Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  Asylum.

  “Who’s been in my room and nicked my notepad?” Jason yelled. “You or that lovely son of yours?”

  The gardener backed away, but not her. “I’ll call the police!” she hissed. “Then you’ll have a record. No more jobs for you, Saes. That’ll teach you to put your nose where it’s not wanted. And another thing…”

  Jason let her rant on while he sussed out what he could of the room. Classy curtains and carpet; no expense spared, it seemed. But it was the bed and its padded champagne-coloured headboard that dominated even the pale wood dressing table and matching double wardrobe. Against the door hung what appeared to be a woman’s black riding habit from much earlier days. Closer to, he also spotted a mobile phone on the nearest bedside table. A sleek little silver number. And something else that made him catch his breath. He’d never seen an actual dildo before, but what else could the thing be? Creamy white and surely too thick, with a distinct kink halfway along its shaft.

  But Jason had to get back on track. And soon. “What did you do to Miss Jenkins to make her leave like that?” he challenged the old woman. “Try to strangle her? Push her out of the way? Well, let me tell you couple of psychos, I’m sticking here till she’s found safe and well. OK?”

  With that, and not unexpectedly, the door was slammed in his face; the bolts slid back into place. The key viciously turned.

  Tempted to retrieve the besom and chuck it in the pool, Jason reminded himself to stick to what mattered and, right now, Monty Flynn’s study was tops. In total darkness, with his own boots in hand to silence his journey across rugs and creaking floorboards, he reached the front door and with the tiniest of clicks, set the latch.

  Once outside in the night’s oppressive stillness, and too close to the front wall to activate the security light, he groped his way along the thick ivy until his hand connected with the front lounge’s stone windowsill. Ten paces later, came the lock-ups with the ivy still conveniently in place.

  He tucked his boots out of sight and, having tested his weight on the cold, damp foliage, began to climb. So far so good, and within seconds, as a scrap of acid moonlight poked through the clouds, his fingers found what they were looking for: a moss-covered windowsill.

  ***

  The lower portion of the sash window, although broken, moved sweetly upwards at an angle, enough for him to wedge it open with clumps of ivy. Next, he curled himself over the sill into a large, oblong room divided into sleeping and working areas. A desk and filing cabinet stood to the right, with a single bed, armchair and open wardrobe to the left. A noticeable smell of drink and fags lingered in the air. But where were all the books Monty Flynn was supposed to own? Helen had been right about that. In fact, where was anything?

  Jason paused, ready if necessary to hide in the darkest corner, out of the moonlight’s glow. This was how Helen must have felt. A nervous trespasser. He gave himself five minutes to find what he was looking for. Hadn’t Gregor Vasilich boasted on page 83 of Evil Eyes, that ‘knowledge is power?’ However, as Jason directed the pale green light from his phone on to the oak desk and its many drawers, he realised someone – or perhaps more than one – had got there first. Not even a paper clip remained. The computer and framed photographs that Helen had also mentioned, had gone. But why?

  Just then the phone light suddenly died. He clicked it on again to see the filing cabinet, too, had been emptied. And then, without warning, his Orange Rome phone began to vibrate in his hand.

  20.

  Wednesday 9th October 1946 – 4.30 p.m.

  Having relieved his unexpected visitor of his sodden, reeking hat and coat, and suggested the rifle stay in the lobby, Lionel hefted a pine log on to his fire and indicated the second of two armchairs whose green upholstery and walnut feet, almost matched the one belonging to his late father.

  As a result of the bombings in his native city, the chaos of death and destruction, he’d grown to crave order. A simplicity of material things that allowed his mind to burrow whichever way an idea took it. But nothing could have prepared him for what was about to come from Peris Morgan’s mouth.

  The old soldier, with an inch of whisky now in his glass sat bolt upright as if in bed, enduring a bad dream or some long-ago memory from days spent at the Front during the Great War. It was then Lionel noticed that his left eye stayed still, more opaque than its partner. Was it real or artificial, he wondered. Yet despite this and other privations, the man still felt driven to serve the land of his birth. He also had a few questions to answer.

  “So what makes you think I’ve been up to Heron House?” Lionel began.

  “Not sayin’, sir.”

  “Was it young Gwilym Price?”

  The stranger hung his head, which Lionel took to mean ‘yes.’ “You’ve things to tell me about it,” Lionel reminded him, lowering himself into his own chair with pen and a small notebook at the ready. Thirty-three years of teaching had shown it was best to write things down rather than rely on an over-burdened memory.

  “I have, sir.” The old man eyed the pad. “But be sure to burn your paper afterwards. D’you understand, sir?”

  As if in anticipation, the flames caressing the base of the log, sprang into life, leaping halfway up the chimney, releasing the sappy smell that would normally soothe Lionel into a doze. But not now. This time he was tense. On alert. He’d rarely seen a man so fearful since he’d left Birmingham’s mean, ravaged streets.

  “Someone should set fire to that damned Heron House, too.” Peris Morgan took a mouthful of whisky as if to fortify himself, and licked his cracked lips before continuing. “What they do up there is shameful. More what you’d find down Cardiff docks or Soho, not here among decent, clean-livin’ folk.” He paused, drawing in his slightly wheezy breath, while outside, beyond the still-open curtains, the grey dusk had become an impenetrable black. He got up to shut it out, aware both his hands trembling. His usually reliable legs more those of someone more elderly.

  “You’d think bein’ judges and all, they’d know about what was proper and what wasn’t.”

  So Carol hadn’t been mistaken.

  “Judges? How many?”

  “Three at least. Top of the heap and rich as Croesus, so I’ve heard. Come up country for fun and games. But,” he wagged a knobbly forefinger in Lionel’s direction. “Not what you and I’d call fun and games. I’ve heard the screams, the yellin,’ the cracking of whips. ‘Specially the cracking of whips. You wouldn’t believe it. But what did Constable Prydderch say when I told him? Live and let live. That there was no law against festivities.”

  “Festivities?” Lionel also wrote that down, unsure what to divulge about Walter’s visit to the school and what he himself had witnessed up by the Nantymwyn lead mine. This Homeguard veteran was still a stranger, after all.

  “Sir, I say orgies.”

  Holy Jesus...

  The word came as a shock, but couldn’t completely erase the memory of how in civilian life, Lionel’s own father had been taken to court by a wealthy but dissatisfied customer with a cunning barrister, and lost most of his savings in costs. Why he’d joined up and why, in his last letter home, he’d warned his only son to steer clear of ‘those black, Godless beetles who’ll suck you dry.’

  Having recovered from Peris Morgan’s shock announcement, Lionel had to ask the vital question. “So who exactly lives at Heron House?”

  His visitor set down his glass and wiped his mouth with his jacket cuff. A brown, leather affair, creased by years of wear and weather. “I never saw no wife myself, but to my da, she was a real beauty. Joy was her name. A Cardiff girl. Died giving birth a while back now. Buried in St. Barnabas’ Church, she is. The grave’s very well cared for. Always has been. Must have cost an arm and a leg, mind, a plot like that.”

  “This baby?”

  “A son it was. Charles, as I recall. Never saw him either, mind. Must be the same age as our Kyffin.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t attend my school,” said
Lionel, almost adding that the cries he’d heard at Heron House weren’t those of a young boy. “Never has done.”

  “Talk is he’s in some posh place down Dorset way. Can’t be sure, mind.” He glanced at Lionel. “Don’t understand it to be honest. But there you go. With what’s supposedly going on at home, best he’s not around.”

  “Who’s his father?”

  The old soldier eyed his whisky glass. Drew his jacket closer over his stained woollen shirt, even though the log in the grate was fully alight, giving off more of the scented smell of pine.

  “I’m assuming Edmund Pitt-Rose. Why I’ve come calling. Heart o’ stone he has, and God help you if you find yourself up in front of him in court like some poor devils I know. Treated worse than the salmon in his keep-net.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Sion Beynon’s uncle over in Salem for a start. Stole some sheep. Got ten years and hanged himself in Swansea jail the next month.”

  “Who else lives there?” persisted Lionel, who often had to refocus his charges at school. He’d never known youngsters chatter so much as the Welsh – often delightfully so – but one had planned a lesson to get through. “I glimpsed a young woman wearing a black dress and white apron. Hard little face, and even harder eyes. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”

  “Gwenno Davies. Stuck-up little piece, given her situation.” Peris drained his glass and replaced it on the side table rather too sharply. Whether deliberately or not, Lionel couldn’t decide. Normally at this time of day, Lionel’d fetch his pipe and, with three practised pushes of his thumb, fill it with his favourite brand of tobacco. But there’d be no pipe now. He was aware of a slow but inexorable unravelling. The way the mist undresses the hills after a damp night.

  The man opposite was in his stride. Lionel topped up Peris Morgan’s empty glass. Whatever it took to loosen that tongue even further.

  “Her and her older brother Idris are – you know – touched up here.” His visitor tapped the side of his forehead with a finger missing its top knuckle. “All the lead smelting that went on, see. Specially down here in Nantybai. Mind you, they wasn’t the only ones. Oh, no. My daughter had terrible nightmares for years. Would take herself off sleepwalking. Once, we found her wading along the Towy. No clothes on, mind.”

  Lionel had heard of such cases on his travels, also during the three school Governors’ meetings he’d attended since his appointment. How the mines’ owners had insisted that conditions for workers and community safety had always been a priority. But he wasn’t here to fill his head with the world’s stories, troubling though they were. He needed some answers.

  “This so-called judge said he’d set his lad on me. Would that be Idris Davies?”

  A nod. “Evil little ferret. Keep out of his way, if I were you.”

  A serious warning coming from an armed man big as a shed. But Lionel hadn’t finished. “Have you ever seen his sister wearing a riding habit. Polished boots, all very pukka?”

  At this, Morgan smiled a ragged smile. “Oh yes, and I can tell you about her little Welsh costume, too. Talk about butter wouldn’t melt. Till she starts speaking, that is. And as for her riding crop, can you guess what that’s made of?”

  Lionel was caught by surprise.

  “Leather?”

  “Thought you’d say that, sir. No, it’s a bull’s dick, dried and stretched. So Dai Meat said. A friend of his over in Hereford made it for her. She’s never without it. You see, her and Idris are the Cerberus, guarding Hell’s gates.”

  Lionel was too startled by news of the crop and Peris Morgan’s unlikely show of erudition to jot anything down, while all the while, the picture of Heron House was growing more bizarre by the minute.

  Lionel then made a decision. The time had come to share his own fear. “She threatened me with a gun after Walter Jones’ funeral on Saturday,” he said. “I was quite shaken up, just like today during my lunch hour.”

  “I’m not surprised. Only fifteen, mind, but she’s the spy, the lookout, while tending the grave and all. More than once I’ve been tempted to take a pot shot. Vermin those two are, sir. Vermin, and that’s a compliment.”

  When he’d finished, Peris Morgan raised himself from his chair and moved towards the window, patting Lionel’s shoulder as he went. “You’re a good man, Mr Hargreaves. Although you’re no Welsh speaker, you’ve done a lot in your first year in Rhandirmwyn. But if I were you – and unlike me, you’ve many more days to live and nights to sleep – I’d get yourself back to the Midlands. More people, see; where you wouldn’t stand out like you do here. You’d be safe.”

  Lionel stared at the fire, then his notebook’s jottings. No, he told himself. These aren’t going in the flames. Nor am I leaving. “So whose screams did I hear coming from the house?” he persisted. “There must be someone else up there. What are you keeping from me?”

  A pause followed, as long and dark as the Severn Railway Tunnel where too many workmen had perished.

  “If I tell you, sir, you must swear never to breathe a word. Even when you’ve gone. Let me hear it.”

  Lionel swallowed hard as if a stone had lodged in his throat. “I swear.”

  “There’s a young woman. Just two years older than Gwenno. The daughter. Spit of her mother she is, if what my da said was true. I’ve only caught sight of her the once. Hair as black as a rook’s wing. Eyes as dark as any coal could be.”

  “Please go on,” Lionel urged him as he might a shy pupil. His heartbeat quickening.

  “She’s the one they all come to see. Those... those...” Here Peris Morgan faltered. His voice beginning to break up, as his listener watched the once lively log suddenly give up the ghost and lie on its ashes like some old, charred relic.

  The same girl as young Walter had seen?

  “Has she any friends from the village?”

  “Her? No, sir. She’s more like a prisoner. All I can say.”

  With a shiver, Lionel recalled what Betsan Griffiths had written down to win his prize. How she was apparently unhappy at winning. Now he knew why, but Peris Morgan was speaking again. “There is one friend, sir, if you can call him that. The conchie. Talk is, he’s been sniffing around her. My wife saw them together by the old adit up Pen Cerrigmwyn. Kissing they were.”

  “The organist from St. Barnabas?”

  “Yes, sir. A fool for love. But sure as there’s breath in my body, his dainty little feet won’t be pumping those pedals for long. And hard as it might sound, I wouldn’t care. In my book, cowards like him don’t deserve to live.”

  “That’s rather harsh, Mr Morgan. It seems he’s suffered enough already.”

  “Pah!”

  The last of the Homeguard snatched his hat and coat from the peg in the lobby. “Tell that to those poor lads who never saw their loved ones again.”

  The silent night soon claimed him and the quickening tread of his boots on the stony track, while Lionel shivered again in the still, damp air. Having checked his fire was well and truly dead, he picked up his torch and his beloved tweed overcoat then closed his front door behind him.

  There’d be no relaxing tonight. Not with three important visits to make, and while he picked his way over to Troed y Rhiw, realised with a jolt, he’d forgotten to ask the worthy but misguided bigot the unfortunate young woman’s name.

  Just then, as he reached his gate, he was aware of his visitor retracing his steps. Peris Morgan, smelling of whisky was close enough to send a tremor of apprehension through Lionel’s body. “Something I just remembered,” Peris Morgan began. “Them judges at Heron House what I was telling you about. Heard a whisper they call themselves The Order, though God knows what that means. Might just be gossip, mind.”

  “That’s a strange name,” Lionel said, half to himself, immediately thinking of Masons. Besides, Betsan hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

  “I’ll leave you now. Just you watch yourself, sir.”

  “I will.”

  Yet the moment the other man had gone, Lion
el drew his coat tighter around his body and let his lit torch roam for a few moments around the surrounding dusky bushes and trees that had suddenly acquired an air of menace and danger.

  21.

  Sunday 5th April 2009 – 6 a.m.

  ‘There’ll be no hiding place. So don’t get cocky. And if you squeal to anyone else, you’ll end up in bin bags where no-one’ll find you. Got it, bitch?’

  That message left on Helen’s phone was from someone definitely male, definitely Woods, but more of a Welsh intonation than in the cab. Perhaps he’d also lied about living in Surrey, and the rest. She had thought of nothing else since, and yet, as a dirty grey light seeped under the slightly wedged-open lid into her squalid quarters, she realised from her watch showing 6 a.m. she must have slept.

  What the Hell’s that?

  Had war suddenly broken out in the middle of Wiltshire? A grumbling roll of wheels and men shouting were drawing closer. She pushed up the bin’s lid a bit further to see what was going on.

  Damn.

  A vast refuse lorry, complete with churning drum and a bad smell, was backing up while a fluorescent yellow guy was already investigating the first bin in the row.

  Stay calm. Get a grip.

  She must wait for the inevitable. To get out and run would only arouse suspicion and might bring the willing Trouser Suit on her case. Besides, if that threat had been left by Ethan Woods, he probably wasn’t far away and at least she’d have company.

  Here goes...

  Suddenly more daylight appeared and the peak of a red baseball cap followed by two startled eyes stared down at Helen. The hydraulics’ din drowned the man’s surprised shouts.

  “I can explain,” she croaked, aware of her period surging southwards. “I’d nowhere else to go. This bloke was chasing me.”

  “You Welsh?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “All Taffies are bonkers.” Nevertheless, two filthy gloved hands reached down towards her. “Up you come before you get shredded.”