry. I feel a terrible guilt about that boy. We used him. We have a debt to repay. We – the booksellers – are having a collection for them. Of books. Not many of us won’t have the odd pagan-oriented item on our shelves.’

‘You might have a problem getting Robin to accept charity.’