‘And you a Christian.’
‘Yes, it’s very sad.’
Down in the hollow, the air was already purpling with dusk, the birdsong withdrawing into the trees. Two sparrows flew out of the eaves. Merrily looked at the oak front door.
‘Makes you wonder why these Gwilyms wanted it back,’ Jane said. ‘It’s going to cost a fortune even to patch it up.’
‘I can understand that – if it’s the family home since way, way back. And if this guy Sycharth owns The Centurion, he’s certainly got the money.’
The house looked heavier close-up, less vulnerable, some of its lower stones like boulders. Jane picked up a stone tile fallen from the porch and propped it against the wall.
‘So these Gwilyms are obviously going to be seriously pissed off about the Newtons or the Grays or whoever cut this deal with Charles’s guys behind their backs.’
‘Having to sit there on the other side of the river and watch the old homestead getting immaculately renovated. Turned into somebody else’s business.’
‘Would there be any chance of them ever buying it back?’
‘Can’t be ruled out, flower. The Duchy’s a business, buying and selling property. If they can’t make it work, they might sell it on. And the project certainly hasn’t got off to the best of starts.’
Merrily was watching the top unrolling from a new can of worms. How influential was Sycharth Gwilym in Hereford property circles? Had Felix Barlow ever worked for the Gwilyms? Had Felix somehow been got at? OK, that seemed unlikely but … God, who could you totally trust? Who could you ever trust?
‘So,’ Jane said. ‘We going in?’
She was standing, brown paw marks down her front, under the grey metal skull of a lamp over the front door. Fragments of glass embedded in its rim like splintered teeth. Merrily frowned.
‘Perhaps not. Can’t just look around and leave. First rule of deliverance: never walk away from an alleged disturbance without leaving God’s card.’
‘In case of what?’ Jane said. ‘A ghostly coffin in the hall, and the body suddenly sits up, with the pennies dropping from its dead eyes?’
‘Wasn’t quite how I was thinking.’
‘You know what I think? I think you just don’t want to go into a possibly haunted house with someone you think might still be halfpagan.’
‘Things have changed. These days, I tend to credit the boss with being more broad-minded.’
‘So go on, then. Unlock it.’
Jane’s eyes were dancing erratically. It could be that she didn’t actually want to go in. But she was Jane Watkins.
‘Yeah. All right.’
Merrily put the key into a hole enlarged, probably, by generations of Gwilyns coming home from the pub in the dark. The key rattling around in there, failing to locate the tumblers. It took both hands and a lot of jiggling before the lock turned over and the door sprang loose and hung there sullenly, still needing a shoulder to shudder it open.
‘House that doesn’t want to be restored,’ Merrily said.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
She stepped inside ahead of Jane, inhaling damp and plaster dust disturbed by the vibration. Two grimy leaded windows were set into a sloping wall, and the restricted light – brown and flecked, like the sediment at the bottom of an old medicine bottle – was barely reaching the shadows that crowded the corners of what seemed quite a big room.
Smelling wet earth, Merrily counted one, two three four … five doors, and the wall opposite jaggedly agape: a vast inglenook, the oak beam across it as rough and massive as the capstone of a cromlech. Primeval. Like the tree itself had fallen onto some waiting stones, been sawn off and the entire house built around it.
‘So this …’ Jane peering over Merrily’s shoulder ‘… this is where they laid the old girl out?’
‘Not here now, though, Jane. Sorry to disappoint.’
The only furniture was in the hearth, a rusted iron fire-basket the size of a small sheep-pen. In search of better light, Merrily walked across what seemed like worn linoleum ground into the earth to a narrow door next to the inglenook. When she unlatched it, greyness slithered down a stone staircase, half-spiralling behind the fireplace.
She didn’t go up. She was cold, rubbing her arms through the toothin sweatshirt, looking over her shoulder into an empty …
‘Jane?’
‘Down here. Couple of steps going down into … looks like the kitchen. Big hooks in the beams. Kind of a fatty smell.’
‘Just … tell me when you’re going somewhere, OK?’
‘In case of what?’ Jane came back up, pulling a door shut behind her. ‘What’s upstairs?’
‘I don’t know. I’d feel better with a torch.’
‘If it was dangerous, they’d have warned you, wouldn’t they?’
‘I suppose.’
The only warnings had come, in that faintly teasing way, from Mrs Morningwood, Merrily scenting a set-up.
‘Go on, then, Mum.’
Jane was behind her on the steps, the wooden handrail was hanging loose from the wall. Merrily didn’t touch it.
Upstairs, they found a landing with no windows, the only light fanning from one door left narrowly ajar. Merrily put out an arm to hold Jane back – could be floorboards missing – before stepping tentatively into a long and dismal bedroom smelling of dead things in decay. Bluish light from a single dormer, half-boarded. Wooden skeletons of two beds, at either end of the room.
‘Like in the story,’ Jane whispered.
‘What?’
‘“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You”. In Parkins’s room at the … whatever the pub was called.’
‘The Globe Inn.’
Jane turned sharply.
‘Bloody hell! That’s why you—’
‘It’s just a bit coincidental.’
‘In the circumstances, Mum, I’d say it’s seriously coincidental.’
‘It’s … noteworthy.’
There was a paper sack up against one wall. Fuchsia’s lime-plaster? Was this the room where she’d … claimed to have seen something wriggling under the …
The floor was bare boards. Felix had evidently taken his dust sheets away.
‘Mum, why didn’t you ask Mrs Morningwood about M. R. James?’
‘Because there’s a couple of other people I need to discuss it with first. And if you were to email the Ghosts and Scholars website we might learn a bit more from the experts.’
‘I’ll do that tonight. But if … like, if M. R. James admits something strange happened to him in Garway, maybe he actually stayed in the Globe Inn? That would surely—’
‘He always stayed with some people not too far away. Let’s not speculate, huh?’
‘Whatever.’ Jane looked around. ‘Are you going to leave the calling card or what?’
‘Can’t decide what to do. It’s just an empty house. In my limited experience, they need … people.’
‘They?’
‘Don’t ask me what they are. However, I think – Huw Owen thinks – we might need to ask a few people round, interested parties. Although getting a Gwilym and a Gray into the same room might be problematical.’
‘Why would you need to?’
‘That seem a bit like meddling to you?’
Feuds were a pastoral issue, and she wasn’t the parish priest. Maybe she needed to talk to Teddy Murray again, even though he was only a stand-in.
They checked out three other bedrooms of varying sizes, unfurnished. A bathroom with a cracked, discoloured bath and no water from the taps. A separate toilet that stank. Everywhere tainted by dereliction, in dire need of Felix Barlow.