Fabric of Sin (57 page)

A Mercedes 4x4 drew up in front of the Master House.

Nobody got out.

‘Sycharth,’ Jimmy Hayter said. ‘He’ll wait till the last minute before he goes in. This is gonna be hard for him. Especially with Gray here.’

Lol said, ‘Your meeting with him yesterday …’

‘Robinson, watch my lips.’

Hayter’s lips were a flat line.

‘Murray wanted you both back for his service, though,’ Lol said. ‘Didn’t he?’

The memorial service which would have been held yesterday and wasn’t. Several men in suits, whom word hadn’t reached in time, had arrived to find a black-edged card on the door, informing would-be worshippers that, owing to the tragic and sudden death of the Rev. Edward Murray, all services should be considered cancelled until further notice. Some consternation, apparently.

‘Maybe the original plan was to do something here,’ Lol said. ‘Continue some process Murray had started thirty-odd years ago.’

‘Yeah. Maybe. He’d been studying all that time, been through degrees of Masonry I didn’t know existed.’

‘But then, despite Gray’s illness, Gwilym didn’t manage to get the house back and it was sold, very symbolically, to the Duchy of Cornwall, so you had to arrange it at the church.’

‘No, it was always going to be the church.’ Hayter said. ‘The church is all-Templar. He was going to bring something to the church that would reconnect the wires, as he put it.’

‘What?’

‘We weren’t privileged to know.’

‘You’re lying again, Jimmy.’

‘Robinson, you …’ Hayter dug his fingers into the grooves of the hawthorn. ‘Gwilym and me, we met to decide what to do about him. We’d had enough.’

‘What, like you broke the Boswell?’

‘That’s how
I
wanted to play it, yes. Frankly. And knew the right people.’

‘Like he claimed to have made Mr Gray ill? Think how
that
backfired, Jimmy.’

‘Look … Robinson … we didn’t do anything. Gwilym said, let me talk to him. And he did. And the agreement was, after the seven hundredth anniversary, that would be it. Murray’s side of it was to remove the body. If it turned up during restoration, we’d be well in the shit. Not Murray, because nobody ever suspects the vicar, do they, unless it’s choirboys or kiddie-porn?’

‘And what was your side of the deal?’

Hayter’s mouth flat-lined.

‘You know he took the bones away, don’t you?’ Lol said.

‘What?’

‘He took them away in a couple of plastic feed-sacks.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Only they’ve disappeared. They could be anywhere now.’

Hayter sprang off the tree, and you could almost see the sweat rising like sap.

Before they stepped inside the inglenook, Merrily did St Patrick’s Breastplate, Mrs Morningwood repeating every line. Whether she believed any of this was anybody’s guess, but she went along with it.

In the torchlight: Baphomet.

Mrs Morningwood felt around the coarse, sardonic sandstone contours of his ageless face.

‘You know, it’s actually quite old. I’d thought it would be some sort of replica, the kind of thing you get from garden centres.’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘Because, when Jane told me about it, I assumed it had been put here by Stourport’s rabble. I thought that was what you were picking up in here – I do accept these things. I may be cynical but that doesn’t make me a sceptic.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be sceptical and analytical about this stuff, but I was affected and I can’t explain it. And I still don’t know why it made you encourage a learner driver to bring you over here.’

‘Oh lord, I didn’t know
that
, darling. Apologies. The reason I wanted to see it – and as things turned out it was damned prescient – was that Jane pointed out, quite rightly, that it was inside the inglenook and
facing the back wall. Facing the priest’s hole, in fact, which I’d heard about – years ago, from Roxanne’s mother, as it happens.’

‘You wanted to come here and look if the hole had, at some stage, been unblocked.’

‘It made sense. I did think Mary was dead, I did think they’d killed her. And having the face of Baphomet gazing at the tomb – that seemed to me the disgusting kind of conceit that they’d have gone in for. I was half right … and half wrong. This is old. Could be as old as the one in the church. And yet …’

‘It’s not quite like the one in the church, as I remember it,’ Merrily said.

‘It
has
been removed, though, darling, look … that’s modern cement, isn’t it? Some of it’s already been chipped away. This is part of what Murray came for. You have a chisel?’

‘Crowbar be OK?’

‘Splendid.’

He’d left it in the hearth. If this wasn’t the instrument of Felix’s death, it could have been. Fuchsia, too. Whatever, it had been held by the same hands. Merrily held it across both of hers. Didn’t move, faced Mrs Morningwood over the iron firebasket.

‘
Did
you kill him deliberately, Muriel?’

Muriel turned slowly from the stone, lifted her head, exposing her throat – the bloodied dents of thumbnails around the windpipe.

‘Yes,’ Merrily said. ‘I know.’

‘He’d learned from Fuchsia that I knew whose child she was. He knew that after Fuchsia’s death I wasn’t going to leave it alone. He knew – obviously from Sycharth – about my family history. He knew that I was talking to you because … you told him?’

‘No reason not to. Or so I thought.’

‘And he knew that people in my line of work sometimes get raped and murdered. And he enjoyed it. Without remorse. He was never a Christian.’

‘Did you intend to kill him, Muriel? I need to know. Had you been waiting? Being patient and watchful, the way he was?’

‘You don’t want to be an accessory, darling. Or your lovely boyfriend. Or your extraordinary daughter. So don’t ask me stupid questions.
Because I’ve gone through a kind of purgatory, and I’d go through it again. Now give me the bloody crowbar … Thank you.’ Mrs Morningwood prised away a lump of cement. ‘As I thought …’

‘What happened to the bones?’ Merrily said.

‘Back off, or you’ll get dust in your eyes.’

‘Is it conceivable you saw where Murray put the bones?’

‘How would that be possible?’

‘Let me take you through it. There’s a narrow public footpath just along from The Turning. Goes between two cottages down to the church, then links to the path leading here. If somebody happened to be parked nearby, watching Teddy Murray dragging two sacks up the field, this person might notice where he’d put them. Temporarily. Before using that footpath to make his way back to the road and The Turning. Giving the watcher time to get back to his or her car, switch on the engine and wait for him to appear on the road with – metaphorically-speaking – a big red cross in the centre of his surplice.’

‘I suppose a vivid imagination is sometimes quite useful in your job.’

‘We looked everywhere, Lol and Jane and me. Most of the morning. He wasn’t carrying them when he walked – sorry,
ran
– into the road. We thought he must have hidden them somewhere, but evidently they’d been picked up by then.’

‘You’re wasting your time and mine.’

‘Not that you’d be the first person anyone would suspect. What with all the injuries you received in the accident – the eyes, the lip, the neck, the head? Don’t think the terrible poetry of all this has been entirely lost on me.’

‘Shine the torch up here, would you?’

‘Why did you get me to bless your garden this morning, Muriel?’

‘Do you want to know what’s here, or not?’

‘They could connect Mary’s DNA with Fuchsia. Find out the truth.’

‘Truth …’ Both hands inside the stone, Muriel began to ease something slowly towards what passed for light under here. ‘Truth is not what’s settled in courts or reported in the papers. Truth simply … exists.’

‘Muriel, this makes no sense.’

‘Darling, it makes
Garway
sense. Hold out your hands.’

T
HE FIRST OF
them to come in was Adam Eastgate. Hooded eyes, military scrutiny. Looking around at the drabness and the pitted plaster, the floor that was half-flags and half-linoleum, shrivelled and long-embedded like mummified skin, and he sighed.

‘We don’t often make mistakes.’

Maybe it was one of his sayings.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘if you’re thinking of selling it on, I’d urge you to vet any potential purchaser extremely carefully. But I expect you do that anyway.’

‘I don’t recall mentioning selling it,’ Eastgate said. ‘That would be a bit defeatist.’

‘Adam … sorry, this is Mrs Morningwood.’

‘Aye, I know,’ he said.

Which was unexpected.

She’d been thinking that, if Muriel hadn’t been here, now might have been the best time to ask Adam Eastgate again about those threatening communications the Duchy had received. The ones possibly containing Welsh phrases, perhaps suggesting that the Prince of Wales’s purchase of Templar properties on the Welsh Border had been … noted. Probably with disfavour.

Letters which, if you were looking for an author, might point towards a Welshman fanatically proud of his family’s links with the greatest national hero of all time. Or, less obviously, but more likely in Merrily’s view, to someone who had no cause to love this Welshman … and a personal need, which could no longer be suppressed, to let light into dark places.

Some of us do know our Welsh pronunciations but can’t resist taking the piss
.

‘Merrily,’ Eastgate said, ‘you look, if you don’t mind me saying so, like you’ve been doing a spot of cleaning.’

‘Yes, well …’ She pushed hair back from her face. ‘Women in the clergy … not afraid to get our hands dirty. And, erm, everything else.’

He smiled; he still looked less than comfortable.

‘So this’ll be for Felix, will it? And the woman?’

‘Going to be a bit non-specific, Adam. Straightforward Eucharist, quite short, relating to a number of people who had connections with this place. And, if I could just say this, what happened to Felix … that may not be quite what you think. It’s quite important we don’t blame Fuchsia. I’m telling everyone this.’

She watched Mrs Morningwood approaching Eastgate, gripping his arm.

‘Ah …
I
know who you are, now. Recognise the Geordie accent. You’re the chap who left a message on my machine the other day. Been away, you see.’

‘Just a query, Mrs Mornington.’

‘Wood.’

‘Aye. Sorry. I was just given your number. Only, I gather you’re quite well known as a herbalist and a healer, kind of thing, and not the only one in this area.’

‘Quite a few in the general area, involved in different disciplines. Eight … nine, perhaps.’

Merrily shot her a look.

Eastgate said, ‘So if this place – and I’m talking off the record and in a very tentative way – were to become – assuming it could be done without damaging the character – a centre for alternative health … do you think that would have local support?’

Mrs Morningwood wrinkled her nose.

‘There’s a good possibility.’

Bloody hell
. Merrily remembered Jane raising the idea, not entirely seriously.

‘This is a bit sudden, Adam.’

‘Not really.’

‘It would’ve come down from …?’

‘The place things come down from,’ Eastgate said, as Jane herself came in, holding the door open for Roxanne Gray, pushing Paul in his wheelchair to within a few feet of the relic that Mrs Morningwood had found in the inglenook.

John 20
.

A text often used during funeral services, with or without the Requiem Eucharist. She read it to the gathering.

‘On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early
…’

Except for Paul Gray in his wheelchair, the congregration was standing. Adam Eastgate at one end, Sycharth Gwilym at the other, tight-faced, uneasy, no sense of a man who’d come home. In the middle, Roxanne and Mrs Morningwood. Lord Stourport on his own by the door, hands in pockets, breathing down his nose. Next to him, Lol and Jane and, at their feet, lying down, nose between his front paws, the dog that Mrs Morningwood had said would refuse to come in here.

It was the biggest congregation you’d get in Garway this particular weekend.

It added up to nine people.

‘Peter then came out with the other disciple and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first and, stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there
…’

On the portable altar, a simple white cloth, wine and actual bread to celebrate the Eucharist.

A Requiem, then, for some people she could name, one she couldn’t. And one she was she was still agonizing about and would do, right up to the moment.

In front of the altar, on a trestle they’d found in the barn, where a coffin might be at a funeral, was the sandstone urn, size of a small chalice, recovered from a recess half the size of a bread-oven behind the face of the Baphomet.

They’d managed to remove the top, she and Mrs Morningwood. Some powder in the bottom … had to be ashes.

Lol had told her what Stourport had said about Teddy Murray’s intention to bring something into the church for his gnostic, Masonic service. She’d asked his advice, and Lol had said, do it. If
anybody
needed it …

Merrily let the ritual unwind at its own pace, still unsure.

Listening.

There was no name on the sandstone urn, no words at all. For all she knew, there could be dozens of these all over Europe; there would’ve been a lot of ashes. No clues when it had been walled up or who had first brought it here. But it made sense.

Merrily took a breath, picked up the urn, kept her voice fairly low. She commended to God the souls of Fuchsia Mary Linden and Felix Barlow and, in her head, in a second of silence, Mary Roberts Linden, sleeping in the herb garden.

She cleared her throat. The marks on her alb were like smuts on a spectator backing away from the flames into the shadow of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.