Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  “So what? That doesn’t give you the right to snoop on everything I or Mr Flynn do,” Helen said.

  “I have all the right.” She came close enough for Helen to see the pink veins in the whites of her angry eyes. Her bony forefinger wagging back and fore.

  “What do you mean by that?” Helen challenged, hearing the cooked toast pop up.

  “Cool it,” whispered Jason. “Let’s go.”

  “And you, young man,” Gwenno Davies called after him, “if you’ve a whit of sense you’ll take yourself back to where you came from. This girl will endanger you with her lies.”

  Helen saw him turn his back as the woman pushed past him out of the kitchen. A subtle move that drove him upwards in her estimation.

  “I’m off,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Don’t care. I need to think. Sort my head out.”

  ***

  “Bitch,” Helen muttered after her enemy, who was creeping upstairs wiping off any possible finger marks from the oak banister as she went. Her patch of scalp glowing under the dusty chandelier. “No, Rat bitch.” And to the Irishman hovering on the top step in his well-worn dressing gown who wouldn’t say ’boo’ to her, “I’m not sticking that woman much longer. Who could?”

  Mr Flynn let Gwenno Davies pass, and from her lower position Helen saw a small smile of triumph stretch her uncharitable lips. She also noticed how her boss sucked at his right index finger.

  “Did you hear me?” Helen’s voice raised a notch to reach him. “Doesn’t it matter what I think? Am I that invisible?”

  But he slipped away without answering, back into his office-cum-bedroom over the lock-ups, and in that moment, Helen realised it wasn’t just his sleeping tablets giving him that unhealthy pallor. She’d been there when he’d picked up Jason’s copy of Metro and read about that hanging in London.

  Something was seriously wrong.

  She took the shallow stairs two at a time and tiptoed along the first floor’s narrow corridor before turning the tight corner at the far end to reach his door. Here she pressed her ear to its cold, old wood long enough to hear him on his landline phone asking Directory Enquiries for that Islington Police Station’s number.

  ***

  Helen didn’t hang about, instead raced up to the attic floor and Jason’s unlocked room where to her surprise, that MARGIAD sign on the door had gone. Likewise the dark stain she’d almost dared ask The Rat to clean. But more than any of this was the book that had inspired the Londoner to come here in the first place. It lay intact on his bedside table, not a page missing, and in perfect order. Had his story been made up? And if so, why?

  This is crazy. In fact, more than crazy.

  She glanced at his neatly made bed then out of the dormer window on to the persistent drizzle and that normally dominant hill opposite now just a harmless blur. Then something that made her heartbeat quicken again. Jason was standing in the gateway down below, beckoning her to join him.

  She hesitated, ashamed at being so easily flattered. Yet no-one she’d so far met in Llandovery or on her one evening visit to the Fox and Feathers with Mr Flynn, had paid her any attention. No worries about her mam’s one big fear all too loudly expressed when she’d landed the cooking job. “Don’t for God’s sake get embroiled with the peasants there. Wait until a man with proper work and a healthy bank balance comes along. Someone safe.”

  She should be so lucky.

  And there was Jason Robbins gesturing to her as if stranded on some desert island. Another one down on his luck, but nevertheless, clinging to a big dream. Hers was to have her own place. New and clean, unlike Heron House, complete with funky chairs and a big IKEA bed with drawers underneath.

  She locked Jason’s door just in case, and was about to go downstairs two at a time when she saw Mr Flynn waiting for her on the bottom step.

  “I’ll be away for the next couple of days,” he said, before lowering his voice. “Keep an eye on the place, and if the Davieses prove tricky, just let it go. OK?”

  What an odd thing to say.

  Helen stared at his tense features. His crumpled dark grey suit she’d never seen him wear. Here was a man afraid. “Where are you going? Just in case.”

  “London. You’ve got my mobile number, but please, only in an emergency.”

  “There won’t be any.”

  “Good. And don’t give it to anyone else without my say-so.”

  “OK.”

  He suddenly gripped her nearest hand and she noticed a fresh plaster on that same right index finger he’d been sucking earlier. “Thanks for that, Helen. “Means a lot.” He gave her the strangest look before snatching up a well-worn briefcase and fleeing away through the hall and out of the front door. Within seconds, he was revving up the Volvo then negotiating the central flowerbed on two wheels, spraying mud and gravel into the air as he went.

  ***

  Having pulled up the hood of her waxed coat and zipped herself inside its slightly sticky warmth up to the chin, Helen checked that her limited set of house keys were safe in her pocket along with two snatched cup cakes, then joined Jason who stood eyes fixed on the grey saloon as it sped out of sight.

  “I locked your room,” she said.

  “Damn. Forgot. Cheers.”

  “Now then, left or right?” she said as brightly as she could. Her employer’s news could wait for the time being. Jason had been waiting for her, hadn’t he?

  “Talk about rushing off,” he complained, still staring after the car. “Nearly ran me over.”

  “He ought to watch it.” She then nudged his damp arm. “Listen, I’ve something to tell you. It’ll freak you out.”

  “What?” But she could tell he wasn’t really listening.

  “Your library book’s fine. If the weather wasn’t so minging, I’d have brought it to show you.”

  That made him focus.

  “Evil Eyes fine? How come? It was ripped to shreds when I last saw it.”

  “If you don’t believe me, come and take a look.”

  “No thanks. I need fresh air.” He duly upturned his face and drew in a great gulp of drizzle. “I can’t get last night out of my head.”

  “Nor me. Left or right?” she repeated.

  “Your call.”

  ***

  The mist that yesterday had made the massive hill almost invisible, now slipped away to reveal its shining greenness in awesome clarity against the sky. She could never reproduce that colour using manufactured paints. Viridian was too dark, too blue. Chrome green even mixed with gamboge, too dense. No, she’d have to search for some obscure plant dye, but right now, that wasn’t exactly top of her agenda.

  “Any graveyards round here?” Jason asked unexpectedly.

  “Non-conformist church? Chapels? Take your pick. Why do you ask?”

  “Who was Margiad?”

  “I’ve said, I’ve no idea. Can’t we just leave it?”

  His answer was to follow the downhill track that his would-be tutor had just taken, his black jacket glistening on him like wet skin. His booted steps sure-footed. Suddenly, an M.I.A. track hit her ears. From where, she couldn’t tell, until Jason paused, pressing a sleek, black mobile phone to his ear. Orange Rome. Very smart, but how come his caller had got a signal? He looked back at her, a deepening frown on his face as he listened. Whoever it was, didn’t last long, and at the end, he seemed frozen stiff. “Remember me. Remember me,” he repeated as if in some kind of trance. “What can that mean?”

  “God knows. What was the number?”

  He checked all the options.

  “Zilch.”

  “Sex?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  Helen’s feeling of powerlessness turned her waxed coat into a prison. A hot, clinging one at that. She shook herself free of it letting the soft, spitting rain cool her face, her neck. She’d never had much patience with those who believe in the afterlife or the paranormal. Her mam had knocked those notions out of her young mind whenever she
’d asked. Yet if something truly inexplicable did happen to her, she’d be off like a shot. As for her da, the man with a secret life, hadn’t he sometimes, like Mr Flynn, called her his angel?

  Meanwhile Jason’s call still bothered her. For a mobile to work, you either had to go two miles east or west from here, or to the very top of Heron House.

  “It’s not rocket science,” Helen said. “You’ve got a help option, surely?”

  But he was in another world. “Remember me. Remember me. I mean, who’d say that? My mother or her toyboy? My skinflint brother? My stores manager at Woolies? My dead mate Archie?”

  She could tell by his frown he’d not meant to give so much away, but her encouragement nevertheless triggered his whole story and, by the time they’d reached an even more minor road off to the right, she realised why they both seemed to have more in common than she’d first imagined. How he was still grieving for the soldier, his best friend, probably buried in ten pieces.

  ***

  Although dripped on by too many overhanging trees, they kept up the pace until an almost illegible sign for Nantybai appeared, together with a PERIGYL – DANGER OF DEATH warning sign about the lower lead mine’s old workings. This came complete with the graphic silhouette of a dead man.

  Helen knew from Mr Flynn that a once-lively hamlet had existed next to the church dedicated to St. Barnabas. Its hub, the old school, had long been demolished after a mysterious fire, while the mill, shop and smithy had died with their owners. All that remained were a few former lead mine workers’ cottages, now holiday rentals or second homes. Way beyond her measly pay she’d realised, when one came up for sale last month. There was also the Red Kite campsite situated right next to the River Towy, and more than once, she’d been tempted to rent one of its static caravans and hike up to Heron House for work each morning. At least she’d have her own space, without The Rat listening outside her bedroom as she washed in its too-small washbasin.

  Soon, at the lane’s end, she and Jason were staring up at that same church whose rain-blackened slates and grey stone walls lent it a forbidding feel, as did the fact it stood marooned in a crowded but silent graveyard.

  ***

  For some reason, it was here they parted company. He to the older area, she to the brightly adorned cremation markers and newer burials of mostly men. She glanced over to see Jason’s head bobbing about amongst the tilting headstones, and just then experienced a profound feeling their paths might do more than continue to cross.

  “Hey! take a butcher’s at this one.” His voice came from behind the biggest memorial topped by a crouching angel who, despite seventy years of Welsh weather, seemed remarkably white. “Edmund Pitt-Rose QC and his wife, Joy. Dearly beloved and all that… I wonder if they’re related to that poor sod who’s just been found hanged in London.”

  Helen, in an effort to leave that suddenly cloying smell of roses lingering in the moist air, ran over to join him and stare at what was clearly a large family plot. “Who knows? But surely there aren’t too many with that name around. Especially here. Unless, like the drovers they were passing through.”

  “See these dates? Joy died in 1937 and her husband almost thirty years later. Hardly passing through.” He caught her eye. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes. Islington. Where Mr Flynn was going earlier. To be honest, I thought he looked demented.”

  “Do the Davieses know he’s gone?”

  “Now that’s a thought.”

  Despite their presence, an eerie stillness seemed to pervade the place. Helen slipped her arms into her coat sleeves, glad now of their warmth.

  “Plot thickens.” Jason knelt down on the wet, newly-mown grass, letting his fingers follow the stonemason’s lettering. Their original gold leaf replaced by paint from a none-too-steady hand. The whole thing lovingly tended, obviously. “Joined for nine years until parted by death,” he read, then looked up at her. “Had you heard of this surname before yesterday?”

  “No. But looks like there’s plenty of space for more.”

  ***

  “At this rate, I’ll need to get myself a coat like yours.” Jason stood up, shook out his sodden leather jacket and, shivering like a road drill in action, returned it to his back. “Mr Flynn might have warned me.”

  “Same here when I first arrived. The rainfall’s ten times worse than in Aber. Nor did he say a word about who else was sharing his roof.”

  “You mean that married couple?”

  Helen laughed then covered her mouth. Her mamgu had always said it was unlucky to laugh amongst the dead. “They’re the barmy army, OK? I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  She then found herself looking at the grave of a Walter Jones who’d died in October 1946 aged nine. Only child of Eira and the late Iori. The sad remains of nine pine cones lay stuck to his pale granite slab. She wondered what had happened to him. If his mam was still alive.

  Jason joined her. “Never mind my thriller, which isn’t going anywhere, there’s stuff happening here that needs an explanation. Fast. “Remember me,” for a start. And the more I think about it, it was definitely a Welsh voice and female.”

  Again he fished out his mobile and tried RECALL without any luck. The same for SAVED MESSAGES and VOICEMAIL. All the while Helen watched him as if something between them had changed. She could have walked off. But no. She actually wanted to give him some small hope that he might perhaps fulfil Mr Flynn’s expectations.

  “There’s something else I’d like you to see,” she said. “Now this damned drizzle’s stopped.”

  But Jason stayed put as if he wasn’t finished. “I keep thinking of this boss of yours. Why such a big bee up his bum just now?”

  She sighed. If he wanted to try his detective skills, it didn’t have to involve her. “He never said. Just for me to keep an eye on the place and call him in case of emergency.” She pushed back her coat sleeve to reveal her watch. “It’s half ten already. I can’t be out too long. Just in case.” She moved away from the sorry plot towards a gap in the bordering hedge, but he soon caught up with her.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She frowned again. “OK. He basically said I mustn’t upset the Davieses. Good, eh?”

  “I don’t get it. Why are they so special? Anyone would think they owned the place. Not him.”

  “Join the club.”

  They watched as a very elderly woman half-hidden under her umbrella, came through the small gateway carrying a flowerpot of something, and made her way to that same youngster’s grave. She stood over it, as if completely unaware of anyone else.

  “Look,” he whispered. “I might not have written a single line of this book of mine, but I’m good at sniffing rats. Had to be in my job especially with all that Health and Safety crap dumped on us.”

  “There’s one you’ve missed, then,” she smiled, dug in her coat pocket and produced two of the same kind of cakes he’d had for tea yesterday. Their blue icing still unappetisingly Gothic.

  “Cheers,” he said, taking a bite. “Now, what was it I had to see?”

  “Not far. I promise.”

  “Why not the lead workings down here, if you’ve got to get back?”

  “The upper ones are far more interesting. Besides, I’ve had a thought. Once I’ve checked on Heron House, I could drive us to the pub. According to Mr Flynn, they do fab home-made chips.”

  At this, her companion’s tired eyes sparked into life and, for the first time that day, she saw him smile. “And perhaps we can find out more about the intriguing Margiad.”

  “Right then. Wagons roll.”

  ***

  With a white, hiding mist lurking in hedgerow corners and among the neat, slate-roofed barns of a farm called Cysgod y Deri, they trekked along a muddy path churned up by so many sheep’s feet and horses’ hooves. With each step, Jason’s boots made an embarrassing sucking sound. He whistled between his teeth probably to disguise it, but Helen was fixed on some
thing far more serious.

  “Pen Carregmwyn’s to the right. See?” she said. “Pen means hill.”

  “Can’t miss it. And are those Heron House’s chimneys?”

  “Correct.”

  They crossed Rhandirmwyn’s main street – originally the turnpike road to Builth – and reached an overgrown junction with yet another weather-beaten fingerpost indicating a turning to the right.

  “Up here,” she encouraged, and soon, having reached a wide, grassy plateau, the valley view below made her catch her breath. That same farm and its outbuildings like so many tiny dice thrown onto green baize.

  For at least a minute his gaze devoured the land and the sky before he turned to her. “Someone should paint this.”

  “I’m planning to,” she said without thinking. And while he listened with what seemed genuine interest, she filled in the gaps of her so-far unsuccessful life.

  “OK.” He nudged her at the end. “You start on the painting tomorrow, and I’ll start my thriller. Deal?”

  She hesitated. This was not a realistic proposal. “Deal.”

  “Anyway, it’ll give me an advantage before the other punters show up.”

  “Not competitive, then?” she grinned, suddenly becoming aware of a sickly, lanolin smell behind her. There, just a few steps away, in a hollow of foul water, lay the torn remains of a ewe and her lamb. Their spines interlocked. The bigger one resembling a long, brown Afro comb, the smaller version white and delicate. “Don’t look,” she said. “Nature’s nasty.” And next, as if from nowhere, came the roar of beating wings overhead. Rooks. Too many of them, blackening the sky.

  “Move!” Jason grabbed her hand. His felt hot, solid. She found herself blushing.