The Earth Hums in B Flat (9 page)

‘Then just tell me what's worrying you, Magda.'

‘What do you think's happened to Ifan?' says Mam.

‘Ifan?' says Tada. ‘I don't think anything's happened to him. He'll turn up. Why are you worrying about Ifan?'

‘I'm . . . I used to be quite fond of him. You know that.'

‘It was a long time ago, Magda,' says Tada. ‘No reason for you to worry about him now.'

‘Nanw Lipstick is stirring up old stories about him. And she says he's gone off with a fancy woman.'

I wriggle towards the wall and put my ear against it. The wallpaper has rubbed into a furry patch that tickles my ear.

Tada gives a spluttery laugh. ‘Is that what's worrying you?' he says. ‘That Nanw Lipstick will find out you once went about with Ifan?'

‘I couldn't bear it. Not all the gossip,' says Mam. ‘And what if she found out about . . . you know . . . Mam, as well. I couldn't bear the shame of that.'

‘Oh, Magda,' says Tada. His voice is weary. ‘You were hardly a fancy woman, were you? How old were you? Just a girl. And as for your mother . . . well, we've gone over and over that, haven't we? Over and over it.' The bed thumps against the wall again as Tada turns over. ‘What happened to your mother is nothing for you to be ashamed about,' he says.

In the back yard John Morris has got into a fight with Nellie Davies's cats. They fizz and spit at each other. Nellie Davies complains about John Morris all the time. I don't understand why he's such a good fighter when he's so lazy. Maybe he has the spirit of a warrior in him. If foxes and spiders and dolls have spirits, a cat is sure to have a spirit too.

I press my ear back against the wall.

‘Anyway, that's water long gone under the bridge,' says Tada. ‘It's poor Elin Evans we should be worrying about if he doesn't turn up again, left on her own with those little girls.'

Mam doesn't make a sound.

‘Nice woman like that,' says Tada. ‘I can't understand the man.'

The silence stretches to the moon. I lie back and pull the sheet over my mouth again.

‘Best thing all round would be if Ifan came back soon,' says Tada. ‘Twm Edwards won't be able to manage without a shepherd for long and Elin could lose the cottage.'

Mrs Evans could lose Brwyn Coch! What would happen to her and Angharad and little Catrin, cast out into the cold by Twm Edwards? Catrin doesn't like the cold. Where would they live? Where would Mrs Evans put all her books?

‘Well, none of our business, is it?' Tada says into the quietness. ‘But someone ought to find out where Ifan's got to, fancy woman or no fancy woman. I wonder if Sergeant Jones is looking into it.'

Mam doesn't answer at all. The house sighs and grumbles around me as it settles down for the night. Bethan heaves over in the bed taking the blanket and the sheet with her. I haul them back. Bethan would like to know about Mam and Ifan Evans. Maybe Mam was only Bethan's age. Just a girl, Tada said. It's like Bethan liking Caroline's brother, Richard. Yuck. Tada begins to snore, louder and louder, in a duet with Bethan. It's difficult to think in all the noise. Now there are two things I've got to start doing tomorrow. I have to think of a plot to rescue the fox-fur from Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and give it a decent burial so its spirit will be sure to go to Heaven. And I have to find Ifan Evans. Then Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin won't have to leave Brwyn Coch. And they won't become homeless and nearly starve and Catrin and Angharad won't die of scarlet fever because they're living in poverty like the children in
Little Women
. Although I would help nurse them.

I pull the sheet tighter over my mouth. The corpse bird hoots again and again in Bron-y-graig and I feel the beat of its heavy wings enter the rhythm of my sleep to carry me away into the night sky.

11

I push my way through the side gate of the Police House. Beside the path the bluebells hang their heads under the weight of the morning's rain. The clouds have turned even greyer and I feel goose pimples prickling all over my arms. A breeze blows up from the sea. I raise my hand to knock on Sergeant Jones's door and it swings open in front of me. Sergeant Jones is struggling to close the window behind his desk, sneezing into a big white handkerchief at the same time.

‘Martha's beating the carpets,' he says. ‘That breeze blew all the dust in through the window.'

I can hear the slap of the carpet beater from the garden beyond the window drumming on the carpets. Clouds of dust rise above the clothesline and drift towards the window.

‘Spring cleaning,' says the Sergeant. ‘All it does is shift the dust somewhere else. If I sneeze much more I'll probably have one of my nosebleeds. Are you any good at first aid, Gwenni?'

I stand in the doorway and shift my weight from one leg to another. I don't want to think about blood; I don't want to think about Mrs Evans's poor mouth and the piteous dead fox. Sergeant Jones waves the big handkerchief he sneezed into at me. I don't look at the handkerchief.

‘Come in, come in,' he says. ‘Don't stand there holding up the door frame. I haven't started that Mr Campion book you brought me last time yet, if that's what you've come about. I've been much too busy.'

‘I haven't come about that,' I say. Sergeant Jones doesn't catch criminals the way Albert Campion does. He says we don't have criminals like that in our town, criminals that steal priceless jewels or kidnap people and murder them. I wonder if we have priceless jewels in our town. Maybe Mrs Llywelyn Pugh wears some under her dead fox. I want to be a detective like Albert Campion, not a detective who spends all his time digging his garden. Sergeant Jones says you have to be a policeman like him before you can be a detective. Detecting isn't a suitable job for a woman, Gwenni, he says. But he won't tell me why it isn't. Maybe he doesn't know.

Sergeant Jones pushes his handkerchief into his trouser pocket and winks at me. ‘Come to confess to a crime, then, have you, Gwenni?' he says and laughs until his chins wobble.

I wait for him to stop spluttering. ‘Do you find missing people?' I ask.

‘Sometimes,' he says, scratching his head as if he's trying to remember when he last found a missing person. He sits in his chair, which groans as he pushes his bottom back between the arms. I sit on the wooden chair in front of his desk. The seat is cold under my legs and I shiver.

‘It's a bit chilly, isn't it?' says Sergeant Jones. ‘I can see snow on the Wyddfa from the bedroom window. That's April for you.' He leans back in his chair. Mrs Sergeant Jones is beating the carpets faster now. Bang-bang. Bang-bang. Maybe she thinks it's going to rain again. Or snow.

‘It's about Ifan Evans,' I say.

‘Thought so,' says Sergeant Jones.

‘Are you trying to find him?'

‘The police don't usually try to find grown men who've gone away of their own accord, Gwenni.'

‘Why not? What if their wives want them back? What if their children want them back?'

Sergeant Jones sighs. His chair groans again as he leans forward over the desk. His breath is warm and smells of Mrs Sergeant Jones's famous vanilla biscuits. ‘Men leave their families and homes for all sorts of complicated reasons, Gwenni. Sometimes, their families are even glad to see them go.'

‘But Mrs Evans will be cast out of her house and Angharad and little Catrin will starve and become ill if Ifan Evans doesn't come back.'

Sergeant Jones laughs again, then looks at me and stops. He drums his fingers on his desk in time with Mrs Sergeant Jones's carpet-beating. ‘Come on, Gwenni,' he says. ‘Sometimes I think you read too many books. This is real life; I don't think things will be quite that bad. And, anyway, Ifan Evans will probably turn up again, like the bad penny.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Nothing, Gwenni, it's just something people say.'

‘But what if he doesn't turn up like the bad penny?'

Sergeant Jones heaves his shoulders up in a giant shrug. ‘There's nothing I can do, Gwenni, not officially. I have asked one or two people who might have known something about where he might have gone, of course I have, but—'

‘Have you talked to Guto?'

‘I've tried, but you know what he's like, Gwenni. Anyway, no one's got any idea about where Ifan might be. So that's that. And it's no good giving me that old-fashioned look, I've done as much as I can and I've got a lot of other work to do, you know.'

I look out at the garden through the window behind him. Mrs Sergeant Jones has finished her carpet-beating but there are still little clouds of dust hovering above the clothesline.

‘I mean a lot of police work, Gwenni, not gardening work.'

It's become much warmer in the office with the window closed. I get up from my chair to undo the belt and buttons on my mackintosh. A poster on the wall next to the door has a picture of a man's face on it and the words
Have you seen this
man?
printed underneath the face. ‘Why can't you make a poster of Ifan Evans like this one and put it up in lots of places? Is this man missing too?'

‘He's missing all right,' says Sergeant Jones, ‘but he's a criminal, he escaped from custody. He's a murderer, Gwenni, that's why I've got to keep an eye out for him. Though he's not likely to come this way.'

‘A murderer.' I move closer to the poster. So this is what a murderer looks like. Just like anybody else. Maybe that's why they're hard to catch.

‘Have you ever caught a murderer, Sergeant Jones?' I sit down in my chair again. Maybe Mrs Sergeant Jones should make a cushion for it. A cushion with embroidered flowers all over it and dried lavender inside it like she makes for the Chapel's Sale of Work. She's almost as good as Aunty Siân at sewing. It would make Sergeant Jones's office smell summery all year.

‘Not here, Gwenni. There hasn't been a murder since I've been stationed here.'

‘I thought that was what the police did, catch criminals and murderers.'

‘Plenty of criminals here of one sort or another. Just plain silly, most of them. And greedy.'

‘Did you catch a murderer where you were stationed before, then? When I asked you, you said: Not here.'

‘You're a sharp one, Gwenni.' Sergeant Jones looks at his golden watch, which has some writing etched into it, and then swings it back on its golden chain into his waistcoat pocket before I can make out what it says. He always does that. ‘Well, yes, I helped to catch a murderer when I was a constable at Dinbych. Just starting out I was.' He looks hard at me. ‘But it wasn't exciting, you know, like in books or the pictures. It was just trudging from door to door asking people the same questions over and over.'

‘Questions like that?' I nod towards the poster.

‘Something like that,' says Sergeant Jones. ‘And warning people to be careful. The man had run away from the asylum and he'd killed somebody almost immediately; he wasn't responsible for his actions.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘We caught him and he was sent back to the asylum. He wasn't fit to stand trial.' Sergeant Jones sighs. ‘He died soon after.'

‘Who did he murder?'

‘A farmer who was trying to help him. It was all very sad, Gwenni. And a long time ago.' He tugs the watch out of its pocket and looks at it again. ‘I have to do some paperwork now, Gwenni, so you'll have to go home. Tell your mam I was asking after her.'

I scrape my chair back along the floor and stand up. ‘But can't you make a poster like that for Ifan Evans?'

‘No, of course I can't,' says Sergeant Jones. ‘Ifan Evans isn't a criminal.'

‘But he's gone away and left Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin and Mot and the lambs.'

‘It's odd, I grant you, Gwenni. But it's not a crime. I can't chase after him for that.'

Sergeant Jones puffs and huffs as he pulls himself out of his chair and stands up. I wait by the door and put my hand up to feel the poster; the paper is smooth and thick. ‘But I can,' I say. I know just what to do. I'll ask Mrs Evans for a photograph of Ifan Evans to make a poster like this one.

‘No, Gwenni, you can't,' says the Sergeant. His face is purply red from the effort of getting out of his chair.

‘Yes, I can,' I say. ‘I can ask people if they've seen him and they'll think it's just one of my games. I'll say I'm playing detectives; I'll say I'm being Albert Campion or Gari Tryfan.'

Sergeant Jones pulls out his little black notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket that's over the back of his chair, and his pencil from behind his ear. He flips the pages of the notebook and licks the pencil. His tongue is purply red, too. I look away.

‘I'll make a note of our conversation, Gwenni,' he says, ‘but I don't want you asking people about Ifan Evans as if he's done something wrong. I don't think your mam would like it very much, either, do you?'