The Hunted Hare

by Fay Sampson

  “Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”

  Jenny got back into the car, disconsolately. “I would have liked to have gone into the church to pray. I know I can pray anywhere, but it seemed particularly important this morning. To feel part of all those tens of thousands of people who have come on pilgrimage and worshipped here over the centuries.”

  “Perhaps they’ll have taken the tape down by the time we get back. The fire officer seemed pretty positive about what started it.”

  “But Sergeant Lincoln is a lot less positive about why.”

  She hoped Aidan would not see her shudder as he steered into the lane. Could it really be something to do with me? she thought. My books?

  The rain had turned to drizzle by the time they had left Cwm Pennant and driven the ten miles to Llanfyllin. Aidan parked the car and they got out to explore. A mix of centuries-old buildings, some half-timbered, some red brick, surrounded the square with its memorial cross. They found a black-beamed coffee shop. Melangell fell on a strawberry milkshake and a fruit-studded slice of bara brith with enthusiasm.

  Jenny asked the teenage waitress about the museum. The girl looked blank. But the woman Jenny took to be the manager called across from the till.

  “Across the square. Do you see that side street almost opposite? It’s down there. Chap who owned it used to be a bit of a character. But he’s gone now.”

  “Caradoc Lewis? We’ve met him,” Jenny said. “He lives in Pennant Melangell now. Yes, he does seem a bit eccentric.”

  Eccentric enough to set fire to a Christian church?

  Melangell skipped across the square beside them. She really is such an easy child to be with, Jenny thought. Any other seven-year-old would be complaining she was bored, as we drag her round yet another site of Dark Age history.

  She was glad to see that Aidan had brought his camera this time. Like the absence of her scarf, it restored a semblance of normality.

  The museum looked little more remarkable than any of the other houses in the street. The buildings here were smaller than those in the square, domestic in scale. There was a bow-fronted window to one side of the door.

  “Looks more like a gift shop than a museum,” Aidan said.

  He was right. The window was filled with boxes of fudge, flowered notelets, rather crudely fashioned china animals. Jenny noticed several rabbits, which might have been meant as hares. The signs were not encouraging.

  Over the window a sign read: “THE LEWIS COLLECTION”. A small metal stand by the door said “OPEN”.

  They stepped indoors to a jangling bell. A youngish man, perhaps in his thirties, came hurrying to greet them, smiling broadly. He wore a red T-shirt with the same words, “THE LEWIS COLLECTION”, arranged in a circle around the figure of a hare. Jenny checked its long ears and rangy legs. This one was definitely not a rabbit.

  “You’ve come for a look round, have you? It’s a shame about the weather, isn’t it? But we need the rain. Still, you’ll be snug and dry in here. There’s lots to see.”

  Jenny glanced around her. It still looked like a gift shop.

  Aidan had his wallet out, eyeing the curator expectantly.

  “Oh, yes! Silly of me. That’ll be £3 each and £1.50 for the young lady.”

  Melangell beamed up at him.

  “Just take your time,” he went on. “There are more rooms at the back and upstairs. If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.”

  Jenny studied the gifts on sale. They were not of a high quality. Mostly tourist tat.

  But I suppose he’d have to take a lot of £3s to make it pay, she thought. And people seem to buy this sort of stuff.

  Had it been like this in Caradoc’s time? She couldn’t imagine him selling merchandise like this. A teddy bear with a T-shirt saying “A Present from Powys”; plastic dolls in an approximation of traditional Welsh dress, which bounced on springs; a dragon key ring that said “I Love Wales”.

  She would try to find something not too awful to take away afterwards, as a souvenir.

  The room at the back of the house was a complete contrast. It had been given over to the Stone Age. The impression was instantly serious. The artefacts were laid out in glass cases on tables around the walls. Each was carefully labelled with descriptive title, an approximate date and a note of where it was found.

  Scraper. c. 8000 BC Pengwern

  She noticed two from the Pennant Melangell area.

  What she missed, especially with a child, were the explanatory boards that she now took for granted in a modern museum. Those scenes of our early ancestors working in their encampments, fishing, hunting. A vivid picture of how these items in the cases would be used, and by whom. She felt for Melangell. She was sure that to a seven-year-old, one knapped flint must look much like another.

  Aidan had found a case of arrowheads. They, at least, were more interestingly recognizable.

  Melangell turned her face up to Jenny. “Could you shoot an arrow with a flint head like this?”

  The question jolted Jenny. The fire at the church had pushed the shocking nature of Thaddaeus’s death to the back of her mind.

  “I’ve never tried,” she said. “But I suppose I could, yes. It would take a bit of getting used to. They would be heavier than the arrows we use now.”

  Not necessarily, an inner voice told her. There are enthusiasts who go out into the wildernesses of North America to hunt with bows and arrows. It would take a powerful missile to bring down an elk or a bear.

  She found a tray of beads, fashioned from coloured stones and shells, and called Melangell over to admire them.

  But the things that really interested her, if they existed, would be upstairs, in the room set aside for the Celtic kingdoms after the Romans left Britain. The time of the real St Melangell.

  To get to the display on Celtic Christianity, they had to go back to the gift shop, and take the staircase. The curator, Kevin, gave them a cheery wave. Apart from him, the shop was empty. The way led them through rooms devoted to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Jenny lingered over a 3,000-year-old pottery urn, reddish clay, stained with black.

  “They were cremating their dead then, and burying the remains in these.”

  There was a badly damaged bronze knife, some bone pins, rings from a horse harness. It was a poor display compared with the glories of the British Museum, or the local treasures you would expect to find in a county museum. This time, it was enlivened by photographs of the remains of hut circles. The ruined walls of boulders were half lost among heather and tall grass.

  “Still, if it’s all stuff he’s found himself, you’ve got to give the guy credit,” Aidan said, with grudging respect. “It may not be much by professional archaeology standards, but it’s a lot for one man.”

  They moved on to the Iron Age. Jenny felt a ripple of excitement, and knew that Aidan’s interest was quickened too. These were the centuries immediately before Christ, and before the Roman invasion. Here there were indeed echoes of a dying glory.

  “Gold!” exclaimed Jenny. “That’s the finial of a torque.” She turned eagerly to show Melangell. “A torque was like a metal collar you wore round your neck. At least, you did if you were rich and important. The two ends didn’t quite meet, so that you could open it up to put it on. And each end had a knob called a finial. Do you see? It’s been shaped to look like an animal’s head.”

  “A cat. No, a lion. I didn’t think they had lions in Wales.”

  “It could be a bear. They had them.”

  Aidan had joined them. “If he found gold, he’d have to report it, wouldn’t he? It would be treasure trove. Property of the Crown.”

  “They might have decided a broken bit like that wasn’t important enough to interest the big museums. Do you remember the National Museum in Dublin? They had a whole room full of dazzling Iron Age gold. The authorities could have let him keep this.”

  “Always supposing he told them.”

  There was a recognizable spear head,
part of an amber necklace, a battered coin.

  “This is more like it,” Aidan said.

  “They’ve got a hare,” Melangell’s voice came suddenly high from the other side of the room.

  Jenny started, and hurried to join her. A collection of bones was laid out in a glass case. They were small and slender. There was a skull with a sharp-toothed snout. A card behind them announced:

  Skeleton of a hare.

  Ritual sacrifice. c. 150 BC.

  The Celts in Powys worshipped the

  goddess in the form of a hare.

  Found by Caradoc Lewis in the

  Tanat Valley 1983.

  “So he was barking up that tree thirty years ago,” Aidan said.

  “How did he know they were a hare’s bones?” Melangell asked. “I’ve seen a rabbit with big teeth like that.”

  “Good question. Longer legs? But how did he date them to 150 BC?”

  “Do you think he sent them away to a lab and paid to have them expertly analyzed?” Jenny wondered. “Or did he just convince himself they were what he always believed he would find in the Tanat Valley? Because of the story about St Melangell.”

  “You could always ask him,” Aidan grinned. “Though I don’t fancy putting the question myself.”

  “It’s the last room I’m really looking forward to. The Celtic Christian one.”

  “I’ll be interested to see how he copes with the things he doesn’t believe in.”

  They stepped down into the third room on the upper floor. The first thing that met their eyes was a vertical shaft of granite mounted in the centre of the floor. It bore the faint trace of interlacing knotwork carved on its face.

  “Don’t tell me!” exclaimed Jenny. “That’s the shaft of a Celtic cross.”

  There were floor tiles from a vanished abbey. A silver cloak pin with some more Celtic interlace and a dragon’s head. A pewter goblet that might have served as a chalice.

  A larger notice was attached to the far wall.

  The Tanat Valley retained its memory of

  former holiness even after worship of the

  goddess was suppressed by the Christian

  church. It survived in disguise in the

  cult of the Virgin Mary. The legend of St

  Melangell and her hare in Cwm Pennant

  clearly points to the fact that the animal

  was still a sacred hare.

  Below it was a piece of slate with a modern etching of a hare. Melangell stroked it.

  “He’s here again, isn’t he?”

  Jenny thought she was referring to the animal her small fingers caressed. But then she heard the irascible Welsh accent coming up the stairs on the far side of the Bronze Age gallery. The young curator was remonstrating with him.

  “Mr Lewis! This really isn’t on, you know. You sold me the museum, house and stock. I paid you a fair price for it, considering you weren’t exactly making a profit from it. You just can’t…”

  Jenny felt her face whiten. She pulled Aidan’s arm.

  “It’s Caradoc Lewis again. I don’t think I can face him.”

  He drew her back into the corner of the room, out of sight of the door.

  “No, Mr Lewis!” came the anguished voice from the Iron Age room next door. “You had no right to keep a set of keys. These things don’t belong to you now.”

  “I did the excavations, year after year.” Caradoc Lewis’s tones were savage now with passion. “I found these things. Do you think I’d have sold my collection if there was any other way I could have raised the money to buy that land? Capel-y-Cwm. My bank manager had the nerve to call it ‘just a pile of stones at the back of beyond’. But I bought everything that goes with it. A sacred place, if ever there was one. Forget the church. Christian mumbo-jumbo. Well, no, the yews mark it out as an ancient place of worship. Still…”

  There was the sound of a door slamming open. Things shuffled and rattled.

  “Please be careful! I haven’t catalogued what’s in these cupboards yet. I don’t want anything damaged.”

  Caradoc’s voice became more muffled, as if he might have had his head inside one of the cupboards beneath the displays. “I know what I’m doing, boy. No need to wet your trousers. There are just two things I want. And they wouldn’t mean anything to you unless I told you what they were. Ignoramus!”

  “If there was anything you wanted to keep, you should have said so at the time of the sale.”

  “There! These boxes will do.” The voice rose clearer now, triumphant. “Want to take a look? No, I can see it in your foolish face. You wouldn’t have a clue what you’d be looking at, would you? Not gold. No Iron Age sword. Not the Holy Grail. Not how you’d think of it as, anyway. What’s in these boxes would be boring to someone like you.”

  “I thought the stuff you kept there was just duplicates of what we’ve got on display.”

  “Then you won’t miss these, will you? Good day to you.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” the young man’s voice faltered.

  With relief, Jenny heard footsteps cross the bare boards as they moved to leave.

  The steps halted. Caradoc Lewis’s rich voice rose high with surprise.

  “Well, well! The curiously named Melangell. What are you doing here?”

  Jenny looked round in alarm. Melangell stood, a slight figure with a mop of pale brown curls, in front of the slate carving of the hare, directly opposite the door into the Iron Age room.

  Caradoc Lewis’s steps came slowly closer. Jenny clutched Aidan more tightly. He was starting to move protectively towards Melangell.

  One step down into the room where the Davisons stood. He turned savagely to find Jenny and Aidan against the wall behind the door.

  Aidan he ignored. His dark eyes went straight to Jenny. Their malevolent gaze seemed to bore into her skull. His tall, stooped form was poised like a snake about to strike. He was clutching two cardboard boxes to his chest.

  “You!” he hissed. “Always you, isn’t it? Well, you won’t stop me this time.”

  He wheeled about and almost bounded up the step to the Iron Age room. He clattered across it and they heard him going down the stairs.

  The curator in the red T-shirt came into the Christian Era gallery.

  “I’m sorry. That man’s quite mad. I wish I’d never had anything to do with him. People did warn me.”

  He was shaking, and so was Jenny. But she hardly heeded him, because her memory still burned with the malevolence of Caradoc Lewis’s gaze. She knew with certainty now that the fire in the tower bookshop had been directed at her, had been the work of this eccentric amateur archaeologist. That to him, she was the enemy to his passion for the goddess and the sacred hare.

  And if he had lit that fire to punish her, had endangered that precious church, what else might he have done? Certainly Chief Inspector Denbigh believed there was an intimate connection between the arson and the murder. It might have been Caradoc Lewis’s ferocious enmity towards those who stood in his way that drove him to kill Thaddaeus Brown.

  What did that mean for her?

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “IT MUST BE HIM, mustn’t it?” Jenny said, as they drove back to Pennant Melangell.

  They had followed the Ewarts’ advice and made a visit to Llanfyllin’s historic workhouse. But not even Melangell’s delight at the horrors of being a pauper could dim the memory of Caradoc Lewis’s malevolence.

  “The police seem fairly sure the fire is directly related to … the other.” She glanced briefly back at Melangell, but the girl’s pointed face seemed to be studying the slate quarries on the steep sides of the valley.

  “It seems the only conclusion that makes sense. There are hardly likely to be two violent maniacs on the loose in such a small population.” Aidan looked sideways at her in concern. “We need to tell them about this latest encounter. The police.”

  “I know. It probably won’t sound like anything much, just in words. But when you were f
ace to face with him, it was.”

  “Home tomorrow,” he said. He grinned back at Melangell. “How do you fancy stopping off at Warwick Castle? They’ve got some great realistic scenes of what life was like if you lived there. People, horses, food, weapons. You can dress up as a princess.”

  Melangell’s face came to life.

  “Have they got a dungeon?”

  “Definitely. With bodies.”

  “Aidan! I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

  “They’re only giving kids what they like. Little ghouls.”

  “Mm. If you want to.”

  The brief enthusiasm had faded. Melangell seemed subdued now. She was sucking her thumb and clutching the velvety hare Jenny’s conscience had persuaded her to buy from the museum’s tawdry gift shop.

  Aidan swung into the laurel-fringed car park in front of the House of the Hare. The rain had stopped, but the leaves still glistened wetly.

  “I thought they were closing that little incident room. But things look busy.”

  The number of cars indicated a renewed police activity. Jenny wished she knew which way the detectives’ minds were tending.

  Her legs felt strangely like cotton wool as she stepped out of the car. She steadied herself against the bonnet.

  “Are you all right?” Aidan was suddenly at her side. “No, of course you’re not. Silly question. It would have been quite an energetic day, even without that upset. Go and lie down.”

  “No. I have to see Inspector Denbigh first. He needs to know.”

  “I can tell him.”

  “It wasn’t you he was looking at, as if he was skewering a chicken.”

  They threaded their way through the side path that led to the row of sheds where the police had set up their outpost. PC Watkins came to greet them. She seemed to have established herself as an essential part of the team, among the plain clothes detectives.

  “Can we speak to Chief Inspector Denbigh, please?” Aidan asked. “We’ve got some new information.”

  “You’re out of luck. Will DS Lincoln do?”