"Jesus, I'm sorry."
He kissed the top of her head. "Forgive me?"
"I shall think about
it." she said.
"Bethan, is that
you?"
"Hello, Dai. Where are
you?"
"In the embalming room,
come on through."
Berry felt his legs giving way.
"Only kidding," the
bald man said, pushing through the purple curtains. "Oh, I'm sorry,
Bethan. I thought you had Guto with you. Bugger won't go within a mile of the
embalming room, see." He chuckled.
Bethan said, "This is
Berry Morelli. He and Guto have a similar attitude to death."
Dai shook hands with Berry. The
undertaker's hand was mercifully dry, no traces of embalming fluid.
"Morelli. Italian, is it? You want to go to that pizza place next door, show
the buggers how to do it properly."
Berry shook his head. "No
way you can teach an Englishman to make a pizza."
"This could be true."
Dai said. "The trouble with an Englishman, however, is he doesn't believe
there is anything he cannot do. Come through to the office."
The office looked out over a
cleanly swept, white-walled yard. Over the top of the end wall they could see a
segment of Pontmeurig castle.
There were four hard chairs
with purple velvet seats and a desk. It had a phone on it and a diary, four
brass coffin handles and a thickset man with crinkly grey hair.
Bethan said, "Berry, this
is Idwal Pugh. He is the mayor of Pontmeurig."
"Hi, Mayor." Berry
said, shaking Idwal's hand. "Berry Morelli. Don't get up."
"I can never quite bring
myself to sit on a chair in here," Idwal Pugh said, short legs dangling
over the side of the desk. "Don't want to feel I'm here on business,
see."
"One day," said Dai,
"we'll bring you in feet first, you bugger. Now, Bethan . . ."
"This is difficult." Bethan
said. "And in confidence, please."
"Of course," Dai
said. "Sit down. I have told Big Gladys to make some tea."
"Idwal, you remember that
night at the Drovers . . . Well, of course you do."
"Oh
that
night," Idwal said. "I told you, we should have gone
to—" He looked at Berry in alarm. "Not police, this chap, is
he?"
"He's a friend of Giles,"
Bethan said. And of mine. No, he's not police."
"Only, I thought, with
this, you know—"
"Idwal, relax." Dai
said. "I am not so short of work that I
want
you to have a stroke."
"And we were talking,"
Bethan said, "that night, before the trouble, about Y Groes, if you
remember. Dai was annoyed that Giles Freeman had managed to secure a house there
when he could not. And you said—"
"I suppose I said I would
not want to live there myself."
"Correct," Bethan
said. "You said I think, that it was ungodly. Why did you say that?"
"What are you getting at
here. Bethan?"
"Just tell me why you said
that."
"Well, I suppose . . . I'm
a chapel man, see. Always been a chapel man."
"Yes, and the only chapel
in Y Groes is Dilwyn Dafis's garage before it was converted."
"Well, see, it isn't just that
. . ." Idwal began to fill his pipe. "This is only my own thoughts,
Bethan."
"Yes, fine. Go on."
"Well, this is a
non-conformist area. Every village has at least one chapel."
"At least," Bethan
said.
"But I remember, when I was
a youngster, my dad telling me how they almost had to have a missionary
expedition to take the Chapel to Y Groes. Known as Y Groesfan then, the crossing
place. And the only village without a chapel. Only the other side of the Nearly
Mountains, but it might have been some pagan place in Africa, the way they
campaigned and raised the money."
"Who campaigned?"
Berry asked.
"Ah, well, see, this is
the point. There was a farmer—I forget his name—who moved up towards Eglwys
Fawr for a bigger farm and became a convert to the Chapel. And he still kept a
field in Y Groesfan, on the edge of the village there. And he said, I will give
this field for a chapel to be built there, and everybody began to raise money,
in Eglwys,
in Pont, in chapels down as far as Lampeter and Cardigan. It became a . . . how
do you say it in English . . . ?"
"
Cause célèbre
?" said Berry.
"Exactly. A
cause célèbre
. Everybody gave money for
the new chapel in Y Groesfan. And I am asking myself why. What was there in the
history of this village that everybody should instinctively put their hands in
their pockets to raise the money for a chapel, when there was no demand from
the inhabitants. No demand whatsoever, even though many doors were knocked upon
and Bibles proffered."
"But surely, it's a
church
village?"
"Pah!" said Idwal,
puffing contemptuously on his pipe.
"So they raised the money
and they built the chapel." Bethan said. "What happened then?"
"Oh, it went very well for
a time. Like, as I say, a missionary conquest of some pagan place in Africa.
People travelled from miles around to attend services at the new chapel. Like a
pilgrimage, see. The first motor coach outings from Pont were to Y Groes—they'd
got the name changed now, as well, to reflect its new status. The Cross. Oh, it
was wonderful, for a while."
"And what happened?"
said Berry.
Idwal shrugged. "Some say
it was the war. Or that it was like everything that burns so bright. Soon
extinguished. But myself, I think there is something in that place that needs
to be cleaned out before the Lord can enter in. It seems to me . . ."
There was a loud tap on the
office door, and it was shouldered open by a large girl whose hair was streaked
in gold and purple like the curtains in the chapel of rest. She was carrying a
tea tray.
"Thank you, Gladys,"
Dai said.
"Will you be going over to
Y Groes, Mr. Williams, because you've another appointment at twelve. Do you
want me to put them off?"
"I'm not going anywhere,
girl. Why would you think that?"
"Well, no, I just thought,
with the murder. Put it down here, shall I? If Mr. Pugh will move his
legs."
"Murder?" Berry said.
"Oh hell, Gladys,"
Dai said. "Murder is a different thing altogether. Police do their own
fetching and carrying with a murder."
"Only they've found
something else now, Jane was telling me from the café. More police cars gone
chasing up the Nearly Mountains."
"Bloody tragic," Dai
said, and it was not clear whether he was talking about the death or the fact
that, because it was murder, he had not been called in to remove the body.
"Poor girl," Idwal
said. "First she loses her husband, and now . . ." He shook his head.
"No," Bethan
whispered. "Oh, please, no-"
"Oh, Christ," Dai
said. "I thought you knew—I thought that was why you were asking all
this?"
Chapter LIV
The police car pulled in behind Gwyn Arthur's Fiesta. Detective Sergeant
Neil Probert got out and looked down to where his chief was standing, at the
bottom of a steep bank, about twenty yards from the road.
Probert, the Divisional natty
dresser, was clearly hoping Gwyn Arthur would climb up and join him at the
roadside. But when the Chief stood his ground, Probert wove a delicate path
down the bank, hitching up his smart trousers at the waist.
"Thinking of joining the
Masons, are we, Neil?" inquired Gwyn Arthur. "Come on, man, the mud's
all frozen!"
"Except for that
bit," he added with malicious relish as Probert squelched to a halt in a
patch of boggy ground, where all the ice had been melted by the heat from the Volvo's
engine.
The big blue car had gone down
the bank and into a tangle of thorn bushes. Three police officers were cutting and
tearing the bushes away for the benefit of a female
Home Office pathologist who was rather
attractive - certainly the best thing they could hope to encounter on a December
morning in the Nearly Mountains.
"I spoke to the garage,
sir," Probert said, squeezing the brackish water from the bottoms of his
trousers. "He picked up his car at just after nine-thirty. Appeared quiet
and preoccupied but not otherwise agitated. Inquired at the garage about a
hardware shop and they directed him to Theo Davies, where he bought twenty feet
of rubber pipe."
"Not dissimilar, I take
it," said Gwyn Arthur, "to the hose we see here affixed to the
exhaust pipe."
"Indeed, sir,"
Probert said.
"In that case, Neil, it
looks like a wrap."
"Yes, sir."
"Would you like to have a
look at him, in case anything occurs to you?"
"No thank you, sir."
"He doesn't look bad. Pink
and healthy. Kind it is, to a corpse, carbon monoxide."
"So I understand, sir."
Gwyn Arthur nodded. "All that
remains, it seems to me, is for Mollie to furnish forensic with a few traces of
blood of the appropriate group."
"Hang on, Gwyn. I'm not
even in the bloody car yet," the pathologist called across, and Gwyn
Arthur smiled at her.
"Just a point, Neil. Did
anyone see him arrive at the garage?"
"Yes, sir. He was in a blue
Land-Rover driven by a young female. Assumed to be his daughter."
Gwyn Arthur nodded. Shortly
after the discovery of her mother's body, the back of its head a mess, he'd
spent ten minutes talking to Mrs. Claire Freeman. Obviously in shock, but
remarkably coherent, Mrs. Freeman had told of picking up her father, as
pre-arranged, at eight-fifteen and driving him to Pontmeurig. It had been
agreed that Mr. Hardy would return with the car to collect his wife. His manner,
as described by his daughter, was in no way suspicious. Indeed, he had several
times expressed the hope that the car would be ready to collect so that he
could take Mrs. Hardy home.
"If you find a pen,
Mollie—"
"I know, I know . .
."
In a plastic sack at Gwyn
Arthur's feet was an AA book, found on the passenger seat, partly under the
dead man's head. Across the yellow cover of the book had been scrawled,
I'm
so sorry. I do not know why it happened. I loved her really
.
That poor girl.
In thirty years of police work,
Gwyn Arthur had several times encountered people around whom tragedies grew like
black flowers. This was definitely the worst case—compounded by her being stranded
in a remote village in a strange country.
He thought fleetingly of the
death of Giles Freeman, of the American who had come to the station with his
undisclosed suspicions. Undoubtedly, there was more to this than any of them
realised, but the details were likely to be deeply private, and what good would
come of digging it over now? It was a wrap. He had a result. Murder and
suicide, a common-or-garden domestic. Leave it be.
Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur
Jones: firm believer in compassionate policing.
"Oh, and BBC Wales have
been on, sir. I think they might be sending a crew across from
Carmarthen."
"Get back to Mike from the
car, tell him to phone and tell them they'll get more excitement out of the
by-election."