'Still,' Merrily said, 'Menna's here. For any time you want to look at her and remember the old days before she turned into a woman and became less malleable. And J.W.'s left you with a key. So you can come in any time and watch what you once had... see what you did. Watch it slowly decaying before your-'

Merrily sank to her knees.

She'd been expecting, if anything, a shriek of outrage and clawing hands. She hadn't seen this coming. Judith Prosser didn't seem to be close enough. Now Merrily was on her knees, with the flash memory of a fist out of nowhere, hard as a kitchen pestle. On a cheekbone.

She had never been hit like this before. It was shattering, like a car crash. She cried out in shock and agony.

Judith Prosser bent with a hand out as if to help her, and then hit her again with the heel of it, full in the eye. Merrily even saw it, as if in slow motion, but still couldn't move. It drove her back into the wall, her head connecting with the concrete, her left eye closing.

'You can tell the police about that, too, Mrs Watkins.' Judith was panting with satisfaction. 'And see who they believe a hysterical little pretend-priest from Off, or Mrs Councillor Prosser. Ah...'

One hand over her weeping eye, Merrily saw through the other one that the door had swung open. And the doorway was filled. Really filled.

'Good evening, Jeffery,' Judith said.

'You have me, Judith, as a witness that she hit you first.' Weal's voice was colourless and flat as card. 'But only if you make no further mess of her than that, or it would not be a reasonable defence.'

He was carrying what looked like a kind of garden implement. He came in and gently closed the door of the mausoleum behind him. He was wearing a charcoal grey three-piece suit and a white shirt, and a black tie to show he was still in mourning. His face was pouchy, red veins prominent in his grey cheeks.

He propped the garden implement against the door. Merrily saw that it was a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun.

'Thought it was the hippies, see.' He nodded at the twelve-bore. 'Some satanist hippies are parked up in the clearing by the Fedw Dingle. Father Ellis phoned to warn me. They break in anywhere.'

'Isn't loaded, is it, Jeffery?' Judith said.

'It's always loaded. There are foxes about. And feral cats. I hate cats, as you know.'

'Not going to the Masonic?'

'I was going, Judith, till I saw all those troublemakers in the village. Can't leave your house unguarded, all this going on, can you?'

Talking politely, like neighbours over the wall, people who knew each other but not that well.

They must have known one another for most of their lives.

Merrily didn't try to move. Judith looked down at her.

'Recognize this one, do you, Jeffery? Came to see me this morning. Asking all kinds of questions about Father Ellis. And about you, and Menna. When she left, I saw that the keys... You know where I keep your keys, on the hook beside the door? Stupid of me, I know, but I trust people, see, and we've never had anything stolen before. But when she left I seen the keys were gone.'

Weal stood over Merrily. 'Called the police?'

'Well, next thing, there she is coming down the lane tonight. I thought, I'll follow her, I will, and sure enough, up the drive she goes, lets herself in and when I came in here, she'd already done that.' They both looked at the open tomb. 'Disgusting little bitch. I shouldn't have touched her but, as you say, she went for me. Like a cat.'

I hate cats, as you know. How instinctive she was.

Merrily was able to open her swelling eye, just a little. She looked up at Weal. It was like standing under some weathered civic monument. She didn't think there was any point at all in telling him that Judith had lured her here, picking up, with psychopathic acumen, Merrily's guilt, her sense of responsibility for Barbara Buckingham.

'Why did you do this? Why do you keep coming here? Why do you keep wanting to see my wife?'

J.W. Weal gazing down at her sorrowfully, giving Merrily the first real indication that there was something wrong with him. His speech was slow, his voice was dry.

'The truth of it is,' Judith said, 'that she seems to have a vendetta against Father Ellis.'

'Father Ellis is... a good man,' Weal said calmly.

No, it wasn't calmness so much as depletion. Something missing almost as if he was drugged, not fully here. As if part of him existed on some intermediate plane, at grey-and-lightless level. Lying there in a cocoon of pain, detached, Merrily felt her senses heightened, her objectivity sharpened.

'Supposed to be the exorcist for the Hereford Diocese, she is,' Judith told Weal. 'Doesn't like him working in her back yard a priest whose feet she is not fit to wash. What good would a woman like this be at what he does?'

Merrily tried to stand. Judith immediately pushed her down again and she slid into the corner by the door. Judith was wearing her leather gloves again, perhaps to cover up any slight abrasions or bruising from the punches. Merrily's face felt numb and twisted. She wondered if her cheekbone was broken. She wondered where this would end. The way these two were talking to each other, it was like a bad play.

'Gave me some nonsense story,' Judith Prosser said. 'About Barbara Buckingham being murdered and buried in there.' Another nod to the open tomb.

Why, in God's name, didn't one of them close it?

'Buckingham?' Weal said vaguely. What was wrong with him?

'Barbara Thomas.'

'Murdered?'

'She thinks Barbara was murdered.' A gleeful, almost girlish lilt now. 'Thinks you did it, Jeffery.'

Merrily didn't look at him. She could almost hear his mind trying to make sense of it.

'Because... Barbara Thomas... came to see me, is it?' His voice thin and stretched, as though he was trying to remember something. 'Because she... accused me?'

'Did she?' Merrily said.

'Shut up!' Judith moved towards her. Merrily shrank back into the corner. If she could just get to her feet, she might... but then there was Weal.

'If you grievously injure her,' he told Judith earnestly, 'you know I may not be able to help you.'

Merrily shut her eyes. Think! Barbara believes Weal was responsible for Menna's death, so she goes to see Weal and accuses him of bringing about Menna's death by subjecting her to Ellis's perverse ritual. What does Weal do then? What does he do to Barbara?

Nothing.

The way he was talking now, viewing the situation, almost naively, from a pedantic legal perspective, made one thing clear: whatever else he was, this man was not a killer.

There's only one killer.

'J.W.,' Merrily said. 'When Barbara came to see you... when she went a little crazy and started accusing you of... things, did you...' She could hear the acceleration of Judith's breathing, but she didn't look at her; she was going to get this out if she was beaten into the ground for it. 'Did you send her to see Judith?'

Weal didn't answer. He glanced briefly at Judith, then down at Merrily. The question had thrown him. He looked at Judith again, his jaw moving uncertainly, as if he was trying to remember why it was that he hated her so much.

Merrily could suddenly see Weal and Barbara in the old rectory, Weal red-faced and anguished. Why are you plaguing me, you stupid, tiresome woman? Why don't you talk to the one person who, for twenty-five years, has been...?

Judith said, 'Jeffery, you're tired.'

'Yes,' he said. 'I'm always tired these days.'

'Why don't you go back to the house now?' Judith said kindly. 'I'll sort this out.'

He put his fingers vaguely to his forehead. 'You won't go doing anything stupid, will you, Judith? We are entitled to protect our property, but only...'

'Don't worry about me. I have never been a stupid woman. I was just carried away, see. Just carried away, Jeffery.'

He nodded.

'Here,' Judith picked up his shotgun. 'Take this with you and lock it away. No one will try to get in now.'

She held the gun upright and handed it to him. Weal accepted it, holding the barrel loosely.

'Right,' he said. 'Thank you, Judith.'

When Judith's gloved hand slid gracefully down the barrel, down the stock, the blast was like the end of the world. Merrily, shrinking into her corner, into herself, saw J.W. Weal's head burst like a melon in a rising red spray.

Felt it come down again, a warm hail.

56.

Each of my Dyings JUDITH STILL HELD the shotgun, her face creased in concern.

'Poor man,' she said. 'But, see, what did he have to live for now?'

Judith held the gun with both gloved hands, the stock under her arm.

'Not much,' she added. 'Not much at all.'

Weal's great body blocked the door. His blood and flesh and bone and brain blotched the walls, but most of the mess, still dripping, was on the ceiling. Merrily, sobbing, was still hearing the sound of Weal's head hitting the ceiling. Would hear it for ever.

'A terrible accident,' Judith said.

Two smells now: the embalming room and the slaughterhouse. Merrily hung her head. She felt very cold. She heard something sliding stickily down the wall behind and above her.

'An accident, Mrs Watkins. A terrible accident.'

'Yes,' Merrily croaked.

'Or perhaps he meant to do it, do you think? You saw me handing it to him. Such a tall man, it was pointing directly under his chin.' She laughed shrilly. 'Such a big man. They calls him Big Weal in Kington and around. Big Weal The Big Wheel.'

'That's very good,' Merrily said.

Judith said flatly, 'I'm making excuses, isn't it?'

Merrily felt something warm on her forehead, wiped it roughly away with her sleeve. She thought that maybe being squashed into a corner had protected her from most of the carnage. She remembered Judith jumping quickly back, snatching the gun away too. Not a speck on Judith.

She heard herself say, 'These things happen,' and felt a bubble of hysteria. She began to get up, levering herself, hands flat behind her pushing against the floor, her bottom against the wall. Now she could see J.W. Weal's huge shoes, shining in the lantern light, his legs...

'Oh no, you don't!' Judith swung round, the stock hard against her shoulder. 'You'll stay there while I think, or you'll have the other barrel.'

Merrily froze. Judith's eyes were pale but not distant like J.W.'s had been. Her gaze was fixed hard on Merrily.

'You made me do that. It's your fault. You suggested to J.W. that he must've sent Barbara Thomas to me. He never did. He wouldn't do that.'

'Didn't she... tell you?' Merrily's gaze turned to the river of blood that had pumped from J.W. Weal's collar. She gagged.

'She was off her head, that woman,' Judith said. 'Off her head! Screaming at me. Standing there, screaming at me, in her fancy clothes. How dare she run away, go from here, spend her life in cushy... where was it? Where was it?'

'Ham... Hampshire.'

'Hampshire. Soft, cushy place that is. How dare she come back from Hampshire, start screaming at me me who's had it hard all my life. They comes here, the English, think they can say what they like.'

Half a mile over the border just half a mile and this myth of the English having it so good.

Judith's accent seemed to deepen as she remembered the encounter. 'But a scrawny neck, she had, like an old bird. Trying to hide her scrawny neck with a fancy, silk scarf. But I found it, Mrs Watkins.'

Oh God. Merrily stiffened in her half-crouch against the wall. Sinewy hands around a scrawny neck. Maybe a silk scarf pulled tight.

'Going to tell everybody, she was, that bitch! Everybody! Going to shout it all over Radnorshire that Mrs Councillor Prosser was a lesbian! How dare the bitch call me a lesbian? "I'll sue you!" I said to her. "I'll hire J.W. to sue you. See how long your English money lasts you then!" '

Merrily retched again.

'Never seen blood before, Mrs Watkins? Used to kill all our own pigs, we did, when I was a girl. And whatever else we wanted to, until the regulations. Regulations about this and that... Regulations, it is, killing country life.' She calmed down, sighed. 'Poor Jeffery it's just like putting down an old horse.'

'What was... the matter with him?'

'It was since she died.' A toss of her head towards the tomb. 'He was hardly awake since. Couldn't face being awake.'

'Was he... on medication? From Dr Coll?'

'Wouldn't have it. Said it was the mourning took his energy, eating him up inside.'

Took his energy?

Menna.

'Do you know what I think?' Judith said, brightening. 'I think he ought to have killed you, Mrs Watkins.'

Merrily felt the first spasm of a cramp in her right leg. She had to move.