Last Tango in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  *

  Next morning I put a call through to Gretel’s hall of residence. It was a bit early to expect students to be up but they were made of different mettle in Lampeter and the porter told me she was out giving alms. I left a message for her to call me before evensong at the latest. Then I made some coffee and called Meirion, the crime reporter at the Gazette. He’d heard about the attack on Marmalade but no one knew what the story was. The police were just treating it as routine. He promised to let me know if he heard anything. I asked him about the man in the Peacocks’ coat. Did it ring any bells? He chuckled. We both knew that on matters like this he had a whole cathedral belfry at his disposal.

  ‘I seem to remember some sort of incident out at Ysbyty Ystwyth a while back,’ he said. ‘Something to do with the military, called the Ysbyty Ystwyth Experiment or something. Apparently some civilians saw something they shouldn’t have and afterwards they got a visit from someone dressed the way you describe. I didn’t cover the story so I don’t know much but I’ll dig up what I can.’

  I thanked him and went downstairs to fetch the post. There was a card from Mrs Llantrisant. If ever there was a demonstration of the fact that we never really know anyone, she was it. Ten years swabbing my step and general cleaning and all along she had been planning to blow up the dam at Nant-y-moch. She’d been on Saint Madoc’s Rock for eighteen months now, standing, they said, all day long on the cliff-top like a statue from Easter Island, staring out towards Aberystwyth. On fine days you could charter a boat from the harbour and look at her through binoculars. She must have earned some privileges through good behaviour to be allowed to send mail. This was the second in four months.

  A pair of puffins have taken up residence in the eaves of the old wool shed. I have called them Gertie and Bertie. They dote on each other madly. Their cooing and billing fills me with joy in the gleam of the morning sun. But when evening falls and a gentle melancholy descends upon their preening a fear creeps into my heart and I have to close the shutters and banish them. Ah yes! love, that beautiful demon that devours us all in the end. I think of you and all that has passed between us and I forgive you freely with my heart because only love – for that harlot whose name I will not utter – could have made you betray me the way you did. Banished from the hearths of those I love and confronted daily with the rubble of my life, this is the truth I publish abroad: love will corrupt us more assuredly than sin.

  Yours Gertrude Ophelia Llantrisant

  I dropped the card on to the table and said to the empty room, ‘Wow!’ Despite all that had happened I found no hatred in my heart for her. Only pity. Was her middle name really Ophelia? I put on my hat and coat, left Ionawr sleeping, and walked out.

  It was a grey, damp morning and the light on the end of the harbour jetty winked sleepily. I walked to the very end of the Prom and then doubled back, my steps taking me unwittingly, or perhaps because they knew better than me where they wanted to go, to the place on Harbour Row where Bianca had died: the stigmatic stain in the tarmac that commemorated the short blasted life of an Aberystwyth harlot. The mark had faded now but the faith that her outline would return was strong among the pilgrims. The nearby guest-houses were already booked out for the week of the anniversary next summer and it didn’t matter how much Domestos the ladies from the Sweet Jesus League poured on the tarmac. There was a man standing at the spot, staring down and deep in thought. It was Father Seamus. He bent down and picked up a wreath, one of the donation from the Abergavenny Rotary Club, and put it in the bin. He looked slightly embarrassed to find himself observed.

  ‘Best place for it,’ he said lamely.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘We could do without this sort of nonsense.’

  I nodded. ‘You’re a sceptic, then?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re not, Louie?’

  I shrugged. ‘I am, of course, but it really did look like her, you know. And this is the exact spot where it happened.’

  ‘It’s just a stain. You could probably find one on your toilet floor that reminded you of someone if you screwed up your eyes and stared long enough. And had enough to drink.’

  ‘True, but no one has been murdered on my toilet floor.’

  Father Seamus took my arm and led me away. ‘This sort of thing doesn’t help, Louie. I really don’t think so. These people have very pressing needs, real problems of squalor and sickness and hunger and overcrowding. Dickensian problems even …’ We walked along towards the Seaman’s Mission, Father Seamus still holding my arm, although I didn’t feel comfortable with him doing it.

  ‘These people need concrete solutions. Looking to ghosts for their deliverance won’t help them.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Father.’

  ‘I know it’s hard, but sometimes we have to face facts, no matter how unpalatable.’

  ‘But what are the facts, Father?’

  He raised his hand and put it on my shoulder and leaned in, faking a look of deep, pained seriousness. ‘Sometimes when a prostitute dies in brutal tragic circumstances, it doesn’t make her a Mary Magdalene, it just makes her a dead whore.’

  I winced and in that moment I hated Father Seamus. No one who knew Bianca could have used words like that about her. But I said nothing because forcing a smile on to a face that sees little reason to smile and getting on with it is all part of the job.

  After Father Seamus disappeared from view I walked down the alley between the two buildings to the Rock Wholesaler fronting the harbour. The door was ajar and I entered, my nostrils filling instantly with an intense suffocating sweetness. It was an Aladdin’s Cave of confectionery: millions of pink crystalline rods, neatly stacked and rising to the ceiling like alabaster columns in a mosque. The light had a soft pink translucency, almost hypnotic, like you get from staring at the bright sun through an eyelid, spidery red veins showing through like the scarlet letters a.b.e.r.y.s.t.w.y.t.h.

  After the flood the stockpile had been replenished with the same urgency that they rebuild stocks of coal at a power station following a strike. And now, all around, men scurried like ants with sugar, toiling to keep it topped up. I passed through another door into an antechamber where I came upon the same scene except for a minor difference. A door was open at the back and men were lifting crates on to a lorry. Off to one side, with a Biro stuck behind her ear, Calamity was sitting on an upturned crate, punching numbers into an adding machine.

  ‘What do I do with the Blackpool, Miss Calamity?’ said a warehouseman.

  ‘Stack it behind the rainbow-coloured ones,’ she said without looking up.

  I took a step forward, my shadow falling across her gaze.

  ‘Oh hi, Louie! How’s it going?’

  ‘What’s this, contraband seaside rock?’

  ‘Just skimming off some surplus production.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to stop all this wheeling and dealing?’

  She sighed. ‘I know, you did, Louie, but it’s just not that simple.’

  ‘Where’s the hard part?’

  ‘You can’t roll an empire up overnight. I’ve got people relying on me.’

  ‘One of these days you’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘Everyone’s paid off, don’t worry. They’re all looking the other way.’

  ‘And what’s all this about Smokey G. Jones and some placebo?’

  ‘I’m trying to cut her down – she’s getting through three bottles a week.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  She shrugged. ‘You know how it is. She took part in a trial at the hospital for some new drug and they gave her the placebo. She said it worked a treat. Placebos are the –’

  ‘I know what they are.’

  ‘Faith can move mountains, Louie.’

  ‘But you can’t go round prescribing drugs.’

  ‘It’s only vitamin C. And anyway, she’s hooked now, I can’t stop it.’

  The sound of a man unconvincingly barking like a dog cut through the air. The noi
se set off a frenzy of activity. The men stopped unloading and scurried hither and thither, slamming doors and flinging tarpaulins over crates. Shouts of ‘police’ and ‘stop’ came from the other room. Calamity grabbed her stuff and fled to the far side of the hall. In less than two seconds I was alone. Calamity rushed back, grabbed my arm and dragged me to the cupboards where they stored the protective clothing and pulled me inside.

  *

  We stood in the dark cupboard and held our breath, listening intently to the sounds from outside. Footsteps approached. Stopped. The door was pushed slightly, teasingly. And then opened. It was Llunos. He made a soft gulping sound as he recognised us, his eyes jumping in their orbits. We smiled. He closed the door. Five minutes later, a piece of paper was slipped through. It said, ‘Not you as well!’

  Chapter 6

  THE DEATH OF one of the ventriloquists had shaken the others quite badly and some had agreed to talk. I was shown into a room upstairs at the Seaman’s Mission in which sat two very old men, with fine wisps of white hair on their shiny pates, and old suits that had stayed the same size for years as they both gradually shrank. They were drinking tea and still chewing their breakfast with grizzled unshaven jowls and false teeth that suggested the necessary lip control to be a working vent was no more than a distant memory for them. They were twins, Bill and Ben.

  ‘Few years ago he probably performed at their birthday parties,’ said Ben. ‘Their little faces glowing with excitement.’

  ‘All pink and freshly scrubbed, their hair neatly combed and everyone smelling of vanilla,’ said Bill. Then he turned to me again as if just remembering something.

  ‘Are you sure the confrère spoke after Mr Marmalade was dead?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘His confrère, Señor Rodrigo.’

  ‘You mean his dummy?’

  ‘We never use that word, it’s insulting. Are you sure he carried on speaking?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure, I’m just saying that’s how it seemed. It was probably the wind.’

  ‘How could it be the wind, the wind doesn’t speak Spanish!’

  ‘No I know, but it’s like –’

  The old man stamped his foot in a strangely uncalled-for state of agitation. ‘But that’s a stupid thing to say, the wind goes: Woooooooaaahhh-ooooo …!’

  ‘Or: Phweeeeeeeeeee!’ added Ben.

  ‘Not like Spanish at all,’ said Bill.

  ‘OK, you win.’ I raised my hands. ‘It couldn’t have been the wind.’

  The two old-timers looked at each other with an air of intense earnest. Bill hissed the words, ‘It’s the Quietus! The Quietus!’

  Ben punched his fist feebly into his palm. ‘It’s … it’s not possible, no it cannot be –’

  ‘And yet it must … this man has seen it … with his own eyes!’

  ‘Are we to believe a … a … an outsider … one who has no love for the Art?’

  ‘Must we reject him because of his obscurity?’

  ‘But if … if … no it cannot be. Not to such a lowly one as … as … a private detective, who ever heard of such a thing?’

  ‘And yet did not the Good Lord reveal himself to a mere shepherd?’

  ‘If it is true we must put a call through to St Petersburg.’

  ‘But we have to be sure, we have to be certain.’

  They stopped their conference and turned to me. ‘It is the Quietus.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. If you did you wouldn’t be here, you would be on the train to St Petersburg.’

  ‘If I promise not to go to St Petersburg, will you tell me what it is?’

  ‘The Dying Swan Quietus. It’s a legend … no! It’s much more than that … it’s the elephants’ graveyard of ventriloquism … no! It’s much more than that, more than that, it’s …’

  His brother interjected. ‘You know the trick they always do at kids’ parties where the vent makes his confrère speak while he drinks a glass of milk?’

  I nodded, ‘I’ve seen it a couple of times.’

  ‘It’s like that, only you do it when you die. Like a dying swan. It’s … it’s very sacred to us.’

  ‘You get a prize if you report one.’

  ‘But there’s only ever been one. Enoch Ishmael in 1785. There was a plaque to him on the harbour wall for many years.’

  ‘But the druids melted it down to spite us.’

  ‘One day we are going to have a day-care centre and it will be called the Enoch Ishmael Day-Care Centre.’

  The double-handed conversation had started to resemble a vaudeville act. I raised my hand. ‘Whoa! Enough about the Quietus. I want to know about this man who shared the room with the monk, Dean Morgan.’

  They stopped speaking and fidgeted. ‘We … we … don’t know about him.’

  ‘Please, it’s very important that I find him.’

  ‘No, we don’t know him. We’ve never heard of him.’ Their faces became disfigured with disgust. ‘He’s not our friend, we hated him. Tell us about the Quietus …’

  I stood up, walked to the door and said, ‘What Quietus? I didn’t see any Quietus.’

  Gretel turned up in the office later that afternoon, wearing a fawn Spanish inquisitor’s cowl over her Mother Hubbard. Her face shone with the mild intoxication that comes from a day-trip to Gomorrah. She sat in the client’s chair and spun round like a child before steadying herself by grabbing the edge of the desk. ‘I can’t stay long I’ve got a haunting tutorial at six.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And I’ve got three pairs of pants on so don’t even think of trying to take advantage of me.’

  ‘And I bet they’re really big pants, aren’t they?’

  She nodded. ‘They were my gran’s.’

  ‘Ah well, just my luck. I’ll have to ask you about Dean Morgan instead.’

  ‘Have you found him yet?’ she asked breezily, as if we were talking about a lost hamster.

  ‘Funnily enough, no, I’ve been a bit slow this week. But I’ve found out a few things. It seems he only spent a couple of days at the Excelsior before checking out. According to the hotel detective he checked out in disguise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A new identity. He checked in as a professor and left as a ventriloquist.’

  I said the word slowly and scrutinised Gretel’s expression for any sort of reaction. Clients invariably know a lot more than they tell you.

  ‘How strange. Are you sure it was him?’

  I shook my head. ‘No but I think the detective was telling the truth and he wouldn’t have been mistaken, I doubt the Dean was very accomplished at the cloak-and-dagger stuff.’

  ‘He must be in trouble, then.’

  ‘It’s a possibility. But not the only one. It’s always possible he just wanted to let his hair down.’

  ‘But he hasn’t got any – well hardly any.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Make whoopy.’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’

  ‘People do it, you know, even in Lampeter. It’s a quite popular pastime, drinking and carousing and … and … well, you know.’

  She flushed, from anger or embarrassment. ‘Yes I think I do. You’re suggesting his disappearance might have something to do with a woman, aren’t you!’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Not to Professor Morgan it doesn’t! He’s a respectable man.’

  She was looking agitated. I made a submissive gesture with my hands. ‘Try not to get upset and at least consider it. You get some starchy old fossil spending years in some creaky old college …’

  She shot up from her chair. ‘That’s it, I’m leaving!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Tears of indignation were watering her eyes. ‘How dare you call Professor Morgan a fossil!’

  I jumped round to the other side of the desk and grabbed her arm. She let herself be guided gently back to the seat. She said, ‘Dean Morgan isn’t the sort of person to do som
ething like that.’

  ‘People like the Dean are exactly the sort of people who do things like that.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  I sighed. ‘If you hire me I’m on your side. But only so long as you are hiring me to find out the truth and not to ignore evidence that might damage someone’s reputation. You have to understand where I stand. This is a dangerous town and if you send me out there to do your business you owe it to me to tell me everything you know. I’ll do my best for you, I’ll even put myself in danger if I think the case merits it, but all the same you have to do your best by me. That’s fair, isn’t it?’ It was an old, old spiel and I’d used it a thousand times before. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but I don’t think I’d had a client yet who told me everything she knew and the bits they forgot to mention were always the ones that caused all the trouble.

  ‘Do you really think he’s gone off with a woman?’

  ‘I don’t think anything at the moment. Tell me about the Bad Girl.’

  Gretel flinched. ‘H … h … how did you know about her?’

  ‘You mentioned her, remember?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. Oh.’

  ‘She was bad!’

  ‘Yes, I know, and you are good and so was the Dean.’

  Gretel leaned forward across the desk as if there might be someone listening behind the door. ‘We hated her really and none of us would speak to her. She was an orphan, you see, they found her on the church steps – no really! They really did! We couldn’t stop laughing when we heard, we thought it only happened in nineteenth-century novels. And there she was on a Sunday-school scholarship! But that’s ridiculous, isn’t it, because they are only supposed to be for holy people but who knows where she came from? For all we knew her father could have been a dirty old donkey-man like yours!’ She stopped and leaned back. ‘But we don’t talk about her.’

  ‘Yeah I can see how hard it is for you.’