A Crown of Lights mw-3

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Did she?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Shut up!’ Judith moved towards her. Merrily shrank back into the corner. If she could just get to her feet, she might... but then there was Weal.

  ‘If you grievously injure her,’ he told Judith earnestly, ‘you know I may not be able to help you.’

  Merrily shut her eyes. Think! Barbara believes Weal was responsible for Menna’s death, so she goes to see Weal and accuses him of bringing about Menna’s death by subjecting her to Ellis’s perverse ritual. What does Weal do then? What does he do to Barbara?

  Nothing.

  The way he was talking now, viewing the situation, almost naively, from a pedantic legal perspective, made one thing clear: whatever else he was, this man was not a killer.

  There’s only one killer.

  ‘J.W.,’ Merrily said. ‘When Barbara came to see you... when she went a little crazy and started accusing you of... things, did you...’ She could hear the acceleration of Judith’s breathing, but she didn’t look at her; she was going to get this out if she was beaten into the ground for it. ‘Did you send her to see Judith?’

  Weal didn’t answer. He glanced briefly at Judith, then down at Merrily. The question had thrown him. He looked at Judith again, his jaw moving uncertainly, as if he was trying to remember why it was that he hated her so much.

  Merrily could suddenly see Weal and Barbara in the old rectory, Weal red-faced and anguished. Why are you plaguing me, you stupid, tiresome woman? Why don’t you talk to the one person who, for twenty-five years, has been...?

  Judith said, ‘Jeffery, you’re tired.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m always tired these days.’

  ‘Why don’t you go back to the house now?’ Judith said kindly. ‘I’ll sort this out.’

  He put his fingers vaguely to his forehead. ‘You won’t go doing anything stupid, will you, Judith? We are entitled to protect our property, but only...’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I have never been a stupid woman. I was just carried away, see. Just carried away, Jeffery.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Here,’ Judith picked up his shotgun. ‘Take this with you and lock it away. No one will try to get in now.’

  She held the gun upright and handed it to him. Weal accepted it, holding the barrel loosely.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Judith.’

  When Judith’s gloved hand slid gracefully down the barrel, down the stock, the blast was like the end of the world. Merrily, shrinking into her corner, into herself, saw J.W. Weal’s head burst like a melon in a rising red spray.

  Felt it come down again, a warm hail.

  56

  Each of my Dyings

  JUDITH STILL HELD the shotgun, her face creased in concern.

  ‘Poor man,’ she said. ‘But, see, what did he have to live for now?’

  Judith held the gun with both gloved hands, the stock under her arm.

  ‘Not much,’ she added. ‘Not much at all.’

  Weal’s great body blocked the door. His blood and flesh and bone and brain blotched the walls, but most of the mess, still dripping, was on the ceiling. Merrily, sobbing, was still hearing the sound of Weal’s head hitting the ceiling. Would hear it for ever.

  ‘A terrible accident,’ Judith said.

  Two smells now: the embalming room and the slaughterhouse. Merrily hung her head. She felt very cold. She heard something sliding stickily down the wall behind and above her.

  ‘An accident, Mrs Watkins. A terrible accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ Merrily croaked.

  ‘Or perhaps he meant to do it, do you think? You saw me handing it to him. Such a tall man, it was pointing directly under his chin.’ She laughed shrilly. ‘Such a big man. They calls him Big Weal in Kington and around. Big Weal – The Big Wheel.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ Merrily said.

  Judith said flatly, ‘I’m making excuses, isn’t it?’

  Merrily felt something warm on her forehead, wiped it roughly away with her sleeve. She thought that maybe being squashed into a corner had protected her from most of the carnage. She remembered Judith jumping quickly back, snatching the gun away too. Not a speck on Judith.

  She heard herself say, ‘These things happen,’ and felt a bubble of hysteria. She began to get up, levering herself, hands flat behind her pushing against the floor, her bottom against the wall. Now she could see J.W. Weal’s huge shoes, shining in the lantern light, his legs...

  ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ Judith swung round, the stock hard against her shoulder. ‘You’ll stay there while I think, or you’ll have the other barrel.’

  Merrily froze. Judith’s eyes were pale – but not distant like J.W.’s had been. Her gaze was fixed hard on Merrily.

  ‘You made me do that. It’s your fault. You suggested to J.W. that he must’ve sent Barbara Thomas to me. He never did. He wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Didn’t she... tell you?’ Merrily’s gaze turned to the river of blood that had pumped from J.W. Weal’s collar. She gagged.

  ‘She was off her head, that woman,’ Judith said. ‘Off her head! Screaming at me. Standing there, screaming at me, in her fancy clothes. How dare she run away, go from here, spend her life in cushy... where was it? Where was it?’

  ‘Ham... Hampshire.’

  ‘Hampshire. Soft, cushy place that is. How dare she come back from Hampshire, start screaming at me – me who’s had it hard all my life. They comes here, the English, think they can say what they like.’

  Half a mile over the border – just half a mile – and this myth of the English having it so good.

  Judith’s accent seemed to deepen as she remembered the encounter. ‘But a scrawny neck, she had, like an old bird. Trying to hide her scrawny neck with a fancy, silk scarf. But I found it, Mrs Watkins.’

  Oh God. Merrily stiffened in her half-crouch against the wall. Sinewy hands around a scrawny neck. Maybe a silk scarf pulled tight.

  ‘Going to tell everybody, she was, that bitch! Everybody! Going to shout it all over Radnorshire that Mrs Councillor Prosser was a lesbian! How dare the bitch call me a lesbian? “I’ll sue you!” I said to her. “I’ll hire J.W. to sue you. See how long your English money lasts you then!” ’

  Merrily retched again.

  ‘Never seen blood before, Mrs Watkins? Used to kill all our own pigs, we did, when I was a girl. And whatever else we wanted to, until the regulations. Regulations about this and that... Regulations, it is, killing country life.’ She calmed down, sighed. ‘Poor Jeffery – it’s just like putting down an old horse.’

  ‘What was... the matter with him?’

  ‘It was since she died.’ A toss of her head towards the tomb. ‘He was hardly awake since. Couldn’t face being awake.’

  ‘Was he... on medication? From Dr Coll?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have it. Said it was the mourning took his energy, eating him up inside.’

  Took his energy?

  Menna.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ Judith said, brightening. ‘I think he ought to have killed you, Mrs Watkins.’

  Merrily felt the first spasm of a cramp in her right leg. She had to move.

  ‘That’s what I think. Meddling little bitch, you are, come to spy on Father Ellis.’

  Merrily braced herself against the wall, straightened the leg in front of her, looking up. Into the black, metal-smelling barrels of the twelve-bore hovering six inches from her face.

  Judith said, ‘Perhaps he did shoot you.’ She raised a hand to her head for a moment, horribly childlike, as if putting something together in her mind. ‘Likely he shot you before he killed himself. Blew your little head off with the one barrel, saved the other for himself. He was a solicitor. A logical man, see.’

  She looked delighted – the woman was mad.

  Merrily looked along the barrel of the great gun towards the stock. She saw two triggers, one slightly in front of the other, Judith’s finger around the second one. The speed she’d managed it la
st time, there must be hardly any tension in those triggers.

  Merrily jerked her head to one side, but the two holes followed her.

  Judith was a practical woman.

  ‘First used one of these when I was nine year old,’ she said proudly, ‘when I could hardly lift it. Saw my father shooting crows.’ She smiled happily. ‘Country girl, see, always the tomboy. Always a better shot than Councillor Prosser.’

  The trigger finger relaxed. Merrily still held her breath. Could she summon the strength to throw herself from the wall, knock the barrel aside? As if she’d picked up the thought, Judith backed away smartly, smiling.

  ‘Jeffery thought you were one of the hippies broken in. Thought you were a hippy, and you went for him and his gun went off. That’s what they’ll say, isn’t it? Then, when he saw what he’d done, he turned the gun on himself. Suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed. Went to an inquest two year ago, we did, Councillor Prosser and I. One of our old neighbours hanged himself – verdict of suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed. Everyone here knew J.W.’s balance of mind was gone.’

  Merrily shook her head helplessly.

  Judith waggled her fingers to show she was still wearing gloves. ‘Dropped the gun as he died. Two of you dead.’ She glanced at the open tomb. ‘Went to say goodbye to his wife, before he killed himself. Poor Jeffery, he’s with her now – is that what you think, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Judith’s face turned red. ‘Rubbish! Nonsense! How can a woman be so stupid. There is nothing after death! Menna waiting in the clouds with her arms open, waiting for her J.W. with no head? Is that what you would tell them in your church, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘Is that what you say to Father Ellis?’

  The barrel moved down to Merrily’s chest. At this range, the blast would cut her in half, and it could happen any time. If she moved too quickly, Judith would blow her apart. She wouldn’t feel anything. She wouldn’t even hear the shot. Her last moment would be a moment just like this.

  ‘We could have been friends, you and I, Merrily Watkins.’

  ‘I’m not sure that we could,’ Merrily said honestly.

  ‘I’m not a lesbian, you know. Are you calling me a lesbian?’

  Merrily thought of Jane, glad that Gomer was with her. Would the kid later remember hearing a distant explosion from the village, hear it echoing down her life. Pray that these concrete walls were too thick. Pray: Please, God, Oh God. Please, Jesus, hold me safe from the forces of evil. On each of my dyings shed your light and your love. Would she die wearing Jane’s coat? She saw not her own life flashing before her, but Jane’s. Jane aged three on the beach in Pembrokeshire, following a ball, tripping over it, starting to cry because she thought she should, and then bursting into wild laughter, rolling over and over like a kitten.

  Merrily tore herself wretchedly back into the present.

  ‘Frankly, Judith, I couldn’t care less where you stand sexually. It’s insignificant.’

  ‘Not to me, Mrs Watkins. Not to my reputation.’

  ‘The real point is, you’re a monster. A monster that feeds on the vulnerable. Anything that brings out pity in the rest of us, it just makes you more excited. Tears turn you on. You were probably everything to Menna – all she had sometimes. But she was nothing to you, no more than a slim, white, trembling body to play with.’

  She stood up, looked at Judith and shrugged.

  ‘You may close your eyes, if you wish,’ Judith said coldly, but she’d squeezed the second trigger before Merrily even had time to decide.

  Betty and the stately Alexandra drifted about the ruins like mother and daughter ghosts, moving things around while Robin watched and held the lamp.

  The fat candles mostly stayed: on sills and ledges, and in glass lanterns on the top of the tower.

  The altar got moved. This was an old workbench from the barn, with a wood vice still clamped on the side. Robin helped Alexandra carry it from the north wall to a place in the middle of the nave, opposite the tower but facing where Betty figured the chancel had been. East-facing, like a Christian altar, in case this Merrily Watkins turned up.

  The ruins hung around them like old and tattered drapes, moonlight showing up all the moth-holes. The moon was real white now, like a slice of Philadelphia cheese over the tower. Robin thought he saw a movement up there. An owl, maybe.

  Across the roofless nave, Betty was taking some crystals from a drawstring bag. She kept her eyes down.

  When it was all ready, the coven was summoned in, and Alexandra said to Betty, ‘Will it be?’

  Robin looked at Betty, and he knew she had at last accepted that the Christian priest would not come.

  Betty nodded.

  Tapers and matches were handed out. The coven moved like shadows, dipping and bending, and when each one rose there was a new glimmering.

  Max’s wife Bella did the tower. ‘Creepy,’ she said when she came down. ‘Felt I was being watched.’

  In the end, there must have been seventy or eighty candles alight. Lined up in every jagged, glassless window. Along the walls of the roofless nave. In the arrow-cracks of the tower. On top of the cold battlements, in glass lanterns.

  St Michael’s, Old Hindwell, was ethereal, unearthly, shivering with lights, and the display reflected, crystallized, in the Hindwell Brook.

  57

  In Shock

  NEVER HAD a gun, never wanted one, but Gomer knew about gunshots, how loud they could be at night, how the sound would carry miles, and he’d figured out roughly where this one had come from, and it wasn’t likely to be poachers or lampers of hares – not tonight with all these coppers on the loose.

  ‘The church?’ young Jane said, scared.

  ‘Further on, more like.’

  He wasn’t gonner say it was the ole rectory yet, but he was gonner check it out.

  As they reached Prossers’ farm, a police van shot past them – far too fast, in Gomer’s view, to be heading for the entrance to the ole church. They wouldn’t’ve heard the shot. Most likely they was heading for the camp the coppers would’ve now set up where they’d dug up Barbara Thomas.

  Gomer had been worried they might get stopped. Under his bomber jacket, he had his sweatshirt on back to front, so it no longer said, ‘Gomer Parry Plant Hire’.

  Behind them, the fire was just fumes on the air, almost unnoticeable as they reached the St Michael’s entrance. No protesters here yet. No coppers, neither. And no reporters. A woman’s body and some bugger figuring to fry three hundred people had to be more important than God and the Devil.

  The five-bar gate was closed across the track, but the padlock hung loose from the hasp on a chain. Gomer was about to open it when Jane let out a gasp.

  Two women were approaching up the road.

  Jane hesitates a moment, then starts to run. Gomer levels his torch.

  It lights up Judy Prosser. Also the vicar.

  The kiddie runs to her mam and they starts hugging, but Gomer knows straight off this en’t normal. He walks over, slowly.

  ‘’Ow’re you, Judy?’

  But he’s looking at the vicar in the torchlight, where her eye’s black and swelled-up, her face lopsided.

  Jane’s now spotted it, too. ‘Mum, what have you—’

  But Judy cuts in. ‘Gomer, we’re looking for the police, we are. Something terrible’s happened.’

  ‘What’s that, Judy?’

  ‘I have to report a suicide.’ She’s holding herself up straight in this long, black quilted coat. ‘Mr Weal – he’s shot himself, I’m afraid to say.’

  ‘Big Weal?’

  ‘Blew his head off with a shotgun. In his wife’s tomb, this was, poor man. Turned his mind, isn’t it? The grief. Tried to stop him, didn’t I, Mrs Watkins? Tried to talk him out of it.’

  The vicar says, in this clear voice, like in the pulpit, ‘No one could have done more, Mrs Prosser.’

  ‘You all right, vicar?’

  ‘Yeah, I�
�m... fine. Apart from a few bruises where... Mr Weal hit me.’

  ‘I warned her not to approach him,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘Silly girl.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been a very silly girl.’

  Judy says, ‘We all were terrified that he might do something stupid. So, as a close neighbour, I was keeping an eye on him. I go there every night, I do, to check he’s all right, and sometimes I finds him beside the tomb, with the top open, just staring at Menna’s remains. Mrs Watkins said she did not think this was healthy and she asked me to take her to see Mr Weal, and we finds the poor man in there, with his wife on show and his twelve-bore in his hands. Mrs Watkins panics, see—’

  ‘Gomer...?’ the vicar says. ‘Ar?’

  ‘Are there any police around? I thought there’d be some here.’

  ‘Over the harchaeologist site, vicar,’ Gomer says warily. ‘Any number o’ the buggers.’

  ‘Could you take Mrs Prosser. Ask for a senior officer, and tell them Mrs Prosser has a lot of... information.’

  ‘You can tell them my husband’s on the police committee,’ Judy says. ‘That should expedite matters. But surely you’re coming, too, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘I have to take my child back to the vicarage, Mrs Prosser. She’s too young to hear about this kind of thing.’

  The vicar hugs young Jane very close for a few seconds.

  ‘Say goodnight to Gomer, Jane,’ the vicar says.

  The kiddie comes over, puts her arms round Gomer’s neck and hugs him real tight, and in his ear in this shocked, trembling whisper, her says,

  ‘Mum says to tell the police not to let her go. She’s killed twice.’

  They followed the path to the old archaeological site. Some thirty yards away, they could see two police cars lined up, a radio crackling from one of them. They could see the low, white tent, the orange tape. The second car was parked on the edge of a small wood full of dead trees, white branches shining like bone. Jane had told her what was probably still lying under the tent.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the kid kept saying. ‘Are you sure?’