Crybbe

CHAPTER V

Fay had a whole pile of books and just two short names.

She was alone in the reading room of the County Library in Llandrindod Wells, nearly thirty rural miles from Crybbe and another world: bright, spacy streets, a spa town.

Two names: Wort and Dee.

Fortunately there was an index to the dozens of volumes of transactions of the Radnorshire Society, a huge collection of many decades of articles by mainly amateur scholars, exploring aspects of the social, political and natural history of the most sparsely populated county in southern Britain.

There were also books on Tudor history and three biographies of John Dee (1527-1608) whose family came from Radnorshire.

She read of a farmhouse, Nant-y-groes, once the Dee family home, at Pilleth, six miles from Crybbe. But it had, apparently, been demolished and rebuilt and was now unrecognisable as Elizabethan.

Dee himself had been born in the south-east of England but had always been fascinated by his Welsh border ancestry. The name Dee, it seemed, had probably developed from the Welsh Du meaning black.

History, Fay discovered, had not been over-generous to this mathematician, astronomer and expert on navigation – perhaps because of his principle role as astrologer to the court of Elizabeth I and his lifelong obsession with magic and spiritualism. Most schoolchildren learned about Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon, but John Dee hardly figured on the syllabus, despite having carried out major intelligence operations in Europe, on behalf of the Queen, during periods of Spanish hostility.

Two hours' superficial reading convinced Fay that John Dee was basically sound. He studied 'natural magic' – a search for an intelligence behind nature. But there was no serious evidence, despite many contemporary and subsequent attempts to smear him, of any involvement in black magic.

Dee wanted to know eternal secrets, the ones he believed no human intelligence could pass on. He sought communion with spirits and 'angels', for which a medium was required.

Fay read of several professed psychics, who sometimes turned out to be less well-intentioned than he was. People like the very dubious Sir Edward Kelley, who once claimed the spirits had suggested that, in order to realise their full human potential, he and Dee should swap wives.

Now that, Fay thought, was the kind of scam Guy might try to pull.

But there was no mention of Dee working with Sir Michael Wort in Radnorshire.

She skipped over all the weird, impenetrable stuff about Dee's so-called Angelic Conversations and went back to the Radnorshire transactions.

It emerged that while Dee himself might not have been a medium he clearly was, like Henry Kettle, an expert dowser.

In 1574, he wrote to Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley, requesting permission to seek 'hidden treasure' using a method that was scientific rather than magical (nothing psychic), Fay smiled, involving a particular type of rod.

He was also most interested in folklore and local customs, druidic lore and landscape patterns.

OK. Speculation time.

If there were such things as ley-lines, the mounds and stones which defined them must have been far more in evidence in Dee's time.

If ley-lines had psychic properties, Dee's interest in the remains would have been of a more than antiquarian nature.

If he'd been in the area in the 1570s he could hardly have failed to run into Wort.

If Dee felt that Wort had knowledge or psychic abilities he lacked, he might have been inclined to overlook the sheriff's less savoury practices.

Fay looked up Wort and found only passing references. No mention of hangings. His name was in a chronological list of high sheriffs, and that was all.

She looked up Trow and found nothing. She looked in the local telephone directories, found several Worts and several Trows, noted down numbers.

Then she simply looked up Crybbe and found surprisingly little, apart from references to the curfew, with the usual stuff about the legacy of Percy Weale, a mention of the town hall as one of the finest in the area.

Had Crybbe received so little attention because, for much of its history, it had been in England? Or was it, as she'd intimated to Powys, because local historians weren't too thick on the ground.

It was almost as though nobody wanted the place to have a history.

And so Fay emerged from the library with only one significant piece of information.

It came from a brief mention of Crybbe Court in an article dated 1962 about the few surviving manor houses of Radnorshire. Crybbe Court, which the writer said was in dire need of extensive restoration, had been built in the 1570s by a local landowner, Sir Michael Wort, who later served as High Sheriff of the county and who lived there until his death in the summer of 1593.

It was precisely four centuries since the hanging of Black Michael.

'Oh, what the hell,' Colonel Col Croston said. 'Don't see why not.'

'I'm really very grateful,' Guy told him.

It was the first piece of genuine co-operation to come his way. Well, from the locals, anyway. Whether you could call this chap a local was highly debatable, but he was the deputy mayor.

As soon as Guy had found out that the public meeting wasn't, after all, going to be chaired by old Preece, he'd driven off by himself to the deputy's home, a partly renovated Welsh long-house across the river, about a mile out of town on the Ludlow road.

Col Croston had turned out to be an affable, pale-eyed, sparse-haired, athletic-looking chap in his fifties. He lived quite untidily with a couple of Labradors, who rather resembled him, and a tough-looking little wife who didn't. There was a mechanical digger working on a trench fifty yards or so from the house. Try and ignore the smell,' the Colonel had greeted him breezily. 'Spot of bother with the old septic tank.'

What the deputy mayor had just agreed was to let Guy shoot a few minutes of videotape in the meeting before it actually started, so there would at least be some pictures of an assembly of townsfolk and councillors. Guy would milk this opportunity for character close-ups of the taciturn, grizzled faces of Old Crybbe.

His heart lurched. He wished he hadn't thought of grizzled old faces. With bulbous noses and bulging eyes and blood fountains from severed arteries.

'And… er… Colonel,' he said hurriedly. 'What I'd also like, if you have no objections, is a little interview with you, possibly before and after, outlining the issues – the town's attitudes to becoming a major New Age centre.'

'Well, I'll do my best, Guy. But I must say, one of the things I was hoping to learn in there tonight is what exactly New Age is. Drink?'

Thanks, just a small one. You like it here, Colonel?'

'Col. Name's Colin. Well, you know, got to settle somewhere. No, it's not a bad place. Once one gets used to their little peculiarities. Like the dogs – used to take these chaps into town of a morning, pick up the paper, that kind of thing. Always well-behaved, never chase anything. But a word or two was said and now I walk them in the other direction. Compromise, you see. Secret of survival in the sticks. I don't mind.'

'So if I were to ask you how people here feel about Max Goff and…'

'Ho!' said Mrs Croston, passing through, wearing a stained boiler suit.

'Ruth's not terribly impressed with Mr Goff,' Col said. 'My own feeling is it's no bad thing at all, long as it doesn't get out of hand. You've got to have an economy, and this place has ignored the possibilities of tourism and that kind of business for too long. Agriculture's going down the chute so, on the whole, I think we're quite fortunate to have him.'

'Will you say that on camera?'

'Oh… why not? Long as it's clear I'm speaking personally, not on behalf of the council.'

'Super,' Guy said. 'Now what about all these prehistoric stones Goff's sticking in the ground?'

'Ah well, there've been rumblings there, I have to say. Fine by me, but country folk are incredibly superstitious. Who, after all, got rid of the original stones? Money, however – money does tend to overcome quite a lot, doesn't it? But I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of them started disappearing again.'

'Interesting,' Guy said. 'So you think there'll be fireworks in there tonight.'

Col laughed. 'Will there be disagreement? Oh yes. Will there be suspicion, resentment, resistance? Definitely. Fireworks? Well, they'll listen very patiently to what Goff has to say, then they'll ask one or two very polite questions before drifting quietly away into the night. And then, just as quietly, they'll do their best to shaft the blighter. That's how things are done in Crybbe If they don't like you, best to keep the removal van on standby with the engine running.'

'Doesn't sound as if it would have made very good telly, in that case, even if we got in.'

'Excruciatingly boring telly,' Col confirmed. 'Unless you've got some sort of infra-red equipment capable of filming undercurrents. 'Nother one?'

'No… no thanks.' Guy covered his glass with a hand. 'Sounds like you have this place pretty well weighed up, Col.'

'Good Lord, no. Only been here a few years. That's just about long enough to realise one needs to've been established here a good six generations to even get close to it. Annoy the hell out of me, these newcomers who profess to be like that – Col hooked two fingers together – 'with the locals after a month or two. I know where I stand, and I don't mind, we've got an interesting home with about fourteen acres I'm still trying to decide what to do with. And I'm the token outsider on the council, which is just about as close as anyone can aspire to get. When I'm Mr Mayor I'll try to effect a few minor structural changes on the council which will doubtless disappear when the next chap takes over. Mrs Byford will see to that – she's the clerk. Mayors come and go, Mrs B doesn't.'

'Is that Tessa Byford's mother?' Guy watched the Colonel's eyes.

'Grandmother.' No specific reaction. 'The girl, Tessa, lives with them. What they call in Crybbe a problem child. Shows a lot of promise as an artist, apparently – that's not a very Crybbe thing to be, as you'll have realised. She'll leave, go to college and never come back. They all do.'

'All?'

'Anybody who doesn't want to be a farmer or a shopkeeper or some such. Sad, but that's the way it tends to be.'

'Ah,' said Guy, 'but will she move away now – now there's a place for artistic types? Now Crybbe looks set to become a little melting pot for ideas and creativity?'

'Look, Guy, creativity and ideas have always been frowned upon in Crybbe – and, before you ask, no, I certainly won't say any of that on camera. 'Nother drink, did I ask you?"

Graham Jarrett was just too smooth, too confident. Powys didn't trust him. He'd wander down to your subconscious like he owned the fishing rights.

'I assure you," Jarrett insisted, 'that this is on the level. I've checked dates, I've checked what facts I can and… Now, here's something… The Bull. The girl said she lived at the Bull, and as you know there's no such pub in Crybbe any more. But I've discovered the Bull was actually the original name of the Cock. And that's not a cock-and-bull story.' Graham Jarrett straightened his cardigan. 'I have it on very reliable authority.'

He'd given Powys a transcript of the Catrin tape without argument, because Graham Jarrett wanted to be in The Book, didn't he?

'OK, how many other cases have you encountered where the subject is regressed to the very same town where the regression is taking place?'

'It's been known. Very often they specifically return to a town because they feel they've been there before.'

'But she didn't. She came here to work.'

Jarrett opened his hands. 'Stranger things…'

'Yeah, OK. But you've got a situation here where one personality is fading and another just forces its way in over the top, right?'

Graham Jarrett shrank back into the dark-green drapery of his consulting room. Powys was sure there must be more on the tape than there was on the transcript. Jarrett claimed he'd given the cassette to Guy, but he wouldn't have done that before making a copy.

'I know what you're going to suggest, Joe.'

'Well?'

'Don't. Don't even use that word "possession" in here.'

There was a bonus for Guy in his visit to Col Croston's house. He'd raised the matter of the suicide, the old man and the razor, less inhibited about it now and less intimidated by it as time went on. There'd been no disturbance in his room at the Cock last night, unless one included Catrin's shrill moments of ecstasy. Catrin had been quite amazing. With the light out.

'No,' Col Croston said. 'Can't say I have.' But he'd referred the question to his wife, neither of them, fortunately, seeming over-curious about Guy's interest in local suicides.

'I know,' Mrs Croston had said. 'Why not ask Gomer? Gomer knows everything.'

The little man working on the soakaway to the Crostons' septic tank had been only too happy to come out of his trench for a chat. There was a disgustingly ripe smell in the vicinity of the trench and Guy found that he and Gomer Parry were very soon left alone.

'Good chap, the Colonel,' Gomer said. "Ad this other job lined up, over to Brynglas, see, and it was postponed, last minute. Straightaway, the Colonel says, you stick around, boy, do my soakaway. Fills in two days perfect. Very considerate man, the Colonel.'

It didn't take him long to get a reaction on the suicide. Unlike most people in this area, Gomer appeared to have a healthy appetite for the unpleasant.

'Handel Roberts.' Gomer beamed. 'Sure to be.'

'And who precisely was Handel Roberts?

'Copper,' said Gomer. 'While back now. I wasn't so old, but I remember Handel Roberts all right. Didn't Wynford tell you about this? No, I s'pose 'e wouldn't. Coppers, see. They don't gossip about their own.'

Gomer broke off to wipe something revolting from his glasses with an oily rag.

He blinked at Guy. 'That's better. Aye, Handel Roberts. He was station sergeant, see, like Wynford. Only there was twice as many police in them days, before there was any crime to speak of – there's logic, isn't it? Well, this was the time they'd built the new police 'ouses as part of the council estate. And it comes to Handel retiring and the County Police lets him carry on living in the old police 'ouse, peppercorn rent, sort of thing, everybody happy. Until – I forget the details – but some new police authority takes over and they decides the old police 'ouse is worth a bob or two so they'll sell it.'

Guy could see where this was going. Old Handel Roberts, unable to afford the place, no savings, nowhere to go.

Nowhere but the bathroom.

'Ear to ear,' Gomer said with a big grin. 'Blood everywhere. But 'e 'ad the last laugh, the old boy did. They couldn't sell the police 'ouse after that, not for a long time. And then it was a cheap job, see. Billy Byford 'ad it for peanuts. Newly wed at the time – Nettie played 'ell, wouldn't move in till Billy stripped that bathroom back to the bare brick, put in new basin, bath and lavvy.'

Guy said delicately, 'And he still, er, that is Handel Roberts, was believed to haunt the place, I gather.'

'Well, you're better informed than what I am,' Gomer said. 'Anything funny going on there, Nettie'd've been off like a rabbit. Oh hell, aye. Want me to tell you all this for the telly cameras? No problem, just gimme time to get cleaned up, like.'

'No, no… just something I needed to check.'

'Anything else you wanner know, you'll find me around most of the week. 'Ad this job lined up with the council, but it's been put back, so I'm available, see, any time.'

'That's very' kind of you indeed, Gomer. I won't hesitate. Oh, there is one final thing… Handel Roberts, what did he look like?'

Gomer indulged in a long sniff. He seemed immune to the appalling stench from the soakaway.

'Big nose is all I remember, see. Hell of a big nose.'

Powys drove to Fay's house, but there was no one in. He didn't know where else to go, so he sat there in the Mini, in Bell Street. It was two-thirty. He'd bought some chips for lunch and ended up dumping most of them in a litter bin, feeling sick.

He'd learned from Graham Jarrett that Rachel's body had been sent for burial to her parents' home, somewhere in Essex, Jarrett thought. He ought to find out, send flowers, with a message.

Saying what? I think I know why you died, Rachel. You died because of a cat. A cat placed in the rafters to ward off evil spirits. You died because a four-hundred-year-old dead cat can't hurl itself from the building. Because somebody has to be holding it and, unfortunately for you, nobody else was around at the time.

The Bottle Stone was no more than a sick coincidence, albeit the kind that questioned the whole nature of coincidence.

But the cat had been part of the ritual procedure to prevent something returning. Before the spirit could regain its occupancy, the cat had to go.

Just a little formality.

Powys took a tight hold of the steering wheel.

I am not a crank.