The Fabric of Sin: A Merrily Watkins Mystery Read online

  ‘And this is what it said to Felix?’

  ‘This one didn’t speak to Felix, Merrily,’ Fuchsia said. ‘It spoke to me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And now my aura’s permeated with darkness.’ Fuchsia opened her arms. ‘Can you see?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Some priests can. Not the man at Garway, he was no help at all, but there was a very good guy in the place I grew up. He’d packed it in, but it never goes away. It’s a calling, like they say. I believe that, Merrily. If you answer the call, you may receive gifts.’

  ‘It’s as well to be careful about gifts,’ Merrily said. ‘You can never be too sure who they’re from.’

  Fuchsia crouched in front of the stove and opened up its vents, pale flames spurting in the glass square. On a shelf to the left of the stainless steel flue, Merrily read titles from a stack of paperbacks. The Gap in the Curtain, The Secrets of Dr Taverner, The Flint Knife, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.

  ‘Where did you grow up, Fuchsia?’

  ‘West Wales. Cardiganshire.’ Fuchsia watched the flames. ‘I was born there.’

  No Welsh accent, though. Through the caravan window, Merrily saw a man in a hat coming out of the mist.

  ‘Felix was there, too,’ Fuchsia said.

  ‘In Cardiganshire?’

  ‘In the place where I was born. He was there when I entered the world.’ Fuchsia smiled, her face reflected, stretched and warped, in the shiny flue. ‘Felix cut my cord, Merrily.’

  Merrily blinked.

  ‘Which makes for a lifelong connection,’ Fuchsia said.

  Something you learned as a deliverance minister: whatever ghosts were, there were people who saw them and people who wanted to see them, and they were seldom the same people.

  Put it this way: if whatever had happened at Garway had happened to Felix Merrily would have been more inclined to believe it.

  He was a big, untamed-looking man in a leather waistcoat. Long red-grey hair in a rubberbanded ponytail, a wide smile through a stubble like sharp sand. He’d left his wellies at the bottom of the caravan steps, and she saw that his woollen socks had been darned. How often nowadays did socks get darned?

  ‘Didn’t really want this, Mrs Watkins.’ He lowered himself with a sigh into the sofa opposite her; he had to be a good twenty years older than Fuchsia. ‘I just wanted off the job, and that would be an end to it, but Adam … he’s like a terrier, is Adam.’

  ‘He likes you. Trusts you to get it right.’

  ‘He should know better.’ Felix pulled out a dented cigarette tin and Rizlas. ‘All right if I …?’

  ‘Please do. In fact …’ Merrily reached gratefully down to her bag, bringing out the Silk Cut and the Zippo. ‘And he doesn’t want to see you lose the contract, if something can be … cleared up.’

  ‘I never asked for this. I want you to know that. I said to Adam, leave it. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘But then he told me,’ Fuchsia said, ‘and I realized you must be meant, Merrily.’

  ‘Meant,’ Merrily said.

  ‘It’s a matter of metaphysics.’

  Merrily looked at Felix, who said nothing, and back at Fuchsia whose wide-eyed gaze met hers full-on.

  ‘That house is diseased, you see. We need spiritual antibiotics.’

  ‘You know a bit about these things, then.’

  ‘I know that this is about good and evil, Merrily,’ Fuchsia said, ‘and I’ve experienced the evil.’

  ‘OK.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘Do you want to tell me?’

  4

  Nearest the Scissors

  DUST SHEETS?

  Mostly heavy-duty plastic, Felix explained. They’d laid them on the floor where the damp and sunken stone flags had been taken up. This was after the roof had been made safe. First things first. They’d spread the dust sheets on the floor, so they could make a start on the walls.

  ‘Lime-plaster,’ Fuchsia said. ‘I love it.’

  ‘You should see her,’ Felix said. ‘She moves like a dragonfly.’

  ‘Not that day.’ Fuchsia moved closer to the wood stove. ‘There was no air that day. It was close and heavy outside, but still damp inside the house. My wings …’ She giggled bleakly, a sound like pills rattling in a jar. ‘My wings were drooping.’

  ‘It was the first time she’d been there, see,’ Felix said. ‘I have three blokes in the regular team, they’d made a start on the roof.’

  Fuchsia watched the flames.

  ‘I was looking forward to it. It seemed a lovely area. It has two personalities, Merrily. Long, light views on the English side, and then deep green and full of drama as it swoops down to the Monnow Valley and Wales.’ She gripped her knees. ‘All spoiled now.’

  Felix looked at her, worried, then he turned to Merrily.

  ‘So … Ledwardine, eh? You know Gomer Parry?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Danny Thomas?’

  ‘Not quite as well. I didn’t meet him until he became Gomer’s partner in the plant-hire.’

  ‘I was in Danny’s band in the Seventies,’ Felix said. ‘Bass. Fingers always too messed up for anything more delicate than a bass guitar, and a bit clumsy at that. I think we did one gig, and I wouldn’t say folks was actually walking out the door—’

  ‘It was full of death,’ Fuchsia said. ‘The cold, white, waxy stillness of death.’

  Merrily saw Felix grit his teeth, turning away from Fuchsia, whose elongated reflection in the stainless-steel flue was starting to look like Munch’s Scream.

  ‘I didn’t know whether it wanted me out or it wanted me dead, Merrily.’

  ‘Stop it, girl.’

  Felix’s fingers gripping his knees. Merrily knelt down next to Fuchsia on the rug.

  ‘What made you think that something wanted you dead?’

  Fuchsia shrugged.

  ‘I tried to work – I went out, I came back, I went out again. And then I went back. I am a professional.’ She stared defiantly at Merrily. ‘Felix went back on his own the next day, and when he came home it was like it was all over him. I made him shower and then I burned all the clothes he’d been wearing. Just out there, Merrily. I poured petrol on them.’

  Merrily nodded. Very early in her deliverance career she’d been advised to do something similar, to draw a line under a particular situation. Some things it was easier not to question.

  ‘You said you went back.’

  ‘It was under the dust sheets.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘I tried to ignore it, but all the time I could hear the dust sheets behind me, wriggling and rippling and whispering. The air was really thick and heavy and I wouldn’t let myself turn round.’

  ‘Felix wasn’t there?’

  ‘I was checking out the granary,’ Felix said. ‘Working out how many steps could be repaired. Heard her screaming, started running …’

  Fuchsia was staring down at her hands, mumbling something. Merrily bent to her.

  ‘I’m sorry …?’

  ‘A face of crumpled linen,’ Felix said. ‘She’s said that a few times.’

  ‘That’s what you saw?’

  Fuchsia nodded her head violently and bent forward as if she had awful stomach-ache, and Felix looked depairingly at Merrily, and then Fuchsia said, ‘Can we do it in the church?’

  ‘The blessing. Don’t see why not. But I’d need to clear it with the vicar.’

  ‘No. There’s no need, Merrily.’

  ‘Well, it’s what we usually do, but …’ At least she was on fairly good terms with the minister at Monkland; she could get away with it. ‘If you’d rather not make a thing out of it …’

  ‘Not this church,’ Fuchsia said.

  She’d insisted on changing first, into something white.

  The old-fashioned way. All due ceremony.

  Merrily went back across the field, through the clearing mist, to the car and brought the blue case out of the boot
. Inside it were the holy water and oil for anointing. Borrowed from Roman Catholicism but it was sometimes helpful. Partly theatre.

  She waited in the field, with Felix.

  ‘Those books on the shelf near the stove – are they yours or Fuchsia’s?’

  ‘I don’t read much nowadays. Half a page and I fall asleep. If they en’t technical books, they en’t mine.’

  ‘I meant the ghost stories.’

  ‘Oh. Aye, she likes the old ghost stories. Sometime she’ll read one aloud and it scares the pants off me, but she just giggles. Finds them comforting, mabbe. The old houses, the formality, the stiff way people talk. Stilted. Sometimes she says she was born out of time. Wrong place, wrong time.’

  ‘Where was she born?’

  ‘She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘She said Cardiganshire.’

  ‘Well, that …’ Felix half smiled. ‘That’s more or less right. You heard of Tepee City?’

  ‘Blimey, is it still there?’

  ‘I reckon. Likely the longest-surviving alternative community in Britain by now. I was there about a year, as a young feller. Gap year, as you might say. Nice folks, in the main. Had to pull your weight, mind, or you wouldn’t be welcome for too long.’

  ‘So you were a tepee dweller.’

  ‘Bender, in my case. You know – the ole bent-over sapling kind of thing?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Only there a year, like I say, but I never regretted it. When you eventually graduate to building and rebuilding proper houses, if the first ones you ever put together was benders you’ve probably got your priorities right – make it warm, watertight and use natural insulation.’

  ‘Fuchsia said you, erm …’

  ‘Cut her cord? Aye, she likes to tell people that.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It is, actually.’ Felix squeezed his prickly jaw. ‘Childbirth in the valley, it could be like a communal event. I just happened to be nearest the scissors. Afterwards, Mary asked me to be her … godfather, kind of thing. Though we never went to church, just down the wood. Where we lit a fire, asked the gods to bless the child … bit pagan, sorry about that, but they did, kind of … you know, they included Jesus.’

  Merrily smiled faintly.

  ‘Then we played some music, smoked some weed, and I held the child for a bit and made some vows in the smoke.’

  ‘So you and Fuchsia’s mother – I’m sorry for asking personal questions but it helps to know a few basics …’

  ‘No,’ Felix said. ‘Me and Mary, that never really happened. I wanted it to, at the time, I en’t denying that. She was beautiful. Thin. Fragile. Didn’t have much to say. Needed looking after. When she turned up at Tepee City, she was already pregnant. Said the father’d buggered off to America to go on the road in a pick-up truck. I suppose I got closer to her than anybody, but not as close as I’d’ve liked, you know? She stayed a few months, and then she … she just left.’

  ‘With the baby?’

  ‘No, she left the baby in the Valley. With another family.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘More or less. Rachel, the woman who took Fuchsia, she was this earth-mother type, done it before. I mean, it was that kind of place. Fuchsia was a child of the tribe, kind of thing. We thought Mary was gonner come back – she said she’d been offered a job, good money and she’d be back for the kid. The social services tried to find her, got nowhere. So it ended up with Rachel adopting Fuchsia, or fostering her, whatever. And I kept in touch, kind of thing. Helped out. Sent money.’

  ‘You left when it was clear that Fuchsia’s mother wasn’t going to come back?’

  ‘No, no, what happened, my ole feller died suddenly, I had to sort things out. He had a builder’s yard, my dad. I sold it after a bit, went to work for a firm of conservation builders. Learning the trade, kind of thing. Then went on my own, built up a business. Got married, got divorced. Then Fuchsia showed up.’

  ‘What, just appeared?’

  ‘We’d put her through art college, see.’

  ‘You had?’

  ‘Had the money by then, Mrs Watkins. Why not? I mean, I never meant for this … for us to be like, you know, how it’s turned out. She just arrived one day, and she was interested in what I was doing, the conservation work, and she hadn’t got a job …’

  ‘She went to work for you, before there was any … relationship?’

  ‘That was how it started, aye.’ Felix wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. ‘I call her my plasterer – what she does really is mouldings, recreates original colours, experiments with limewashes. She just loves the feel of plaster.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Watkins, I’m under no illusions about how long it’s gonner last, but we’re rebuilding that—’ Felix nodded towards the barn. ‘It was a ruin, and I’m determined to make it into a proper home for her. Like an ancestral home, kind of thing, for the ancestry she’ll never have. She reads all these stories about folks living in country houses, and if I can give her that, things might be … good. For a while.’

  ‘You never heard from her mother again?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘You’d never tried to find her?’

  ‘Didn’t know where to start. No idea where she was from. She had a bit of a Brummie accent, I remember, and she was mixed race – one of them must’ve been black. Fuchsia reckons she’s dead.’

  ‘Why does she think that?’

  ‘Just a feeling. There’s this kind of tribal mysticism in Tepee City, and she had a period of building fires in a clearing in the wood and looking for Mary in the smoke. Now she just mopes around ole churches and reads ghost stories. I was hoping, when the barn was finished, it’d be some kind of stability.’

  Merrily looked at him, saying nothing. There was a sadness here. A longing, but also a realistic suspicion that it wasn’t going to work out.

  ‘If you can take away the fear,’ Felix said. ‘If you could just do that … you know?’

  ‘You think it’s more than just this place – the Master House.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know. I believe something happened to her in that place, I just don’t know if it’s … in her mind. I don’t know, Mrs Watkins. I accept that these things go on.’

  ‘What I mean is, you have a feeling for houses, but nothing seems to have … I mean for you …’

  ‘It didn’t have anything to say to me, good or bad. What I usually do, if a place is blocking me, is I’ll spend a night inside, in a sleeping bag. You wake up in a house, you can somehow get a proper feel of it. I might’ve got round to that, but … she didn’t want me to. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but … it’s just a job. Just money.’

  ‘Right. Erm … why’s it called the Master House, do you know?’

  ‘Not really. Bloke I spoke to said it goes back to the Templars who built Garway church. They had masters and grand masters, apparently. It could be old enough, I found fourteenth-century bits, maybe older.’

  ‘Did you ask anybody if it was supposed to be haunted? Anybody locally?’

  ‘A woman we talked to said it wouldn’t be a surprise. Said it hadn’t been a happy house.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Has a smallholding, edge of the hamlet. Sells free-range eggs and honey and herbs. Mrs Mornington … Morningside. Something like that.’

  ‘And the reason you won’t go back now is purely …’

  ‘See it from my position, if you can,’ Felix said.

  Fuchsia came down the caravan steps then, wearing what looked like a bridesmaid dress with a bodice of white lace. The colours in her hair were like streaks of oil rainbowed in dark water.

  Merrily felt a flicker of unease and glanced at Felix, but he was gazing across at Monkland church with its halo of gilded mist.

  Pity this wasn’t the church they were using. She had no history here.

  Felix turned and saw Fuchsia and swallowed.

  ‘Looks so much like her now
it scares me a bit.’

  ‘Her mother.’

  ‘Aye.’

  5

  Who is This?

  THE LAST TIME Merrily had been inside the Church of St Cosmas and St Damien, somebody had sacrificed a crow on one of the altars.

  These things happened, just occasionally, after a church had been decommissioned by the C of E, left to fade into film-set Gothic.

  Lifting cloak and cassock to climb into Felix’s silver truck outside the caravan, she was remembering the crow’s entrails arranged like intricate jewellery on the right-hand altar. It was a church with two of everything – twin chancels, twin naves – with a pulpit in the middle. They might see this as representing a dualism, Huw Owen, her spiritual director, had said at the time. Left and right, darkness and light.

  This was in the very early days in Deliverance, and she’d blown it, been unable to handle the necessary cleansing of the church. Emotionally exposed at the time, her senses still snagged on memories of a fairly sickening job in the old General Hospital. Feeling clammy, palms itching, and then the explosion of coughing … and Huw, supervising, ordering her out.

  This was when she’d been advised to burn the vestments she’d been wearing, and she’d done that, in an incinerator behind the vicarage. Burned everything, except for …

  Oh God.

  … This cloak, the same heavy, woollen, cowled cape that she’d worn here on the night of her humiliation. Because it hadn’t been at the General Hospital, it had seemed OK not to burn it. After all, they weren’t cheap, these cloaks, the female clergy still a minority market.

  But – never dismiss coincidence – it was better not to take it in. She began to unlace the cloak as the truck bounced down an eroded lane where torn shards of tarmac were crumbling like piecrust into the verges and Fuchsia’s voice came cawing from the back seat.

  ‘Are you High Church, then, Merrily? Anglo-Catholic?’

  ‘Oh, well, I’ve never been one for labels, Fuchsia. You adapt … compromise where you can.’

  Mix-’n’-match. Pick your own. Anything works now, in the new, flexible C of E.

  ‘Do you have a statue of Our Lady in your church, Merrily?’