He sat in an armchair next to an electric bar fire, toasting muffins on a long brass fork. An arched window behind him looked out over the rooftops of the town and beyond to the deep blue sea. I sat in the other chair, next to the fire, flesh prickling with sweat.
‘Vanya told me everything,’ I said.
Barnaby skewered another muffin on the end of the fork. ‘You wouldn’t be here if he had.’ He held the muffin out to toast. I undid the button of my collar. ‘Sometimes at night I wander the streets dressed as a tramp, asking people for the price of a cup of tea,’ said Old Barnaby. ‘You gave me a fiver once outside the Spar.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘I admire you.’
‘You know who put Gethsemane in the cupboard that ended up in Hughesovka, don’t you?’
‘I didn’t know where it had ended up until Vanya came to see me.’
‘How did he guess?’
‘He didn’t. He saved my boy from drowning, and so naturally I invited him up here for a drink. He told me his life story and what had been so baffling to him – the peculiar story of the imaginary friend, the diphtheria outbreak while he was in prison – it all seemed so obvious to me. So I told him. Your child died of diphtheria, and your wife, anxious not to break your heart while in that prison camp, adopted Gethsemane and made up the story of the imaginary friend.’
‘Who put her in the cupboard?’
‘Goldilocks’s sister. She came to see me after she had been to visit her brother in prison. While on death row Goldilocks had asked to see a priest; they sent the Witchfinder. Goldilocks told him the truth about what had happened; about how Gethsemane had stumbled on the Slaughterhouse Mob torturing my son, how he had never harmed so much as a hair of her head but had been reluctant to speak out for fear of getting his comrades in the gang into trouble. The Witchfinder promised he would do everything in his power to get the conviction quashed. But he did nothing, he was happy to let Goldilocks hang. That’s when the sister came to see me. She offered me a deal. If I agreed to help her brother escape she would tell me what happened to my son. So I agreed. I arranged the escape and helped them leave town, Goldilocks and the girl; they are still alive.’
‘What did the Slaughterhouse Mob do to your son?’
Barnaby stood up and walked over to a cupboard. He opened it and took out something that looked like a hedge clipper. He brought it over and placed it in my hands. The handles were insulated with thick rubber tubes, and at the ends instead of blades there were spikes with electrical contacts.
‘It’s an electric cattle-stunner,’ he explained.
‘From the slaughterhouse?’
‘Yes. The two prongs are applied to the temples and render the beast unconscious before it has its throat cut.’
‘It breaks your teeth?’
‘Convulsions. In the early days, when they gave patients electro-shock therapy in psychiatric hospitals they often made the voltage too high, it used to give the patients convulsions so strong they would break their own teeth. Goldilocks was familiar with electro-convulsive therapy because they administered it to his brother at the asylum. He must have told the mob about it and given them the idea. It’s called a slaughterman’s lobotomy.’
‘They did it to your son? Applied this to his head?’
‘Yes. All afternoon. He wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, and so they just carried on. Lost his teeth and his wits, made his hair stand on end.’
‘Is this how the Witchfinder killed the students?’
‘I have no information about that, but my guess is, yes. He probably wanted to make people think Goldilocks had come back, frighten them a bit.’
‘They tortured him for the secret formula of your rock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t he just tell them?’
‘He did tell them, but they wouldn’t believe him. He told them and told them, he screamed and shouted, but they refused to believe him.’ He picked up an envelope and handed it to me. ‘This is the secret formula. If you take a look you will understand.’
I reached inside and pulled out a piece of paper. There was nothing written on it. ‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. My great-grandfather discovered one of the most fundamental and strange proclivities of the human mind, and inadvertently stumbled upon the essence of branding. It was like the ampersand in the company name and the bogus partner name, Merlin. What do these things add? Nothing, except in the psyche, to which they bring an indefinable magic. The people heard about the secret formula and the ritual on top of Constitution Hill and convinced themselves they could taste the difference. For over a century we have made exactly the same rock as everyone else and the whole world has been willing to swear that ours tasted superior.’
‘Where does Gethsemane fit in?’
‘She stumbled on them in the barn when they were torturing my son. She escaped from the sty and wandered into the barn. She saw them at work, saw too much. While they were deliberating what to do with her, Goldilocks’s sister stole her away and hid her in the cupboard. She gave her some food and drink. She had no idea the cupboard was due to be collected by Mooncalf. She told me all this, sitting in that chair many years ago.’
I stood up and thanked him for his time. I had one final question. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’
He hesitated, his smile shrank a fraction. ‘What bodies?’
‘The bodies of Goldilocks and his sister. You wouldn’t have done all this and let them get away.’
‘Oh, but I did! We had a deal. I told you: they started a new life somewhere safe and far away.’
‘Maybe. Over the years every member of the Slaughterhouse Mob, except the typographer downstairs, has been murdered or died violently in obscure circumstances. Most people reckon you had a hand in their deaths and I tend to agree. My guess is, if your intention was to hunt them all down, there was no way you would have allowed Goldilocks and his sister to live. Maybe they are safe, but probably not far away. Maybe they’re asleep in the dam.’
‘Well if they are you will have a devil of a job finding them, won’t you?’ He reached out a hand to shake. I ignored it and turned to leave. As I reached the door he stopped me in my tracks. ‘Of course, you know what Vanya’s real purpose was in coming to Aberystwyth, don’t you?’
I paused in the doorway, teetering on the threshold of leaving.
‘Murder,’ said Ephraim Barnaby.
I half turned, unable to restrain myself.
‘He came to find Gethsemane’s murderer and kill him. During those long years in the gulag after he killed his wife he reflected deeply on the litany of pain that had comprised his life. And, as any man would, he brooded intensely on the short period of happiness he had once enjoyed with his wife and little daughter. A happiness that was destroyed when, he supposed, the wandering spirit of a murdered girl took up residence in the soul of his own little Ninotchka. In those dark bitter winters he came to the conclusion that the man who had murdered Gethsemane was the cause, albeit indirectly, of all his woe. The murderer had shattered the only episode of bliss Vanya had known in this world and for that had to be punished. This thought alone, this burning desire for revenge, was what sustained him during those prison years. But, as we know, there was no murder, no wandering spirit. No one was responsible for the tragedy, apart from Vanya’s wife. When he learned this bitter truth sitting here in that chair there was nothing left to sustain him. His spirit was extinguished like a snuffed candle. The rest you know.’