The Fabric of Sin

‘What?’

‘He took them away in a couple of plastic feed-sacks.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Only they’ve disappeared. They could be anywhere now.’

Hayter sprang off the tree, and you could almost see the sweat rising like sap.

Before they stepped inside the inglenook, Merrily did St Patrick’s Breastplate, Mrs Morningwood repeating every line. Whether she believed any of this was anybody’s guess, but she went along with it.

In the torchlight: Baphomet.

Mrs Morningwood felt around the coarse, sardonic sandstone contours of his ageless face.

‘You know, it’s actually quite old. I’d thought it would be some sort of replica, the kind of thing you get from garden centres.’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘Because, when Jane told me about it, I assumed it had been put here by Stourport’s rabble. I thought that was what you were picking up in here — I do accept these things. I may be cynical but that doesn’t make me a sceptic.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be sceptical and analytical about this stuff, but I was affected and I can’t explain it. And I still don’t know why it made you encourage a learner driver to bring you over here.’

‘Oh lord, I didn’t know that, darling. Apologies. The reason I wanted to see it — and as things turned out it was damned prescient — was that Jane pointed out, quite rightly, that it was inside the inglenook and facing the back wall. Facing the priest’s hole, in fact, which I’d heard about — years ago, from Roxanne’s mother, as it happens.’

‘You wanted to come here and look if the hole had, at some stage, been unblocked.’

‘It made sense. I did think Mary was dead, I did think they’d killed her. And having the face of Baphomet gazing at the tomb — that seemed to me the disgusting kind of conceit that they’d have gone in for. I was half right … and half wrong. This is old. Could be as old as the one in the church. And yet …’

‘It’s not quite like the one in the church, as I remember it,’ Merrily said.

‘It has been removed, though, darling, look … that’s modern cement, isn’t it? Some of it’s already been chipped away. This is part of what Murray came for. You have a chisel?’

‘Crowbar be OK?’

‘Splendid.’

He’d left it in the hearth. If this wasn’t the instrument of Felix’s death, it could have been. Fuchsia, too. Whatever, it had been held by the same hands. Merrily held it across both of hers. Didn’t move, faced Mrs Morningwood over the iron firebasket.

‘Did you kill him deliberately, Muriel?’

Muriel turned slowly from the stone, lifted her head, exposing her throat — the bloodied dents of thumbnails around the windpipe.

‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘I know.’

‘He’d learned from Fuchsia that I knew whose child she was. He knew that after Fuchsia’s death I wasn’t going to leave it alone. He knew — obviously from Sycharth — about my family history. He knew that I was talking to you because … you told him?’

‘No reason not to. Or so I thought.’

‘And he knew that people in my line of work sometimes get raped and murdered. And he enjoyed it. Without remorse. He was never a Christian.’

‘Did you intend to kill him, Muriel? I need to know. Had you been waiting? Being patient and watchful, the way he was?’

‘You don’t want to be an accessory, darling. Or your lovely boyfriend. Or your extraordinary daughter. So don’t ask me stupid questions. Because I’ve gone through a kind of purgatory, and I’d go through it again. Now give me the bloody crowbar … Thank you.’ Mrs Morningwood prised away a lump of cement. ‘As I thought …’

‘What happened to the bones?’ Merrily said.

‘Back off, or you’ll get dust in your eyes.’

‘Is it conceivable you saw where Murray put the bones?’

‘How would that be possible?’

‘Let me take you through it. There’s a narrow public footpath just along from The Turning. Goes between two cottages down to the church, then links to the path leading here. If somebody happened to be parked nearby, watching Teddy Murray dragging two sacks up the field, this person might notice where he’d put them. Temporarily. Before using that footpath to make his way back to the road and The Turning. Giving the watcher time to get back to his or her car, switch on the engine and wait for him to appear on the road with — metaphorically-speaking — a big red cross in the centre of his surplice.’

‘I suppose a vivid imagination is sometimes quite useful in your job.’

‘We looked everywhere, Lol and Jane and me. Most of the morning. He wasn’t carrying them when he walked — sorry, ran — into the road. We thought he must have hidden them somewhere, but evidently they’d been picked up by then.’

‘You’re wasting your time and mine.’

‘Not that you’d be the first person anyone would suspect. What with all the injuries you received in the accident — the eyes, the lip, the neck, the head? Don’t think the terrible poetry of all this has been entirely lost on me.’

‘Shine the torch up here, would you?’

‘Why did you get me to bless your garden this morning, Muriel?’

‘Do you want to know what’s here, or not?’

‘They could connect Mary’s DNA with Fuchsia. Find out the truth.’

‘Truth …’ Both hands inside the stone, Muriel began to ease something slowly towards what passed for light under here. ‘Truth is not what’s settled in courts or reported in the papers. Truth simply … exists.’

‘Muriel, this makes no sense.’

‘Darling, it makes Garway sense. Hold out your hands.’

Requiem

The first of them to come in was Adam Eastgate. Hooded eyes, military scrutiny. Looking around at the drabness and the pitted plaster, the floor that was half-flags and half-linoleum, shrivelled and long-embedded like mummified skin, and he sighed.

‘We don’t often make mistakes.’

Maybe it was one of his sayings.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘if you’re thinking of selling it on, I’d urge you to vet any potential purchaser extremely carefully. But I expect you do that anyway.’

‘I don’t recall mentioning selling it,’ Eastgate said. ‘That would be a bit defeatist.’

‘Adam … sorry, this is Mrs Morningwood.’

‘Aye, I know,’ he said.

Which was unexpected.

She’d been thinking that, if Muriel hadn’t been here, now might have been the best time to ask Adam Eastgate again about those threatening communications the Duchy had received. The ones possibly containing Welsh phrases, perhaps suggesting that the Prince of Wales’s purchase of Templar properties on the Welsh Border had been … noted. Probably with disfavour.

Letters which, if you were looking for an author, might point towards a Welshman fanatically proud of his family’s links with the greatest national hero of all time. Or, less obviously, but more likely in Merrily’s view, to someone who had no cause to love this Welshman … and a personal need, which could no longer be suppressed, to let light into dark places.

Some of us do know our Welsh pronunciations but can’t resist taking the piss.