Candlenight (36 page)

   
Berry was picturing the judge's
house, the back porch near the window he'd prised open with a screwdriver on a
late summer's afternoon.

   
"Mr. Freeman had probably
been dead for over an hour by the time they got to him."

   
Gwyn Arthur took another
envelope from a drawer. "Do you want to look at these?"

   
"What are they?"

   
From the brown envelope Gwyn
Arthur pulled a dark grey folder, about six inches by eight, on which was
printed, in black, the words
dyfed-powys police
.

   
"As I say, it did look
somewhat suspicious at first. Mrs. McQueen telephoned the police. I drove
across, with the scenes -of-crime officer. These photographs were taken before
the body was moved."

   
Berry felt a little sick,
tasted ginger marmalade. He opened the dark grey folder.

   
"They would have been produced
at the inquest, had there been one," said Gwyn Arthur.

   
The pictures were in colour.
They'd been taken with a flash.

   
Berry flinched.

   
Giles's lips were drawn back
into a twisted parody of a grin. Both eyes were open, the left one purple and
black. The bruising spread down one side of Giles's face and mingled with the
freckles.

   
Another picture was taken from
further back and higher up, like the photographer had been standing on a chair.

   
"Shit." Berry
breathed.

   
It showed Giles sprawled
crookedly, arms extended. All around him were scattered black books. One had
its binding partially torn away, and curling pages lay around.

   
Tissue-thin. Berry could hear
the pages whispering.

   
Next to Giles's head was a red
dragon's head, spitting faded, threadbare fire into the dead man's right ear.

   
"The study." Berry said,
going cold. "He died in the study."

   
"You have been in this
house?"
   
"Once," Berry said. "Just
once. What happened to the books?"

   
"He appears to have had
some kind of, er, final fit, should I say? Obviously grabbed at the shelves to
try and prevent himself falling. Dragged out the books. Quite a frenzy."

   
"So you ordered an
autopsy."

   
"Naturally. The state of
the room suggested a possible struggle. Oh, yes, we had the portable incident
room on standby, I can tell you. But by teatime it was clear we had overreacted.
These things happen."
   
"Brain tumour."

   
"It had been forming
for—well, who knows how long, weeks, months, years? His wife tells us he had
been suffering from very severe headaches. Mrs. McQueen confirms this. Perhaps,
you yourself . . ."

   
"No. He never mentioned
headaches."

   
"You see, with a condition
like this, his apparent blackout on the car-park ... Hit his head on a car
bumper, he said. All consistent. It is a great tragedy, but that's all it is.
Natural causes. No inquest. Unless there's something you feel you can
add?"

   
"No," Berry said.
"Nothing I have to add. Thanks, Inspector."

   
Gwyn Arthur Jones put the slim
photo-album back in its envelope. "I'm very sorry."

   
"One thing " Berry
said. "His wife, Claire."

   
"Quiet little girl."
said Gwyn Arthur.

   
"Where was she when they
found Giles?"

   
"My, you are a suspicious
chap." said Gwyn Arthur with a half-smile. "Mrs. Freeman was quite a
short distance away, at a friend's house, as it turns out. Mrs. Dafis. is it? I
don't know without looking up the statement. Obviously she feels very bad about
not being there when her husband arrived home and him dying like that, on his own.
I hear the funeral is today."

   
"You going?"

   
"Well, see, I don't mean
any disrespect, but not appropriate, is it, now?"
   
"Guess not."

   
"See, even if he'd gone to
Bronglais, as the doctor wanted, the chances are it would have been too late,
the size of that bloody thing. Any time he could have gone."
   
"Malignant? I was kind of shaky
on The big words."
   
Gwyn Arthur's pipe had gone out. He
laid it on the grey plastic desktop and looked at it.
   
"As the devil," he said.
"As the bloody devil."

Chapter XLI

They came in from the Lampeter end, George twice stopping to consult the
map, slowing at every signpost.

   
Terribly galling, because he
was normally such a fast driver, often recklessly so in his wife's opinion.

   
"Pretty obscure
place," George grunted. "Don't want to get it wrong."

   
"You don't want to get
there at all," Elinor said icily.
   
"Elinor, I still say . . ."

   
"And
why
do you think we weren't told?" Elinor demanded.
"Because I didn't tell her about
his
death. As simple as that."

   
"I can't believe," George
said, slowing the Volvo for another signpost, "that she would be quite so
petty."
   
"You mean, not so petty as
me?"

   
"That is
not
what I said. Elinor, for Christ's sake
will you stop this."

   
"We can't be far
off," Elinor said and affected a shudder "I can feel it
somehow."

   
George sighed and kept quiet.
He was a rumpled man with hair of nicotine and white. He'd never really taken
to his son-in-law, she thought. George avoided people in high-profile jobs. He
wasn't a high-profile person. He'd never minded his daughter being a
photographer, though, because the photographer was the one person guaranteed always
to be
behind
the camera

   
She was like him in a way,
Claire, George's daughter.
   
Wife of Elinor's dead son-in-law.

   
The shock, for Elinor, had been
quite stunning. And to chance upon it, without warning, in Giles's own
newspaper, spread on the ceramic worktop after breakfast, four brief paragraphs
of obituary, a quote from the editor: immense flair . . . terrible tragedy ...
so young . . . will be hard to replace.

   
Elinor had
liked
Giles. He'd been strong in his opinions, forthright. Whereas
George had always been so grey. She'd been sure that Giles would, after a few
weeks, realise the impossibility of living in Wales and lead Claire back.

   
Lead. That was it. He'd always
been a leader. That was what she'd liked about Giles, that staunchly English
quality of leadership.

   
"I don't know where we're
going to stay." George was saying. "You do realise there's a
by-election on."

   
"We'll find
somewhere," Elinor said, more briskly than she felt. "Just get us
there."

   
"It's four miles,"
George said. "That's what the signpost said. But you know what they say
about Welsh miles."

   
The aftershock had been the
discovery that Giles's funeral was not to be in London. Elinor had learned this
by telephoning his paper. She'd phoned the number in Y Groes about twenty
times, of course, and got an answering machine. Claire's voice ... in Welsh!
She'd refused to leave a message after the tone. "Claire, I'm sorry, I
refuse to leave a message." she'd said once, voice faltering, and hung up,
regretful and feeling rather stupid.

   
At the paper, the political editor
said he too was surprised that the funeral was being held in Wales, although
with both Giles's parents being dead be supposed there was no special reason
for it to be done in London. And with the by-election on, there'd at least be
enough reporters out there to make a respectable showing.

   
Elinor had been glad, at least,
to learn that Giles was not to be buried in the churchyard at Y Groes. Even the
ceremony would not be held there.

   
And yet she did wonder why.

   
And still she had not spoken to
Claire. Her daughter's reaction on their appearance at the funeral was
something she could not even attempt to predict. She accepted that they had not
parted on the best of terms, but for the girl to avoid her own mother at a time
when a mother was needed the most . . .

   
George had taken a hopelessly
circuitous route and they had turned into the road linking Aberystwyth and
Pontmeurig, entering the grim valley of the disused lead mine.

   
Feeling at once sorrowful,
offended and inadequate, Elinor experienced the pinprick of a small tear. Her
daughter was a widow. A widow and childless.

   
"I suppose she'll marry again."
George said suddenly, as if he'd picked up her thoughts. Which was something he
never did, being far too insensitive.

   
"What do you mean?"

   
"She's young. I suppose if
she stays out here, there'll be lots of chaps . . . that is, I mean . . ."

   
"Stays?" Elinor's
body went as rigid as the stark towers of the lead mine. "
Stays
here? Are you
quite
mad?"

Guto was in deep shit.

   
Berry had seen it coming, a
whole dump-truck load. Guto underneath, apparently oblivious of the danger.

   
The man steering the dump
truck, one sure finger on the wheel, was F. C. W. "Bill" Sykes.
Political Editor of the
Daily Telegraph
,
one of fourteen reporters and two TV crews, ranged in a three-quarter circle
around the candidate.
   
Television lights were belching hot
glare into the makeshift gladiatorial arena in the shabby lounge of the
Drovers' Arms.

   
They were mob-handed now, no
longer the inoffensive affable guys in the public bar last night. Notebooks and
pocket cassette machines next to the cups at their elbows.
   
No alcohol, just hard caffeine. They
meant business.

   
Berry Morelli had covered one
British by-election before and knew they were basically all the same: every
morning, for about a fortnight, each of the political parties would hold
a Press conference with the candidate and some heavy back-up from Westminster—a
minister or a shadow-minister or, on perhaps one occasion, the party leader. In
Plaid Cymru's case, Berry guessed, the leader would show up pretty often, on account
of the party had only three MPs to pull out.

   
They must be saving the big
guns for later. Guto was doing his first conference solo, accompanied by only
one minder—Plaid's General Secretary, a diffident guy in tinted
glasses. This afternoon they'd be out on the streets, canvassing, pressing the
flesh, as they put it. And then, each night there'd be public meetings to
address.
   
Hard grind.

   
And this morning, the baptism
of fire.

   
It started with a question
about an act of vandalism perpetrated by the Welsh Language Society against a leading
high-street building society which had been unwise
enough to refuse a mortgage application in Welsh.

   
"Ah, well," Guto
explained, "they are youngsters with a mission and sometimes they get
carried away."

   
"Usually by the
police." Ray Wheeler said from the table nearest Guto's. There was
laughter.

   
"All right then, old boy,"
rumbled Bill Sykes. "While we're on the subject of brushes with the law .
. ."

   
He was unfolding a cutting from
Wales's national news- paper, the
Western
Mail
.

   
"Let's get this one out of
the way, eh?" Sykes said kindly. "Clear the air. This business of you
being questioned by the constabulary about minor injuries inflicted on some
poor
chap from London who'd had the temerity to buy himself a farmhouse near here.
Small incident in a pub, I believe."

   
"This pub, Bill,"
Charlie Firth said. "May even have been this very room. This is where they
hold the auctions, isn't it?"

   
"Was it really?" said
Sykes. as if he didn't know.
   
"Anyway, let's polish it off now,
shall we? Then we can all have a nice peaceful campaign. What exactly happened.
Mr. Evans?"