Berry shook his head. "No way you can teach an Englishman to make a pizza."
"This could be true." Dai said. "The trouble with an Englishman, however, is he doesn't believe there is anything he cannot do. Come through to the office."
The office looked out over a cleanly swept, white-walled yard. Over the top of the end wall they could see a segment of Pontmeurig castle.
There were four hard chairs with purple velvet seats and a desk. It had a phone on it and a diary, four brass coffin handles and a thickset man with crinkly grey hair.
Bethan said, "Berry, this is Idwal Pugh. He is the mayor of Pontmeurig."
"Hi, Mayor." Berry said, shaking Idwal's hand. "Berry Morelli. Don't get up."
"I can never quite bring myself to sit on a chair in here," Idwal Pugh said, short legs dangling over the side of the desk. "Don't want to feel I'm here on business, see."
"One day," said Dai, "we'll bring you in feet first, you bugger. Now, Bethan…"
"This is difficult." Bethan said. "And in confidence, please."
"Of course," Dai said. "Sit down. I have told Big Gladys to make some tea."
"Idwal, you remember that night at the Drovers… Well, of course you do."
"Oh that night," Idwal said. "I told you, we should have gone to—" He looked at Berry in alarm. "Not police, this chap, is he?"
"He's a friend of Giles," Bethan said. And of mine. No, he's not police."
"Only, I thought, with this, you know—"
"Idwal, relax." Dai said. "I am not so short of work that I want you to have a stroke."
"And we were talking," Bethan said, "that night, before the trouble, about Y Groes, if you remember. Dai was annoyed that Giles Freeman had managed to secure a house there when he could not. And you said—"
"I suppose I said I would not want to live there myself."
"Correct," Bethan said. "You said I think, that it was ungodly. Why did you say that?"
"What are you getting at here. Bethan?"
"Just tell me why you said that."
"Well, I suppose… I'm a chapel man, see. Always been a chapel man."
"Yes, and the only chapel in Y Groes is Dilwyn Dafis's garage before it was converted."
"Well, see, it isn't just that…" Idwal began to fill his pipe. "This is only my own thoughts, Bethan."
"Yes, fine. Go on."
"Well, this is a non-conformist area. Every village has at least one chapel."
"At least," Bethan said.
"But I remember, when I was a youngster, my dad telling me how they almost had to have a missionary expedition to take the Chapel to Y Groes. Known as Y Groesfan then, the crossing place. And the only village without a chapel. Only the other side of the Nearly Mountains, but it might have been some pagan place in Africa, the way they campaigned and raised the money."
"Who campaigned?" Berry asked.
"Ah, well, see, this is the point. There was a farmer — I forget his name — who moved up towards Eglwys Fawr for a bigger farm and became a convert to the Chapel. And he still kept a field in Y Groesfan, on the edge of the village there. And he said, I will give this field for a chapel to be built there, and everybody began to raise money, in Eglwys, in Pont, in chapels down as far as Lampeter and Cardigan. It became a… how do you say it in English…?"
"Cause célèbre?" said Berry.
"Exactly. A cause célèbre. Everybody gave money for the new chapel in Y Groesfan. And I am asking myself why. What was there in the history of this village that everybody should instinctively put their hands in their pockets to raise the money for a chapel, when there was no demand from the inhabitants. No demand whatsoever, even though many doors were knocked upon and Bibles proffered."
"But surely, it's a church village?"
"Pah!" said Idwal, puffing contemptuously on his pipe.
"So they raised the money and they built the chapel." Bethan said. "What happened then?"
"Oh, it went very well for a time. Like, as I say, a missionary conquest of some pagan place in Africa. People travelled from miles around to attend services at the new chapel. Like a pilgrimage, see. The first motor coach outings from Pont were to Y Groes — they'd got the name changed now, as well, to reflect its new status. The Cross. Oh, it was wonderful, for a while."
"And what happened?" said Berry.
Idwal shrugged. "Some say it was the war. Or that it was like everything that burns so bright. Soon extinguished. But myself, I think there is something in that place that needs to be cleaned out before the Lord can enter in. It seems to me…"
There was a loud tap on the office door, and it was shouldered open by a large girl whose hair was streaked in gold and purple like the curtains in the chapel of rest. She was carrying a tea tray.
"Thank you, Gladys," Dai said.
"Will you be going over to Y Groes, Mr. Williams, because you've another appointment at twelve. Do you want me to put them off?"
"I'm not going anywhere, girl. Why would you think that?"
"Well, no, I just thought, with the murder. Put it down here, shall I? If Mr. Pugh will move his legs."
"Murder?" Berry said.
"Oh hell, Gladys," Dai said. "Murder is a different thing altogether. Police do their own fetching and carrying with a murder."
"Only they've found something else now, Jane was telling me from the café. More police cars gone chasing up the Nearly Mountains."
"Bloody tragic," Dai said, and it was not clear whether he was talking about the death or the fact that, because it was murder, he had not been called in to remove the body.
"Poor girl," Idwal said. "First she loses her husband, and now…" He shook his head.
"No," Bethan whispered. "Oh, please, no-"
"Oh, Christ," Dai said. "I thought you knew — I thought that was why you were asking all this?"
Chapter LIV
The police car pulled in behind Gwyn Arthur's Fiesta. Detective Sergeant Neil Probert got out and looked down to where his chief was standing, at the bottom of a steep bank, about twenty yards from the road.
Probert, the Divisional natty dresser, was clearly hoping Gwyn Arthur would climb up and join him at the roadside. But when the Chief stood his ground, Probert wove a delicate path down the bank, hitching up his smart trousers at the waist.
"Thinking of joining the Masons, are we, Neil?" inquired Gwyn Arthur. "Come on, man, the mud's all frozen!"
"Except for that bit," he added with malicious relish as Probert squelched to a halt in a patch of boggy ground, where all the ice had been melted by the heat from the Volvo's engine.
The big blue car had gone down the bank and into a tangle of thorn bushes. Three police officers were cutting and tearing the bushes away for the benefit of a female Home Office pathologist who was rather attractive — certainly the best thing they could hope to encounter on a December morning in the Nearly Mountains.
"I spoke to the garage, sir," Probert said, squeezing the brackish water from the bottoms of his trousers. "He picked up his car at just after nine-thirty. Appeared quiet and preoccupied but not otherwise agitated. Inquired at the garage about a hardware shop and they directed him to Theo Davies, where he bought twenty feet of rubber pipe."
"Not dissimilar, I take it," said Gwyn Arthur, "to the hose we see here affixed to the exhaust pipe."
"Indeed, sir," Probert said.
"In that case, Neil, it looks like a wrap."
"Yes, sir."
"Would you like to have a look at him, in case anything occurs to you?"
"No thank you, sir."
"He doesn't look bad. Pink and healthy. Kind it is, to a corpse, carbon monoxide."