The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

talk about.’

‘It upset you?’

‘It upsets me still, Mr Foley. No point in upsetting yourself any more when you get to my age. It’s all over, it’s all done, it was a very tragic business, and it didn’t do me any good at all in the long run. The children were too young, and it turned out there were huge debts. Mr Walter Chancery’s younger brother came to sort things out, and I think he just wanted rid, and my services were the first to be dispensed with, thanks to… someone I could mention but won’t. Anyway, Mrs Hattie, she always valued my services. Oh my Lord, yes. And I cried when I found her. I was in tears. I knew it was all over for all of us.’

The water in Leonard’s eyes had become pools, and he turned his head away.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said.

‘Switch that thing off, would you?’

The tape cut out and the TV screen went blue.

Jane just sat there, watching it, relieved in a way, because there was an awful lot to think about. There was a link between Hattie and the Hound, and the link was Ellen Gethin: Ellen in her long, girdled gown, the small cap on her head. Comely wench, Antony Largo had said irreverently. Nice body. And then Ben had said, Me and Thomas and Ellen. I feel, in a strange sort of way, that we’re kind of a team now.

The TV screen flickered, and Leonard was back. It must have been some time later because his eyes were dry and calm now, and it was a different camera angle — Leonard’s chair pushed closer into the window. A shirt- sleeved arm came into view, with a mug of tea or coffee on the end.

‘There you are, Leonard.’ Vaguely familiar voice.

‘Thank you, Frank.’ Leonard’s hands wrapped themselves around the mug. ‘You don’t mind this, do you, Mr Foley?’

Frank Sampson, Jane thought, Arrow Valley Amateur Dramatics.

Ben said something inaudible.

‘Yes,’ Leonard said. ‘That’s all right. I’ll talk about that. I wasn’t there, though, you understand that. I’m old, but I’m not that old.’

‘You don’t look a day over sixty, Leonard,’ Ben said heartily, and Leonard giggled shrilly, and Ben started to ask him questions about Walter Chancery and his crass attempts to become a society host in his castle by the rocks. Leonard kept stopping to remind Ben that this was only what he’d heard from Mrs Betts, the cook, and a few others of the staff who’d been there many years, and Ben kept saying, don’t worry about that, just keep it coming.

Leonard said it wasn’t quite right about the Chancerys building the house from scratch. In fact, they’d taken it over from a business associate of Walter’s, who was an architect and had done some industrial design for Walter. He’d built the house for himself, lovingly, over many years and had been killed when some masonry collapsed.

‘Here?’ Ben asked.

‘No, no. On a site over in the Midlands. But he’d invited Walter and Bella to see his house, and Bella had fallen in love with it. And after this chap died, she urged Walter to buy it. They’d just found out Bella was pregnant and, of course, this made Walter more amenable to the idea of a new family home.’

Leonard then told a long story about how Walter had had all these stags’ heads with huge antlers brought down from Scotland, and a suit of armour from a place in Gloucestershire. There was a duke came to stay once, Leonard said, or it might have been an earl.

‘And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?’ Ben said nonchalantly at one point. ‘Didn’t they say Sir Arthur was there?’

Leonard looked thoughtful, then he smiled. Outside the window, a woman with a black labrador walked across the car park to a silver Ford Focus.

‘Oh my Lord, yes,’ Leonard said. ‘No doubt about that.’

Jane thought she heard Ben’s sigh, and if she hadn’t heard it she’d sensed it.

But Leonard’s eyes narrowed, and his hands came up, a forefinger quivering.

‘But he never came back, you know,’ Leonard said. ‘That’s why it’s been forgotten. He came here the once, but he never came back, and you can quite understand that. When you know what they did.’

31 Noise and Blood

The hedgerows were swollen on both sides into vast white bales, the lanes squeezed down to one vehicle width. The snow was still falling, but in a desultory way, like a handful of pebbles after an avalanche.

The cab of Gomer’s truck smelled of oil and sawdust and the suspension hung down on the left, as if the truck had a hernia.

‘No, she hasn’t really talked much about the mother,’ Merrily said over the heater’s phlegmy cough. She had on Jane’s duffel coat, woollen gloves, a white woolly hat from the WI Christmas Fair, and Lol’s scarf. And she was still cold. And chilled, which was different.

‘We always knowed there was some’ing we din’t know, vicar,’ Gomer said, ‘that’s the point. First the boy was gonner marry Mary Morson, then her’s gone off with this naturalist feller from the Rocks. Next thing, this Nat’lie’s turned up with her camper van and the kiddie, and they’ve moved into The Nant inside the week, and the ole van gone to Stanner Rocks. Burning her boats kind of thing.’

They passed a barn in a field, cloaked in snow, one of the few isolated barns in this particular area not yet turned into luxury dwellings, and therefore still available for farmer-suicides. It was nearly always the barn, the engine room of the farm. Barns had fully exposed hanging beams and trusses and bales of hay you could build up, steps to the gallows. Dozens of farmers in this area had gone out this way in the past twenty years. Something ritualistic about it: a dying breed speeding up the inevitable.

‘Love at first sight?’ Merrily thought of Lol, back at the vicarage: Go — pushing her mobile phone into her hands — This situation gets you over there, with a good reason. Two birds, one stone. I’ll keep talking to Matthew. Keep it switched on.’

‘Seemed that way.’ Gomer dipping his lights as they made it round a bend. Ahead of them, a small dead tree poked out of a field like a stiffened hand from under a shroud.

Merrily said, ‘But?’

The truck started to skid; Gomer casually spun the wheels into it; the truck rocked and steadied and shaved a few inches from the left-hand snow wall. Gomer bit down on his thin ciggy.

‘Other day, see, what happens is Danny comes home, finds Mary Morson there. Says this Natalie’s been seen in her ole camper van up on Stanner. With a feller. Gettin’ up to things.’

‘Oh.’

‘Well, Mary Morson, her figured they could get back together, her and Jeremy, if it all broke up — that’s Greta’s view of it. Likely on Mary’s terms. Her’d wanner crush him first, then pick up the bits, ennit?’

‘Likeable girl, then.’

‘All heart. So Greta, her says to Danny, He’s your mate, you better go tell him. Mary Morson, her en’t gonner sit on this potato for too long. Well, Danny, his renowned diplomat skills don’t extend to tellin’ his mate his woman’s playin’ away.’

‘Difficult.’

‘Near impossible, for a Radnorshire farmer.’

‘Who was the man she was with, Gomer?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Danny didn’t tell him about it, but you think someone else did?’

‘Mary Morson, mabbe her rung to break the news to him as he wasn’t the only fish in Natalie’s stream.’ Gomer went silent for maybe eight swings of the wipers. ‘Well, see, the thing is, you didn’t always have to tell Jeremy things. He’d know. Wouldn’t let on, mabbe, but he’d know.’

‘Oh?’