The Smile of a Ghost (Merrily Watkins 7), page 7
‘Think I’ll have a word, if that’s all right.’
Mumford nodding glumly, sitting on the brick front wall of his parents’ home, looking out across what seemed to be as close as Ludlow got to messy. The train station, small and discreet, sat on higher ground opposite the supermarket. Lower down was an old feed-mill, beautifully preserved, turned into apartments or something. Then tiers of Georgian and medieval roofs and chimney stacks and, above everything, the high tower of St Laurence’s, like a column of sepia smoke.
‘The doc says she needs assessment,’ Mumford said. ‘Should have had assessment some while back. See the way he looked at me?’
‘It’s how he looks at everybody,’ Merrily said. ‘He’s a psychiatrist.’
Her hands were clasped across her stomach, damming the cold river of doubt that awoke her sometimes in the night – the seeping fear that most of what she did amounted to no more than a ludicrously antiquated distraction from reality.
‘Checking out the old feller now, see,’ Mumford said. ‘Next thing, he’ll have the bloody social services in. This is—’ His hands gripping the bricks on either side. ‘She’s got worse, much worse, since the boy died.’
‘A dreadful shock can do it. Reaction can be delayed. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s on the slippery slope.’
‘At her age,’ Mumford said, ‘what else kind of slope is there?’
Merrily paced a semicircle. She saw Saltash, just out of earshot. His head was on one side, and he was pinching his chin and nodding, flashing his mirthless smile as Mumford’s dad talked, his carrier bag at his feet. She was remembering Huw Owen’s primary rule: never walk away from a house of disturbance without leaving a prayer behind.
Had she left without a prayer because she was afraid it might have inflamed the situation? Or because Nigel Saltash was there?
‘Just because I’m working with a psychiatrist doesn’t mean other possible interpretations go out of the window.’ She bit her lip, uncertain. Hoping she wasn’t just fighting her corner for the sake of it. ‘What do you think she meant about a woman pushing him off the castle?’
Mumford shook his head. ‘She never said that before.’
‘Does it make any sense?’
‘There was a witness – bloke lives over the river. Steve Britton showed me the statement. Bloke saw him fall. Nothing about anybody else. I… Where’s she get this stuff from? Never said nothing like that before. I don’t… Christ, I need to check this out, now, don’t I? You’re right, it’s easy enough to say she’s losing it.’ He sprang up from the wall. ‘I dunno… at every stage of your bloody life you become somebody you said you was never gonner be.’
‘In what way?’
‘Ah… you’d be on an investigation: murder, suicide, missing person, and there’d always be some pain-in-the-arse busybody relative – never the father, always someone a bit removed from it – who’d be trying to tell you your job. Have you looked into this or that aspect, have you talked to so-and-so, why en’t you done this? You wanted to strangle them after a bit. But the truth is there aren’t enough cops to do half of what needs doing. And so things don’t come out the way they should, things gets left, filed, ignored…’
‘Be careful, Andy,’ Merrily said, for no good reason, knowing she wouldn’t be careful in a situation like this.
‘Airy-fairy sort of feller, apparently – writes poems and publishes them hisself.’
‘Who?’
‘The witness. I’ll mabbe go see him. Got time now, ennit? Got time to be the busybody pain-in-the-arse uncle. Nobody bothered about the kid when he was alive, except for one ole woman.’
‘Andy, I’m hardly the person to be disparaging it, but if she does think she’s been given this information by a… by Robbie…’
‘Could be something he told her days before, ennit? Before he died. Something that’s suddenly clicked. I been agonizing about Robbie’s death for three weeks now. Thinking, leave it till after the funeral, wait for the inquest. Now even Mam’s on at me to do something. Why din’t you stop her? Where the hell did she get that from, Mrs Watkins?’
On the edge of the car park, Mumford’s dad had picked up his carrier bag and he and Saltash had started back towards the house in the wake of Saltash’s all-concealing smile.
‘Andy.’ Merrily beckoned Mumford into his parents’ tiny front garden. ‘I think we should try and deal with this… Go back in. But not with him. Think of something.’
7
I’ll Be Waiting
THERE WAS ANOTHER clear reason why the implications of retirement were terrifying Andy Mumford.
His dad.
Reg Mumford was taller than his son and held himself stiff-backed and upright, but it was hard to believe now that he’d ever been a policeman. Still wearing his fishing hat, he was standing with his hands on the shoulders of his wife’s chair, as if it was a wheelchair. Merrily’s feeling was that this was because he didn’t want to look at her.
‘I reckon they’ve started watering the beer again, Andrew.’
‘You said.’
‘Have you found that?’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Always start doing it this time of year when the tourists come.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Prices goes up, too. Don’t seem two minutes since it was one and six a pint.’
‘Before my time, Dad.’
‘Hee, hee!’ Reg Mumford pointed at Andy, who was standing uncomfortably up against the sideboard near the picture that was turned to the wall. ‘You en’t gonner be saying that for long. Now you’re retired, see, time’s gonner speed up, time’s gonner flash by, you mark my words, boy.’
‘Mrs Watkins would like to talk to you again,’ Mumford said.
‘I’d be delighted to talk to this young lady, Andrew. Shall we go out for a drink, the three of us?’
‘She wants to talk to Mam, Dad.’
‘Won’t get no sense out of her,’ Reg said. ‘I can tell you that much.’
Merrily, still standing by the door, glanced at Andy Mumford, watched his lips retract, a sign of extreme frustration. They were getting nowhere here. Nigel Saltash had suggested lunch in one of the splendid new restaurants which, he said, now made visits to Ludlow such an unexpected pleasure. At least she’d got out of that, saying that she had a sermon to write, and then Mumford telling Saltash he had to pick his wife up in Dilwyn, not far from Ledwardine, so he could give the vicar a lift back.
She came over from the door and knelt on the rug in front of Mrs Mumford’s chair. Mrs Mumford contemplated her for a while and then began to nod, light graduating into her eyes as if the action of nodding was powering a small dynamo.
‘Now then. Now. I know who you are. I was a bit confused, the way that man kept smiling at me, but I know who you are now, my dear.’
Merrily smiled back. Somehow she didn’t think Mrs Mumford was going to get this right.
‘You were at the funeral, weren’t you?’
‘Erm…’
‘You’re the teacher. Yes. Robbie’s teacher. You was his favourite, you’re…’ Mrs Mumford started to prise herself up. ‘You’re his… history teacher!’
‘Well, I—’
‘’Course you are.’ Reg Mumford was leaning over the chair from behind and pointing a forefinger at his own head, making screwing motions. ‘And we’re very glad to see you, aren’t we, Phyllis?’
‘He loved history,’ Mrs Mumford said.
‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Much bloody good it did him.’ Reg snorted. ‘Should’ve been out playing football. If he’d played football like a normal boy he’d still be alive. I’ve always said that.’
‘Dad, for Christ—’
‘Andrew, we gotter face facts. We’re all terrible sorry ’bout what happened, but it en’t no use blamin’ ourselves for ever and a day, is it? Boy was a bloody dreamer, head in the clouds, no gettin’ round it.’
‘All right, Dad,’ Mumford said, desperate. ‘We’ll go to the pub, you and me, eh? Half an hour, Mrs Watkins, will that be all right?’
Merrily nodded, grateful.
‘Now, I know I had something to show you,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Where did I put it?’
Merrily had made tea for them both. The kitchen wasn’t as clean as it might have been; she’d wondered if there was a home help. Mrs Mumford didn’t seem to be disabled, but she was very overweight.
‘Look in that top drawer, would you?’ She seemed to be accepting Merrily, now they were on their own, but not as a priest; she wouldn’t be ready for that. ‘No, no, not that one… the long one… that’s it.’
‘This?’ Merrily opened the drawer and found a hard-backed sketch pad inside.
‘There it is. Will you bring it over?’
‘Phyllis… why’s this picture turned to the wall?’
‘Eh?’
‘The picture.’ Merrily touched it.
‘No! You leave that alone!’
‘OK.’ She drew back, took the sketch pad to Mrs Mumford who put it flat on her knees. Merrily pulled up a dining chair. An envelope fell out of the sketch pad and she caught it and put it on the chair arm.
‘Don’t know what that is,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Now, look at these. He spent hours on these. You’ve got to be careful not to touch them or it’ll all come off. He had a spray, he did, but it still comes off.’
They were charcoal sketches. The first one was clearly of St Laurence’s Church, but its size was exaggerated so that the townhouses seemed like dog kennels. The second had been drawn from directly below, so that the tower resembled a rocket about to blast off. The perspective looked, to Merrily, to be spot on. There was light and shade and he’d smudged the charcoal to produce mist effects.
‘He was very talented, Phyllis.’
‘Sit there for hours, he would, drawing pictures of the church and the black and white houses. The others… we never sees them, they never comes to see their ole gran. Only Robbie.’
‘He loved being here with you, didn’t he? What’s this one? Is that what they call the Buttercross? With the little clock tower on top.’
‘Town council meets there. That one’s the Feathers Hotel.’
Mrs Mumford was much calmer now, leafing through the drawings, some identified underneath: Castle Lodge, The Reader’s House, the Old College.
‘Did he sit outside with his sketch pad?’
‘Too shy. He went out, see, and he looked at the old houses for a long time and he’d walk all round them and then he’d come back and he… you know… what do you call it?’
‘Drew them from memory?’
‘That’s it.’
Either Robbie had had a photographic memory or he’d really studied these buildings, come to know them intimately. Whichever, it was remarkable. Merrily said this to Phyllis, and Phyllis began to cry silently, the tears just coming, her cheeks swollen and shiny like the pouches that fed hospital drips, and Merrily held her hand, and Phyllis said, ‘He’s dead,’ looking up at her, as if pleading for a contradiction.
‘You’ll see him again, Phyllis.’
‘No.’ Phyllis’s fingers tightening in a spasm, flooded eyes gazing past Merrily now, at the picture turned to the wall.
The atmosphere in the room seemed brown and felt dense, as if the air was flecked with clouds of midges. The sketch pad slid to the carpet.
‘Phyllis, will you say a prayer with me?’
‘The only one of ’em ever come to see his ole gran,’ Phyllis said.
Did she mean still?
‘Can I say a prayer?’
‘When’s the Bishop coming?’
‘I’ll make sure he comes,’ Merrily whispered. ‘I’ll bring him. I promise.’
‘Can’t see the Bishop like this.’ Phyllis pulled her hand away. ‘State of me.’
‘You’re upset, and you’ve got every reason to be.’
‘Going to the bathroom.’
‘OK.’ Merrily helped her up. Phyllis had a bandage on one leg, rumpled, and it wasn’t clean. ‘Will you be all right? Does that dressing need…?’
‘I’m all right. That woman will come… my… Gail, is it?’
‘Andy’s wife.’
‘She’s a nurse.’
Her daughter-in-law of… thirty years, was it? Merrily held open the door that led to the hall. ‘Have you got a downstairs…?’
‘I’m all right, girl.’
Merrily left the door open, went to pick up the sketch pad. It had fallen open at a drawing of what looked like a high stone wall with a jagged white hole in it the shape of a figure, like when a cartoon character crashed through brick-work. She picked up the pad, took it back to the open drawer, listening for Mrs Mumford’s movements down the hall.
Problems here, and nobody would challenge Saltash’s assessment.
When she was putting the pad away, light from the front window showed how she’d misinterpreted the drawing. It wasn’t a hole in the wall, it was a white figure in the foreground, a vaguely female figure with the charcoal smudged around it to suggest a glow, a halo. It was two-dimensional, without contours, featureless.
It seemed to be the only figure in any of Robbie’s drawings.
Merrily closed the sketch pad, put it away in the drawer, went back to plump up the cushions on Mrs Mumford’s chair and spotted the white envelope that had fallen from the sketch pad.
It seemed legitimate to open it.
Inside the envelope was a picture postcard, an atmospheric filter photo of Ludlow Castle in a pink and frosty dawn light, the message written in black fibre-tip across the full width of the card.
Dear Marion,
I am in Ludlow again as I told you and it’s brilliant here even on my own altho when I am walking through the castle I feel you are there with me and then I feel really happy.
Sometimes I pretend you are walking next to me and we are holding hands and it’s brilliant!!!! Everything is all right again, and I never want to leave cos this is our place.
I was so miserable I didn’t think I could stand it till the end of term. Its worse than ever there. I hate them, they are stupid and ignorant and they are trying to wreck my whole life. The nearer it gets to the end of the holidays the sadder I feel and don’t want to go back there and I wish I could stay here with you for ever.
Please come like you promised you would.
Please, please, please come.
I’ll be waiting.
On the way back, in Mumford’s car, coming down from Leominster towards the Ledwardine turning, Merrily said, ‘I did a brief house blessing, no fuss, a prayer for Robbie to be at rest, and the Lord’s Prayer.’
‘She even realize what you were doing?’
‘She’s not that far gone, Andy. Although I don’t think she quite got the point that I was a priest. Hard to say. Erm… look, I’m going to talk to the Bishop, OK? I mean, she asked for him, right?’
‘All that was…’ Mumford looked embarrassed. ‘They both knew him quite well, the Bishop, Mr Dunmore, back when they had the paper shop. Hardly ever went to church, mind, certainly not the ole man, but it didn’t seem to bother him. But, hell, he’s Bishop of Hereford now. We can’t just get the Bishop of Hereford to an old woman who—’
‘What… like, if it was the dowager Lady Mumford it wouldn’t be a problem? Of course we can get him. You got me – I mean you were concerned enough to think it might be something we could help with.’
‘Wish I’d never bothered. The ole man, he don’t give a toss.’
‘He’s not making her feel any better, is he? Do you think he even notices?’
‘Mrs Watkins, the fact is he’s been treating her like she’s daft for half a century.’
A stray spatter of rain landed on the windscreen. Merrily took a breath.
‘Well, I’m not sure she is.’
‘What’s that mean?’ He almost turned at the wheel, but the old Mumford set in and he kept on looking at the road.
‘It’s a feeling. Based on this and that. Who’s Marion?’
‘Who?’
‘Did Robbie have a girlfriend?’
‘Too shy.’
‘That’s what your mother said. But there was an unfinished message on a postcard. In an envelope in Robbie’s sketch pad. Begging someone called Marion to meet him at the castle. He said it was their special place. He said he was imagining them holding hands.’
‘Written by Robbie?’
‘He hadn’t signed it yet, but the handwriting matched the titles he’d put on some of the drawings. Also, was he having a bad time at home?’
‘Not according to his mother, but that don’t mean a thing. If I had a home like his, I’d’ve been having a bad time.’
‘Perhaps you should read the card,’ Merrily said. ‘I put it back in the sketch pad, next to a rather strange drawing.’
‘Strange how?’
‘Difficult to explain.’
Cole Hill came up in the windscreen, and the church steeple, and rain came on for real. Two o’clock in the afternoon, and it felt like dusk.
‘Marion,’ Mumford said. ‘Don’t mean a thing. You ask the ole girl?’
‘I didn’t mention it. She was already upset, so I just did the prayers.’
‘She seemed calmer.’
‘Final point,’ Merrily said. ‘The mirror turned to the wall.’
‘Couldn’t fail to notice that, could you?’
‘I thought it was a picture, so I had a quick look while she was in the loo – thinking maybe it was a picture of the castle or something.’
‘Mirror.’ Mumford sighed. ‘Dad wouldn’t let her take it down. Nothing to straighten his tie in.’
‘I’m not happy with this, Andy.’
‘No,’ Mumford said.
Sermons: every week another one hanging around your neck like a penance, supporting the traditional assumption, from the days when the priest was the only person in the village who could read, that you could stand up there in the pulpit having universal truths channelled through you, when all you really had were questions.
