‘Jane kept a straight face,’ Merrily said, ‘when I said it was my turn to help you with the painting. And then she spoiled it by murmuring something I didn’t quite catch, about brushes and paint pots.’
Lol smiled. Merrily looked around the fire-lit parlour with its bounding shadows. There were always shadows. Lol thought about Lucy Devenish, who’d made him read the poems of Thomas Traherne, the seventeenth-century Herefordshire minister who believed that God wanted you to be happy. Sitting there listening to your mournful, wistful records. It’s spring! Open your heart to the eternal! Let the world flow into you!
Lucy’s last spring, as it had turned out. Suddenly, he could almost feel her in the room with them – Lucy sensing Merrily’s underlying gloom and frowning, and turning, now, towards him, poncho aswirl, eyes like the smouldering core of the fire.
Do something, Lucy commanded.
Lol gazed into the top of the chromium teapot.
‘I see three male presences looming over you.’
‘Mystic Laurence, huh?’
‘One’s a retired detective, who hates the way his world is being fragmented. One’s a bishop, for whom retirement is looming, and he doesn’t want his longed-for haven spoiled. And the third is a retired psychiatrist, who… Actually I don’t think there’s such a thing as a retired psychiatrist. They never give up analysing.’
‘Wrongly, of course,’ Merrily said.
‘But the message is: retired people are the new delinquents – too much time, nothing to lose. Beware of them. Essentially, the teapot is saying this is not your problem.’
‘Easy for the teapot to say.’ Merrily went to sit on the hearth. ‘Last night, when he rang me in the church, Bernie was, “Oh, let’s draw a line under it.” Tonight, he’s virtually saying, “Sort this out.” ’
‘ “Sort this out for me.” ’
‘He does seem to feel a spiritual responsibility for that town.’
‘Because he used to work there. And hopes to retire there. So maybe nothing spiritual about it at all, really,’ Lol said.
‘Not sure about that.’ She took the pot away from him and poured tea for them. ‘Anyway, he thinks this girl’s death is going to cause a lot of dangerous speculation. And he’s probably right. The legend of Marion de la Bruyère is very well known in the town, and this is her tower. The idea that the girl didn’t know about that seems remote.’
‘Might have a terrible appeal for a certain kind of teenager in despair, sure.’
‘More so, probably, than the accidental fall of a fourteen-year-old boy, from a different tower. I just… There has to be a connection we can’t yet see.’
‘Had the girl been seen in Ludlow before?’
‘We’re not going to know that until they confirm her identity and issue a picture.’
‘You keep saying “we”. It’s not your problem.’
But Lol knew already that this was a lost cause.
‘I looked up Belladonna on the Internet.’ Merrily sugared the teas. ‘Just to see what she’s doing these days. What she’s doing in Ludlow.’
‘And?’
‘Didn’t find out. Learned a lot of history. For instance, the name Belladonna isn’t actually much of an affectation. Her name was Arabella Donnachie. So she was always carrying Belladonna around with her in the middle of her name.’
‘Wonder if her parents intended that.’
‘Says not on her website. Says it was fated… all that kind of stuff. She was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Father a well-off accountant. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Walked out at seventeen to form a band, for which she was apparently later considered too weird.’
‘In what way?’
‘Didn’t say. I, erm, tried to call Mumford tonight. No answer at home, mobile off. Suppose he’s gone after her?’
‘She can take care of herself,’ Lol said, and Merrily looked up. He shrugged. ‘I had a call from Prof.’
‘Relating to…?’
‘Well… Belladonna.’
‘And you weren’t going to tell me?’
‘Choosing the moment. Did I mention that Tom Storey was at Knight’s Frome, mixing his album?’
He didn’t know if she’d ever been a Tom Storey fan. Always more of a boy’s hero, Tom – like Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton before he recorded ‘Wonderful Tonight’.
‘Normally, I keep out of the way when Tom’s there,’ Lol said. ‘He’s, um… irascible. His hair’s all white now, and his moustache seems to cover half his face. It’s like the studio’s being vandalized by the Abominable Snowman, and yet at the end of it all those guitar licks – fluid, economical, delicate—’
‘He knows Belladonna?’
‘—And, underneath it all, a sensitive man. I mean sensitive sensitive. And sensitive about discussing it, because he’s in permanent, neurotic denial. Tom will tell you – just like your friend Saltash – that it’s all crap and all in your mind. Except that Tom knows it isn’t. So when Prof said, hang on, I’m going to put Tom on the line…’
‘Belladonna.’ Big voice filling the mobile phone, making it feel twice as heavy, like an ingot. ‘Bella-fucking-donna.’
Lol had had to sit down.
‘You know what that woman did, Laurence? She had a baby. She’s in maternity when she learns she’s finally got herself a recording contract. The longed-for break. What’s she do? Kid’s born, she gives it up for adoption.’
‘At that stage?’
‘Might have arranged it earlier, I’m not brilliant on details, I’m giving you the sense of it. Gives the father up, too. Dead now, poor sod – smack. That’s the kind of woman. Carries death around like a tray of black poppies. Gives up a child for a recording contract.’
Hard to be sure how accurate this was. Lol knew that Tom felt strongly about anything child-related. His daughter, Vanessa, was Down syndrome. He treated her like a goddess.
‘But that was a long time ago,’ Lol said. ‘She couldn’t have been much more than a kid?’
‘A woman, take my word – then. Gawd knows what she is now.’
Tom talked about the albums – biggish over here, for a while, but in the States… mega. Which was rare for a British punk or New Wave artist.
‘American punks, at least they knew a few chords and they didn’t gob on the audience. British punk, Americans just didn’t get the joke. But, see, Belladonna was never funny. And she wasn’t like the rest. She talked posh. Talked like bleedin’ Julie Andrews. They loved that in the States.’
Because America had quite taken to her, Tom said, Belladonna had made a huge amount of money very quickly. And because she’d looked after it – with Daddy’s assistance – she never wound up on some sad, end-of-the-pier, 1980s nostalgia trip like some other poor bleeders Tom could name.
‘They put the loot into property. Old houses. Bought this dump looked like the Bates Motel, done it up, sold it for triple, never looked back. Daddy saw the value, Bell only bought the place on account of – what’s this tell you about her? – on account of she reckoned it was haunted.’
Lol had asked, hesitantly, what it had told Tom.
‘Tells me she don’t… she ain’t got it. She don’t feel. Haunted, to her, was like romance. This fucking, irresponsible, dilettante bitch.’
They were close to Tom’s barrier here. He’d let go of a huge but unstable laugh at this point, like a big tipper-lorry dumping gravel.
‘The house… the house wasn’t haunted enough, apparently. Or the bleedin’ spooks couldn’t stand the company and pissed off.’