Crybbe aka Curfew

heights. He reached for his trousers.

Dismay disfigured her. 'What are you doing? I didn't mean…'

'Just going to the loo, if you could direct me. Guy Morrison never goes anywhere without trousers. Not the kind of risk one takes.'

'Oh.' Jocasta relaxed. 'Yes. We're having a downstairs cloakroom made, but it isn't quite… Up the stairs, turn left and there's a bathroom directly facing you at the end of the passage. Don't be long, will you?'

Thankfully, she didn't qualify the final entreaty with another dreadful double entendre.

Guy slithered into his trousers and set off barefoot up the stairs, slightly worried now. Happily married women were fine. Unhappily married women were worse than unattached women. They clutched you as if you were a lifebelt. They were seldom afraid of word getting out about you and them. And while it might be all right for pop stars, scandal was rarely helpful to the careers of responsible producer-presenters in Features and Documentaries.

Bare-chested on the stairs, he shivered. The walls had been stripped to the stonework. Too rugged for Guy Morrison. He probably wouldn't come here again. He decided he'd open the exhibition tomorrow night and slide quietly away. A one-night stand was OK, but a two-night stand carried just a hint of commitment.

The lights went out.

'Oh, blast!' he heard from the drawing-room.

'What's happened?'

'Power cut,' Jocasta shouted. 'Happens all the time. Take it slowly and you'll be OK. When you get to the bathroom you'll find a torch on top of the cabinet.'

Guy stubbed his toe on the top banister-post and tried not to cry out.

But he found his way to the bathroom quite easily because of a certain greasy phosphorescence oozing out of the crack between the door and its frame.

'Funny sort of power cut,' he said, not thinking at all.

'Police say there are no suspicious circumstances, but they still can't explain how Mr Preece, whose family has been farming in the area for over four hundred years, came to be in the river.'

'That report,' the Offa's Dyke newsreader said, 'from Fay Morrison in Crybbe. Now sport, and for Hereford United…'

Fay switched off Powys's radio.

It was thirty-three minutes past ten and almost totally dark.

'Must've been awkward for you.' J. M. Powys rammed a freshly dried log into the Jotul and slammed the iron door on it.

Fay, in a black sweat-suit, was cross-legged on the hearth, by the stove.

'Not really,' she said, in cases like this you're not expected to probe too hard. If it had been a child, I'd be spending most of the night talking to worried mothers about why the council needed to fence off the river. Then tomorrow, this being Crybbe, I'd have to explain to Ashpole why the worried mothers were refusing to be interviewed on tape. But in a case like this, it's just assumed he killed himself. Be an open verdict. Unless…'

'Unless they find the gun.' Powys switched on a green-shaded table-lamp. Rachel drew the curtains against the night and the rain and the river.

Fay said, if anybody had any suspicions, we'd have heard from the police by now. All the same, Jack Preece…'

'His father,' Powys said.

'Yes. Jack Preece knows. I could see it in his eyes when we were down by the river, with the body.'

'Knows what?'

'I think he knows Jonathon had gone out to shoot Arnold.'

Rachel sat down on the sofa. 'What makes you…?'

'Just a minute. Hang on.' Powys stood up. 'You say Jonathon had gone out to shoot Arnold. You're saying he'd deliberately targeted Arnold?'

Fay nodded.

'Do I get the feeling there's a history to this?'

Fay swallowed, 'If I tell you this, you're going to switch to small talk for a few minutes and then look for an excuse to get rid of me. It's so weird.'

'Fay.' Powys spread his arms. 'I'm the bloke who wrote The Old Golden Land. Nothing's too weird.'

There was a longish silence. Then the green-shaded table-lamp went out.

'Bugger,' Rachel said.

'OK,' Fay said slowly. 'You can't see my face now, and I won't be able to see the incredulity on yours.'

She took a long breath. She told them about dogs in Crybbe.

'How long have you known this?' Powys asked.

'Only a day or so. I should be doing a story on it, shouldn't I? A town with no dogs' Jesus, it's not common, is it? But life here is so much like a bad dream, I'm sure if I sold it to the papers, when all the reporters arrived to check it out, there'd be dogs everywhere, shelves full of Chum at the grocer's, poop-scoops at the ironmonger's, posters for the Crybbe and District Annual Dog Show…'

She was glad they couldn't see the helpless tears in her eyes.

'I can't trust myself here,' Fay said, fighting to keep the tears out of her voice, I can't trust myself to perceive anything correctly. Too much has happened.'

'Have you thought about why it could be?' Powys asked, a soft, accepting voice in the darkness. 'Why no dogs?'

'Sure I've thought about it – in between thinking about my dad going bonkers, about holding on to my job, about somebody breaking in and smashing up my tape-machine, about being arrested for manslaughter, about living with a gho… about tons of things. I'm sorry, I'm not very rational tonight.

'So what you're saying is' – Rachel's very rational voice, 'that, because you wouldn't get rid of Arnold, Jonathon Preece deliberately set out to shoot him?'

'I had a phone call. An anonymous call. Get rid of him this weekend, or…'

'Or he'd be shot?'

'There was no specified threat. Just a warning. I think Jack Preece was the caller. Therefore it seems likely he sent Jonathon out with the gun.'

She heard Powys fumbling with the stove and its iron door was flung wide, letting a stuttering red and yellow firelight into the room.

His face looked much younger in the firelight. 'If this is right about no dogs – I'm sorry, Fay, if you say there are no dogs, I believe you – we could be looking at the key to something here.'

'You're the expert,' Fay said.

'There aren't any experts. This is the one area in which nobody's an expert.'

'If all dogs howl at the curfew,' Rachel said logically, 'why don't they just get rid of the curfew? It's not as if it's a major tourist attraction. Not as if they even draw attention to it. It just happens, it's just continued, without much being said. OK there's this story about the legacy of land to the Preeces, but is anybody really going to take that away if the curfew stops?'

'I don't think for one minute,' said Powys, 'that that's the real reason for the curfew.'

Fay sat up, interested. 'So what is the real reason?'

'If we knew that we'd know the secret of Crybbe.'

'You think there's something to know? You think there's good reason why the place is as miserable as sin?'

'There's something. Fay. how did you come to get Henry's dog. I mean, did you know him well?'

'Hardly at all. I'd done an interview with him on the day he died.'

'That's interesting. What sort of an interview? What was it about?'

'Er… dowsing. I wanted to know what he was doing in Crybbe, but it was obvious he didn't want to talk about that, so… Anyway, it was never used.'