'I truly hope your friend has the sense not to get involved. You don't have any influence there, I suppose?'

'I'm a songwriter, Simon. I write songs.'

'And don't you go making any silly connections between some doped-up woman and the Lady of the Bines.'

'Am I allowed to write a song about it?'

Simon made a thoughtful, sibilant sound through his teeth. 'All right,' he said, 'I'm going to tell you the truth about the Lady of the Bines, OK?'

Lol sat down again.

'According to the legend,' Simon said, 'if you see her, your hops will start to wither before the season's out. Right?'

'Uh huh.'

'Once the Wilt hits somebody's yards, the old codgers in the pub will start muttering about the Lady. You'll have seen the signs: Keep Out. Danger of Infection. Most big yards have them. The Wilt's voracious and it can be carried by people just walking in and out of a field. Most people observe the restrictions. Kids, though, are another matter. Always been a problem keeping kids out. And I guess that's why they made up the story.'

'Made it up? Who made it up?'

'They did. I don't know who, but it's bollocks, Lol!' Simon threw out his arms; you could almost see the bat wings of a surplice. 'The story was made up to scare kids away from the hop-yards. The history of hops in Herefordshire doesn't go back as far as the days of knights and ladies.'

'Sally Boswell was spinning me a line?'

'Maybe she made it up. She's a clever lady; she's been around long enough.' Simon had picked up his bow and was tapping it against his leg like a riding crop. 'This is the country, Lol. In the country, in certain situations, everybody lies.'

13.

Question of Diplomacy

ALTHOUGH SHE WORKED for the Bishop and the Church of England, in essence Sophie Hill served the Cathedral. If you confided in her, only God and those medieval stones would ever know.

She was not exactly a mother-figure a just that little bit too austere a and certainly not an older sister. Agony aunt would probably get closer. Merrily wondered how many perplexed priests in a crisis of faith, or facing divorce or the prospect of being outed as gay had, over the years, consulted Sophie before a or instead of a bishops and deans and archdeacons.

'Except, I should have done something,' Merrily insisted. 'From the start, Huw Owen always used to stress that, regardless of our own opinions, we should never leave the premises without-'

'Merrily a seriously a how could you?' Sophie handed her tea in a white china cup. 'If the girl herself wouldn't have anything to do with you, and if the mother felt unable to take you completely into her confidence-'

'She took bloody Dennis into her confidence.'

'Only because the girl had accused you of threatening her a transparent nonsense which, in my view, throws immediate doubt on her casting of Jane as the instigator.'

Merrily paused, with the cup at her lips. 'You don't see Jane involved in this?'

'There was a time, not too long ago,' Sophie conceded, 'when there was very little of which I would have acquitted Jane without a number of serious questions. But no. There's an element of... malevolence here. Not that I think she was ever malevolent but, with younger children, mischief and maliciousness can be horribly interwoven, and I rather think she's grown beyond that stage.'

'Well, thank you.'

'All the same, you do need to speak to her without delay. Where is she now?'

'On holiday, with her boyfriend's-with Eirion's family. In Pembrokeshire.'

'Can you contact her on the phone?'

'If I can't,' Merrily said, 'I'll be driving down there tonight.'

'Don't overreact.'

'Sophie, I've just been accused of menacing a juvenile!'

'Accused by the juvenile.'

'I wasn't aware of Dennis Beckett immediately springing to my defence.'

'No. But then, Canon Beckett was hardly vociferous in support of the ordination of women.'

'I didn't know that.'

'I'll make you a list sometime.' Sophie pushed the phone across the desk to her.

'Merrily!' Gwennan squealed. 'How marvellous it is to hear from you again!'

They'd spoken twice on the phone but never actually met. She hadn't met Eirion's father, either, the Cardiff-based business consultant, fixer, member of many quangos and chairman of the Broadcasting Council for Wales. Gwennan was his second wife.

'Erm... I just wanted a very quick word with Jane, please,' Merrily said. 'Something she might have forgotten to tell me before she left.'

'Oh dear,' said Gwennan. 'You've just missed her. She's just this minute taken the children to the beach.'

'What time will she be back?'

'Oh heavens... I don't know really. The problem is, Merrily, that Dafydd and I have a lunch appointment in Haverfordwest, so we won't be seeing Eirion and Jane until tonight. They've taken the children out for the day. Isn't she marvellous with children?'

Merrily blinked. 'She is?'

'What I'll do, I'll leave a note in case they come back earlier. Though, knowing Jane, she'll have too much planned for them all. But she'll definitely call you tonight, I'll make sure of it.'

'If you would. It's nothing vital, just something I need to check. She's actually looking after the children, then? Young children?'

'Eight and eleven,' Gwennan said. 'She's wonderful with them. You don't have any other children of your own, do you? I expect that's what it is.'

Merrily put down the phone to the sound of heavy footsteps and puffing on the stairs: the Bishop returning, after seeing Dennis Beckett to his car. He came in and closed the door.

'I've told him to keep this to himself, naturally.'

'Don't feel you have to protect me,' Merrily said bitterly. 'If it turns out to be remotely true about Jane, I'll be out of here before you can say Deuteronomy.'

'Merrily, the very last-' The Bishop glanced around to make sure the door was firmly shut, then sat down opposite her at Sophie's desk. 'The very last thing I want is to lose you from Deliverance because of something-'

'Bernie, if this is true, I'll have to leave the parish, the diocese... everything, probably.'

'That's ridiculous.'

'I've told her she has to speak to Jane.' Sophie placed a cup and saucer in front of the Bishop, poured his tea.

'It looks like it'll be tonight before I get through to her,' Merrily told him. 'I'll also need to speak to the Shelbones, of course, but not until after I speak to Jane.'

'No!' The Bishop dislodged his cup, splashing hot tea on his cuff. 'Out of the question. You stay well away from that family. Dennis has prayed with the girl, and that's enough for the present, as far as I'm concerned.'

'You can't say that. Now it's out in the open, I'm going to have to find out about this ouija-board stuff. If that's not part of the Deliverance agenda, what is?'

'What this whole business is, my girl, is a pretty firm pointer to why we need a Deliverance support group, without delay. Jobs like this, it's like the damned police a you need to go out in pairs to give yourself a witness. Have you even provided me with a list of possibles yet?'

'Well, at least I've eliminated Dennis.' She took out her cigarettes. 'Would you mind?'

Sophie frowned, but Bernie Dunmore waved a hand. 'Go ahead, if it'll make you think clearer.'

'Suppose I have a word with the headmaster at Moorfield?'

'Do you know the headmaster?'

'Bernie, Jane goes there.'

He coughed. 'Yes. What's his name?'

'Robert Morrell.'

'I don't think I've met him yet.'

'You probably won't.' Merrily lit a cigarette. 'He's an atheist.'

'Aren't they all? But, sure, go and see him, by all means. Go and see him in your capacity as a concerned parent a if he isn't already in the Algarve or somewhere.'

'Thanks.'

'I'll call him for you,' Sophie said.

'In a moment, Sophie. Merrily, there's something else we need to look at, on the other side of the county, as it happens. Sophie, could you get that e-mail? You'll be glad to know, Merrily, that you're not the only minister in this diocese facing, ah, flak.'

'I know.' Merrily took one more puff on the cigarette and then stubbed it out in the empty powder compact she used as a portable ashtray. 'That was all I needed, thanks. This would be the vicar of Knight's Frome?'

'You've read the Sunday paper, then.'

'I was quoted in it, Bernie.'

'Yes. Of course you were.' He wiped a hand across his forehead. 'I think I need a holiday.'

'And Sunday wouldn't be Sunday, at Ledwardine Vicarage, without the People and the News of the World. Anyway, I thought I ought to ring him. He certainly didn't seem over-worried, and he didn't ask for any help. I've also spoken to the guy who a well, let's just say a journalist. The inference is that the story was engineered by Mr Stock, for reasons of his own. So my feeling is that Simon St John probably knew exactly what he was doing when he said no.'

Bernie Dunmore's dog collar disappeared under his chins. 'Just as you did when you said no to Mrs Shelbone on that first occasion?'

Merrily was silent.

When the Bishop had gone, she stood up to let Sophie repossess her desk.

'He obviously just wants to keep me well away from Dilwyn.'

'Oh, more than that, I think.' Sophie scoured her blotter for traces of ash. 'If it was anyone other than the Reverend St John, he might have let it go. But I don't think any of us are entirely sure about Mr St John.'

'Tell me.' Merrily sat in the chair vacated by the Bishop.

'And it's not simply that he used to be in some sort of rock-and-roll group in the eighties, if that's what you were thinking.'

'I wasn't aware of that. Would it be a band I've heard of?'

'You probably would, but I don't even recall the name. Nor is it the fact that St John isn't known for his diplomacy... or the delicacy of his language.' Sophie's eyes narrowed under her compact coiffure. 'Even more profane than you, Merrily, by all accounts.'

'A Quentin Tarantino priest?'

'Certainly a troubled priest. Or was. I believe he's come very close to leaving the Church more than once. He seems to have what you might call an attitude problem. Came to us from Gwent, newly married. His wife's quite seriously disabled. The vicarage at Knight's Frome had to be considerably modified before they could move in.'

'How does that affect his ministry?'

'Not at all a except by eliciting sympathy from the parishioners. Not that Mrs St John appears to welcome sympathy. I think, in the end, it probably does mainly come back to that question of diplomacy. He tends to be volatile and arbitrary. For instance a and this is the instance the Bishop's no doubt recalling a he once refused to marry a member of a very well-established local farming family, someone with family graves in the churchyard going back at least two centuries, because he said it was a marriage of convenience and the couple clearly didn't love one another. He told them to... "Eff off to a registry office".'

Merrily rolled her eyes. 'The times I've wanted to say that.'

'But you didn't, did you?'

'Only because a, I didn't have the bottle and b, Uncle Ted the churchwarden would've had me on toast. Come to think of it, that comes down to bottle, too, doesn't it?'

'It's simply a matter of tempering one's responses,' Sophie said. 'The Reverend St John tends to form personal opinions about people and act on them. Which is why the Bishop feels it might be advisable in this instance to have a second opinion. There's also this message a probably the first serious response to your Deliverance website.'

Sophie laid in front of her an e-mail printout.

Rev. Watkins, I am grateful that you were less quick to dismiss my appeal for spiritual assistance than was my local minister. I am assuming you were not misquoted in saying that if you were aware of someone in genuine need of spiritual support, you would wish to see they received whatever help you were able to give them. May I therefore appeal to you as a Christian to at least investigate the situation here before my wife and I are driven to the edge of sanity. May I stress that this is not a 'wind-up'.

Yours very sincerely, Gerard Stock.