The Earth Hums in B Flat Page 14

‘But it was Mrs Evans who made me see—’ I say.

  Mam roars like the MGM lion.

  I wonder if I ought to give Mam one of her tablets. I move to fetch them from the scullery but Mam lunges at me from where she’s on her knees in front of the grate and catches my mackintosh with one hand and waves the poker at me with the other.

  ‘Don’t think you’re getting away with this,’ she says. She pants as she pulls herself to her feet. I stagger with her weight. Some of her yellow curls are singed at the tips and the two streams of lipstick make her look as if she’s been eating some of the raw meat she gives to John Morris. Sparks from the fire have made a pattern of black holes down the front of her blue jumper. It’s one of her favourite jumpers. She’ll be cross about that. She lets go of my mackintosh and swivels round and pokes at the fire again.

  ‘Nearly gone now,’ she says. ‘It’ll soon be ashes. No one will know.’

  I don’t mention that Mrs Evans has guessed that I took the dead fox and will be expecting to see Mrs Llywelyn Pugh wearing it again in the winter.

  Mam looks at me. ‘Don’t you go telling anybody about this,’ she says. ‘Does that Alwenna know you took it?’

  I cross my fingers and shake my head.

  ‘Everyone will think it’s the Bermo bad boys,’ says Mam. She gives the fire another flick with the poker. She takes a deep, shuddery breath, then coughs. ‘It’ll be all right. So long as no one knows, it’ll be all right. So don’t you go telling anyone it was you, Gwenni.’ She glares at me. ‘Promise. Cross your heart and hope to die. Go on.’

  I can’t promise, not even with my fingers crossed. I back towards the door so that I can run out and Mam follows me, waving the poker.

  There’s a crash as the front door opens and I move out of the way just in time for Tada to rush through into the living room. He stops still. He looks at Mam. She looks like the Guy Fawkes they put on the town bonfire. ‘Magda?’ he says. ‘What’s happened? Have we got a chimney fire?’

  ‘Ask her,’ says Mam, waving the poker at me.

  Tada tries to take the poker. Mam won’t let go of it; it’s as if the heat from the fire has fused it to her hand. Mam begins to cry, and then cough. Tada helps her to her chair and lowers her into it. She drops the poker and covers her face with her pink cushion.

  ‘Well?’ Tada says to me.

  ‘I took Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox,’ I say. ‘Not the Bermo bad boys.’

  ‘It didn’t sound the sort of thing any bad boys would want to steal,’ says Tada.

  ‘And I hid it inside Mam’s big cake tin and put it under the bed. I was going to bury it and save its spirit.’

  ‘Well,’ says Tada. His mouth twitches and he looks back at Mam. She rocks back and forth in her chair like Mrs Evans did when she’d been to the dentist. Except Mam doesn’t make any sound at all.

  ‘Only I talked to Mrs Evans and I was going to give it back and say sorry. But Bethan found it and told Mam and Mam . . .’ I point at the grate and its smouldering remains.

  Tada bends down and begins to sweep up some of the fur with the hearth-brush. The fox’s glass eyes clink on the tiles as he sweeps. He stands straight again, the brush dangling in his hand, and looks around the room. The smoke hangs in slow swathes under the ceiling and ash covers everything. Mam rocks and rocks.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ he says.

  Mam stops rocking and lowers her cushion. ‘Aren’t you going to tell her off?’ she says. ‘Am I the only one who can see how wicked she is?’

  ‘Hush, Magda. Hush,’ says Tada. ‘You sit quietly there. I’ll make you a cup of tea as soon as I can clear the grate.’

  ‘Tea?’ says Mam. Her voice rises. ‘Tea? You stand there and listen to her telling you these stupid things and all you can think about is making a cup of tea?’

  Tada puts the hearth-brush down and tries to catch hold of Mam’s hand. She swats him away.

  ‘People think she’s odd enough already,’ she says. ‘You have to do something about it. What if she ends up like her grandmother?’ She mewls and covers her mouth with her cushion.

  ‘Hush, hush,’ says Tada. ‘Gwenni, you go upstairs to read for a bit. I’ll bring you a cup of tea once I get the fire sorted.’

  I back out of the room and follow the ribbons of smoke up the stairs. It’s going to take days and days to clean everything. Down in the living room Tada tries to soothe Mam. When I walk into my bedroom Mari the Doll looks up at me and I say to her, ‘What could be so bad about ending up like Nain?’

  24

  The black taxi becomes smaller and smaller, then disappears into the mist on the road winding up to Brwyn Coch. Angharad and Catrin were snatched so quickly away from me by their aunty it feels as if they’ve been kidnapped. Maybe I’ve slipped into one of the stories in Aunty Lol’s detective books.

  I rummage about in my mackintosh pocket and find one Black Jack. The paper has stuck to it but I lick it off and spit it out. Black Jacks are my favourite sweets in the whole world. Alwenna won’t eat them because they make her teeth look grimy. You can’t have grimy teeth if you want boys to like you. If you can suck a Black Jack without chewing, it will last a long, long time.

  Maybe Mrs Evans was just worn out after the inquest. She didn’t look at me. She just sat in the back of the taxi with her hand over her eyes. Tada says inquests are not very nice things; not at all like I read about in Aunty Lol’s books.

  Catrin was crying for me when her aunty pulled her into the taxi. I hadn’t seen her for nearly a week; Mam won’t let me go to Brwyn Coch any more. But Tada said: I’m putting my foot down. And told me he’d arranged for me to have time off school today to look after Angharad and Catrin so that Mrs Evans could attend the inquest. I took them to Nain’s house because our house is still a bit smoky even though Nain’s been cleaning it all week. Mam’s new tablets from Dr Edwards made her too sleepy to help. Nain gave us Heinz spaghetti on buttery toast and chocolate cake, and Angharad and Catrin were happy.

  I lean on the railings of the Baptism Pool. The water is low in the Pool, as if the rain never falls here, and smells of decay. I don’t look too closely at it. It seems long ago since I saw the spirit in the water when I was flying. Was it a premonition? Maybe I really can foretell the future, like Nain with her tea leaves. Perhaps that has been passed on to me with her name. A trickle of gory water runs from a pipe halfway down the concrete side of the Pool. Is it rust that makes it that colour, or is it blood? I try not to think where it might be coming from and move away.

  My mackintosh is covered in flakes of paint and rust marks where it rubbed against the railings. I try to brush them off but they stick as if they’ve been glued on. Mam will be cross with me. Suddenly I am so tired that I slide down to lie in the grass. Mist swirls above me. I hear the sheep call to their lambs, though the lambs will be almost as big as their mothers by now. Nearby, a bee drones ceaselessly between the red campion stems on the bank. ‘Poor thing,’ I say to it as my eyes close, ‘you won’t find much there.’ And I drift away into sleep.

  A squeak jerks me awake. What is it? Then I hear another squeak. I lift my head and see Sergeant Jones wheel his bicycle out of the mist. His face is red and his white shirt has wet patches spreading from under his arms. He’s slung his jacket over the bicycle’s crossbar and his helmet dangles by its strap from the handlebars. I jump up from the grass.

  ‘You startled me, Gwenni,’ says Sergeant Jones. His breath wheezes from his lungs. ‘Oof, it’s close today.’ Waves of sweaty heat roll from him over me. I try not to breathe. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was walking up with Angharad and Catrin when Ned Hughes’s black taxi came by with Mrs Evans and Miss Cadwalader and they took the girls into the taxi,’ I say.

  ‘Was Mrs Evans all right?’ Sergeant Jones pulls one of his big white handkerchiefs from his trouser pocket and mops his face. But his face is just as shiny when he pushes the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  ‘I think
she was tired,’ I say. ‘I only spoke to Miss Cadwalader. Tada says inquests are horrible things.’

  ‘I’m on my way up there,’ says Sergeant Jones, ‘just to make sure everything’s all right.’

  ‘Tada says she’ll be better after the inquest. She’ll be able to bury Mr Evans now.’ He can lie in our cemetery with his dead babies. Will all his secrets be on his gravestone for everyone to read?

  Sergeant Jones props his bicycle against the railings of the Baptism Pool and pulls his handkerchief out again to mop his face. ‘This close weather doesn’t agree with me,’ he says. He looks at me. ‘And how’s your mam?’ he says. ‘I expect she’s upset by this business, all this talk of inquests.’

  ‘Dr Edwards gave her some new tablets,’ I say. I don’t mention that it’s the dead fox that upset her.

  ‘Well, I hope she’s better soon. Tell her Martha missed her on Monday morning,’ he says. ‘She hates doing those brasses on her own.’ He mops his face again and pushes the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘So, did your father tell you anything else?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Tell me what? Is there something else to tell? People don’t tell me things because they think I’m a child.’

  ‘You are a child, Gwenni. People don’t tell children things they think will frighten them, for instance.’

  ‘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 n
ames 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.