then someone called Dolores had written,
Sadgirl, you have to understand Karone is a technical adviser and inclined to be abrupt. i think what he’s saying is you need to go back and think things out. this is the biggest thing you have ever done or will ever do. i myself know, because of my condition, that i’m going to have to do this thing sometime, and all that is important to me is that when the time comes i do it efficiently and quickly and without leaving an unsightly mess for my folks to clear up. you sound like your problems are emotional and i beg you to go away and think again because it will surely pass.
‘Sorry, that’s not the one.’ Jane scrolled down. ‘I feel really bad about Dolores. She’s obviously got something really horrible wrong with her.’ She put a forefinger on the screen. ‘This one.’
20
Old Ludlow
‘Canon Callaghan-Clarke is looking for you,’ Sophie said, without glancing up. ‘She’s rung here twice already. Claiming your answering machine isn’t switched on.’
‘Can’t believe how inefficient I am sometimes.’
Merrily dumped her bag on the desk, pulled out the chair opposite Sophie, who was addressing an envelope by hand with a fountain pen. Glasses on the tip of her nose, Sophie put the envelope in a tray, for the ink to dry, and started on another.
They’d talked on the phone soon after nine, when Jane, clear-eyed and superficially undamaged by minimal sleep, had carried off a slice of toast and marmalade to the bus stop. Merrily had told Jane a certain amount, not everything, about last night. She’d told Sophie — because there were probably confessionals less secure than this office — the whole situation. More or less.
‘Oh yes,’ Sophie said. ‘On the filing cabinet — this morning’s
‘Oh.’
The paper was folded at page five and a fuzzy picture of Jemima Pegler at a party, collapsed in laughter, with two other girls holding her up. The circumstances of her death had come to light too late for yesterday’s morning papers to indulge in more than straight reporting.
What a difference a day made: on the other side of the page from Jemima was a line drawing of a woman in a medieval robe and headdress.
A leap across time… Eight centuries separated them. But now Jemima Pegler and Marion de la Bruyere are united in tragic death.
Obvious the media would discover Marion. And nobody waited for an inquest any more; the police line ‘no suspicious circumstances’ was a strong enough pointer to suicide. The story said Jemima’s death had the hallmarks of a copycat suicide, but who was she copying — Robbie Walsh or the death-plunge of the twelfth-century woman whose ghost was said to haunt the castle?
The story is certainly well known in Ludlow, according to Jonathan Scole, who runs Ghostours, which organizes lectures and guided walks around the town’s haunted buildings.
‘Our tours are getting increasingly popular, and this poor kid may well have come to one. We do occasionally get groups of teenage girls.
‘Marion is a very romantic figure, and one of the highlights of the tour is gathering under the castle wall at the precise spot where she fell.
‘It’s intended to be pure entertainment, and I’m afraid I do tend to ham it up a bit.
‘Naturally, it horrifies me that the story could have had this kind of impact on someone, but I doubt it did. If we’d had a multi-storey car park, it’s quite possible she would have jumped off that.
‘I think if someone’s determined to die, they’re going to do it somehow, aren’t they?’
But an experienced psychiatrist who is studying the Ludlow deaths, said that a second fatal fall at the castle was disturbing because it indicated the formation of a behavioural pattern.
‘Saltash.’
‘He does seem to be cornering the market in what one might call soundbite psychology,’ Sophie said.
‘He might be right, actually — the teenage pack-mentality, the need to feel that, even in death, you’re not alone. Anyway, someone has to be around to do the psychobabble.’
‘How far have you read?’ Sophie murmured.
‘What?’
and teenage girls are particularly susceptible to the fantasy world of ghosts and the supernatural as an escape from the ordered world of school and the prospect of exams,’ said Dr Saltash, who is also a special adviser on mental health to the Diocese of Hereford, which includes Ludlow.
‘Special adviser on mental—?’ Merrily let the paper drop to the desk.
‘You notice he doesn’t neglect an opportunity to file psychic phenomena under the general heading of fantasy,’ Sophie said, ‘thus detaching it from the Church’s official area of belief.’
‘This isn’t going to stop, is it?’
Merrily slumped down next to the window. It wasn’t warm out there, but there was enough early-afternoon sunshine for a few people on Broad Street to be wearing dark glasses. She took hers off just as the phone rang and Sophie looked up.
‘Ah.’ Sophie’s hand froze over the receiver. ‘I thought there might be some minor aspect of last night that you hadn’t mentioned.’
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Merrily tilted her head to the window. The sunlight hurt. ‘Purplish last night, now a delicate bottle green.’
‘What are you putting on it?’ Sophie picked up the phone.
‘Just the glasses.’
‘Gatehouse.’ Sophie tucked the phone between shoulder and chin, just above the pearls, leafing through her letters. ‘Yes, Bishop, I’m doing them now, they’ll be in the lunchtime post… Certainly… Well, yes, she’s here now as a matter of fact… I will.’ Sophie put down the phone. ‘He’s coming over later. He wants to talk to you.’
Merrily had started to roll up the
‘God almighty, Merrily! What the hell are you getting into?’
‘It was— OK, it wasn’t exactly an accident, but it—’
‘You do know that’s what’s known as assault causing actual bodily harm? What did they do to Mumford?’
‘Some…’ Merrily let the paper unroll, shaking her head helplessly. ‘Some damage. Nothing serious. We hope.’
Before leaving home, she’d talked on the phone to Mumford’s wife, Gail, who’d sounded cold and guarded, saying Mumford could hardly turn his head this morning. Hardly the first time he’d brought injuries home, but that
