All of a Winter's Night

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Telly was awful?’ Bliss said.

  ‘No, the… the nearest and dearest. Had to take them into the cottage. We’d had the worst of it cleaned up after the videos were done and crime scene were satisfied, but obviously we needed the daughter to tell us what might have been taken, so…’

  ‘No FLOs to support them?’

  Annie shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t think. Family liaison, for me it’s always been where kids are involved. There is now, anyway. They’re staying at the Three Counties, and I’ve asked Sandy Gee to see them. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Essentially, they thought her mother would just sell the place after her husband died.’

  ‘Did a deal with the diocese, apparently,’ Bliss said. ‘Maybe they only hired her so they could flog the existing vicarage and stick the next priest in a flat over a shop.’

  ‘The daughter blames the Church.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘More or less everything. She says having a father who was a vicar was always slightly odd but, when her mother decided that being a vicar’s wife was not enough, the marriage was put under a lot of strain that just got worse. Women priests – why the hell so many women want to embrace superstition has always been beyond me. But… they seem to feel they have to prove they can deal with situations that men tend to avoid. Personal issues, family problems.’

  Bliss nodding. Fellers with any sense would naturally avoid that stuff.

  Annie told him how the Duxburys had ended up with neighbouring parishes in the Gloucester area, and Julie would keep bringing work home. People at the door and ringing up at all hours. Husband couldn’t handle it. He was quite a bit older. Died after a heart attack coming down from the pulpit.

  ‘Lot of self-recrimination on Julie’s part. Her bishop suggested a new parish might be in order. The daughter says she was horrified when her mother announced she was moving to the parish and their cottage was going to be her rectory. She’d keep laughing it off, saying her neighbours, the SAS, would protect her.’

  ‘You talked to them yourself, the Sass?’

  ‘Quite helpful in the end. A few of their guys knew her – attended her services, even.’

  ‘Religion of all kinds being rife in the special forces,’ Bliss said. ‘As we know.’

  ‘I was told they would indeed have kept an eye on Mrs Duxbury, had they known.’

  ‘Yeh, but known what, Annie? What was there to know?’

  ‘Too much, really. By all accounts, she was back into her old ways, looking for people to help. Somebody with mental problems arrives at her door? We’re checking social services. It’s a big area – she has about half a dozen churches. Got to be a few screwballs.’

  Through the window behind Annie, the early night sky was like coal-dust over the red-brick buildings.

  ‘The place was ransacked,’ she said, ‘but surprisingly little seems to have been taken, according to Jennifer Welch – that’s the daughter. Money probably taken from her purse, but the jewellery box was undisturbed, and it did contain some quite valuable pieces. Could’ve been they fled when they realized she was dead, but given the ferocity of the attack, how could they not have realized that was a strong possibility?’

  ‘Could be they surprised her and she slipped, keeled over and bashed her head against the sundial. If they were blokes – or even women – who she happened to know or might recognize, then maybe they panicked and… Don’t look like that, Annie, it happens. People commit terrible crimes to avoid gerrin nicked for comparatively minor offences. Or were they in there looking for something?’

  ‘Hard to imagine what. We got Mrs Welch to check out everything we – or she – could think of.’

  Her face said they weren’t going to have this cleared up by the morning, and the media would be all over it: picturesque location, little river bubbling under the bridge. Annie said she was awaiting a call from the ACC, which might result in a cavalry charge from Worcestershire. Two simultaneous murder inquiries in Hereford, a bit much, that.

  ‘Tell the ACC she can send anybody but Twatface Brent,’ Bliss said. ‘Is it possible somebody actually wanted the vicar dead?’

  ‘Rector. A calculated killing would be the worst case scenario. Not something we could even explore until we’d pulled someone for it. It might look to the press as if we’re in some Agatha Christie story where we’re looking for the one parishioner who really had it in for the priest, but that… doesn’t happen, does it?’

  ‘One day it just might. And no library in which to assemble the suspects ’cos the friggin’ council’s shut them all down.’ Bliss leaned forward. ‘Listen, Hewell… Lech Jaglowski…’

  ‘Oh God, yes. What’ve you got?’

  Bliss beamed, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘I’m made up, to be honest, Annie. Nice lad, Lech. And what a source. Yeh, all right, I’m not sure how much of it I believe, but it’s enough to bring someone in. Tonight.’

  50

  Tarot

  THE SKY WAS a deep and luminous grey, not fully dark. There was nobody else about. A silent farmhouse, an open barn, no indication of the rambling modern village within easy walking distance, and you couldn’t hear the sounds or see the lights of the pub Jane knew was fairly close. The church was in a different place, raised up on its island mound, separate.

  Lol parked the truck close to the mound. They took a flashlight up the short, inclining footpath, past the gnarly yew tree.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Jane said.

  Beyond the church, she could see vehicle lights on the now invisible lane winding up from the wooded hills: Darvill and his lifekeeper in the adapted van. He’d wanted Jane and Lol to go with them, but Lol had politely refused, and Jane was glad about that. They needed some time to talk, though they hadn’t had time to say much. At Lol’s suggestion, she’d called Mum from the truck. No answer. She’d left a short message explaining where they were, how they’d come to be here, then switched off the phone. This was no time for a long-distance argument.

  ‘We can leave anytime,’ Lol said. ‘And maybe we ought to.’

  ‘He does like to feel in control, doesn’t he? Probably a disabled thing. Or just a titled country gent thing.’ Jane stamped her feet to get some feeling into them. ‘I just need to know what he wants.’

  They were outside the great oak door, the colour of old, tanned hide. She let the flashlight follow the curve of the arch where images were arranged like forgotten signs of the zodiac. Below all this, aligned with the top of the door, the pop-eyed Green Man, the Man of Leaves, glared out, fat strands curling from his gaping mouth like the loops of a belt.

  ‘The doorman,’ Jane said. ‘The guardian. Observes everyone coming in, everyone going out.’

  High in the arch she saw what she thought at first was a second green man, but what curled from this one’s mouth were a couple of snakes facing one another over his head, open-mouthed like they were going for a French kiss. The strangeness continued in a stone chain along the top of the wall, under the eaves.

  ‘Just don’t tell me all this means nothing, Lol. Don’t tell me it’s just decoration. And don’t tell me it’s Christian. It’s like… half secular and half sacrilegious. And why here? A tiny little church in the middle of nowhere, with a cathedral doorway.’

  The images drew you in. Mesmerized, she led Lol around the outside of the building. It didn’t take long, but it could take years or a lifetime or more to understand the corbels, these little blocks of stone, each one enclosing an image. Some were scary – devilish faces, deformed faces – some friendly like the cartoon dog and rabbit. Some possibly erotic, even homoerotic, although the guidebook called them wrestlers.

  She was drawn to one that looked like someone about to cut a mournful creature’s throat with a carving knife, but it wasn’t. She looked at Lol. The mournful creature was actually some medieval instrument that looked not unlike the Boswell guitar, and the knife was a bow. The musician’s face was round and had only two prominent fe
atures: its circular eyes with drilled out black pupils. Jane thought about the sweatshirt Lol was wearing under his fleece, with the Roswell humanoid. Alien. If he got the connection, he wasn’t saying anything.

  ‘It’s like some kind of stone tarot,’ Jane said.

  Too loud. She took a step back, half afraid of finding her whole life, past, present and future, in stone images on a medieval church wall.

  ‘Perceptive of you, Jane. More enigmatic than the Sphinx, this church.’

  Darvill had come sailing out of the darkness like some will-o’-the-wisp, one of those head torches on a band below this Russian-looking furry hat.

  ‘What about her?’

  Jane shone her torch up to find the famous Sheela-na-gig all goggle-eyed and shameless, wearing a vacant smile which, in a different light, might look cunning but right now suggested a disturbed innocence. As if she’d been set up for this. Doomed to display for all eternity that enormous fanny.

  She’d read somewhere that maidens in the Caucasus would embroider Sheelas to promote easy childbirth. She thought any woman with one that size could drop triplets without even noticing.

  ‘I’m still not sure what to make of her.’

  ‘You make of her what you will,’ Darvill said quietly. ‘And she’ll make of you whatever she wants. She scares you?’

  Talking to Lol, now, who took a while before replying, as the torch beam moved to the next corbel, a comical cat.

  ‘Not quite the word I’d use. Is it just me, or is there an element of irony here? You can’t help wondering why she’s, um, next to a pussy.’

  There was a sharp, metallic creak from the wheelchair, as if something had snapped, and then Darvill’s voice was slicing the night air.

  ‘Take that back, Robinson.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Take it fucking back.’

  Jane stepped away, nearly dropping the flashlight, catching a parting glimpse of the Sheela still wrenching herself open but now looking confused. Lol and a gravestone were bathed in white by Darvill’s head torch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lol said. ‘Stupid remark.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Darvill said. We can go on now.’

  * * *

  They moved around the church, anticlockwise. Was this good? Jane wondered, remembering churches and monuments where you were supposed to be able to summon the devil this way. It didn’t seem to bother Darvill, who was talking about the church like he was trying to sell it, pointing out its uniquenesses: not oriented exactly east–west, as were most Christian churches, to face Christ on the cross, but to follow the path of an underground stream. Eternal flowing water underneath. One reason it was so alive, Darvill said. So current.

  Round the back, it was bitter, open to the fields, farmhouse lights here and there. Maryfields was down there somewhere, sunk into the woods.

  ‘You’ll notice the anachronisms,’ Darvill said. ‘Like the dog and the rabbit, or the hare and hound as some people prefer. The Disney corbel as it’s known. Look at the dog’s face sometime. You see dogs in medieval tapestries, they’re all greyhound-types, pointed noses. This is a pet dog. A modern pet dog.’

  In medieval times,’ Jane said, ‘you’d think the dog would be tearing the hare to bits.’

  ‘Especially here. It was hunting ground. King John came at least twice, to hunt.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  Jane followed Darvill’s chair around the curving apse, shining the flashlight along the path in front of them, Lol following closely behind her, as if he thought she might disappear, absorbed into the masonry until all that was left of her was a Jane corbel.

  There were places where the church had been repaired with bricks, and the corbels were more widely spaced, as if some were missing. She was thinking of the Victorian lady who’d been shocked by some of the images but missed the obvious. When Darvill stopped, she swung the light away to where the mounded churchyard faded into bumpy fields.

  ‘Is that where the original village was?’

  ‘And across the lane,’ Darvill said. ‘Under the barn.’

  Jane shone the torch back up at the chain of corbels, heard Lol gasp and then stifle it. She spun.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Just tripped.’

  He hadn’t, though, had he? He’d seen the end corbel near the more modern guttering, which showed a man’s stone face. What was left of it. Just the mouth; the rest had been sliced off, as if he’d been in a road accident. Or something.

  She switched off the torch. Didn’t want to see that again, either.

  A stone drain made the path too narrow for the chair, and Darvill had to steer a bumpy course across the grass between graves, and then they were back at the bell tower end with its high window, Darvill ordering Jane to shine her torch up at it.

  ‘See them?’

  ‘I think so. Just about.’

  Two more green men in the high window’s stonework.

  ‘The Man of Leaves isn’t the most talked about image here, but he’s the dominant one.’

  ‘See you in and he sees you out.’

  ‘That’s the one on the door. These two see you coming from afar. What is he, Jane?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘I’ve read loads of books on him. He wasn’t even known as the Green Man until 1939, I think it was. Lady Raglan – not that far from here when you think about it. She got fascinated by the foliate face. The first to call him the Green Man. Is that right?’

  ‘She saw him as a pagan woodland god, like Pan.’

  ‘Was she wrong?’

  ‘Might’ve been.’

  Darvill sat looking up, the beam of his head-torch linking him to the wall. Was it here that he’d fallen from the scaffolding? A longer fall because of the bell tower. Every time he came here he’d feel the impact and the agony. She thought, If I’d fallen off this church I’d hate it for ever, even if it was my fault.

  Nora had appeared at Darvill’s shoulder, the collar of her sheepskin coat pulled half over her face. Darvill’s Russian hat had slipped back as he looked up at the window and she straightened it carefully. Jane feeling in that moment how Nora must feel about Lionel Darvill, and perhaps an inkling of his feelings towards her. No sensation below the waist but what might be happening in his head?

  ‘Does that mean you think you know what he is?’ Jane said. ‘The Man of Leaves?’

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘Like… how?’

  ‘Through his incarnation.’

  She hardly liked to say it.

  ‘Aidan?’

  No reply.

  ‘You going to tell us what he is?’

  ‘No.’

  Darvill reversed the chair and steered it back to the track and round to the great south door and its doorman. Jane thought, He comes knocking on the door. And the minister, the rector, is waiting with a candle to welcome him in.

  ‘Poor Julie,’ she said. ‘Or maybe she didn’t really want to.’

  He looked up at her. He must be feeling really resentful. Couldn’t order people to sit down out here.

  ‘Stand here with a candle,’ Jane said. ‘Waiting for a man in a mask.’

  ‘I’m gonna tell them this,’ Nora said. ‘Julie was a down-the-line, no shit Christian. When we asked her to conduct the solstice service, welcome the dancers into church, she’s like, no way, because… well, even I can see there’s a lot of pre-Christian stuff here. Guy in a green mask, the others with black faces. Julie was never gonna be too comfortable with black faces painted on.’

  Jane said, ‘But she—’

  ‘Yeah, I know. She’d already decided it was her task, as spiritual mother of this place, to heal the feud between the Darvills and the Lloyds. So Julie goes over to see Iestyn, who, like, doesn’t see people. Only other farmers, and not many of them. But she’s a determined lady. She was gonna sit outside his door, or park outside his gate or
whatever, till he came out.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Day she died? Or the day before, depending what hour she was killed.’

  ‘Did Iestyn meet her?’

  ‘We don’t know. All she said – this was on the phone to Li – was she was expecting a reply to what she was suggesting. Now whether she got it…’

  ‘You know what she was suggesting?’

  ‘She was gonna make the solstice festival a memorial service for Aidan Lloyd. Attended by both Li and Iestyn. Get them into the church together. Let God take care of the rest.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘His spiritual home. Iestyn gets to keep his physical remains, in Ledwardine, while Kilpeck… I don’t wanna talk about his soul, but you get the idea. Biggest night in the Border morris calendar, the Man of Leaves brings his predecessor home. With a promise of peace? But now… it’s like someone… something… doesn’t want this. No priest. And no Man of Leaves.’

  ‘It’s not like you don’t have a full morris side,’ Lol said. ‘Surely one of them would do it.’

  ‘None of them are exactly eager,’ Darvill murmured. ‘Jinxed now, Robinson. Aidan was the Man, he was killed. Brewer took it on and he was… well, you know about that. And only eight men now. I had a friend, in London, who’d’ve made up the nine. He’s made an excuse. And then Julie Duxbury, who was to have welcomed the Man into church…’

  ‘Murdered.’

  ‘Superstitious people, morris men. If they weren’t, what use would they be?’

  Jane switched off her torch. Shadows rose and faces vanished. Jane spoke into Darvill’s lamp.

  ‘You want my mother, don’t you?’

  ‘She’d be suitable,’ Darvill said neutrally.

  God…

  ‘But you… you complained about her to the Bishop. You put the knife in for her with a man who wants to get rid of her.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Would it have mattered, long as you got what you wanted?’

  ‘I had a message that a man would come to talk to me about it. Phoned this morning. I said I’d call him back. I haven’t. Yet.’