Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (59 page)

   
Mr Goff, this is obviously a
terrible thing to happen. It must surely have overshadowed your project here?
   
The press were just so flaming
predictable.

Arnold was in fact moving remarkably well. 'He doesn't think he's
disabled,' Fay said. 'He just thinks he's unique.'

   
They climbed over a stile.
Arnold managed to get under it without too much difficulty. She picked him up
for a while, carried on walking across the field with the dog in her arms. The
few sheep ignored them.

   
The sky was full of veined clouds,
yellow at the edges, like wedges of ancient Stilton cheese.

   
Powys had watched Fay wander
down the field and at one point Memory, vibrating on its helipad, turned her
into Rose in a long white frock and a wide straw hat, very French Impressionist.

   
He blinked and Rose was Fay
again, in light-blue jeans and a Greenpeace T-shirt.

   
She put Arnold down. He fell
over and got up again.

   
Fay stopped and turned to him.

   
'Where is it, then?'

   
He said faintly, 'It isn't
here.'

   
'I thought perhaps there was
something wrong with my eyes,' Fay said.

   
'I don't understand it. This was
the field. There's the river, see. The hills are right. There's the farmhouse,
just through those trees.'

   
Fay didn't say a word.

   
'You think I'm bonkers, don't
you?'

   
'Scheduled ancient monuments
don't just disappear,' she said. 'Do they?'

CHAPTER VI

One of the women who cleaned the church was paid to come into the
vicarage on weekdays to prepare Murray's lunch. He rarely saw her do it,
especially in summer; it would just be there on a couple of dishes, under
clingfilm. Variations on a cold-meat salad and a piece of fruit pie with whipped
cream. She never asked if he enjoyed it or if there was something he would
prefer.

   
He lifted up a corner of the
clingfilm, saw a whitish, glistening smudge of something.

   
Mayonnaise. He knew it could
only be mayonnaise.
   
But still Murray retched and pushed
the plate away. This had been happening increasingly, of late - he'd scraped
the lunch untouched into the dustbin. He never seemed to miss it afterwards,
rarely felt hunger, although he knew he was losing weight and even he could see
his face was gaunt and full of long shadows. Pretty soon, he though sourly,
there would be rumours going around that he had AIDs.

   
Next week he might let it be
known that he was interested in a move. He would see how he felt.

   
Today was not the day to do
anything hasty.

   
Today he'd left the vicarage as
usual, before eight, and walked the fifty yards to the church where he'd found
what he'd found.

   
The church door had not been
damaged because it was never locked. Nothing had been torn or overturned. Only
the cupboard in the vestry, where the communion wine and the chalice were kept,
had been forced.

   
Murray had heard of cases where
centuries-old stained glass had been smashed or, in the case of Catholic
churches, plaster statues pounded to fragments. Swastikas spray-painted on the altar-cloth.
Defecation in the aisle.

   
Nothing so unsubtle here.

   
What was missing was that
element of frenzy, of uncontrolled savagery. This was what had unnerved him,
made him look over his shoulder down the silent nave.

   
Candles - his own Christmas
candles - had been left burning on the altar, two of them, one so far gone that
it was no more than a wick in a tiny pool of liquid wax. Between the candles stood
the communion chalice, not empty.

   
What was in the bottom of the
cup was not mayonnaise.

   
Murray had looked inside once,
then turned away with a short, whispered, outraged prayer - it might have been
a prayer or it might have been a curse; either way it was out of character. His
reserve had been cracked.

   
With distaste, he'd placed the
chalice on the stone floor, remembering too late about fingerprints but knowing
even then hat he would not be calling in the police, because that was all they'd
done.

   
And it was enough.

   
It was inherently worse than
any orgy of spray-paint and destruction. The single small, symbolic act,
profoundly personal, almost tidy. Appalling in its implication, but nothing in itself,
simply not worth reporting to the police and thus alerting the newspapers and Fay
Morrison.

   
'They always ask you,' he
remembered a colleague with an urban parish complaining once, 'if you suspect
Satanism. What are you supposed to say? It's certainly more than anti-social behaviour,
but do you really want some spotty little vandal strutting around thinking he's
the Prince of Darkness?'

   
But this, he thought - staring
down at his cling-wrapped lunch, suddenly nauseous and unsteady - this is
another gesture to
me
. It's saying,
come out. Come out, 'priest', come out and fight.

   
However, as he'd thought while
rinsing out the chalice this morning,
this
can hardly be down to Tessa Byford, can it?

   
Murray had thrown away the
candles, performed a small, lonely service of reconsecration over the chalice
and decided to keep the outrage to himself. By the time the Monday cleaner came
in at ten, there had been no sign of intrusion.

   
As for the small cupboard in
the vestry - he would unscrew it from the wall himself and take it to an
ironmonger's in Leominster, explaining how he'd had to force the lock after being
stupid enough to lose the key. Silly me. Ha ha.

   
Impractical souls, vicars.
Absent-minded, too.

   
Just
how
absent-minded he was becoming was brought dramatically home to
him when the doorbell rang just before two o'clock and he parted the lace
curtains to see a hearse parked in front of the house with a coffin in the
back.

   
It had slipped his mind completely.
But, even so, wasn't it at least a day too early?

   
'Ah, Mr Beech,' the undertaker
said cheerfully. 'Got Jonathon Preece for you.'
   
'Yes, of course.'

   
'Funeral's Wednesday afternoon,
so it's just the two nights in the church, is it?'

   
'Yes, I... I wasn't expecting
him so soon. I thought, with the post mortem . . .'

   
'Aye, we took him for that
first thing this morning and collected him afterwards.'

   
'Oh. But didn't you have things
to, er . . . ?'

   
'No, we cleaned him up
beforehand, Mr Beech. If there's no embalming involved, it's a quick turnover.
Right then, top of the aisle, is it? Bottom of the steps before the altar,
that's where we usually . . .'

   
'Yes, fine. I'll . . . '

   
'Now you just leave it to us,
Mr Beech. We know our way around. We'll make 'im comfortable.'

'In that case,'
 
Jean Wendle said
firmly, 'do you mind if I come in and wait? If that wouldn't be disturbing
you.'

   
A refusal would be impossible.
This was a deliberate, uncompromising foot-in-the-door situation, it having
occurred to Jean that if she took it easy, she might actually get more out of
the wife.

   
Mrs Preece took half a step
back. With no pretence of not being reluctant, she held the cottage door open
just wide enough for Jean to slide inside. There were roses around the door, which
was nice, which showed somebody cared. Or had cared.

   
'Thank you.'

   
The first thing Jean noticed in
the parlour was a fresh onion on a saucer on top of the television.

   
She was fascinated. She hadn't
seen this in years.

   
Mrs Preece actually had hair
like an onion, coiled into a tight, white bun, and everything else about her
was closed up just as tight.

   
She looked unlikely to offer
her guest a cup of tea.
   
'I do realize things must be very
difficult for you at present,' Jean said, if there is anything I can do . . .'
   
Mrs Preece snorted.

   
Jean smiled at her. 'The reason
I'm here, the public meeting will be upon us tomorrow evening and I felt there
were one or two things I should like to know in advance.'

   
'If you're yere as a spy for Mr
Max Goff,' Mrs Preece said bluntly, 'then there's no need to dress it up.'

   
Jean was not unpleasantly
surprised.

   
'Do you know, Mrs Preece,' she said,
being equally blunt, 'this is the first experience I've ever had of an
indigenous Crybbe person coming right out with something, instead of first
skirting furtively around the issue.'

   
'Maybe you been talking to the
wrong people,' said Mrs Preece.

   
'And who, would you say, are
the "wrong" people? By the way, I wouldn't waste that nice onion on
me.'
   
'I
beg
your pardon.'

   
'Just don't tell me,' Jean said
levelly, 'that the onion on the saucer is there to absorb paint smells or
germs. You put it there to attract any unwelcome emanations from people you
don't want in your house. And when they've gone you quietly dispose of the
onion. Will you be getting rid of it when I leave, Mrs Preece?'

   
Mrs Preece, face reddening,
looked down at her clumpy brown shoes.

   
'Or am I flattering myself?'
Jean said.
   
'I don't know what you're talking
about.'
   
'Och, away with you, Mrs Preece. I'm
no' one of your London innocents.'

   
'You're none of you innocent,'
Mrs Preece cried. 'You're all as guilty as, as . . .' Her voice dropped. 'As
guilty as sin.'
   
'Of what?' Jean asked gently.

   
Mrs Preece shook her head.
'You're not getting me going, I'm not stupid. You must know as you're doing no
good for this town.'

   
'And why is that, Mrs Preece?
Do you mind if I sit down?'
   
And before Mrs Preece could argue,
Jean had slipped into the Mayor's fireside chair.

   
'Because it seems to me, you
see, that all the new people love Crybbe just exactly the way it is, Mrs
Preece. They would hate anything to happen to the local traditions. In fact
that's why I'm here. I was hoping your husband could tell me a wee bit about
the curfew.'

   
Mrs Preece turned away.

   
'I'm also compiling a small
history of the town and its folklore,' Jean said.

   
'Nothing to tell,' Mrs Preece said
eventually. 'Nothing that's not written down already.'

   
'I don't think so. I think there
is a remarkable amount to tell which has never been written down.'

   
Mrs Preece stood over Jean. She
wore a large, striped apron, like a butcher's. Discernible anxiety in her eyes
now.

   
'Tell
me
about it, Mrs Preece. Tell me about the ritual which your
husband's family has maintained so
selflessly
for so many centuries.'

   
'Just a bequest,' the Mayor's
wife said. 'That's all. A bequest of land a long time ago in the sixteenth
century. Depending on the bell to be rung every night.'

   
'This is codswallop,' Jean
Wendle said. 'This is a smokescreen.'

   
'Well, we 'ave the documents to
prove it!' Mrs Preece was getting angry. 'That's how much it's codswallop!'

   
'Oh, I'm sure you do. But the
real reason for the curfew, is it not, is to protect the town from . . . well,
let's call it the Black Dog.'

   
Mrs Preece's face froze like a
stopped clock.

   
Into the silence came lazy
footsteps on the path.