‘You don’t find too many like this nowadays, do you, outside of churches?’
‘And prisons,’ Bliss said. ‘You’re not staying there, are you?’
‘Too scary. And the central heating’s not working.’
‘Come on, Merrily, the truth.’
‘Why I’m going back? Apart from, every time I close my eyes, seeing Fuchsia Mary Linden swimming towards me, asking to be blessed in the old-fashioned way?’
‘That’s it?’
‘And all the things we might have found out if I hadn’t been so smug and sceptical. Things that would never come out at an inquest. I’m assuming an inquest is going to be where this ends.’
‘The media have indeed been told we’re not looking for a third party,’ Bliss said. ‘And, frankly, if it was so much as suggested that the third party might turn out to be the kind of third party I suspect you’re looking at then I think we’ve made a sound decision.’
‘Assuming the forensics support the obvious conclusion that Fuchsia killed Felix and then herself … how important is it to you to find a motive?’
‘It’s obviously tidier, for us, Merrily, if we can find evidence of domestic strife and/or mental imbalance.’
‘You tried to find the mother, by any chance? Mary Linden.’
‘We’ve got the birth certificate, and the name tallies. As does Tepee Valley. But the mother’s name is less poetic than “Linden”. Mary Roberts.’
‘What about the adoptive parents?’
‘Moved on, some years ago. We’re trying to pin them down, but bloody hippies, they could be anywhere. We’re continuing inquiries, but we don’t have the manpower to make too much of it.’
‘If you get anywhere … would there be stuff you’re able to share? Sometimes it’s easier for the police to get information than somebody like me with no obvious reason to inquire.’
‘Equally,’ Bliss said, ‘there are situations where it’s easier for a harmless cleric to learn things than a copper.’
‘Does that mean we’re looking at an arrangement? You tell me what you’ve learned from relatives or anyone else, I tell you … what I can.’
‘What you can?’
‘Look at it this way, Frannie – most of the stuff I wouldn’t feel right divulging is going to be stuff that would embarrass you anyway. And the coroner.’
‘You’re so cute, Merrily,’ Bliss said.
‘I’m a professional. It’s odd how people seem to forget that.’
Bliss smiled, shaking his head.
‘Particularly me,’ Merrily said.
After a lunch of soup and a cheese sandwich, she rang Uncle Ted, the senior churchwarden, to explain that she might be away for a few days. He was out, so she laid it gratefully on his machine. Uncle Ted was still resentful of Deliverance, although he must know that without it she’d probably wind up with another four parishes and Ledwardine would see even less of her.
She rang Lol, but he must have already left for tonight’s gig, somewhere in South Wales. She’d try his mobile later. She ought to go and lie on the bed, try and recharge, but there was too much to do in a very short time.
Looking up Morningwood in the phone book, she found just one entry and called it on the mobile.
‘Poor girl,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
Nothing about Felix. Just ‘Poor girl.’
‘I’m … coming over. Either tonight or early tomorrow. Will you be around, Mrs Morningwood?’
‘In and out, darling. Never far away. Always there around nightfall to shut the chicks away.’
‘And you’re … where?’
‘Coming in from the Hereford side, past The Turning – know where that is?’
‘No.’
‘Ask. Three hundred yards, sign on the right, Ty Gwyn. Short track.’
‘OK. If you’re not in, I’ll keep trying.’
There was an uncertain pause. Mrs Morningwood cleared her throat.
‘Reason I called earlier … Spoke about you with a friend, Sally, in the Frome Valley.’
A momentary fog; you ran into too many people in this job.
‘You met, it seems, under difficult circumstances, relating to gypsies,’ Mrs Morningwood said.
‘Oh … Sally Boswell?’
At the hop museum. Her husband, Al, had made Lol’s most precious guitar. Mandolin soundbox and about a dozen different types of wood. Lol revered Al. Al revered Sally.
‘Known her for quite some years, darling. She confirmed what I’d sensed when we met. That you are rescourceful and trustworthy.’
‘That was very kind of her. Mrs Morningwood, can I—’
‘No, come and see me. I’m wary of phones.’
And she’d gone. Suddenly nobody was trusting phones. It was getting like the old Soviet Union.
Merrily dropped the mobile in the in-tray, picked up Dobbs’s Charles file and read an unidentified cutting – looked from the typeface and the length of the paragraphs like one of the quality broadsheets – about the Prince’s diet. How, aged around thirty, after seeing how some pigs were treated, he’d vowed to become vegetarian. Dropped red meat, taken up raw vegetables, lost weight and developed a rather ascetic appearance.
He’d still gone shooting, though. Some family traditions must’ve been hard to shed, especially with a father like his. But the interest in organic farming had grown out of it, with impressive results.
How relevant was any of this stuff? If there’d been anything immediately pertinent in the Dobbs file, Sophie would have spotted it. Merrily slid the papers back into the file as the phone quivered before it rang.
Sophie herself.
‘You have … a locum.’
Her voice was not so much dry as arid.
‘That was quick.’
‘Merrily, I’m afraid that it isn’t going to be Ruth Wisdom.’
‘Oh.’
‘Ruth has unexpected domestic ties,’ Sophie said. ‘Consequently, I had to put out a round-robin email. Which, I’m afraid, was answered within … a very short time.’
‘I did point out, didn’t I, that Jane will still be here? I mean, she’s got her own apartment in the attic, but— it’s not a bloke, is it?’
‘I’m very sorry, Merrily,’ Sophie said. ‘You really won’t like this, but it was out of my hands.’
25
Monster
WHEN JANE GOT off the school bus, there was a silver-grey car she didn’t recognize outside the vicarage.
She walked over. It looked like one of those hybrid jobs that ran partly on urine or something, cost an arm and a leg but the driver was guaranteed a martyr’s welcome in eco-paradise. Very tidy inside, a pair of women’s leather gloves on the dash.
Jane went back to the market square, wishing whoever it was would just sod off. Needing some time, undisturbed, with Mum, because what she had in her airline bag was likely to be of serious and sobering significance.
Normally, if you had a free period in the afternoon, you spent it wiping out any outstanding homework essays. Jane had had two free periods and had spent them both, plus most of the lunch hour, on one of the common-room computers. Feeling she had something to prove. To Mum and … maybe to Coops, who she hadn’t seen for a few days. But she intended to, soon.
She looked around the square for Lol’s cool truck. Not there. He must’ve left for his gig. Jane felt a kind of dismay. While it was good that Lol had gigs, better still that he’d found the balls to do gigs, inevitably it was pulling him and Mum in different directions. And although they did their best neither of them, in all honesty, was what you could call a strong and decisive person.