Singing the Sadness

by Reginald Hill

  The others consisted of his wife, Morna; the Haggards, Fran and Franny; the Reverend David Davies, a.k.a. Dai Bard a.k.a. Bruce the Juice; and a man called Edwin Sample, presumably the ‘Electricity’ Sample Mrs Williams had mentioned, who had so little presence or conversation that after a while you forgot he was there, till suddenly you became aware of his bright sharp eyes fixed on the person talking like a thrush’s on a worm-cast.

  Morna Lewis was also as self-effacing as her hostessly duties would allow her.

  She was, Joe reckoned, the illest woman he’d ever seen moving under her own steam. No; correction. Whatever she was moving under it wasn’t as warm as steam. She was like a figure drawn by frost on a sheet of glass, so thin and icy white, you felt a warm breath might melt her away. The family resemblance betwen herself and her son was strong. With the same black hair and thin pale features, she could have been his ghost. But when she smiled on being introduced to Joe, her face lit up like Audrey Hepburn’s, and Joe felt truly welcome.

  The Haggards made greater demands on his attention, not least because they were as alike in person as in name. In fact, remembering which name belonged to which looked like being a real problem till Joe fell back on the old mnemonic device of rhyme. Fran the Man.

  They were both medium build, medium height, with elegantly coiffured light-brown hair, light-blue eyes, matching suntan, and sets of perfect teeth which looked like they could have come out of the same glass. Her creamy dress was slightly paler than his creamy suit, but both looked to Joe’s inexpert eye like they’d been designed by the same expensive French hand. They were both media people. Fran the Man was a TV producer, and Joe was assured that there was no need to feel confused every time he looked at Franny as she was indeed Zelda Lavall, the actress.

  Joe, who wasn’t in the least confused as he’d never heard the name nor to his knowledge seen her act, said, ‘Hey. Zelda Lavall. Wait till I tell them back home.’

  He won a brilliant smile, which pleased him. It wasn’t often his efforts at deception met with such success.

  But not for long was Franny/Zelda allowed to hold his or anyone’s attention. It soon became clear that in the Llanffugiol firmament, only one star was allowed to shine.

  The Reverend David Davies, had he been a missionary, would have been a good argument for cannibalism. He was so well fleshed that, turned on a spit, he would have been self-basting. More to the point, a boiled head is a silent head. The trouble was that Lewis, though ready enough to act the High Master in relation to his wife and other guests, seemed in some slight awe of the man who was introduced not only as the festival’s organizing genius but as the author of something called The Third Door, mention of which was evidently expected to provoke an admiring intake of breath from those present. Intakes of breath, however, were something which did not seem necessary to Dai Bard, who talked non-stop on any and every subject, no matter how peripheral to it his own experience seemed to be.

  Mention of the events at Copa Cottage, far from putting Joe centre-stage, inspired the reverend tongue to a series of small but intense lectures on subjects as various as the historical antecedents of New Age travellers, the evidence for and biological explanations of spontaneous combustion, and the delicate balance between the greater heat-resistant properties of Negroid skin and the instinctual fear of fire inherent in most members of the more primitive races.

  At this point, even Lewis felt his hostly duty required him to run a bit of interference, but it took the ringing of the telephone to bring the monologue to a complete halt.

  ‘It’s for you, David,’ said Morna Lewis, who left the room to answer it. ‘Some problem with the caterer.’

  With a look of self-important exasperation on his face, the Bard went out.

  ‘Come and sit here, Joe,’ said Franny Haggard, patting the deeply indented sofa cushion next to her which Davies had just vacated. ‘I’m dying to hear every last little detail of what went down last night.’

  She meant it too, hanging on to his every word like the white chick who married the black guy in the opera, and urging him on with admiring questions whenever he flagged, plus generous refills of Lewis’s sherry (which was dry enough to seal shaving cuts) whenever his voice got too croaky.

  ‘And did the girl actually say anything to you?’ asked Franny.

  Joe saw her again, saw the mouth gape in agony, saw the eyes fixed on him, saw the naked will urging the naked, burnt, hurting limbs to move …

  Oh yes, she’d said things to him, but nothing he could tell these people.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

  Franny was regarding him like she’d noticed his hesitation.

  ‘What about in hospital?’ she asked. ‘You saw her there?’

  ‘Just a glimpse. And she wasn’t speaking then either, but the cops have got someone on hand so they can talk to her soon as she recovers.’

  ‘Will she recover?’ asked Morna Lewis, who’d been hanging on his words almost as intently as Franny Haggard.

  ‘Hope so,’ said Joe fervently. ‘But like I say, you’d need to ask the hospital for an update. Or the cops.’

  ‘The cops!’ said Fran the Man with a dismissive sneer. ‘Last to know anything in my experience.’

  ‘They were pretty quick on the scene,’ said Joe defensively, though why he should feel defensive on their behalf he didn’t know. ‘That guy, Prince, arrived almost as soon as we did.’

  ‘Prince?’ said Haggard looking towards Lewis.

  ‘Sergeant Tom Prince,’ said Lewis, smiling. ‘Happened to be in the area. Nice chap. Very helpful.’

  ‘Then it’s a pity he’s not in charge,’ complained Haggard. ‘Getting information out of that Ursell creature is like getting a decision out of the BBC. Seems to have a chip on his shoulder. Anything known, Leon?’

  ‘Ursell? Well, he’s from these parts, somewhere. Went off to England but got transferred back here a couple of years ago. Allegedly to look after some elderly relation, I believe, but of course it might simply have been that he couldn’t cut the mustard out there in the mad urban world, and he’s been taking it out on us poor rustics ever since. I recall when he was here before, on another matter, he was shall we say uncooperative. I had a word with John Penty-Hooser and that got things back on line.’

  Pantyhose, thought Joe, registering that while Prince seemed to meet with GM approval, Ursell clearly didn’t. Point in his favour, maybe?

  ‘Perhaps your chum could have another word now,’ said Haggard.

  ‘Doesn’t like to interfere too much with the chaps on the ground, but he’ll keep me informed,’ said Lewis confidently. ‘At the moment, they’re working on the theory that the woman was some itinerant who’d broken into Copa, and was the accidental victim of some mindless nationalist group who torched the place, thinking it was empty.’

  ‘That what you think, Joe?’ asked Franny.

  ‘Well, that message sprayed on the outhouse makes it the best bet,’ he said.

  ‘But not the only bet?’ persisted the woman.

  All eyes were on Joe, and he didn’t feel they were all friendly.

  He hated it when he was forced publicly to translate vague feelings into firm theories. Somehow they always came out like the ramblings of a dimwit trying to sound smart.

  ‘Could be the woman started the fire herself by accident and the message on the wall was someone trying to cash in on it,’ he offered.

  ‘Someone who just happened to be passing with a spray-can,’ murmured Lewis, his mockery all the more evident because his tone was perfectly polite.

  ‘There was someone wandering around,’ insisted Joe, forced against his will to defend what he had never really wanted to say.

  He told them about the man on the farm buggy.

  This seemed like news to Lewis. Maybe his line to Pantyhose wasn’t as open as he imagined, thought Joe. Or maybe Ursell wasn’t telling his DCC everything. In which case, I may have just dropped the DI in it, Joe thought with sink
ing heart.

  ‘Well, thank you for the benefit of your professional insights, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Lewis with the decisiveness of a man who thinks it’s time for a new subject. ‘I’m sure we don’t want to fatigue you with any further questioning.’

  Any sense of insincerity in the High Master’s words was removed by Franny Haggard, who squeezed his knee gently and murmured, ‘I thank you too, Joe. And it’s a real privilege to talk to someone who did what you did. If there’s any decency left in the world, they’ll give you a medal for it.’

  Through the closed door, they’d been able to hear the distant rumble of the Bard’s telephone conversation, or rather conversations, as the phone had been replaced at least once and another number dialled. Now the man’s voice soared high, and though the words were still indistinguishable, Joe, who had some experience of passionate preaching, had no difficulty in recognizing a hellfire climax.

  As if in acknowledgement that this might be their last chance for some time to exercise their tongues, everyone started talking to each other, except for Edwin Sample who remained silent and watchful, till Joe, who’d been brought up to feel it was rude to leave people out of a conversation said, ‘You the one they call Electricity, Mr Sample?’

  Such a look of alarm came over the man’s face, Joe had to elaborate.

  ‘Someone said it was you installed the security system. At the college.’

  He’d been going to say cottage, but it occurred to him this might sound like a criticism. As it was, he’d managed to stop all the other conversations.

  He soldiered on, ‘Being in the surveillance business myself, sort of, I was interested …’

  Sample didn’t look like he was going to answer, but Lewis came smoothly in.

  ‘You’re quite right, Mr Sixsmith. It was Edwin’s firm who did the work for me. These days when we read daily of intrusions into schools, hospitals and other semi-open institutions, we can’t be too careful, can we?’

  Joe nodded agreement, Sample sat back in his chair and started rubbing his hands together, Morna gave everyone her Hepburn smile.

  Then Fran the Man broke this moment of concord by saying, ‘And it was, of course, Mr Sample, who did the electrical and security work for me at Copa Cottage. State of the art, I think was the term used.’

  There was, if not accusation, certainly complaint in his voice.

  Lewis frowned at him warningly, as if to say that this was not the time or place to bring up such matters. But it was certainly a matter the police would bring up, thought Joe. And with the subject opened, he saw no need to be shy about pursuing it.

  ‘So it wouldn’t have been easy to break into Copa?’ he said.

  ‘Without a Sherman tank, impossible,’ said Haggard.

  It sounded like a quote.

  ‘So who had keys?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Me, naturally,’ said Fran the Man.

  ‘And I also. Naturally,’ said Lewis. ‘In my capacity as local keyholder in case of any problem requiring instant attention. And, in answer to your next question, Mr Sixsmith, it is in a place of safety known only to me where it still remains. Naturally I have checked.’

  ‘What about the police? Don’t they have a key?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Fran the Man. ‘Why should they have?’

  ‘Well, if there’s a direct alarm line to the station …’

  He saw from Haggard’s face there wasn’t. So much for state of the art.

  There were other questions he’d have liked to ask if he’d been on the case, and maybe even though he wasn’t. But at this moment the door burst open and Dai Bard re-entered on a wave of indignation.

  ‘That was Mrs Pontin in charge of catering to say she’s at Mr Jonas’s slide show of his trip to the Holy Land – don’t rush to see it; he spent most of his time in bed with his stomach and what he did take is mostly out of focus anyway – and she ran into Mrs Jones from Penfyn whose husband’s firm got the sandwich contract, and she cut her dead, so naturally she asked why, and it all came out that someone had phoned her husband and cancelled the contract, saying that I’d given it instead to a cousin of mine in Wrexham!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Lewis. ‘But you managed to sort it out, I do not doubt.’

  ‘Yes, of course I did, though not without considerable difficulty,’ said Davies, torn between being super-efficient and overworked. ‘But I shall not rest till I discover the scoundrel who has dared to take my name in vain!’

  Joe reckoned that what ought to be rattling the Bard’s cage was the notion someone was trying to sabotage the festival rather than having his name taken in vain, which he seemed to recall was one of the Almighty’s no-go areas.

  Still, it had nothing to do with him, and even Lewis, with whom it did, seemed to be taking it all very laid-back.

  Dai Bard let his fierce gaze move slowly round the room, as if debating whether any here present might be in the conspiracy. Joe, who was perhaps the easiest man in the world to make feel guilty even when totally innocent, looked away. So did most of the others, except for Morna Lewis whose tragic grey eyes looked unblinkingly into the Bard’s fiery orbs as she murmured those most welcome of words to a hungry PI, ‘I think we can go in to dinner now.’

  Chapter 9

  In the dining room an elegant rosewood table, agleam with the deep lustre of age and loving care, was set for eight. Joe had noticed that the furniture everywhere looked to be in a better state than the fabric and decor of the house. The once gilded ceiling cornices were now faded and flaking and the wooden wall panelling looked as if it was held together by a coat of varnish. This was definitely a Lady who’d seen better days.

  The first course was a portion of smoked mackerel hardly large enough for a single bite, which was what the Reverend gave it, ramming it down his throat with a bread roll, like a musketeer loading his gun.

  Joe took the chance offered by the temporary gagging to ask, ‘Why’s it called the Lady House?’

  Dai Bard’s eyes bulged as he tried to swallow quickly to answer but Lewis was there before him.

  ‘It seems that before the first war, the Squire of Branddreth found the hall wasn’t large enough to contain both his wife and his mother. He tried moving the latter into Copa Cottage but that proved far too small and inconvenient to match her sense of personal worth, so he had this place built for her, hence its name, the Lady House.’

  ‘So Copa used to belong to the estate?’ said Joe.

  ‘That’s right. We bought it off Leon a couple of years ago,’ said Fran the Man.

  ‘It was a real wreck,’ said Franny. ‘We put so much work into it to turn it into something really nice, and now this …’

  ‘It’s particularly galling as we made sure we got all the work done locally,’ said her husband. ‘Took twice as long and cost twice as much as getting outside contractors, but we wanted to make a statement. It wasn’t as if we were depriving some local couple of a house either. I’ve talked to the youngsters in the Grey Mare. What they want is a modern council house with all mod cons and good streetlighting between them and the local supermarket. Until I spent a fortune digging a well and installing a pump, the only water supply at Copa was what you could catch in a rain barrel.’

  ‘I’m glad you hung on to the rain barrel,’ said Joe, thinking maybe Haggard should have talked to the regulars at the Goat and Axle as well as those at the Grey Mare.

  ‘So you can see why we find it so hard to believe anyone from round here would be involved in arson,’ Fran the Man went on. ‘Perhaps after all it will turn out to be an electrical fault.’

  This seemed an undiplomatic thing to say with Electricity Sample, whose firm was presumably responsible for the electrics as well as the security, sitting at the table. Security too. The poor devil was vulnerable on all fronts. Haggard had the look of a man who wouldn’t be backward about suing his best friend in a matter of substantial loss.

  ‘Fire chief will be checking out how it started,’ he said. ‘Did
they manage to save much?’

  His memory of the ruined cottage as Merv drove him past it that morning didn’t give much cause for hope.

  ‘Much?’ echoed Haggard. ‘No, not much. In fact, so far as I can gather, absolutely nothing usable. To track down the culprit, I mean.’

  It seemed a slightly odd way of putting it, nor did he utter the words with the tragic force of a man broken by total loss. Maybe like a lot of folk with holiday cottages, they’d just filled it with a lot of old junk. Except Franny Haggard didn’t strike him as the old-junk type.

  She seemed to confirm this by saying with some force, ‘If it was deliberate, I hope whoever did it rots in hell.’

  ‘The ways of God are mysterious and we must not rush to judgement, for often out of apparent evil comes actual good, and through pain and peril we find the road to salvation.’

  Dai Bard was back in business, and the appearance of the main course offered little hope of another food-induced silence. From a casserole dish two small lamb chops in a thin gravy were deposited on each plate, and to them were added three new potatoes and a spoonful of string beans.

  There was wine too, two bottles of some dark-red stuff which gave promise of being at least as nutritious as the grub. Not that most of those present were likely to benefit all that much. It seemed to be generally accepted that one bottle was shared between six of them while the other was the personal property of Dai Bard, bringing to mind his other nickname, Bruce the Juice.

  Lewis must need this guy badly to invite him to dinner, thought Joe. Even a dinner like this. Then he reprimanded himself for the unkind thought. Mrs Lewis, he guessed, was doing her best with what she could afford. Things going badly at the school after the Sillcroft thing, selling off assets like Copa Cottage to raise a bit of spare cash, not enough spare, though, to see to the fabric of the Lady House – poor woman was probably having to entertain on a shoestring. Which was what these beans reminded him of.

  But for all their tastelessness his hunger had been such that he’d allowed his drift of thought under the constant drone of Dai Bard’s monologue to so distract him that he’d forgotten his manners and he’d finished his meal way ahead of the field.