The Wrong Rite (19 page)

“You are obviously an expert at handling your own affairs, Bob. But if Arthur didn’t buy the annuity, how could it have come through him?”

“That is what Mary would not tell me. Once she got her hands on money, I could not control her. She grew bold and insolent in her manner. She angered me so that I would sometimes wish the annuity had never been. Arthur must have done this in some devious and underhanded way to spite me; he knew Mary would become froward and disrespectful. He never liked me.”

“But he must have been fond of Mary,” Janet put in.

“No such fondness was ever apparent in his behavior toward her. There would be words, often there would be words. Arthur would accuse Mary of taking too much for the cutting, of not following his instructions, of sometimes even exchanging good stones of his for flawed stones from other dealers and getting paid extra by his competitors for having worked the deception on him. Mary thought Arthur was disloyally taking his best stones to other cutters in order to cheat us out of the profits, notwithstanding the agreement that had existed since the time of our fathers and grandfathers even. She was irate about this, she said she was going to spy on him and catch him in the act.”

“And did she?” asked Sir Caradoc.

“I think not, though I could not be sure. In those days, she would often be required to travel abroad, to Amsterdam and other places. I would not be going with her, you see, because that would have meant paying two fares and I do not like to stay in pensions or cheap hotels or to travel tourist class, which is no class at all. To have pleased myself would have been to give Mary expensive ideas. I would therefore make the reservations in advance and send her alone. Unfortunately I had to allow her certain sums for pocket money. Although I demanded always a strict accounting, Mary could have lied to me about how she spent the money. She could even have cashed in a ticket and gone somewhere else. Women are never to be trusted, but what else could I do?”

“So Mary was still doing a fair amount of traveling when Arthur died?”

“A fair amount, yes. In fact she was abroad at the time of his death, though fortunately elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Ostend, I believe. I cannot say for sure.”

“Couldn’t you tell from her passport?”

“After Arthur was killed, Mary Rhys burned her passport and vowed she would travel abroad no more because foreign lands were too dangerous. And she did not.”

“That’s right,” said Janet. “She mentioned night before last that the world came to her.”

“That was what Mary liked to believe. Unfortunately not enough of the world has been coming of late. Had it not been for the annuity, I might have had to dip into my reserves. There have been worries, I can tell you, my life has not been easy. And now I am beset with further troubles. The only balm in my Gilead is that I have made Dai a bonded apprentice. He will have to carry on in Mary’s stead. It is regrettable that he has not Mary’s gift nor Mary’s reputation; he will have to make up for his lack by greater industry. I shall have my work cut out, keeping him ever busy.”

“But what if Dai doesn’t want to be kept ever busy?”

Bob had clearly talked himself out of his depression; now he favored Janet with a calm and complacent stare. “Dai Rhys will do as I tell him. And now, Sir Caradoc, it will be best that you send for Dai Rhys at once. He must begin packing for himself and for Mary, and also for myself since I am prostrate with grief, as you plainly see. We will require a modest repast and then the car at half-past two to carry us to the station. I shall want a little extra time to deal with the stationmaster about the return half of Mary’s ticket. I have dire forebodings that it may not be easy to obtain the reimbursement due to me.”

“And I have dire forebodings that you and Dai will not be allowed to leave,” the old man replied. “Is this not so, Constable Rhys? Will Bob and Dai not have to remain here until after the inquest?”

“That is my personal belief, Sir Caradoc, sir. It will be for Chief Constable Davies to be deciding. I am to be reporting to him this afternoon about what we have been able to learn from Mr. Bob Rhys. If we have in fact learned anything other than that Miss Mary Rhys’s death may result in a diminution of Mr. Rhys’s income,” Rhys the Police added with a certain amount of grim satisfaction for which Janet certainly didn’t blame him.

“But I am promised this evening to address the Friends of the Lesser Demons, which is a very important society, look you,” wailed Bob. “And what about the return tickets? They are for the special rate, they will be forfeit if we do not leave today.”

Sir Caradoc was having some trouble keeping the lid on. “You and Dai are guests in my home, Bob. When it becomes possible for you to leave, I will make sure you both get home without further strain on Mary’s insurance. Now you must go up to your room and rest your troubled spirits. I will have food sent up to you; you need not come down again until we have heard from Chief Constable Davies what he wants done with you.”

That’s telling him, Janet thought. Disgusting old toad.

Even the toad looked taken aback, but only for a moment. “Wait, I am cogitating. I am examining the evidence, I am making deductions. You have thoroughly searched the room Mary was occupying?”

“We have,” said Madoc. “Constable Rhys, my wife, and myself, with Sir Caradoc’s permission.”

“And you found only the box that had contained the gunpowder? There was no other thing that caught your interest?”

“Such as what, Bob?”

“Such as a suicide note, that is what. You would have noticed a suicide note, surely.”

“Oh yes, we’d have noticed. There wasn’t any note. There was no written matter of any kind, only a book that Mary had been reading.”

Madoc did not speak ill of the dead’s choice of reading matter. Bob was triumphant.

“Then, Madoc ap Emlyn, there was no suicide. You have known Mary. Do you believe it would have been possible for her to have killed herself wantonly and wickedly without making a great hurrah about it? She would have papered the room with notes! She would have written in giant letters all across the walls and ceiling. She would have flung herself into the fire with a dirge upon her lips and a wild and dreadful shriek, and flaming torches in both hands. And she would have composed herself a funeral elegy, moreover, that she would have expected me to read at the obsequies. And she would have left instructions for a funeral that would have put an Egyptian pharaoh’s to shame, and she would have sent out invitations in advance to everybody she ever heard of. Is this not true, what I have said?”

“You do have a point, Bob,” Madoc conceded. “So your argument is that Mary didn’t commit suicide because she left no writing on the ceiling.”

“Or elsewhere. I am saying that, yes. And I am right, you know I am right. And it must go on the police record that I am right, Cyril Rhys. You must make the insurance company understand that there is to be no nonsense about suicide and therefore no delay in their paying me my one hundred thousand pounds.”

“It is not for me to be telling them,” the constable objected. “It will be for you to be putting your argument to the coroner at the inquest, and for the jury then to believe you or not, as the case may be. They will wonder, I have to tell you. They will be asking themselves, if Miss Mary Rhys was not intending to commit suicide, why was she jumping into that bonfire all covered with gunpowder?”

“Oh, that is simple. Huw Rhys is to blame for that. Huw is against the building of the Beltane fires, look you. He thinks they are a pagan custom and therefore to be abandoned, which is very foolish of him and also dangerous because the old gods will turn against him and then where will he be? He would not even help me assemble the nine men to collect the nine different woods. He said there was already wood enough to build a small fire, and a small fire was all there was going to be because he does not hold with my nonsense. And this to me, who am renowned among the Friends of the Lesser Demons and other learned groups for my knowledge of the Beltane fires and have written papers, mind you. And also on other subjects which I will not mention because I am thinking profoundly on the subject of my sister and the gunpowder. Do you understand me, Constable Cyril Rhys?”

“No, I do not understand you, Mr. Bob Rhys, and you need not keep telling me who I am. What has Mr. Huw Rhys’s opposition to a big bonfire to do with what happened to Miss Mary Rhys?”

“It is because Huw would permit only a small fire that my sister meant to make it bigger, do you see? She had lamented earlier to me that leaping a small fire would not give her scope to display her consummate skill and make her the cynosure of all eyes. Furthermore, if the blaze was not of impressive proportions, it would not be noticed by mystical beings whose names I must not repeat aloud in this unhallowed place. Mary at least had some understanding of occult matters, thanks to my inspired tutelage. Being a woman and therefore foolish, however, she was wont to put her own interpretations on them. Ergo. Ergo, I say.”

“Yes, Bob, you’ve said it quite nicely,” said Madoc. “So what was Mary’s interpretation, then? That she should blow herself up to placate those mystical beings?”

“No, no, not at all. It would only have been to make the fire burn brighter that she carried the gunpowder. She would have believed she could accomplish this without scathe to herself. Mary thought, you see, that she had gained mastery over fire.”

“Good Lord, did she really? Because you’d encouraged her to think so?”

“Not I. You cannot accuse me of such a silliness. I did not support my sister’s belief in her mastery over fire; I would never have given her that satisfaction. It was all in her own head. Mary brought destruction upon herself, yes, but she did so only because of her false belief that she was an adept like me. This was death by misadventure, plain and simple. And let her demise be a lesson to all who dabble in magic without knowing what they do.”

Bob stood up, having neatly talked himself out of any reason to feel shocked or depressed over his sister’s terrible end. “So all I need to do is explain to the coroner that this unfortunate incident was all due to Huw Rhys’s intransigence and my sister’s mistaken trust in powers she did not have. He will then instruct the insurance company that I am to be paid forthwith and that will be the end of this sorry matter. Now I will telephone the Friends of the Lesser Demons at your expense, Sir Caradoc, to explain why I cannot come to talk to them tonight. And then I will betake myself upstairs to study my grimoire for information on how to lay Mary’s ghost so that she will not go lurking about these ancestral halls and scaring the daylights out of people. I know what is due to my gracious kinsman, Sir Caradoc, and thus I will repay your hospitality.”

A cool nod was the most his gracious kinsman could manage.

“Come along then, Bob,” said Madoc, “I’ll go up with you and wake up Dai. You’ll want to question him next, won’t you, Cyril?”

What Madoc himself wanted was to ask the one question he hadn’t wanted to pose in front of Uncle Caradoc. He followed Bob into the fat man’s by now stuffy and disordered bedroom and shut the door after them. “Now then, Bob, what can you tell me about the killing of a ram in the chapel night before last?”

Bob gaped at him, eyes abulge and jowls awobble. “A ram? Is it a sacrifice you are meaning?”

“Please answer my question.”

“How can I answer? In what way was this killing performed?”

“The head was cut off and set up on the altar. The body was left on the floor.”

“And the blood? Was the blood drained into a sacrificial basin?”

“No, it was all over the floor.”

“And the carcass not heaved up on the altar, even? It sounds to me like a shabby and ill-managed affair. Was the head at least crowned with a garland?”

“No, it was crowned with Padarn’s old cap, and his pipe was stuck in the mouth.”

“Then it is ignoramuses who have done this outrageous bumble, and they have achieved nothing by it. Why was I not sent for to consult? It is an affront, I tell you. What would the Friends of the Lesser Demons say? I will not tolerate so rude a slight, I will shake the dust of this house from my feet and I will never darken its door again. And you may tell that to Sir Caradoc Rhys for me!”

Well, here was an ill wind that had finally blown some good. None the wiser but somewhat cheered, Madoc went to wake up the nephew.

WELL, YOU SURE LOOK
like the morning after the night before.

Janet didn’t say so out loud; Dai Rhys was an abject enough specimen without having to be reminded. He’d put on some clothes; yesterday’s shirt and jeans picked up off the bedroom floor after they’d spent the night as a bed for Betty’s cat, from the look of them. Madoc hadn’t allowed him time to shave, though; Janet found his intermittent sprouts of whisker oddly moving. The poor kid couldn’t even grow a convincing crop of stubble. How old was Dai anyway? She went and got him a cup of tea.

When she came back with a tray, Janet got the impression that she hadn’t missed much. Dai appeared to be answering Constable Cyril’s questions mainly by blank stares and pitiful moans. She set a full cup and a plate of cakes on a taboret close to his hand, and pulled up a chair next to him.

“For Pete’s sake, Constable, let up on the boy till he’s got a little something inside him. Here, Dai, drink your tea while it’s hot. I expect you must feel pretty awful, like the rest of us. Would you believe your Uncle Bob was actually knocked speechless for once in his life?”

That got to him. Dai even managed a snort of what might have passed for laughter, rather unfortunately because he’d been in the act of sipping his tea. At least she’d loosened him up enough to quit acting like a zombie.

“Where’s Uncle Bob now?” he asked once he’d got his tea under control.

“Upstairs studying how to lay your aunt’s ghost. Here, have one of Betty’s cakes. Does he honestly believe that stuff, Dai, or is he just gassing?”

“Oh, he believes it. He’s balmy enough to believe anything. So’s Aunt Mary. I mean—is she?”