The Earth Hums in B Flat (20 page)

‘I'm never frightened,' I say.

‘You should be sometimes,' says Sergeant Jones. ‘It's only common sense. Now, I don't think it's safe for you to be walking out here in the back of beyond on your own.'

‘Why ever not? I'm always up here. And I'm not always on my own. I often see Guto'r Wern. He's been teaching me to fly. But I think he can only fly in his sleep, like me.'

Sergeant Jones leans on the Pool railings next to his bicycle. It's too late to tell him his white shirt and his uniform trousers will be covered in old paint and rust. But maybe Mrs Sergeant Jones doesn't get cross.

He takes a deep breath. ‘You know what inquests are for, I expect, Gwenni, from reading those books you lend me. For instance, this inquest today told us how Ifan died, and—' ‘Everyone knows how he died. He fell in the Reservoir and drowned,' I say. ‘Sergeant Jones, does this water in the Pool come from the Reservoir?'

‘What? Oh, no, it's a stream, Gwenni, an underground stream. And Ifan Evans didn't die because he fell in the Reservoir and drowned. The inquest told us he was killed, Gwenni. Someone murdered him. This changes things.'

I stare at him. Murder. I thought murder only happened far away from here or in books. Who could have murdered Ifan Evans?

‘Who killed him?' I say. ‘Did the inquest say who killed him?'

‘No. The police will have to find the killer. And while there's a murderer on the loose you'd better stop wandering about on your own like this.'

‘I can help you find the murderer, Sergeant Jones. I can, really.'

‘This is serious, Gwenni. It's not like finding a lost cat or even a lost person. Anyway, there are some important policemen coming from Dolgellau to investigate, policemen who are used to catching murderers.'

‘Please let me help, Sergeant Jones, please. I won't get in the way of the investigation, honest. I'll investigate on my own.'

‘I should think you'd know better after that last bit of investigation you did. You upset everybody, including your mam.' I open my mouth to protest and he lifts his hand, his palm towards me. ‘But if you must do something, pretend it's a story in one of those detective books you give me, and work out the clues. Can you do that?'

‘Oh, yes, Sergeant Jones.' He didn't tell me not to investigate, did he? ‘We'll catch the murderer before the policemen from Dolgellau do.' I dance about on the grass and clamber on to the railings, balancing on the top one like I do on Tada's chair with my arms held out.

‘Careful,' says Sergeant Jones.

‘I can fly,' I call to him. ‘I can fly and see everything.' I leap into the air. I feel a breeze whip my hair behind me into a long tail. I land at Sergeant Jones's feet.

Sergeant Jones shakes his head. ‘Go straight home, Gwenni.' He takes hold of his bicycle and wheels it into the road. ‘Go straight home, and be careful. This could be dangerous.'

25

Pretend it's a story, Sergeant Jones said. But this isn't like a story in a book at all. In books, the clues are laid out tidily, one at a time. I don't know where to start looking for clues, even. And now, because there's a murderer on the loose, I'm not allowed to go out walking on my own so I have no time or stillness to think about my investigation. It's more important than ever because Sergeant Jones told Tada that the special detectives from Dolgellau want to interview me on Monday. When he told Mam she started shaking and had to have an extra one of Dr Edwards's new tablets. Tada said he would go with me but Mam said he'd let me tell them all the wrong things, and anyway, they couldn't afford to lose a whole day of Tada's pay, and since Mam wouldn't be able to clean the Police House if the special detectives were there, she might as well be the one to go with me.

I fold the sheet over the scratchy blanket and pull them both up over my mouth and my nose. Tonight, John Morris isn't fighting any other cats, and I haven't heard the corpse bird at all. It's quiet and still enough now except for Tada's snores. Even Bethan is lying flat on her back without moving or snoring. I pinch her to make sure she's not dead, and she gives a giant snore and turns over, pulling the sheet and the blanket off me. I have to haul hard to get them back. My mind wanders, thinking about Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin, and Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and her dead fox, and poor Guto, and Mam's nerves, and secrets, secrets everywhere. ‘Concentrate,' I tell myself. ‘Find those clues.'

Detectives find clues at the scene of the crime. But where was the scene of the crime? Somewhere between Brwyn Coch and the Reservoir? The sheep will have eaten any clues left there. They nibble everything away. Except thistles and dandelions. Sheep don't eat the clues in books or on the wireless. Mr Campion and Gari Tryfan don't have trouble with sheep.

Bethan won't lie still now. I push her leg back to her own side of the bed. She never takes any notice of my ribbon down the middle of the mattress. I pull the sheet and the blanket around me and clamp my arms straight down my sides on top of them so she can't pull them off every time she heaves herself around.

And now, Mam's started moaning in her sleep, mumbling words I can't understand. Every night since she burnt Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's dead fox, she cries out in her sleep. Tada wakes, and I hear him without putting my ear to the wall. ‘Hush, Magda,' he says. ‘My sweetheart. My lovely girl.' He says the same things every time. ‘I'll look after you. We'll be fine. Hush, now, hush.' When Mam is quiet, the bed twangs as Tada settles down to sleep again.

Perhaps everything will be fine once the murderer is caught. I wonder if the detectives from Dolgellau are any better than Sergeant Jones. If only I could find some clues. Maybe I'm looking at them but can't see them, like when Mam sends me to fetch something from the sideboard or the larder and I can't find it, and she says: It's right in front of your beak, Gwenni.

I feel myself begin to drift like a twig in the stream. I mustn't go to sleep. So, instead, I lift from the bed, high into the sky. Flying is magical; all the clouds disappear unless I need one to lie on, and if the moon is thin the stars give me plenty of their light. Is flying magical enough for me to find clues? I turn my back on the sea and the town, and soar up to Brwyn Coch. I hear the cottage sigh in its sleep when I fly above it. A night-light is burning in Angharad and Catrin's bedroom, but all the other windows are dark. The geese are shuffling around in their shed, and Mot is whimpering as he sleeps in his kennel.

I float down slowly towards the Reservoir. From here the fields and paths, the Reservoir and the Baptism Pool below it, the winding road, all look like a drawing on a page in an old mapbook, so that I want to lean down and write all their names on them. Instead, I search – up and down from the Reservoir to Brwyn Coch, and back again, over and over. I can't find one single clue. What if Ifan Evans's death wasn't murder? What if he fell against the stone wall at the edge of the Reservoir and hit his head on a stone and then fell into the water? I swoop lower and fly just above the wall to search for blood on the stones, but I can't see any.

I'm just about to lift into the sky again when I see a fox running away from the Reservoir, up the fields towards Brwyn Coch. I fly after it. It's running so fast that I can't catch up with it. It runs along the side of the cottage and just as it disappears around the back I hear barking below me. I look down and see the black dog racing after the fox. It barks and barks as it nears Brwyn Coch and, as if it's in a film at the picture house when the projector runs slow, the cottage begins to collapse. Its chimneys tumble down and the roof caves in. The black dog's bark grows louder, until the sky is filled with its sound. Brwyn Coch's windows fall out and the walls crumble into a heap of stones. And Mrs Evans, and Angharad and Catrin, and Mot and the geese have all vanished.

I wake up yelling at the black dog to stop barking, and find the bedclothes twisted and damp around me. My flying turned into a bad dream tonight. And Mam is banging on the bedroom wall and shouting, ‘Be quiet, Gwenni. I must have my beauty sleep.'

26

Sergeant Jones opens the door to his office. ‘Come in. Come in,' he says as if he's invited us to a tea party.

Mam prods me over the threshold and whispers, ‘Don't forget what I told you.' She gives me another prod with her forefinger to make sure I've heard her. But hearing doesn't mean remembering. What was it that she told me?

I give Sergeant Jones the book I've brought with me. ‘
The
Tiger in the Smoke
,' I say. ‘It's really good.'

Sergeant Jones tucks the book under his arm and says, ‘Just come inside, will you, Gwenni?' He mops his face and his head with his handkerchief and closes the door behind us with a bang that makes Mam jump. The office is stuffy and the smell of sweat and soap takes my breath away.

Someone else is sitting in Sergeant Jones's armchair behind the desk. The light comes through the window behind him and shades his face. His hair is dark and his suit is dark. He stands up and with his hands invites me and Mam to sit in the two wooden chairs on our side of the desk. He doesn't speak.

‘This is Detective Inspector Thomas from Dolgellau,' says Sergeant Jones to Mam and me. A real, live detective, just like I want to be. Not a policeman in a uniform.

‘Pleased to meet you,' says Mam in her posh voice, and she sits on one of the chairs. The seat is narrow and her bottom spreads over the sides.

‘Mrs Magda Morgan and Gwenni, her daughter, sir,' says Sergeant Jones to the real, live detective. I sit down, too, and as Sergeant Jones sits on a chair against the wall to the side of us I notice another man sitting behind us, beyond Sergeant Jones, in a corner of the office under a new have-you-seen-this-man poster, with a notepad on his knee and the sheen of perspiration on his face.

‘It's hard to breathe in here with the window shut,' I say to Sergeant Jones.

‘We have to keep the . . . eh . . . conversation private, Gwenni,' he says. But there's nothing outside to hear the conversation apart from the mist and the roses round the window.

The real, live detective slaps his hands down flat on the desk and says, ‘I've asked Gwenni to come here today, Mrs Morgan, because she may be able to help us find out what happened to Mr Ifan Evans on April the fifth. A Saturday.' He sits back in Sergeant Jones's chair. It doesn't groan the way it does when Sergeant Jones sits in it.

‘She doesn't know anything,' says Mam. ‘She didn't see him at all that Saturday. She can't help you.'

I remember now. Mam told me to keep my mouth shut and let her do all the talking.

‘I'd really like Gwenni herself to tell me about that Saturday, Mrs Morgan,' says the real detective. ‘You can't tell what might be important in a murder inquiry.'

A murder inquiry. Mam gulps and her hands start shaking. She looks across at Sergeant Jones.

‘Just let Gwenni tell it the way it happened, Magda,' he says.

‘But nothing happened. Nothing happened,' says Mam, her hands clutching at her handbag.

The door from the house swings opens as Mam speaks. Mrs Sergeant Jones appears with a tea tray in her hands, humming
A
Pure Heart
and smiling at us all. I can smell her famous vanilla biscuits from here. It's my favourite smell in the whole world. I never knew what vanilla was until Mrs Sergeant Jones showed me the pod and how she put it in a jar of sugar so that the sugar takes on its smell and taste.

Sergeant Jones takes the tray from her and puts it on top of the filing cabinet and pours tea for everyone into Mrs Sergeant Jones's best cups that her grandmother gave her. The man sitting behind us gives a funny cough, as if he's swallowed something the wrong way, except he hasn't had his tea yet. The real detective spreads his fingers wide on the desk in front of us and presses on them until the tips turn white.

Mam and I hold a cup and saucer with a vanilla biscuit each in the saucers and I begin to nibble my biscuit.

‘Now that we've all got a nice cup of tea,' says the real detective, ‘let's start again, shall we? Gwenni, the man sitting behind you is Detective Sergeant Lloyd, and he'll be taking notes of everything I ask you and all your answers. We'll have to speak in English, I'm afraid, in case it becomes evidence in court.'

Mam's cup chatters on its saucer. My mouth is full of scrumptious biscuit so I nod.

‘Now, Gwenni,' says the real detective, in English, ‘just tell me, as if you were telling a story, about your Saturday morning at Brwyn Coch; the Saturday that you went to look after the little girls because Mrs Evans had an appointment with the dentist. Can you do that?'

Does he want to know about me flying in my sleep and being common as dirt with the bread and jam, and the Baptism Pool and the Reservoir? I swallow my vanilla biscuit. ‘Where shall I start?' I ask.

The real detective looks at some notes on the desk. They're too far away for me to read them upside down. He says, ‘We've already spoken to Mrs Williams at Penrhiw Farm and she said she saw you on your way up to Brwyn Coch. Do you remember? Begin from just before that.'