2003 - A Jarful of Angels (27 page)

On Friday afternoon Will took a leisurely walk up from town, pausing on the hump-backed bridge. The sun was dipping behind Carmel Chapel and the windows were lit with an eerie orange-red glow. An early moon rose over Blagdon’s Tump and somewhere on a hill farm a dog began to bark.

He was always drawn back to the bridge. He looked down again at the spot where the boy’s clothes had been found. In the old photograph taken outside the Limp they had been black and white, but Will still remembered the colours vividly. The stained khaki shorts, the faded blue of the ripped T-shirt. The lingering smell of Fairy soap and lavender.

A pile of clothes left neatly on the river bank.

Will’s mind was full of jumbled half-memories. Disjointed thoughts flashed through his tired brain. And he could make no sense of any of them.

Random thoughts that surely had no significance: the old Italian reading his book at the counter; a child stepping into a pair of shoes. But there had been no shoes left on the river bank. And yet…

He thought of the sleeping child in his mother’s arms. Brand-new trainers that cost a fortune.

Damn! Something didn’t add up. He couldn’t make any sense of it at all.

Looking down at Carmel Chapel he remembered the morning when he and Rodwell had taken a walk in the graveyard and come across the grave of the boy’s mother.

The newly dug grave was close against the walls of the chapel. There had been a mound of damp, black earth. The funeral flowers had been cleared away, but a few stray curling petals were embedded in the soil.

A simple, cheap wooden cross bore the words: Ellen Jennifer Bevan. He remembered that as he’d stood there he’d felt as though someone had been watching him and he’d swivelled round, but the graveyard was empty. A piece of card, the type attached to wreaths had been trodden into the damp earth. He had prised it from the ground and turned it over. The ink had smudged and the black soil had stained its whiteness.

“To Mam. Love…” but the rest of the childlike script had been obliterated into an inky stain. Will had slipped the card into the pocket of his trousers and had walked away through grass that was still wet with the early dew.

It was all such a long time ago. He wondered what temporary madness had made him think that after all this time he could solve the mystery. The case had been closed for years and yet for some inexplicable reason he’d never really been able to let it go.

Now, forty odd years later he pressed the doorbell of Coronation House and jumped in alarm at the racket that ensued. A loud rendering of ‘Que Sera, Sera’ emanated from somewhere close by. Elizabeth Tranter opened the door and Will stepped across the threshold of the house feeling the strange sensation of the past mingling with the present.

“Well, Mr Sloane, come in do. Tea? With sugar or without?”

“Please. No sugar, thanks.”

Elizabeth Tranter showed him into the sitting room and left him alone while she busied herself in the kitchen. Will looked round the immaculately tidy room. Large ornately framed photographs of two children adorned the walls. One was of a boy with a swede-shaped head, dressed in a boy scout uniform, a boy with a small mean mouth, sly eyes and, by the look of him, a bit of a bully, Will guessed.

There was a picture of a girl about the same age as Bessie had been when he’d first met her, she was wearing a pale-pink ballet tutu and clutching a silver cup. This child had no ringlets but a fussy hairstyle, adorned with scrunchies, slides and other such paraphernalia. The expression ‘done up like a dog’s dinner’ came to mind. Another picture of the same girl was of her wearing a fussy Bo-Peep style wedding dress with a crowd of Bo-Peep bridesmaids, and one of the boy dressed in a morning suit.

Elizabeth Tranter came back into the room with a tray of tea.

“Course they’re grown up a bit now. Derek we called him, after my brother, he’s doing very well for himself, lecturing in woodwork in the Tech, and our Leanne is a nursery nurse. Last year she got married to a boy from a nice chapel family down the valley. Mervyn was telling me that I’ve met you before, but I’ve got a terrible memory!”

“It was a long time ago when we met, Elizabeth. You were only a little girl.”

“I really don’t remember.”

“I interviewed you and your friend, another Elizabeth as I recall.”

Elizabeth’s eyes clouded over and she screwed up her nose in an effort to remember.

“Elizabeth? Elizabeth. Oh, you must mean Iffy!”

“That’s right. Iffy Meredith.”

“Sounds daft now, doesn’t it? Iffy! They called me Bessie, as you know. Quite revolting! That was years ago. Why were you interviewing us?”

“About a boy who disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Lawrence Bevan.”

Elizabeth Prosser bit her lip in another effort to conjure up memory.

“Oh yes! I’d forgotten all about that. Well, I didn’t know him that well. We called him Fatty. You haven’t found him, have you?”

“No. The police stopped looking for him years ago. I was just in town on some business and it reminded me of the case. Policemen are notorious for remembering cases they fatted to solve. As I say, I was just passing through and I met your husband in the garden of the Big House, I always liked that house.”

“Oh, I wasn’t keen on Mervyn buying it at first. I found it a bit scary and gloomy you know, but it’s the biggest house around here. Mervyn’s done very well for himself and he’s fancied that house since he was a boy. It’ll be nice when it’s modernised, I suppose. More cake?”

Will accepted.

“It was sad about the boy, Fatty. But he was probably better off. His father was a dreadful man and as for his mother, well, she was no sort of mother at all.”

“What do you think happened to him, Elizabeth?”

“Fatty? Drowned, I suppose. He was always off swimming in the river, or up the ponds. He had a screw loose, I fancy.”

Will nodded and said, “There was never any sign of a body, though. We’d have found him if he’d drowned.”

“I s’pose so. Well, I expect he ran off somewhere and got done in.”

“Perhaps he was grieving for his mam,” said Will.

“Oh, I don’t think so! She was always drunk. I think he was afraid of being put with the nuns, they’d have made him wash!”

The front door opened and Mervyn came into the room.

“Talking about that Bevan lad who disappeared? I know he’s dead and you shouldn’t speak ill, but I couldn’t stand him. Cocky little git, he was!”

“Tea, Mervyn?”

“Please. Always up to something he was. They reckon it was him who set fire to Dai Full Pelt’s bloody – ”

Bessie coughed loudly, and blushed.

“Beg pardon. My wife is averse to bad language, but I picked a lot up on the buildings over the years. Started at the bottom. Hard work got me where I am today.”

That and a bit of arm twisting, thought Will.

“Does the other Elizabeth…er…Iffy, still live round here?”

“No. She disappeared.”

Will felt his heart leap.

“Disappeared?”

“Oh, not like Fatty did. She got a scholarship to a convent down the valley.”

“St Martha’s, that was,” said Mervyn. “I seen her once in her uniform down by the docks in Cardiff. She was talking to a boy. She looked the other way quick and pretended she hadn’t seen me. Stuck up little bug – madam! Thought she was better than us with her fancy clothes and her posh school.”

“I lost touch with her after primary school. Our houses were pulled down and we all moved.”

“You must have missed her,” Will said.

“No, not really. She wasn’t my type. I made new friends at secondary modern school. It’s odd looking back, isn’t it? I mean you don’t notice things when you’re little, but I think Iffy was…er…was illegitimate.”

Mervyn interrupted. “Obvious really, wasn’t it? She was very dark-skinned.”

“She showed me a picture of her mam, once,” said Bessie. “A newspaper picture. She said it was the only one she had. She said her nan didn’t like her showing it to anyone. Then, years later I saw her mam, recognised her from her photo.”

“I thought she was an orphan,” said Will.

“She was.”

“So where did you see her mam?”

Elizabeth Prosser laughed. There was a nastiness behind the laughter that made Will cringe.

“I saw her in a film at the Limp! It was the same woman in the photograph. I must have been daft! The picture was of Elizabeth Taylor. It was that film with Richard Burton.”

Will sighed.

“So you’ve never heard from her?”

“No. It was sad about her grancha, though. Her grandparents brought her up. He died in the fire.”

“The fire?”

“In the Big House. The night it went up. About a year after we’d all moved. She was ancient by then, old Mrs Medlicott. She’d gone funny in the head by all accounts. The old man was passing and he went in to try and get her out, but it was too late. It cost him his life trying to save her. And Iffy’s nan died not long after. Anyway, I’m afraid I must away to my practice in the chapel.”

Will walked with Elizabeth Tranter down past the Big House.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” said Elizabeth. “When we were kids we used to step right out in the road to avoid the gates. I was terrified of the place and soon I’ll be living there.”

“Why were you so afraid?”

“Oh, ghosts and stuff, and Iffy’s nan reckoned the old woman wasn’t safe around children.”

“Why was that?”

“I don’t really know. Mrs Medlicott’s husband, the old doctor, drowned himself in the pond and everyone said he haunted the place.”

Will thought of Agnes Medlicott’s strong hands and wondered. He paused outside the gates and looked into the gardens. The statue Mervyn had been carrying lay in the grass.

“Those statues are really very beautiful.”

“Ugh! I think they’re awful.”

Will pointed. “That one lying there in the grass looks as if someone has tried to cement the head back on.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, that was Fatty! I remember now. There was an old woman, a mad old thing, who walked around with a cart. I forget her name, she was a nasty, foul-mouthed old thing. She lived in Dancing Duck Lane. The statue’s head was in the cart. There was some story about the old doctor being in love with some girl and chopping her head off. Honestly, it’s a wonder we weren’t half terrified to death with all the daft stories. Headless ghosts and dancing statues. It was all nonsense.”

“And Fatty stuck the head back on?”

“Yes. He snuck in there in the dark.”

“Why?”

“Goodness only knows, he had this mad idea of giving her her head back. He was always doing daft things. Iffy was as bad as him. She told me once that she’d seen a human skull stuck in the ice the year the river froze over. A skull with two front teeth missing! I remember too, she told me that Fatty had said he’d found a jarful of angels, but she said that after Fatty had disappeared, she swore that she and Billy had seen them. They were both a pair of liars, her and Fatty. Thinking about it p’raps neither of them was right in the head!”

“You didn’t believe her?” Will asked.

“That she’d seen a load of angels? No! Fatty just had this way of convincing people to believe him. Iffy always fell for his yarns. Not me, though! I might not have been clever like they were, but I had plenty of common sense! A jarful of angels, my foot!”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.’”

“I beg your pardon?”

“
Hamlet
.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause.

“As to Fatty’s disappearance, he was always saying he was going to run off. He was going to make his fortune and come back for his mam and Iffy! He was sweet on Iffy Meredith. He was always up to some nonsense or other.”

“Does Billy Edwards still live around here?” Will asked.

“No. I’m the only one left of the four of us. Last I heard of Billy, he’d emigrated, gone to Australia, or it might have been Canada. He married a girl from over the next valley. They had twins, two sets, I think. Excuse me a moment.”

They had reached the gates to Carmel Chapel and Elizabeth opened them with a clang.

“I know you’re in there, Lally Tudge! Come on, out of it!”

Will saw a shadowy figure duck behind a grave, then hurry away towards the trees.

“Don’t want the likes of her hanging about the place,” Elizabeth said to Will.

“Who is she?”

“Lally Tudge. She’s not all there. Wants locking up if you ask me. Wandering about with an old doll wrapped in a blanket like it was a real baby.”

“Why does she do that?”

Elizabeth lowered her voice, “She’s not a very nice type of person, Mr Sloane. She had an illegitimate baby years ago down in the home for bad girls.”

“Poor, poor girl,” said Will sadly.

Elizabeth Prosser stared at him as though he were mad.