The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

Chapter 2

After I’d swept the wood into a neat pile I sat down on my chair and pondered. It’s hard to know what to do after a visit like that and for a while I cursed the mayor, but looking back I have to admit he was right; his soothsayer was good. Less than ten minutes later the client who would be responsible for the mess walked in.

He was short: less than five six, and dumpy, wearing a grey flannel suit. His head was bald and pointed, as if his shower-head had been replaced by a pencil sharpener. He walked slowly, breathing heavily and paused at the door to catch his breath. He surveyed the room.

‘I tried ringing, but the operator said there was a fault on the line.’

‘I had an accident with the phone.’

He looked at the shards of Bakelite and nodded. I invited him in and pointed to the client’s chair, which was set opposite me at the distance of a desk. He took a seat. The desk had always presented a barrier that I appreciated between me and the clients and I felt naked in its absence. The movement of air, displaced as he sat down, wafted the faint, cloying scent of Parma Violets. He took a packet from his pocket and removed a sweet from the wrapper with the same intensity that some people show for the ritual of lighting up a cigarette.

‘You are Louie Knight, Aberystwyth’s only private detective,’ he said. He took it for granted that I was and continued. ‘My name is Iolo Raspiwtin. I was born in a croft in the district of Pontwerwyd, overlooking the Nant-y-Moch River, in 1931. Nant-y-Moch, as you know, means “river of the pig” in English.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘I bring you a case, not just any case, but a special case, probably the toughest case you have ever had; possibly the toughest case any private detective has ever had.’

‘I’m a tough guy.’

‘You’ll need to be.’

I let that one ride, leant back in my chair and crossed my legs.

‘In view of the difficulties involved, I mean to be generous. I will pay you £200 now, and £200 in the unlikely event that you complete the task.’

I smiled and offered him a glass of rum, which he accepted. I fetched two glasses from the drainer in the kitchenette and poured two measures. We raised our glasses in a silent toast.

‘I seek a man. One who I have reason to suspect is either in Aberystwyth now or will arrive very shortly. This man can help me with a project that has preoccupied me most of my life and which is not relevant to your inquiry.’

‘In my experience such things are almost always relevant to the inquiry.’

‘Not this time.’

‘Tell me what makes him difficult to find. I assume he is difficult to find?’

‘Absolutely. Why else would I pay you £200? He is difficult to find because he is dead.’

‘Dead people are usually quite easy to find because they are kept in the ground.’

‘Conventionally, yes, the ground is the appointed storage for our mortal remains.’

‘Where did this man’s remains end up?’

‘On the bus to Aberaeron.’

I gripped my chin gently between thumb and forefinger, pretending to think deeply about the mystery. ‘Did he catch the bus himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘That would imply that he was alive.’

‘Precisely. His name was Iestyn Probert. He was hanged at Aberystwyth gaol in 1965 for his part in the raid on the Coliseum cinema. This raid is quite famous.’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Indeed, who hasn’t?’

‘Do you have any grounds for believing the man who caught the bus was the same as the man who was hanged?’

‘The bus driver recognised him from the photos.’

I tried to stifle a mounting sense of irritation. Raspiwtin had a disconcerting way of not quite answering questions. ‘Let me put it a different way. How does a dead man perform the act of catching a bus?’

‘He was no longer dead. They resurrected him.’

‘Who?’

He paused and stared, his eyes boring into mine with an intensity in which hints of fanaticism glinted. I stared back. He walked to the window and closed the curtains before retaking his seat. Then he leaned forward slightly. ‘Have you heard of the Ystrad Meurig incident?’

‘There have been many incidents at Ystrad Meurig.’

‘This one featured a flying saucer. It crashed. They called it the Welsh Roswell.’

‘Why did you close the curtains?’

He ignored me. ‘I presume you have heard of the Roswell incident?’

‘In America?’

‘Yes, in New Mexico in 1947. They found saucer debris and exobiological remains that were secretly taken to Area 51.’

‘I heard it was just a crashed weather balloon.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you had seen the autopsy footage, as I have.’

‘How does this relate to the dead man?’

‘The raid on the Coliseum cinema took place the same week as the Ystrad Meurig incident. The getaway car drove right through the area cordoned off by the military. For some reason Iestyn Probert was evicted from the car and went on the run. A week or so later he was arrested again. You see?’

‘Not really. Don’t hanged men get put in a canvas winding sheet and dissolved in quicklime?’

‘Normally, yes, hanged men were buried in an unmarked plot inside the walls of Aberystwyth prison; but Iestyn Probert came from the Denunciationist community at Cwmnewidion Isaf, and arrangements were made to return his corpse to them for burial. While his corpse was still in the possession of the prison morgue a most remarkable event occurred. A strange woman turned up and bought the cadaver from the attendant. He described her as elfin with no thumbs and cat-like irises. She paid with a Cantref-y-Gwaelod doubloon. Cantref-y-Gwaelod is the lost Iron Age kingdom that sank beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay after the last ice age.’

‘I know. Strange as it may seem, I’ve had a number of clients with connections to Cantref-y-Gwaelod.’

He smiled, as if this fact lent credence to his tale.

I eyed him over the rim of the rum glass. ‘Perhaps you should tell me a bit more about yourself. Your name sounds familiar.’

‘You are no doubt thinking of my famous cousin Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, former Counsellor to Tsar Nicholas II and physic to his son, Alexei. It was my forebear’s proud boast that he was able to treat Alexei’s haemophilia by telegram. My branch of the family travelled to Wales via the Welsh settlement of Hughesovka in the Ukraine, shortly after the armistice of the Great War. We adopted the Welsh spelling of Raspiwtin to better assimilate.’

‘That was a smart move; the Welsh can be suspicious of foreigners.’

He looked pleased. ‘Indeed. At the age of six I was sent to live and study with the monks on Caldey Island. I applied myself to my studies with great diligence, and because of my quick wit and piety I was lucky enough to earn, at the age of ten, a scholarship to the Vatican laundry. There, for the next eight years, I passed my time listening, and learning, and attending with great solemnity the Hephaestian fires that burned night and day beneath the great steaming wash pots. I became an expert in the laundering of liturgical vestments: surplices, stoles, albs, chasubles, cinctures, tunicles, copes, maniples, humeral veils, birettas, palliums, fanons, faldas, pontifical gloves and, of course, pontifical underlinen. It was from the latter that I first descried the contradictions – the Janus-faced god-beast that is Man – that would underpin my later apostasia. The Vatican laundry is the great university of the human condition, for therein is contained in its entirety the true folly of Man. Gold threads and satin smeared with the pollution that mocks our aspirations to rise beyond the fur that defines us as beasts. Boiled up, distilled through the divine agency of Persil, rising up as a vapour, condensing . . . daily its sweetly perfumed and laundered truth fell as rain upon our eager upturned cherubic faces. I say truly, you can never look at a pope the same way again after you’ve washed his pants.’ He drained his glass and held it out for a refill; I dutifully obliged. ‘It was here that the first stage on the slipway to my spiritual disintegration took place, which would eventually bring me to your door.’

I drummed my finger against the tumbler. ‘So you seek a man called Iestyn who took part in the famous raid on the Coliseum cinema. For that they hanged him. But you say he was seen alive after they hanged him.’

‘Yes.’

‘You know, a lot of people would say your story was a load of phooey.’

‘I did too. Until I made inquiries regarding this man many years ago and was assured by the authorities that no such person existed.’

‘Because he was dead.’

‘No, no such person had ever existed.’ He paused and looked intensely at me. ‘You see?’

‘No.’

‘What more proof do you need?’

‘That he doesn’t exist?’

‘Evidence of his existence is being suppressed by the authorities.’

‘Not necessarily; lots of people don’t exist.’

‘Name one.’

‘Santa Claus.’

‘Yes.’

‘The Tooth Fairy.’

‘OK.’

I paused.

His eyes flashed in expectation of victory.

‘Fingal.’

‘Who?’

‘The giant who owned the cave in Scotland. Someone wrote a symphony about him.’

‘See! You struggle after three. Who has heard of this Fingal and his symphony? There is in fact hardly anybody who doesn’t exist in this precise manner.’

‘Neptune.’

‘Yes, I accept that Neptune does not exist.’

‘Jack Frost.’

‘I concede Jack Frost also.’

‘The Jabberwock.’

‘You are good at this.’

‘Little Miss Muffet.’

He swung an arm out as if catching a fly and clicked his fingers. ‘You see? You have already run out. The character of Little Miss Muffet is said by many scholars to be an allegory of Mary, Queen of Scots.’ He stood up in triumph and carried the glass over to the windowsill.

‘What makes you think Iestyn has come back to town?’

‘Two weeks ago there was an alien contact just outside Aberystwyth. A farmer reported seeing a flying saucer land in one of his fields. He was approached by the occupants of the craft, one of whom was an elfin woman with no thumbs and cat-like irises. She told him she wanted to make love to him as her race was dying and she wanted the earth-man’s seed to save it. This is a remarkably common feature of accounts of alien contact.’

‘Or of fantasies about alien contact.’

‘These stories occur too frequently and with too much consistency of detail to be fantasies.’

‘You could say the same about people who think they are Napoleon. The details there are usually pretty consistent: they always stick one hand inside their coat over the heart and claim to have a wife called Josephine.’

‘You are too cynical.’

‘You really think they need the earth-man’s seed? Surely after travelling all that way they could think of an easier way to collect it.’

Raspiwtin gave me the condescending smile such people reserve for those of us who err in darkness. ‘You may have a point, but the pertinent thing for our inquiry is this: they also asked for directions to Iestyn Probert’s house.’ He stood up.

‘Is that supposed to prove he is alive?’

‘The aliens evidently thought so. Are you saying they are wrong?’ He walked to the door, adding, ‘I’m staying at the Marine.’

‘This would be his old house, I take it?’

‘That’s right. It seems pretty clear, does it not, that some sort of rendezvous had been arranged.’

‘Where is this house?’

‘Out at Ystumtuen in the hamlet of Llwynmwyn.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘I don’t know. You won’t find it on a map; it has been effaced.’

‘How convenient.’

‘You are familiar with the narrow-gauge railway to Devil’s Bridge that passes in the valley below Ystumtuen?’

‘Sort of.’

‘If you sit on the left-hand side of the carriage and look out across the valley just before Rhiwfron, you will note a discoloration in the grass of the distant valley side, caused by seepage from the lead mines; some people think it forms the shape of a duck. Iestyn used to live in a house that stood at the end of what those people would regard as the bill.’

‘Talking of the bill,’ I said, ‘this £200 up front that you mentioned. Up front usually means right now, doesn’t it?’

‘So you take the case, then?’

‘Yes, I take the case.’