Phil Rickman - A Crown of Lights

‘And she let you loose in there? Almost a stranger?’

‘She needs somebody to trust.’

‘Yeah.’ People trusted Betty on sight; it was a rare quality.

‘And she wanted it sorting out, but quite clearly couldn’t face going down there, because of the extra responsibility it might heap on her, which she’s never been good at. And also because there’s a lot of him still there. You can feel him – a clean, precise sort of mind; and frustration because he couldn’t find enough to do with it. So when he was buying a house, he was determined to know everything, get the very best deal.’

‘Not like me, huh?’

Betty smiled. ‘You’re the worst kind of impulse buyer. You even hide things from yourself. You and the Major wouldn’t have got on at all.’

‘So what did you find?’

‘Mrs Wilshire said I could bring anything home that might be useful. I’ve got a cardboard box full of stuff in the car.’

‘But you didn’t bring it in?’

‘Tomorrow.’ Betty leaned her head back. ‘I’ve read enough for one night. No wonder he kept it in the shed.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I mean, in one respect, Major Wilshire was like you – once he’d seen this place, he had to have it. But it also had to be at the right price. And of course he wasn’t remotely superstitious. An old soldier, he wasn’t afraid of anything that couldn’t shoot him. But I suppose that if he happened to come up with certain information that might upset any other potential buyers...’ Betty stopped and rolled her head around to ease tension. ‘It’s funny... the first time I ever went in those ruins, I thought, this is really not a happy place.’

‘This is something the agent should’ve told us? We get to sue the agent?’

‘How very American of you. No, I rather doubt it. All too long ago. Anyway, they told us about Major Wilshire’s death, which was the main drawback, presumably, as far as they were concerned.’

‘So what is this? The ruins are haunted?’

‘We jumped to conclusions. We assumed the church was abandoned because of flooding or no access for cars. Or at least you did.’

‘I assumed. Yeah, assuming is what I do. All the time. OK.’ Robin stood up. ‘I can’t stand it. Gimme the car keys, I’ll go fetch your box of goodies.’

When he arrived back with the stuff, she had cocoa coming up. He slammed and barred the door. He was tingling with cold and damp.

‘Whooo, it’s turned into fog! Was it like that when you were driving home?’

‘Some of the way.’

Just as well he’d fallen asleep earlier and hadn’t known about the fog; he’d have been worried sick about her, with the ice on the roads and all.

He dumped the cardboard wine box on the table. ‘Best not to go out at night this time of year, living in a place like this. Suppose it was so thick you drove into the creek?’

‘Brook,’ Betty said.

‘Whatever.’ Robin unpacked the box. Mostly, it seemed to be photocopies, the top one evidently from some official list of historic buildings.

CHURCH OF ST MICHAEL, OLD HINDWELL.

Ruins of former parish church. Mainly C13 and C14, with later south porch and chancel. Embattled three-stage tower of late C14, rubble-construction with diagonal buttresses to north-west and south-west...

And so on. There were a couple more pages of this stuff, which Robin put aside for further study.

‘Like you said, looks like the Major built up a fairly comprehensive background file.’

He turned up some sale particulars similar to the one he and Betty had received. Same agent – and same wording, give or take.

‘A characterful, historic farmhouse with outbuildings and the picturesque ruins of a parish church, in a most unusual location...’

All true enough, as far as it went. Next, Robin found several pages ripped out of a spiral-bound notebook and bunched together with a bulldog clip. There was handwriting on them, not too intelligible, and a string of phone numbers.

‘What’s this?’

‘Don’t know. Couldn’t make it out. There’s all kinds of junk in there. Mrs Wilshire told me to take it anyway. I think she just wanted to get rid of as much as she could. Right, there you are... that’s the start of it.’

He lifted out a news cutting pasted to a piece of A4. The item was small and faded. ‘Rector Resigns due to Ill Health.’

It said little more than that the Reverend Terence Penney had given up the living of Old Hindwell and had left the area. A replacement was being sought.

‘When was this?’ A date had been scrawled across the newsprint but he couldn’t make it out.

‘Nineteen seventy-seven.’

‘ That late? You mean the Old Hindwell church was still operational until seventy-seven?’

‘’seventy-eight, actually.’

‘Why did I have it in mind it must have been abandoned back in the thirties or forties?’

‘Because you were sold on the idea that it was due to motor vehicles and the brook. Read the letter underneath. It’s from the same woman who wrote the piece in the newspaper.’

It had been typewritten, on an old machine with an old ribbon.

Lower Lodge

Monkshall

Leominster

Herefordshire

18 May

Dear Major Wilshire,

Thank you for your letter. Yes, you are quite right, I did have the dubious honour of being appointed Radnor Valley correspondent of the Brecon and Radnor Express for a few years in the 1970s, receiving, if I recall correctly, something like one halfpenny a line for my jottings about local events of note!

My reports on the departure of the Reverend Penney were not, I must say, the ones of which I am most proud, amounting, as they did, to what I suppose would be termed these days a ‘cover up’. But my late husband and I were comparatively recent incomers to the area and I was ‘walking on eggshells’ and determined not to cause offence to anyone!

However, I suppose after all this time there is no reason to conceal anything any more, especially as there was considerable local gossip about it at the time.

Yes, the Reverend Penney was indeed rather a strange young man, although I am still inclined to discount the rumours that he ‘took drugs’. There were some hippy types living in the area at the time with whom he was quite friendly, so I suppose this is how the rumour originated.

In retrospect, I think Mr Penney was not the most appropriate person to be put in charge of St Michael’s. He was a young man and very enthusiastic, full of ideas, but the local people were somewhat set in their ways and resistant to any kind of change. The church itself was not in very good condition (even before Mr Penney’s arrival!), and the parish was having difficulty raising money for repairs – there were not the grants available in those days – and it was a big responsibility for such a young and inexperienced minister.

Yes, I am afraid that what you have been told is broadly correct, though I must say that I never found any signs of mental imbalance in Mr Penney, in his first year at least. He was always friendly, if a little remote.

My memories of THAT day remain confused. Perhaps we should have suspected something after the small fire, the slippage of tiles from the roof and the repeated acts of apparent vandalism (I realize no charges ever resulted from these continued occurrences, so I hope I can trust you, as a soldier, to treat this correspondence as strictly confidential), but no one could really have predicted the events of that particular October morning. It would not have seemed so bad had it not been raining so hard and the brook in such spate. Naturally, quite a crowd – for Hindwell – gathered and there was much weeping and wailing, although this was quickly suppressed and after that day I do not remember anyone speaking of it – quite extraordinary. It was as if the whole village somehow shared the shame.