Candlenight (46 page)

   
Bethan came out of the bathroom,
a big towel around her. She looked wonderful, black hair all tangled, skin
aglow in the warm light of the Tudor lamp.

   
"Feel better?" He
tossed the book on the bed, rose and filled the electric kettle sitting there
with tea and coffee and biscuits and soft drinks. One worthwhile extra that
inns had picked up from the motel trade.

   
Bethan sat down on the edge of
the bed, towelling her hair.

   
"What happened to him?
Glyndwr."

   
"He retired,
defeated," Bethan said through the towel.

   
"Checked in at a
retirement home for aged rebels, huh?"

   
"By the early 1400s, he
was losing ground." Bethan said patiently. "It all fell apart and
Owain just disappeared. He had a daughter near Hereford and one story suggests
he went to live with her."

   
"In England?"

   
"I am afraid so. But at
least he could still see the Welsh hills."
   
"Sad."

   
"All Welsh history is
sad."

   
"Jesus, how would the
Welsh survive without self-pity?'
   
"Unfair," Bethan said.
"But tonight, I am prepared to excuse you."

   
"Bethan ..." He hesitated.
"Is this the first time since . . . ?"
   
"Robin. Yes."

   
"How do you feel about
that?"

   
She put the towel down. Faced
him across the bed. Her eyes were brown and luminous in the lamplight.
"Glad," she said. "I have tried to feel bad but I don't. I wish
we could stay here for a very long time."

   
Pouring boiling water on four teabags—it
wasn't a very big pot—he thought. I don't have a job to go to, neither does
she.

   
"We can stay here a while,"
he said. "Buy a change of clothes." He ran a hand across his chin.
"Razor. Toothpaste."

   
"No," she said.
"We can't. You know we can't"
   
"Maybe we're both chasing
shadows."

   
Bethan said, "You wanted to
know about the bird of death."

   
"Right now I can do
without the bird of death."

   
She said in a rush, "The
bird of death is supposed to come at night and tap on your window. It's an
omen, like the
cannwyll gorff
and the
toili
, the phantom funeral. Sometimes
it flutters its wings. At night, this—unnatural. Sometimes . . ."Bethan
clutched the towel around her breasts. "Sometimes it has no wings at
all."

   
"Why couldn't Claire's mom
have simply been disturbed by an owl?"

   
"Oh, Berry." Bethan
said in exasperation. "I am not saying she actually
saw
anything. It's what she
believes
she saw or heard or whatever. Yes. You're right, it's all nonsense. These
things don't even exist—except, somehow, in the minds of people living in Y
Groes "

   
"I didn't say that. I
never said it was nonsense."

   
"Meaning?"

   
"Meaning I'm prepared to
believe there's something essentially weird about the place." He poured
tea, passed her a cup. Gave the pot a stir and then poured a murkier
brew for himself. "We're talking about this now?"

   
"Yes."

   
"OK, let's lay it all on
the table and push it around. Robin died suddenly. Giles too. Suddenly, but
natural causes. Who else?"

   
"Dilwyn Dafis, who runs
the local garage. He had an English wife, a young secretary. He met her on
holiday. Within a year or so of coming to Y Groes. she was dead. Breast cancer,
I think, and it spread very rapidly."

   
"That's three."

   
"A couple of years ago,
the Church in Wales sent a young Englishman as curate to ap Siencyn. I don't
know much about this, but he had some sort of fall in the church. Broke
his neck."

   
"Four. Three natural
causes, one accident."
   
"And a suicide." She told him
about a child leading her to a body hanging from a tree by the riverbank. '
   
"
You
found him?"

   
She nodded, lowered her heavy
eyelids. With one small breast exposed, she looked like a creation of one of
those Italian painters Berry didn't know enough about. Botticelli, maybe. No,
too slim for Botticelli, hair too dark. Aura too sad.

   
"You had a bad time,"
he said. Understatement.
   
"And then there was another one,
about the same time as the suicide."

   
She reached down for the red
notebook. "This is his, I'm sure. He was a historian of some sort. He came
to the school once. He was writing a book about relations between Wales and
England in the late medieval period, had some theory involving Y Groes. He
wouldn't tell
me
about it, a little Welsh
schoolteacher. He was a very pompous man. Nobody really liked him and yet they
humoured him, let him stay at the
Tafarn."

   
"Could they stop
him?"

   
"The
Tafarn
does not provide overnight accommodation. They have a dining
room for local functions, but no bed and breakfast."

   
"What about Claire's mom
and dad? They stayed there."
   
"Only, presumably, because Claire
requested it. And yet Aled gave this man—that's Aled the landlord there—he gave
this man Ingley a room. An unpleasant, prying English academic. That is
curious, don't you think?"
   
"And he died, this guy?"

   
"A heart attack, they
said. Found dead in bed."
   
"Police called in?"

   
"No need." Bethan
riffled the pages of the red notebook. "The local GP, Dr. Wyn, examined
him, said he knew of his heart condition and signed a death certificate."

   
"Why'd this guy conceal
his notebook under the floorboards?"

   
Bethan shook her head.

   
"How do you know it was
his?"

   
She opened the notebook.
"Little maps of the village, rough plans of the church. Very detailed
notes on a late-medieval tomb. Pages of references to different textbooks.
Addresses. And look at it." She passed him the book. "It's quite new.
The pages are a little dusty but not in the least yellow. It obviously had not
been under the floor very long."

   
Berry sighed. "Problem
about all this—you got half a dozen deaths. OK, all premature. But all of them
explained
. No mystery here. Nothing you
could tell the cops."

   
He dropped the red notebook on
the top of the Glyndwr paperback. "Paranoia, Bethan. That's what they'd
say. And what about Claire? She's English; nothing happened to her."

   
"You heard what her mother
said. She was taken to see her grandfather as a small child. He disappeared
with her. We don't know what happened then. All I know is that while Giles was
desperately struggling with basic Welsh. Claire was mastering the grammar and
pronunciation at a speed I could not believe. And there are other things.
You've
seen the changes, her mother's
seen it. It's uncanny. Eerie."

   
'"True," he conceded.
Reached across the bed, pulled her into his arms. "But what the hell can
we do about it?"

   
"I'm only relieved."
she said, wet hair against his chest, "that her parents managed to get
away before . . ."

Chapter LII

Did George
know
she was on
Valium?

   
She thought he must. How could
anyone be expected to cope with reality as dismal as this without a little
something to place a distance between one and it?

   
George did not, of course, need
anything himself. Some sedative side of his mind seemed to be turned on
automatically whenever life threatened to cross the pain threshold.

   
He certainly enjoyed his dinner
again.

   
The little licensee had gone to
great pains to make sure they were comfortable, lighting a log fire in the
dining room where They ate alone. Serving lamb which George said was more tender
and succulent than any he'd had before, even in the most expensive restaurants.

   
She had no opinion on this, did
not remember tasting it.

   
The wine, though, she drank
some of that, quite a lot in fact.

   
"Steady on, Elinor."
George had said, predictably, at one point.

   
At which she'd poured more.

   
"Another bottle, Mr.
Hardy? The little landlord, dapper at George's elbow.

   
"Oh, I don't think—"

   
"Yes please," she'd
said to the landlord. Thinking of the combined sedative punch of valium and alcohol
and deciding she needed to be entirely out of her head if she was to sleep the
night through.

   
"When's Claire
coming?" Pushing her plate away.

   
"She isn't." George lighting
a cigarette, blue smoke everywhere. "She's picking me up first thing, then
we can get the car back. Won't take them more than half an hour once they've
got the parts. So I told Claire not to bother coming over, we'd be having an
early night."

   
"An early night?"
Elinor croaking a mirthless laugh as a log collapsed in the fireplace.
"Bit late for that now."
   
"Have some coffee."

   
"Don't want coffee, thank
you. The Welsh can't make proper coffee. Nescafe and Maxwell House are all one
ever gets in Wales."

   
"Actually, what I didn't
want—" George leaning across the table, voice lowered, "—was another
night in that awful bar, all this bonhomie."

   
"Oh, I hate it too,
George. I shall drink here."

   
"Please, Elinor . . .
We'll be away tomorrow."

   
"You bet your miserable life
we will. If we have to flag down a long-distance lorry driver and show him my drooping
tits."

   
"Elinor!" Through his
teeth. ". . . God's sake."

   
"Perhaps I'd've been
better off with a lorry driver, what do think George? Common people have
fun."

   
"Are you coming?" Getting
to his feet, taking his cigarette with him.

   
"Did you ever imagine. George,
that the day would come when you'd want to get me to bed only to save embarrassment?"

   
"Yes," George said
brutally.

She awoke thinking the night was over.

   
A reasonable mistake to make.
There was a brightness beyond the curtains, before which all the furniture in
the bedroom was blackly silhouetted.

   
But her watch showed 3:55 a.m.

   
Elinor, in a white nightdress,
slid her feet into her wooden Scholl's, made her way unsteadily to the door,
turning the handle slowly because, for once, her husband was sleeping quietly,
no snoring.

   
At least the radiators in this
place worked efficiently. It must be a freezing night outside, but the
atmosphere in the bedroom was close, almost stuffy. Same on the landing
outside.

   
She locked herself in the
bathroom, two doors away, used the lavatory. She was disappointed but not
surprised that the combination of drink and Valium had failed to take her all the
way to the daylight- Washing her hands afterwards, she could not bear to look
into the mirror over the basin, knowing how raddled she must look, still in
last night's
make-up for the first time in thirty-odd years.

   
She had no headache, but was
certainly on the way down from wherever she'd been, despising herself utterly.

   
Why had they come? What had she
been trying to prove?

   
Come to pay their last respects
lo their good and upright son-in-law. And to be at their daughter's side in her
hour of need.

   
A joke. Claire had not needed
them for years and would never need them now.

She bent her head over the sink, turned on the taps again. Feebly
splashed water on her face, left great lipstick smears on the towel wiping it
off.