The Smile of a Ghost (35 page)

‘And do you know a psychometrist?’

‘Well… kind of. But I were taking it dead slow. I see her periodically, and I go, bloody hell, I saw that woman and I forgot to flaming mention it. Bugger! Letting her think it’s no big deal to me, but avoiding giving her the woman’s name.’

‘Because this woman doesn’t exist, right?’

‘Uh… not exactly.’ Jon stopped. There was a bench up against the castle wall, near a gateway into the outer ruins. He gestured for Merrily to sit down.

‘You really do sail close to the wind, don’t you, Jon?’

‘What life’s all about, Mary, i’n’t it? See, there’s a friend of mine, lives over in Bewdley, does the same business – ghost-walks. Anyway, I met this girl when I were just setting up, and we had a bit of a thing going and she give me a few tips. Still do each other favours. She was gonna do it, play the psychic for me.’

‘But she’s not a psychic?’

‘Well, we all are a bit, aren’t we? I mean, it’s easy – there are staples in haunted houses: man in uniform, woman at the window. Baby crying. Cold spots. It’s how mediums do it. You mention something – old geezer always wore a muffler, somebody goes, yeah, that’s my grandad. Only in a house, they go yeah, I did feel something in that pantry. Piece of piss, Mary.’

‘Well, forgive me for being—’

‘I’m telling you, you go in there, tell her you can hear a baby crying or something, I guarantee you’ll get a result.’

‘Jon, have you forgotten what I do normally?’

‘God’ll protect you, then, won’t He? Look, you genuinely know about this stuff, right? What you were giving me earlier about phantasms of the living – that’s serious, in-depth knowledge. You could carry it off, no problem. I tell you, she thinks she’s getting something out of you, she’s a pussycat.’

‘And what do you want out of this, Jon? What do you want out of her?’

It was a still day; you could hear the weir. Over Wales, the sun was just visible, like a coin pressed into tinfoil.

‘What do you think I want?’ Jon Scole gripped his knees, leaning forward. ‘How much you think it costs these days to have a shop in Ludlow? Keep enough stock to attract people in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Me parents left me enough to get a bit of a business going, but costs are always higher than you think they’re gonna be, especially here. The ghost-walks don’t do badly in the season, but it’s peanuts really. And if the Mayor and his family wanna squeeze me out they can do it any time. Could make sure the lease don’t get renewed, for a start.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘He bloody would, Mary. And could I afford to buy anything proper? Not the way property’s going in this town.’

‘I thought you sold a café to the Little Chef?’

Jon sighed. ‘I sold a bit of land with a prefabricated transport caff on it. No comparison with posh high-street business premises in an upmarket place like this.’

‘So you’re looking for a backer, in other words.’

‘Think what she’s spent on that house. And buying the land to stop the building? You heard about that? Imagine what that cost. Bought it straight out, no financial juggling required. Imagine.’

‘So if she sees you as someone who’s done her a few favours…?’

‘Who knows? Bit of a tightrope, I’ll give you that.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to’ve hung this on you. I just thought… Well, obviously, I didn’t think at all, did I? I just come out with it.’

He looked a bit lost. He was younger than he’d seemed, maybe no more than thirty. The beard was deceptive, as it was no doubt intended to be.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you go back to your vicarage, have a think, and if I don’t hear from you again… well, it’s been interesting, hasn’t it?’

‘There’s just one problem here, Jon. Supposing we find out that she did something that could take her away from here? How would that help you?’

‘What, to prison?’

‘Well, I’m not going to arrest her, I’m just a jobbing priest, but…’

‘I’m under no illusions, girl,’ Jon said. ‘The day she finds it impossible to live in Ludlow, that’s the Mayor’s birthday. And you wouldn’t shed any tears neither if you found Robbie’s death was in some way down to Bell. But I reckon whatever you did find out you’d accept it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t try to twist it or move the goalposts. So if it turns out she’s, OK, out of her tree, but basically harmless, that’s all right, i’n’t it?’

‘We’ll… have to see.’

‘I believe in fate, me,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.’

Merrily got back into the car and lit a cigarette.

It could hardly be worse, could it? Either she could go along with it, faking ridiculous psychic skills just to gain some kind of access to Bell Pepper (and then what?) or make an ignominious retreat, put the whole issue in front of the Deliverance Panel, let them dismiss it out of hand, accept an official rebuke for not informing them earlier and then wait for the axe to fall.

How the hell had she got into this?

She supposed the paper bag on the passenger seat answered that question. She picked it up and shook out the book:
Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures
. What had a boy as clued-up as Robbie Walsh wanted with a picture book anyway?

She laid it on the passenger seat and flicked through it, expecting cartoon-like artist’s impressions; in fact, most of the illustrations seemed to be from old engravings, stained glass, carvings on tombs. This made more sense – he would have wanted as authentic an illustration as possible of what life in the Middle Ages had been like. It had obviously been important to him, as he’d walked these streets, to see through medieval eyes.

Why
had that been so important? Why had an evidently personable adolescent boy needed to retreat through time? What had made the present so unbearable?

She leafed through the book – the reason she’d bought it, for £7.99 – for where the page had been ripped out. Just one missing page, and the facing one had been about… Trial by Ordeal? Was that it? She turned to the chapter headed ‘Medieval Misdeeds and Retribution’.

Page ninety-one had a reproduction of a sombre woodcut, depicting a man hanging from a gibbet, his head bowed over a tightened noose. Several people were gathered around, watching. Some appeared to be smiling.

Merrily stared at it, recalling how the page had been quite carefully removed from Robbie’s copy. The reverse, page ninety-two, had a black and white photograph of the reconstruction of a medieval wooden gibbet from some interpretive museum. Immediately, she was hearing Bernie Dunmore telling her how Bell Pepper might have been dealt with in times gone by on Gallows Hill, still preserved as open space in Ludlow.

Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg. Don’t you dare make anything of that.

She wasn’t about to; it seemed unlikely to be relevant, but it was worth mentioning, and so she called Mumford.

No answer. She rang the Bishop, managed to get him at home. He even seemed relieved to hear her.

‘Woke up in the night, deeply troubled about all this, Merrily. Wondering what I’d let you in for. Came out in a sweat – couldn’t get a handle on what I was expecting you to resolve. Just some great amorphous wrongness. Ludicrous.’

‘ “A great amorphous wrongness.” I do like talking to an experienced metaphysician.’

‘Pack it in and come home. It was stupid of me to even—’

‘We can’t disappoint Dennis Beckett now, Bernie. Erm… something that keeps coming up: The Palmers’ Guild. What’s that about?’

‘In what context?’

‘You remember the Mayor told us Mrs Pepper was setting up a trust to help conserve old buildings in Ludlow? She’s apparently named it after The Palmers’ Guild, which may have built the original house on the site where she’s living.’

‘There’s a window in the church – I’m not an expert on this, Merrily, but you can’t operate in Ludlow without coming across the Guild. Sometimes spelt “Gild” without the “u”, in the old way. They were probably the original Ludlow conservationists – kept the church standing, anyway. Started, I think, in the thirteenth century when a great deal of wealth in the town was coming out of the wool industry. Guilds conferred a kind of pseudo-aristocratic social standing on rich businessmen.’

‘They invested in property.’

‘A couple of hundred properties at one time. Some of the income was used for the benefit of members who had fallen on hard times. It was a cooperative movement.’

‘But the religious side of it—’

‘Right. The Palmers’ window in St Laurence’s has eight stained-glass panels depicting what we can only think of as a legend put about to give the Palmers some authenticity. It was said that, in the eleventh century, pilgrims from Ludlow had brought back a ring from St John the Evangelist which they presented to the King of England at the time, Edward the Confessor. That’s what the window illustrates. It’s probably a fabrication.’

‘On which basis the Guild appointed priests, right?’

‘To devote their prayers to speeding its deceased members out of purgatory. A medieval conceit, difficult for us to comprehend, but it’s clear that this was the main function of the Guild. Started out employing three chaplains, who also served the parish church, but there were as many as eight in the fifteenth century, catering to the whims of four thousand Guild members. A lot of prayer, a lot of Masses.’

‘All focused on immortality.’

‘They were certainly considerably more concerned about what happens afterwards than our society. Even if they did think God was open to back-handers.’

‘I met Mrs Pepper this afternoon.’ Merrily tamped out her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Briefly.’

‘And did she appear mad?’

‘On one level, barking. She was kissing a yew tree.’

‘I beg your—’

‘Kissing a yew tree. Very sensuously.’

‘I don’t know how to react to that.’

‘The yew is nature’s prime symbol of immortality. I’m just trying to find a link here with The Palmers’ Guild, who built her house and who evidently had a similar obsession.’

‘No more than anyone in those days. And this woman doesn’t appear to be particularly well disposed towards Christianity.’

‘But she’s very much obsessed with place-memories. Ghosts. The way that Ludlow exists in more than one time-frame. It’s as if she wants to experience other… I don’t know. I don’t know if there are hallucinogenic drugs involved here or what. It’s fascinating, in a way. My impression was that she was putting on a show today. Partly because she used to be a rock singer at the theatrical end of the business, and outrageous exhibitionism comes naturally… and partly because it’s a good smokescreen. People think you’re mad, they leave you alone. How people react to your madness tells you whether they… sorry, you still there, Bernie?’

‘Merrily, you’re not… I don’t like to think of you being drawn into anything.’

‘Me?’

‘I realize you must be feeling terribly insecure at the moment.’

‘Insecure,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s evidently looking for some kind of security. Acceptance.’

‘But by whom? Not by George Lackland, clearly.’

‘By the dead?’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think?’

29

M
ERRILY DIDN
’
T REMEMBER
when Jane had last been this amused – turning off The Coral on the CD player, coming back to the sofa and curling up in the lamplight, with a cushion clutched to her chest like she used to do when she was twelve, small pulses of amusement producing little choking noises in her throat.

‘This’ – fiendish smile – ‘could be the long-delayed beginning, Mum. The start of the new you, in floaty frocks and snaky bangles. And it’ll be, like, so cool that you never return to the grim old Church, and the future opens out for you like… like something that opens out. A sunflower. Whatever.’

‘And we’ll give up the vicarage,’ Merrily said, ‘and put our names down for a mobile home with wind-chimes, where we have to share a bedroom, and a shower block with the neighbours, and—’

‘Hell, no, you’ll live with Lol!’

Lol. Merrily looked at the clock. He’d be on stage now, having dealt with his nerves with the help of Moira Cairns, for whom he was opening, the woman who had coerced him back to gigs, who had become a kind of talisman for Lol.

Maybe he should be living with Moira Cairns.

Jane was staring at her, wide-eyed. God, had she actually said that out loud?

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘You’re actually still paranoid about Moira.’

‘Oh, that’s rid—’

‘Hah!’

‘I’m an actual grown-up now, Jane.’

‘This is because you’ve never met her,’ Jane said. ‘For what it’s worth, when she first appeared, I used to be worried about that, too, because she is, admittedly, mesmerically beautiful. But also, for someone who’s almost a big star, she’s actually relatively OK. She understands things. She once called me a wee pain in the arse.’

‘That was penetratingly perceptive of her.’

‘Seriously,’ Jane said, ‘there are things you could learn from Moira. Like how to step back from other people’s problems and learn to live? Because, when you think about it, neither you nor Lol’s ever had a normal life. Pregnant at nineteen. Widowed with a small and delightfully complex child while you’re still in your twenties…’