A Crown of Lights

doorway was filled. Really filled.

‘Good evening, Jeffery,’ Judith said.

‘You have me, Judith, as a witness that she hit you first.’ Weal’s voice was colourless and flat as card. ‘But only if you make no further mess of her than that, or it would not be a reasonable defence.’

He was carrying what looked like a kind of garden implement. He came in and gently closed the door of the mausoleum behind him. He was wearing a charcoal grey three-piece suit and a white shirt, and a black tie to show he was still in mourning. His face was pouchy, red veins prominent in his grey cheeks.

He propped the garden implement against the door. Merrily saw that it was a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun.

‘Thought it was the hippies, see.’ He nodded at the twelve-bore. ‘Some satanist hippies are parked up in the clearing by the Fedw Dingle. Father Ellis phoned to warn me. They break in anywhere.’

‘Isn’t loaded, is it, Jeffery?’ Judith said.

‘It’s always loaded. There are foxes about. And feral cats. I hate cats, as you know.’

‘Not going to the Masonic?’

‘I was going, Judith, till I saw all those troublemakers in the village. Can’t leave your house unguarded, all this going on, can you?’

Talking politely, like neighbours over the wall, people who knew each other but not that well.

They must have known one another for most of their lives.

Merrily didn’t try to move. Judith looked down at her.

‘Recognize this one, do you, Jeffery? Came to see me this morning. Asking all kinds of questions about Father Ellis. And about you, and Menna. When she left, I saw that the keys... You know where I keep your keys, on the hook beside the door? Stupid of me, I know, but I trust people, see, and we’ve never had anything stolen before. But when she left I seen the keys were gone.’

Weal stood over Merrily. ‘Called the police?’

‘Well, next thing, there she is coming down the lane tonight. I thought, I’ll follow her, I will, and sure enough, up the drive she goes, lets herself in and when I came in here, she’d already done that.’ They both looked at the open tomb. ‘Disgusting little bitch. I shouldn’t have touched her but, as you say, she went for me. Like a cat.’

I hate cats, as you know. How instinctive she was.

Merrily was able to open her swelling eye, just a little. She looked up at Weal. It was like standing under some weathered civic monument. She didn’t think there was any point at all in telling him that Judith had lured her here, picking up, with psychopathic acumen, Merrily’s guilt, her sense of responsibility for Barbara Buckingham.

‘Why did you do this? Why do you keep coming here? Why do you keep wanting to see my wife?’

J.W. Weal gazing down at her sorrowfully, giving Merrily the first real indication that there was something wrong with him. His speech was slow, his voice was dry.

‘The truth of it is,’ Judith said, ‘that she seems to have a vendetta against Father Ellis.’

‘Father Ellis is... a good man,’ Weal said calmly.

No, it wasn’t calmness so much as depletion. Something missing – almost as if he was drugged, not fully here. As if part of him existed on some intermediate plane, at grey-and-lightless level. Lying there in a cocoon of pain, detached, Merrily felt her senses heightened, her objectivity sharpened.

‘Supposed to be the exorcist for the Hereford Diocese, she is,’ Judith told Weal. ‘Doesn’t like him working in her back yard – a priest whose feet she is not fit to wash. What good would a woman like this be at what he does?’

Merrily tried to stand. Judith immediately pushed her down again and she slid into the corner by the door. Judith was wearing her leather gloves again, perhaps to cover up any slight abrasions or bruising from the punches. Merrily’s face felt numb and twisted. She wondered if her cheekbone was broken. She wondered where this would end. The way these two were talking to each other, it was like a bad play.

‘Gave me some nonsense story,’ Judith Prosser said. ‘About Barbara Buckingham being murdered and buried in there.’ Another nod to the open tomb.

Why, in God’s name, didn’t one of them close it?

‘Buckingham?’ Weal said vaguely. What was wrong with him?

‘Barbara Thomas.’

‘Murdered?’

‘She thinks Barbara was murdered.’ A gleeful, almost girlish lilt now. ‘Thinks you did it, Jeffery.’

Merrily didn’t look at him. She could almost hear his mind trying to make sense of it.

‘Because... Barbara Thomas... came to see me, is it?’ His voice thin and stretched, as though he was trying to remember something. ‘Because she... accused me?’

‘Did she?’ Merrily said.

‘Shut up!’ Judith moved towards her. Merrily shrank back into the corner. If she could just get to her feet, she might... but then there was Weal.

‘If you grievously injure her,’ he told Judith earnestly, ‘you know I may not be able to help you.’

Merrily shut her eyes. Think! Barbara believes Weal was responsible for Menna’s death, so she goes to see Weal and accuses him of bringing about Menna’s death by subjecting her to Ellis’s perverse ritual. What does Weal do then? What does he do to Barbara?

Nothing.

The way he was talking now, viewing the situation, almost naively, from a pedantic legal perspective, made one thing clear: whatever else he was, this man was not a killer.

There’s only one killer.

‘J.W.,’ Merrily said. ‘When Barbara came to see you... when she went a little crazy and started accusing you of... things, did you...’ She could hear the acceleration of Judith’s breathing, but she didn’t look at her; she was going to get this out if she was beaten into the ground for it. ‘Did you send her to see Judith?’

Weal didn’t answer. He glanced briefly at Judith, then down at Merrily. The question had thrown him. He looked at Judith again, his jaw moving uncertainly, as if he was trying to remember why it was that he hated her so much.

Merrily could suddenly see Weal and Barbara in the old rectory, Weal red-faced and anguished. Why are you plaguing me, you stupid, tiresome woman? Why don’t you talk to the one person who, for twenty-five years, has been...?

Judith said, ‘Jeffery, you’re tired.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m always tired these days.’

‘Why don’t you go back to the house now?’ Judith said kindly. ‘I’ll sort this out.’

He put his fingers vaguely to his forehead. ‘You won’t go doing anything stupid, will you, Judith? We are entitled to protect our property, but only...’

‘Don’t worry about me. I have never been a stupid woman. I was just carried away, see. Just carried away, Jeffery.’

He nodded.

‘Here,’ Judith picked up his shotgun. ‘Take this with you and lock it away. No one will try to get in now.’

She held the gun upright and handed it to him. Weal accepted it, holding the barrel loosely.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Judith.’

When Judith’s gloved hand slid gracefully down the barrel, down the stock, the blast was like the end of the world. Merrily, shrinking into her corner, into herself, saw J.W. Weal’s head burst like a melon in a rising red spray.

Felt it come down again, a warm hail.

56 Each of my Dyings