The Magus of Hay(31)

‘Mrs Watkins,’ Bliss said, ‘specializes in peculiar tangents.’

‘Your parents know about all this?’ Merrily said to Tamsin. ‘Did they tell you off for being silly?’

‘Or maybe warn you off?’ Bliss said. ‘In case he caught you.’

Tamsin shook her head.

‘I never heard any adults mention Mr Hambling, to be honest. Not until I started talking to them last night. People I’d known since I was a little girl.’

‘When he caught kids,’ Bliss said, ‘was he… unexpectedly friendly, perhaps?’

‘Not that I heard. They said he could get a bit annoyed if he’d been interrupted.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, I think I know where you’re going with this, sir, but I really don’t think there was anything like… that. Like, it’s not as if we didn’t know about it going on, even as country kids – there was this bloke we were all told to keep away from, but he was quite young. He moved to Abergavenny, where I think he got nicked finally for kiddy-fiddling. Besides, my friend, when we got older, she used to say she… that she thought Mr Hambling was well catered for in that department.’

‘Which department?’

‘Women, sir.’

Bliss raised both eyebrows.

‘You haven’t told me about this, have you, Tamsin?’

‘No sir.’ Tamsin didn’t blush this time. ‘I was getting round to it when you went to look for Mrs Watkins. Situation was that David Hambling, he used to have quite a number of visitors, and some of them were women. Quite young women. Well, compared to him.’

‘When was this?’

‘All the time. I mean, still. I thought I’d better check before saying anything, so I phoned my friend at work, and she phoned her mum who said there was one here like a few days ago?’

‘One what?’

‘A young woman. Well… youngish. Thirty-five? Driving a red Audi. My friend’s mum reckons they did his shopping for him.’

‘There’s no car here, is there?’

‘He’s never had one. He liked to go everywhere on foot. They reckoned he’d walk miles at one time, up into the mountains, along the Wye. Like I said, he must’ve kept himself very fit. But if he needed to go any distance, there’d always be someone to take him.’

‘All strangers to the locals?’

‘I think so. Not that he wasn’t friendly with local people… he was. He’d help them out, do things for them.’

‘Like?’

‘Well, he… he like knew a lot of old things that doctors don’t do any more. Like if you dislocated a bone he could put it back? And he knew about herbs. He could take away headaches. And people who were run-down, he’d get them going again.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Merrily said.

‘And they reckoned if you’d lost something important he could find it sometimes. But he wouldn’t take money for any of it. All he asked in return was that they should respect his privacy. And not talk about it.’

‘Somebody obviously talked about it to you,’ Bliss said.

‘Yeah, but I reckon that’s only ’cos he’s dead. It’s a funny place, Cusop, sir, people’s privacy does get respected. Like the King of Hay, his home’s in Cusop. His family home, but I bet not many people know exactly where it is. Lot of people who run things in Hay, they live in Cusop, ’cos it’s separate. No estates down yere, and most of the houses are secluded. And the Dingle, it’s a dead-end – far as cars go anyway. You get to the end, you’re near enough in the mountains. Somebody once said to me it was like a bottle. You put the stopper on and nothing gets out. Sorry, sir, you prob’ly didn’t want all this.’

‘No, carry on, Tamsin, you’re doing really well here. So nobody recognized any of the women who came to see him?’

Tamsin looked uncertain.

‘It’s possible they did. But not ’cos they were local. They recognized them from other places. Newspapers and television. Well, famous people do come to Hay, don’t they? Writers and TV people and politicians. So it’s not that much of a big deal. With the women, people used to be a bit scandalized by it, at one time, but not any more. It was more like, you know, good luck to the ole devil, kind of thing. That’s the impression I got.’

Bliss said, ‘When you say they brought his shopping…’

Merrily followed his gaze around the kitchen, past the Stanley oil-fired cooker and the big fridge/freezer to another door and three rows of shelves with branded items and jars and pots.