The Smile of a Ghost

the same site over eight hundred years ago?’

‘Ah…’ The Bishop cleared his throat, uncomfortable. ‘I don’t imagine anyone’s expressed it with that degree of… exactitude. Rumours trickle through the streets about a place becoming unlucky, and they gather momentum. Even when I was there, you’d get people saying the town was becoming ungodly, selling out to Mammon — new restaurants, rich incomers.’

‘How does that relate to two teenagers and an elderly woman?’

‘Well, it… That is, George says some people were suggesting the Walsh boy had become a little too obsessed with the past. Aspects of the past, that is, that should be left to, ah…’

‘Has he seen the papers this morning?’

‘For once, it seems, the papers are only echoing what’s already been whispered. It’ll die down in the press, probably before the week’s out. The media always treat these stories as a joke. Not in the town, however. Things will be blamed on it that have no connection whatsoever.’

‘So what’s the Mayor want?’

‘A meeting. He’s asked me to go and see him. Tonight. I’ve told him I’d like to bring someone with me who knows more about the elements being, ah, hinted at. Are you free tonight, Merrily?’

‘I could be.’

‘Good. Excellent.’

‘Right, then,’ Merrily said. ‘So, do you want me, or Sophie, to inform the Deliverance Panel?’

The Bishop looked blank.

‘Procedure,’ Merrily said. ‘All possible cases must be referred to the panel for assessment before any action is taken.’

‘Who decided that?’

‘The panel.’

‘Well, I think’ — the Bishop stopped tapping and closed his hand around the pen — ‘that we ought to regard this as a preliminary and essentially informal discussion. Don’t you?’

‘If that’s what you think, Bishop.’

‘Oh yes. I do.’ He placed the pen carefully on the desk. ‘I… your eyes, Merrily. Is there something wrong with your eyes, or are you trying to look sinister?’

21 Tradition

The Mayor closed his heavy front door, and they stepped into a hall that was cream-panelled and bright with shards of crystal light from an electric chandelier. Through Merrily’s new glasses it glowed amber and pink, like a rose garden at sunset.

‘This is the Reverend Mrs Merrily Watkins,’ the Bishop said. ‘Merrily is my, ah, Deliverance Consultant.’

‘Oh yes?’ The Mayor shook hands stiffly. He wore a mid-brown three-piece suit, with a watch chain, and you didn’t come across many of those any more. ‘I see.’

He obviously didn’t see at all. You could be close to the church your whole life without being aware of what went on in the crypt. Bernie Dunmore didn’t explain; Merrily felt he was still faintly embarrassed, even in Ludlow, about perpetuating a tradition as medieval as hers.

‘Come on through, Bernard,’ the Mayor said. ‘Let’s sit down in the drawing room and hope to discuss all this in a civilized manner.’

George Lackland’s home was above and behind Lackland Modern Furnishings, midway down Corve Street. The Corve was the more modest of Ludlow’s two rivers, and this ancient street sloped steeply down from the town centre to meet it. The shops here didn’t look like shops at night; most were fabricated inside historic buildings, and the owners hadn’t been allowed to enlarge windows or put up new signs. Much of Corve Street was frozen in various eras, all of them pre-neon.

Even the Mayor looked like part of the facade. His forehead jutted like a mantelpiece over the deep-set embers of his eyes. He looked more like a bishop than the Bishop.

‘Nancy sends her apologies, Bernard. Meeting of the festival committee. Some very big names coming to town this year.’

‘You mean the few who don’t live here already?’ Bernie said. He was still in his episcopal purple shirt. He’d told Merrily that George would expect this.

She followed the Mayor down the hall to his drawing room, unbuttoning her black cardigan so that the dog collar was fully on view. She wasn’t insecure about the women’s priesthood any more, but he might be.

‘This is nice,’ she said.

Well, it probably had been, once. The room was lodged in the era when cream leather three-piece suites were cool, and carpets were always fully fitted because bare floorboards were a sign of penury. There was a high ceiling, with mouldings and another crystal chandelier. French windows revealed a moon-bathed sunken garden, and that really was nice.

‘Yes, we’re fortunate — if that’s the word — to have quite a number of famous folk living here now.’ George’s voice had an Old Ludlow roll, Shropshire easing into Hereford. ‘We seem to have become a bit of a refuge from London — actors, television personalities, political people…’

‘Singers?’ Merrily said.

‘Aye, singers too.’

The Mayor put on a cautious smile, showing Merrily to a chair near the hearth, where a log-effect gas fire fanned out tame flames. He opened a drinks cabinet, glancing towards the French window — perhaps, by daylight, you’d be able to see the castle ruins from here. Then he looked back, with uncertainty, at Merrily.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Watkins… what exactly was it that you said you did? I don’t fully…’

‘Perhaps…’ Bernie coughed. Sweat had pooled in the centre of his expanding male-pattern tonsure. ‘Perhaps I ought to explain, George, that Deliverance Consultant is the modern term for what we used to call Diocesan Exorcist.’

A silent moment, flames flickering emptily among the artificial logs. Conscious of what the Bishop had said about her looking sinister, Merrily had dived into Chave and Jackson on Broad Street and picked up this pair of less- dark glasses that might even be taken as ordinary tinted spectacles. On the outside, the glasses looked light brown, but they turned these flames bright red, like a miniature synthesis of hell.

‘Merrily’s our adviser on the paranormal.’ Bernie sank into the leather sofa. ‘That is, the person who advises people who believe they’re having problems with… what we loosely refer to, George, as the unquiet dead.’

There. He’d said it. His hands came together in his lap as the cushions broke wind with a soft hiss.

‘This young woman?’ George said. ‘Oh dear.’

And then he changed the subject and went to get them drinks.

Merrily saw, against a far wall, an elderly radiogram: polished mahogany case with gilded fabric over the speakers. She could imagine the records: nothing later than Elvis.

She sipped her tonic water. ‘Mr Mayor, is there any history of… disturbance, unrest… around the Hanging Tower?’

It had taken half an hour to get to this point, via the new restaurants (a good thing in general, better than nightclubs) the new Tesco’s (there was demand for it, and it could have been worse, long as it didn’t put the traditional butchers out of business) and the new people.

The new people? Well, they had money, which they spent in the new shops. Buying the sort of old rubbish that George and Nancy, not so long ago, used to throw out. But at least the new people appreciated the town. Sometimes too much.

‘Disturbance?’ the Mayor said. ‘You mean these young people dancing around?’

‘No.’ Merrily looked at the Bishop. ‘I mean paranormal phenomena.’

‘Of what… nature?’

The Bishop avoided her gaze and said quickly, ‘Merrily knows about the breathing, the gasping sounds. Alleged.’