The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What did they do to him?’ Lol asked eventually, wanting to get this over with.

  ‘Each of the workshops has a storage shed at the rear,’ Bliss said. ‘Wood shed, traditional design with exposed cross-beam.’

  Bliss stared into his glass of Gomer Parry’s cloudy homemade cider, the colour of rust and border clay. Threw down names that Lol had never heard before: Jason Mebus, Connor Boyd, Shane Nicklin.

  ‘The first time they hanged him,’ Bliss said, ‘they cut him down fairly quickly.’

  39

  Raw Madness

  The backstairs were a dim half-spiral, coldly lit by one vertical slit too high to see through. Merrily was half-expecting the kitchen below to have a greasy spit and dead meat hanging from hooks, but it wasn’t like that.

  ‘Good morning again,’ the woman said.

  The kitchen was warm and glazed with light tinted orange and emerald from illuminated glass in Gothic tracery around the tops of two long, thin windows. Pale ash units with olive-tiled work surfaces were built around a double-oven Aga. A rack of oak shelves displayed an apothecary’s collection of coloured jars and stoppered bottles.

  ‘Bell asked me to take care of you.’ The woman, who hadn’t yet introduced herself, had tufted brown hair, wore a white-and-grey-checked suit, no jewellery. ‘If not quite, I have to say, in those words.’

  Coffee was percolating, and she was making wholemeal toast.

  ‘Have a seat, Mrs Watkins.’

  Oh.

  Merrily said nothing. A stone trough of red and orange tulips sent up a warm glow from below the twin windows, which opened up views across the fields to where the town rose in steep tiers to the church tower.

  ‘It’s rather late for breakfast,’ the woman said, ‘but I don’t suppose you particularly feel like lunch.’

  ‘Tea or coffee would be’ — Merrily had noticed that the tulips were in fact growing out of a stone coffin, its interior shaped for a body — ‘fine.’

  Life directly out of death. Symbolism everywhere.

  The woman wrinkled her nose, tapped the coffin with a shoe. ‘I’m still trying to persuade her to put that morbid artefact outside. Having already bribed the plumber to say there was no way it was going to work as a kitchen sink.’

  No way she’d have it outside, either. Bell must have been cosying up to death since her teens.

  ‘She must be a… challenging person to accommodate,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Actually we accommodate each other fairly well. I call in most days, on the way to or from the office, or for lunch. Organize all the maintenance people and the services and the cleaner and the gardener and everyone else she’s far too vague to deal with. Do grab yourself a seat.’

  There was a round table, with wooden chairs reflecting the design of seventeenth-century Glastonbury church chairs, with stubby X-legs. Merrily slid one out and sat down cautiously.

  ‘I think we spoke on the phone.’

  ‘Briefly.’ Susannah Pepper put the tray of coffee and toast in the centre of the table and sat down opposite her and smiled.

  Ominous. A friendly, relaxed lawyer was rarely a good omen.

  ‘Where’s Bell?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Susannah looked Merrily in the eyes. She was about thirty, and she seemed fit and confident and capable. Her skin was softly furry, like a peach’s. ‘I persuaded her to go out and let me handle things. She’s awfully disappointed in you. Feels betrayed.’

  Silence. The sun had come out, setting fire to the orange glass in the tracery at the top of the windows, and the tulips in the stone coffin reached up like small goblets waiting to be filled.

  ‘All right,’ Merrily said at last. ‘I’m going to have to ask, aren’t I? How did you know who I was?’

  Susannah stood up and went out of the room and came back with a leather briefcase, extracting a folded newspaper and tossing it on the table.

  ‘This morning’s edition.’

  Merrily opened the paper and stared down, growing cold with dismay, at two pictures, one of the Hanging Tower, the other of herself, in colour, full face, under the headline:

  EXORCIZE OUR CASTLE OF DEATH

  Evil ghost must go, say townsfolk

  She looked up. ‘This is crap.’

  ‘I think you should read it.’

  She read it. It was overdramatized and dumbed-down. It was crass. It was full of conjecture. But at the centre of it…

  The Mayor of Ludlow, George Lackland, confirmed last night that he had discussed the issue with Hereford exorcist, the Rev. Merrily Watkins.

  ‘It’s very much a matter for the Church,’ he said. ‘Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there’s no doubt in my mind that a religious service, or an exorcism, would make many people feel more at peace.

  ‘It’s been suggested that these tragic deaths have brought tourists into the town, but to my mind notoriety of this kind is no good for anyone in the long run.’

  ‘OK. It’s not crap. Not entirely.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s misleading, but it’s come from an actual petition sent to George Lackland. Someone obviously sent a copy to the press. But nobody’s spoken to me about it. I mean, one reason I’m here is to try and avoid anything drastic or…’

  ‘Laughable,’ Susannah said. ‘Holy water and incantations. Or am I misrepresenting your occupation?’

  ‘Don’t know where this picture came from, either,’ Merrily said. ‘Looks like an old one… couple of years old, anyway.’

  She was outside Ledwardine church, and she was in the full kit. It looked like an official picture from the diocese. She didn’t remember it being taken.

  And now Bell Pepper had evidently seen it. Bell, who disliked the clergy, had learned that she was not only a minister but a working exorcist, and she wasn’t called Mary. Everything was now entirely clear, and the situation couldn’t be worse.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ Susannah said. ‘Cigarettes are disgusting. And let’s drop the bullshit, shall we? Why are you associating my client with what you’ve come here to do? Bearing in mind, before you answer, that I’ve talked to George Lackland.’

  ‘In which case you’ll be aware that it was George Lackland who approached us — the diocese.’

  ‘George is an old-fashioned man,’ Susannah said. ‘He still thinks the Church should have a role in the way this town is run, and he seems to have fallen for the myth that the deaths of two children and one old woman are manifestations of some kind of spiritual malaise.’

  ‘And is he entirely wrong there?’

  ‘He’s in danger of becoming a laughing stock.’

  ‘Well…’ Now that George had dropped her in it, there seemed little point in dressing this up. ‘A lot of people saw Bell with Robbie Walsh in the days before he died. A woman famously obsessed with death. Last night, she told me she’d been taking steps to adopt him, which would explain quite a lot. Can you confirm that?’

  ‘I don’t have to confirm anything to you,’ Susannah said. ‘Your ridiculous role with a failing religion gives you no right, legal or moral, to probe into people’s private lives.’

  ‘Up to you, Susannah, but adoption at least offers a plausible explanation for—’

  ‘All right, yes.’ Susannah leaned back and opened her jacket. ‘It was already in progress. It was to have been a substantial settlement, and the mother was practically biting our hands off. Kept ringing me up, just to make sure we weren’t going off the idea.’

  ‘Figures.’ Merrily thought of all the things Mumford had said about his sister: the extreme bitterness towards their own mother after the boy died. Big money, maybe life-changing money, had just gone down the pan.

  ‘He’d have moved in here,’ Susannah said, ‘and gone to school in Ludlow. And his gran — of whom he was fond but who was becoming unfit to look after him — would have seen far more of him than she already did. I don’t claim to have fully fathomed out
the relationship between Bell and the boy. But they certainly had shared interests which he seems to have been unable to pursue at home.’

  ‘And perhaps she needed an heir? Of sorts. Would that be…?’

  ‘You mean for the New Palmers’ Guild Trust?’

  ‘What exactly is that?’

  ‘No big secret. The Trust, into which most of Bell’s assets will pass when she dies, will support, in perpetuity, specific historic features of the town.’

  Merrily nodded. ‘Like the maintenance of the St Leonard’s cemetery as a wilderness with corpses?’

  ‘Be assured that I and my successors will administer the Trust entirely according to my client’s wishes.’

  ‘And the conservation of certain yew trees? Preservation of public rights of way connecting sacred places? And perhaps keeping particular viewpoints open, in the face of possible future development?’

  ‘The specific details have yet to be sorted out. And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.’

  ‘I’m getting to it,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m trying to find out how much you know and how much you understand about Bell’s other plans for when she dies.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t you? I mean, you really don’t?’

  ‘Perhaps you should spell it out.’

  ‘I’m wary,’ Merrily said. ‘I think I’d rather be speaking to her stepdaughter than her lawyer. I mean, what does your father say about all this?’

  ‘Dad? Dad says be kind to her, never exploit her — and keep me the hell out of it.’ Susannah’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about my dad?’

  ‘Music producer… bewitched by Bell’s obvious charms… maybe liked unusual music, but couldn’t handle the extreme lifestyle which, in her case, went with it.’

  ‘He lives in Sacramento now, has three children, plays golf.’

  ‘Your mother was his first wife?’

  ‘Whom he left for Bell, but that’s all well in the past. My mother’s second husband, if you want the full nepotism bit, is David Sebald, brother of Peter Sebald, one of the original partners in the firm I’m working for.’

  ‘But you and Bell—’

  ‘Never got on all that well with David’s other kids, so I used to spend quite a few weekends with Dad and Bell. Who was so completely out of it most of the time that I sometimes felt, at the age of about fifteen, like her stepmother. Like I said, we’ve always accommodated each other. I’m not judgemental.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Bringing Smith, Sebald one of their wealthiest private clients would have done Susannah no harm at all with the firm.

  ‘That’s to say, where no criminal law or local statutes are infringed, I don’t question her behaviour,’ Susannah said. ‘This town’s full of eccentrics.’

  ‘You must be worried about her, though.’

  ‘Put it this way, my private life would have been a whole lot easier if the firm had been based in Birmingham.’

  ‘Because then Bell would have come to visit and gone home the next day. But this being where it is, she doesn’t want to leave. Not ever, in fact. Do you know what I’m saying?’

  Through the long window, the town glittered on its hill, the sun gilding the pinnacles on the church tower and coating what you could see of the castle walls with crusted honey. No motor vehicles visible. A living dream of Olde Englande.

  ‘That’s pretty ridiculous.’ Susannah finally looked unnerved. ‘You must realize that.’

  ‘If I started dismissing ideas that seemed ridiculous, I wouldn’t get very far in this job.’

  ‘Then it’s a ridiculous job.’

  ‘It’s apparently been estimated,’ Merrily said, ‘that one in three people has had a paranormal experience, and one in ten has seen a ghost. It all makes perfect sense to Bell.’

  ‘You’re saying she’s become completely insane?’

  ‘No, I don’t think she— OK, it’s not good, it’s not healthy, it’s spiritually… a bit squalid, frankly. But it’s not insane. In fact, it’s all been worked out very practically.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Susannah backed away, folding her arms. ‘But if there was any truth in what you’ve just outlined, she’d… in my view, she’d be guaranteed certifiable.’

  ‘Then how do you explain it? How do you explain her nocturnal perambulations?’

  ‘She’s a night person. In every sense — her albums are dark and doomy, she likes to mix with goths and weirdos and she’s a bloody exhibitionist.’

  ‘An exhibitionist who wants to protect her private life and won’t talk to the media, except the local media?’

  ‘That’s not so unusual. It’s part of the star-mentality. They like to have it both ways.’

  ‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s led what she calls a temporary kind of life. She says she was diagnosed at an early age with a congenital heart defect and she’s lived her whole life with the angel of death standing outside the door, sharpening his scythe. I don’t know if that’s true or not—’

  ‘I’d like to get her to a heart specialist, but she won’t. She has a fear of dying in hospital.’

  ‘Or anywhere but here. She’s moved from place to place — she’s had the money to do that — and she can’t settle anywhere. Until she arrives in the place of her dreams. Literally. All right, whether she had been dreaming about Ludlow for years is anybody’s guess, but she’s convinced herself she had. And she comes here and she connects. It’s a town where you can walk from century to century, and it’s not been over-cosmeticized. It’s as it was. And for Bell the atmosphere everywhere is dense with… eternity.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s pretty and it’s a good place to work. I can understand her falling in love with it.’

  ‘For Bell, those streets up there sing. Especially at dead of night, when she’s on her own. They sing, she sings…’

  ‘Oh, please—’

  ‘OK, you don’t get it, you don’t feel the density. That’s fine.’

  ‘Well, hey, I’m sorry.’ Susannah threw up her arms. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a bloody airy-fairy artist, merely a humble solicitor. We just grease the wheels that keep the world turning, and I’m really sorry but we don’t have time to drift off into the ether. Unlike poets. And priests, apparently.’

  ‘I’m not saying I can feel it on that level, or anywhere near.’

  ‘She walks around at night in unorthodox clothing and she sings sometimes. Wow.’

  ‘She’s feeding herself into the fabric of the town. I realize this is bollocks to you, but to her it’s everything and she doesn’t know how much time she has left, and when that time’s up she wants to…’

  ‘… To be a ghost?’

  ‘To be a ghost here. Catherine of Aragon, Prince Arthur, Marion de la Bruyère… Belladonna.’

  Susannah snorted and turned away. Saul Pepper’s regular daughter, with a solid job and no weird, music-business links.

  ‘Did you bring this paper in here this morning?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, you actually showed this to her?’

  ‘It’s all over town. Someone would have told her, sooner or later.’

  ‘And what exactly did she say?’

  Susannah turned round. ‘She became… distressed. She told me you were in the house, upstairs. That she’d invited you into her house, and you were betraying her. I told her to let me handle it. I didn’t want her wailing and screaming at you, like one of her albums. I told her I’d get rid of you, make sure you never bothered her again.’

  ‘And how would you have done that? Some kind of injunction?’

  ‘I’d’ve had you restrained. Gone to a higher authority.’

  Merrily put her head on one side. ‘God?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. After I spoke to you the other morning, I wasn’t satisfied that you’d taken any notice.’

  ‘Damn right.’

  ‘So I spoke to some other people in the Church, and I was referred to your superior, the… Director of Deliverance?’
/>
  ‘What?’

  ‘Canon Clarke? I’ve got it written down at the office.’

  It felt as though the room shook.

  ‘She told me that you’d now virtually resigned from your official position,’ Susannah said, ‘because of personal problems. She said you were overstressed. She said if I had any more trouble I should contact her immediately.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She said we could deal with it between us. I hadn’t realized she was a barrister.’

  ‘That must’ve been a comfort to you.’

  ‘If you want the truth,’ Susannah said, ‘I had the feeling of some personal friction, and that’s why I decided to talk to you myself. And now I’m wishing I hadn’t.’

  ‘OK…’ Merrily took a breath. ‘I want to get something right. Did Bell actually use the word “betrayal”? About me.’

  ‘She said you’d won her trust and entered her fortress by deceit and you’d betrayed her in the worst way possible. She… she lost it for a while. I was glad to get her out of the house.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Hour or so? Hour and a half?’

  ‘Any idea at all where she’s gone?’

  Susannah shook her head. ‘She just put on her long coat and walked away, and then, a minute or two later, she just, you know, screamed. Just once. She’s always been a screamer, hasn’t she?’

  ‘You mean you took no notice.’

  ‘I went to the window. There was no sign of her.’

  ‘Well, I think I have to find her, don’t I?’ Merrily said.

  ‘Don’t you ever give up?’

  ‘No, look, tell me if I’m wrong here. Robbie’s death — the way it happened, and where it happened — took something out of Bell’s life that I don’t think she’ll ever get back. Now she thinks we’re about to try and take something else away. Doesn’t she?’

  ‘I just can’t believe any of that.’ Susannah moved away across the flags, a trickle of sweat gleaming on her forehead. ‘It’s not rational… even for her.’

  ‘It’s very rational — for her. And now she thinks the town’s turned against her. Did she tell you she was attacked last night? Did you see her face?’