From Aberystwyth with Love

Chapter 9

Sometimes in life the only sensible thing to do is sit under a tree wearing a sombrero and sleep until the sun is lower in the sky and the shadows lengthen. I didn’t have a sombrero but I had an office and a fan. I leaned back in my chair and yawned. Calamity had set up an open-reel tape deck with the séance tape. There was also an astrolabe, some tarot cards and an archive edition of the Cambrian News from 1955 lying on the desk. It carried the story of a bank holiday battle between cops and Teddy boys from which someone had cut out the main photo. The Slaughterhouse Mob had been involved in the fight.

‘Where’s the picture?’ I asked sleepily.

‘I don’t know, it was like that when I got it.’

‘What’s the astrolabe for?’

‘Reverse horoscopy.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s like a horoscope done backwards. Normally you use the positions of the planets to predict someone’s future, but it’s just as easy to work out what their horoscope would have been, say, last month. I thought I would run a check on this Goldilocks boy to see what he was up to the day Gethsemane disappeared. According to the news reports he refused to provide an alibi. The Feds use it a lot to check the stories of the perps.’

‘I’ve never heard of it before.’

‘Well they don’t like to shout about it, you know, it’s a pretty powerful technique. You get a guy in the interview room who claims he was nowhere near the crime scene on the night in question, he says he was with his auntie in Wichita the whole time, and the grumpy cop throws down the horoscope and says, “Oh yeah? That’s not what The Mighty Zoroaster says: he’s got you down two blocks away from the robbery on Friday between ten and twelve. And that’s not all. Next day he says it’s a good day financially and you could come into a little windfall. Explain that one to me, Einstein. Or do I have to check out the horoscope for your sweet little auntie in Wichita, too?” That’s usually the point where the perps give it up.’

‘This is daft.’

‘The Feds don’t think so.’

‘If you believe in that sort of stuff you might as well do a reverse horoscopy for Gethsemane’s dog, after all he disappeared, too.’

‘That’s not such a bad idea.’

‘Let’s listen to the tape.’

Calamity pressed down on a clunky Bakelite knob and the reels warbled up to speed. ‘You have to listen hard,’ she said.

Room acoustic, shuffling, whispers inaudible. Then a woman’s voice, ‘Is there someone there?’

A child whispering, ‘Hello, Mummy.’

‘Yes? Speak, spirit.’

‘Hello, Mummy.’

‘Who are we talking to?’

‘This is Gethsemane. It’s nice here. I’m having a lovely time. Happy birthday, Mummy. Bye-bye, Mummy.’

Silence, unidentifiable noises. More inaudible muttering, shuffling. Then the tape ends in a riot of knocking, clunking, banging and white noise. Calamity stopped and rewound.

‘You have to listen two or three times to get the detail.’ She played it again. At the end, after Gethsemane had spoken, she turned the volume up full. The hiss sounded like a swarm of angry cicadas. In amid the symphony of noise other sounds emerged, soft but distinct, a collection of tantalising sounds: high-pitched squealing, demonic laughter, a clattering sound together with a bell; and a muffled voice saying something indistinct. Calamity pressed stop with an air of triumph, we looked at each other. Her eyes gleamed.

‘Any idea what the voice is saying?’ I asked.

‘It sounds like quelle ee something. I think it might be French.’ She ticked off items on the fingers of her hand. ‘Squealing, demonic laughter and bloke saying something in French. That’s a sound signature, Louie, it’s a watermark, every one of those sounds helps us identify the place where that recording was made.’

I didn’t really think so, but maybe she was right. Since Christmas when her own venture failed I had been taking extra care not to dampen her enthusiasm for things. I was scared she might notice. ‘Pretty tough job working it out,’ I said.

‘It looks like it now, I agree, but you wait till we start unpicking it. The perp. has left his muddy footprints all over this one. Those noises are a key which will help us unravel the mystery.’

‘What’s the next step?’

‘The envelope was postmarked Aberaeron. There is only one medium listed in the phone book for Aberaeron. The chances of it being the same one are slim, but it’s a good starting point. We can play it to her and ask her to tell us where the recording was made. I’ve booked us in for a sitting tomorrow morning. Her name’s Madame Sosostris.’

‘You’ll need to make a copy of the tape, I promised to return it to Arianwen.’ I picked up the envelope and tore the stamps off. ‘Take these and send them and the tape round to Grimalkin’s.’ I put the envelope back into the drawer.

‘Why are you keeping that?’

‘It’s got a smell that puzzles me. They won’t mind, they only care about the stamps. What if the spiritualist won’t co-operate?’

‘We lean on her using the Ehrich Weiss manoeuvre.’

Calamity gave me a nonchalant look, the one that said, I know you don’t know what that is but first you have to ask.

I laughed. ‘Oh, the old Eric Weiss manoeuvre!’

‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Of course!’

‘What?’

‘It’s when someone gets something stuck in their throat.’

‘That’s the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

‘OK then, I don’t know.’

‘Ehrich Weiss was the original name of Harry Houdini. He used to expose Victorian charlatans. He had this particular trick where he would turn up at a séance under an assumed name with a letter addressed to that name in his pocket. The letter would contain all sorts of bogus personal details and he would hand the coat in when he arrived. And lo! Even though he had made it all up, the spirits would start quoting it.’

I grinned, it was impossible not to. If this was superseding the paradigm it was fun. ‘And then what happens?’

‘We bust her. We tell her we are detectives and threaten to nick her under the illegal spirits act or something. Then we offer to cut her a deal: we play the tape and ask her where it was made; if she co-operates we let her walk.’

Our attention was distracted by a strange clumping sound in the stairwell. There were footsteps, then a clump, then more footsteps. We listened intently, holding our breath as the sound got closer and closer. Finally an old woman appeared in the doorway, leaning her weight on an aluminium walking stick. She wore a frock patterned with sunflowers, and apricot-coloured stockings; there were bandages on both her swollen ankles. She stopped, paused to catch her breath and said, ‘I’m Ffanci Llangollen.’

Evening had fallen with a melancholy so soft one could almost hear a bugle playing in a distant shire. Fog wafted in from the bay, foreshortening visibility, muffling the stars; the sea became a millpond of grey-green milk. Sospan was starting to pack up. The blackboard on the counter listed the special as Fish Milt Sundae and it was evident that the original price had been rubbed out and replaced with another more tempting one. Ffanci clutched Calamity’s forearm to steady herself and stared at the kiosk with a look that suggested it had been years since she last treated herself to an ice cream; years during which, perhaps, she had assumed they were forbidden to people over the age of ten.

‘Three day-returns to the Promised Land,’ I said.

Sospan pulled a wan face.

‘That’s a tall order, Mr Knight. Taller than usual.’

‘I thought it was your speciality.’

‘Tickets to paradise I dispense, not the Promised Land.’ He walked off to serve another customer as if the distinction was self-explanatory.

‘What did she look like?’ said Ffanci Llangollen. ‘The man at the police station told me it was you who found the hat.’

I turned to stare at her. She had a soft face, a kind face, but one which was etched with the years of travelling and perhaps the strain of relighting a candle of hope every morning.

‘She had a blue pinafore dress,’ I said, ‘over a white blouse, her hair was auburn, I think, shoulder length . . .’

‘What about her eyes?’ said Ffanci impatiently.

‘I can’t remember the colour but they sparkled like . . . like . . .’

‘Mischievously, like an imp?’ said Ffanci, and without waiting for me to answer, said, ‘Yes, it’s her. I knew it. Finally, I can rest.’

Sospan returned. ‘Is there a difference?’ I said to him.

‘Between what?’

‘Paradise and promised lands.’

‘There’s a world of difference. Promised lands are illusions, born of the failure to understand the central problem of the human condition, namely that dissatisfactions are not the result of physical geography but rather the geography of the soul. Paradise, on the other hand, is something we have lost, a happy dell from which we have been expelled, and to which we yearn to return.’

‘And your ice cream facilitates a temporary return to this lost paradise?’

‘Ice cream is the vehicle, but the true conduit is the vanilla. A remarkable product: an orchid containing in its flower both the male and female private parts, with a little vegetable curtain between them to prevent hanky-panky. Vanilla is from Tahiti which furnishes us with the one indisputable instance in the history of the world of men finding true paradise.’

‘In Tahiti?’

‘The vanilla-scented isle of dreams. The first European sailors to set foot there discovered it in a sea fog not dissimilar to the one we have here this evening. The scent of vanilla drifted to them through the fog, and they heard the sound of women singing. When the fog burned off the mariners found themselves in a bay more beautiful than any they had seen before: a lush golden-green perfumed paradise. All around them were little canoes in which stood maidens wearing petticoats of paper, playing songs on conches. Then, upon a hidden signal, they let their paper petticoats fall and revealed themselves to the men who all cheered. They spent the next month making love and all the girls wanted in return for their favours was a ship’s nail.’ Sospan paused in the action of serving the ice as if temporarily overpowered by anguish.

‘Maybe you should go there,’ said Calamity.

‘Alas, Calamity, my first loyalty is to my box.’

‘Have you never been tempted,’ I said, ‘to find a little maiden to play the conch to you?’

Sospan looked thoughtful and a distant look entered his eyes. ‘There was a girl once . . . but it was not meant to be.’

‘But there are other girls,’ I said. ‘There are lots of nice girls in Aberystwyth.’

‘No, you don’t understand. When a man takes the ice-cream orders, he shapes his entire life for better or ill, there is no turning back. I won’t pretend that I don’t occasionally dream of how it might have been; in autumn sometimes at the end of the season, when we take in the first delivery of coal for the coming winter, and the traffic at the kiosk drops off . . . I sometimes think how nice it would be to arrive home and . . . and . . . you know how it is when you open the door and smell that peculiar smell that belongs to a house wherein is found love? I sometimes picture her standing there, my girl, she kisses me and asks how my day at the box was. I kiss her back and bend down and sweep my little son into my arms and his little eyes sparkle because he loves me and especially loves my smell of vanilla.’

‘I don’t see why you can’t sell ice cream and have a family,’ said Calamity.

Sospan looked flustered. ‘It’s not as simple as that, Calamity, it’s . . . hard to . . . one day you will understand.’

‘They also serve who only stand and scoop,’ I said in a lame attempt to lift his spirits. He did not answer, but stared into space wearing a pained expression.

We stopped to watch as an old man glided past pushing someone in a wheelchair. The man was wearing mustard-coloured tartan drainpipe trousers, at half mast on his legs, and a moth-eaten rain-coloured frock coat. His hair was long and white and thin, turning up at the collar in untidy curls. It was Ephraim Barnaby V, the owner of the rock emporium. His son Gomer, sitting in the wheelchair, was in his late fifties, but he did not look like a man of that age. Instead he looked like a goblin foetus: ageless, shrivelled, skinny and bonier than a kipper.

Ffanci Llangollen gasped and said in a fierce whisper, ‘It’s Gomer Barnaby! Went missing the same day as Gethsemane.’

‘Hasn’t spoken or walked since the day,’ said Sospan.

Calamity and I turned to him, and, fancying himself in possession of privileged information, he warmed to his theme. ‘They found him wandering in a daze among the abandoned houses of Abercuawg, his wits all gone.’

‘They say he lost his teeth, too,’ I said.

‘All broken,’ said Sospan. ‘No one knows what happened, and he has never been able to say.’

‘I heard he saw a troll,’ said Calamity.

Ephraim Barnaby wheeled his son past the children’s paddling pool and out on to the wooden jetty where the council posted the tide tables. He pushed to the very end and there they remained in poses of utter tranquillity, motionless as men turned to stone by sorcery.

Sospan, mindful that this sudden image of unmerited suffering had thrown a shadow over the sacrament of vanilla-taking, spoke to break the spell. ‘So, are you going anywhere nice for your holidays?’

‘We may be going to Hughesovka,’ said Calamity.

Sospan nodded as if pleased by our choice. ‘You must look up my cousin.’

‘It’s only a sort of long shot,’ I said. ‘We’re not really likely to be going.’

‘I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time there, just so long as you don’t try and save money by purchasing the tickets from Mooncalf.’

‘Is that not a good idea?’ asked Calamity.

‘You know Mooncalf, he’ll have you on a side trip to Romania or something. My grandfather gave me two pieces of advice when he was on his deathbed. Always polish the heels as well as the toes, he said, and never delegate your travel arrangements to Mooncalf & Sons. I have followed both these injunctions to the letter all my life and I have never regretted it.’

Calamity looked downcast. ‘I’m sure it’s OK now, Transylvania has changed a lot.’

‘Quite possibly,’ said Sospan.

Ffanci Llangollen put her hand on my arm. ‘Mr Knight, won’t you tell me about the case you are investigating?’

I wondered what to tell her.

‘I know you will deny you are on one, the policeman told me you wouldn’t say. He said you wouldn’t tell him but you might tell me. Won’t you tell me?’

‘It’s not easy,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said distantly, ‘it isn’t.’

‘I meant—’

‘I know what you meant.’

‘Let me talk to someone first, there’s someone I have to ask . . . Where can I find you?’

‘Either in the public shelter or on one of the benches near the bandstand. I sit there usually. I won’t go far, don’t worry.’ She turned to leave and, remembering something, took out a letter and gave it to me. ‘I found this on your mat downstairs. Hand-delivered.’

We watched her amble slowly away into the fog. I opened the letter. It was from Meici Jones, an invitation to his birthday party the next day.