The Smile of a Ghost (Merrily Watkins 7), page 13
‘We don’t know where she’s from?’
‘Other side of Herefordshire. Ledbury, I think. That is, George— I rang an old friend in Ludlow, George Lackland, the Mayor – you saw him on the TV thing. Used to be my senior churchwarden. George says the police are saying she seems to have hitch-hiked across.’
‘Thirty-odd miles? Forty?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Do they know why?’
‘Will they ever?’
‘Witnesses?’
‘Someone on the bowling green below The Linney appears to have seen her fall. No one inside the castle was aware of it, although it must have happened while the place was open to visitors. So easily done, you see. You can’t follow everybody around. She apparently paid to go in and just… never came out. Nightmarish.’
‘Was she dead when they found her?’
‘I’m not sure. George thinks there may have been complications. But if she was alive when they found her she didn’t survive long.’
Outside, the rain had started, like nails on the window.
‘Bernie… erm, should we be… involved in any way?’
Merrily heard his breath, slowly expelled.
‘I don’t know. Something did strike me when I saw the TV pictures. Actually, I feel rather foolish and trivial even mentioning it at a time like this, but you just know that some people in the town are going to be talking about it. This sort of gossip… one can’t do anything to stop it. You, ah… Marion. You remember Marion.’
‘I think I can just about remember Marion, yes.’
‘And we were all thinking, yes, but… wrong tower.’
‘The keep, as distinct from the Hanging Tower.’
‘Precisely. Well, you wouldn’t know the layout of the castle, but I do. And there it was, on the news.’
‘Sophie and I missed the beginning of the report,’ Merrily said cautiously.
‘Well, they didn’t make a point of it, but they wouldn’t know either. However…’ The Bishop coughed. ‘They showed it from the outside. Unmistakable. This time, it was the Hanging Tower.’
14
Black Poppies
THAT NIGHT, LOL boiled some water for tea, using a Primus stove in his kitchen, leaving Merrily to finish dressing by firelight. He had something to tell her, but it could wait.
When he came back into the living room with the tray, she was sitting on the end of the sofa, small and demure, with – unless he was deluding himself – the same glow on her face that he’d once seen by the light of altar candles, and her hair tied back with a rubber band. But, too soon, the glow was fading.
‘OK?’
‘I’ll go up to the bathroom later, with a torch and a mirror, to check the fine details.’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant,’ Lol said.
As so often, it had been a touch furtive. Curtains surreptitiously drawn. Cushions from the sofa, this time, on top of freshly washed paint cloths on the flagstones. Like teenagers, when the parents might come in… only the parents were the parish.
‘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.’
‘She didn’t feel’ – Lol took a chance – ‘the way some people… feel. But she wanted to?’
Tom was quiet, Lol half-expecting him to ring off. And then,
‘Story is, she had meningitis as a kid. Teens, anyway. Came close to checking out, had some death’s-door experience, changed her life. Kept wanting to tell me about it, following me around. Sent me a card wiv… you know, a picture inside. Of her. That kind of picture. I don’t fink so. Outta my face, you crazy woman!’
‘So when was the last time you actually spoke to her?’
‘Gawd… few years ago? She wanted to work wiv me this time. Like I’d be that insane? Didn’t seem to be able to decode the phrase piss off. Kept ringing, bending Shelley’s ear, the missus – I wasn’t gonna talk to her, no way; it’s why we was ex-directory, Gawdsake. We had the number changed, in the end. Mad, sick, stupid woman. And the music… atrocious.’
‘Where was she living, the last you heard?’
‘Moves around. Always moved around, couldn’t settle. I fink – Shelley would know this – I fink, the last we heard, she was on her daughter’s back. Nah, nah, not her daughter, Saul Pepper’s daughter. The poor bastard she married. He had a daughter already. Bell went to live near the daughter, that’s the last we heard.’
‘Would that have been in Ludlow?’
‘Where?’
‘In Shropshire.’
‘Shit,’ Tom said. ‘That ain’t too far away from here, is it? Listen, you ever run into the mad bitch, you never spoke to me in your life, Laurence.’
Lol put a log on the fire.
‘The marriage to Saul Pepper ended, apparently, about six years ago,’ Merrily said. ‘He went to America to work. Has a new family now. One website says the split was amicable. Pepper said she was too’ – Merrily sighed – ‘too weird for him. In the end. Seems to have been too weird for people all her life.’
‘But not too weird for Saul Pepper’s daughter.’
‘Nor, it seems, for Robbie Walsh. Erm… what Tom Storey told you about the near-death experience – that’s interesting. The Church has a strange attitude towards all that. The most common perceived experience of an afterlife, but we’re oh so wary.’
‘You?’
‘Me, no. I’d love to have a near-death experience. Well, not too near, not just yet, but I mean most people who’ve had them – the long tunnel, the glorious light – they immediately seem to lose all fear of dying.’
‘I thought the clergy naturally would have no f—’
‘You’re kidding.’
Lol smiled. ‘Doesn’t really explain Belladonna’s music, though, does it? Her old stage act. Which was not about the delights of the afterlife as much as the trappings of death itself: coffins, biers, all that. What kind of near-death experience accounts for that?’
‘Good point. None of this adds up, does it? I mean, that’s the problem… nothing here adds up. Nothing quite connects. Pieces missing, everywhere.’
‘What about the dead girl?’
‘Especially that. That’s… horrific.’ Merrily stood up, steadying her mug of tea. ‘I’m going to suggest that Mumford talk to Frannie Bliss, see if he can find out what the police have uncovered. I think what Bernie’s saying is that it needs to be sorted – explained – before local people start putting a superstitious slant on it.’
‘Does that really happen any more, in our secular society?’
‘Especially in our secular society,’ Merrily said. She reached out for Lol’s hand. ‘Nothing wrong, is there?’
‘I… no.’
‘You’re OK about the Bristol gig?’
‘I’ll just take lots of drugs,’ Lol said.
She peered at him to see if he was smiling. He smiled.
A few minutes later, he watched from the front window as she moved across the edge of the cobbled square to the vicarage gate. He felt vacant, spare. She was working seven days a week, letting herself be used to further other people’s agendas. In the past week, he’d written about half a song that was never going to be more than a filler track on the next album, if there was a next album. He felt incomplete, worthless.
The fire was burning low and the room was laden with shadows as dense as old clothes. It was time he got the electricity connected.
15
Ghost-Walk
MUMFORD DIDN’T WANT to talk to Frannie Bliss.
Well, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Bliss, he said on the phone, just that he didn’t want to put the DI in a difficult position.
Mumford, reluctantly, as Joe Public: a crisis of confidence.
‘You do want to find out about this?’ Merrily said. ‘How this girl’s suicide ties in. If it does.’
‘Suppose I wouldn’t mind, aye.’
Almost certainly Welsh Border-speak for, Yes, I will never rest again until I know. Outside the scullery window, the apple trees’ budded branches dangled uncertainly, and the grey-green moss gleamed coldly on the stone wall between the vicarage garden and the churchyard. Spring had stalled in frosty spurts of morning mist, the exhaust of winter.
‘You heard the local radio, Mrs Watkins?’
‘Some of the early stuff.’
The breakfast lead on Radio Hereford and Worcester had been an extended report live from Ledbury. Not unexpectedly, the parents weren’t talking. Anonymous neighbours said that the dead girl, Jemima Pegler, used to be a helpful, friendly kid, once, but she’d changed. Neighbours in small towns didn’t like to use words like sullen. They said more withdrawn lately.
‘You leave it on for the studio discussion?’ Mumford said.
‘Didn’t have time.’
‘Your friend Dr Saltash?’
Merrily gripped the wooden arms of her chair, Ethel the cat taking off from the desk and raking up a page of the sermon pad.
‘Introduced as a retired consultant psychiatrist with Hereford hospitals, special consultant to the Department of Health, and the author of a paper on self-harming in children and teenagers.’
‘Andy, was this man always bloody ubiquitous, or is it just my paranoia?’
‘Said he couldn’t really comment on an individual case but in the general way of things this particular method of suicide – public place – it was usually a cry for attention. A child saying, You’re all gonner know who I am now, kind of thing.’
‘And two near-identical deaths in more or less the same spot?’
‘Didn’t make much of that. Once a place gets known for it… like scores of folk jumping off Beachy Head, ennit?’
‘He mention your mother?’
‘Not in so many words. Old folk, that’s not so emotive, is it? Not like kids.’
‘And we still don’t know what the police think.’
Giving Mumford another opportunity to say he’d contact Bliss.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I gotter go into Ludlow this afternoon, see about the inquest, get an undertaker on standby for the ole girl. Might talk to some other people while I’m there. Let you know what I find out, all right?’
‘Please.’
‘’Course,’ Mumford said, ‘no partic’lar reason why you shouldn’t give the boss a call.’
‘Bliss?’
‘Always got time for you, as I recall.’
‘And then, like… tell you what he says.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Mumford said.
‘Andy Mumford,’ Frannie Bliss said nostalgically. ‘Merrily, I just can’t tell you how much I miss the miserable bastard. The faded rugby-club ties, the knackered tweed jackets he probably inherited from his dad…’
