Singing the Sadness

‘Yes, that was the most worrying thing. Often it’s not fire that does the real damage, but smoke inhalation. But as far as we can see, he’s been lucky there too. There’ll be some discomfort if he breathes too deeply, and his oesophagus will feel like it’s been pulled through with a pineapple for a while, but no lasting damage. Now, normally we’d keep him in for observation for another day or two, but if he’s happy to discharge himself …’

Joe sat straight up, ignoring the pain.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘What is this? I know you folk get short of beds, but how many legs do I need amputated before you let me stay here?’

It was Beryl who answered.

‘Don’t be exciting yourself, Joe,’ she said. ‘Yes, they are short of beds, but no, they’re not throwing you out. Only there’s a nice little sickbay at Branddreth College, and with me being a nurse, the doc’ll be happy to let me take care of your medication. Also there’ll be a doctor in attendance at the festival who’ll be able to check you out if necessary. We thought you might like it better to be close to the others rather than stuck here, miles away. But it’s your say-so.’

Joe scowled thoughtfully, but inside he was chortling with delight. Cosy little sickbay with Beryl as his private nurse or stuck here among the living dead with hospital hours and hospital food … no contest!

‘Where do I sign?’ he wheezed.

Godsip, who was still young enough to feel guilty at giving a patient the bum’s rush, wanted to put him in a wheelchair but Joe insisted on getting dressed and walking under his own steam.

He regretted it the moment he stood up but he wasn’t going to back off now and by the time he’d got into his clothes, he’d adjusted to the discomfort, but tying his shoelaces made him wince.

‘I’ll get that,’ said Merv, kneeling before him.

‘Heard you English were into hero worship but didn’t realize how far it went,’ said a sardonic Welsh voice.

It came from a tall thin man with eyes screwed up as if against the sun and a weathered face who looked like Clint Eastwood at early Dirty Harry age. His suit looked about the same vintage too.

Brynner, Burton and Eastwood, all in the same neck of the woods. Maybe I’ve wandered into an old movie, thought Joe, and these burns and bruises are just make-up.

Merv stood up. He didn’t tower over the newcomer but he had a couple of inches advantage which he used to good effect.

‘Joe, this is DI Ursell I told you about, but I expect you’d have recognized him anyway.’

Ursell regarded Joe as though thinking about inviting him to make his day.

‘Glad to meet you,’ said Joe. ‘How’s the lady?’

‘I’m a copper not a quack,’ said Ursell. ‘What bothers me isn’t how she is but who she is. Thought you could help me there.’

‘Sorry?’ said Joe.

Ursell rolled his eyes and said very slowly, as to a backward foreigner, ‘Did she say anything which might give us a clue who she is?’

‘Not a thing,’ said Joe. ‘Didn’t have time for introductions and she wasn’t in a fit state anyway. But don’t you folk keep records of who lives round here, council tax, electoral register, that sort of thing?’

It was a genuine question. Joe knew the Scots had a different legal system because it had come up in an episode of Dr Finlay’s Casebook, so maybe the Welsh moved in their own mysterious way too.

Ursell, however, looked like he was taking it as a crack.

‘Oh, yes, we keep very good records, as you may find, Mr Sixsmith. We like to know all about everyone who lives round here, or comes visiting for that matter. But nothing’s known about this woman, nothing at all, which I find very puzzling. I suppose everyone on your coach is accounted for?’

He glared accusingly at Merv, but it was Mirabelle who leapt into the breach.

‘What you saying? This poor lady jumped off our coach and ran into that burning house just so my nephew could risk his life saving her? And while we’re disputing the matter, how come that other policeman who was there didn’t do the saving? Ain’t that what we pay our taxes for?’

Even without the backing of rational argument, Mirabelle was a fearsome disputant. With it, she towered like the sons of Anak, and Ursell became as a grasshopper in her sight.

‘Sorry, no, you misunderstand me,’ he said, trying without much success for a placating smile. ‘Far as I understand it, Sergeant Prince was in his car, summoning help, and didn’t know there was anyone in the house till a few minutes later when he rejoined you all. House should have been empty, see? So what we have here is a woman nobody knows, and she’s in a bad way, and all of us are very keen to let her next of kin know what’s happened, so as they can get here to give her support and comfort.’

He didn’t sound very convincing but he suddenly sounded very Welsh, in the same way the Scots become very Scottish and the Irish very Irish at times they want to be defensively disarming. This was a phenomenon Joe’s radical solicitor friend, Butcher, had pointed out in reference to himself. ‘You saying I come over all Uncle Tommish?’ he’d demanded indignantly. ‘Worse than that,’ she replied. ‘You come over all poor-me-deprived-Luton-laddish.’

Mirabelle wasn’t disarmed.

‘If that wasn’t her own house burning, why you not hassling the folk whose house it is?’ she demanded.

‘That’s Mr and Mrs Haggard of Islington, London,’ said Ursell. ‘They’re on their way but over the phone they’ve made it clear no one was staying in Copa Cottage with their permission.’

He made Islington, London, sound like Gomorrah, thought Joe. And also he got an impression that this Mr and Mrs Haggard were not people of good standing in Ursell’s eyes. Of course it could be it was just this anti-Anglocolonization thing he’d once read about in a magazine at the dentist’s.

‘Maybe they got children,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Young ‘uns can be pretty free with what ain’t their own.’

She shot Joe an unjustifiably significant glance.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Ursell, clearly tiring of being disarming. ‘Now, if I could have a quick word with Mr Sixsmith alone …’

There was resistance, but the DI was good at crowd control and in less than a minute he had everyone else out into the corridor. He now looked at the other patients as if considering pushing them out too but decided against it.

Joe said, ‘There was some writing on a wall, something about GO HOME ENGLISH. Maybe this wasn’t an accident, is that what you’re thinking?’

Ursell let out the long-suffering sigh of one who is fed up with being taught how to suck eggs.

‘Someone mentioned you were some kind of investigator, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said with a neutrality worse than sarcasm. Not that it mattered to Joe who’d been put down by men with research degrees in down-putting.

‘Not trying to investigate anything,’ he said. ‘Specially not when you had one of your own men right on the spot. Prince, did someone say his name was? He the local bobby?’

Ursell took his time answering.

‘Not really,’ he said finally. ‘Just happened to be in the area on another matter, it seems. And not one of my men. Uniformed, or perhaps you didn’t notice?’

Joe, familiar with the often strained relationship between CID and the rest back in Luton, said provocatively, ‘In, out, always a cop, isn’t that what they say?’

Ursell said softly, ‘We can certainly count ourselves lucky having two pairs of trained eyes at the scene of the crime.’

That unsarcastic sarcasm again.

‘So it was definitely a crime?’ said Joe.

Ursell hesitated then shrugged.

‘It’s no secret, not round here anyway. Yes, it was arson. Traces of an accelerant, probably petrol.’

‘So maybe if this woman shouldn’t have been in the house, these fire raisers thought the place was empty?’ suggested Joe.

‘Could be,’ admitted Ursell. ‘Why she didn’t hear something and get out quick is the puzzle.’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Joe, very superior. ‘She was naked when I found her. I reckon she was in the shower when it happened, probably didn’t hear a thing. Came out, found the place full of smoke. Ran into the front bedroom which was when we spotted her. Saw there was no way out there. Headed back, ceiling beneath already on fire, and her foot went through the floorboards. After that, best she could manage was to drag herself back into the shower, turn the cold water full on, and lie there waiting for the end.’

The long speech brought on a fit of coughing which spared Ursell the angst of having to agree.

‘You here to sing, you say? Interesting,’ he observed when Joe regained control. ‘Rest of the choir coughs in tune too, I daresay.’

‘Come along and listen if you’ve a spare moment,’ snapped Joe, irritated at the sneer against the choir. ‘You might learn something.’

‘Oh yes? About as much chance as I have of having a spare moment, with all this in my lap.’

Now Joe was thoroughly incensed, not a condition he was very familiar with.

‘Listen, Inspector. I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced, but this fire, whoever’s responsible, it’s not me or my choir, and it’s almost certainly not that poor woman who’s got herself nearly burnt to death. Now, if you need to talk to me again, you’ll find me at Branddreth College.’

He strode to the door. It was an effort not to show what an effort striding was, but he managed it.

With Merv’s strength at one side, and Beryl’s warmth at the other, he set off down a long corridor.

Ursell overtook them without a glance and turned down a side corridor. When they reached it, Joe looked along it and saw the inspector talking to a uniformed policeman who’d just risen from a chair outside a door.

‘Hang on a sec,’ said Joe.

He abandoned his supporters and walked down the side corridor. Ursell and the uniformed man watched his approach in silence. When he reached them, Joe peered in through the glass panel of the door. He’d anticipated what he would see there, but the sight of that deathly still figure lying on a bed, hooked up to a variety of drips and monitoring apparatus, still caught at his throat worse than the smoke from the fire.

‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.

‘No change,’ said Ursell.

‘I hope that … I hope …’

Joe broke off. What had this cop, who looked like he thought life was a form of irritable bowel syndrome, to do with his hopes?

He turned away, but he’d only gone a few paces when the inspector came alongside.

‘Mr Sixsmith.’

‘Yes?’ said Joe, halting.

‘I don’t think I said, you did OK.’

Saying it seemed to hurt his throat as much as speaking hurt Joe’s.

‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘Maybe not OK enough, eh? You’ll let me know if anything …’

‘Rest assured,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ll let you know.’

Maybe it was just the accent, but the words sounded very final.

Chapter 4

In The Lost Traveller’s Guide, the famous travel book devoted to places unlikely to be visited on purpose, Branddreth Hall, the seat of Branddreth College, is described thus:

Here we have a building which achieves the remarkable feat of spanning six centuries, from medieval stronghold through Tudor hall, Georgian manor and Victorian mansion, to twentieth-century school, without once coming within welly-hurling distance of distinction. Succeeding generations have recorded their disappointment that, despite all attempts at contemporaneous improvement, the complete building sullenly insists on remaining less than the sum of its parts, and in this unrepentant ugliness, the Lady House, an Edwardian dower house built in what might best be called the Mock-Tudor Council Estate style, shows an almost touching family resemblance.

Joe, whose architectural acme was the green and yellow marble-clad ziggurat housing the new Malayan restaurant in Luton High, viewed the hall with no such critical eye. All he saw was the gift-wrapping round the cosy little sickbay where Beryl was going to act as his personal nurse.

On their way, they had passed the burnt-out shell of the farmhouse, or Copa Cottage as he now knew it was called. Only a jagged shell of outer wall remained standing and firemen were still picking their way through the ashes. A real inferno, thought Joe. And nearly my pyre.

A fire engine and two police cars were parked in front of the ruin with a plum-coloured Daimler standing a little to one side, like a duchess keeping her skirts out of the heavy tread of the hired help.

Next to it stood four people, watching the firemen at their work. Two of them, a man and a woman, thirtysomethings, smartly tweeded in the way posh townies dress for the country, he with his arm comfortingly round her shoulders, Joe guessed to be the Haggards from Islington. A little to one side, regarding them with grave concern, stood a tall distinguished man, with aquiline nose, silvering hair, and a walking stick.

And set back from this trio, regarding them all with unreadable blankness, was Detective Inspector Ursell.

Who’d had time to finish his business at the hospital, leave after them, and still get here before they did. Which meant that Merv could still be a long way from sussing out these winding country roads, a suspicion confirmed when Mirabelle hissed, ‘What you doing bringing us past here?’

Thinks seeing the place again might do my head in, thought Joe, not altogether displeased at being regarded as such a sensitive plant. Then Beryl’s arm went around him, and he realized his body was shivering. Maybe he was that sensitive plant after all!

The rest of the journey (less than a mile – Merv had got that right at least) passed in melancholy silence. But when they got out of the coach and heard the sound of singing voices drifting through the bright spring air, interrupted from time to time by Rev. Pot’s cries of encouragement or abuse, Joe’s heart bounded and he felt like he’d come home.

Even the discovery that the cosy little sickbay was more barrack room than BUPA didn’t depress his spirits. Meekly he allowed Beryl to check him over for damage in transit then put him to bed, with Aunt Mirabelle playing gooseberry, more, he thought generously, out of concern for his condition than suspicion it wouldn’t debar him from unclean thoughts.

He drank some thin soup and a cup of tea. A high liquid intake was prescribed till his throat eased. Hopefully he enquired about the availability of Guinness. Beryl pursed her lips (oh, how he longed to open that purse) but Mirabelle, God bless her, said, ‘That black stout supposed to be good for nursing mothers, isn’t it? Don’t see how it can do you any harm. But sleep first.’

Upon which promise, and the imagined promise contained in the kiss which Beryl brushed across his mouth, Joe closed his eyes obediently and, to what would have been his surprise if he’d been awake to appreciate it, he fell asleep immediately.

He woke in semi-darkness and the knowledge that there was someone in the room.

Like most of Joe’s instant certainties, evidence came a good way second. His occasional good friend, Superintendent Willie Woodbine of Luton CID, justified his plagiarism of Joe’s occasional detective triumphs (the same occasions on which he became a good friend) by saying, ‘God knows how you get there, Joe, but you’ve got to understand, the real work starts with me having to plot a logical path that won’t get laughed out of court.’

While Joe didn’t see how this entitled Willie to take ninety per cent of the credit, he did see that a lowly PI couldn’t afford to turn down any offer of goodwill from the fuzz on no matter what extortionate terms.

Now he didn’t waste time working out what combination of sound, smell and sixth or seventh sense was giving him this info, but focused on the two main issues: one, he wasn’t alone; two, he didn’t know who it was he wasn’t alone with.

He kept his breathing natural. Not as easy as it sounded. It had taken the great American gumshoe, Endo Venera, whose book Not So Private Eye had become Joe’s professional Bible, to point out that not many folk had the faintest idea what their natural breathing sounded like when asleep. ‘Only way to check if you gurgle like a baby or grunt like a hog is to use your VAT,’ said Venera.

It had taken Joe a very confused five minutes to work out that the American didn’t mean value-added tax but voice-activated tape. Such hi-tech aids weren’t in his armoury, but he managed to rig up a conventional recorder on a timer so that he got an hour’s worth of the weird noises he made in bed. Even then he had to separate the basso continuo of his cat, Whitey, from his own surprisingly high-pitched plainsong. So now he was able to avoid the giveaway error of an imitation baritone snore as he lay there, and felt the intruder moving stealthily closer.

Very close now. His mental eye was seeing a mad Welsh nationalist with a can of petrol in one hand and a lighter in the other, bent on getting rid of this potential witness to last night’s crime. It was hard, but he kept his nerve and waited. The intruder had come to a stop. So, Joe realized, had his own breathing. Dead giveaway! Showtime!

He shot upright, flung out his arms, grappled his assailant to his body in a weapon-neutralizing bearhug, rolled out of the bed and wrestled him to the floor.

Various parts of his body sent out signals. Conflicting signals. His injured shoulder, back and knee registered what-the-shoot-are-you-doing-dickhead? shafts of pain, while his face and chest acknowledged gratefully that what they were pressing down on was pleasantly soft and yielding.

Then his ears got in on the act, picking up a high-pitched shriek of shock and indignation which confirmed what his torso was telling him.

This him he’d got hold of was a her, and a well-built one at that.

Ignoring his pain, he rolled off, stood up, and pulled the curtains aside to let in a torrent of bright sunlight.

It fell on a young woman in her mid teens with long blonde hair and a surprised expression. She was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse, both of which had ridden up under the pressure of his attack. She had strong well-fleshed legs and a bosom to match.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘I mean, hey … I’m sorry.’

He bent over her and offered his hand to help her rise. It occurred to him too late that if her purpose were offensive, he was laying himself wide open to a kick in the crutch or a blade in the belly.

But all she did was take his hand and draw herself upright, saying, ‘Bloody hell, boyo, they told me you were ill.’

Joe’s aches, temporarily anaesthetized by his chivalric guilt, came flooding back, and he sat on the bed with a groan.

‘Too late playing for sympathy now,’ she said. ‘Not when you’ve indecently assaulted me already.’

She had a voice like a Welsh stream, bubbling with gently mocking laughter.

Joe said, ‘Really am sorry. Thought you were a burglar or something.’

‘So it was just self-defence, not irresistible desire. There’s disappointing. Is it your back is hurting, then?’

‘Among other places,’ admitted Joe.

‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

She came round the bed and before he could protest she had pushed his pyjama jacket up round his neck and her fingers were pressing up and down his spine, lightly at first, then probing ever deeper. He opened his mouth to cry out in pain, then realized there wasn’t any, or at least a lot less than there’d been a few seconds ago.

‘Going, is it?’ she asked. ‘That’s good. Let’s hope it goes to somebody who deserves it. Not a real hero. First time I got my hands on a real hero.’

‘You the district nurse or something?’ enquired Joe.

This produced a cascade of laughter.

‘No way! You try that wrestling trick on Gladys Two-bars and she’d snap you like a twig, hero or not.’

‘Gladys …?’

‘Two-bars. Gave her a lady’s bike when she started, but twice out and the frame buckled under the weight of her, so they had to get her a man’s, and even then she needed a double crossbar.’

Joe offered up a prayer of thanks he’d been spared that encounter and asked, ‘So who are you, then?’

‘Bron, that’s Bronwen, Williams. My da’s caretaker here at the college, and when your friends had to go off, they asked if we’d keep an eye on you. I would never have said yes if I’d known what sort of man you were going to turn out to be.’

Joe didn’t enquire what sort of man that was, but asked instead, ‘So where’ve they gone, my friends?’

‘Down into Llanffugiol, silly. Festival proper starts tomorrow and they got to register, see what’s what, more rules than a lawyers’ union these choir contests, my da says.’

‘Yes, but it’s the singing that counts,’ said Joe defensively.

‘You think so? Easy to tell you’re not from round here. Could sing like an angel and they’d disqualify you for not having wings if they felt like it. Here, lie down, will you, else I’ll be doing my own back in.’

Obediently, Joe stretched prone on the bed and next thing the girl was straddling him, her bum warm against his buttocks as she leaned her fingers deep into his back.

‘You trained for this?’ he croaked.

‘No. You complaining? Send you back to that fancy hospital if you like. But you won’t find any of those puffed-up little nurses can give you this treatment. Nothing but a bunch of skivvies, that lot, just about fit for cleaning bedpans. Chuck you out before you can hardly walk, too. ‘Spect they’ll be chucking that woman out you rescued any time now.’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe, wondering what experience of Caerlindys Hospital had given Bronwen such a jaundiced opinion of the place. ‘She looks to be in a pretty bad way.’

‘You talk to her then?’

‘Not me. Police are trying but she’s in no state.’

‘Police are useless,’ she said dismissively. She was, thought Joe, a very dismissive young woman. ‘So they don’t know who she is, then? What she was doing there?’

‘Not yet. What’s the word locally?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Back home, everyone would have a theory,’ said Joe. ‘Can’t be much different here, I shouldn’t have thought.’

‘Mind our own business round here,’ she said sharply. ‘Got enough to do looking after ourselves without wasting time on strangers.’

In the circumstances, which were that her bare thighs were gripping the bare back of a complete stranger, this seemed a questionable disclaimer, thought Joe. But he wasn’t about to raise the objection.

The massage, temporarily suspended, now resumed, with the girl sliding back and forth above him like a rower pulling on an oar, as she let her hands run in long slow strokes the whole length of his back from bum to shoulders.

‘How’s that feel?’ she asked

‘Lot better,’ said Joe, his voice now husky with more than just smoke damage.

‘Turn over and I’ll do your front then,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said explosively. ‘Front’s fine, really.’

‘You sure?’ she said, her voice husky as his own. ‘It’s all down to tension, you know, get rid of the tension and you get rid of the pain …’

She’s taking the mickey, thought Joe. She knows exactly what’s going on and she’s taking the mickey.

Before he could decide how to respond there was a sound like the polite cough well-brought-up folk use when less well-brought-up folk would shout, ‘Oy!’

The girl dismounted like a pro jockey. Joe turned his head to see what had made the sound and rather to his surprise, because being right first time wasn’t something he was used to, he saw what looked like the very model of a well-brought-up polite cougher in the doorway.

It was the silver-haired man with the eagle’s beak he’d seen in the group by the ruined cottage.

‘Mr Sixsmith, I presume,’ he said, advancing. ‘I’m glad to see Bronwen’s looking after you. I’m Leon Lewis, High Master of Branddreth.’

He approached the bed with his hand outstretched. Joe, though already gratefully acknowledging the deflating effect of the interruption, was not yet in a position to do more than flap his hand out sideways.