The Magus of Hay(28)

‘I did.’

‘Bloody hell. Well. If you know where the Cusop Dingle sign is, follow it and just keep driving till you see my car.’

‘Is it possible there’s something in Cusop I need to know about?’

‘Might be.’

‘Only it has a church and a minister. Should I mention it, out of protocol… courtesy, even?’



‘Nah, I wouldn’t. Not at this stage.’

‘Frannie, you don’t know what protocol and courtesy mean.’

‘Yeh, well, had trouble with a lorra words since I had me head kicked in.’

‘I did wonder how that was going? In fact I even Googled brain-injury, which is something I don’t normally—’

‘Merrily.’ Bliss’s voice was suddenly wound tight. ‘Brain stem injury. Different. How’s Jane?’

‘Gone away for gap-year therapy. How did he die, this man?’

‘Found in a pool below a waterfall. Probably drowned. We don’t know for certain yet.’

‘Cusop has a waterfall?’

‘Several, apparently. Least, the brook does.’

‘Don’t have to inspect a body or anything, do I?’

‘Eleven-thirty, then,’ Bliss said. ‘Ta ra.’

She sat staring at the phone. Would she have said yes with such alacrity if the Bishop – and even Sophie – hadn’t gone behind her back over Sylvia Merchant? Courtesy and protocol. A two-way street.

No call that night from Jane or Lol. None expected. Jane had already rung four times in just over a day – what did that say about both of them?

She left it till after ten, when she knew he’d be in, and called Huw Owen in the Brecon Beacons. No answer. No answering machine. Didn’t try again. What did she really expect him to say about Sylvia Merchant? What could you really claim to do for these people when even the dictionaries had their doubts?

Merrily went to bed too early, a last-light sheen on the landing window, a brown fog on the oaken stairs.

On your own. In that vast old vicarage.

Who knew how old the vicarage really was? Three centuries, four centuries, five… more? You’d need to carbon date every oak beam even to make an educated guess. She’d gone up and down these stairs tens of thousands of times, knowing the house was empty but also knowing that Jane would be home before nightfall. And also, in the past year or so, that Lol was in his cottage at the bottom of the cobbled square.

Coming back from the bathroom, it was like being the only guest in a drab old hotel. One of the bulbs in the landing light had expired a couple of nights ago and now the walls were the colour of worn leather and she was unusually aware of her footsteps. It was oppressive in the way it had been when she and Jane had first moved in and she’d had recurrent dreams of the house being even bigger than it was, with a forbidden extra storey. Also vividly bloody dreams of her dead husband, Sean, Jane’s father, who had died in a motorway crash with his other woman.

Did she actually like this vicarage? It was impressive. Lots of period features.

No, not a lot, really. Amazing it had survived when the Church was flogging them off all over the country, putting the clergy into former council houses. She suspected the reason it hadn’t happened here was Uncle Ted, senior churchwarden, retired solicitor with an extensive portfolio of stocks and shares, who’d been known to bail the parish out more than once and thought a showpiece black and white village like Ledwardine deserved a seventeenth-century seven-bedroom mausoleum for its vicar to freeze in.

Merrily spun round, shivering in her T-shirt and pants, gazing into the night-blue squares of the leaded window. A small black shadow flitted in front of her into the bedroom.

Me and the cat.

Some people said cats were drawn to negative energy. Ethel mewed. Merrily bent and picked her up, put her on the rug and climbed into bed.

After a few minutes she got up again, went across to the window which overlooked the village lights, said a small, neutral prayer for Ms Merchant and the soul of Ms Nott and went back to bed.



There was a small bump and squirmy movements between her feet.

Ethel. Hopefully.





14

A hollow in time


BLISS LOOKED SOMEHOW askew, walking uneasily like a soldier conscious of roadside bombs. A defensiveness behind the sloping smile.

Not brain damage, brain stem damage. Different. Google said some functions impaired, but not mental capacity. Not for too long, anyway. Usually.

‘Frannie.’

‘Ta for this, Rev.’

Mid-morning in Cusop Dingle might have been early evening somewhere else. Wet, white sunlight was strained through the canopy of heavy trees hanging over the black Freelander, Bliss’s Honda and a small police car in the opening of a track leading across the bridge to some hidden house.