The Smile of a Ghost (32 page)

‘So how did they meet?’

‘On the ghost-walk. Some nights, when it’s a bit quiet, she’ll just show up. Tag along. Tourists leave her alone; she’s a bit forbidding in that cloak. Anyway, one night – this’d be around last Christmas, when I was just getting the shop together – Robbie was there, and I were a bit knackered so I let him do most of it. He knew all the stories, better than me. And he just… little bugger brought it alive, standing there under a lantern on a stick. Especially the medieval stuff. He’d tell you what they were wearing, what the streets were like… the smells, even. Not in an academic way – he were still a young lad, no big words. But it was like the rest of us were in the here and now, and he was walking the same street, but he was in the twelfth century. You had to see it.’

‘He sounds remarkable. I hadn’t quite realized…’

‘I don’t wanna build him up too much, Mary, he were just a lad.’

‘And Bell…?’

‘Riveted, obviously. A young lad who seemed to be seeing things she couldn’t?’

‘What did you think about that?’

‘Me? I just thought he’d read a lot of books.’

‘And they became friends – Robbie and Bell?’

‘She made sure of that.’

‘Guy I spoke to said they seemed like… mother and son.’

‘They were mates.’ Jon looked irritated. ‘Let’s not get silly about it.’

‘Did you talk to him about her?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘And how did he relate to her… special interests?’

‘You mean was he exposed to Bell’s obsession with all things death? I don’t know. This copper asked me that. Detective. You know what they’re like, trying to make you say things.’

Mumford.

‘I mean, what is this, Mary? Is this some scheme of Lackland’s to get her out of his hair for good? Stitch her up for assisting Robbie to do himself in? Turn the whole town against her?’

Merrily stared at him. ‘What makes you think he did himself in?’

‘I dunno.’ Jon jammed his hands in the lowest pockets of his leather jacket, rattling chains. ‘It just never made a lot of sense to me that he’d just fall off. Kid knew his way around every passage in that castle with his eyes shut. And then that girl – not much doubt about that, is there? She came here to die.’

‘Did you ever have any reason to think Robbie was depressed about anything?’

‘No, he were full of life when he… I never thought, you know? He said things maybe I should’ve put together. Like, you’d ask him about his parents, and his face would cloud over. I was thinking maybe divorce, so I stopped asking. Didn’t wanna upset him. We just don’t know, do we, how to react for the best? What do you think?’

‘I think there are some questions that nobody’s been asking. And I think everybody’s been walking round Belladonna as if she’s the Queen.’

‘Mary, next to Bell, the Queen’s anybody’s.’ He looked at her, standing a bit too close. ‘She could be interested in you. I mean, you know your stuff, don’t you? It’s just… the priest thing. And an exorcist, even worse. Like Rentokil for ghosts.’

‘We’re not—’

‘I know you’re not. I’m telling you how she’d see you.’

‘Doesn’t mind being in the church, though.’

‘That’s because it’s where it is. It’s obvious the church is one of the places. Right at the top of the town, at the centre, where all the lanes and alleyways come out. View from the top of the tower – amazing. You should see that, makes the Hanging Tower look like jumping off a stepladder. You been there yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Blimey, you gotta see that. We could go there now. Ten minutes. You got time?’

Merrily looked at her watch. It was coming up to one p.m. She needed a break to think about all this, and she wanted to speak to Mumford. But more than any of this, she felt the need to break the spell.

‘All right, what are you doing around, say, four o’clock?’ Jon said. ‘Suppose I meet you at the entrance to the car park, near the castle?’

She nodded. She’d have to see it sometime. At least this guy would know the exact spot. Four p.m. would give her time to talk to Mumford and try to see the interior decorator who, according to George Lackland, had had some peculiar requests made of him by Mrs Pepper.

‘OK.’

‘Ace. Meanwhile – Bell. Let me think about this. I mean, I reckon she’d take to you as a person.’ Jon Scole grinned. ‘They say she goes both ways.’

‘Not with me she doesn’t, Jonathan.’

‘Just kidding, Mary.’

26

T
HERE WAS THIS
feeling of unease now, whenever Merrily thought about Andy Mumford. Wouldn’t have been too surprised to spot him back on the prowl here in Ludlow. She felt he was teetering like Jemima Pegler had, and perhaps Robbie Walsh, over a long drop.

But when she rang from the Volvo he was at home.

‘How’re you?’ His voice was still higher than usual; he would hate that – every time he spoke, a reminder of the kid with the chain.

‘I’m fine.’ She was in the car park at the top of town, close to the castle. The day had dulled, thin grey clouds windshielding the sun like smoked glass. She crumpled up the cellophane wrapping of her lunch, one free-range egg-and-cress sandwich. ‘You seen a doctor, Andy?’

‘No need. It’s better than it was.’

‘Doesn’t sound it.’

‘That’s because it hurts more.’ Mumford wheezed out a laugh. ‘Where you calling from?’

‘I’m back in Ludlow.’

‘That a fact.’

‘I’ve got a few days off.’ She could hardly tell him about the Bishop or George Lackland. ‘Vicar with a black eye doesn’t look good in the pulpit. And I thought that, with you being persona non grata here, maybe I could… check a few things out?’

‘Good of you.’

‘So I went to talk to Jonathan Scole.’

‘Boy tried to bullshit me.’

‘I think it’s his way. He does seem to have been fond of Robbie, however. Poor kid had a virtual season ticket on the ghost-walk in return for lecturing the punters on local history.’

‘What about the woman?’

‘She seems to have milked Robbie, too. If I ever get to see her, I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said. Paused. ‘Oh… I had a bit of information, too. From headquarters.’

‘You finally spoke to Bliss?’

‘No, no. Another person this was, in the Division. Distant relation. Second cousin to a second cousin, kind of thing. Gives me a call now and then, we chats about this and that.’

Family. In this part of the world, no matter how thinly a blood link was stretched, it was there to be rediscovered when necessary.

‘Seems Jason Mebus finally turned seventeen,’ Mumford said.

‘And you missed his party.’

‘They had his party below stairs at Hereford, attended by former colleagues of mine. Jason got into a confrontation at the Orchard Gardens last night – pub by the Plascarreg? Two boys finished up seriously hammered in the car park.’

‘By Jason?’

‘By four of them, but the others were juveniles. Jason’s charged with ABH. His first as an adult.’

‘He’s off the streets, then?’

‘That en’t gonner happen till he kills somebody. He was bailed. If the presiding magistrate’s in a real bad mood, he’ll get community service, the others’ll have a stern ticking-off. One of the others, by the way, was Chain-boy – Connor Boyd, his name.’

‘How do you know it’s him?’

‘Moron still had the chain.’

‘Ah.’ She watched a young couple loading babies and groceries into a people-carrier parked against the wall under the castle, where some siege engine might once have stood. ‘Andy, does this… relative know what they did to you?’

‘Said I had a throat infection. Another one of them’s Connor’s half-brother, Shane Nicklin, twelve. I reckon he was likely the little angel who came in to see us on his own. Regular at juvenile court. Shot a toddler in the eye with an airgun when he was seven.’

‘A good family, then.’

‘An example to us all,’ Mumford said.

‘I’m rather embarrassed about this,’ Callum Corey said. ‘You shouldn’t be putting me in this position.’

He looked about twenty-three and wore a white silk shirt. He stretched his legs out, swivelling sulkily from side to side in his leather chair. On the wall behind his desk were framed photo blow-ups of the restoration jobs Coreys had handled, and it was impressive: baronial interiors, open log fires.

‘It’s all word-of-mouth in our profession, Mrs Watkins,’ Mr Corey said. ‘Any gossip of this sort gets out, it can do us immense harm. My father thought he was doing old Lackland a favour – didn’t think he was going to blab it all over town.’

‘I don’t actually think,’ Merrily said, ‘that confiding it to a priest amounts to blabbing it all over town. Besides, he didn’t actually tell me what happened, he just suggested that I might have a word with you.’

‘You don’t look like a priest to me.’

‘What’s a priest look like?’

Mr Corey was the new type of ex-public-school painter and decorator, working out of this tasteful Georgian town house in Broad Street, which sloped to the old town gate and then to the river at the Horseshoe Weir where Mrs Mumford had drowned. The office was the size of a small ballroom, with blue-washed walls and four long Georgian windows. Trestle tables displayed leather-bound catalogues and samples of moulding and dressed stone.

‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘I can see I’m putting you in a difficult position. I’ll go. Thank you for seeing me, Mr Corey.’

‘No, look—’ He came half out of his chair. ‘Wait… sit down. I just wondered… how the Church came into it. We… we’ve done some work for the Church.’

‘One word from me and all that would be over for good.’

He looked startled for a moment. Merrily smiled.

‘Joke, Mr Corey. OK, how do we come into it? Well… there’ve been incidents in St Laurence’s. We don’t like to involve the police if we can deal with these things ourselves. And I’d be grateful if this wasn’t blabbed all over town either.’

A glass-fronted cast-iron wood-burning stove was burning low, more for effect than heat at this time of year. Callum Corey pulled his chair away from it.

‘It wasn’t our job, originally. The Weir House was a project by the Raphaels – hit-and-run restorers. Move into a place, do it up, sell it, move on. Except in this case they virtually had to build from the foundations up. One of the old Palmers’ Guild houses. Look, please sit down. Would you like something to drink?’

‘Just had lunch, thanks.’ She sat down across the desk from him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the Palmers’ Guild.’

‘Name’s now been appropriated by Mrs Pepper for a conservation trust she’s setting up. I’m afraid I’ll believe that when I see it. Originally, they were well-off pilgrims to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Brought a palm leaf back to prove it, something like that. That was how it started. Then they became a sort of cooperative movement that employed priests exclusively to pray for the immortal souls of their members. They became immensely wealthy and lasted for several centuries.’

‘Just in Ludlow?’

‘Began in Ludlow, spread over a wide area. Put huge amounts into the fabric of the church and financed the building of about fifty houses in the town. Including the ruin that the Raphaels renamed The Weir House.’

‘Mrs Pepper bought it off these Raphaels?’

‘Very quickly, apparently. There were still bits and pieces left to complete – but that’s always the case with these quick-bodge merchants. It’s all about appearances.’

‘So Mrs Pepper hired you to finish it off.’

‘Perfect it,’ Callum said. ‘There’s an impressive central room with an immense stone fireplace. One wall had been improperly finished and was miasmic.’

‘You mean it was damp?’

‘They’d used a gypsum mix on top of the stones but it hadn’t worked. What it needed was something more sympathetic.’

‘Like lime?’

‘Exactly.’ He looked surprised that she’d know.

‘I live in a four-hundred-year-old vicarage.’

‘Ah. We’re asked to renovate churches, but rarely touch vicarages and rectories still owned by the Church. They don’t seem prepared to spend too much money on dwelling houses.’

‘Unlike Mrs Pepper.’

‘Mrs Pepper didn’t quibble at all about the price. However, she had in mind certain… refinements of her own. Originally, horsehair was often mixed with the slaked lime. Did you know that?’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Mrs Pepper had something similar in mind. But she wanted to use… her own hair.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m not sure you do, actually.’ Callum looked down at his unused blotter. ‘We do get a few odd requests of this nature sometimes – the craze for feng shui, fuelled by those dreadful TV make-over programmes. Some of the proposals contravene listed-building regulations, but we do what we can to satisfy the customer.’

‘So you went along with it.’