Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  Jason tried to concentrate on the rest of the story. Heron House had been the magnet for evil by top brass over a long period of time, but he hadn’t finished yet. Helen was out there somewhere, and too many questions needed answers. Like where was Monty Flynn in all this? Where had the Davieses got to? And what might be next on the agenda?

  It was then he spotted Gwenno’s strange riding crop lying across an adjacent chair, half hidden by the waxed tablecloth’s edge. He picked it up and for some reason, sniffed it. Definitely not leather.

  “Look at this,” he said. “What’s it made of?”

  Gwilym took one look then laughed. “Too early for smut, son.”

  Jason stared at him with exaggerated disappointment until his companion relented.

  ***

  “Par for the course, I suppose,” said Jason, once he knew. “No wonder she was always stroking it in that suggestive way.” He returned the thing to the chair while the rook killer licked his knife and gathered up the crockery like the tidy widower he was.

  “And as for her and the brother,” Gwilym said, “I’ll give you a clue. I knew they wouldn’t last long once you and Miss Jenkins turned up. Risk of them singing, see? Spoiling the next party.”

  Next party?

  The farmer ran water deliberately fast into the kitchen sink. The sound of it made Jason reach his room in ten seconds flat and cram his foul clothes from yesterday into his dad’s suitcase. He then added Evil Eyes and his empty refill pad but, as he was about to bring down the lid and press the clasps into place, his strength seemed to melt and another’s take over. He smelt the overpowering whiff of roses. That tinged sweetness Helen swore she’d experienced.

  Margiad Pitt-Rose was back. Her voice like velvet while that full-lipped mouth slipped involuntarily into his mind. “I need you now, my Jason,” she pleaded. “More than ever. You promised to write my story. You promised, but you seem to be forgetting me. I’m ready to start at the beginning when my sweetest little brother was sent away to school. When I was all alone…”

  “I will. OK?” Jason stumbled. “Later, when I’ve got a few things sorted.”

  “I said now.”

  He swore under his breath, trying again to close his case, but all at once felt an invisible hand creeping round his side and on to the zip of his jeans. At the same time, that stain on the carpet by his feet seemed to brighten, to move and spread. The liverish odour rising up from it reminded him of when his mum had her monthlies and would accidentally leave her used sanitary towels in the bathroom.

  “You loved what I did the last time, didn’t you?” cooed his predator. “We could do it again, and again. Even daddy said I was the best in the whole wide world at giving pleasure to a man. The best! Me. Think of it. Coming from him, the most famous, wonderful judge in the whole of Wales.”

  Daddy?

  Jason grabbed the still-open suitcase under his arm and fled from the room, slamming its door as he went.

  “Seen a ghost, bach?” enquired the farmer in the reception hall, cramming his black hat on his head. His rifle leaning on the fire screen.

  “Helen’s mum lives in Borth. I must get her number.”

  No tone.

  A quick inspection outside under the purpling sky showed someone had been busy severing the telephone line. Just like at Golwg y Mwyn.

  “Shift!” he yelled at Gwilym through the front door, before something else caught his eye. Something dark blue on the move, nudging towards him. The bumper rock hard against his calves, pushing, pushing…

  The only way was up. On to the bonnet and over the side, the sudden blast of Gwilym’s rifle making him blind, deaf save for his friend’s warning roar at whoever was driving. “Stop or next time I blow your brains out!”

  Jason rolled clear. Gravel in his hair, on his skin and down his neck. And there was the farmer poised for a second shot. The Escort’s near-side rear tyre went down, but still it dragged itself in reverse before grinding away through the gates.

  ***

  “That was Sergeant Rees,” said the farmer afterwards, eyeing Jason with concern. “One of our local law enforcement officers. Shitting a brick he was. You alright?”

  “Thanks to you, yes.”

  Jason straightened up. Still in one piece. Christ, the old man was brave. Archie’d have been proud of him.

  “We could try catching up with the scumbag,” said his saviour. “Really finish his morning off nicely.”

  But all Jason could think of was Margiad.

  “Look,” Jason said. “I’ve got to explore the Angred shaft. Trust me.”

  Gwilym hesitated. Not surprising considering his recent experience there. “We might meet my uncle again,” he said. “I’m not sure…”

  “Please come. If we find what I’m expecting, everything could fall into place. And you did ask me to help get to the bottom of things, didn’t you?”

  “You’re right, bach, but in my case the spirit is often willing but the flesh too weak.”

  “Not any more,” said Jason.

  And on the way, shifting the weight of his battered suitcase from hand to hand as he went, Jason relayed to his astonished friend his adventure in the pool, ending with that strange, rigid object he’d felt lurking under his feet by its steps.

  ***

  “What did you mean by ‘the next party?’” Jason quizzed him once they’d paused for breath alongside a pile of rusted pipes on the forestry track. “That everything’s going to start up again at Heron House?”

  Gwilym nodded.

  “Come on, boyo. Those pious old Devils, those judges, may still be alive. Their deeds like nuts that daren’t be cracked. To what lengths did they go, or will their descendants go to keep it that way? Ask yourself. Specially if Heron House falls into their hands.”

  “You mentioned Mr Hargreaves the Headmaster,” Jason blew warm air on to his blue fingers before he and Gwilym resumed walking. “He’s really caught my imagination.”

  “A fine man, even though he spoke not a word of Welsh. I started attending school once he’d gone. Felt I owed him that much. That one day he’d come back and see how I’d made a go of my life after my mam died. Now look…”

  Old, bitter tears glazed his eyes. Jason stopped, rested a hand on his arm.

  “Do you have proof of him coming to harm?”

  “No, but Carol did,” Gwilym sniffed then wiped his nose with his coat cuff. “Something Idris Davies said to her when he was sweeping leaves into the pool, the way he did. Why I’d like to take my little coracle in there tomorrow. Do some serious fishing.”

  “And I need to tell you something,” Jason began. “I’ve kept it back till now, but I know it’ll be safe with you.”

  “Go on, then.”

  The faint sound of gunshot peppered the chilling stillness as Jason finally relayed Helen’s news of Charles Pitt-Rose’s will. When he’d finished, the farmer grew unsteady as if he was about to fall. Jason held him just in time, and together, without speaking, they moved as one up the ravaged hill.

  ***

  Cold enough to break your bones. Break your heart. Jason, burdened not only by Gwilym’s reaction to the inheritance story, but his own heavy suitcase, led the way up past Betsan’s sad little place where the police cordon had slackened and tattered in the wind. Up towards the scree-strewn ridges and spoil tips of Nantymwyn’s former lead mine.

  With the other man’s wheezy breath accompanying his own, it occurred to Jason how strange it had been to come here of all places to find a real mate. Albeit one old enough to be his granddad. Gwilym Price was solid. Rock solid. One day he’d pay him back. He then found himself wondering how the Sergeant would extricate himself from trying to maim him, if not worse. After all, it was only Gwilym’s word that the driver of that dented Escort had been him. And how about that other man Idris Davies had been talking to by the pool? To his English ears, one Welsh voice was like another. He looked round to see the farmer stopped in his tracks.

  “Can
’t go on no more,” he panted. “Thinking about what you’ve just said. about that scumbag Llyr. What if he killed Betsan? And why didn’t she tell me about the will? She must have known about it before Saturday.”

  “Fear, I expect.”

  “DCI Jobiah never said nothing an’ all.”

  “Perhaps he hadn’t heard.”

  Gwilym glanced at Jason and then other pre-occupations resurfaced, together with dry, old tears. It was clear he was drowning in grief.

  “I keep thinking about my Carol,” he said, “after she’d seen that Lionel Hargreaves for the last time. He’d taken Margiad in apparently. Taken pity on her…”

  His words seemed to float like ice flakes in that otherwise dense silence. Jason shivered under his ruined jacket. “Carol was convinced Margiad betrayed him and my uncle to her da and his cronies. Look how Robert was with me yesterday. He’s still very angry, and he’s right to be. He’s stopping his lover and her unborn baby having a proper burial, that’s what it is. Her and her da’s baby.” His whole body seemed to slump as if exhausted.

  “You’re having me on?”

  “Am I? She loved her da over and above anything or anyone. No-one’s going to tell me different. She loved him. Better get used to it, son. She’d do anything to protect him from the law. Betsan said the same. How she’d give herself bruises for effect. But who was Betsan? Just a kid at the time.”

  Jason glanced back at Golwg y Mwyn’s little chimney.

  “So what happened to Margiad and her baby?”

  “No-one knows, but she must be round here somewhere, sure to be, as Robert’s never been sighted nowhere else.” Gwilym began to move again as Jason crept towards the Angred shaft’s black opening, got down on his hands and knees to remove the various wooden planks and bricks that littered its access. Immediately, he smelt death. A rank, sour-sweetness eking up his nose, making his recent breakfast shift in his stomach. He could also hear water. Deep and dangerous. But to give up now wasn’t on his agenda. As a kid he’d been glued to a TV series about a rural vet in Yorkshire. One episode where he helped a cow give birth had stayed in his mind; where his gloved hands had explored her innards until her calf’s glistening back legs slipped safely into view. So here he was, his own expectations goading him on, because also within his grasp could lie a matter of life or death.

  ***

  No matter that sharp stones and barbed wire remnants dug into Jason’s knees. He must keep focussed. Keep going. As his numb fingers gradually cleared the entrance, he realised that beyond this opening – from where Monty Flynn boasted he’d once explored the cave beneath – lay no helpful ledge, no gradual easing into the shaft like any normal access for workers, but a sudden, vertiginous drop.

  “Careful, man,” shouted the farmer. “I’ll fetch the car and a decent torch. Hang on.”

  “I’m OK. You just keep a lookout.”

  Jason meant for malevolent beings from this and another more distant world, all with their own agendas. And if Llyr Pitt-Rose was responsible for nicking the Irishman’s gear and hiding it here, he must have used ropes. He might also be checking up on it.

  Damn.

  His once cosseted jacket had become a thick, icy skin as he slithered forwards on his front into the gaping darkness, willing his eyes to adjust to it before venturing any further. He felt the void below caress his chin, sending a thicker, more fetid stink into his nostrils. He blinked and blinked again, before his right hand landed on what he guessed might be some small animal’s dried turd. But no. It was firmer than that. More solid.

  He sucked in his breath as he drew the object out into the morning’s gloomy light.

  What on earth?

  Whatever it was, was tiny. A dirty green bone, inlaid at both ends with what looked like brown moss. Whether human or not, he couldn’t tell. But he had his phone and its handy camera which he regretted not using at Golwg y Mwyn.

  Everything ready.

  Click.

  Nothing.

  Click again.

  Zilch. Just a blank, white screen. The same wherever he pointed it.

  ***

  With both items in his jacket pocket, Jason returned to the opening, thinking about magnetic fields and why the camera had been such a dud. Also aware that should he need outside help, Cerrigmwyn Hill would prevent the rest of his phone from working.

  Both arms now, dangling downwards, scouring the shaft’s nearest, rubbly wall. There must be a ledge after all. Why? Because something unnaturally smooth and slippery lay under his fingertips. Just as he gained a better grip on what was clearly a package of some sort, he felt a weight lying along the whole length of his body. A dead, heavy weight, crushing him into the damp grass. All the while, that same rotting smell was enveloping him, creeping into his nostrils, his throat. Choking, choking… “Gerroff!” he managed to scream, trying with all his hung-over strength to force away whoever had landed on him. “What the Hell are you doing?”

  “Give me her bone,” came a man’s voice. Welsh. Determined.

  “Her bone? Whose d’you mean?”

  “I’m not asking twice. Time’s running out.”

  Was this Robert Price again? Dead all these years?

  Think… Think… There must be a prayer I can say.

  Jason closed his eyes.

  “Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

  “That won’t stop me, Jason. Nothing will. You’ll see. She wants you more than me. Like she wanted her father more than me. And I’ll see your bones will lie with hers and his child’s, unconsecrated, damned for ever in limbo unless...”

  “Where? In this shaft?”

  “The bone. Now.”

  No…

  Then the pushing started. Inch by inch, as if Jason’s own body was suddenly weak, weightless, colluding in his own end. He was back on those childhood marshes again with his puppy who’d run off and drowned; never to be seen again. He mustn’t give in. ‘Fight,’ said Archie. And he did, until all at once came the strange sounds of a grizzly voice singing “O’er these gloomy hills of darkness, O be still my soul and gaze…”

  Immediately, Jason felt that killing presence lift away. In its place came a sense of something extraordinary. Beyond description. Beyond reason. And once the hymn had ended, and his heart stopped trying to burst from his chest, he and Gwilym both sat facing the shaft in total silence. It was too soon to speak about what had happened. Perhaps even unlucky, so they didn’t even try. Instead, both worked together to haul up the three bulky bin liners, using the trailer ropes still attached.

  “Best get these shifted a.s.a.p,” said Jason whose unsteady hands, returned the debris to the adit’s entrance. “You never know who might be hanging around to reclaim them. I’ll take the heavy stuff. Feels like a computer. Obviously important.”

  “I’ll bring the Nissan up as close as I can. Then hide the stuff at my place.”

  ***

  “I swear Idris Davies and Sergeant Rees were planning to dump that Escort in the Towy,” Jason said, once Gwilym rejoined him. “Just before I’d been pushed in the pool. ‘Plenty of flow to carry it away,’ he’d said. But why bother doing that?”

  “Fools. The tide’ll take it down Carmarthen way where plenty will see it. Question is, man, who’ll be inside it?”

  While they loaded the bags into the 4X4’s boot and covered them with an old rug, Jason suddenly realised important fingerprints might have been destroyed in the process. Perhaps too late now, he told himself, although an article he’d read claimed prints on plastic lasted the longest. Something to do with sweat. Having shared this reassuring nugget with his friend, they set off for Cysgod y Deri.

  Once clear of the forestry and on a straight track, he showed Gwilym the bone. “Robert referred to it as hers, then her dad’s child. Whatever, I had to hand it over to him or else be pushed down the shaft where she is. Robert hates her. Said she prefers me to him. This is getting weirder and weirder.”

  The farmer d
idn’t reply instead his jaw tightened as he examined the tiny specimen. “It’s a human metatarsal alright.” He glanced sideways at Jason. The shadow from his black hat turning his bruises the same colour. “But not from an adult.”

  “What then?”

  “Foetal, most likely. Are you thinking the same as me?”

  “I’m thinking how you saved my life,” Jason said.

  “I meant that to keep it might bring bad luck.” Yet nonetheless, the old man automatically slipped the little relic into his raincoat pocket.

  Another silence while the 4X4 descended away from Heron House and joined the potholed track to the farm. Gwilym was speaking again. “Uncle Robert loved William Williams’ hymns. I just took a chance with his favourite. There’s no telling what might have happened otherwise.”

  “I’ll never forget what you did.”

  “Wherever his remains are, Robert’s at peace now. God rest his unhappy soul,” said Gwilym.

  “And Margiad? Could you do the same for her?” What he really meant was, get her off my case.

  Gwilym Price suddenly crossed himself. A gesture that made Jason’s blood turn even colder. “No bach. I’m sure she led the killers to him. Deliberately. I’ve just remembered Beynon ‘The Shop’ saying how he saw these four well-built men hanging around up the lane from St. Barnabas’. Christmas Eve it was, just after the carol service. Maybe the same criminals as tried pushing you under in the pool.”

  “We’re talking ghosts, Gwilym. They came then vanished into thin air.”

  “These didn’t. Snow’d been down a week. Thick it was. Everything muffled. Very handy. Perhaps Robert was going to the Towy and a boat. Why we both saw his spectre carrying that old oar. As for Margiad, it looked like she’d been waiting for him. But not in the way you might think.”

  “You mean a decoy?”

  “That’s my feeling. Beynon’s, too. Beyond heartless I call it. I mean, look what she did to you...”

  As if he could ever forget.

  “So when and how did she and her baby die?”

  “No-one knows. The adit was cleared just recently, for safety reasons, but nothing human was found. I made a point of asking.”