Cold Remains
Page 34
As for the diary itself, Jane Harris had promised that once the four criminal trials had ended, this could be released to help Jason’s research. She too, had suggested using fictional names and places for his novel.
Why was everyone so fearful?
Another sip of coffee. A bite of bun to fortify himself as Jason opened what the intrepid postman had delivered earlier that morning. First, an impersonal notification from his former manager at Woolies that his redundancy payment would be in his bank account tomorrow. The sum a pleasant surprise. But his first question was what could he buy Helen to make up for her loss?
Next, a damp blue envelope redirected by Helen’s mother from Borth. He switched on the lamp and pulled out a postcard of Aberystwyth’s pier:
6a, Ael y Bryn, Aberystwyth.
14th April
Dear Jason, (or should I say Mr Robbins?)
The police have just called to see me and my nephew, which is how I discovered your address. I am not long for this earth and hope you all will forgive me my transgressions. As governess at Heron House, I could have changed much, but my flesh and spirit were too weak. The Devil’s magnet drew me in to The Order’s arms. Joy Pitt-Rose – a pure and devoted mother – must still be spinning in her grave. Mine will be the sea. I hope most sincerely that Miss Jenkins soon makes a full recovery.
With regrets
Nancy Mair Powell †
That sinister sign after her name made him blink, want to wrap his hands around her scheming throat. He slipped the letter inside the diary’s front cover and opened the next envelope. Less damp, prepaid, from Carmarthen, and inside a small monochrome photo of a young Charles Pitt-Rose with a strange one-liner on the back from this so-called governess. Clipped to this, a yellow stick-on note:
I felt you should have this. The Cottage Hospital found it inside Helen’s underwear and passed it to the Coroner.
Thinking of you,
Jane Harris.
Forgetting to breathe, he placed the photo in his jeans’ back pocket. Part of Helen. Part of him for the journey. He was about to bin the note when he noticed more writing on the other side:
P.S. I’ve also found a pre-war photo of Heron House exactly as you’d described it, with those three people standing at the front. They look so normal.
Why I’ve come back here…
Jason checked his watch. Sod the mid-morning counselling session and not just because of the weather. Like his binned pills, he didn’t need it. As for the Radio 2 interview from the flat later on, he was definitely up for that.
Time therefore for the fresh start and, already fired up for chapter one, his writing became faster, more flowing as the prologue was born. Margiad Pitt-Rose, about to give birth to her father’s child, was ruthlessly luring the clinging conchie to his death…
***
Just then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted something on the snowy windowsill outside and wondered if some rendering had fallen there. Or a piece of branch. He swivelled his chair round for a better view. Whatever it was, was black and imperceptibly moving.
A rook.
One he recognised by its very white throat. Unfazed by the bombarding snowflakes, this snow-topped creature stared at him with unsettling intensity. What the Hell was it doing here?
He was then distracted by a violent tearing sound and turned to see his completed prologue on the dressing table, being ripped apart by unseen hands.
No…
A ringtone broke the tense, cold silence. He hesitated until the caller’s number showed up. Eluned Jenkins was hysterical, almost incoherent. He kept the phone a few inches from his ear. Felt the nearby icy radiator.
“Jason, is that you?”
Not for long.
“How’s Helen? I meant to ring last thing...” Jason said.
“She’s having a nice, warm bath. But why I’m calling is I’ve just heard from these solicitors in Brecon, a Mr Shelley it is. He’ll be contacting you as well…”
“Me? What about?” He began to shiver.
“Look, Jason, I don’t know where to start.” She took a deep breath which didn’t slow her down at all. “But first, for Helen’s sake, I hope you’re still writing that mad woman’s story?”
“I’m on chapter three already,” he lied.
“Good. Well, you know Miss Betsan Griffiths who was killed up by Nantymwyn two weeks ago? Well, apparently, on Thursday afternoon, this Margiad’s spooky voice had got into her head, bragging how she’d helped her brother Charles hang himself down in London. Told him he was guilty of incest and should never have been born. How it was his duty to die for that and for not rescuing her when their daddy gassed her and his own unborn baby after promising to take care of them. ‘So what’s it to be, gay boy and pervert, who used his own half-brother Llyr to satisfy his lust?’” Eluned Jenkins’ voice rose to a higher register. ‘“The rope or the cross? Just don’t keep me waiting...’”
A breathy pause followed, in which Jason’s cooling skin began to crawl.
“Can you believe it? In 2009?”
Silence.
“Jason? Are you still there?”
“Just about.” But his teeth were chattering, as they’d done in that black saloon.
“Well, this Betsan couldn’t tell anyone how or why, could she?” The primary school teacher continued in full spate. “Too scared, Mr Shelley said. Except Betsan had known for some time she was the dead man’s main beneficiary. Anyway, once the solicitor had checked it out with the Met, and they confirmed Charles Pitt-Rose really had been found hanged, she drove straight over to Brecon and changed her will. In case her own heart stopped beating. I ask you… But not before she’d thrown away her crucifix and this thing stuck on her car’s bumper.”
“A GPS tracker? Like on Helen’s?”
“That’s it, but guess what? I’ve just found another one at the bottom of her rucksack before it went in the wash today. Smaller, mind. No bigger than a shirt button.”
What?
He’d checked the thing through last Monday. The day he thought she’d died in the back of the VW.
Silence, in which the ominous black shape beyond the window glass fluffed up its feathers before settling back into place. Helen was suddenly too far away, and her mother was talking again. “Not even the papers have got hold of this latest development. It’s been kept really secret.”
He eyed the strange visitor again. His circulation leaving his fingertips the colour of pale wax.
“And as for secrets, my Helen never said a thing about Miss Griffiths. Nor you, Jason. Not even when we were at the Cottage Hospital together.”
“She’d only met Betsan a few times,” he explained, trying to keep calm. “Me not at all.”
At least, not alive.
“Anyway, what I’m getting round to saying is, she’d left her own small estate and the big bequest to Helen as she’d felt sorry for her. Tidy too, she’d said. No mention of what would have happened if my girl had died, mind…” Here, Eluned Jenkins’ voice broke down, syllable by syllable, ending in a loud blowing of her nose. “So it’s all yours if you want it,” she said finally.
He noticed both Yale keys now oddly bright despite their distance from his Anglepoise lamp. “I don’t quite understand.”
“Heron House, of course. Helen won’t go near it. And we all know why.”
Why I’ve come back here. Or have you forgotten?
His body felt numb all over except for his gut in freefall. He got up unsteadily for a closer look at the window, but not until his freezing nose was almost touching the whitened glass, did his heart fully flip. For he realised that in the rook’s open beak lay a small, green-stained bone bearing brown mossy tufts at each end. Identical to the specimen Gwilym had pocketed. Had this really brought his old friend such bad luck? That shocking end? If so, he, Jason, surely was to blame.
He gripped the inner windowsill, holding his breath, repulsed yet hypnotised as that malevolence, with an even more steely ex
pression in its eyes, began to tap her baby bone against the glass.
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