Crybbe aka Curfew

'What was wrong with the dog?'

'He had a badly injured leg'

This could lead back to Jonathon Preece in no time at all. Holistic police-work. Everything inter-connected.

Joseph Miles Powys, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Jonathon Preece, Rachel Wade and Rose Hart. You don't have to say anything, but anything you do say…

Perhaps I should confess, he thought, looking up to the single, small, high window and seeing a hesitant sun in the white sky, wobbling nervously like the yolk of a lightly poached egg.

Maybe I did it. Maybe I killed her, as surely as if I'd been standing behind her in the prospect chamber, with both hands outstretched.

He thought, If I start believing that, we're all finished. So he went back to thinking about the cat.

CHAPTER IV

The sun was out for the first time in ages, hanging around unsurely like a new kid standing in the school doorway.

Fay walked aimlessly up the hill from the police station towards the town square and the Cock, pausing by the railings alongside the few steps to its door. Even a weak sun was not kind to this building; its bricks needed pointing, its timbers looked like old railway sleepers.

The Cock didn't even have a sign, as you might have imagined, with a bight painting of a proud rooster crowing joyfully from the hen-house roof. But, knowing Crybbe, would you really imagine a sign like that?

And anyway, whoever said the name referred to that kind of cock? A far more appropriate emblem for this town, Fay thought, would be a decidedly limp penis.

Crybbe. Crybachu (to wither).

Fay looked down the alley towards the brick building housing the Crybbe Unattended Studio and wondered if she'd ever go in there again. They were obviously handling the Rachel Wade story themselves; nobody had even attempted to contact her.

I need the money. Fay realized suddenly. I need an income. I need a job. Why are they doing this to me?

She thought of Joe Powys – I think I've got problems – helping the police with their inquiries. Quite legitimately, by the sound of it.

Rachel Wade… the dead woman, Rachel Wade.

He couldn't have… surely. She liked Joe. He seemed so normal, for the author of a seminal New Age treatise.

Well, comparatively normal.

Oh God, what was happening?

She didn't notice the door open quietly in a narrow townhouse to the left of the Cock, didn't hear the footsteps. When she turned her head, the woman was standing next to her, looking across the square to the church.

'Good morning, Fay.'

Fay was too startled, momentarily, to reply. She'd never seen this woman before, a woman nearly as small as she was, but perhaps a quarter of a century older.

Well, never seen the face before.

'Jean Wendle?' Fay said.

'I am.'

Last seen in a hat, sitting very still, impersonating the ghost of Grace Legge.

May I perhaps offer you a coffee?' Jean Wendle said.

Catrin Jones knew Guy would be furious about the Mayor's ban on cameras at tomorrow's public meeting.

She also knew from experience that when bad news was brought to him Guy had a tendency to take it out on the messenger.

The need to salvage something from the morning had brought her to this subdued, secluded house opposite the church, at the entrance to the shaded lane leading down to Crybbe Court.

'I'd be delighted to help you, any way I can,' said Graham Jarrett, hypnotherapist, small, silvery haired, late- fifties.

'I was thinking perhaps this, what is it, recession…?'

'Regression.'

It was very quiet and peaceful in the house, with many heavy velvet curtains. Catrin could imagine people here falling easily into hypnosis,

'Yes. Regression,' she said. 'This is… past lives?'

'Well, we don't like to talk necessarily in terms of past lives,' Graham Jarrett said, matter-of-fact, like a customer-friendly bank manager. 'But sometimes, when taken back under hypnosis to an area of time prior to their birth, people do seem to acquire different personalities and memories of events they couldn't be expected to have detailed knowledge of.'

'Fantastic,' Catrin said.

'I certainly wouldn't be averse to having you film a session, if the client was in agreement.'

'That would be excellent,' Catrin said.

'But I have to warn you that many of them do prefer it to be private.'

'Oh, listen, my producer – Guy Morrison – is a wonderfully assuring man. They would have nothing to worry about with him.'

'Perhaps he would like to be regressed himself?' said Graham Jarrett with a meaningful smile.

'Oh. Well…'

'Or you, perhaps?'

'Me?'

'Think about it,' Graham Jarrett said lightly.

Fay sat in the wooden bow-chair. Jean Wendle was on the edge of a huge, floppy sofa with both hands around a mug of coffee. She wore a white cashmere sweater and pink canvas trousers.

'I heard it on the news,' she said. 'About poor Rachel Wade.'

'Yes,' Fay said, wondering if she'd also heard about Powys helping with inquiries.

'It's a crumbling old place, the Court. What was she doing there at that time of night?'

'I don't know. I've only heard the news, too. I'll expect I'll be finding out. All I know is…'

Oh, what the hell, the woman was supposed to have been lawyer, wasn't she? Maybe she could help.

'All I know is, the police aren't convinced it was an accident. Joe Powys apparently saw her fall and called the police. They're kind of holding him on suspicion.'

A sunbeam licked one gilt handle of a big Chinese vase with an umbrella in it then crept across the carpet to the tip of Jean Wendle's moccasins.

'Oh dear,' Jean said.

Fay told her how things had been between Joe and Rachel, in case she wasn't aware of that. She described her own interrogation by the police. What they'd told her about Rose.

'Can they hold him, do you think?'

'It doesn't sound as if they have any evidence to speak of,' Jean said. 'They can't convict on a coincidence. They also have to ask themselves why this man should engineer the death his lover in the same way that a previous girlfriend died, then immediately report it as an accident – knowing that the police would sooner or later learn about the earlier misfortune. I wonder how they found out about that so quickly. Did Joe tell them himself, I wonder? Do you mind if I smoke?'

Fay shook her head. Jean went across to the Georgian table, put down her coffee mug, lifted the lid on an antique writing box, found a thin cigar and a cheap, disposable lighter. She picked up a small, silver ashtray and brought everything back to the sofa.