The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (34 page)

‘So why’s this Sebbie Dacre so scared of going out there himself with a gun?’

‘I say scared?’ Gomer squinted at her.

Also, at night, she’d thought of Nathan. What if he’d died? What if he’d died there in Danny’s van, leaving Ben facing a manslaughter charge, at the very least, and Gomer and Danny and her as accessories?

What if he’d died
after
they’d got him to the hospital? What if he was dead now?

‘I wouldn’t know why Sebbie’s scared,’ Gomer said. ‘Man like Sebbie, he don’t confide to the likes of we. Don’t confide to nobody, that family. He also don’t scare that easy.’

‘They were related to the Chancerys of Stanner, weren’t they?’

‘Who you year that from, Janey?’

‘Woman who’s booking a conference at Stanner. Mrs Pollen.’

‘From Pembridge?’ Gomer nodded. ‘Me and Nev put her a septic tank in once. Husband used to be County Harchivist for Powys.’

‘So Dacre
is
related to the Chancerys?’

‘Small world, girl, terrible inbred. Sebbie’s ma was Margery Davies, second daughter of Robert and Hattie Davies – Hattie Chancery as was. After Stanner was sold, Margie ’herited most of the ground on the Welsh side and some money, and her married Richard Dacre, who was the son of a farmer on the
English
side. So, overnight, like, they become the biggest landowners yereabouts. And they had just the one son and that was Sebbie, and a younger daughter. So when Richard died, Sebbie got the main farms and all the ground and a fair bit of cash. And then he bought up Emrys Morgan’s farm across the valley, when Emrys died, and so that’s why they calls him Sebbie Three Farms. See?’

‘So Dacre is Hattie Chancery’s grandson. And great-grandson of Walter Chance, who built Stanner Hall.’

‘Correct. Hattie, her had two daughters, but Paula, the oldest, got sent away, and Paula was left the Stanner home farm, The Nant, which was leased long-term to Eddie Berrows, Jeremy’s dad, who was Hattie’s farm manager’s son.’

‘So Jeremy’s farm was originally part of the Stanner estate, too.’

‘Not much wasn’t. Now Paula, after what happened with Hattie and Robert, her was brung up by Robert’s sister up in Cheshire. Growed up and married a feller up there and just took the income from the lease. But her died youngish, see, and Richard Dacre, he kept trying to buy The Nant off Paula’s husband, but Paula, her had a soft spot for the Berrows from when her was little, and her husband knew the Berrowses didn’t want the Dacres as their landlords, ’cause the Dacres’d likely have ’em out on their arses first possible opportunity. So he signs another lease with Eddie Berrows – under Richard’s nose, so to speak. And the Dacres was blind bloody furious. So that split the family good and proper. Plus, it explains why Sebbie Dacre got no love for Jeremy.’

‘It’s not short of feuds, is it, this area? You need an up-to-date feud-map just to find your way around.’ Jane was imagining a large-scale plan of the Welsh Border hills, with arteries of hatred linking farms and estates, pockets of old resentment, dotted lines marking tunnels of lingering suspicion.

‘’Course, quite a lot of folk don’t think too highly of Sebbie,’ Gomer said. ‘Do he care? Do he f— No, he don’t, Janey. He don’t care.’

‘So, what happened – I mean I really think I ought to know this, working at Stanner – what exactly happened with Hattie Chancery? Or is that something people don’t talk about?’

‘They don’t
talk
about it,’ Gomer said, ‘on account there en’t that many folk left round yere remembers it.’

‘What about you?’

‘I was just a boy then. Just a kiddie at the little school.’

‘So you’re saying you don’t remember it either?’

Gomer dug into a pocket of his baggy jeans and slapped his ciggy tin on the kitchen table. ‘’Course I remembers it. All everybody bloody jabbered about for weeks.’

Jane beamed at him. ‘Maybe I will have a cup of tea after all, if that’s all right.’

And she sat quietly and watched Gomer making it. Could tell by the way he was nodding to himself, lips moving, that he was replaying his memories like a videotape, and maybe editing them, too.

While the tea was brewing, Gomer brought down Minnie’s bone-china cups and saucers, and it was touching to watch him laying them out with hands that looked like heavy-duty gardening gloves. Jane waited. If she was going to be of any use to Antony Largo, she needed more background information. This wasn’t simply curiosity, it was need-to-know.

Last night, from the apartment, she’d rung Natalie to ask how things were going, like with Ben. Nat hadn’t been all that forthcoming. ‘He’s all right.’

Jane had pressed on anyway. ‘But
is
he? That guy thought Ben was going to kill him. He was terrified, he— It’s like... it’s a side of Ben I’ve never seen.’

‘He’s a man,’ Nat had said, offhand. ‘Men can’t be seen to back down. I really don’t think he meant to do that much damage.’

‘Nat, was he—?’

‘It happened very quickly, Jane. I didn’t really see anything.’

‘Well, obviously, that’s what you’d tell the police.’

‘Police?’

‘I mean
if
the police were involved. If that guy’s injuries—’

‘Jane...’ Nat’s voice had gone low. ‘That really isn’t going to happen. So I think it’s best we all forget about this incident. It was a one-off, and if it gets round... you know what this area’s like. We don’t want Ben to get a reputation. Best if we don’t talk about it
any more
. All right?’

Nat had sounded nervy. Not herself at all.

And Jane was still hearing,
Thick, barbaric yobs. No subtlety... Where I come from, we have
real
hard bastards
.’

Time to investigate Ben’s history. This morning, Jane had got up early, gone down to the scullery, switched on the computer and fed
Ben Foley
into Google. Hard to remember what life had been like without the Net. Now everybody was a private eye.

The results had been disappointing. All she’d found were references to the various TV series Ben had been involved with, no personal stuff at all. It had been mildly amusing to discover a Web site for
The Missing Casebook
, his series about what had really happened to Sherlock Holmes post-Reichenbach. It had become a very small cult, the Web site set up by a hard core of fans furious that it hadn’t run to a second series. But the site didn’t seem to have been updated for a while.

Jane also looked up Antony Largo. Most of the references were to his documentary
Women of the Midnight
. The words most often applied to Antony were
committed
and
tenacious
. To understand what drove women to kill without mercy, without pity, inverting their need to nurture, he was said to have spent weeks in Holloway prison and had corresponded with Myra Hindley, the moors murderess. After
Women of the Midnight
, Antony never seemed to have been out of work, but he didn’t seem to have done anything since that had been quite as massively acclaimed.

It was becoming clear that Ben had known exactly what he was doing – connecting with old triumphs – when he’d introduced Antony to Hattie Chancery.

‘Hattie Chancery,’ Gomer said, lighting up. ‘Her was as big as a cow. Her could skin a rabbit with her teeth. Her could ride all day and drink strong men under the table.’

‘Really?’

‘Prob’ly not, but it’s what we was told as kids. “Eat up your sprouts, boy, else Hattie Chancery’ll come for you in the night and put you under her arm and take you away.” You woke up in the night, bit of a creak, it’d be Hattie Chancery on the stairs.’

‘This was while she was still alive?’

‘Sure t’be.’ Gomer nodded. ‘Master of the Middle Marches, see, for years. The hunt, Janey. Used to year ’em galloping up Woolmer’s pitch of a Saturday, hounds yowlin’ away, but the loudest of all’d be Hattie Chancery. Like a
whoop, whoop
in the air, urgin’ on the fellers. Hattie Chancery:
whoop, whoop
.’

Gomer leaned back in his chair, into the smoke from his ciggy and the clouds of his childhood.

‘Was that unusual,’ Jane asked him, ‘having a female hunt master in those days?’

‘Was round yere. But Hattie, her was a dynamite horse-woman, and had this authority about her. Big woman, see. Weighed a fair bit, in later years. Drank beer. Pints. Big thirst on her.’

Jane knew girls at school who drank pints, but that was more about sexual politics than big thirst.

‘You still gets huntswomen like that now, mind,’ Gomer said. ‘Loud. I remember folks used to jump in the ditch if they yeard Hattie’s car comin’ round the bend from the pub at Gladestry.
That
was a fact – into the bloody ditch, no messin’, and they’d year her laughing like a maniac as her come beltin’ past, well tanked-up, all the windows down. No big drink-driving thing in them days, see. Least, not for the likes of Hattie Chancery.’

Jane was surprised that Gomer could remember so far back, but she supposed you did when you got older; it was just the more recent events that became a haze.

‘What about the husband?’

‘Robert? Kept well out of it, Janey. Never hunted. Couldn’t ride, for one thing – they reckoned he had an injury from the Great War, but I also yeard it said he had a bit of a distaste for all that. For blood. Bad time, they reckoned, in France, and he come back a changed man: quiet, thoughtful, never talked about what he’d seen. Son of a doctor in Kington, Robert was. Good-lookin’ feller, caught Hattie’s eye, and that was that. Her was young, eighteen or so, when her married Robert. Hattie’s ole man had died by then, and so Robert come to Stanner. Hattie wouldn’t never leave Stanner. Brought Robert back like a bride. That’s what they used to say. Like a bride.’

Jane sipped her tea, forming this picture of Robert as some kind of poetic Wilfred Owen type, sickened by the horrors of the trenches. Maybe even a Lol type.

‘Serious mismatch,’ Gomer said. ‘Went wrong early, got worse.’

‘You ever see him?’

‘Mostly, he stayed round the house and the grounds, but I seen him once or twice. Every now and seldom he’d go for a walk on his own, along Hergest Ridge, with a knapsack. And I was with my ole man this day – I’d be about seven – and we seen Mr Robert, and he give me an apple. And I remember my ole man watching him walk off, head down into the wind, and the ole man sayin’, “Poor bugger.” Always remember that.
Poor bugger
.’

‘So how long was that before...’

‘Oh, mabbe a year or two. ’Course, there was a lot o’ gossip ’fore that, about Hattie and her men.’

‘She had other men?’

‘Oh hell, aye. Any number, you believed the stories.
Any
number. Good-lookin’ woman, see. Golden-haired and statuesque, like. There was tales...’ Gomer looked into his cup, cleared his throat. ‘Like, you’ll’ve yeard how a new huntsman gets blooded, from his first kill. They reckoned the Middle Marches had its own... test. For a new boy. See if he was up to it, like.’

‘What – up to Hattie?’

‘Her was said to be... I suppose today you’d have a name for it.’

‘Generous?’

‘Nympho,’ Gomer said. ‘Appetites like a feller, my mam used to say – not to me, like, but I overyeard her and Mrs Probert from the Cwm once. Well, naturally, after her done what her done, they all had their theories. More like a feller. Used to get in fights in the pub. Smash an ole pint glass, shove it at you.’

‘She
glassed
people?’

‘All kinds of stories went round after her killed Robert. Stories I wouldn’t rush to repeat.’ Gomer sniffed, stirring his tea, ciggy in his lips. ‘Not to a young woman.’

‘Oh,
Gomer
.’

‘Janey, it was gossip. We was kids. Young boys. ’Sides, it was five or six years after her was dead I yeard this. Durin’ the War. Young lads talkin’, the way young lads talks at that age.’

Jane had an image of Gomer in adolescence: thin as a straw, hair like a yardbrush.

‘Gomer, I’m like... seventeen, now? You know?’

Gomer stirred the dregs of the tea in the pot and filled his cup with it – tea like sump oil. ‘It was Stanner Rocks,’ he said. ‘Used to take ’em up Stanner.’

‘Men?’

‘Funny place, see. Scientists now, they reckons it’s down to what they calls a Standing Wave. Meteological stuff. Gives it a rare climate up there, like in Italy and them places. Nowhere like it, ’specially not on the edge of Wales.’

‘Mediterranean.’ Jane nodded. Ben had gone on about it, bemoaning the fact that the rocks, with their odd climatic conditions and their rare plants, didn’t belong to the hotel. A national nature reserve now, so you had to have special permission to go up there, which meant Ben couldn’t even build it up as a tourist attraction.

‘They din’t know the scientific stuff then,’ Gomer said, ‘but everybody said it was a funny place, what with the Devil’s Garden where nothing grew – just thin soil, more like, but they always called it the Devil’s Garden. Soil’s that thin on them ole rocks that in a good summer you’ll have a drought up there as kills off half the trees and the bushes. See, what—’

‘And she used to take men up there?’