The Earth Hums in B Flat Page 21

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Gwenni,’ he says. ‘But I was coming to see you. Martha just told me she saw you pass the house a while ago when I was in the glasshouse so I thought I’d try to catch up with you. Mind you, I thought you’d be almost up in Cwm Bychan by now, that’s why I brought the bike.’ He laughs at his joke.

  But it can’t be that long since I passed his house, can it? ‘I didn’t feel like going any further,’ I say. ‘And Tada’s distempering the scullery so I don’t want to go home yet.’ What secrets are the faces in the distemper telling Tada before he drowns them?

  ‘Your mam won’t be very happy about your father doing that on a Sunday,’ he says.

  ‘She’s been ill in bed since last night,’ I say. ‘Nain wants Tada to get Dr Edwards to see her.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear she’s ill again,’ Sergeant Jones says. ‘These are upsetting times for us all. Well, Dr Edwards is a good man.

  He’ll soon have her on her feet again.’ He leans his bicycle on the Pool railings. ‘I’d better watch myself on these. It took Martha a lot of effort to get all the rust off my uniform after the last time I was here.’ He wrinkles his nose at the stink from the water and comes over to where I’m sitting. ‘A lot of water’s gone under the bridge since then, Gwenni. A lot of it as bad as the stuff in the Pool there. Mind if I sit with you for a bit?’

  I move along to make room for him, plenty of room, and he lowers himself onto the stone with a loud grunt. ‘Give me a chair, any day,’ he says. ‘Bit of an effort to get this low when you’re my size, Gwenni.’

  Now that I’ve moved I can feel my dress is damp beneath my thighs. The stone is not as dry as it looks. But it’s too late to tell Sergeant Jones that. ‘What did you want?’ I ask him.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he says.

  ‘You said you wanted to catch up with me, so you must’ve wanted something.’

  ‘You’re a quick one,’ he says. ‘Your father’s right on that score.’ He plucks a spiky cornflower head from the stems between his legs and twirls it between his finger and thumb. ‘I just wanted to talk to you, Gwenni. A serious talk. Jokes aside. D’you think we could do that?’

  He’s the one who tells silly jokes instead of catching murderers, not me. But I nod.

  ‘You’ve heard the news, I suppose?’ he says. ‘Well, silly question really.’

  ‘Mrs Evans or Mrs Llywelyn Pugh?’ I say.

  ‘Poor Mrs Llywelyn Pugh. Poor old Hywel,’ he says. ‘But that’s a job for the minister now, not me.’ He shakes his head. ‘No. The news about Elin Evans is what I mean.’

  ‘I know she’s been taken away by those stupid detectives from Dolgellau,’ I say. ‘I know they’ve made another mistake. I know I’ve got to find the real murderer so Mrs Evans will go free.’

  ‘I was afraid of that, Gwenni,’ he says.

  ‘Someone has to,’ I say. ‘In Sunday School Deilwen said they’d hang her and she’d go to Hell. I thought they didn’t hang women any more. Will they hang her, Sergeant Jones?’

  ‘No, no, Gwenni. You’re right. They don’t hang women now, or men. Or only in rare circumstances. Don’t even think about it.’ A shudder goes through him. ‘Someone walking on my grave, Gwenni. But listen to me. Seriously. Those detectives took Elin away because she confessed to killing Ifan. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but Elin asked me if I would, and it’s bound to come out anyway. You need to know it now so that you’ll leave things be. Elin said you’d understand.’

  But I don’t understand. Mrs Evans confessed? Why would she do that? She didn’t kill him. Did she?

  Sergeant Jones leans towards me. ‘She confessed, Gwenni,’ he says. ‘She said that she hit him on his head with the poker because he was drunk and abusive and she was afraid for the children. He’d already punched her in the mouth. D’you remember how you found her that Saturday morning?’

  I remember her bleeding mouth; I thought she’d already been to Price the Dentist. I remember the sticky floor and tripping over the poker, but Angharad and Catrin explained that. I try to remember exactly what they told me. They never once said that their mother had hit their father, I’m certain. ‘It’s a mistake,’ I say. ‘Mrs Evans never—’

  Sergeant Jones holds up his hand. ‘She confessed, Gwenni. So she won’t go to trial, she’ll just be sentenced. And that’s it. It’s over, Gwenni. It’s time to let it go. All good detectives know when it’s time to let go.’

  ‘Then I’ll never be a good detective,’ I say.

  My eyes are watering and I rub them hard.

  ‘Don’t cry, Gwenni,’ says Sergeant Jones.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I say. ‘It’s the grass. I never cry.’

  ‘This is how Elin wants it, Gwenni. It’s important you remember that,’ he says. He struggles to his feet and brushes down his gardening trousers. ‘Bit damp there,’ he says. ‘Don’t stay too long, Gwenni. Go home. It looks as if it’ll rain again soon.’ He wheels his bicycle into the road and heaves himself into the groaning saddle and freewheels down the hill.

  The clouds have become yet darker and lower as we talked, but I sit here still. What did Angharad and Catrin tell me that Saturday about their father? Nothing much, except that the black dog had somehow made their father angry with Mrs Evans. Was that it? That must have been when Ifan Evans punched Mrs Evans like Sergeant Jones just said. Then Catrin hit the black dog with the poker to get it away from her father so that he’d stop hurting her mother and that was why the dog’s blood was on the floor. And one of the girls said that Ifan Evans ran out with the black dog. So, when did Mrs Evans have time to hit Ifan with the poker?

  And why did she confess that she killed him when she didn’t? Was it to save Guto?

  37

  Sergeant Jones said: Go home. But, just for now, I want to sit in the quiet and the stillness. And I’ll have to get some of these bits of rust off my dress before I go home. I brush them with my hand again but they won’t shift; so I begin to pick them off flake by flake.

  If I’d found the evidence to lead me to the real murderer when I flew above Brwyn Coch looking for clues, maybe this wouldn’t be happening. First Guto, and now Mrs Evans. Did I miss the clues because I was flying at night, when everything looks different? I always fly at night because I never fall asleep in the daytime long enough to fly, something always wakes me.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t have bad dreams if I flew in daylight. Although when Nain told us about Mrs Evans last night, I wondered if the bad dream I had about Brwyn Coch wasn’t a dream at all. I wondered if it was a premonition. What if it showed me the future like the Baptist’s spirit in the Baptism Pool? Brwyn Coch hasn’t fallen to pieces, I know, but its family has. I expect premonitions are a bit vague; Nain’s tea leaves are always vague, sometimes they’re so vague she can’t work out what it is they’re foretelling.

  A sharp flake of rust pushes under my thumbnail, and I suck it out. It tastes like the smell of blood. I spit it into my handkerchief and push the handkerchief back up my sleeve, then close my eyes and lean back against the wall. Just for a minute. Maybe Sergeant Jones was right about the rain. It’s colder and damper already, and the stench from the Baptism Pool is as strong as if I was hovering right above it. On the count of three I’m going to jump up from this big stone and run home. One. Two. Two and a half. Three. I jump up and open my eyes. I am hovering above the Pool. In daylight.

  I swerve around the Pool and fly up the road. This isn’t as comfortable as night-time flying. The clouds are still here, massed above me, though I’ve climbed quite high without crashing into them. I can see my town clearly, the houses and gardens and the roads linking them all, and even a few people in their Sunday clothes. I’m too far up to recognise them. And I can see the Reservoir and Brwyn Coch below me. It looks even more like a map than it did last time. If I could fly around the whole world like this, I could become a map-maker. Miss Eames told me in our geography lesson that people who make maps are called cartographers. They use
special instruments to make all kinds of measurements to draw their maps. I could become a cartographer who makes maps from what I can see. I would put in details that no instrument could possibly measure. And how do cartographers show music on their maps? I would show the shape of the Earth’s song on mine, constant as the hum of bees in summer. Even under this heavy cloud I can hear it, filling me like a blessing.

  But I haven’t got time to stop and listen to it. I dive downwards towards Brwyn Coch, and something drops from my pocket. No! It’s my blotter rocker. I race after it and scoop it up with my hand just as it’s about to fall through some trees where I would never find it again. I hold it tightly in my fist. Mrs Evans told Sergeant Jones that I would understand. But I don’t. I don’t know how I’ll ever find any clues to help her. I could fly round and round up here until I’m dizzy, and find nothing. And Sergeant Jones said: It’s time to let go. I open my fist and look at my blotter rocker. I rub my thumb across the violet, and then I push the rocker deep down into my pocket.

  A loud noise makes me spin as I fly. What was it? The clouds seem lower, and the air damper still. I fly as fast as I can towards the Baptism Pool and the road. Listen, there’s that noise again. It sounds like a bark. Is it the black dog? The ground beneath me is turning darker by the second, and ahead of me, where there should be an open field, great trees spring up from the ground, trees shaped like the family tree that Mrs Evans showed me how to make. The black dog barks loudly, filling the sky with his noise, just as he did when Brwyn Coch fell to the ground, and a jagged flash of white light splits the largest tree in half, and each half falls to the ground with a noise like the beating of the biggest drum in the Silver Band. Is this another premonition? I don’t want it. I cover my eyes with my hands so I don’t see any more of it. Huge raindrops fall on me, drenching my dress, soaking through it, chilling me to the marrow of my bones. I peek out between my fingers and see that I’ve landed back on the exact stone by the Pool that I was sitting on earlier, and the rain is bouncing on the stones beside me.

  I jump up from the stone again, and this time I’m running home. If Mam is still in bed looking at the wall, she won’t see that my dress is sopping and covered with spots of rust. So she won’t be cross.

  38

  ‘I didn’t know we’re allowed to use the library after school,’ I say. I’m supposed to go straight home today. I woke with the sniffles and Nain said she had enough to do without having to look after me, so to be sure not to linger anywhere catching anything else from anyone once school was over. But Richard wanted help, and I like the library. And anyway, I got the sniffles after getting soaked yesterday; even my underwear and socks were wringing wet.

  ‘We’re not really,’ says Richard. He pulls out a key from his blazer pocket and unlocks the library door with it. ‘Miss Davies lets me have the key because I help her with shelving the books and writing overdue notes. She said I could use it if I wanted to work here after school.’

  ‘D’you think she’d let me?’ I say.

  Richard closes the door behind us, turning the handle so it doesn’t bang. It’s tranquil in the library. Voices come from afar calling out the scores on the tennis courts and instructions to people on the field practising their running and jumping for sports day. The dark clouds disappeared overnight taking the rain with them but the field must be sodden. Through the library windows I can see beyond the sports field to Eryri where the mountains seem close enough for me to reach out and touch them.

  ‘It’s going to rain again,’ I say.

  ‘Never,’ says Richard. ‘It’s bright sunshine out there. Look how clear and close Snowdon is.’

  ‘That’s why,’ I say. ‘It’s never the way it seems out there.’

  ‘Oh, you.’ Richard moves towards the bookshelves opposite the window.

  ‘Really, though, d’you think Miss Davies would let me read in the library after school?’ I say. ‘Perhaps let me do my homework?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘She lets me come here because she knows what it’s like at home when Dad’s got the black dog. She says she can hear him sometimes from her flat.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a dog,’ I say. ‘You never said. Does it bark a lot, then?’

  He laughs. ‘Haven’t you heard that before?’ he says. ‘Having the black dog? It means being depressed. I told you about Dad being depressed after the war from all that flying and dropping bombs. Mum says he’s in good company, though; even Winston Churchill has the black dog. Trouble is, it makes Dad angry. He never shouts at Mum or Caroline but he goes on and on at me. I could tell Miss Davies about your mother being cross with you all the time, if you like.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’ll ask her,’ I say

  The black dog is not a real dog. I was looking at the answer all the time, and I couldn’t see it. Why didn’t I know that? Why didn’t I guess it? So, the dog I saw with Ifan Evans last Christmas was Mot after all. And when I remembered what happened I imagined it was a bigger and fiercer dog because I was so afraid of it when it licked the fox’s blood from me. And that’s why Angharad, or maybe it was Catrin, couldn’t see the dog – because there wasn’t a dog there, not a real one, only an invisible beast that made Ifan Evans behave like a beast himself. So, when Catrin used the poker to hit and hit the black dog that wasn’t there she must have hit and hit . . . The blood on the floor can’t have come from a dog that wasn’t there, it must have been Ifan Evans’s blood. My stomach starts to ache. Catrin, my little wren. Now I know why Mrs Evans confessed; now I understand. It wasn’t just Guto she wanted to save.

  ‘Gwenni.’ Richard shakes my arm. ‘Did you hear me? I have to find out about eye colour and stuff for biology. Do you want to help me with this homework or not?’

  Do I? I look around the library. There are shelves and shelves weighed with books that are full of stories or ideas, or best of all, with both. Would one of these books have told me about the black dog? And there are shelves and shelves still empty. If all the shelves were filled with books, would I be able to learn everything in the world there is to know from them? Would they tell me what to do now? I put my hand into the front pocket of my satchel, and feel for my blotter rocker. Will this tell me what to do? Mrs Evans said: Keep us in your heart. Sergeant Jones said: This is how Elin wants it. And now I know why. I don’t need to read anything to know what to do. I do nothing. I let it go. Like a good detective.

  Richard reaches for a large book with a dust jacket so faded I can’t see its title. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘This should have something about it. Let’s sit at that table by the window.’

  I leave the rocker in my satchel and carry the book over to the table. The tops of the pages are covered in dust, and I blow a small cloud off them. I rub my eyes with my sleeve.

  ‘Look at your eyes watering,’ says Richard. ‘You’re not crying, are you?’

  ‘It’s the dust,’ I say. ‘And I’ve got a cold.’

  ‘Don’t give it to me,’ Richard says. He puts two more volumes down on the table. ‘I think that book you’ve got is probably best; I think it’s one Miss Edwards gave the library from her own books.’ He pulls a bag of sweets from his pocket and puts it on the table. ‘D’you want a Black Jack?’ He takes one and peels the paper off it. ‘I thought they were your favourites. That’s why I got them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I don’t want one just now. And anyway, we’re not supposed to eat in here.’

  Richard tuts and puts the bag of sweets back in his pocket. ‘If I look stuff up, will you write it down?’ he says. ‘But start with my eyes. What colour are they?’

  I concentrate on his eyes. They’re the colour of Catrin’s eyes. Luminous as the rockpools the tide leaves behind in the summer sun. Blue, with the shadow of grey rocks and a little bit of sandiness in the depths.

  ‘Blue,’ I say.

  ‘Your eyes are green, with chips of blue,’ he says. ‘Green eyes are unusual, aren’t they? I’ve never seen any before. We’ll do your family col
ours too. Write down mine and yours.’

  It’s like the family tree Mrs Evans showed me how to make, but with colours instead of names. I take my tin of coloured pencils and my roughbook from my satchel and draw two trees, then I colour a bright blue eye on one for Richard and an emerald green eye on the other for me. They look like leaves.

  ‘My mum and my dad have got blue eyes,’ says Richard. ‘It’s a bit boring, really. Look, it shows you here.’ He points at a diagram in the book. ‘Two blue-eyed parents will have a blue-eyed child. It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?’

  I take up my bright blue pencil and colour two more blue eyes on Richard’s tree for his mother and father. ‘So, Caroline’s got blue eyes too,’ I say, and when Richard nods I put a blue eye on the tree for her.

  ‘That was too easy,’ says Richard. ‘Who do you get your green eyes from?’

  ‘Tada,’ I say. Mam always says Tada must have cats in the family somewhere. I colour Tada’s eye in emerald green on my tree.

  ‘What colour are your mother’s eyes?’ says Richard.

  ‘Blue.’ I colour Mam’s eye the same blue as Richard’s, though they’re not the same. But I have only one blue pencil.

  ‘See, that’s a bit more interesting,’ says Richard, pointing at the diagram again. ‘One blue-eyed parent and one green-eyed parent can have children with blue or green eyes. Mmm . . .’ He begins to leaf through the book. ‘I wonder what else you can determine.’

  In the hush of the library ideas and stories and information lie quietly in the books until somebody needs them. They don’t clamour for attention.

  ‘This genetic stuff is really interesting,’ says Richard. He looks at my roughbook. ‘Perhaps it would look more scientific if you drew a proper diagram.’

  ‘I like drawing it this way,’ I say. ‘And it describes it better.’

  ‘I’ll do a proper diagram when I get home,’ says Richard. ‘I didn’t have to spend any extra time looking up Caroline’s since she’s the same as me. But Caroline says she told Bethan I’d find out about hers as well. They think it’s a waste of time to come to the library at lunchtime.’