Candlenight

The pictures were in colour. They'd been taken with a flash.

Berry flinched.

Giles's lips were drawn back into a twisted parody of a grin. Both eyes were open, the left one purple and black. The bruising spread down one side of Giles's face and mingled with the freckles.

Another picture was taken from further back and higher up, like the photographer had been standing on a chair.

'Shit.' Berry breathed.

It showed Giles sprawled crookedly, arms extended. All around him were scattered black books. One had its binding partially torn away, and curling pages lay around.

Tissue-thin. Berry could hear the pages whispering.

Next to Giles's head was a red dragon's head, spitting faded, threadbare fire into the dead man's right ear.

'The study.' Berry said, going cold. 'He died in the study.'

'You have been in this house?'

'Once,' Berry said. 'Just once. What happened to the books?'

'He appears to have had some kind of, er, final fit, should I say? Obviously grabbed at the shelves to try and prevent himself falling. Dragged out the books. Quite a frenzy.'

'So you ordered an autopsy.'

'Naturally. The state of the room suggested a possible struggle. Oh, yes, we had the portable incident room on standby, I can tell you. But by teatime it was clear we had overreacted. These things happen.'

'Brain tumour.'

'It had been forming for — well, who knows how long, weeks, months, years? His wife tells us he had been suffering from very severe headaches. Mrs. McQueen confirms this. Perhaps, you yourself…'

'No. He never mentioned headaches.'

'You see, with a condition like this, his apparent blackout on the car-park… Hit his head on a car bumper, he said. All consistent. It is a great tragedy, but that's all it is. Natural causes. No inquest. Unless there's something you feel you can add?'

'No,' Berry said. 'Nothing I have to add. Thanks, Inspector.'

Gwyn Arthur Jones put the slim photo-album back in its envelope. 'I'm very sorry.'

'One thing ' Berry said. 'His wife, Claire.'

'Quiet little girl.' said Gwyn Arthur.

'Where was she when they found Giles?'

'My, you are a suspicious chap.' said Gwyn Arthur with a half-smile. 'Mrs. Freeman was quite a short distance away, at a friend's house, as it turns out. Mrs. Dafis. is it? I don't know without looking up the statement. Obviously she feels very bad about not being there when her husband arrived home and him dying like that, on his own. I hear the funeral is today.'

'You going?'

'Well, see, I don't mean any disrespect, but not appropriate, is it, now?'

'Guess not.'

'See, even if he'd gone to Bronglais, as the doctor wanted, the chances are it would have been too late, the size of that bloody thing. Any time he could have gone.'

'Malignant? I was kind of shaky on The big words.'

Gwyn Arthur's pipe had gone out. He laid it on the grey plastic desktop and looked at it.

'As the devil,' he said. 'As the bloody devil.'

Chapter XLI

They came in from the Lampeter end, George twice stopping to consult the map, slowing at every signpost.

Terribly galling, because he was normally such a fast driver, often recklessly so in his wife's opinion.

'Pretty obscure place,' George grunted. 'Don't want to get it wrong.'

'You don't want to get there at all,' Elinor said icily.

'Elinor, I still say…'

'And why do you think we weren't told?' Elinor demanded. 'Because I didn't tell her about his death. As simple as that.'

'I can't believe,' George said, slowing the Volvo for another signpost, 'that she would be quite so petty.'

'You mean, not so petty as me?'

'That is not what I said. Elinor, for Christ's sake will you stop this.'

'We can't be far off,' Elinor said and affected a shudder 'I can feel it somehow.'

George sighed and kept quiet. He was a rumpled man with hair of nicotine and white. He'd never really taken to his son-in-law, she thought. George avoided people in high-profile jobs. He wasn't a high-profile person. He'd never minded his daughter being a photographer, though, because the photographer was the one person guaranteed always to be behind the camera

She was like him in a way, Claire, George's daughter.

Wife of Elinor's dead son-in-law.

The shock, for Elinor, had been quite stunning. And to chance upon it, without warning, in Giles's own newspaper, spread on the ceramic worktop after breakfast, four brief paragraphs of obituary, a quote from the editor: immense flair… terrible tragedy… so young… will be hard to replace.

Elinor had liked Giles. He'd been strong in his opinions, forthright. Whereas George had always been so grey. She'd been sure that Giles would, after a few weeks, realise the impossibility of living in Wales and lead Claire back.

Lead. That was it. He'd always been a leader. That was what she'd liked about Giles, that staunchly English quality of leadership.

'I don't know where we're going to stay.' George was saying. 'You do realise there's a by-election on.'

'We'll find somewhere,' Elinor said, more briskly than she felt. 'Just get us there.'

'It's four miles,' George said. 'That's what the signpost said. But you know what they say about Welsh miles.'

The aftershock had been the discovery that Giles's funeral was not to be in London. Elinor had learned this by telephoning his paper. She'd phoned the number in Y Groes about twenty times, of course, and got an answering machine. Claire's voice… in Welsh! She'd refused to leave a message after the tone. 'Claire, I'm sorry, I refuse to leave a message.' she'd said once, voice faltering, and hung up, regretful and feeling rather stupid.

At the paper, the political editor said he too was surprised that the funeral was being held in Wales, although with both Giles's parents being dead be supposed there was no special reason for it to be done in London. And with the by-election on, there'd at least be enough reporters out there to make a respectable showing.

Elinor had been glad, at least, to learn that Giles was not to be buried in the churchyard at Y Groes. Even the ceremony would not be held there.

And yet she did wonder why.

And still she had not spoken to Claire. Her daughter's reaction on their appearance at the funeral was something she could not even attempt to predict. She accepted that they had not parted on the best of terms, but for the girl to avoid her own mother at a time when a mother was needed the most…

George had taken a hopelessly circuitous route and they had turned into the road linking Aberystwyth and Pontmeurig, entering the grim valley of the disused lead mine.

Feeling at once sorrowful, offended and inadequate, Elinor experienced the pinprick of a small tear. Her daughter was a widow. A widow and childless.

'I suppose she'll marry again.' George said suddenly, as if he'd picked up her thoughts. Which was something he never did, being far too insensitive.

'What do you mean?'