Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  “Quite.”

  “Like I’ve told you, she’d been up there with the milk van when she heard the din. Being Carol, she didn’t think twice about offering assistance, but that Idris pushed her away. Let slip his sister could manage labour on her own.”

  “Sister? You sure?”

  “That I am.”

  Now he’s said it.

  “Was it his child? Pretty sick if so.”

  “Who knows? But folk talk. That Pitt-Rose monster had dropped dead the month before. There is a likeness with him, mind. Specially that mouth. The round shape of his eyes. Never told the police, did Carol. Frightened she was. But not me. Only when it was too late, mind. Still, she’d described her attacker down to every last detail, and I passed that on. Why my Bob got done on Wednesday. And other stuff off and on ever since she died.”

  “I want him caught too. His overturned Transit van was found in the early hours on the M4, but at least Helen’s safe. She’d managed to leave a Tesco receipt with her name on in the cab to prove she’d been there earlier, then given him the slip before getting a taxi into London.”

  The faintest smile crept across those damaged lips. “I told you she had an old head on young shoulders. But there’s something else.” Gwilym Price opened his Nissan’s passenger door and gestured for Jason to get in. “I heard through the grape-vine that human blood’s been found on one of Betsan’s smashed ornaments. Not hers, that’s for sure. It’s being checked with a saliva sample found on some half-eaten sweet on the driver’s side of his van.” He turned to Jason, his eyes on fire. “I keep asking myself how come that waster’s still drawing breath?” He banged his bare fist on the steering wheel. “There is no justice.”

  He revved too hard and the vehicle, still in first gear, lurched forwards. Jason’s knees slammed into the glove box and the wooden crates in the boot piled up in a heap. For a moment he wished he’d stayed in the pub.

  “Sorry. You alright?” the farmer turned towards him.

  “Yep.” But he wasn’t. That hurt. Here was the last place for his Woolies’ knee pads to have come in handy.

  “Those samples are also being tested in connection with a rape up near Abergwesyn few years back. A schoolgirl she was then. Walking home after a netball match.”

  “Five years ago,” said Jason.

  “How did you know?”

  “The Fuzz mentioned him having form.”

  “I’ll be taking his balls off if I get half a chance. I’ve still got the right gear from when I kept the pigs.”

  They reached Gwilym’s new aluminium gate and perfectly stretched wire fencing, however, the farmer didn’t move. As if Cysgod y Deri’s plain square farmhouse, with its six plain windows, the swept yard and surrounding neat barns, weren’t enough of a draw. “I’m off back to my schooldays now,” he said suddenly, ignoring a fleet of rooks cruising by overhead. “Not that I went to school much. Nice man mind, the headmaster, Mr Hargreaves, but learning from books wasn’t for me. Anyway, there was my mam. I had to help her out.” He glanced upwards to where Golwg y Mwyn’s one chimney was just visible. “I remember Betsan telling me about this quiz he’d organised. Spur of the moment thing it was, on Heron House mainly, though he tried disguising it. Just after one of his pupils suddenly collapsed and died in front of him. Walter Jones it was. Funny business that. Saw something he shouldn’t have, was the gossip.”

  Jason recalled the boy’s sad memorial in the churchyard. The pine cones’ remains.

  “Helen and I saw his grave yesterday.”

  “Well, not long afterwards, Mr Hargreaves disappeared,” Gwilym continued.

  “You mean walked out?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  The way he denied the question made Jason release his seat belt and pull his jacket closer around his body.

  “I’d met him up by Heron House. Shown him where to see the heronries. That’s what he wanted, but did I believe him? No. During the lunch hour it was, so he didn’t have long to spare. I had to get home, but overheard that bastard of a judge having a real go at him for trespassing.”

  As Jason took in the rest of the story, and young Walter Jones’ sudden death a few days before, he realised how big a part the house and its mysterious occupants seemed to have played in the lives of those outside its dank, dark walls.

  “Although Betsan won the prize, she wasn’t happy answering his questions, but back then, ten pounds was ten pounds with no other money coming in.” The farmer turned to him. “Poor dab.”

  “I did notice a quiz certificate on the mantelpiece, signed by a Mr Hargreaves,” Jason said. “Dated Wednesday October 8th 1946.”

  “That’s the one. She was never the same afterwards.”

  Just then, a muddy red Post Brehninol van arrived and, parked up behind him. A fat guy wearing a baseball cap the wrong way round, squeezed himself and his bag out into the open, waddled over to pass Gwilym his mail.

  “Late enough, as usual,” remarked the farmer. “Before you were born, my Carol used to deliver this lot on her horse. Up hill and down dale, it was. But still the post always arrived before eleven o’clock.”

  The man waddled off without a word while Gwilym left the assorted envelopes he’d been given unopened on top of the dash. One, Jason noticed, was from the police in Llandovery.

  “About Betsan,” he nudged him. “What happened next?”

  “Never went back to school, that was for sure. In fact, she rarely left home till she attended College near Swansea. Her mam died shortly after that and left her enough to get Golwg y Mwyn done up.”

  “So her mother didn’t walk out?”

  “Who said that?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Meanwhile, those old eyes that had battled against too much rain and wind, glazed over again. “And then there was my uncle Robert. Gave my da’s brother too much grief, he did. His own mam, too. Sticking to his principles like that.”

  “Just a minute,” Jason still dwelling on the dead woman’s past. “To win that kind of prize, she must have known quite a bit. Stuff that this Mr Hargreaves had to find out, perhaps?”

  “She did. But try getting her to say. All she ever admitted was that she and Gwenno had been friendly.”

  “But Helen said they fell out.”

  A nod. “And,” the man who’d probably heard of more goings on in this quiet backwater than if he’d lived in Tower Hamlets, finally unclicked his seat belt. “She got too scared of the judge to keep going there, see. He’d interfered with her and the others. Know what I mean? A twelve-year-old.”

  “Did her mother know?”

  “Never. If she had, she’d have gone over and killed them with her bare hands.”

  Silence. The drizzly mist still concealing everything over roof height. Not a living creature to be seen.

  “Did Betsan ever mention anyone called Margiad?”

  “Just the once, and once was enough. Sodom and Gomorrah was Heron House, and I’d like to think that if Robert had lived longer, he’d have used that conscience of his to land those criminals in jail and have the place burnt down. And don’t tell me those Davieses didn’t have a part to play. But no proof, see?”

  “Who was she?”

  That silence around them seemed to deepen.

  “Charles’ older sister. Daughter of the house.”

  So Margiad had spoken the truth…

  Jason sucked in his breath. The mystery was, piece by piece beginning to make sense, and he decided it was now time to share his news of the exile’s death and how the loathed Llyr Davies might well have rights to a small fortune.

  ***

  “You’d think such a small community as this would be in the know,” Jason said once Gwilym had recovered his composure. “Especially back then.”

  “Don’t you believe it. But there was Peris Morgan – bit of a one-off, mind, built like a brick shit-house if you get my meaning, who tried dragging the law up here to sort things out. But guess what?” That angry face
turned to Jason while its owner’s hand felt for his door handle. “We’re talking untouchable. He ended up being shot.”

  Holed up with this relative stranger from that misty, wet world outside, Jason felt the whole of his dead-end life welling inside his body – an empty vessel filling and filling until no space remained. Until it spilled over. First the ghostly phone calls, the odd happenings not only in his room, and then the sex in that kitchen.

  “Yesterday evening, at Heron House, something truly sick and weird happened to me,” he began in barely a whisper and, when the rush of words had ended, felt the farmer’s arms inside their waxed sleeves, smother him in a prolonged hug. A shared foreboding and despair.

  29.

  Sunday 5th April 2009 – 1.15 p.m.

  They were late for the solicitor, and the nervous Philippina wouldn’t be hanging on for ever at Sandhurst Mansion. But then, Helen reasoned, she just might. As she trailed Mr Flynn, she realised nothing between herself and him could ever be the same. She also thought about her little car. Was it still intact? Was her room at Heron House as she’d left it, with her gear set out ready to start her mam’s birthday painting?

  Despite the welcome sun now fully out, and the shops offering up impossible luxuries, every step she took towards D.H. Salomon & Co. seemed to be taking her further away from what mattered most, into a twilight zone of shadows. The kind that lurked in Heron House’s every corner where ancient cobwebs peppered with dead flies hung out of Gwenno Davies’ reach.

  “Just round here. It’s a short cut,” called the Irishman, taking a left into the narrow one-way Meadow Passage, home to a crush of 19th century houses, some whose ground floors doubled as up-market businesses, apparently still thriving despite the economic downturn. Tailors, exotic rugs, continental lighting and then number 81.

  Coleridge Fine Art.

  Helen peered through its bay-fronted window which together with a discreet Visa sign, bore a shortlist of regular exhibitors. Some she’d heard of, others not. However, what held her gaze was a large framed oil of Glastonbury Tor, situated centre stage, whose colours made her gasp out loud. This was André Derain with knobs on. The reds and oranges visceral yet luminous. She’d been meant to be here to see it. Survived to be here.

  Then came Mr Flynn’s impatient voice. “What the Hell are you doing? Get moving!”

  “Won’t be a minute,” she said, jotting down the gallery’s name, fax and phone numbers. The website was no use unless she went into Llandovery’s internet café. But it was worth a look.

  Each stroke of her biro seemed to represent a future unfolding. A future that, once she’d waved goodbye to Heron House, would become clearer.

  She tucked her little notepad away and stared again at the painting. But as she stared at that strange mound of land, it began to soften. The vermilion, cadmium and chrome orange to fade. Pits and ridges were no longer of land but a distinct face. The one she’d dreamt of while in that van; distorted in terror. However, this was no dream. There were sound effects as well, so their screams met. Hers and hers. She reeled backwards, but someone with a shining, bald head she recognised from the study at Heron House, caught her just in time. Hissed that same foul threat in her ear.

  When she’d stopped screaming, she also realised that she’d seen those black, leather gloves and duffle coat in the van, never mind smelt the same sweat and cheap aftershave. But this time, there’d been blood. His. Then her own, leaving her body with a vengeance.

  ***

  “That man’s been here again!” she yelled after Mr Flynn’s black coat, as he strode away from her and the green mound of Primrose Hill. “I know it’s Llyr Davies, but I managed to kick him away and call the police.”

  “You what?”

  He’d spun round to glare at her as if she’d attacked him. “Look, I’m really losing patience with you. D’you realise the time? What’s at stake here? I need certain vital information now. Not the cops on my back. It’s actually a matter of life or death.”

  Her pumping heart seemed to freeze. And now her boss, more a stranger than ever, was running like some ragged black rook – running out of her life, perhaps? And for a small moment, she imagined it.

  Her phone was ringing.

  She slapped it against her cheek. DCI Jobiah? Spooky weirdo? No. It was Jason’s number and him sounding different. Nevertheless, she was relieved to hear his voice.

  “Thank God,” he said. “I’ve been worried sick. Specially since finding out more about Llyr Davies. The Fuzz here are trying to find his birth certificate, so it was clever of you to leave proof you’d been in his van. I don’t mean to sound patronising.”

  Her neck began to redden. Then her cheeks.

  “You’re not. I’m knackered, that’s all. We’re on the way to this solicitor’s in Camden to check out Charles Pitt-Rose’s will. Talk about paranoia and secrets. Mr Flynn claims Pitt-Rose paid him to keep the Davieses under wraps. How about that?”

  A roaring motorbike drowned his reply; then, as an open-topped tourist bus crawled by, she described the gallery’s crazy painting and how her bald abductor, injured and on the loose, had caught up with her.

  “Be careful, Helen. He could be a psycho.”

  “I’m doing my best, but Mr Flynn’s pretending Llyr doesn’t exist. Why?”

  “Who knows. Even Gwenno’s frightened of him. She let that slip this morning in front of Sergeant Rees. Strange episode, that. Even spoke fondly of Monty Flynn.”

  “That is odd.”

  “But there’s something else. Margiad is a Pitt-Rose. She told me herself…”

  “How?” A small flicker of jealousy touched Helen’s heart. He’d sounded almost proud.

  “Usual method. Orange are still baffled.”

  “So am I. When you say is a Pitt-Rose, you’re implying she’s still alive. If so, she must be in her late seventies, yet the images I’ve seen and the voice you’ve heard is of someone not even twenty.”

  “Can you have a spook who’s still got a pulse? Still forever young?”

  “I’m not into this stuff at all.” Helen stared at the normal world passing by. But what was normal anyway? “Nor Mr Flynn. He slaps me down every time I mention her as well. Either he’s frightened, or has genuinely never come across her. And look how those two nutters reacted when you spoke out.”

  “Well, Gwilym’s just confirmed Margiad was, or is, Charles’ older sister. Only this morning she referred to the house as Hell. Should I believe her or is she just after attention?”

  Helen felt sick. That horrible stain on Jason’s bedroom carpet seemed to be leaching into her own body, adding to her own bloody burden. She pressed her legs together to stop any excess from showing through her jeans; from making her look like a hospital case, like her attacker.

  “I don’t know what to believe any more. My boss is such a liar.”

  The man himself was now just a bobbing speck in the distance. A nasty little blot on the scene.

  “What else has he got to hide, I wonder?” said Jason.

  “Don’t ask. And how about you? Is The Rat leaving you alone?” A pertinent question as any.

  “I wish.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She waited. Something was up. The silence was too long.

  “You’ve no idea what happened here last night, and Helen,” he paused, his voice breaking up, “I don’t know where to start…”

  ***

  That weak sun was suddenly too hot. The other pedestrians too close. Helen moved along to the cool iron railings bordering Primrose Hill’s crowded green hump. She steadied herself and closed her eyes tight, tighter to shift that revolting, perverted scene Jason had just described. But easier said than done. This was now Technicolor plus grunts and groans. On max.

  “Again, do it again...” came an older man’s breathless voice from where. Helen couldn‘t tell. “Faster, faster...”

  “I can’t.”

  “You damned well will. Marky’s ne
xt. Been hanging on long enough for you to put him out of his misery.”

  Marky?

  Helen’s eyes snapped open. For a moment she’d lost her bearings. What had that been all about? Some sick game or other? A dare?

  “Are you OK?” A Chinese girl with black, spiky hair was offering her a half-finished bottle of Evian water. But it was a darker, thicker water that seemed to be sliding below her feet.

  “Thanks, but I’m in a rush. Time of the month, that’s all.” And as Helen spoke, she felt a huge clot of blood leave her body and not only overload her already saturated pad, but trickle down inside the right leg of her jeans. Was there a public loo in sight? Course not.

  Dammit.

  In punishing mode, she wondered if, despite Jason’s protestations, his former loathing for the old woman had been replaced by some kind of sick desire. No, she wouldn’t be phoning him back or sending a text. She didn’t want to know. Men were a mystery. Right now, Mr Flynn the biggest of all. With that revolting encounter still embedded in her mind, she actually walked past 72 Hurst Crescent and Mr Flynn hovering in the shadow of its colonnaded porch. “We’re here!” he shouted at her. “What the Hell’s up with you?”

  Jason for a start...

  The dark blue front door was already opening behind him. Helen paused. Took a breath big enough to blow up a party balloon, except this was no party. “Mr Flynn,” she said in her hardest, shiniest voice. I’m giving you one month’s notice as from today. And no, I don’t want to discuss it. I’ve had enough.”

  “You can’t!”

  “Yes, I can.”

  A woman’s face peered round the door. Plenty of slap, thought Helen ungenerously. And an expensive haircut. Was this the solicitor? It appeared so, with Mr Flynn working his tarnished charm on her, enough for that door to open further to let him in, then close.