‘And useful for you, under the circumstances. Where’s she based?’
‘Peterchurch. Last of the village copshops, about nine miles from here. The short-sighted suits are gonna close it down soon. So – bottom line, Merrily – this is not a temple, but Mr Hambling could actually have been a… what?’
‘Magician?’
‘And what’s that mean outside of fairy tales?’
‘Magic is… the science and art of causing change to occur, erm, in conformity with will. The late Aleister Crowley’s definition.’
‘But he was a friggin’ fruitcake.’
‘He just liked to mix business with pleasure. Extreme pleasure.’
She inspected two of the framed drawings on the wall. They were both explicitly sexual. One, which looked as if it had been photocopied from an illustration in a book, was a rough and fibrous, coital tangle of threshing limbs. Underneath was written: Man is matter and spirit, both real and both good. The other involved several figures with exaggerated genitalia, both male and female, the kind of drawing done by a dirty old man with a stub of a pencil and one hand in his pocket.
‘Also looks like Hambling was holding meetings here. Giving… intimate lectures?’
‘Intimate?’
‘I mean to small, exclusive groups. He wasn’t advertising it, was he? There are groups that meet to meditate together. Like prayer groups only… more esoteric. That Crowley description about causing change to happen through focused will power… the changes they’re looking for are mostly in themselves. They want to increase their level of consciousness, they want heightened awareness. Contact with other spheres of existence.’
‘Psychic powers, in other words.’
‘People who follow a religion, like Christianity or Islam, have faith that there’s something beyond normal life. A magician wants to know. To know the unknowable.’
‘About Hambling,’ Bliss said. ‘He wasn’t Hambling.’
Merrily pulled out one of the chairs. It was solid, had a straight back, no arms. Good chair for meditation. She sat down, keeping her gaze on Bliss.
‘You’re saying the body in the pool was someone else’s?’
‘I’m saying David Hambling was an assumed name. Only learned that this morning when the coroner’s officer was here with Hambling’s solicitor. Who’s been his solicitor for many years and his father before him, so very solid.’
Merrily said, ‘Was he Lord Lucan?’
‘You’re being bloody frivolous this morning.’
‘Demob happy.’
‘His name was Peter Rector. Before he came here, he was living in a farmhouse up in the Black Mountains where he ran educational residential courses. And not in cookery.’
‘I see.’
‘Another thing we’ve learned is that he’s left most of his money… to one person. To whom he was not related.’
‘Ah.’
‘Who I was thinking you could have a word with. On the basis you’d get more out of this person that I would.’
‘Bloody hell, Bliss, you go on about people like Tamsin taking ages to get to the point—’
‘Just to draw a line under it. Or not. Don’t look at me like that! If I’d had the balls to tough it out under the lights in Gaol Street neither of us would be in this position. However, if it turns out there is something suspicious which I, having come all the way out here on a whim, have somehow failed to uncover…’
‘Egg on face?’
‘The full Spanish omelette. But unless Billy Grace’s PM reveals something iffy, I’m in no position to take it much further after today, anyway. There’s certainly no basis on which I can legitimately approach the beneficiary.’
‘You said he was running his courses in the Black Mountains?’
She pulled a book from the shelf, next to Richard Booth. Hills of Vision: a history of religious life in the Black Mountains by R. H. Beynon. Sorry… the beneficiary?’
‘Everybody’ll know about Rector by tonight, Merrily, so nothing classified, but we might have a few days on the identity of this person. Someone I’m not acquainted with, obviously, but, more significantly, nor is Tamsin. Despite living in the next village.’
‘One of the women who did his shopping? His dealer? Oh—’
A piece of paper had fallen out of the Black Mountains book. She bent to retrieve it.
‘Actually, this is someone,’ Bliss said, ‘who I believe is known to you.’
‘Oh good. Maybe he can lend me some money to get Jane through university.’
‘She, actually.’
‘Can’t be anybody I know well. In fact I can’t think of anyone I know in Dorstone or any neighbouring village.’