The Man in the Moss (51 page)

           
'I wasn't invited to play rubber-bone, but I seem to be
intact.'

           
The Duchess nodded, 'I don't know how you found me - no,
don't explain, it's not important. I didn't mention the man to Moira, she has
enough problems, I think. But if you wanted to help her, you might keep an eye
open for him. If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need
never know, need she?'

           
Macbeth started thinking about the knights and the Holy
Grail.

           
And this guy ... Stanton? Stansfield?

Part Seven

From
Dawber's
Secret
Book of
Bridelow
(unpublished):

THE HISTORY OF BEER

Beer, of course, was brewed
in Bridelow long before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ale was the
original sacred drink, made from the water of the holy spring and the blessed
barley and preserved with the richly-aromatic bog myrtle from the Moss.

                       
Nigel Pennick writes, in his book
Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition:

                       
'Cakes or bread and ale are the sacrament of
country tradition. The runic word for ale -
ALU
- is composed of the three runes
As
,
Lagu
and
Ur
. The first rune has the meaning of
the gods
or
divine power
;
the second
water
and
flow
, and the third
primal strength
. The eating of bread and drinking of ale is the
mystery of the transmutation of the energy in the grain into a form where it is
reborn in our physical bodies.'

                       
It follows, therefore, that, to some local
people, the sale of the Bridelow brewery and the detachment of the beer-making
process from its ancient origins, would seem to be a serious sapping of the
village's inherent strength, perhaps even a symbolic draining away of its
lifeblood.

CHAPTER
I

'She's got to be in. I can
hear the kettle boiling.'

           
And boiling and boiling. Whistling through the house. The
kettle having hysterics.
           
'I've got a key,' Willie said,
bringing out the whole bunch of them.

           
A dark, damp dread was settling around Moira. She took a
step back on the short path leading to Ma Wagstaff's front door. Held on to a
gatepost, biting a lip.

           
'What the f—' The door opening a few inches, then jamming
and Willie putting his shoulder to it. 'Summat caught behind here ...'

           
'Hey, stop, Willie ... Jesus.'

           
Through the crack in the door, she'd seen a foot,
black-shod and pointing upwards. She drew Willie gently back and showed him.

           
'Oh, Christ,' Willie said drably.

           
He didn't approach the door again. He said quietly,
'Moira, do us a favour. Nip across to t'Post Office. Fetch Milly.'
           
'What about a doctor?'

           
'She wouldn't thank you for a doctor. Just get Milly.
Milly Gill.'

Moira didn't need to say a
word. Milly Gill looked at her and lost her smile, shooed out two customers and
shut up the post office. Ran ahead of Moira across the street, big floral bosom
heaving.

           
When they got to the house, Willie had the front door
wide open and tears of horror in his eyes. Milly Gill moved past him to where
the old woman lay in a small, neat bundle at the bottom of the stairs, eyes
like glass buttons, open mouth a breathless void, one leg crooked under her
brown woollen skirt.

           
The body looked as weightless as a sparrow. Moira doubted
she'd ever seen anything from which life was so conspicuously absent. A life
which, obviously, had been so much more than the usual random mesh of
electrical impulses. Even when it was moving, the little body had been the
least of Ma Wagstaff.

           
This was a big death.

           
Willie Wagstaff stood in the front garden looking at his
shoes, drawing long breaths. His hands hung by his sides, fingers motionless.
The kettle's wild whistling ended with a gasp, and then Milly Gill came out and
joined them. 'You'll need a doctor, Willie, luv.'

           
His head came up, eyes briefly bright, but the spark of
hope fading in an instant.

           
'Death certificate,' Milly said softly. She took his arm.
'Come on. Post Office. I'll make us some tea.'

           
The street was silent, but doors were being opened,
curtains tweaked aside. Shadowed faces; nobody came out - everybody sensing the
death mood in the dusky air.

           
Moira thought bleakly,
They don't die like this, people like Ma Wagstaff. Not at a time of crisis.
They don't have accidents and sudden heart attacks. They know when it's over,
and they go quietly and usually in their own time.

           
At the Post Office doorway, Milly Gill called out to the
street at large, 'it's Ma Wagstaff. Nothing anybody can do.' She turned to
Willie, 'No point in keeping it a secret, is there, luv?'

           
Moira heard Willie saying, 'I was only with her this
morning.' The way people talked, facing the mindless robbery of a sudden death.

           
And I saw her less
than an hour ago, and she was in some state, Willie ... she was in some state.

           
'I'd guess it couldn't have been quicker,' Milly Gill
said unconvincingly, leading them through the Post Office into a flowery little
sitting room behind. 'She's still warm, poor old luv. Maybe she had a seizure
or something, going downstairs. Sit yourselves down, I'll put kettle on and
phone for t'doctor.'

           
'This is Moira Cairns,' said Willie.

           
'How d'you do. Plug that fire in, Willie, it's freezing.'

           
Scrabbling down by the hearth, Willie looked up at Moira
through his mousy fringe, fishing out a weak smile that was almost apologetic.

           
'I should go,' Moira said. 'Last thing you need is me.'

           
Willie got to his feet, nervously straightening his
pullover, 'I wouldn't say that. No.'

           
She thought, Poor Willie. Who's he got left? No mother,
no Matt, no job maybe, no direction. Only fingers drumming at the air.

           
'Is there only you ... No brothers, sisters ... ?'
           
'Two sisters,' Willie said.
'There's always more girls. By tradition, like.'

           
Moira sat on the end of a settee with bright, floral
loose-covers. The carpet had a bluebell design and there were paintings and
sketches of wild flowers on the walls.

           
'Ah,' Willie said, 'she had to go sometime. She were
eighty ... I forget. Getting on, though. Least she dint suffer, that's the main
thing '

           
Oh, but she did,
Willie
... She couldn't look at him, her worried eyes following a single
black beam across the ceiling.
           
Two bunches of sage were
hanging from it, the soft, musty scent favouring the
 
atmosphere. Homely.

           
'No hurry,' Milly Gill was saying in another room, on the
phone to the doctor. 'If there's sick people in t'surgery, you see to them
first. See to the living.'

           
When she came back into the sitting room, there were two
cats around her ankles.

           
'Bob and Jim.' Willie's eyes were damp. 'Little buggers.
Didn't see um come.'

           
Moira said, 'Your ma's cats?'

           
Willie smiled. 'Not any more. Cats'll always find a home.
These buggers knew where to come. They'll not be the only ones.'

           
'This lady's with the Mothers' Union, right?'
           
Willie said, 'You know about
that, eh?'
           
'I knew about this one when
she first come in,' said Milly Gill. 'We'll have to have a talk sometime, luv.'

           
Her watchful, grey eyes said she also knew that women
like Ma Wagstaff did not fall downstairs after having unexpected strokes or
heart attacks. Willie's fingers had known that too, had felt it coming,
whatever it was.

           
'Soon, huh?' Moira said.

Joel Beard said, 'Here? In
my ... in the churchyard?'

           
He and the policeman were standing in the church porch,
the wet afternoon draining into an early dusk.

           
'It's a possibility, vicar,' Ashton said, it's something
we have to check out, and the sooner we do it the less likely we are to attract
attention. You haven't had any Press here, I take it?'

           
Joel Beard shook his curls. 'Why would they come here?'

           
'They would if they knew what we were proposing to do,
sir, and these things have a habit of leaking out. So ... I don't know if
you've had experience of an exhumation before, but what it involves is
screening off the immediate area and confining it to as few people as are
absolutely necessary. You can be there yourself if you like, but I assure you
we'll be very tidy. Now, the lights ...'

           
'Lights? You mean you want to do it tonight? I thought
these things took ...'

           
'Not much more than a phone call involved these days,
sir. We're under quite a lot of pressure to find this thing, as you can
imagine.'

           
Joel said, 'It all seems so unlikely.'

           
It didn't, though. It connected all too plausibly.
'Inspector, how do you suppose that this was actually done? Without anything
being seen?'

           
'This was what I was planning to ask you. Country
churchyard, even at night somebody sees something, don't they? Perhaps they saw
and they kept quiet, mmm? When was the grave dug?'

           
'I don't know,' Joel said, 'I imagine the day before. The
Rector was in charge then, but he ... he's in hospital. He's had a heart
attack.'

           
'That's unfortunate,' Ashton said. 'No, you see, what's
been suggested to us is that the grave was dug deeper than is normal and then
the body was brought here and covered with earth and then the funeral went
ahead as normal, with Mr Castle's coffin laid on top of the bog body.'

           
'That's preposterous,' Joel said.

           
It wasn't, though. Somehow there was a link here with the
old woman and the bottle she'd been attempting to secrete into Castle's coffin.

           
'You see, our information is that there was a request
from some people here for the body to be returned to the bog. And when it
seemed unlikely that was going to happen, somebody decided to pinch it. Would
you know anything about that, Mr Beard?'

           
'Good Lord,' Joel said. 'No, I certainly wouldn't. You
know, I think, on the whole, that I should like to be there when you ... do
it.'

           
'I thought you might,' said Ashton.

Moira felt weary and
ineffectual, and she had a headache. Walking, head down, into the Rectory
drive, she was speared by lights.

           
Cathy parked her father's VW Golf crookedly in front of
the garage.

           
'How is he?'

           
'He's OK,' Cathy said quickly, unlocking the front door.
'I'm sorry, I didn't leave you a key, did I? I'm hopelessly inefficient.'

           
About her father - Moira saw she was playing this down.

           
Cathy unloaded plastic carrier bags and her long
university scarf on to the kitchen worktops, all stark, white butcher's-shop
tiling. 'I went into Manchester afterwards. Had to get away somewhere crowded,
to think. Got loads of cold things from Marks and Sparks. You don't mind, do
you? Pop sees to the cooking as a rule. I'm a disaster in the kitchen. Did you
get to see Ma Wagstaff?'