When she'd pressed him, Canon Peters had shrugged and said he just felt there were certain places you ought to avoid if you possibly could.
"Yes, but why…?"
"Oh, I don't know, my dear. Why do some places, some people seem to attract tragedy? Is it isolation? In-breeding? Perhaps it's something endemic to the whole area. Why was Winstone Thorpe so bothered about Giles Freeman moving up there? I don't think we'll ever reach any kind of conclusion. But I had it on my conscience that I might have fobbed off young Morelli. And well, you know, after failing to save Martin…"
Miranda had been vaguely intrigued by this vicar person, this Jenkins.
"Ah." The Canon had looked sort of wry. "I did meet him once, at a conference in Lampeter. Spindly chap, staring eyes. And the stories, of course."
"What stories?"
"His obsession with the old Celtic church — back at the dawn of Christianity in Britain. And what came before it."
"And what did come before it?"
"Oh, Druids and things. All tied in with his preoccupation with being Welsh and the Eisteddfod and the Bardic tradition."
"Tedious," Miranda said.
"Very, my dear."
Miranda had graciously declined another drink and whatever else Canon Alex Peters might have had in mind. She hadn't even stopped for lunch at any of the rather-inviting
Oxfordshire pubs. The tang of adventure in the air seemed to have dissipated, leaving her quite moody and almost oblivious of the fact that she was driving an actual Porsche.
Morelli was arguably the most uptight, paranoid, insecure person she'd ever been close to. Was he really the right person to be paddling about in this grotty little pool of death and misery?
Miranda prodded the Porsche, and it took the hint and whizzed her off towards the Welsh border.
Chapter LVI
Berry found it disturbing the way his whole life had been dramatically condensed in just two days, his horizon reduced to a shadow.
Was this how it happened? Was this what it did to you? Drew you in, and before you knew it there was no place else to go, and the sky was slowly falling?
He was walking from the little square behind the castle, through the back streets to Guto's place to pick up his stuff, pay his bill, thank Mrs. Evans.
And then what?
Not yet noon, but it was like the day had given up on Pontmeurig; the atmosphere had the fuzzy texture of dusk.
He thought about Giles, who, once he'd seen Y Groes, was sunk. Nothing else mattered but to escape to the place — a place where the future, for him, was an illusion.
He thought about the Hardy couple, how desperate she'd been to hightail it out of here and how everything had pushed them back in until, different people by now — they had to be different people — they'd destroyed each other.
Different people.
He'd come here two days ago just to clear his own mind, settle his obligations. Now — he could hardly believe how quickly and simply this had happened—he had no reason to go back. The link with London and, through London, with the States had been neatly severed.
And there was Bethan.
Looking at it objectively, he had to face this — Bethan was part of the trap.
Maybe they were part of each other's traps.
Through the front window he could see Mrs. Evans inside, dusting plates — a job which, in this house, must be like painting the Brooklyn Bridge. And she saw him and put down her duster and rushed to the door.
"Oh. Mr. Morelli—" she wailed.
"Hey, listen. I'm real sorry about last night, only I got detained and—"
"You haven't seen Guto. have you?"
No he hadn't, thank God.
"Only he's gone off in a terrible mood again. Came home last night moaning about being betrayed and giving it all up, his — you know — the candidate's job. He doesn't mean it, mind, but he's terrible offended about somebody."
A somebody with black hair and big gold earrings and eyelids you could die over.
"How, ah, how's his campaign going?"
"Oh dear, you haven't seen the paper?"
On the hallstand, among about a dozen plates, was a copy of that morning's Western Mail, folded around a story in which Conservative candidate Simon Gallier was suggesting that support for Plaid Cymru was rapidly falling away. He had based his conclusion on a Plaid public meeting in the totally Welsh-speaking community of Y Groes which, he claimed, had been attended by fewer than a dozen people.
" — And when he saw that, on top of everything, well—"
"I can imagine."
He could also imagine how Bethan was going to feel about this. What a fucking mess.
"Can I pay you, Mrs. Evans?"
"You aren't leaving, are you?" She looked disconsolate.
"I, ah, think it's for the best. That's three nights, yeah? One hundred and—"
"You only stayed two nights!"
"I shoulda been here last night too."
"Go away with you, boy. Two nights, that's eighteen pounds exactly."
He didn't want to screw things up further for Guto by telling Mrs. Evans that even two nights, at the rates quoted by her son. would come out at seventy pounds. He made her take fifty, assuring her that all Americans had big expense accounts. Then he went to his room, shaved, changed out of the American Werewolf sweatshirt and into a thick fisherman's sweater because it wasn't getting any warmer out there.
Then he carried his bag downstairs, thanked Mrs. Evans again, assuring her (oh, boy…) that things would surely work out for Guto, and took his stuff to the Sprite on the castle parking lot.
Loaded the bag into the boot, keeping an eye open for the Hard Man of the Nationalists. Guto was a guy with a lot to take out on somebody, and he sure as hell wasn't going to hit Simon Gallier if Berry Morelli was available.
He got into the car and sat there watching the alley next to Hampton's Bookshop over the road, waiting for Bethan to emerge.
They'd parted outside the funeral parlour, he to pay Mrs. Evans, she to go home and change. They had said not one word to each other about Elinor and George Hardy.
After half an hour it was very cold in the car and he started the engine and the heater. She knew where he was. She'd come.
What if she didn't?
He looked across at the flat above the bookshop but could detect no movement. And yet she couldn't have gone anywhere because her Peugeot was right there, not fifteen yards away.
But what if she had gone away? What would he do if he never saw her again? If that part of the trap were suddenly to spring open?
He couldn't face it. He needed to be here now not for Winstone or Giles, who were beyond any help, but for Bethan. Accepting now that this was why he'd let his job slide away. This was how his life had condensed — around her. There was no way he could leave here without her. But there was no way she was going to leave until—
A blink of white in the alleyway, and she came out and walked quickly across the street to the car.
Berry closed his eyes and breathed out hard.
Bethan got into the car and slammed the door and they looked at each other.
And he said. "I know. Drive, Morelli."
The village had been called Y Groesfan, and this had interested Dr. Thomas Ingley.
Y Groesfan meant "the crossing place," suggesting a crossroads. And yet no roads crossed in the village; it was a dead end.
What other kind of crossing could there be?
The origins of the village were unknown, but the church was the oldest in this part of Wales, and its site, the mound on which it was built, was prehistoric.