Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  If only plans and reality could be so easily melded together, mused Lionel, wiping up his breakfast dishes and returning them to the correct cupboard.

  So here, he was on the filthiest of mornings, cocooned in Cwm Cottage with not only a gnawing guilty conscience, but also a small mountain of pupil files needing urgent attention. Whatever the outcome on Welsh language discussions taking place in Cardiff, and the implications for him should any nationalist swing intensify, he’d changed his mind. He would not be throwing in the towel.

  Although a recent Western Mail article had warned of seismic shifts in the ethos of Welsh education, he must cling on and hope his reputation – despite Walter Jones’ recent death – would hold sway.

  Once in the lounge, he glanced at the chair Margiad had used, but from the moment she’d heard Carol calling her a trollop, she’d abandoned her brief refuge.

  “Too easy for someone like Carol to judge,” she’d declared, fastening her coat except for its lower buttons. “What does she know? Has she ever been in love? Has everything stacked against her?”

  For once, Lionel hadn’t any answer. Just a question.

  “Forgive my asking, but whose child is it?”

  Scorn had still lingered on her lovely face, like a cloud’s shadow on a hill.

  “Robert’s, of course. Why?”

  “And will you be keeping it? I mean, after the birth?”

  “Only a man could ask that. Yes. She’s my flesh and blood, isn’t she? I want her. So does Robert. He’ll make the best father.”

  “I’m sure he will, and I wish the three of you well.”

  “The best thing about being pregnant is I get no more bleeding. It’s been terrible. It really has.”

  Lionel tried to hide his embarrassment at such unexpected candour. “Well that is good news. But who’s hit you by your eye? It looks recent.”

  “Gwenno. And not the first time, either.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve been very kind,” she’d said, touching his arm with sudden affection. “Unlike some people round here. And I wish I’d been allowed to attend the kind of school you run, rather than put up with the obnoxious Miss Powell all these years.” She’d then turned her beautiful eyes on his. Eyes that made the bruise beneath even more of an aberration. “If you see my Robert, please tell him we’ll soon be together. For ever.”

  “I will. Just look after yourselves and the baby,” he’d said, hearing the young organist’s last words beating their way into his head. “And Cwm Cottage is here whenever you need it. But there’s just one other matter.”

  “Yes?” At this, her troubled gaze had fixed on him so hard, he had to look away.

  “Betsan told me that she’s already been punished for befriending you. Did you know?”

  “Punished? How?”

  “Those men and Gwenno and Idris. They’ve been doing…”

  “Stop! She’s making it up. What nonsense, Mr Hargreaves. She really has too much imagination for her age.”

  “I don’t think so. I find her remarkably mature and sensible.”

  Would he ever forget the piercing stare that followed? Her barely concealed anger? No. Never.

  And then, without another word, she’d gone. Her slight, dark form merging with the sombre foliage that with each passing week, seemed to encroach upon the lane outside and steal what little daylight he had.

  ***

  Back to work, still with that unpleasant memory bearing down on him, while his conscience about neglecting Betsan nagged his soul. Meanwhile, the once small mountain of files now resembled Everest. He must concentrate.

  He opened the topmost file on Freddie McCarthy and Malcolm Biggs evacuated from Maghull four years ago, who’d only once graced his schoolroom with their cheeky wit and funny ways. A rush of panic filled his chest. How on earth could he manufacture a better attendance record for them both? After other young evacuees had returned home, those two had stayed on at Top Farm, on an old drovers’ route to Llandewi Brefi.

  He’d only met them once or twice during the summer, bumping around on two rough ponies, happy as Larry. A lost cause as far as schooling was concerned, but a pleasure to see their smiles.

  Margiad Pitt-Rose, however, was another matter. Still disturbing his mind. How had she known the unborn baby was a girl, for a start? And why say she was Robert’s child when he’d denied it? Like burrs stuck to his coat while out walking, the sense she was hiding something wouldn’t leave him alone. He pushed the Liverpudlians’ thin file beneath the rest, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. No, he’d neither made regular visits to Top Farm, and the couple who’d taken them in, nor alerted Bryn George who’d stopped calling before Lionel had arrived. But try as he might to focus on Freddie and Malcolm’s two bright faces before they faded for ever, another’s took precedence.

  That of a solemn young organist drenched in grief.

  ***

  Lionel heard rain fall down the chimney, sizzling into the fire, while the gutters shed their watery loads against the cottage walls with such ferocity, he missed the familiar voice calling through the letterbox. It came again. This time he heard it.

  “Lionel? It’s me. Carol. Quick!

  Normally he’d have sprung from his seat, over-eager to see the one who’d already lit the smallest of flames in his heart. But nothing was normal now since he’d harboured the pregnant, seemingly traumatised, Margiad Pitt-Rose through whose core ran a spine of steel.

  “Lionel! For God’s sake!”

  The moment he opened the front door, Carol pushed herself against him. She was wet through, her body moulding itself against his. But this was no prelude to passion. She was shivering so hard she could barely speak. “It’s Peris Morgan! Poor man’s been shot like a dog. You must come and see!”

  “Is he dead?”

  Her nod shook more drops from her unprotected head.

  “Where?”

  “By my door. I found him just after I’d finished my round.” She looked up at him. “What’s going on? Why? Why my place?”

  Lionel’s mind became a stew of all the things he should have done. Should be doing. So much had been expected of him since the day he’d been born. He could already see the words on his tombstone. “This is serious, Carol. You must either leave or hide yourself somewhere safe. It’s a warning.” And, as he spoke, seeing her pretty eyes glaze over with fear, realised he could be next.

  ***

  What should have been a short hop to Hafod Lane leading from behind Nantybai towards the River Towy, took them forty minutes in the buffeting downpour. The fierce gale making proper conversation impossible. Even holding hands. So he battled on ahead of her until Myrtle Cottage appeared, bang beside the track without any visible boundary.

  Carol caught up, then overtook him. “Are you ready?”

  How could he ever be ready for death? Especially that of a dedicated guard who’d made it his business to give the village at least some sense of security. A man who, in turn, had warned him.

  Through rain-spattered spectacles, Lionel studied at the front wall and its door set back under a plain porch, but nothing seemed amiss. Carol stopped short and they collided. She then clung to him again, pointing at the uncut verge that appeared to be undisturbed. “He’s gone! Look, he was there. There!”

  Lionel edged away to kneel down and stroke this grass with bare fingers. Where was the blood? The trampling? Footprints or hoof prints, even a spent cartridge, it didn’t matter, and the word ’hallucination’ did cross his mind. A young woman with an arduous job, up hill and down dale, might just have needed a hot, sweet cup of tea.

  She looked down at him as if reading his thoughts. “Now you’ll think I’m making it all up You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Of course I do. But we must alert his family. Call the police.”

  At this, Carol’s wet face changed, as if the life in her too had faded.

  “No, no, no. Can’t you see? Peris came to see you, didn’t he? To
warn you about Heron House? Tell you things that went on there.”

  “Yes.” Lionel stood up, swept the rain from his hair and shook out his soaking coat. As he did so, her cob whinnied from round the back. If only it could talk, thought Lionel, his pulse already working too hard.

  “And didn’t I catch Constable Prydderch laughing and joking with that Edmund Pitt-Rose as if they were best friends? Boasting how many times Margiad could… well, you know… I’m sorry I can’t actually repeat what was said. What I’m getting at is I’ve been seen chatting to you.”

  “Who by?”

  “That trollop. I know I shouldn’t have used that word to describe her. I saw how it shocked you, but she’s hardly run away from all that activity, has she? And with the police so thick with them, it could make everything worse all round. Do you understand, Lionel? Do you?”

  He nodded, feeling suddenly hollow. It was possible that the tragic, beautiful Margiad Pitt-Rose was a decoy.

  ***

  He knew where the Homeguard’s last, loyal servant lived with his son and grandson Kyffin and, having seen Carol safely indoors and heard her lock the door, made his way past the colony of lead-workers’ dwellings, the closed Stores, the grey, stone church and up towards Rhandirmwyn village.

  Plas was as silent as his schoolroom. Silent as a tomb in fact. He registered its neat, box shape, the shining slate roof with its dead chimney that said ‘no-one’s home.’ Even the old trap, usually stored in the lean-to, was missing. And as for the piebald pony used for harness, and for Kyffin to ride in the local show, that had apparently gone too.

  He pulled on the bell-rope and waited for any signs of life. Only the deluge replied. That and the sense of a black net closing ever tighter. And where would it end? He thought of his job, akin to climbing Snowdon in bare feet. How he’d proved so many wrong, and now, despite the opted-out Lancashire lads, boasted the best attendance records in decades. But what of his mission for young Walter? For his poor, grieving mother? Perhaps here, now, he could begin to make amends.

  Lionel stepped back from the porch, realising from the clang of iron on iron; the smell of burning bone, the smithy round the corner was busy. Once he’d telephoned Carmarthen’s police from the box by the pub, he’d pay Robert Price another visit to ask more questions. As it was a Saturday, the organist might well be at home.

  Mrs Griffiths too, with luck.

  Five minutes later, in the misted-up glass box, his call to Carmarthen police station was answered. He duly dropped a sixpence into the slot and asked to speak urgently to a Police Constable Francis. He’d only met the amiable Welshman once when he’d visited the school to spell out the dangers of rifles, air guns and any other weapons brought back as souvenirs from the War. “Wait there, Mr Hargreaves,” the officer said once Lionel’s story ended. “One of my men can be with you in ten minutes by the back roads.”

  “Thank you. As I said, Miss Carr is very fearful. I don’t think she should be involved in this at all.”

  “May not be as easy as that, sir. We’ll talk again soon.”

  It seemed to Lionel that in those ten minutes, civilisations could have risen and fallen. Every second a drawn-out ordeal. He duly faced the door, periodically clearing away a patch in the condensation. Fifteen times, he counted, but on the sixteenth he sensed something was different. And sure enough, instead of rain slapping against the glass square, there was a face. Or at least the top half of a face with just its eyes visible.

  Hard, dark eyes.

  And then that same rain was hitting him as if the protecting door had been ripped away. Now ropes. Thick and rough. One for each of his hands. As a youngster in Solihull, he’d been taught to fight by Uncle Ernest, an amateur welterweight champion whose one coup de grâce to the head, could send you to hospital. But Lionel had seen him off every time; even kept his old boxing gloves behind the school’s storeroom door. Just in case.

  But this was different. Instead of some youthful adversary, were four mature men who’d tightened his bonds so fast he could only kick out, until with two agonising cracks of bone, his knees gave way.

  “Hold him Jimmy. For Chrissake.” The one called Prydderch was losing control. “And you, Marky.”

  “Bloody help me, man.”

  Lionel could smell them. Drink and another childhood memory – this time of dentists – delivered up his nose, in his mouth, blurring the crash of his head against metal, but not the spreading redness before his splintered eyes.

  Red then black.

  “Transport ready?”

  “Where to?”

  “Nothing but the best, of course. As befits his station.”

  37.

  Monday 6th April 2009 – 10.30 a.m.

  Gwilym Price had snored all night once Jason had installed him in the attic room next door to his, separated by a thin partition wall. The farmer, who’d fallen heavily on the forestry track, in his haste to escape his suddenly violent dead uncle, had refused to sleep alone in Troed y Rhiw. He’d also turned down Jason’s offer to drive him for a check-up at Llandovery’s Cottage Hospital.

  “Let’s open that bugger instead,” his fellow lodger had pointed to one of three untouched Glennfiddichs in the kitchen scullery. “If you don’t mind.”

  Jason didn’t mind. As for repeating Helen’s bombshell about Llyr and Betsan, he must bide his time.

  ***

  Parts of him still smelt dodgy after his dip in the pool and he had to assume, after his sixth attempt to get a response from Helen via the landline phone, that she wasn’t interested in him any more. Had probably scrubbed his supportive messages. More than anything, he wanted her to get in touch.

  If he thought about it, this was just another shite page in the book of his life, so why not get legless? The Davies pair had gone off somewhere or other and taken all the house keys. So, nothing to lose. With a makeshift deterrent of garden twine, wound round and round the front door’s inner handle and lock, both lodgers had got stuck in.

  Now he was paying for it.

  While the farmer was brewing up downstairs, Jason, half-blind from sleep and the malt still swilling around his head, checked Helen’s door.

  Unlocked.

  He started. Could have sworn it was secure yesterday, but one bleary-eyed scan of the cleared-out room told him all he needed to know. Even that weird crucifixion print had gone. It was as if she’d never been there. He opened the large, empty wardrobe then went over to the bed to sniff the topmost pillow.

  Nothing.

  He felt desolate.

  ***

  Neither he nor his unlikely friend spoke as they downed two mugs of the treacly brew apiece and chewed on toasted crusts – all that had been left in the bread bin. The morning’s biting chill that Gwilym swore would bring snow by nightfall, made him grip his warm mug all the tighter. The same mug Helen had given him that Friday evening. As for his body, it still felt embalmed by that freezing sludge.

  “Her mobile phone may be kaput as well,” he said, having swallowed the last piece of crust and pushed back his chair. “And I don’t trust this landline any more. I’m going down the pub to call the Fuzz from there.”

  “They probably saw to her room,” said the farmer. “Scare her off, see? And you’ll be next if you’re not wary. Best to deal with the Metropolitan police, like I’ve done. DCI Jobiah at Islington police station. Black, I could tell, and very helpful he was. Used my initiative, see.” The old man looked at him with a certain knowledge in his eyes. The worst ink-blot bruise on his forehead leaking a little blood.

  This was clearly no country bumpkin.

  “You mean this lot are bent?”

  “I couldn’t tell you earlier. Have to be careful, you understand. Yes, Prydderch especially. His da too, and his da before him. It’s known. D’you understand? Used to come up here regular for fun and games. God help anyone who asked questions or rocked the boat. Why I could barely be civil to him up at Betsan’s on Saturday. Why my Carol confided in the scho
ol’s headmaster what she’d seen while delivering the post. Used to be four of them including Edmund Pitt-Rose himself, Glyn Prydderch and two others she’d never seen before, doing things with the daughter. Depraved she called it.”

  Jason frowned. “His son made out he didn’t know who Gwenno was when he showed up here on Saturday afternoon.”

  “There you go. All lies. As for the headmaster, after Carol told him about it all, he just vanished. The search went on for months, and till the day she died, she fretted it had all been her fault.”

  “Seems she was lucky to escape for so long. When did he disappear?”

  “18th October 1946. A Saturday. Pelting down, so she said. The day she’d found the last of the village’s Homeguard shot dead by her house. Peris Morgan. Salt of the earth he was. He’d disappeared into thin air as well.”

  “What did she do, then?”

  “Tried to get people involved. But, except for Mr Hargreaves, they was scared. Me and my mam too, to be honest. And Carol, specially after her cob was poisoned. She was about to move away up north when we met at a barn dance at Ystrad Ffin. I wish we’d left while we’d had the chance.”

  “Then I’d never have met you.”

  Gwilym turned away, embarrassed.

  “Thing is, she’d found this little notebook in the wood store behind the Headmaster’s cottage. Seems he’d begun it after Peris had come calling. Doesn’t take a genius to see they’d both been at risk. Young Betsan too; although Carol wouldn’t say no more, only that the last entry before he vanished said Heron House was home to The Order, whatever that means.” Gwilym licked his forefinger to gather up stray biscuit crumbs then licked it. “Betsan certainly never mentioned nothing to me.”

  Scared, like you, no doubt.

  “Where’s this notebook now?”

  “Stolen from Carol’s kitchen if you please. Someone keen to get hold of it, obviously. Mind you, looked as if Mr Hargreaves’ place had been picked over, too.”