The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (69 page)

‘For heaven’s
sake
—’ Ben Foley’s chair legs screeched as he swung round. ‘You’re saying the baby was
Hattie
? How reliable is this, Beth?’

‘Well, it’s not actually documented anywhere, as far as I know,’ Mrs Pollen said. ‘It’s what the original servants said. We tracked down about four children or grandchildren of Stanner Hall staff who’d been involved in the ceremony. Three of them had heard the story, and two of them actually said their parents had been pretty jolly horrified when Bella Chancery proudly walked in with her new baby daughter.’

‘And the baby was unbaptized?’ Merrily said. ‘Do we
know
that?’

‘What we
do
know, from records, is that Hattie Chancery’s baptism was delayed because she became ill. Although we don’t have an exact date for the so-called exorcism, we know it took place in the winter of 1899, and the baptism is on record as having taken place in March 1900. I also know, from oral accounts, that Bella Chancery, during her spiritualist phase, was very dismissive of Church mumbo-jumbo and probably wouldn’t have had Hattie baptized at all if Walter – much older, more set in his ways – hadn’t insisted.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Ben said, ‘why on earth have you been sitting on this?’

‘Because of the family.’

‘But didn’t Natalie
know
?’

‘
Clancy
didn’t know,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘I also felt that talking about it... I don’t know what I felt, apart from a dreadful foreboding.’

‘But just assuming we’re all taking this on board,’ Ben said, ‘giving credence to... I mean, what are we
saying
? I can’t even put this into words...’

‘OK.’ Merrily moved out towards the table where Matthew and Hardy were sitting. Into the light. ‘When I was training for the Deliverance ministry, the key word was caution. You start with a prayer, build up as necessary. I’ve never done an actual exorcism of a person, and most diocesan exorcists will
never
do one. It’s sledgehammers and nuts. If you overreact, you can open the way for something far worse, create a situation where there isn’t one.’

Mrs Pollen was nodding fiercely.

‘So,’ Merrily said, ‘someone staging a phoney exorcism, based on a
real
exorcism – OK, that may be apocryphal, but the techniques ring true – someone recreating that scenario risks inviting something in. Inviting madness, if you want to look at it psychologically. Or evil, if we’re allowed to be spiritual. And evil loves a short cut. Evil takes the easy option.’

‘The easy option being the unbaptized baby,’ Mrs Pollen said.

49

‘E
XCEPT IT WASN’T
intended to be an exorcism, was it?’ Merrily said. ‘Why don’t you tell us about the original owner of Stanner Hall?’

Beth Pollen hesitated as the connecting door to the lounge opened and Alma’s bulky figure squeezed through. Bliss stood up, Alma whispered something to him.

‘Can I interrupt?’ Bliss said. ‘Mr Foley, do you have any more of these nice oil lamps? Or even – dare I suggest it – a generator?’

Ben stood up. ‘Oh
no
.’

‘I’m afraid so, sir. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Word is that all of Kington’s off.’

‘No,’ Ben said, ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a generator. There are a couple more of these lamps, and a lot of candles, and I could probably get the gas mantles going.’

‘Anything you can do, sir, would be very much appreciated.’

‘Damn. Now?’

‘Well, I’d hate to be a nuisance...’

‘All right.’ Ben walked across to the door to the hall. ‘Oh – Antony has lights, of course. And batteries.’

‘Not very much left, I’m afraid,’ Antony Largo said. ‘Best conserved, eh?’

Jane laughed cynically.

A power cut was going to cause problems, inevitably. Merrily sat and waited for the hall door to close behind Bliss and Ben Foley. At least it had given her some time to work a few things out, align what she’d just heard with what Jeremy had told her, surprisingly voluble once he’d got going.

‘Sorry, Mrs Pollen,’ she said. ‘I think we were talking about the original builder. I mean, I gather you’d know more about this than anybody, from your husband’s preliminary work. As I understand it, the architect who designed Stanner Hall for his own use had done quite a lot of work for Walter Chancery.’

‘Yes.’ Beth Pollen sat just in shadow, looking down at her hands in her lap.

‘And his name was?’

‘Rhys Vaughan. However—’

‘I know much of this is rumour, but we ought to hear it, don’t you think?’

Beth Pollen sighed.

‘I mean, as far as I can make out, nobody knows for
certain
whether he was a direct descendant of the Vaughans of Hergest, but
he
certainly thought so,’ Merrily said.

‘Well, he was a Welsh-speaking Welshman, and the Vaughans were a very important family, descended from the Princes of Brecknock, supporters of a great Welsh cultural tradition, I mean, in the Middle Ages the whole of Kington was actually Welsh-speaking. It must have been important to Rhys that when he built the house it should be on a significant site as close to Hergest as possible. He did originally try to buy Hergest Court, and when he failed he was determined to build something as impressive as Hergest had been in its great days.’

‘And where better than the famous Stanner Rocks?’

‘They weren’t very famous then, Mrs Watkins. The rare plants were only discovered quite recently. But yes, it was an impressive site and he was able to buy a good deal of land. Land wasn’t terribly expensive in those days. It all took a long time because he’d keep running out of money and have to go back to the Midlands and design industrial buildings for people like Walter Chancery.’

‘This would be what interested your husband, who worked for Powys Council.’

‘The great Welsh mansion that never was, yes. Rhys was a very romantic figure. A great patriot. He obviously loved the idea of dominating the border, as he believed his ancestors had.’

‘And working for Walter,’ Merrily said, ‘meant he had quite a lot to do with the much younger Mrs, erm, Chancery.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Pollen said. ‘This is all rumour. Steve absolutely abhorred this kind of gossipy, anecdotal—’

‘It was a bit more than that at the time, though, wasn’t it? According to my information, Hattie Chancery bore very little resemblance to Walter, and the only person who couldn’t see it was Walter himself.’

‘
Bloody hell!
’ Jane said.

‘The word is that this was more than just a passing dalliance. Bella was seriously in love with Rhys, and when he died she was in a terrible state. Which I suppose poor old Walter put down to her being pregnant.’

‘Mum, where the
hell
did you get this?’

Merrily raised an eyebrow at Jane and hoped that she could make it out in the lamplight.
They’re all Vaughans
, Jeremy had said. Hattie and Paula and Margery and Sebbie and Brigid. All Vaughans, with all the Vaughan baggage.

‘So Bella, in her grief, carrying Rhys’s child, desperate for her lover’s vision to become reality, put the arm on Walter to put in a bid for the unfinished folly.’

‘It was
almost
finished,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘All that Bella had to do was bring one of her interior-designer friends up from London. Cost Walter so much money in the end that I think he had to sell one of his companies to meet the final bills. Which I suppose was the beginning of the end for the Chancery fortune. Seems to be what this place does.’

Merrily looked at Amber Foley, who sat as still as a mannequin, her face a mask of dismay. The darkness beyond the lamp-glow seemed more real, now that everyone knew it was a darkness shrouding the whole mid-Border.

‘Which brings us to the seance,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m calling it a seance, because I think the Black Vaughan exorcism thing was probably a cover story, possibly for Walter’s benefit. Would that be close?’

‘It’s all conjecture, isn’t it?’ Beth Pollen said.

‘Is it OK if I go on?’

Beth Pollen spread her hands. Of course... this was the part she would have identified with, as a woman who’d lost a much-loved husband, a soulmate.

‘If we assume that Bella read the Vaughan legend, what would have stood out?’

‘The baby,’ Jane whispered.

‘And she now had one of her own. A little Vaughan. A genuine heir to all this – the whole huge tradition. A tiny descendant of the Princes of Brecknock. And she could
never
admit it. I don’t know anything about Walter Chancery, but taking over the house built by your tame architect is one thing... living in your wife’s lover’s mansion with his child...
very
different.’

‘This is totally mind-boggling,’ Jane said.

‘And may not be true,’ Beth Pollen said, rather desperately now.

‘But she was a serious follower of the big new fashion for spiritualism.’ Merrily took a long breath, wishing it carried nicotine. ‘
I
think when she read about the baby, she conceived the idea of somehow – and we can’t know the details – of somehow presenting the child, Hattie, to her heritage. And more specifically, to her father. The medium...’

‘Wouldn’t the medium have given it away, Mrs Watkins? If her father had spoken through Erasmus Cookson?’

‘
No
.’ Jane was on her feet. ‘Because Cookson was from London. Bella had him brought in. He just
had
to have been a mate, someone she could trust not to pass on anything indiscreet until afterwards.’

‘But the priests...’

‘Window dressing, I suspect,’ Merrily said. ‘This is a woman who was secretly bereaved, desperate for psychic contact with her lover. Suppose she’d planned, at some stage, to leave Walter for Rhys Vaughan? Perhaps he’d told her that when the house was finished... I don’t know. We
can’t
know.’ She glanced at Alistair Hardy. ‘And where Conan Doyle comes in, I’ve no idea at all.’

Beth Pollen sighed. ‘We might as well try and finish the story. My researches suggest that it was Walter who invited Conan Doyle. I think... I think it was probably true that Doyle, a man with a strong sense of what was right and wrong, would have been appalled to find a baby brought into something like this. And I suppose that, being the man he was, he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d found out what was behind it. Perhaps Bella begged him to keep quiet, and so...’

‘That was why he switched
The Hound
to Devon?’ Jane said.

‘Impossible to say, isn’t it? It could have been something fairly shocking that happened at the seance.’

‘The baby starts croaking in Welsh?’ Jane smiled malevolently.

‘I suppose we were all hoping something might be confirmed this weekend,’ Beth said.

Alistair Hardy was sitting upright, like Dr Bell, with his arms folded. ‘You didn’t tell me any of this, Beth.’

‘No,’ Beth said, almost distantly, and Merrily guessed that this had been a test for him. That Beth’s commitment to spiritualism was less unquestioning than her colleagues in the White Company had supposed. That Alistair Hardy had perhaps conveyed messages from her husband that she
wanted
to believe and yet...

Poor woman. If Hardy, as Dr Bell, Conan Doyle or even himself, had been able to reflect any aspect of a story which was unsupported by anything in print, his stature would have been confirmed, at least in Beth Pollen’s estimation. As it was, he remained iffy.

‘That’s all I know,’ Merrily said.

Beth Pollen said, ‘Perhaps it’s best if we leave it there.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No. We can’t, can we? There’s a woman behind that door over there who’s either a totally evil human being or a human being to whom evil was... bequeathed. We can’t alter what happens to her, but we
can
try to stop it here.’

Merrily nodded.

‘Hattie was unbaptized,’ Beth said. ‘I’m sure there’s a psychiatrist or a geneticist somewhere who can put it into terminology that wouldn’t cause anyone any embarrassment, but it seems likely that that night she acquired what we poor country folk can only describe as The Curse of the Vaughans.’

Merrily looked across the room at Jeremy Berrows, who knew.

‘Why don’t we see what Arthur Conan Doyle had to say? Go back to the Baskerville curse. Who invited evil into Baskerville Hall?’

‘Hugo,’ Jane said. ‘A wild, profane and godless man, in the seventeenth century, at the time of the Civil War. Hugo promises to “render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil” if he can catch up with the wench. No real parallel there, Beth.’

‘Oh, I’ve tried jolly hard to come up with one. The nearest I can get is Ellen Gethin. I often wonder if Ellen didn’t offer herself to the Powers of Evil if she was granted the opportunity – and the physical strength – to avenge her brother.’

‘But did she?’ Merrily wondered. ‘I mean, did
she
? That’s a very familiar story. I bet you’ll find slightly different versions all over the country.’