“Constable Evans! A word, if you don't mind.” Mrs. Powell-Jones, the wife of the minister of Capel Beulah, came bearing down the street toward Evan as he stepped out of his car. She was wearing a wide white cardigan that flapped out around her, giving her the appearance of a galleon under full sail. It was too late to get back in the car again. Evan took a deep breath and resigned himself to his fate. He wondered what she'd found to complain about this time. She usually found some small infraction in the village and didn't seem to understand that he was no longer the community policeman, in charge of such things. He was on the spot. That was all that mattered.
“What's the problem, Mrs. P-J?” he asked.
“You are, Constable. I've just heard the most distressing news.”
“You have?”
“I understand that you are to be married shortly.”
“That's hardly distressing news, is it?” Evan asked.
She ignored this. “Of course I had hopedâwell, expected, really, that my husband, being the senior pastor in this place, would have the honor of performing the ceremony. But now I find that isn't to be so. I sincerely hope you have not asked that man to do it instead.”
“Which man is that, Mrs. Powell-Jones?” Evan asked, even though he knew the answer.
“The minister of that inferior chapel across the street. The one who frequents public houses and other dens of vice.”
“Oh, you mean Mr. Parry Davies?” Evan asked, with a grin. “No, you can rest assured he's not going to perform the ceremony.”
Her face turned pale. “Surely you don't mean you're going to be married in a registry office? Not invoking the blessing of the Almighty?”
“Wrong again,” Evan said, for once enjoying the confrontation with her. “We're getting married in the little church at Nant Peris.”
“Anglican?” She clutched her ample bosom in dramatic fashion. “High Church, with incense and chanting and all that Papist nonsense? Mr. Evansâhow could you?”
“Bronwen's choice, not mine,” he said, “but I've nothing against it.”
“That's even worse than a registry office. Incense and statues are tools of the devil. Your marriage will be doomed from the start.”
“I don't think so. But cheer up, you'll be invited, of course. We're having a marquee and everyone is invited.”
She drew herself up into her Queen Victoria imitation. “Mr. Evans, if you think I'll set foot in a Church of Wales establishment, then you can think again.”
With that she turned on her heels and had started to walk back up the street when a loud popping noise echoed back from the mountainside. Evans-the-Post came roaring down Llanfair's main street on his motorbike. Mrs. Powell-Jones leaped for safety onto the pavement as the postman passed her, a look of half terror, half excitement in his eyes.
“You should never be allowed to ride that thing!” Mrs. Powell-Jones screamed after him. “You're a menace to society. I shall call the postmaster!”
As the postman drew level with Evan he didn't slow, but shouted out: “I left a letter for you at your house.”
“Who's it from?” Evan shouted back.
Evans-the-Post was known for reading the mail before he delivered it.
“They didn't say. No signature. All typewritten. Boring.” The words floated behind him as he shot over the hump-backed bridge and disappeared down the pass.
Evan grinned to himself. If Evans-the-Post could only deliver the mail to the whole of North Wales, there would be considerably fewer crimes. He certainly had the knack of reading the most amazing amount through sealed envelopes. In fact, if the whole world operated a bush telegraph system like the village of Llanfair, the police would have a far easier job of tracking criminal activity. Not much went on in the village that everyone didn't hear about within five minutes. If Evan had been to visit Bronwen when she lived in the schoolhouse, his time of arrival and departure were duly passed along to his landlady. Evan suspected the village probably even knew what he and Bronwen were doing behind closed doors. In factâhe stopped short as a thought struck him. Several local men had joined in the search that first afternoon. It would be worth asking them what they might have seen on the mountain. And if he had to have a pint of Guinness, just to keep them companyâwell, that was part of the job, wasn't it?
As he crossed the road to the Red Dragon, he admitted to himself that this was also a way of delaying another evening of confrontation with his mother and Bronwen. Evan couldn't understand why his mother was being so difficult. What was there not to like about Bronwen? If he had been about to marry a brassy, gum-chewing hussy, he could have understood her attitude. But Bronwen was everything a mother should wish in a daughter-in-lawâintelligent, pretty, gentle, caring, well educated, well liked. What more did she bloody well want?
He pushed open the heavy oak door of the pub and marched inside.
“Watch out, here comes the future bridegroom, and from the look on his face, they've just had a tiff,” Evans-the-Meat called out, giving Charlie Hopkins a dig in the ribs that almost made him spill his pint of Robinson's.
“We haven't had a tiff,” Evan said. “I've just got things on my mind, that's all.” It would have been disloyal to complain about his mother, however annoying she was being.
“It must be having his mother in the village, keeping an eye on him,” Charlie Hopkins commented to the men gathered around the bar. “She makes sure Bronwen goes home by eight o'clock at night, and no creeping up the mountain when it gets dark, either.”
Evan grinned.
“I'm glad you came in, Evan
bach,”
Betsy said, pouring him a pint of Guinness without being asked. “I want to show you and Bronwen what I want to wear to the wedding. Barry thinks it's too revealing, but then you know what a fuddy-duddy he is.”
“That's not being a fuddy-duddy, expecting my girl to look refined and classy and not all tarted up.” Barry-the-Bucket, Betsy's current beau, stood up to his full six feet two inches from where he had been leaning against the bar. He was wearing his usual mud-spattered overalls. “I don't want blokes ogling her cleavage.”
“Just because I've got a very nice cleavage.” Betsy smoothed down her T-shirt, riveting every pair of male eyes for a few seconds.
“A wedding is a solemn occasion,” Barry said. “You're supposed to dress like for chapel.”
“But it's not chapel, is it? It's church and they are more liberal,” Betsy said. “And what's more, there's going to be dancing afterwards, isn't there, Evan
bach?”
“So I gather,” Evan said. “Bronwen's really the one to ask. She and her mother have been making all the plans.”
“You're doomed, boyo,” Evans-the-Meat said. He turned to the other men. “Already he's letting the little lady make all the decisions.”
“Only because I don't have time,” Evan said. “She's got school holidays, hasn't she? And I'm working hard on this case.”
“The missing girl, you mean?” Charlie's face was suddenly solemn. “They never found her?”
Evan shook his head. “That's why I came over here. Some of you helped in the search that day, didn't you?”
“I did,” Charlie said. “And so did Barry, and you two, right?”
“Did any of you go right up as far as Glaslyn?”
“I did,” Barry said.
“So did I,” Fred Roberts, one of the other men, answered.
“You didn't happen to notice a red glove lying close to the waterline, at the bottom of that steep scree slope, did you?”
Barry and Fred exchanged looks. “A red glove?” Barry said. “I remember looking down at the lake and asking myself if she could possibly have fallen in. Then I thought that she'd have had to be bloody stupid to try to climb down that screeâand if she had been on the path above and just stumbled, then she wouldn't have fallen all the way down. There are those rocks that would have stopped her fall.”
“So you would definitely have noticed a red glove then?”
“I'm sure I would have,” Barry said.
“None of you saw a mobile phone, I suppose? Any vehicle tracks?”
“Vehicle tracks? There were search and rescue vehicles up there. They'd have made tracks, I suppose.” Barry looked puzzled.
“We weren't looking for vehicles,” Charlie Hopkins said. “We were looking for a missing girl.”
“And what about mine shafts? Did any of the searchers check around any of the mine openings?” Evan asked.
“I'm sure they did,” Barry said. “Anyway, it wouldn't be easy to fall into one of those mine shaftsâthey've all got warning signs and they're mostly sealed off. She'd have to be particularly bloody stupid, in fact.”
Evan downed the last of his Guinness. “I'd better be going,” he said. “Thanks for your help, boys.”
“I don't know that we've been any help,” Charlie Hopkins said. “What do they think happened to her, then? They can't possibly think she fell down a mine shaft, can they?”
“It's one possibility they are considering,” Evan said. “They've also had divers in the lake.”
Charlie shook his head. “You'd have thought, with all those people around, someone would have heard a splash, or a cry for help, wouldn't you?”
“You'd have thought so,” Evan agreed.
“Well, she can't have vanished into thin air,” Charlie said.
But that's just what she had done, Evan thought as he stepped out into the fresh evening air.
He opened his cottage door carefully, half expecting to find his mother lying in wait, but mercifully the place was quiet and empty. He heaved a sigh of relief and bent to pick up his mail. Among the usual number of offers for double-glazed windows or cheap trips to Turkey there was a slim typewritten envelope, addressed to Constable Evan Evans and the future Mrs. Evans. The one that Evans-the-Post had been curious about. When he opened it, he saw why. He found, to his surprise, that it contained music. No words, no heading. Just two lines of musical notation. He stared at it for a while but he couldn't read music and it meant nothing to him.
Bronwen could read music, however. Evan made his way up the hill as quickly as he could. It was a hard slog at the end of a long day and in semi-darkness. That four-wheel drive vehicle was obviously a necessity, he decided.
“In here,
cariad,”
Bronwen called as he let himself into their new cottage. Evan followed her voice into the bedroom. Bronwen was on her knees on the bare floor.
“I'm measuring.” She looked up. “I was down at the antiques shop today and Mr. Cartwright thinks he knows where he can get us a brass bedstead. So I'm trying to see which way it would fit.”
“I hope you're going to polish it,” Evan said. “Brass tarnishes awfully quickly.”
“Oh, don't be such a spoilsport.” Bronwen scrambled to her feet to kiss him. “You know very well that you would hate a house furnished with all that cheap modern stuff. We have to have furniture that belongs, and a brass bed definitely belongs here, doesn't it?”
“As long as it's got a comfortable mattress on it, I really don't care,” Evan said. “But stop doing that for a moment, please. I've got something to show you.” He handed her the sheet of paper. “Take a look at this.”
“It's music.” Bronwen examined it. “Where did it come from?”
“Somebody sent it in today's post. No return address. Typewritten envelope. I have no idea why anyone would want to send us music.”
“Perhaps some budding composer has written us a special anthem for our wedding,” Bronwen said excitedly. “What a pity we don't have a piano anymore. I'll miss having the school piano to play, but I can't see how we'd have room for one up here, or how anyone would be able to carry it up the mountain.”
“You have your guitar,” Evan said.
“Yes, that will have to do, if I can unearth it. I'm afraid this room is still in total chaos.” She rummaged among boxes of clothing, more books, hiking boots, until at last she located the guitar in the far corner, dragged it out, and took it from its case.
“Now let's see.” She carried the guitar through to the living room and sat at one of the chairs in the window. “Put the music down on the table here and I'll play it.”
She played the series of notes, then looked up. “If it's an anthem for our wedding, it's not very good, is it?” she asked. “It doesn't really go anywhere.”
“It's not really a proper tune, is it?” Evan said. “Repetitive.”
“It's very strange.” She examined the paper. “No title, no hint of whom it's from. I wonder what key it's supposed to be in? It may sound better with the right chords to accompany it, but the person hasn't written in the clef or the key signature. No sharps or flats, I mean, so I don't know what chords to put with it.” She continued to stare at it. “Starts on b, ends on d. That really doesn't make sense. I mean why would anyone write music that goes BAD DAD, DAD DEADâ”