‘I thought...’ Merrily put down the airline bag she’d brought from the car. The junior exorcist’s starter kit. ‘I thought I’d keep it simple.’
But should she even be doing it here, rather than in that big room behind the bay window, where the ‘baptism’ had taken place?
Yes, she should. She didn’t want the complication of having to try to restore peace to a room where the atmosphere had apparently been ravaged by another priest. Also, she had been asked by Menna’s next of kin to calm the spirit. No one had invited her to deal with that room, least of all Weal. She didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to enter his actual house in his absence. She really needed guidance. If she’d predicted this situation might develop, she’d have rung her spiritual adviser, Huw Owen, in advance. But there’d been no time for that.
Judith moved to a double switch on the wall, and the lantern at the head of the tomb went out, leaving Menna’s concrete cell softly lit, like a drawing room.
‘Are you a Christian, Mrs Prosser?’
‘That’s a funny question.’
‘I know you go to church. I know you support Father Ellis. I don’t really know what you believe.’
‘Nor will you ever,’ Judith said tartly. ‘What’s your point? What are you getting at?’
‘Do you believe in the unquiet dead?’
Judith Prosser regarded Merrily across the tomb, her eyes half closed. ‘The dead are always quiet, Mrs Watkins. The dead are dead, and only the weak-minded are afraid of them. They cannot touch us. Nor, I assume...’ She laid a forefinger gently on Menna’s small inscription, ‘... can we touch them.’
‘Meaning Mr Weal.’
‘Mr Weal’s a tragic figure, isn’t it? He wanted what he thought Menna was. He liked it that she was quiet. He liked it that she was polite to her father and did not go with boys. A real, three-dimensional woman was far too complicated for J.W. He wanted, I suppose, a shadow of a woman.’
Oh my God.
Merrily said, ‘You have to tell me this. If not you yourself, then has anyone else seen the... spirit of Menna Weal?’
Judith made a scornful pfft noise. She half turned and began to unbutton her coat. ‘Anyway...’ Sweeping the coat back to place her hands on her hips, turning to face Merrily. ‘Time is getting on. What do you propose to do here, my girl?’
‘Well... I’m going to say some prayers. What I really should be doing – I mean to be halfway sure of this – is holding a Requiem Eucharist. And for that there really ought to be a few of us. Like I said this morning, it would be better if we’d had Mr Weal with us. I mean with us.’
‘And as I said, that would be imposs—’
‘Or even Barbara. If Barbara were here, it—’
Merrily heard her own words rebound from the concrete walls. She lurched away from the tomb, as if it were mined.
Such a vast tomb for one small body.
Judith looked mildly curious. ‘Someone walk over your grave, Mrs Watkins?’
Merrily knew she’d gone pale. ‘Judith...?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Mrs Prosser. ‘We’re quite alone, almost.’
Merrily swallowed. The scarf felt tight around her throat.
‘What do you think J.W. Weal would have done if he’d discovered that Barbara Buckingham had found out about Father Ellis’s exorcism of Menna, performed at his behest?’
Judith’s eyes were not laughing. ‘What on earth am I supposed to say to that?’ She stepped back.
Now they were both looking at the tomb.
‘Oh, I see,’ Judith said.
Merrily said nothing.
‘You mean, after he dumped the car in the Claerwen Reservoir, what, precisely, did he do with the body?’
Merrily said nothing.
‘Does Barbara perhaps lie below her poor sister? Were her remains, in those fine English clothes, already set in concrete when Menna’s coffin was laid to... unrest?’
Merrily bit her lip.
‘Come on, woman! Is that what you meant?’
‘It looks very deep,’ Merrily said. ‘And... as you said, the monumental mason worked all night.’
‘All right!’ Judith’s voice rang with challenge. ‘Then let’s find out, shall we?’
Merrily found she’d backed against the door.
‘Oh, Mrs Watkins, did you think poor J.W. could bring himself to say such a final farewell to his beloved? What other reason would a man like him have for going to all this trouble?’ She pointed.
From back here, Merrily didn’t even have to bend down to see that the tomb’s handsome oakwood lid was hinged.
‘It’s very heavy, all the same,’ Judith said. ‘You may have to help me.’
Merrily remembered, when she was a little kid, being towed along by her mother to make the arrangements for her gran’s funeral, and how the undertaker’s inner door had been left open. Merrily’s mother thinking she was too young to understand. But not too young to absorb the smell of formaldehyde from the embalming room.
She’d been four years old, the formaldehyde alternating with the equally piercing tang of furniture polish, making her afraid to go to sleep that night, and she didn’t know why. There was only this grim, opaque fear, the sense of a deep, unpleasant mystery.
Which returned when Judith threw back the solid oak lid of the tomb. Judith hadn’t needed help with it after all. She looked down into the tomb and smiled.
The dead are always quiet, Mrs Watkins. The dead are dead, and only the weak-minded are afraid of them.
But Merrily who, since ordination, had seen any number of laid-out bodies was afraid. The same grim opaque fear, and she didn’t know why.
What would be the point, anyway? Judith had only done this for effect, to put herself in control from the start. And if the body of Barbara Buckingham was in there too, it would be in the base, set in concrete, never to be discovered, certainly not in J.W. Weal’s lifetime.
Menna, though – Menna was readily accessible. It was clear that Judith was not now looking down on merely a coffin lid.
‘Close it, please,’ Merrily said.
‘How do you know it isn’t Barbara? Come on, see for yourself.’
‘This is intrusion,’ Merrily said.
‘It was always intrusion, Mrs Watkins.’
‘Then close the lid and I’ll say some prayers and we’ll go.’
‘If I close the lid,’ Judith said, ‘she won’t be able to hear you, will she?’
The whole mausoleum stank of embalming fluid. Merrily needed air, a fortifying cigarette. She went back to the door.
‘Don’t open it, you silly girl. The light!’ Judith let go of the lid and it hung for a moment and then fell against the stone side of the tomb with a shuddering crash, leaving the interior fully exposed. The single lantern, over the foot of the tomb, swung slightly, and Merrily saw a quiver of parchment-coloured lace from inside.
‘Come over yere, Mrs Watkins,’ Judith said.
‘This is wrong.’ Merrily’s hand went to the centre of her breast where, under her coat, under her jumper, the pectoral cross lay. Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me...
‘Come and see how peaceful she looks. It’ll make you feel better. Then we’ll say goodnight to her. Come yere.’
... Christ before me. Merrily walked into the centre of the mausoleum. If necessary, she’d close the lid herself.
‘You silly girl.’ Judith reached out suddenly and grabbed her by the arm, pulled her close. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’ll look after you.’