‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Susannah said. ‘Cigarettes are disgusting. And let’s drop the bullshit, shall we? Why are you associating my client with what you’ve come here to do? Bearing in mind, before you answer, that I’ve talked to George Lackland.’
‘In which case you’ll be aware that it was George Lackland who approached us – the diocese.’
‘George is an old-fashioned man,’ Susannah said. ‘He still thinks the Church should have a role in the way this town is run, and he seems to have fallen for the myth that the deaths of two children and one old woman are manifestations of some kind of spiritual malaise.’
‘And is he entirely wrong there?’
‘He’s in danger of becoming a laughing stock.’
‘Well…’ Now that George had dropped her in it, there seemed little point in dressing this up. ‘A lot of people saw Bell with Robbie Walsh in the days before he died. A woman famously obsessed with death. Last night, she told me she’d been taking steps to adopt him, which would explain quite a lot. Can you confirm that?’
‘I don’t have to confirm anything to you,’ Susannah said. ‘Your ridiculous role with a failing religion gives you no right, legal or moral, to probe into people’s private lives.’
‘Up to you, Susannah, but adoption at least offers a plausible explanation for—’
‘All right, yes.’ Susannah leaned back and opened her jacket. ‘It was already in progress. It was to have been a substantial settlement, and the mother was practically biting our hands off. Kept ringing me up, just to make sure we weren’t going off the idea.’
‘Figures.’ Merrily thought of all the things Mumford had said about his sister: the extreme bitterness towards their own mother after the boy died. Big money, maybe life-changing money, had just gone down the pan.
‘He’d have moved in here,’ Susannah said, ‘and gone to school in Ludlow. And his gran – of whom he was fond but who was becoming unfit to look after him – would have seen far more of him than she already did. I don’t claim to have fully fathomed out the relationship between Bell and the boy. But they certainly had shared interests which he seems to have been unable to pursue at home.’
‘And perhaps she needed an heir? Of sorts. Would that be…?’
‘You mean for the New Palmers’ Guild Trust?’
‘What exactly is that?’
‘No big secret. The Trust, into which most of Bell’s assets will pass when she dies, will support, in perpetuity, specific historic features of the town.’
Merrily nodded. ‘Like the maintenance of the St Leonard’s cemetery as a wilderness with corpses?’
‘Be assured that I and my successors will administer the Trust entirely according to my client’s wishes.’
‘And the conservation of certain yew trees? Preservation of public rights of way connecting sacred places? And perhaps keeping particular viewpoints open, in the face of possible future development?’
‘The specific details have yet to be sorted out. And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.’
‘I’m getting to it,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m trying to find out how much you know and how much you understand about Bell’s other plans for when she dies.’
‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t you? I mean, you really don’t?’
‘Perhaps you should spell it out.’
‘I’m wary,’ Merrily said. ‘I think I’d rather be speaking to her stepdaughter than her lawyer. I mean, what does your father say about all this?’
‘Dad? Dad says be kind to her, never exploit her – and keep me the hell out of it.’ Susannah’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about my dad?’
‘Music producer… bewitched by Bell’s obvious charms… maybe liked unusual music, but couldn’t handle the extreme lifestyle which, in her case, went with it.’
‘He lives in Sacramento now, has three children, plays golf.’
‘Your mother was his first wife?’
‘Whom he left for Bell, but that’s all well in the past. My mother’s second husband, if you want the full nepotism bit, is David Sebald, brother of Peter Sebald, one of the original partners in the firm I’m working for.’
‘But you and Bell—’
‘Never got on all that well with David’s other kids, so I used to spend quite a few weekends with Dad and Bell. Who was so completely out of it most of the time that I sometimes felt, at the age of about fifteen, like her stepmother. Like I said, we’ve always accommodated each other. I’m not judgemental.’
‘Mmm.’ Bringing Smith, Sebald one of their wealthiest private clients would have done Susannah no harm at all with the firm.
‘That’s to say, where no criminal law or local statutes are infringed, I don’t question her behaviour,’ Susannah said. ‘This town’s full of eccentrics.’
‘You must be worried about her, though.’
‘Put it this way, my private life would have been a whole lot easier if the firm had been based in Birmingham.’
‘Because then Bell would have come to visit and gone home the next day. But this being where it is, she doesn’t want to leave. Not ever, in fact. Do you know what I’m saying?’
Through the long window, the town glittered on its hill, the sun gilding the pinnacles on the church tower and coating what you could see of the castle walls with crusted honey. No motor vehicles visible. A living dream of Olde Englande.
‘That’s pretty ridiculous.’ Susannah finally looked unnerved. ‘You must realize that.’
‘If I started dismissing ideas that seemed ridiculous, I wouldn’t get very far in this job.’
‘Then it’s a ridiculous job.’
‘It’s apparently been estimated,’ Merrily said, ‘that one in three people has had a paranormal experience, and one in ten has seen a ghost. It all makes perfect sense to Bell.’
‘You’re saying she’s become completely insane?’
‘No, I don’t think she— OK, it’s not good, it’s not healthy, it’s spiritually… a bit squalid, frankly. But it’s not insane. In fact, it’s all been worked out very practically.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Susannah backed away, folding her arms. ‘But if there was any truth in what you’ve just outlined, she’d… in my view, she’d be guaranteed certifiable.’
‘Then how do you explain it? How do you explain her nocturnal perambulations?’
‘She’s a night person. In every sense – her albums are dark and doomy, she likes to mix with goths and weirdos and she’s a bloody exhibitionist.’
‘An exhibitionist who wants to protect her private life and won’t talk to the media, except the local media?’
‘That’s not so unusual. It’s part of the star-mentality. They like to have it both ways.’
‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s led what she calls a temporary kind of life. She says she was diagnosed at an early age with a congenital heart defect and she’s lived her whole life with the angel of death standing outside the door, sharpening his scythe. I don’t know if that’s true or not—’
‘I’d like to get her to a heart specialist, but she won’t. She has a fear of dying in hospital.’
‘Or anywhere but here. She’s moved from place to place – she’s had the money to do that – and she can’t settle anywhere. Until she arrives in the place of her dreams. Literally. All right, whether she had been dreaming about Ludlow for years is anybody’s guess, but she’s convinced herself she had. And she comes here and she connects. It’s a town where you can walk from century to century, and it’s not been over-cosmeticized. It’s as it was. And for Bell the atmosphere everywhere is dense with… eternity.’