Gomer identified Mrs Eleri Cobbold, the village sub-post-mistress, Mrs Smith whose cottage they'd passed, Linda Llewellyn who managed a riding stables towards Presteigne. The others he didn't know. Mostly from Off, he reckoned.

Marianne wasn't among them.

'No back way out of the hall, is there?'

'Yes, but not without comin' down them steps, vicar, less you wants to squeeze through a fence and lose yourself in the forestry.'

So she was still up there. That made sense; they'd hardly want to bring her out looking like a road casualty, not with TV crews around.

Ellis had reached the car park of the Black Lion. He was evidently about to hold a press conference.

'Gomer, could you kind of hang around and listen to what he says? I need to go back in there.'

All eyes were fixed on Ellis as Merrily walked inconspicuously back through the rain towards the steps.

Nobody on the door this time. Inside the hall, all the blinds were now raised, the chairs were spread out and a plain wooden lectern stood in the centre of the room. This time, one corner looked very much like another and only a vague smell of wax indicated that anything more contentious than an ad hoc meeting of the community council had taken place.

No, there was something else: the atmosphere you often caught in a church after a packed service tiny shivers in the air like dust motes waiting to settle.

A black coat slung over one of the chairs suggested someone was still around, if only a cleaner. Presently, Merrily became aware of voices from beyond the door with the 'Toilets' sign above it where that solitary man had stood. She crossed the hall, not caring about the sound of her shoes on the polished floorboards.

The door opened into an ante-room leading to separate women's and men's lavatories. It contained a sink and one of the chairs from the main room Marianne sitting in it. A woman was bending over her with a moistened paper towel, patting her brow. Marianne didn't react when the door swung shut behind Merrily, but the other woman looked up at once, clear blue eyes unblinking.

'We can manage, thank you.'

The voice echoed off the tiles: cold white tiles, floor to ceiling, reminding Merrily of the stark bathroom at Ledwardine vicarage.

'How is she?'

'She's much better, thank you. Had problems at home, haven't you, my love?'

The woman wore jeans and a black and orange rugby shirt. She had a lean, wind-roughened face, bleakly handsome. A face which had long since become insensitive to slaps from the weather and the world. A face last seen lit by the lanterns in Menna's mausoleum.

The woman dabbed at Marianne's cheek, screwed up the paper towel and looked again at Merrily, in annoyance. 'You want the lavatory, is it?'

'No. I'd just like a word with Marianne when you've finished.' Merrily unwound her scarf. 'Merrily Watkins. Hereford Diocese.'

'Oh? Come to spy on Father Ellis, is it? We're not stupid. We know what the diocese thinks of him.'

Marianne looked glassy-eyed. She didn't care one way or the other.

'And anyway,' the woman said, 'Mrs Starkey hasn't been through anything she didn't personally request. Father Ellis doesn't do a soft ministry.'

'Obviously not.'

'Practical man who gets results. She'll be fine, if people will let her alone. If you want to talk to anybody, you can talk to me. Judith Prosser, my name. Councillor Prosser's wife. Come outside.'

She gave Marianne's shoulder a squeeze then went and held open the door for Merrily, ushering her out and down the central aisle of the hall, past Ellis's lectern. She picked up the black quilted coat from a chair back, and they went out through the main doors.

The rain had stopped. At the top of the steps, Judith Prosser didn't turn to look at Merrily; she leaned on the metal railings and gazed over to the village centre, where Ellis and his entourage were assembling for the media.

'And was it the diocese sent you to Menna's funeral, too, Reverend Watkins?'

Above Old Hindwell, a hopeless sun was trying vainly to burn a hole in the clouds. Mist still filigreed the firs on Burfa Hill but the tower of the old church was clear to the north.

'I didn't think you'd recognized me,' Merrily said.

'Well, of course I recognized you.'

This was the intelligent woman who Gomer seemed to admire. Who did her husband's thinking for him. Who could sit and watch another woman physically invaded in the name of God.

'For what it's worth, that was nothing at all to do with the diocese,' Merrily told her. 'I'd arranged to meet Barbara Buckingham at her sister's funeral. You remember Barbara?'

Judith Prosser's head turned slowly until her eyes locked on Merrily's.

'Had you now?'

'She was referred to me by a nurse at Hereford Hospital, after her sister died there. I do... counselling work, in certain areas.'

'Didn't come to the funeral, though, did she?'

'She's disappeared,' Merrily said. 'She spent some days here and now she's disappeared. The police are worried about her safety.'

'Oh, her safety? An eyebrow arched under Judith's stiff, short hair. 'And what are we to assume they mean by that?'

'We both know what they mean, Mrs Prosser.'

The sun had given up the struggle, was no more than a pale grey circle embossed on the cloud.

'Poor Barbara,' Judith said.

Merrily did some thinking. While she hadn't come up here to discuss Barbara and Menna, as soon as the conversation had been diverted away from Ellis himself, Judith Prosser had become instantly more forthcoming.

'Barbara told me you used to write to her.'

'For many years. We were best friends for a time, as girls.'

'So you know why she left home.'

'Do you?'

'I know it wasn't a hydatid cyst.'

'Ha. Good informants you must have. What else did they tell you?'

'That you were looking out for Menna, and keeping Barbara informed. Menna was a source of... disquiet... for Barbara. Especially after their mother died.'

'Ah.' Judith Prosser nodded. 'So that's it.' She leaned back with her elbows against the railings. 'Well, let me assure you right now, Mrs... is it Mrs? Let me assure you emphatically that Mervyn Thomas never touched Menna. I know that, because I warned him myself what would happen to him if he ever did.'

'But you'd have been just a kid... or not much more.'

'This was not when Menna was a child. Good heavens, Merv was never a child-molester. He'd wait till they filled out. Ha! No, there was never anything for Barbara to worry about there. Nothing. She could go on living her rich, soft, English life without a qualm.'

'Hasn't she been to see you in the past week or so?'

Judith sniffed. 'I heard she was around, pestering people including you, it seems. Evidently she couldn't face me.'

'Wasn't it you who told her about Menna's stroke?'

'I sent her a short note. Somebody had to.'

'But not her husband.'

Mrs Prosser smiled and nodded. 'Let me also tell you, Mrs Watkins, that Jeffery Weal was the best thing that could have happened to Menna. If you knew her which Barbara, lest we forget, never really did Menna was a wispy, flimsy little thing. Insubstantial, see, like a ghost. She-Are you all right?'

'Yes.' Merrily swallowed. 'I'm fine. Why was Mr Weal so good for her?'

'If you knew her, you would know she would always need someone to direct her life. And while he was not the most demonstrative of men, he adored her. Kept her like a jewel.'

In a padded box, Merrily thought, in a private vault.

'Anyway,' Judith said, 'I do hope the Diocese of Hereford is not going to interfere with Father Ellis. He suits this area very well. He meets our needs.'

'Really? How many other people has he exorcized?'

Judith Prosser sighed in exasperation. 'As far as local people are concerned, he's giving back the church the authority it used to have. Time was when we had a village policeman and troublesome youngsters would get a clip around the ear. Now they have to go up before people like my husband, Councillor Prosser, and receive some paltry sentence a conditional discharge, or a period of community service if they're very bad. Time was when sinners would be dealt with by the Church, isn't it? They weren't so ready to reoffend then.'

'The way Father Ellis deals with them?'

Judith smiled thinly. 'The way God deals with them, he would say, isn't it? Excuse me, I must go back and minister to Mrs Starkey.'

Halfway down the steps, Merrily encountered Gomer coming up. There were now a lot of things she needed to ask him. But, behind his glasses, Gomer's eyes were luridly alive.

'It's on, vicar.'

'The march?'

'Oh hell, aye. Tonight. No stoppin' the bugger now. Somebody been over to St Michael's, and they reckons Thorogood's back. En't on his own, neither.'

Merrily felt dejected. All she wanted was to get home, do some hard thinking, ring the bishop to discuss the issue of internal ministry. She didn't want to even have to look at Nicholas Ellis again tonight.

'Bunch o' cars and vans been arrivin' at St Michael's since 'bout half an hour ago. One of 'em had, like, a big badge on the back, 'cordin' to Eleri Cobbold. Like a star in a circle?'

'Pentagram,' Merrily said dully.

'Ar,' said Gomer, 'they figured it wasn't the bloody RAC.'

'How's Ellis reacted?'

'Oh, dead serious. Heavy, grim for the cameras. Man called upon to do God's holy work, kind o' thing.'

'Yeah, I can imagine. But underneath...'

'Underneath pardon me, vicar like a dog with two dicks.'

'I don't need this,' Merrily said.

32.

Potion BETTY LEFT MRS Pottinger's lodge in weak sunshine, wanting nothing more than to collapse in front of that cranky farmhouse stove and pour it all out to Robin.

Except that Robin would go insane.

She called for a quick salad at a supermarket cafe on the outskirts of Leominster. By the time she reached the Welsh border, it was approaching an early dusk and raining and, in her mind, she was back in the shop with Mrs Cobbold and the slender man with the pointed beard.

Oh, good morning, Doctor.

A sharp day, Eleri.

Dr Coll.

She needed to tell somebody about Dr Coll and the Hindwell Trust. She wished it could be Robin. Wished she could trust him not to go shooting his mouth off and have them facing legal action on top of everything else.

The Hindwell Trust, Juliet Pottinger had explained, was a local charity originally started to assist local youngsters from hard-pressed farming families to go on to higher education. To become for instance doctors and lawyers, so that they might return and serve the local community.

A local people's charity.

Juliet Pottinger had come to Old Hindwell because of her husband's job. Stanley had been much older, an archaeologist with the Clwyd-Powys Trust, who had continued to work part-time after his official retirement. He was, in fact, one of the first people to suspect that the Radnor Basin had a prehistory as significant as anywhere in Wales. His part-time job became a full-time obsession. He was overworking. He collapsed.

'Dr Collard Banks-Morgan was like a small, bearded, ministering angel,' Mrs Pottinger had said wryly. 'Whisked poor Stanley into the cottage hospital. Those were the days when anyone could occupy a bed for virtually as long as they wished. Stanley practically had to discharge himself in the end, to get back to his beloved excavation.'

And while Stanley was trowelling away at his favoured site, a round barrow at Harpton, Dr Coll paid Mrs P. a discreet visit. He informed her, in absolute confidence, that he was more than a little worried about Stanley's heart; that Stanley, not to dress up the situation, had just had a very lucky escape, and he could one day very easily push the enfeebled organ... just a little too far.

'Oh, don't tell him that. Good heavens, don't have him carrying it around like an unexploded bomb!' said Dr Coll jovially. 'I shall keep tabs on him, myself.' Chuckling, he added, 'I believe I'm developing a latent interest in prehistory!'

Dr Coll had been discretion itself, popping in for a regular chat perhaps to ask Stanley the possible significance of some mound he could see from his surgery window or bring him photocopies of articles on Victorian excavations from the Radnorshire Transactions. And all the time, as he told Juliet with a wink, he was observing Stanley's colour, his breathing, his general demeanour. Keeping tabs.

She thought the man's style was wonderful: perfect preventative medicine. How different from the city, where a GP could barely spare one the time of day.

And Betty was rehearing Lizzie Wilshire: Dr Coll's been marvellous... such a caring, caring man.