He clearly hadn’t known about Felix and Fuchsia.
‘All right.’ Huw did one of his slow, meditative sighs; she thought of him pushing weary fingers through hair like waste silage. ‘Tell me again. Tell me what happened to you.’
‘I’m not going into it again because it sounds stupid and if anyone told it to me I’d react the way you’re reacting.’
‘Oh, for— Listen. Don’t get me wrong, Merrily. I accept that summat happened. You’ve been doing this long enough to know the difference and it’d be patronizing of me to suggest otherwise. Give me the physical symptoms.’
‘I don’t—’
‘You bloody do.’
‘All right, couldn’t breathe, heart going like an old washing machine.’
‘And?’
‘And the feeling of being … I was transfixed. It was like I’d invaded his space and had to take the consequences.’
‘It felt evil?’
‘It was … without heart. I thought it had some kind of worm coming out of its mouth, but it was rope or something fibrous. There was a sense of naked contempt. And a sense that it was …’
‘Alive?’
‘I was trying to pray. As you do. The Breastplate. Second nature. And I couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t, you know, form the words. Jane was calling to me from across the room, and she might as well’ve been miles away. There was just me and him. I’d invaded his space, he … invaded mine.’
‘How’d he do that?’
‘It was just an instant, a microsecond of insidious cold, a … a penetrating cold.’
‘Sexual?’
‘Jesus, Huw!’
‘Was it?’
‘The so-called green man …’ Merrily stifled the shudder, leaning back hard ‘… carries a lot of associations, some of them fertilityoriented, therefore—’
‘Therefore it’s all subjective. Jesus wept! You go in with that kind of namby-pamby academic attitude, you’re stuffed before you start. You’re a priest. You either treat it as a level of reality, or you back off. Which is what, as your spiritual director, I’m formally suggesting that you do.’
‘You’re spending too much time in your hellfire chapel, Huw.’
She listened to him breathing. Shut her eyes, bit her lip.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Let’s lay it out,’ Huw said. ‘A woman kills her lover and then tops herself, and you’re worried it’s because of something she picked up at this house. That correct?’
‘I think … that it’s a question that needs an answer. And a question that neither the police nor the coroner are ever likely to ask.’
‘Even though the only experience in that farmhouse she told you about was a not-even-thinly-disguised scene from a famous ghost story by Monty James?’
‘I can’t explain that. Doesn’t help, either, that the story predates James’s visit to Garway by about fifteen years.’
‘And bears no relation to your own perceived experience.’
‘No.’
Frannie Bliss’s face had appeared at the kitchen window, peering in, hands binoculared against the glass. Merrily pointed in the direction of the door, making turning motions to indicate that it was open.
‘Ever think summat’s playing with you?’ Huw said. ‘The way a cat plays with a bird?’
‘You trying to scare me or something?’
She’d noticed he’d said bird. Unlike mice sometimes, she thought, birds don’t escape.
Bliss said, ‘I’m not here, all right?’
‘You’re asking me to lie for you again?’
Merrily filled the kettle. Bliss sat down and stretched out his legs under the table, hands behind his head.
‘He really bothers me, that bastard. They all do.’
‘Jonathan?’
‘If that’s his name.’
‘I thought you knew him.’ Merrily sat down. ‘I thought he worked out of a little office at headquarters.’
‘No, Merrily, that’s Bill Boyd. We’ve learned to put up with Bill. Jonathan came up from the capital last week, apparently to look into a certain issue. One of the less-publicized aspects of nine-eleven and seven-seven and the rest is that we get to see a lot more of his sort. Lofty, superior gits in expensive suits.’
‘What issue?’
‘You’re not the first to ask.’
‘You’re expected to work with him, and you don’t know what he’s investigating?’
Bliss glanced at Merrily, an eyebrow raised.
‘I didn’t like to ask him directly, Frannie, if he was Special Branch, in case he realized we’d been discussing it.’
‘I’m grateful, Merrily.’
‘So …’ She half-extracted a cigarette and then pushed it back. ‘He’s not investigating a haunting, is he?’
‘I think it’s reasonable to assume,’ Bliss said, ‘that he’s looking into a perceived threat against the Heir to the Throne.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘Applying my renowned deductive skills, I’m working on the assumption that they – the Duchy of Cornwall – have received certain communications. Could be anonymous letters, untraceable emails, text messages – lot of options in the technological age.’
‘Locally?’
‘Or at their head office, wherever that is. But relating to here, that’s clear enough.’
‘Posing a direct threat to the Man?’
‘Maybe suggesting – if I’m reading between the right lines – that the Duchy is acquiring too much property in this part of the world.’
‘But who would that be likely to bother? And what can they do about it anyway? It’s probably just a crank.’
‘Merrily, Al-Qaeda might just be five towel-heads in a cave with a computer, a video camera and a mobile phone.’
‘It’s crazy.’
‘It’s the world we’re trying to go on living in.’
‘All right …’ Merrily let her chin sink into her cupped hands. ‘Long did ask a particularly odd question, didn’t he, when we were talking about Fuchsia and Tepee City? He said isn’t that a Welsh-speaking area full of Welsh nationalists?’
‘Old-fashioned Welsh nationalists, was the term he actually used.’
‘Why would he think Welsh nationalists are concerned about the Prince of Wales buying property in Herefordshire, England?’
‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it, Merrily?’
‘And anyway, the days of Welsh nationalist terrorism, such as it was, are long over.’
‘If he really thought there was anything in it, he certainly wouldn’t’ve mentioned it in front of you. Oh, Merrily …’ Bliss bounced his heels alternately off the stone flags, like a kid ‘… you don’t know how much it pisses me off when there’s something high-level going down in my manor that I don’t know about.’
‘You think I can help, or you’re just here for sympathy?’
Bliss smiled. Merrily leaned back, folding her arms, thinking it out.
‘OK … if someone is suggesting that the Master House – for reasons we can’t fathom – is one acquisition too many, was this before or after Felix Barlow told Adam Eastgate that this was a house that didn’t want to be restored?’
‘After would be my guess.’ Bliss nodded at the overnight bag in the corner. ‘What’s with the luggage?’
‘Going to Garway.’
‘Why?’
‘Need to.’
Merrily pulled over the padded folder containing Adam Eastgate’s plans for the Master House. When she upended it, a plastic bag fell out, resealed like a police evidence bag. She pulled it open and shook out the key onto the table.