The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

Author:Mari Strachan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC043000, FIC000000
ISBN: 9781921834042
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2009-03-29T22:00:00+00:00

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.

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