Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘He doesn’t need to know what happened to you.’

Knowing, as she said it, that she was wrong. Kent Asprey would need to know and, while Mrs Morningwood might get away with her story about the head injury, how many people emerged from car crashes with strangulation marks?

‘Sooner or later this is going to hit you, Muriel.’

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

‘No, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. You get some rest, I’ll pace around for a couple of hours.’

When she turned at the door, Mrs Morningwood was standing by the window, a wounded smile on damaged lips. Or maybe not a smile at all, just the wound. It just had to be someone she knew.

‘And no, you won’t wake up to find police at the bedside,’ Merrily said.

‘Thank you.’

‘You need anything, just—’

‘I won’t. Equally, if you need to go out to attend to your parish affairs, go ahead.’

‘Right.’

Merrily went unhappily downstairs and through the kitchen to the scullery. Sat down and stared at the blotter on the desk, trying to be impressed by Mrs Morningwood’s resilience, but becoming only more mystified, not to say horrified by the bloody woman’s ability to contain the rage and the pain which ought to be taking her apart.

Merrily felt useless, ineffectual and – Jane had been right – some kind of doormat. She’d … for God’s sake, she’d just cleaned up a crime scene . This monster was out there, and she’d mopped up his mess, destroyed any usable traces of his DNA, and she …

… needed to pray and couldn’t.

Her palms were moist with sweat and she couldn’t summon the will even to put them together. A kind of barren coldness in her chest. A sense of desertion, as if something had vanished from her life.

Like the meaning of it. Like a basic feel for the spiritual validity of her job, her role in this black farce. Like any kind of self-worth.

She made herself look up Adam Eastgate’s number in the index. Maybe, if she hadn’t been so flattened by the Bishop’s early call, she’d have stood up to Mrs Morningwood, made her see some sense.

Stood up to a woman who’d been beaten up and raped? Made her ‘see sense’?

Merrily shook her head almost savagely, as if this could crumble the sludge in her brain so that the fragments might resettle into some random but interpretable pattern. Then she lit a cigarette, picked up the black bakelite phone, abruptly replaced it, reverted to the mobile and made the call.

‘No, the Bishop didn’t phone,’ Adam Eastgate said. ‘He came to see us, Merrily. At home.’

‘He came to your home?’

‘Said he was passing – I live over at Burghill, not the kind of place you just happen to pass. What he had to say made sense, I suppose. A pity, mind.’

‘He told you … what, exactly?’ She was aware of her stomach contracting. Close to an ulcer . ‘He suggested that it might be dangerous to be connected with a murder and suicide?’

‘More or less.’

‘For the Church or the Duchy?’

‘I think he meant for us, but that would be our problem, wouldn’t it?’

‘Maybe suggesting it would not look good if it got out that I’d administered a blessing for Fuchsia, in a disused church, just a short time before she killed her partner? Did he say that?’

‘Close.’

‘And if it got out that I’d been involved at the behest of the Duchy of Cornwall …’

‘He might have said something like that as well, aye.’

Merrily had expected a reluctance to answer her questions, but it wasn’t there. Eastgate wasn’t obviously eager, but he wasn’t erecting barriers.

‘Did the Bishop tell you I’d come to the conclusion that Fuchsia had made the whole thing up? So it had all been for nothing.’

‘My information is that the inquest will be told that the girl killed Felix and then took her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed. I think that’s the official wording.’

‘So, erm … did you then tell the Bishop that you didn’t want us to take it any further?’

‘No. I didn’t say that.’

‘Oh.’

‘I liked Felix. I was wishing I could turn the clock back to the time we were first offered the property by the Grays. If I could unmake that deal, I’d be a happier man.’

She remembered him standing by the window in the Duchy’s barn. We don’t often make mistakes .

‘Adam, when you bought it, did you know about the feud with the Gwilyms? That is, did you know the Grays were offering it to you specifically because they wanted to keep it out of the hands of the Gwilyms? That they wanted it to go to someone richer, more remote … impregnable. Someone who couldn’t be leaned on to sell it. Did you know any of that?’

‘Not then, no. I learned some of it later, and I’ve since had a long chat with Paul Gray. Yesterday, in fact. Mr Gray’s got his problems, as you may know.’

‘Yes.’

‘He told me he didn’t want them compounded by an old feud. He didn’t want – if anything should happen to him – for his wife to be left with it.’

‘The feud.’

‘Or the house. He wanted to apologize for unloading an unhappy place on us. He’d considered us as – like you just said – rich and remote. Hadn’t realized that local people would be involved.’

‘An unhappy place.’

‘Well, he’s not had much luck, has he? In that situation, mind, you can get a bit irrational. I told him we were taking steps. I was sorry for the man. Sorry for all of us.’

‘This was before the Bishop …?’

‘Obviously. It was … disappointing, the Bishop’s attitude.’ Eastgate spoke slowly, edging around something. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. Left us in a bit of a dilemma.’

‘Has it?’

‘As you know, I was in two minds, from the start, about involving the Church, but I’d told them I liked the look of you, and it couldn’t do any harm.’

‘Told who?’

‘You must’ve realized there’d be people I needed to keep informed. And when the Bishop backed off, I referred the whole thing up. That is, to my immediate boss in the Duchy.’

‘Right.’

‘And he referred it further up.’

‘How much further?’

‘I think you know what I’m saying.’

Blimey .

‘When was this?’

‘First thing this morning. You should expect a call, Merrily.’

‘From …?’

‘I was asked to provide what information I could about you. I’m telling you this in case someone mentions it. I wouldn’t like you to think we were going behind your back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Somebody went on your website, found a lot about deliverance, not much about you personally.’

‘Low-key, Adam. Part of the brief.’

‘Your daughter’s been a bit of a feisty lass, mind.’

‘That isn’t on the website.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘If you’re talking about the stones in Coleman’s Meadow,’ Merrily said, ‘for what it’s worth, I’m behind Jane all the way. I’m sorry if—’

‘No, no, that’s good, Merrily. That was well received. Part of our heritage. I was going to say that, meanwhile, someone else was consulted. A senior person in the Church who knows you. Thinks a lot about you, as it turns out. Anyway … you should expect a call.’

‘Who was this you spoke to? In the Church.’

‘Merrily, I’m just the land agent.’

‘Expect a call, you said?’

‘Aye.’

‘Is this a call for which I need to wear my best cassock? As it were.’

‘No.’ Eastgate laughed. ‘That’s not how it works.’

When she stood up, it felt as if the scullery floor was tilting beneath her feet, and she had to get out of here, and the damn mobile was chiming again.