‘But it seems likely that Robbie Walsh would have heard the stories.’
‘Best-known ghost story in Ludlow, Merrily. And there’s no shortage of competition in this town. There’s a chap now who conducts ghost-walks at least twice a week in the season. Marion, I’d guess, would be his star attraction.’
‘From what little I know about medieval history,’ Merrily said, ‘an unattached female, in those days, wouldn’t be far into her teens.’
Bernie coughed. ‘If at all.’
‘Robbie would have known that. He wandered the town alone. He might well have fantasized a relationship — maybe, at that age, no more than a rather romantic friendship — with a girl from the past, rather than a supernatural entity. The guileless damsel. The kind you rarely encounter today.’
Merrily thought about Jane, who wouldn’t have fitted the description ‘guileless’ since turning eight.
‘And written to her?’ Bernie said.
‘Gives a kind of substance to the fantasy. Makes her seem more real to him.’
‘Pleading with her to meet him? Saying he’ll be waiting?’
Merrily shrugged.
‘If that’s your psychological explanation,’ the Bishop said, ‘I’m not sure I want to hear the other one.’
‘I haven’t fully worked out the other one yet.’
They were silent for a few moments. A bunch of kids were whooping and kicking a lager can in the square. Merrily wound her window up.
‘Andy, isn’t it likely, given what Bernie says, that your mother would have heard the story of Marion?’
Mumford grunted. ‘I hadn’t. But then I en’t from yere.’
‘Could she be subconsciously associating it with Robbie’s death, is what I’m wondering. She’s seen his drawing. She’s probably read the letter, even if she’s forgotten about it. And in her confused state of mind…’
Out on the square, one of the boys who’d been kicking the can, shouted out, for no obvious reason, ‘Fuckin’ shiiiiiite!’ Merrily thought of the cries — somewhere on the tape-loop — of slaughtered citizens, hacked to death by de Lacy’s men, while the broken body of Marion de la Bruyere still lay at the foot of the tower.
‘And also, Andy, given that the card suggests a depth of unhappiness at home, doesn’t this open up another possibility?’
‘You’re saying suicide.’
‘In which case’ — Merrily looked over her shoulder at the shadowy Mumford — ‘would you really want to take it any further?’
‘Wrong tower,’ Mumford said stubbornly. ‘You heard what Osman said: boy knew that castle like the back of his hand. He wants to kill himself the way this girl did, why would he jump off the wrong tower?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell you what,’ Mumford said. ‘If you wanner stick with this ghost stuff, mabbe I’ll check out the real woman. The living woman. The one he was seen with. Mother and son.’
‘Mrs Pepper.’
‘If her name turns out to be Marion, what we gonner be looking at then?’
‘Look, it’s getting late,’ the Bishop said. ‘Perhaps we should go and do what we came for — see how we can comfort your mother. Perhaps hear what Phyllis has to say. And then… little prayer-circle, do you think, Merrily? Proper blessing of the house? How’s your father, Andrew?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘Probably showing less than he’s feeling if he’s the Reg I remember, but I’ll persuade him to join us. All right, Andrew, how about you drive down and prepare the ground? Merrily and I should perhaps… discuss tactics.’
‘Thank you,’ Mumford said. ‘Aye, I’ll go and talk to them. Thanks.’
He had to put his shoulder to the rear offside door, which jammed most times. When he’d gone, the Bishop turned to Merrily, his arms folded, his legs stretched out into the well.
‘So what’s all this really about?’ he said mildly.
She asked if she could have a cigarette, so they got out and walked down towards the centre of the town. There was a greenish sheen on roofs and a glare in window-glass as a near-full moon came up like stage lighting, sharpening the medieval gables and creaming the appropriately buttery stonework of the Buttercross with its neo- classical portico and its clock tower.
Eras overlapping like double exposures on a film.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Bernie Dunmore said. ‘I warned you last summer, before that trouble at the hop kiln nearly backfired on you. I said that, when dealing with matters that can never be verified, you needed to cover your back. Had to get some support around you.’
‘It just wasn’t as easy as you thought. The people I was hoping to get are not… joiners.’
‘Yes, well, unfortunately, in the Church of England the joiners are usually the ones trying to further a political agenda. I don’t know Sian Callaghan-Clarke very well, and I’m sure the hint of dominatrix I sometimes see in her eyes is pure illusion—’
‘Bernie, I never wanted a cosy life.’
‘—Whereas Saltash is someone I have had dealings with over the years, and the man has an ego the size of a Hereford bull’s balls, to put it bluntly. And, incredibly for a psychiatrist, he doesn’t appear to listen. So you have my sympathy there, Merrily. However…’
This was difficult. If Merrily wasn’t careful, the Bishop was going to think she’d generated this whole situation to bend his ear on the subject of control-freak Deliverance advisers, brought him out here to get him on her side.
‘Bernie, if you’re thinking—’
He lifted a hand. ‘We do share a secretary. Sophie gets e-mails from Callaghan-Clarke. Endlessly, it seems. Questioning this, questioning that, usually about the way we conduct Deliverance.’
‘She hasn’t complained to me.’
‘Hasn’t complained to me, either. Sophie doesn’t complain. Just hasn’t concealed the computer traffic. I mean, obviously, as soon as interest in using Saltash was expressed from the Dean’s office, of all places, I suspected we’d have problems, if only because I knew he’d rather like to repossess your office for general Cathedral admin.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You knew he was hardly a Deliverance, ah, groupie, Merrily.’
She followed him across the narrow medieval street into the wide street that glided gracefully down to the Georgian era and the river.
‘How close is the Dean to Saltash?’
‘Not sure, Merrily, but I have the feeling he was once chaplain at a mental hospital somewhere. Oh, they’re going to try and tie your hands, between them, that’s not in doubt. As to Sian — whether it’s personal ambition on her part, or she’s firing someone else’s bullets, I wouldn’t know. But remember, whatever they try to make you do, you’re still the only officially trained Deliverance minister in this diocese.’
‘She’s certainly doing her best to discredit the man who trained me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about old Huw — been there before, loves it. And you don’t have to do what you’re told. In fact, resisting the rationalists is probably an important part of your role. Tightrope, obviously, I’m not denying that, but then the whole job’s a tightrope.’ He pushed his hands into the pockets of his golfing jacket, watching his plodding feet in the moonlight. ‘Of course, you’ll never prove Saltash wrong, because to do that you’d virtually have to prove the existence of ghosts, wouldn’t you?’
‘Hadn’t thought of it quite like that,’ she lied.
‘I…’ He stopped under the awning outside the ancient and cavernous De Grey’s restaurant. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you, Merrily.’
‘Oh?’
‘When the Underwood ghost book was published, I… All right, I was a curate, but I was still a young chap, played rugby, had some mates, and we used to go drinking on a Friday night. Not to excess, in my case, obviously, but we enjoyed ourselves. And I happened to have a copy of the book, and we… I mean, you know what young chaps are like…’
‘Do I?’
