A Crown of Lights (58 page)

‘Fucker,’ Robin said.

‘So we forget all that. We forget the politics.’

‘Even Vivvie?’

Alexandra glanced behind her. Robin saw the whole coven in the shadows.

Vivvie came forward, looking like some rescued urchin. She stood beside Alexandra. ‘Whatever,’ she said.

‘My suggestion,’ Alexandra said, ‘is that we simply enact the Imbolc rite.’

‘Who’d be the high priest?’ Robin said.

‘It should be you.’

Robin knew this was a major concession, with George and Max out there. Although he’d been through second-degree initiation, he’d never led a coven.

‘And when we come to the Great Rite,’ Alexandra said, ‘we’ll leave so that you can complete it.’

For Robin, the cold February night began to acquire luminosity.

Alexandra smiled. ‘You’ve both had a bad time. We want this night to be yours.’

Robin tingled. He did not dare look at Betty.

O
NLY A DEAD
body.

Whatever else remained was not here; it was probably earth-bound in that back room, where a medieval exorcism replayed itself again and again, until the spirit was flailing and crackling and beating at the glass. The grey and lightless thing that J.W. Weal brought home from Hereford County Hospital.

‘Look at her...’ said Merrily, in whom guilt constantly dwelt, like an old schoolmistress. ‘That’s what you all did. That’s what you left behind. Take a proper look at her face. Go
on
.’

But Judith Prosser looked only at Merrily. And there was no guilt. Practical Judith in her tight blue jeans, the sleeves of her shirt pushed up to the elbows, her black coat in a heap on the floor. Practical Judith Prosser, ready to act, thinking what to do next, how to make her move. A smart woman, a hard woman, a survivor.

But Merrily, perhaps taking on the guilt that Judith would never feel, pushed harder.

‘Maybe that’s why J.W. invited you to the interment – you and Gareth and the good Dr Coll. Did Dr Coll, by the way, prescribe Valium to keep Menna afloat, keep her quiet when she threatened to be an embarrassment? Was there medication for Marianne, too? I thought Marianne seemed
awfully
compliant during her cleansing.’

‘You have it all worked out, Mrs Watkins,’ Judith said.

‘Yeah,’ Merrily said. ‘I finally think I do. It stinks worse than this embalming stuff.’

‘And what will you do with it all? Will you go to the police and make accusations against Dr Collard Banks-Morgan and Mr Weal, the solicitor, and Mrs Councillor Prosser?’

‘It would help,’ Merrily conceded, ‘if Barbara Buckingham’s body
was
in here.’

‘So why don’t you come back here with a pickaxe? Or with your good friend Gomer Parry and one of his road-breakers?’

It wasn’t going to be there, was it? There was no one under Menna. Yet Merrily was sure now that Barbara Buckingham was dead.

‘
Did
Barbara find out about the exorcism?’

Judith slowly shook her head, smiling her pasted-on smile, back on top of the situation, giving nothing away.

‘Still,’ Merrily said, ‘
Menna
’s here. For any time you want to look at her and remember the old days before she turned into a woman and became less malleable. And J.W.’s left you with a key. So you can come in any time and watch what you once had... see what you did. Watch it slowly decaying before your—’

Merrily sank to her knees.

She’d been expecting, if anything, a shriek of outrage and clawing hands. She hadn’t seen this coming. Judith Prosser didn’t seem to be close enough. Now Merrily was on her knees, with the flash memory of a fist out of nowhere, hard as a kitchen pestle. On a cheekbone.

She had never been hit like this before. It was shattering, like a car crash. She cried out in shock and agony.

Judith Prosser bent with a hand out as if to help her, and then hit her again with the heel of it, full in the eye. Merrily even saw it, as if in slow motion, but still couldn’t move. It drove her back into the wall, her head connecting with the concrete, her left eye closing.

‘You can tell the police about that, too, Mrs Watkins.’ Judith was panting with satisfaction. ‘And see who they believe – a hysterical little pretend-priest from Off, or Mrs Councillor Prosser. Ah...’

One hand over her weeping eye, Merrily saw through the other one that the door had swung open. And the doorway was filled. Really filled.

‘Good evening, Jeffery,’ Judith said.

‘You have me, Judith, as a witness that she hit you first.’ Weal’s voice was colourless and flat as card. ‘But only if you make no further mess of her than that, or it would not be a reasonable defence.’

He was carrying what looked like a kind of garden implement. He came in and gently closed the door of the mausoleum behind him. He was wearing a charcoal grey three-piece suit and a white shirt, and a black tie to show he was still in mourning. His face was pouchy, red veins prominent in his grey cheeks.

He propped the garden implement against the door. Merrily saw that it was a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun.

‘Thought it was the hippies, see.’ He nodded at the twelve-bore. ‘Some satanist hippies are parked up in the clearing by the Fedw Dingle. Father Ellis phoned to warn me. They break in anywhere.’

‘Isn’t loaded, is it, Jeffery?’ Judith said.

‘It’s always loaded. There are foxes about. And feral cats. I hate cats, as you know.’

‘Not going to the Masonic?’

‘I
was
going, Judith, till I saw all those troublemakers in the village. Can’t leave your house unguarded, all this going on, can you?’

Talking politely, like neighbours over the wall, people who knew each other but not that well.

They must have known one another for most of their lives.

Merrily didn’t try to move. Judith looked down at her.

‘Recognize this one, do you, Jeffery? Came to see me this morning. Asking all kinds of questions about Father Ellis. And about you, and Menna. When she left, I saw that the keys... You know where I keep your keys, on the hook beside the door? Stupid of me, I know, but I trust people, see, and we’ve never
had anything stolen before. But when she left I seen the keys were gone.’

Weal stood over Merrily. ‘Called the police?’

‘Well, next thing, there she is coming down the lane tonight. I thought, I’ll follow her, I will, and sure enough, up the drive she goes, lets herself in and when I came
in
here, she’d already done
that
.’ They both looked at the open tomb. ‘Disgusting little bitch. I shouldn’t have touched her but, as you say, she went for me. Like a cat.’

I hate cats, as you know.
How instinctive she was.

Merrily was able to open her swelling eye, just a little. She looked up at Weal. It was like standing under some weathered civic monument. She didn’t think there was any point at all in telling him that Judith had lured her here, picking up, with psychopathic acumen, Merrily’s guilt, her sense of responsibility for Barbara Buckingham.

‘Why did you do this? Why do you keep coming here? Why do you keep wanting to see my wife?’

J.W. Weal gazing down at her sorrowfully, giving Merrily the first real indication that there was something wrong with him. His speech was slow, his voice was dry.

‘The truth of it is,’ Judith said, ‘that she seems to have a vendetta against Father Ellis.’

‘Father Ellis is... a good man,’ Weal said calmly.

No, it wasn’t calmness so much as depletion. Something missing – almost as if he was drugged, not fully here. As if part of him existed on some intermediate plane, at grey-and-lightless level. Lying there in a cocoon of pain, detached, Merrily felt her senses heightened, her objectivity sharpened.

‘Supposed to be the exorcist for the Hereford Diocese, she is,’ Judith told Weal. ‘Doesn’t like him working in her back yard – a priest whose feet she is not fit to wash. What good would a woman like
this
be at what he does?’

Merrily tried to stand. Judith immediately pushed her down again and she slid into the corner by the door. Judith was wearing her leather gloves again, perhaps to cover up any slight
abrasions or bruising from the punches. Merrily’s face felt numb and twisted. She wondered if her cheekbone was broken. She wondered where this would end. The way these two were talking to each other, it was like a bad play.

‘Gave me some nonsense story,’ Judith Prosser said. ‘About Barbara Buckingham being murdered and buried in there.’ Another nod to the open tomb.

Why, in God’s name, didn’t one of them close it?

‘Buckingham?’ Weal said vaguely. What was
wrong
with him?

‘Barbara
Thomas
.’

‘Murdered?’

‘
She
thinks Barbara was murdered.’ A gleeful, almost girlish lilt now. ‘Thinks you did it, Jeffery.’

Merrily didn’t look at him. She could almost hear his mind trying to make sense of it.

‘Because... Barbara Thomas... came to see me, is it?’ His voice thin and stretched, as though he was trying to remember something. ‘Because she... accused me?’

‘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.

J
UDITH 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?’