2006 - Wildcat Moon (27 page)

One day soon the winter storms would bring the chapel to the ground, it would be blown away into the sea and nothing would be left.

He was about to climb down from the font when he turned his attention to the hole in the middle of the wooden lid. He wondered if there was still any water in the font and who the last child to be christened was.

The hole was small but his hands were little. Mammy often asked him to help get things out of small places.

He rolled up the sleeves of his jumper and squeezed his hand down into the hole. It was a long way down and he had to lie across the font His hand made contact with the stone basin but it was dry as a bone; the water must have dried up years ago. He pulled out his hand clutching a ball of mouldy feathers, before thrusting his arm in again and scrabbling around until his fingers touched against something hard. He got it between his fingers and lifted it out He turned it over and realized that it was an old button. There was a loop on the back where it would have been sewn onto a garment Maybe it had fallen off the priest’s arm when he was baptizing a baby. He spat on the button and rubbed it on his jumper. He spat again and rubbed harder. There was some sort of pattern on the front of the button. He took out his penknife, flicked it open and began to scrape away the grime. It took him ages but as it got cleaner he could see that it was an ivory button on which someone had carved an elephant.

It was unusual and lovely.

He put it down on the font and put his arm back down into the hole.

His arm began to-ache and his ribs grew stiff. Then just as he was about to give up, his fingers touched against something else. He managed to get a hold on it but then dropped it. He tried again and moments later he pulled something up out of the hole.

In the palm of his hand lay a small, ornate crucifix on a broken chain. It was covered in dust and mouse droppings and he shook it to remove the worst of them. He spat on it and nibbed it on his jumper. As he held it up, it shone dully in the dying light.

Suddenly, he heard a noise behind him and spun around, lost his grip and fell off the font. He landed with a thump, scrabbled to his feet, rubbed his bruised knees and tried to stop the scream that was growing in the pit of his belly.

Jesus! There was someone here in the chapel.

There was a clunk. The sound of wheezing, and a slow deep groaning.

Any minute now he was going to pee himself with fright.

Bugger Benjamin Tregantle telling him not to be afraid of anything.

Help me, Mammy!

The door to the cupboard next to the altar creaked open and he stood rooted to the spot, looking into eyes as fearful as his own.

Gwennie blinked and stared at the small boy peeping over the top of the font.

It was the boy they called Archie Grimble who lived in Bag End. The one she’d tried to save from those bloody Kelly boys. The boy looked back at her aghast, his mouth wide open and the sun glinting off his spectacles.

Gwennie spoke first.

“What in God’s name are you doing in here?”

“I…I…I’m allowed. I have a key,” he stammered.

“You do?”

“I know how you got in though. I found out the secret way by accident.”

“Did you now? What are you snooping about in here for?”

“Nothing,” he said and blushed crimson.

“You’re not a very good liar!”

Archie looked down at his feet.

“Well, this place could tell a few stories if only the walls could speak.”

“It’s a shame they can’t,” he muttered.

“I haven’t been in here since…”

There was a long and awkward silence until Archie said, “You had a funeral in here for Thomas Greswode, didn’t you?”

She looked at him quizzically. “How do you know about that?”

“I’m a detective in my spare time.”

She threw back her head and laughed a toothless laugh.

Archie stiffened and took a step backwards.

She grew quiet and watched him with shrewd, lively eyes.

“Don’t worry, son, I’ll not hurt you. I went to two funerals for Thomas Greswode. I mourned him twice over.”

He took another step away from her.

“I’m not doing any harm here,” he said. “I’m just looking for clues.”

“You’re trying to solve some sort of mystery?”

He nodded.

“And what’s the mystery?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you solve a mystery if-you don’t know what it is?”

Archie looked down at his feet again.

She smiled a gummy smile. “I came here to bury the past and yet I find a young whippersnapper in here ferreting about. I don’t know what mystery you’re trying to solve but I’ll bet the wobbly chapel has plenty of secrets. It dates back hundreds of years. See the altar there, that was part of an old ship.”

“Was it?”

“It sank off Skilly Point. Everyone on board except two perished and one of them was the fellow who built the first house here on Bloater Row.”

“That was Hogwash House, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“He was a Spaniard. He’s buried over here, look, along with his missus.”

Archie looked at the memorial tablet set into the floor.

“Angeles Gabriel. Only the locals couldn’t get their tongues round a mouthful of a name like that so they called him the Angel of Espagne. Gradually it got changed to Spayne and no doubt after that to Payne…”

“Like the Paynes in the Peapods?”

“That’s right. You’ve only got to look at the colouring of that pair to know their ancestors are not English.”

“So they’d be related to the first settler?”

“I reckon it’s likely. Angeles Spain made a fortune and built Killivray House and then he lost it all again. A bit of a gambler, it was said. If he hadn’t lost his fortune then there would probably be Paynes in Killivray House today.”

“So when did the Greswodes get Killivray House?”

“The story is that one of the Greswodes had a bet with Angeles. The Greswode family used to live at Nanskelly. The Spaniard lost and the Greswodes got Killivray. And a sad day for Killivray it was when they moved in.”

“You don’t like the Greswodes?”

“Like them? I wouldn’t piss on them if their arses was burning.”

Archie looked at her with wide eyes.

“Why do you think the black man killed himself?”

“The black man had a name,” she said. “He was called Bo, well that’s what we called him. His full name was Boreo Orore.”

“Oh,” said Archie and he remembered the Bo mentioned in the diary who had been so kind to Thomas.

“I think that he killed himself because he was a coward when it came to it, in the end.”

Archie wrinkled his brow. “He couldn’t have been a coward to blow his own brains out.”

Gwennie winced and clasped her hands together tightly. “It might have seemed like a brave act to him but he left me to face the music alone. And yet all along he’d promised me he would take the three of us back to Africa…”

“To see the enormous sunsets and hear the calling of elephants and lions at night?”

“How do you know that?”

“I told you, I’m a detective,” he said with a shy grin.

For a moment the wrinkles seemed to fade and her face looked almost young.

“What were you doing up on top of the font? Trying to christen yourself?”

“No. I was just investigating. You see there’s a hole in the top. I wondered if there was anything in there.”

“A mountain of muck, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“I found these.”

He held out his hand and showed her the button and the crucifix.

She looked down at them in silence and Archie watched in consternation as her lip began to tremble and tears slipped from her eyes, gathering in the wrinkles of her face, making tributaries down her cheeks.

He fumbled in the pocket of his shorts for his handkerchief and held it out to her. She took it and wiped her eyes and face.

“Can I touch them?”

“Yes,” He held them out to her and she took them with a shaking hand.

“These belonged to Bo,” she whispered in a voice cracked with emotion.

Archie wrinkled up his forehead in puzzlement. “How do you know?”

“I knew everything about him.”

“Why do you think someone put them in the font?”

Gwennie looked up and there was a light in her eyes that alarmed him.

“He would never have taken this off,” she said, holding up the crucifix. “It was a parting gift from his mother before he left Africa for England.”

“He wanted to go back to Africa, didn’t he?”

Gwennie looked at Archie steadfastly. “He never wanted to leave in the first place. He came on the promise of being able to go back one day, to make some money and help his family.”

“Why didn’t he go back?”

“Greswode always kept him poor. Worked him to death and made sure there was no chance of him ever returning.”

All the while she spoke she didn’t take her eyes off the crucifix and the button.

“He would never have taken the crucifix off,” she said again. “And if he did why would he have put it in the font?”

Archie thought hard, “To hide it?”

“No. I know he would never have taken it off willingly.”

“You mean someone might have taken it off him? Or it got broken in a struggle maybe?” Archie mused.

Gwennie stood quite still.

“Ay, that’s what must have happened. And the button, the elephant button is from a shirt of his…a beautiful blue shirt that he used to wear for best.”

Archie listened with bated breath, afraid to speak in case she stopped.

“He used to look so handsome in that shirt the blue showed off his black skin a treat. I sewed those buttons on myself and they wouldn’t have fallen off easily, it must have come off in a struggle.”

“And if that’s what happened then maybe the person he struggled with hid them in the font, but why would anyone do that?”

“Perhaps whoever did it panicked, had to hide them to cover things up. I remember thinking that his blue shirt wasn’t among his belongings when they packed them up after his death.”

“So do you think he wore his best shirt here but someone changed him after, after they…?”

“Killed him,” said Gwennie coldly. “I don’t think my Bo killed himself, and all this time I’ve blamed him…”

“If he struggled and the shirt was ripped then maybe the police would have known that he hadn’t done it himself.”

“You are a very clever boy,” she said absently. “I should have trusted him; I should have known he wouldn’t leave me.”

“You weren’t to know, though, were you?”

“I see now that it was all so nicely covered up. I was away when it happened…”

Archie tried to make sense of it but her thoughts were too fast for him to keep up.

He chewed his lips nervously and listened.

“You see, I made cook tell me everything when I found out. She said that when they found him he was wearing his working clothes…they had to burn them because they were covered in…”

“Covered in what?”

“It doesn’t matter…you see he wouldn’t have worn that shirt to work in…maybe he had come to the Skallies to see my father. And all these years I doubted him…”

Archie was confused. Why would the black man have come to see Gwennie’s father?

Then a thought struck him. “How would Bo have got in here?”

Gwennie smiled sadly, “I’d shown him the secret way. We used to meet in here sometimes.”

“Maybe he came in that way and there was someone already here.”

“Someone who’d arranged to meet him?”

Gwennie put her hand to her head as if trying to catch hold of a thought.

“I remember afterwards, Wilf from the Pilchard said that the last time he’d seen Bo he was coming down through the sand dunes. He said he was whistling and seemed excited about something.”

“He wouldn’t have been excited about blowing his brains out, would he? I mean no one would.”

“I think,” she said, making the sign of the cross, “that my Bo was definitely murdered.”

“Why do you think someone would murder him?” Archie said breathlessly.

“I don’t know but there was something bothering Bo in the weeks before he died. He said that there was something not right and that someone wasn’t telling the truth and he didn’t like the way the master was with me. Neither did I.”

“How was he with you?”

“It’s of no consequence. He had wandering hands.”

“Maybe Bo found out something and then he had to be killed to shut him up.”

“I’ll never know for sure but I’ll bet that the Greswodes had a hand in it. Maybe he’d worked out that I was with child…that Bo and I were going to go away together. He was a very jealous man.”

She became silent then and shuffled across to a pew and sat down looking ahead of her. Archie sat down beside her.

The sunlight played across her face and the crucifix in her hand glowed brightly.

“You can keep the crucifix and the button if you like,” Archie said. “To remind you of Bo.”

She looked up at him and her eyes were extraordinarily blue and full of tears.

“Thank you,” she said and she closed her hand around them tightly.

“I think that I need some time alone now.”

Archie nodded and got to his feet.

“I’d like it if you didn’t mention this to anyone, Archie. There’s no point raking up the past now, there’s no one left to be punished for what they did. You’ve done me a very great favour.”

“Havel?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure, Archie, that coming here today you’ve worked out what did happen to 80. And I know now that he wasn’t meaning to leave me. It makes it almost bearable.”

The sun died behind the window and darkness seeped into the chapel like smoke.

Afterwards he would never forget the look on her face as she watched him go but it would be a long time before he heard the end of her story.

He let himself out of the chapel and pocketed the keys.

“Bang! Bang! You’re dead!” squawked the parrot from the Grockles.

“Ah, bugger off!” whispered Archie Grimble and he walked slowly back along Bloater Row.

Archie and Cissie were sitting out on the step of the Pilchard counting marbles when the postman came along Bloater Row. He smiled at Archie and Cissie, posted a letter through the letter box of Skibbereen and then went whistling back the way he’d come.