‘Poor weather for a holiday,’ he said with a slight Welsh accent, absorbing with evident approval the clinging of my wet jade-green T-shirt over the lower foothills of the Himalayas. Probably made him feel at home after Page Three.
‘I’m not on holiday, I live locally,’ I said, not prepared to elaborate further, since although I could take him with one hand tied behind my back, disclosing the name of my village seems to arouse nothing but levity.
‘Strange I haven’t seen you about before, then?’ he said to my breasts, puzzled. ‘I live in a bungalow a mile or two along the cliffs. Let me introduce myself – I am an Ace.’
‘I’m sure you’re an absolute Trump,’ I assured him kindly (though not Donald, despite the waitress’s near-Ivana hairdo).
His gaze moved at last to my face, and his expression changed to one of outrage: ‘Gilbert Ace.’
‘Of course – I’ve seen you in the distance talking to Miranda, that’s why you looked slightly familiar. Well, well – at last we’re alone together.’
He bristled like an angry prawn. ‘You’re that Sappho Jones woman! Let me tell you that I was Dafydd and Gethyn’s nearest male relative, and Aces Acre should have been mine. It’s belonged to the Aces for centuries!’
‘And there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm,’ I intoned pleasantly, and he glared at me.
‘It’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘Not to me, it isn’t.’
‘Look here, you may be a bit miffed about it, but the cottage was theirs to do with as they wished, and this way they got to live in it all their lives and could still afford to do all the things they wanted to.’
‘Yes, like fritter a fortune on giant TVs and exotic cruises,’ he snapped.
‘They had fun, so why not? And you got the house contents and what was left, didn’t you? You’ve just told me you’ve a bungalow of your own, so I don’t suppose you really need the cottage anyway. I’m sorry and all that, but there it is.’
‘The solicitor said there was nothing to be done,’ he conceded ungraciously.
‘Then I hope you aren’t going to hold it against me, because it will be awkward since we’re both friends of Miranda’s and keep bumping into one another.’
‘I’m not one to hold a grudge,’ he said stiffly and clearly untruthfully, ‘and any friend of Miranda’s is a friend of mine.’
There was just a tinge of the soppy about him when he said her name, which made me wonder if he still had a soft spot for his childhood sweetheart. I was pretty sure Miranda was fond of him, but I mustn’t forget the missing wife. He may not look a potential Bluebeard, but I thought we needed to know exactly where Dorinda had got to.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I hope we can be friends, Gil, because the Gower is such a small place that birdies in their little nests must agree.’
Relays of breakfast began to arrive, and he watched with a slightly bemused expression as I methodically dealt with it. I’m a big girl and I need sustenance, especially sustenance I don’t have to cook myself.
‘I’m always ravenous,’ I explained, lavishly loading my fork with sausage, egg and fried bread. ‘But particularly today – the cliff walk was very bracing.’
‘You really shouldn’t go on the cliff path in this weather,’ he reproved gravely. ‘You might have gone over.’
‘Not unless I’d strayed from the path, and that’s clear enough.’
He shook his head gloomily. ‘It’s easily done.’
‘Not by me.’
‘You’d be surprised at the silly things people do on cliffs,’ he told me.
‘No, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. But it’s strange how the mist plays tricks with your perceptions. I mean, at one point I thought I heard someone shouting near the cliff edge, and moving about, but of course it was just a sheep bobbing along on one of those tracks. And then, while I’d stepped off the path to investigate, I fell over an old raincoat that was blowing about.’
He looked startled. ‘Do you actually think there might have been someone there, on the edge?’
‘No, of course I don’t – I mean it’s not exactly Beachy Head, is it? They don’t queue to jump off?’
‘There have been several tragic episodes associated with these cliffs,’ he assured me, and then proceeded with great relish to tell me all about the various accidents and suicides that appeared to have littered the cliffs and beach with bodies over the last century, though since he didn’t look any older than me he can’t have eye-witnessed all of these events. If he had, though, his conversational style might have driven some of them over the edge.
‘I’m an expert on local matters,’ he finished modestly.
‘Um,’ I said, through a mouthful of egg and bacon.
‘I don’t know if Miranda told you, but I’m a keen ornithologist. You’ve probably come across my latest publication: A Guide to Unusual Bird Visitors to the Gower?’
No, but I would probably feature in the sequel, More Even Weirder Bird Visitors to the Gower.
‘I’ll be sure to look out for it, Gilbert,’ I said kindly, remembering what Miranda had told me of his near nervous breakdown, domineering wife, and police grillings. ‘But I have trouble telling my kestrels from my hawks, or even, my kestrels from my knaves.’
He looked at me with serious, glossy brown eyes. ‘You should start reading my weekly “Nature Notes” in the local paper, and then you’ll soon know your way around the feathered world. It’s fascinating, quite fascinating, I assure you. I have my binoculars trained on the cliffs at all hours of the day.’
And the night too, I shouldn’t wonder. I supposed he knew I was a writer too, though it didn’t seem to make him feel matey. But perhaps he didn’t count Fantasy as real writing. Lots of people don’t. I laugh all the way to the bank.
By now I’d lavishly loaded the last of the butter on to my toast and scrunched it up, feeling another chapter of Vengeane forming nebulously in my brain recesses. An idea of amazing brilliance was coming into being . . .
‘Raarg must seem to die, yet be reborn as a fitting mate for Nala, warrior-queen – yet the Grisund Oracle has told her that Dragonslayer is her future mate!’ I exclaimed, putting my coffee cup down with a clunk.
Through the purging fires of Meldroth the—
I got up. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and leaving him open-mouthed (though maybe he was just in Page Three mode again) I made for the exit, irritably fending the waitress off with a handful of money. ‘Keep the change,’ I said, snatching my anorak and shoes. ‘Something urgent . . .’
The rain had almost stopped but I hurdled great pools of water as I took to my heels across the car park.
And just as the windscreen wipers slowly parted the last, scattered drops, the Last of the Aces emerged from the café and gesticulated wildly.
I gave him a friendly salute and drove past, already muttering into the tape player.
In the mirror the slight figure turned and trudged off in the direction of the cliffs.
‘It’s going to be – a lovely day . . .’ I sang, forgetting to switch the recording button off. ‘Lovely day, lovely day, lovely day, love-ly day . . .’
Chapter 12
Spotted
Raarg’s epiphany just seemed to ripple off my tongue and into my tape recorder as if it wanted to be written.
‘They laid the naked body of Raarg at her feet, unmarked by the fires of the Abyss except for a faint, strange bronze sheen to the skin . . .’
Now warm and dry, I reclined comfortably on my Dentist’s Delight lounger in a long, loose, embroidered black robe, letting myself dwell on all the appalling things that were about to happen to gorgeous, villainous Raarg before he was purged of evil. Or maybe not.
‘Cowering, drenched in the sweat of fear, Raarg—’
‘S-Sappho!’
‘Damn!’
I clicked off the recorder and levered myself reluctantly from the warmly moulded leather. While subconsciously I’d been aware of Miranda coming in earlie
r to sort out the flower orders, I knew she wouldn’t disturb me when I was working unless it was something important.
She was in the conservatory, hovering like a shy fish at the front of the aquarium, together with the cause of her interruption: he was substantial, and wearing a navy uniform the size of the Isle of Wight.
‘C-Constable Gwynne,’ she introduced, gesturing with a handful of dried henbane, as if I could have missed him, and then made off muttering something about coffee.
‘Is that Gwyn as in Nell?’ I enquired interestedly.
‘I don’t know any—’ he began, then broke off and frowned portentously at me, giving me the impression I’d just thrown him off his internal script.
Anyway, Nell Gwyn had a pretty, cheeky little face, and this poor boy’s was so cratered by acne it must have made a close shave difficult. Maybe his girlfriends found the tufted effect endearing? The Acne of Perfection.
He stood among the hanging foliage, an innocent strayed into a witch’s coven but determined to do his duty.
‘Are you Mrs Sap . . . Sap-ho Jones?’ he enquired, as if owning to such an outlandish name could get me arrested under the Meaning of the Act.
‘Soft p’s, Constable,’ I explained, ‘Saffo – after the ancient Greek poetess. And I’m a Ms – I’ve never even technically been a Mrs.’
Clearly The Biggest Spotty Dog I Ever Did See cherished an innate feeling that women who called themselves Ms were leftish, feminist lesbians, though I hope he didn’t suspect poor Miranda of being my partner. She wouldn’t like it: and anyway, the only meaningful relationships she’s had recently have been entirely blameless ones involving chocolate fudge cake.
‘I see,’ he said severely, though clearly he didn’t, and scribbled into a little book not unlike the ones I use for my Spiral Bound jottings. ‘I wonder if I might ask you one or two questions, madam, in connection with an inquiry we’re at present making?’
‘You’d better come into the sitting room,’ I said resignedly, though I couldn’t immediately recall any transgressions, even of a motoring kind, ‘but it’s a damned shame about Raarg – I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to do with him next.’
Spotty Muldoon looked pink and baffled, so I added kindly, ‘Never mind, it isn’t your fault, Officer.’
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in a demented lift sort of way and throughout our conversation his eyes tended to wander towards my cleavage and jump away: but then, this happens a lot.
My bust may be disproportionately huge but at least it’s gravity-defying – and long may it hold its own.
‘I-I’m sorry if I’ve called at an inconvenient time,’ he began. ‘Perhaps you’d like to go and get dressed first?’
‘It is inconvenient, but you’re here now so we might as well get on with it. And I am dressed – this is a Bedouin thobe. I often write in it, it’s kind of inspiring – The Sheik and all that, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know? Never mind. Do take a seat,’ I added.
He clapped eyes on the dentist’s chair beyond me and made an odd choking sound: this season, policemen’s faces will be crimson . . .
Does it remind him of some strange instrument from a kinky magazine, even though I’ve removed all the weirder attachments? What did he think I’d been up to? My reassuring smile didn’t seem to cheer him either, and he sank slowly backwards on to the bedspread-covered sofa opposite, looking horrified.
I tied my loose hair into a bell-rope knot, then perched on the recliner. ‘What did you want to ask me about, Officer?’ I encouraged, seeing he’d lost the thread of his narrative and was clinging to the notebook as a drowning man clutches a lifebelt.
He cleared his throat. ‘We – er – we’re investigating an accident on Rhossili cliffs early this morning and believe you may be able to help us with our inquiries.’
This morning? Already it seemed days ago when I walked through wet mist on the cliffs.
‘Yes, I did walk the cliff path first thing, battling with the elements – but the elements won. What are you inquiring into – and how did you know I was there?’
‘A local resident made us aware of the matter and gave us your description.’
‘What matter? I had a chat with a Mr Gilbert Ace in the Seaspray Café – would he be your snitch? And what exactly have I done?’
‘Nothing, madam, we just want you to—’
‘Help you with your inquiries?’ I finished helpfully.
‘Yes,’ he agreed stolidly. ‘Mr Ace, who is known to us,’ as a confirmed wife murderer, and they would get him yet, his expression strongly suggested, ‘reported the conversation with you because you mentioned a possible incident on the cliff top, and he stated that afterwards, feeling some disquiet, he walked to the spot you had described and made a search.’
A cold knot formed in my bowels or somewhere equally horrible. ‘Oh, no, don’t tell me that someone did jump off that cliff and all I did was go and have a nice hot breakfast in the café!’
‘Possibly, but we don’t know for certain, madam. Mr Ace found a raincoat near the edge, which was not wet enough to have been out for very long, but a search has revealed no further evidence.’
I stared at him, weighing it up logically. ‘It’s a bit thin,’ I commented, relieved. ‘One damp raincoat, no bodies.’
He made a note, licked a finger, and turned to a fresh page. My misplaced levity had probably earned me a place in his little black book as Gower Murderer Number Two, after Gil.
‘There was no form of identification in the coat,’ he conceded reluctantly, ‘and the cliffs are popular with the tourists: all sorts of things get left behind.’
‘But not usually raincoats early on a cold misty morning? And the only tourists I saw were in the café. But then, if it was a suicide, why would they take their raincoat off?’
‘Suicides don’t always think logically, madam.’
That’s right, make me feel guilty again.
‘But anyway, even if someone did leap off just as I got there, there wasn’t anything I could have done, was there?’
‘No, I expect not, madam, but in the circumstances we need a statement of the occurrence in case evidence turns up later. Perhaps you could just tell me in your own words exactly what happened?’
I tried to give him some idea of what conditions had been like that morning, but with the contrariness of April the day was now warm, mild and entirely inoffensive.
Like me.
‘I couldn’t see anything much, but sheep were sort of bobbing about, and the gulls were screaming – one screamed really loudly just after I heard the voice, so then I realized that that was probably what I heard, which seemed quite likely since my mind was on Vengeane . . .’
His pencil stopped and he stared accusingly at me. ‘You heard a voice? You haven’t mentioned that before!’
Miranda jingled her way in with the coffee tray as I answered patiently, ‘Because I probably imagined it, along with everything else – apart from the raincoat. I must have done, mustn’t I? Because no one would be standing on a wet misty cliff at the crack of dawn shouting “Geronimo!”’
Miranda started and the tray began to tilt alarmingly. I leaped up and just managed to catch it before everything fell off, then set it down on the table while she plumped limply down on the opposite end of the sofa to the surprised policeman, who suddenly rose several inches into the air, like Krakatoa, only quieter.
‘S-sorry,’ she muttered. ‘C-clumsy.’
‘It’s that tray – it’s warped.’ I turned back to the young man.
‘There, you can see how silly it all is, can’t you? Who’d be standing on the cliffs shouting that? It’s hardly in the “Famous Last Words” category. So I imagined the whole thing, and the raincoat probably blew there from the car park or the path.’
With a long-suffering sigh he snapped his little book shut, and his eyes lost their Rising Young Officer gleam and turned as dull as dry pebbles.
Picking up the coffee po
t, shaped like an outlandish green monster poised over the cowering naked figure of Raarg, who formed the spout (a recent present from a fan), I said brightly, ‘Coffee, Constable?’
You could tell he wasn’t a coffee drinker from the speed with which he declined and jumped to his feet. Perhaps Earl Grey would have gone down better? But also it was clear that he thought the whole episode was a complete waste of time.
I saw him out through the rather bare white kitchen, and the ranked Fantasy foliage, though it was more of a chase than an escorted departure.
‘Suspected Witches Coven’ would probably feature strongly on the next page of his notebook.
He paused at the door for a last regretful glance down the front of my thobe, turned, fell over an empty tea chest, recovered, and marched away solemnly with his ears burning brightly like twin beacons: each one big enough to receive satellite TV.
Chapter 13
Dogged
When I went back indoors I found that Miranda had resumed her interrupted posy making, and was busy with henbane (imperfection), poison ivy (obvious), and Scotch thistle (retaliation).
Let’s hope the recipient has a sense of humour, I thought.
Her small hands deftly twined green and purple striped ribbon around the stems and tied the little booklet to the finished bouquet.
‘What’s the significance of “Geronimo”, Miranda?’ I enquired when she had packed it in its box. ‘You nearly dropped that tray when I said it.’
And now I’d come back down from Vengeane with a bump I noticed a couple of other odd things – like it being midday, whereas she usually came in to do the flowers early in the morning, and her looking . . . well, fraught was the only word. Her hands trembled as she labelled the box.
And come to think of it, where was Spike? ‘G-Geronimo? Oh – it’s just silly, really – it’s one of Chris’s words. He-he always shouted it at the critical moment when we were . . . well, you know.’
‘No. What—’ The penny dropped. ‘Oh, right.’
I didn’t really want to know that. And didn’t someone who shouted ‘Geronimo!’ at the moment of orgasm merit an instant Bobbitt pinking shears job?
A Leap of Faith Page 12
