‘You’ll like him,’ Bliss said. ‘He’ll make you laugh.’
‘You still haven’t told me whether—’
The line went dead. Merrily sat holding the empty phone, staring blankly at the rest of the message on the screen.
Incidentally, if you didn’t know this, Gwendolen McBryde’s daughter was also called Jane, and MRJ was very fond of her. This may well have been because Jane, something of an artist like both her parents, was fascinated by the supernatural and creepy things generally. So when MRJ says ‘we’ caused offence at Garway, he may well be referring to the, by then, teenage Jane and possibly her mother as well as himself. It occurs to me that you might like to read Michael Cox’s biography of MRJ, relevant pages of which I’ve attached.
Good luck with your investigations; do let me know how you get on!
Rosemary Pardoe
Merrily sat up, clicked on the attachment, bringing up two scanned pages from
M. R. James, An Informal Portrait
. The first began by examining the possibility that the lively and affectionate young widow Gwendolen McBryde had been rather attracted to her late husband’s
best friend, a man who had helped her through difficult times and been conscientious about his role as Jane’s guardian.
Monty had been entirely relaxed at the house, Woodlands, in south Herefordshire, treated with ‘affectionate and admiring indulgence’ by his host. Gwendolen had recalled him doing impersonations, putting on funny accents and once reading aloud from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
to a background of nightjars.
He’d also once read the lessons at nearby Abbeydore. According to Gwendolen, he had a beautiful voice which, when he read aloud,
lent you his understanding
. At Abbeydore,
it gave me an unreal feeling as if some saint held forth to lesser creatures and birds
.
As for Gwen’s daughter … well, it seemed she was
very
much Monty’s kind of kid, producing lots of delightful drawings of unspeakable entities emerging from gaping tombs.
So Rosemary Pardoe’s suggestion that it was the daughter who’d been with Monty James in Garway seemed to be on the money.
Oh God. When in Herefordshire, M. R. James had stayed with a widowed single mother with a teenage daughter who was into creepy things and was called … Jane.
Into the bleak morning, after the night of cruel tragedy, came the brittle sound of cosmic laughter.
She thought of Bliss.
He’ll make you laugh
.
And what he’d said on the phone when she was in the car on Garway Hill.
What they used to call the funnies
.
Oh hell.
‘This is Jonathan Long.’ Bliss hooked out a chair at the refectory table. ‘One of my colleagues.’
All the time she was making them coffee, Merrily kept glancing at Bliss, but there was no eye response; he didn’t look happy. She felt the tension rolling in her stomach, hard as a golf ball.
Jonathan Long – rank unspecified – looked several years younger than Bliss, perhaps very early thirties. He didn’t look like a cop, maybe a young academic, a lecturer in something dry and exact like law or
economics. His body was thickening, and he wore a dark grey threespiece suit. A cop with a waistcoat was rare these days, a
young
cop with a waistcoat entirely outside Merrily’s experience.
‘I gather you’ve known Francis for some time,’ Long said.
‘Way back. Since he had a full head of hair.’
Tension throwing out flippancy like feeble sparks. Long didn’t smile. Neither did Bliss. Long had spiky black hair, and a light tan; Bliss needed to avoid the sun in case his freckles turned malignant.
‘We were hoping, Mrs Watkins, that you might share some of your impressions.’
Long’s accent was educated and still fairly refined; seemed unlikely that he’d spent much of his career confiscating crack pipes and bundling binge drinkers into blue vans. It also seemed unlikely that he was going to identify himself as Special Branch.
‘About what, Mr Long?’ She sat down opposite them. ‘Theology? Contemporary music?’
‘Specifically, Fuchsia Mary Linden.’ Long examined his coffee. ‘Do you have cream, by any chance?’
‘Erm … no, sorry.’ All right, playtime over. ‘You’ve found her, right?’
‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘We’ve found her. We
think
we’ve found her.’
His usually foxy eyes were dull as pennies. Sudden sunlight dropped from the highest kitchen window like a splash of cold milk.
‘We’re still waiting for the dental report,’ Jonathan Long said. ‘But it’s unlikely to be anyone else.’
H
AD SHE, ON
some level, expected it? Had she looked down on Felix’s body last night, dumped like a heap of building rubble on his own doorstep, and somehow known she was seeing only half a tragedy?
I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily
.
A train in the distance, rattling through the night. The coffee going cold in front of her while the horror came out in short, sick spurts.
‘On the southern line. The London train, via Newport.’ Jonathan Long’s voice light and casual, as if he was reading from a passenger timetable. ‘Just under half a kilometre from what I understand is known as the Tram Inn level crossing.’
‘Past the big feed place with the silos,’ Bliss said.
The full significance of it crashed in on Merrily like a rock through a windscreen. She pushed her chair back, a raking screech on the stone flags.
‘She laid her head …?’
‘On the line,’ Bliss said. ‘I don’t know how people can do that, meself. They just think of the train roaring unstoppably out of the night. Never a thought for the poor bastard driving it.’
Watch over her, in the name of all the angels and saints in heaven. Keep guard over her soul day and night
.
‘You knew last night, didn’t you?’ Merrily stared at him. ‘You knew when we were at the caravan.’
This word ‘whimsical’ … Would that translate, for the rest of us, as three sheets to the wind?
‘Don’t look at me like that, Merrily. We knew a woman had been hit by a train, that was all. What do you know about her?’
‘Not much. But then, in some ways there isn’t much that anyone knows.’
‘We have names of adoptive parents, but we haven’t spoken to them yet.’
‘You even found them?’
‘I’m— We have someone working on it.’
Merrily told them about Fuchsia’s mother, Tepee City.
‘How did you get an ID, Frannie?’
‘Car keys in her pocket. A van parked near the Tram Inn, registered to Felix Barlow.’
‘Tepee City,’ Long said. ‘That’s well into Wales, isn’t it, Mrs Watkins? A Welsh-speaking area.’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘A significant amount of old-fashioned Welsh nationalism in that area, I think.’
‘Not much in Tepee City itself, I’d’ve thought. Alternative communities are usually immigrants. What’s your point?’
Like he was going to tell her, this smooth git with his secret agenda. Merrily just wanted to throw him out, throw both of them out and take herself down to the church to scream abuse at God.
‘This house,’ Long said. ‘The Master House. Fuchsia was instrumental in getting Felix Barlow to pull out of the contract?’
‘She was the reason he pulled out.’
‘Because she thought it was haunted.’
‘Because she said she’d sensed a … an evil there,’ Merrily said, reluctantly.
Long smiled the kind of smile where you couldn’t have slid a butter knife between his lips.
‘From your conversations with her, can you think of any other reason why she – or anyone else, for that matter – might not have wanted that house redeveloped?’
‘You mean a
sane
reason? No. I can’t.’
Wasn’t God’s fault. Merrily gripped her knees under the table. She was incompetent. Smug, self-satisfied, lazy. She’d spotted the unconvincing elements, the lines from M. R. James, and missed all the danger signs.
When he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them
.
‘So what did you …?’ Long was steepling his fingers. ‘Francis has tried to explain your role in the, ah, Diocese, but what precisely did you
do
with this woman?’
‘Are you actually leading the inquiry, Mr Long?’
‘Mr Bliss is leading the murder inquiry, I’m dealing with a side issue which may or may not be connected.’
‘Do you want to explain that?’
Jonathan Long said nothing. Merrily played with a teaspoon, let the silence drift for a few seconds, looked at him.
‘So would that … would that be one of those
we ask the questions
kind of silences?’
‘I did try to tell you on the way here, mate,’ Bliss said. ‘This is a woman who isn’t invariably attracted to the enigmatic type.’
Long’s gaze settled for a moment on Bliss, and then he turned back to Merrily.
‘You performed an exorcism? Or whatever you prefer to call it.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake—’ Merrily dropped the teaspoon into her mug. ‘We have an escalating series of responses, and exorcism is so far up the ladder we usually get vertigo before we … She had a blessing. In a church. That’s it.’
And it shouldn’t have been. There should’ve been follow-up. Aftercare.
‘What was your opinion of her, Mrs Watkins?’
‘What?’
‘Give me a picture.’
‘She was intelligent, in her way. Intense. Seemed certain about what she’d experienced, but I was … keeping an open mind.’
‘You thought she might be delusional.’
‘Or making it up. Some people do.’
‘But you went ahead, all the same.’
‘At the blessing stage, we can afford to be … a bit uncertain. For the heavier stuff, you need permission from the bishop. It’s also likely to involve a psychiatric assessment.’
‘And do you think psychiatry might have been appropriate in the case of Fuchsia Mary Linden?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any suggestion of previous violence? On either side.’
‘Her and Felix? No. I mean, are you
sure
she did this?’
‘Merrily,’ Bliss said. ‘As I’m apparently leading the inquiry, I’ll make an executive decision to spell it out for you. We’re waiting for forensic. Even the dental stuff isn’t straightforward. When a train’s – I’m sorry – when a train’s run over someone’s head, it’s like collecting beads from a broken necklace. No, we
don’t
know she killed him and there’s a possibility we never will, for sure. We haven’t found a weapon. But it’s one of those situations where the press statement is likely to say that we’re not looking for anybody else. That any clearer?’
‘Thanks. No … I can’t see any reason she’d want to kill Felix. My impression was that she very much needed him in her life. Her rock, if you like. An old family friend, a link going … way back.
She
’d gone in search of him. She seems to have wanted security, a proper home.’
Didn’t want to mention either umbilical cords or paying for art college. Might tell Bliss later, but not in front of Jonathan Long.
Not for her to pass on Mrs Morningwood’s stories, either. Not to this guy.
Long nodded. ‘Right then.’ He stood up. ‘That’s probably all for the present … unless …’
He glanced at Bliss, who came more slowly to his feet.
‘If you think of anything else that might be relevant, Merrily, you know where I am.’ Bliss smiled. ‘Jonathan … well, nobody really knows where Jonathan is.’
When they’d gone, Merrily poured Long’s coffee, untouched, down the sink and rang Huw Owen in the Brecon Beacons. No answer. She called Sophie at the gatehouse. Engaged.
She wasn’t ready to go to the church.
She ought to sit down and think about it, sensibly.
She didn’t feel sensible. There was a possibility – no getting round it
– that she could, in some way, have prevented this. All of it. If she hadn’t been so blasé, so easily deflected. She fumbled a cigarette out of the packet, started to light it and couldn’t get a proper grip on the Zippo. No use saying it had all been out of her hands; she’d let it slip through them, fall to the flags, smash.
The phone was ringing in the scullery. Merrily dropped the lighter, went to the sink and splashed water on her face. Towelled it roughly and went through to the phone.
‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’
‘Adam Eastgate, Merrily, at the Duchy. Listen, have you heard the radio news this morning?’
‘Kind of.’
‘I’ve been trying to get some sense out of the police.’
‘Erm … I was over there last night. Not long after they found him. I’m so sorry, Adam.’
The big black phone was full of a charged-up silence.
‘The police’ve just been here,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m afraid …’
‘Jesus, Merrily, I could never in a million years have imagined—’
‘No. Me neither. I’m not sure if you know this, but Felix’s girlfriend Fuchsia is also dead. Found on … on the railway. Not yet officially identified, but I don’t think there’s any doubt.’
‘Christ almighty. So, how … how did Felix die?’
‘He had head injuries. Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t see any of this coming, either. And I ought to have.’
‘Come on, that’s
easily
said, Merrily. We could all say that. Hell, I knew him better than any builder we ever used, he was a canny fella, I liked him a lot, but … Jesus, this is not real. This is complete madness.’
‘Yes.’
In her head, Merrily was in the car again on Garway Hill, on the phone to Bliss, irritably deciding not to check out the Master House.
Sod this, going home
.
‘I’ll have to get word to the Man,’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘He always admired Felix’s work.’
She heard him breathing steadily. Pictured him standing by the window in the Duchy’s barn, looking out towards the Welsh border hills
and Garway and wondering how this might rebound. Heard him clearing his throat.
‘Merrily, I’ve got to ask. Does this connect, in your … your view of things, to the Master House?’