The Hunted Hare

by Fay Sampson

  A child’s voice came from the corridor. “I told you, Daddy. I knew Lorna didn’t stab him to get the money. She’s not like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  JENNY RAN HER HANDS over her scalp in dismay. “I’m sorry, sweetie! Daddy and I weren’t really quarrelling. It’s just that he’s worried about me.”

  Melangell came and hugged her. “I’m worried about you. But I don’t shout at you.”

  “My fault again,” Aidan said. “Look, this place is getting on top of me. I need to get out.” He held up his hands in self-defence. “No, I know we agreed we’re not running away before the end of the week. I just meant a change of scenery. Do you fancy a drive? Or could you manage a short walk?”

  Jenny got to her feet, one arm still around Melangell. “Didn’t you say something about a footpath across the fields? No, it’s OK! I know I can’t walk to the waterfall. But you said there was a footpath sign on the other side of the road. I wouldn’t mind strolling across the fields to the river. That was the first thing that struck me when we came to Pennant Melangell before. There was a peace lying over the meadows by the Tanat that was almost tangible. I could do with discovering that again.”

  When they reached the point in the lane where a sign on the right pointed uphill saying “WATERFALL” Jenny looked at it with a wry regret. “That’s what I’d really like to do. But I know I can’t.”

  “It was tougher than I expected,” Aidan said. “I’m not really sure that the sign means you can go to the foot of the waterfall. If it does, we missed the path.”

  “We’ll settle for going left, then. Where’s the path?”

  They found a farm track by a cattle grid and set off over the fields. Jenny realized how much she had missed the swing of her long legs over open country.

  “OK?” Aidan asked. “It’s not going to be too far?”

  “Watch me.”

  They came to a little bridge over the river. Already, the Tanat had collected the run-off from several waterfalls around the horseshoe of hills, of which Pistyll Blaen-y-cwm was the most impressive. It ran clear and lively, quite broad, even so near its source. Jenny knelt and dangled her wrists in it.

  “Mmm. I can feel it washing me clean. There’s been so much nastiness. Violence, suspicion. I need cleansing.”

  Was it really only noon when she had knelt in the church before Mother Joan, to receive her blessing and be anointed with oil? When she and Aidan had shared communion?

  “Do you want to go on? According to the map, there’s a smaller waterfall behind that farm.”

  “Yes, please.”

  The fall was no more than a trickle after a dry spring. Trees grew darkly over it. It slid over damp boulders in a branch-hung cleft. Ferns grew in the crevices. The water trickled over the edge in drops like a bead curtain.

  Melangell started to climb among the rocks. “Careful,” Aidan warned. “They’re slippery when they’re wet. And I’ve a feeling we may be on private land here.”

  Melangell craned her head from her vantage point above them. “They’re here.”

  “Who?”

  “Lorna and Mr Caradoc.”

  Jenny saw Aidan start. “I’d forgotten. His house is the next one along the valley. I remember now Inspector Denbigh showing me the map. He pointed out that on the day of the murder, Caradoc could actually have got to the House of the Hare ahead of us, if he’d legged it across the footpath we’ve just taken, while Melangell and I were walking back along the lane.”

  “But he didn’t, did he? No one saw him at the house.”

  “No. But that’s not to say he wasn’t there. You were in bed, and everyone else seems to have been in rooms facing the front or the side. It would be easy enough for anyone to get over the wall and creep through the bushes to where Thaddaeus was killed.”

  Jenny shivered. “I thought we’d come out here to put all that behind us for a while.”

  He hugged her. “I’m sorry. That was my idea, wasn’t it?… But why is Lorna with Caradoc?”

  Jenny sat down on a rock, suddenly weary. “She was here on Tuesday with him and Thaddaeus, wasn’t she? She must have been. You met her running away from the waterfall. And then you came across Thaddaeus and Caradoc arguing. She must have gone there with her uncle and something happened that upset her.”

  “And it wasn’t what we thought it was.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Then, if it wasn’t Thaddaeus who upset her, it must have been Caradoc Lewis.”

  “So why is she back here talking to him?”

  Aidan let the silence linger. Then, “So soon after she came into your room.”

  Jenny’s head jerked up. “What are you getting at?”

  He shrugged, and walked away to stand under the tree-shadowed rocks where Melangell was still climbing. “Sweetie, I’d really be grateful if you came down from there.” He turned his head back to Jenny and said more quietly, “I may have done something rather foolish. When I bawled you out for letting Lorna in. It must have been pretty obvious that I was scared for you. It could have given Lorna the impression that you really did know something the murderer would rather you didn’t.”

  The muscles of Jenny’s face stiffened. “You think Caradoc…? And Lorna knows it? She’d warn him about me, rather than tell the police? But I don’t know anything! At least, if I do, I still can’t remember what it is.”

  “Lorna won’t know that.”

  Jenny stood up. She tried to remember her only sight of Caradoc Lewis. She had been in the apse at St Melangell’s when he came into the church. A tall, stooped man, with alarmingly quick movements. Like a large black spider that stays motionless on the wall and then makes a sudden dart. Mother Joan come in shortly afterwards, shocked by the news of Thaddaeus’s murder. But when Jenny had walked out of the church she had left the two of them arguing.

  Melangell hopped down from the rocks beside them. “I wish I could hear what they’re saying. They had their backs to me and they were looking up the river towards the waterfall. The big waterfall, I mean. Where we had our picnic. He was telling her something. I know because he was waving his arms about a lot. Like this.” She demonstrated how Caradoc’s hands had shaped something like a ball in the air, and then had pointed towards the falls. “But that’s silly, isn’t it? You wouldn’t play football there.”

  Aidan let his own hands copy her movements. “Not a ball. But something rounded? Sorry, love. I give up.”

  “It’s important, though, isn’t it? Lorna was listening, and then she started nodding. And she grabbed hold of his arm. Like so.” This time Melangell seized her father’s arm and looked up at him eagerly. Then she dropped it and kicked the turf. “But I don’t know why.”

  Jenny brushed fragments of grass from her trousers. “Caradoc Lewis and the Browns have been around here longer than we have. They know each other. The fact that he had an argument with Thaddaeus doesn’t make him a murderer. I think I just want to believe that he is so it won’t be anyone at the house.”

  “You didn’t see Lorna afterwards. Crying.”

  “I did see her. From a distance. And yes, she did look upset when she ran into Euan’s arms.”

  “If Caradoc did that, why is she back here alone with him so soon?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Melangell broke in. “They’re coming this way.”

  Jenny’s head jerked up just in time to catch the start both man and girl gave when they saw the Davisons.

  Caradoc Lewis was the first to recover. His thin lips stretched in a cadaverous smile.

  “Ah, Mr Davison, and the enchantingly named Melangell. You seem to make a habit of being found on private land.”

  Aidan held up his hands in surrender. “It’s a fair cop, guv. But we got to the end of the public path and this fall was just too temptingly near. We hadn’t managed to get my wife to Pistyll Blaen-y-cwm.”

  The dark eyes swung round on Jenny. It was the first time she had found herself face to face with
him. There was something in his tall, stooping presence which she found unnerving. His eyes held hers and would not let her go.

  “Yes, Jennifer Davison. The author. Whose book is so prominently on display in the church gift shop. The Christian version of the myth of the goddess and the hare.”

  Jenny remembered, almost with a feeling of guilt, that Mother Joan had told her Caradoc Lewis had wanted his own book to be sold in the shop. A book which rubbished that Christian story and directed its readers to the pagan goddess who could turn herself into a hare.

  “It’s a balanced account,” she defended herself. “I don’t deny that the hare was a sacred animal to the Celts. But Melangell, or Monacella in her Latin name, was a real person. You can be pretty sure that when you get a church dedicated to a Celtic saint who isn’t found anywhere else that this was someone who really lived and worked there and was remembered by local people as a holy person. The Celtic Church didn’t need the pope in Rome to proclaim someone a saint.”

  “Pious balderdash!” He took a step closer, towering over her. “Your precious church will do anything to stamp out the worship of the true gods of this land. It’s quite capable of inventing a fictitious saint.”

  “Melangell was genuine. The grave in the apse is almost certainly hers. It’s bones from there which were disinterred and placed in the shrine.”

  “Human bones! That’s not what I’m interested in. I tell you, something far more powerful would be to discover the bones of the hare. That’s what our ancestors venerated. I’ve had a premonition. A dream, you might call it. But more compelling than anything that word ‘dream’ conveys. The sacred hare is in this valley. I was so convinced of it that I sold up the little museum I had in Llanfyllin and bought this land. It’s here.” His finger jabbed at the ground between them. “I can feel it in my bones. I mean to find it.”

  The smile that stretched his skull-like face was alarming.

  Jenny longed to withdraw herself from the intensity of his gaze. There was not just the enthusiasm of his belief, but a malevolence which seemed to be directed towards her. Why? Because her book was sold in the church shop which had refused his? Or because Lorna had flown to him straight from Jenny’s bedroom, to tell him that the Davisons feared Jenny was in danger? Danger that only made sense if she held a clue to Thaddaeus’s murder.

  Even the presence of Aidan just a few steps away could not protect her from the helplessness she felt under the shadow of this overbearing man.

  She tore her eyes away from Caradoc’s face with an effort, and glanced at Lorna. She was not sure how to read the expression on that sweet pale face within its cloud of black hair. Frightened? Defiant?

  Might Lorna know more about her uncle’s murder than she had confessed? What would have put her so much in the power of this man that she had come running to him?

  Melangell was tugging at Aidan’s arm. “Daddy! What’s that?”

  Grateful for the distraction which allowed her to turn away from Caradoc’s gaze, Jenny turned to follow Melangell’s eyes.

  A column of smoke was rising over the hedgerow trees. For a moment, Jenny could see nothing remarkable in it. Someone having a bonfire. A smoky cottage chimney. Then the significance of the location struck home to her. She could just make out the wooden bell turret that barely rose above St Melangell’s roof. Even as she gasped, a tongue of flame shot up from it.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AIDAN HAD STARTED TO RUN towards the church before his mind knew what his feet were doing. He took several flying strides, then came to a sudden halt. He looked back at Jenny’s horrified face. Every instinct was longing to propel him towards the fire as fast as he could go. But that would mean leaving Jenny behind with Caradoc Lewis. He had felt the animosity as the lean man stooped over her, spouting his wild theories about sacred hares. If Lewis had killed Thaddaeus, Jenny was the last person who should be left alone with him. Yet he could hardly expect her to run across several fields and down the lane. He balanced on the balls of his feet in an agony of impatience. Jenny would be devastated if the shrine they had come all this way to visit burned down.

  Jenny was not the only one appalled. Beside Caradoc, Lorna’s pale face was whiter still. Like Aidan, she seemed to be desperate to run back to the burning church. But Lewis had her by the arm. Long fingers, like eagle’s claws, grasped her. She looked up at him in consternation, but could not pull away.

  “Stay here,” Caradoc commanded. “Let the fools see to it themselves.”

  Jenny had caught Aidan’s dilemma. “Don’t wait for me. I’m coming. Just not as fast as you.”

  She began to hurry over the grass, back along the field path. Aidan hesitated long enough to see that Caradoc and Lorna were not coming, then sped ahead. At the first gate he waited. Jenny was halfway across the field, walking fast. Melangell had opted to stay with her. No one else was following.

  He plunged on, racing now. At the next field boundary she was just in sight, approaching the gate.

  He sprinted across the church car park to a scene of hectic activity. Neighbours, staff from the House of the Hare, two police officers, were all hard at work firefighting. Sian was organizing a bucket chain from the nearest cottage.

  Small bright flames still licked from the slatted bell turret, half lost in the sunlight. From the upper windows of the small tower, black smoke billowed. Smaller drifts of it crept from the ground floor. The frantic workers were evidently getting some sort of control over the fire in the bookshop.

  He spotted the grey-haired Freda Rawlinson, who had served him tea at the St Melangell Centre. She looked distraught. “It’s terrible! Terrible! How could such a thing happen?”

  “Has somebody set fire to the shrine? Is it badly damaged?”

  “The shrine? Oh, no, thank God. It’s just the tower. But all our books and cards have gone up in flames. And I’m terribly afraid we may have lost all those newspaper cuttings and displays in the local history exhibition in the room above.” She wrung her hands. “Let’s pray the fire service gets here before it spreads any further.”

  Aidan tried to picture a large fire appliance tearing along the single track lane. What would happen if it met a vehicle coming the other way?

  He grabbed a bucket from Josef and made towards the tower. Two uniformed police officers in shirtsleeves were coming out. Their faces were red with heat and exertion, and they were coughing. But Aidan sensed that they were enjoying this physical action more than the patient gathering and sifting of information in the temporary incident room.

  One pushed a hand across his soot-smeared face. “Sorry, sir. No one’s to go back inside. We’ve got control on the ground floor, but Lord knows how it’s spreading higher up. Could be in the roof beams by now. Best wait for the professionals.”

  Aidan stood back helplessly. How could such a fire have started? He thought of the rack of candles lit as a sign of prayer. It had been quite close to that pile of prayer cards on the base of the shrine, hadn’t it? He pictured the flames crawling up the brocade that covered the stone canopy. Of, heaven forbid, the wooden screen with the carving of St Melangell’s legend he had photographed only three days ago.

  But no. Freda Rawlinson had said it started in the tower. The shrine was in the chancel at the other end of the church.

  So, if it wasn’t a carelessly placed candle, how else could the fire have begun?

  A cold knowledge was creeping up on him. Someone had set this fire deliberately. But why? An arsonist who simply revelled in starting a blaze? It seemed unlikely in this remote spot. Someone with a grudge against the church? But they had left the most precious target untouched, St Melangell’s shrine. He was pushing away the blackest thought of all. The fire had started in the bookshop. Where Jenny’s history of St Melangell had been prominently on display. His own name was on the cover too, but it was really Jenny’s creation. Had someone wanted to send her a powerful warning of what could happen if she…?

  He was surprised at the relief he
felt to hear the measured tones of Chief Inspector Denbigh behind him.

  “Now, Mrs Rawlinson, if you could calm down and tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t know any more than anyone else. I live further down the valley. Someone rang me to say the church was on fire. So of course I came as fast as I could. What a terrible thing for Mother Joan. She’s only in charge this week, while our own priest is on holiday in Portugal.”

  “She wasn’t here?”

  “No. She lives over in Llanrhaeadr. She comes over when there’s a service.”

  “So who was on duty in the shop?”

  “No one. It’s the same in most churches. There’s a woman who orders the stock and does the accounts. She’ll be devastated. But during the day people just put the money for their purchases in a box on the wall.”

  “So anyone can wander in and out of the church as they please?”

  “Of course. It’s a house of prayer. Someone locks up at night and opens it at ten in the morning. We get a lot of pilgrims to the shrine.”

  “Inspector,” Aidan cut in. “I know of someone who might have reason to set fire to the bookshop.”

  He was interrupted by the blaring siren of a fire appliance. It was, Aidan noticed, one of the smaller ones. Firemen leapt out. In next to no time, it seemed, a hose was snaking from the water main to the church. Aidan and the inspector stepped clear with the others to watch.

  The vehicle could not get close enough to the tower, because of the churchyard wall and the narrow lychgate. But they raised a hoist, and the fireman on top directed a surprisingly powerful jet at the blazing bell turret. Aidan felt the rush of adrenalin subside as the flames cowered under the deluge and went out. Officers wearing breathing apparatus were entering the tower.

  “Now, Mr Davison,” the inspector’s voice said at his elbow. “There was something you wanted to tell me.”

  Aidan turned away from the firefighting, trying to recapture the train of his thought.