The Fabric of Sin

Merrily lurching towards Jane through the wet grass, a woman’s voice crying out behind her.

‘Roscoe!’

When Jane sat down in the grass, it was on top of her, pinning her down, all over her face.

Tail waving, thank God. A woman with shoulder-length white-blonde hair threw down a short leather dog- lead.

‘You bastard, Roscoe!’

The dog shifted from Jane, looked back at the woman, seeming bemused.

‘Obviously thought she was offering to play with him,’ the woman said. ‘Is it racist nowadays to say the Irish wolfhound’s the stupidest bloody creature on four legs? You all right, darling?’

‘I … sure.’

Jane had struggled upright, holding Roscoe’s hairy head against a hip to prove that she wasn’t afraid of him. If there hadn’t been energy in the air before, there was now.

‘Teach you to stand there in a place like this,’ the woman said, ‘calling out the Number of the bloody Beast.’

15 Fearsome Tradition

The woman picked up the dog-lead. She wore an ancient Barbour, flayed almost white in places, full of holes and flakily at odds with her rose-pink silk scarf. Her face was long and thin-lipped, and older than the Barbour, but by how much was anybody’s guess.

‘If we’re on your land,’ Merrily said, ‘I apologize.’

Frowning at Jane, who was brushing herself down, smudged brown paw marks down the front of the white hoodie.

‘It isn’t my land, don’t worry.’ The woman patted her knee and Roscoe ambled over, and she attached his lead as a mobile phone beeped inside the Barbour. ‘Not that ownership of most of the land around here isn’t open to some kind of dispute. Excuse me a moment.’

Reining in the wolfhound, she dug out the mobile, pushed back her straight white hair and held the phone to an ear without turning or moving away.

‘Mr Hinton, good afternoon … No, not yet, I’m afraid. As you may not have noticed, it’s Sunday … Yes, indeed, I’m expecting the delivery in the next week and as soon as it gets here I shall bring it round … Yes, I guarantee you’ll love it. Guarantee it … Money back, yes, absolutely. We’ll talk again, Mr Hinton.’

The woman clicked off the phone, dropped it into a coat pocket.

‘Farmers. They think everybody works on Sundays. The columbarium, yes, why does it have 666 chambers? Not often spoken of locally. As you see by its situation, we tend not to advertise our antiquities.’

‘Why not?’ Jane asked. ‘It’s supposed to be unique.’

‘No idea.’ The woman smiled, exposing a dark and raunchy slit between upper front teeth, setting light to deep-set but vivid blue-green eyes. ‘But then I was merely born here. We tend, nowadays, to rely on outsiders — usually Americans — to explain all our mysteries. Where’ve you come from?’

Merrily told her Ledwardine, in the north of the county. Aware of time moving on, the need to take a brief look at the Master House before they left.

‘You’re no use at all then.’ The woman patted her pockets. ‘Haven’t got a fag on you, by any chance? Slim chance nowadays, I know.’

‘Actually, I have.’ Merrily reached down to her shoulder bag. ‘Only Silk Cut, I’m afraid.’

‘That would be perfect, m’ dear. Left my buggers on the mantelpiece, and I’m absolutely gasping. Thank you.’

She mouthed a cigarette and Merrily lit it for her and she swallowed a lungful of smoke, head tilted back to exhale it into the sky in the direction of the devil’s dovecote.

‘Lit up in the pub the other night in joyful contravention of the law. Chap looking at me as if I’d pissed on his shoes. Bloody government. How dare they?’

Merrily looked at Jane. Jane was wide-eyed and trying not to laugh.

‘Ledwardine, eh?’ The woman lowering her eyes to Merrily’s Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt. ‘And you evidently know the little digger chap with specs that you or I might use to track the canals on Mars.’

‘I didn’t realize Gomer worked so far out.’

‘Needed new field drains in a hurry — ditches overflowing. Quagmire. My regular chap had packed it in but absolutely refused to recommend anyone local. He’d worked for the Grays, you see, and, oh my God, you can’t work for the Grays and the Gwilyms. You were here yesterday with Murray, weren’t you?’

‘So fascinated that I came back.’

‘Thought so.’ Squinting at Merrily through the smoke and a frond of hair, nicotine-blonded, fallen forward, a worn elegance about her.

‘Bad penny,’ said Merrily.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mrs Watkins.’

And you thought the intelligence services in Ledwardine were fast. Merrily took a step back. The woman held up her cigarette.

‘Not habitually nosy. But living here, one learns there are things it’s as well to know about as not. So, yes, I do know who you are.’ She snatched another puff, blowing the smoke out sideways. ‘And what you do.’

‘Not exactly a chance encounter, then,’ Merrily said.

‘No. Sorry.’ The woman switched the cigarette to her left hand, putting out the right. ‘Morningwood. Mrs.’

Free-range eggs and honey and herbs. The woman who’d told Felix the Master House was unhappy.

They shook hands.

‘This is Jane. My daughter.’

‘Of course. Girl involved in a fracas with the wretched Council. I applaud you, m’ dear. Would have been there m’self, with a placard, but always too busy.’

Merrily sighed. ‘Mrs Morningwood, this is all very impressive—’

‘Darling, it’s not impressive at all. Truth of it is, Roscoe and I happened to be padding quietly through the church precincts yesterday afternoon when Murray was kind enough to identify you by name.’

‘You must’ve been … behind the church tower?’

‘No wish to intrude.’

Merrily imagined Mrs Morningwood flattened against the stonework with a hand around the wolfhound’s muzzle. Not that this would have been necessary; you couldn’t help noticing how docile and obedient Roscoe had become since being … set on Jane?

‘And the rest was down to Google. Directing me immediately to your Diocesan website. Deliverance? That’s really what they’re calling it nowadays?’

‘Mixed blessing, Google.’

‘Brass tacks, Mrs Watkins?’

‘If you like.’

‘All right.’ Mrs Morningwood flicked away an inch of ash. ‘Save some time, I ask you why you’re here. You say, what’s it to you, you prying cow? I then try to convince you that I might be able to assist in some way, being the nearest neighbour of whoever’s attempting to live in that benighted hovel at any particular time.’

‘The Master House.’