Pulp Fiction | The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair by John Oram (3 page)

It was a comfortable, old-fashioned inn with a great deal of old oak, gleaming brass and a permanent smell of boiled cabbage. And it was tactically situated on High Street between a chapel hall and a cinema (Saturdays only). Smack, in fact, at the hub of Corwen's roaring night life.

Illya checked in, had a meal and went down to the hotel bar.

Trade was not booming but here was enough business to keep the wolf from the vestibule. Three or four natives who looked like farmers were arguing in Welsh over tankards. A couple of traveling salesmen were adding up the day's total of glass bead and trade gin and plotting new skullduggery for the morrow over glasses of whiskey hot. And sitting by himself at a table near the open fireplace was a character in hairy tweeds and a fold-weave tie with a flannel shirt to match. He had a plate of bread and cheese and a bottle of Guinness in front of him

Nobody paid much attention to Illya's entrance. The farmers returned his "good evening" with a hasty "nos da." The two salesmen looked up, nodded briefly and returned to their figuring. The tweedy man said nothing at all.

The landlord drew a pint of bitter and Illya retired with it to a corner. Something seemed to tell him the boys could get along without his company.

All the evening his eyes kept returning to the man near the fireplace. Despite the natty country suiting he looked out of his element. He had a shaggy mop of jet black hair and his lantern-jawed face was deeply lined. His brown eyes, when he looked up to order another bottle of stout, were sad yet with a look of burning in them. All in all Illya figured his right setting was one of those groups of artsy-craftsy eggheads who hang around Greenwich Village or London's Hampstead area.

At about nine o'clock he got up, muttered "nos da" to nobody in particular and went out.

The farmers looked after him and grinned. One of them tapped the front of his head meaningly. Then they got on with their argument.

Feeling as wanted as a two-way stretch in a nunnery Illya went up to bed.

Next morning he was out bright and early, sizing up the terrain and fraternizing with the locals.

Corwen is no metropolis, being just a largish handful of gray Welsh-type houses thrown picturesquely between the mountains and the River Dee. When you've seen the main street, the cattle pen, the open-air market and the bowling greens you've been the rounds. But that was the kind of town Illya liked and he wished he was there with nothing more than a vacation on his mind. He would have enjoyed talking fat-stock prices with the farmers and rambling around the less vertical portions of the scenery.

Around eleven o'clock, while discussing Owen Glendower with a citizen who looked as if he might have been a contemporary, he saw the shock-headed man again. He was still wearing a tweed jacket but it was ancient and bleached by sun and rain. With it he wore battered cord breeches and gumboots that were streaked with dried mud. He walked with a curious forward stoop — almost a lurch. He passed Illya, going fast, his eyes staring angrily ahead. Although he was alone he was talking in a low monotone.

"That one's an oddball," Illya said. "Who is he?"

"Der!" said the ancient. "There's a pity for him. Poor fellow, indeed. It makes my throat dry to think of him."

"I understand," Illya said. He steered the old man into the Cader Idris. The bar, fortunately, was empty. Illya settled him at the far end and bought two pints.

The oldster raised his tankard in a fist like a withered ham. "Davis is the name," he quavered. "David Davis, Pant-y Pwll."

"That guy out there?"

"No, man. Me! I do like to know who I am drinking with, you see."

Illya said, "My name's Carson. I come from Canada."

"Canada, is it? Well, well! I had a brother went to Canada. Time of the Boer War, it was. I ain't never heard from him since." He clucked regretfully.

"The mails are dreadful," Illya said. "But we were talking about the queer fellow in the gumboots."

Davis looked at him under bushy white eyebrows. He pulled out a clay pipe, blew through it, put it between his gums. Then he went through a long pantomime of pocket patting.

"Oh, dammo!" he cackled. "There's an old fool I am, now. Come out without my pouch. And not a bit to my pipe."

Illya sighed and went to the counter again. The bar only carried black shag and he hoped it would poison the old bandit's declining years. He threw the packet on the table.

"Now give," he said.

Davis stuffed the pipe to a running commentary of "t'ck, t'cks' and "dear, dears," but the first swig of beer seemed to lubricate his vocal chords.

"Hugh ap Morgan," he said. "A foreigner like yourself, true — a Cardiff man — but a Welshman of sorts, I suppose, after all. Yes, a sad case indeed."

Illya said, "Let's get this straight. You're talking now about the guy outside, not some relation of yours by marriage?"

"I'm telling you, aren't I? Hugh ap Morgan of Cardiff. Bachelor of Science, University of Wales. Jailbird!" He spat the last word out with vicious relish.

Illya held himself in. The science and jail motif was interesting but it was too early to be optimistic. He asked patiently, "How did he come to get in the can?"

Davis wagged his head slowly. "Misled, he was. Those Welsh nationalists, as they do call themselves! T'ck, t'ck!"

His feelings overcame him. He had to take another drink. That meant more business with the pipe, which he had allowed to go out.

At last he went on: "It was before the war. A big case it was, they tell me, in all the newspapers. Long sentences they all got."

"But for what?"

"I'm telling you, aren't I? Nationalists, they were. Wanting Home Rule for Wales. So they went about burning airports, blowing up bridges and such nonsense. What they call sawbooters."

"And this guy Morgan was one of them?"

"Ay, indeed." He wagged his head again. "Three years he got, because of his youth. And sentence remitted for good conduct, too."

"But that's thirty years ago."

Davis went on as if he hadn't heard. "Of course he was finished. Never got a decent job again, poor dab. Lived hand to mouth, as you might say."

Illya said as casually as he could, "What is he doing now?"

"Oh, he's with the lot up by Cwm Carrog. The ban-the-bomb lot, long hair and no guts." Mr. Davis spat emphatically. "I'd ban-the-bomb 'em if I was ten years younger. And my boy Dai, Welsh Guards, dead out there in France..."

Illya bought him another pint.

"This Cwm Carrog," he said. "What is it?"

"Duw, man! Don't know the Cwm Carrog? There's ignorance for you. A big old farm it is, right up on Berwyn, very ancient. Property of Mr. Price Hughes. A gentleman. Openhandedness, itself."

"And these ban-the-bomb types work the land for him, eh?"

"Ay," he cackled. "Six of them it takes to do the work of two good Welshmen! And nowhere near so well, neither."

Illya said, "The boss is easy to please, it seems."

"Yes, indeed. A very easy man. Mr. Hughes Cwm Carrog. A shame it is the way they do take advantage of him. Loafing about half the day."

"Hmm. I suppose his family has been settled there since the Flood and he's past caring what happens."

Davis shook his head. "No, no. He bought the farm about....let's see now....about six years ago. Came from foreign parts, I'm told. London, I shouldn't wonder. A great traveler, Mr. Price Hughes. That's how they can cheat him, you see. For when he is wanted, there he is — gone again. And not a sight of him for months perhaps."

"Well, if he's so widely traveled he must be wise to these smart guys," Illya said. "Why doesn't he throw them out and work the place with local hands?"

"But why, man?" Mr. Davis leaned close enough to give Illya a strong shot of mixed leek and beer. His rheumy eyes bulged impressively. "Because not a man, woman or child would set foot in Cwm Carrog except in broad daylight. Haunted it is, you wouldn't believe."

Illya ginned. "You're a great old kidder, all right."

If the old man had been a Druid that somebody tried to kiss under the mistletoe he couldn't have been more offended. He put his gnarled hands on the table and slowly hoisted himself to his feet.

"In other places, so I am told, it is different," he said. "But up here there is things we do not make a jest of. I will thank you for your beer and wish you good morning."

He started to walk out of the bar.

"Hey! Wait," Illya called. "You forgot to finish your drink."

Davis hesitated, turned, then stalked back to the table like a flouted patriarch.

"Young you are and ignorant," he said, "but no doubt not meaning to insult. So I will drink your beer though it do stick in my throat like gall." The rest of the pint vanished. "Laugh you do, now, but" — he pointed a threatening finger — "when you have heard the thing that wails and screams all night at Cwm Carrog, and seen the lights where none should be, a different tune you will sing, my boy."

It made a wonderful exit. Illya almost forgot himself and clapped.

After Davis had gone he sat on, thinking. It looked as if he might have struck oil with the first drill. Totting the score he had a screwball nationalist who had done time for sabotage, a mysterious philanthropist who let the hired help loaf around all day, a bunch of possibly phony nuclear disarmers, and a warranted genuine haunted house for them all to play in without fear of local peek-a-booing. And the philanthropist had a record of long absences from the home base.

The indications were that Cwm Carrog should be inspected without delay. The wailing wonder intrigued him.

After an early lunch of Welsh lamb and all the trimmings Illya went up to his rooms and changed his suit for a black sweater, black windbreaker and dark gray flannel slacks. A flashlight and a pair of rubber-soled sneakers went into the knapsack he carried for form's sake.

He walked downstairs to the office and got general sailing directions from the landlord. He told him he was planning a long hike and would not be back until late next day.

The landlord made him pay for his room in advance.

It was a five-mile hike to the foot of Berwyn. Illya had plenty of time, so he took it easy.

The road led through two neat little villages, all lime-wash and slate roofs, with shops and inns hardly distinguishable in size or appearance from the cottages. Between the hamlets he had the Dee on one side of him and woodland on the other. There was plenty to see, including a couple of patient herons on the river bank and an old forsaken church that might have been St. David's original curacy.

At last, on the farther outskirts of the second village, he found himself looking up at the great rounded mass of Berwyn. Its lower slopes were thick with pines. The upper reaches were all bracken and heather, with a curious ring of firs like a crown on top. He could see a white cottage or two but nothing that looked like a sizable farm.

He crossed an iron footbridge over a stream that might have been the Carrog and took a narrow lane which climbed up the hillside. It was bordered by high hazed hedges and crowding close were the pines, thousands of them. Once he had got started the only sound was the crunch of flints under his boots. He felt as if he were clattering along the aisle of a cathedral.

After he had been climbing for about thirty minutes he began to wonder whether there was anything in old man Davis' tales. The green stillness was uncanny. It was as if all those damned trees were watching him.... waiting for something....

He was glad when they thinned out and the hedges gave way to unmortared stone walls, letting in the wind and the sunlight. Behind the walls he could hear sheep crashing about in the miniature jungle of bracken fern. At least he hoped they were sheep. The way his nerves were, he would not have been surprised if a brace of pixies had sneaked up on him.

A few minutes more brought him to the end of the bracken belt and also to a gate in the wall. Tired of the flinty lane he pushed the gate open and trudged on among the heather, keeping the wall on his right-hand side. The going was more slippery but not so hard on his aching feet.

He was now nearing the skyline. Just in case of accidents he got closer to the wall and moved forward more cautiously.

It was as well that he did. Over the shoulder of the hill some hundreds of feet below, he saw what could only be Cwm Carrog. He dropped flat and studied the farm.

There was the usual assemblage of barns and pens, only larger than seemed usual in the neighborhood. The farmhouse itself was a square-built gray structure, almost hidden on three sides by ancient macrocarpas. In the westering sunlight it looked unbelievably sinister. There was no sign of life in the yard or around the buildings.

Illya crawled back to the safe side of the hill and thoughtfully chewed a blade of grass. This lone expedition was beginning to look less and less attractive.

Not that he was frightened, but he was slightly out of his depth. Most of his assignments had previously been in cities, with trucks and cars making a friendly murmuring background to his investigation. It's pretty hard to take ghosts seriously under such conditions. Cwm Carrog was something else again. At the very least, if his suspicions were confirmed, he stood a fair chance of getting his teeth kicked in by Mr. Price Hughes's proteges. At worst — well, sitting there on the bare hillside in territory where folks were still apt to put out bowls of bread and milk for night-prowling goblins, he was prepared to believe that anything could happen.

The sun called it a day and sank behind a convenient mountain. Out of the pines far below a silver mist came up like a sea. A chilly night breeze began to hunt for Illya's spine through windbreaker and sweater. Sheep bleated forlornly.

Illya crawled up to take another look at Cwm Carrog. It was already half submerged in the mist. He decided zero hour had come.

The journey down that hillside was to remain forever one of his major nightmares. By day it would have been easy enough but in the near-darkness he had plenty of troubles.

At first the wall was a guide but when the last of the light had faded it became a menace. Many of the top stones had fallen among the heather. Illya found them every time, and every time he took a dive. Seen on the movies it would have been a riot, but somehow he missed the comic angle. He dared not use his flashlight, and if he got too far from the wall he lost his bearings. And at any minute he expected to hear the whine of a bullet heading in his direction, especially when he got down among the bracken. No matter how cautiously he trod, the stuff crackled like a forest fire with every step. He could only hope that Mr. Hughes's sentries, if he had posted any, would blame the sheep.