The Fabric of Sin

Monty had been entirely relaxed at the house, Woodlands, in south Herefordshire, treated with ‘affectionate and admiring indulgence’ by his host. Gwendolen had recalled him doing impersonations, putting on funny accents and once reading aloud from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a background of nightjars.

He’d also once read the lessons at nearby Abbeydore. According to Gwendolen, he had a beautiful voice which, when he read aloud, lent you his understanding. At Abbeydore, it gave me an unreal feeling as if some saint held forth to lesser creatures and birds.

As for Gwen’s daughter … well, it seemed she was very much Monty’s kind of kid, producing lots of delightful drawings of unspeakable entities emerging from gaping tombs.

So Rosemary Pardoe’s suggestion that it was the daughter who’d been with Monty James in Garway seemed to be on the money.

Oh God. When in Herefordshire, M. R. James had stayed with a widowed single mother with a teenage daughter who was into creepy things and was called … Jane.

Into the bleak morning, after the night of cruel tragedy, came the brittle sound of cosmic laughter.

She thought of Bliss. He’ll make you laugh.

And what he’d said on the phone when she was in the car on Garway Hill.

What they used to call the funnies.

Oh hell.

‘This is Jonathan Long.’ Bliss hooked out a chair at the refectory table. ‘One of my colleagues.’

All the time she was making them coffee, Merrily kept glancing at Bliss, but there was no eye response; he didn’t look happy. She felt the tension rolling in her stomach, hard as a golf ball.

Jonathan Long — rank unspecified — looked several years younger than Bliss, perhaps very early thirties. He didn’t look like a cop, maybe a young academic, a lecturer in something dry and exact like law or economics. His body was thickening, and he wore a dark grey threespiece suit. A cop with a waistcoat was rare these days, a young cop with a waistcoat entirely outside Merrily’s experience.

‘I gather you’ve known Francis for some time,’ Long said.

‘Way back. Since he had a full head of hair.’

Tension throwing out flippancy like feeble sparks. Long didn’t smile. Neither did Bliss. Long had spiky black hair, and a light tan; Bliss needed to avoid the sun in case his freckles turned malignant.

‘We were hoping, Mrs Watkins, that you might share some of your impressions.’

Long’s accent was educated and still fairly refined; seemed unlikely that he’d spent much of his career confiscating crack pipes and bundling binge drinkers into blue vans. It also seemed unlikely that he was going to identify himself as Special Branch.

‘About what, Mr Long?’ She sat down opposite them. ‘Theology? Contemporary music?’

‘Specifically, Fuchsia Mary Linden.’ Long examined his coffee. ‘Do you have cream, by any chance?’

‘Erm … no, sorry.’ All right, playtime over. ‘You’ve found her, right?’

‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘We’ve found her. We think we’ve found her.’

His usually foxy eyes were dull as pennies. Sudden sunlight dropped from the highest kitchen window like a splash of cold milk.

‘We’re still waiting for the dental report,’ Jonathan Long said. ‘But it’s unlikely to be anyone else.’

22 Collecting Beads

Had she, on some level, expected it? Had she looked down on Felix’s body last night, dumped like a heap of building rubble on his own doorstep, and somehow known she was seeing only half a tragedy?

I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily.

A train in the distance, rattling through the night. The coffee going cold in front of her while the horror came out in short, sick spurts.

‘On the southern line. The London train, via Newport.’ Jonathan Long’s voice light and casual, as if he was reading from a passenger timetable. ‘Just under half a kilometre from what I understand is known as the Tram Inn level crossing.’

‘Past the big feed place with the silos,’ Bliss said.

The full significance of it crashed in on Merrily like a rock through a windscreen. She pushed her chair back, a raking screech on the stone flags.

‘She laid her head …?’

‘On the line,’ Bliss said. ‘I don’t know how people can do that, meself. They just think of the train roaring unstoppably out of the night. Never a thought for the poor bastard driving it.’

Watch over her, in the name of all the angels and saints in heaven. Keep guard over her soul day and night.

‘You knew last night, didn’t you?’ Merrily stared at him. ‘You knew when we were at the caravan.’

This word ‘whimsical’ … Would that translate, for the rest of us, as three sheets to the wind?

‘Don’t look at me like that, Merrily. We knew a woman had been hit by a train, that was all. What do you know about her?’

‘Not much. But then, in some ways there isn’t much that anyone knows.’

‘We have names of adoptive parents, but we haven’t spoken to them yet.’

‘You even found them?’

‘I’m— We have someone working on it.’

Merrily told them about Fuchsia’s mother, Tepee City.

‘How did you get an ID, Frannie?’

‘Car keys in her pocket. A van parked near the Tram Inn, registered to Felix Barlow.’

‘Tepee City,’ Long said. ‘That’s well into Wales, isn’t it, Mrs Watkins? A Welsh-speaking area.’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘A significant amount of old-fashioned Welsh nationalism in that area, I think.’

‘Not much in Tepee City itself, I’d’ve thought. Alternative communities are usually immigrants. What’s your point?’

Like he was going to tell her, this smooth git with his secret agenda. Merrily just wanted to throw him out, throw both of them out and take herself down to the church to scream abuse at God.

‘This house,’ Long said. ‘The Master House. Fuchsia was instrumental in getting Felix Barlow to pull out of the contract?’

‘She was the reason he pulled out.’

‘Because she thought it was haunted.’

‘Because she said she’d sensed a … an evil there,’ Merrily said, reluctantly.

Long smiled the kind of smile where you couldn’t have slid a butter knife between his lips.

‘From your conversations with her, can you think of any other reason why she — or anyone else, for that matter — might not have wanted that house redeveloped?’

‘You mean a sane reason? No. I can’t.’

Wasn’t God’s fault. Merrily gripped her knees under the table. She was incompetent. Smug, self-satisfied, lazy. She’d spotted the unconvincing elements, the lines from M. R. James, and missed all the danger signs.

When he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them.

‘So what did you …?’ Long was steepling his fingers. ‘Francis has tried to explain your role in the, ah, Diocese, but what precisely did you do with this woman?’

‘Are you actually leading the inquiry, Mr Long?’

‘Mr Bliss is leading the murder inquiry, I’m dealing with a side issue which may or may not be connected.’