The Cure of Souls

There was momentary quiet around the table. Then Sally Boswell pushed away her mug of cooling tea.

‘You’re right, of course. Stewart Ash was a gentle soul. I feared very much for him, with the appalling Adam Lake pursuing the kiln. He was so happy there – compiling his little books, talking to the locals about the old days. Taking his careful photos with equipment so old that Conrad Lake would have discarded it without a thought. You’re right – poor Stewart just wanted to be left alone in his beloved kiln-house.’

Sally said she’d once asked Stewart to whom he planned to leave the place. It would have to be his favourite niece, he said – despite her dreadful husband. And so it was Sally who had suggested, half humorously, that he make a will leaving it to the most obnoxious of his relatives, with a clause pre-empting resale… and then tell Lake what he’d done. On the other matter, the book, Sally had asked Stewart if he’d consider turning the photographs over to her, saying she was prepared to write the book and publish it, too, and sell it in the museum if no one else dared take it.

‘He could keep the profits, for all I cared,’ Sally said.

‘And what did Stewart say?’ Lol asked.

‘He was thinking about it,’ Sally said. ‘He was still thinking about it when he was killed.’

‘By who?’

Al exploded. ‘Mother of God, there’s no big mystery here, boy. Stewart was gay. He was doing a book on the hop-pickers of yore, and his bits of research did indeed bring him into contact with some very nice gypsy boys. Most gypsies have very few hang-ups about sex. Twenty quid for a three-minute hand job would sound very reasonable indeed.’

‘And these are nice boys,’ Sally said cynically. ‘Very friendly. He can trust them. So perhaps we weren’t the first ones to see those photographs.’

‘Let’s just imagine,’ Al went on, ‘that Stewart – no doubt more interested in the hop-bine than the naked girl – gives one of the photos to the Smith boys and asks if any of them can tell him who the girl is. They say they’ll take it back to their family and ask around. They return the picture a day or so later, heads shaking: “Terrible sorry, guv’nor – nobody’d recognize this one at all.” ’

Al flashed his goblin’s grin around the table.

‘But in fact someone in the family whose opinion you do not, under any circumstances, discount, has said to the Smith boys, “It is your duty to the family to go back and get the rest of these photos and if you know what’s good for you for the rest of your dishonourable lives, you will not return without them…” ’

‘So the Smith boys did do it,’ Merrily said.

‘Never any doubt in my mind. It was probably much as it was told to the court – an attempted burglary. They went for the pictures – all of them. And the book, too, whatever stage it was at, to find out how much Stewart knew, find out what really happened to Rebekah Smith. Oh, a mission of great importance. And had it been anything else – anything but his precious book – Stewart would’ve said, “Go ahead, take it, take it all.” ’ Al sat back. ‘Anything but his bloody book.’

A large moth, with black rings on its wings, landed in the centre of the table, moved around it for a few moments and then fluttered away.

‘There goes Stewart now,’ Al said whimsically.

Lol kept asking about the pictures. Where were they now? Did the Smith boys take them, or did they panic and leave empty-handed, as had been implied in court? If the Smiths had taken them, would they have had time to pass them on before they were brought in by the police?

Merrily thought Lol seemed obsessed, as if he was determined to spread out all the mysteries of Knight’s Frome, like the cut and turned hay under the full moon.

‘If the family have the pictures,’ Al said, ‘they’ll keep bloody quiet about it now, at least until after the appeal. No stronger evidence of the boys’ guilt. And it’s all spoiled now, anyway. Who could ever justify the murder of an innocent man to prove the guilt of another who’s already dead?’

‘Besides which,’ Merrily said, ‘it’s just a photograph of a naked girl – no proof of who took it and no suggestion of what happened to the girl.’

Lol looked at Al and then at Sally. ‘And what did happen to the girl?’

‘No one knows,’ Sally admitted. ‘We don’t know how the relationship between Rebekah and Lake came about, which of them seduced the other, who exploited whom. But everything I know of Conrad suggests that it was probably going on before Caroline left him. He would have taken a perverse delight, knowing of her friendship with the Romanies, in forming one of his own. However, Conrad’s idea of a relationship was not… a two-sided thing.’

‘But he picked the wrong woman.’ Al pushed long white hair behind his ears. ‘He picked the woman with the mouth which would eat the world. It’s likely that the departure of Caroline would have fed some ambition into her head. So what does he do? Does Conrad Lake, good friend and supporter of Oliver Perry-Jones, marry a gypsy? Out of the question. Can he pay her off, perhaps? Ha! Does even the Emperor of Frome have enough money to pay off Rebekah Smith? I think not.’

Sally said, ‘I don’t know how he killed her. Probably strangulation. But I think I can guess how he disposed of her remains.’

Merrily stared at Sally, and the night quivered around her.

Vision, when it came, could knock you sideways.

The burning stench of gunpowder and rotten eggs, the smell of cheap fireworks from when you were a kid, fierce and searing as a jet from a blowlamp, the hot breath of hell; brimstone.

Just because the pictures of Rebekah were found in the kiln, didn’t mean—?

Merrily put a hand to her throat. She saw the sudden concern in Lol’s eyes, recalling his anxiety in the kiln, during the Deliverance – the utterly needless deliverance of the soul of the inoffensive Stewart Ash to God. It wasn’t Stewart, it had never been Stewart. Stewart wasn’t the type…

Al Boswell put his head on one side. ‘Drukerimaskri?’

‘Is it possible,’ Merrily said, ‘that Rebekah Smith might have died in the kiln? Was this the conjecture at the time?’

Sally Boswell raised up her glasses on their chain, put them on, gazed through them into Merrily’s eyes. Her face was severe and, for once, she looked her age.

‘Oh yes,’ she said.

‘And could she have choked?’

‘Sulphur,’ Sally said. ‘Do you know what sulphur does?’

‘Yes. I’ve a strong idea.’

Sally spoke in her museum curator’s voice, without emotion. ‘What happens in a hop-kiln is that when the sulphur is to be burned, everyone gets out very rapidly. Sulphur, in small quantities or as an element in spa water, can be beneficial to health. Sulphur burning in a confined space can be horribly poisonous. It causes extreme reactions very quickly. It attacks, the eyes, the throat, the lungs, the skin. It turns hops yellow. I think that anyone exposed to sulphur fumes, in a confined space and unable to get out, would be… grateful to suffocate.’

Al said, ‘Lake always took his women to that kiln. Common knowledge.’

‘Women? How many women did he have?’

‘How many sheep in a flock?’ Sally said. ‘And after the cursory search for Rebekah was over, he became less cautious. He’d pick up prostitutes in Hereford and Worcester and bring them back – right up to his death. He had a mattress in the loft.’

Al regarded Merrily gravely. ‘How do you come to know of this?’

Merrily’s phone began to shrill.

Al suddenly smashed a fist down on the iron table. ‘He locked her in, didn’t he? He locked Rebekah in the fucking kiln with the sulphur rolls burning blue in the brimstone tray?’

‘I don’t know that,’ Merrily said. ‘I just—’

‘He turned her yellow! And then he came back and did whatever else was necessary, and then he fed her to the furnace. The reliable old oil-fired cast-iron furnace, burning at two million BTUs… cremation guaranteed!’

Merrily stood up and found she was shaking. She took the phone to the edge of the weed-choked terrace.

‘M–Merrily Watkins.’