The Cold Light of Mourning (7 page)

She enjoyed the feeling that painting outdoors, or en plein air, always brought—that she was where she belonged, doing what she was meant to be doing. She reached down and swirled her sable brush in a little jar of water, and then opened her travelling palette case. She eyed the cobalt blue, and once more looked up at the sky. Within minutes she was lost in her work, the whispering brushstrokes gradually laying down the view in front of her.

By three-thirty, Emyr, David, and Robbie Llewellyn were dressed and ready to leave for the church. They made their way downstairs and through the house, past Gwennie who stood at the entrance to the kitchen. When they reached the parking lot at the back of the house, they all turned toward David’s BMW.

“I think we should take the Range Rover, Emyr,” David said, gesturing at the Hall’s utility vehicle. “I’m having a bit of trouble with mine; I think the alternator’s going. We’ll be better off in yours. Don’t want mine giving up the ghost in the middle of the High Street.”

Emyr and Robbie stopped.

“Okay, David, but the Rover isn’t as clean as it should have been. There’s a lot of mud and spatter on it. Still, does it matter?”

“Well, look, Emyr, let’s do it this way. We’ll take the Rover, but I’ll drive.” He motioned to Robbie. “Hop in the back.”

When everyone was settled, David put the car in gear and they set off down the long driveway on their silent journey to the church.

A short time later they pulled up in front of St. Elen’s, the beautiful stone church that had been given pride of place several centuries earlier in its majestic setting beside the river. The group made their way along the path leading to the church where a small group of wedding guests had gathered. The pastel blues, pinks, greens, lilacs, and ivories of the women’s elaborate hats and coat dresses contrasted with the sturdy stone of the church’s façade, lending an air of festivity and lightness.

Emyr and his groomsmen passed quickly into the church, with a few nods here and there, and walked to the vestry where the rector had said he would be waiting for them.

“Ah, Emyr,” said Rev. Evans as he stretched out his hand. “I am so sorry to hear there has been a problem with Meg Wynne. I do hope she’s all right. We must try to think how we can handle this for the best, to give as much dignity as we can to the occasion. I take it you have still not heard from her?”

“No,” said Emyr, “nothing. We’ve rung the hospitals but nobody has seen her.”

“Right, well then,” said the rector. “Then here’s what I suggest we do.”

By four o’clock, as gentle organ music provided a soothing backdrop, the congregation was seated, amid the usual rustling, whispering, throat clearing, glancing about to see who had been invited and who had not, and smiling and gesturing at old friends.

Emyr and David took their places at the front of the church, and stared ahead.

Silence fell as Robbie appeared at the back of the church with Mrs. Thompson on his arm. She was dressed in a floor-length beige dress with a detailed floral pattern embroidered across the bodice. Her matching hat, with broad brim and spiky leaves bobbing off it, could not hide her puffy, red eyes or look of bewilderment. The guests watched as the two made their way slowly down the aisle, followed by Mr. Thompson, red faced and sweating.

As they realized what they were seeing, guests turned to each other and a low murmur filled the church. Why wouldn’t the father of the bride be walking down the aisle with his daughter? Something must be very wrong. After seeing Mrs. Thompson into her pew, and watching as her husband awkwardly took his place beside her, Robbie returned to the rear of the church to watch and wait.

The sanctuary, with its whitewashed walls, carved rood screen, choir stalls, and dark roof beams had been tastefully decorated in an understated way; there were no bows on the pews or strategically placed flower arrangements. The only floral pieces were two enormous baskets of pink peonies, in perfect proportion for the size of the room, which had been set at the front of the church on either side of the altar.

The rector stepped in front of the congregation, and held up his hand. As the late-afternoon sun filtered through the stained-glass window, scattering a kaleidoscope of colours across his snowy surplice, the music stopped and a heavy, ominous silence settled over the assembled guests.

“Prynhawn da,”
he greeted the congregation in Welsh. “Good afternoon.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid I have an important announcement to make.”

An immediate hush, lightly laced with a frisson of excitement at such an unusual beginning to a wedding, swept over the crowd.

“It seems that our bride, Meg Wynne Thompson is missing, and …”

The wedding guests turned to one another with varying degrees of shock, confusion, or mild misplaced amusement on their faces and began whispering.

The rector, looking as stern as members of his regular Sunday morning congregation had ever seen him, again held up his hand and looked sternly from one side of the room to the other.

“… and as I have never been in this position before, I am not sure exactly how best to proceed. But I think we should all sit quietly here, and please remember exactly where you are, for about twenty minutes to give the bride time to arrive if there has been a delay or she has been held up for some reason we haven’t been told about. At the end of that time, I will speak to you again.”

As Rev. Evans sat down in his chair at the front of the church, the organ recital resumed and the minutes ticked by with unbearable slowness as somber organ music filled the church.

After what seemed an eternity, the jarring, anachronistic sound of a ringing mobile snapped everyone back to reality. All eyes turned to Emyr as he quickly left his pew, ducked behind the screen, and then emerged a few moments later and whispered something to the rector who then gave a tiny shake of his head.

Rev. Evans again stood before the congregation, his eyes dark with concern. He looked at his wife for reassurance, and when she gave him a slight nod of encouragement, he began to speak.

“I have to tell you now that as we have received no word of Meg Wynne, we are going to consider the wedding, on this day, to be postponed. As it is getting on for teatime, and many of you have come a long way, we are suggesting that you make your way to the Red Dragon Hotel where a meal has been prepared for you.

“So now, I would ask that we leave the church in a quiet, orderly fashion, starting with those in the back rows. The families will leave last.”

The shocked stillness that had settled over the congregation was broken only by the heart-wrenching sound of sobbing coming from the front row. Meg Wynne’s father, unused to performing small gestures of comfort but seeming to recognize that something was expected of him, put a stiff, reluctant arm around his weeping wife’s shoulder.

Eight

A
t four-thirty, Anne stood up, smoothed the front of her bridesmaid’s dress, and walked slowly and resolutely toward the closet.

“Whatever it is, Jenn, it’s over and I’m getting changed out of this bloody dress.”

“Me, too,” Jennifer replied. “I doubt I’ll be wearing this dress again. Can you think of any reason why you would wear yours?”

Anne shook her head as she stepped lightly out of her frock, leaving a slippery puddle of pale pink silk in the middle of the floor.

Jennifer picked it up, folded it carefully, and set it on the bed. A moment later, hers had joined it.

“We’ll keep them together and take them to a charity shop, yeah?” she said. “They’ll be more use as a set. Maybe they’ll bring someone else better luck, someone who doesn’t know their story. I wonder if we even need to get them dry-cleaned. After all, we never even got to leave the room in them. Pity, that. They were really lovely dresses.”

After a long day of intense pent-up frustration and mounting fear, the tears finally came, suddenly and in abundance. She reached for some tissues, sat on the bed, and wept silently for her lost friend. As Anne started toward her, arms outstretched, the telephone rang.

“Hello? Yes?” Anne said. After a moment of listening silence, while keeping an anxious eye on her distraught friend, she replied firmly, “Yes, David, I see. Right. Well, what else could you do, really? Yes, I’ll tell Jenn and we’ll ring you later. Thanks for letting us know. Bye.”

She replaced the telephone and sat down beside Jennifer.

“That was David. The rector’s made the announcement. He and Emyr have left the church and are on their way to Ty Brith to be with Emyr’s father. Apparently he’s taking all this very hard. Well, he would do, wouldn’t he? So the people from the wedding have been sent over here for their meal, David’s called off the photographer and the deejay, and he’s asking us if we can sort things out here, keep an eye on everything, whatever that means. And oh yes, they’ve finally called the police.

“It’s getting on now for five, so we’ll need to keep all the rooms until tomorrow anyway. Also, the police could arrive at any time, and I expect they’ll want to talk to us, and see what we know, which isn’t much.

“This isn’t nearly over, Jenn. In fact, I think something really bad must have happened, so we’ll have to hang together on this.”

She paused to give her friend time to collect herself, but the tears kept coming.

“Well, you have a good cry, and when you’re feeling a little better, we’ll decide what to do next. Are you hungry? Do you think we should go downstairs and show ourselves at the reception, or whatever it would be called?”

Jennifer started to wail.

“No, probably not,” Anne answered her own question. “There will be too many people asking questions. Why don’t you rest up for a few minutes? Me, I need a proper drink and God knows I deserve it. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

She closed the door behind her, then opened it again and popped her head back into the room.

“You know, Jenn, I’ve just thought that if the police are going to be arriving here at any minute, we might as well get ready for them. The first thing they’ll ask is, ‘When did you notice she was missing?’ Personally, I think they’ll wonder why they weren’t called in sooner. Right, I’m off. See you later or join me in the bar if you feel like coming downstairs.”

As she made her way down the carpeted stairs to the ground floor, the soft sound of murmured conversation rose to greet her. She wondered if she should look in at the small group of disoriented wedding guests that had gathered for a subdued meal in the hotel’s ground-floor reception room. Deciding against it, she strode purposefully to the lounge and ordered a large vodka and tonic. Taking it to an empty table near the window, she sat down and took a long, grateful sip. It had been an endless, emotionally draining day and she hoped she would never have to go through anything like it again. As she was about to take her second sip, she was hit by the flash of understanding and insight of a sudden idea when she realized that as of tomorrow, things were going to get much worse.

When she returned to the room Jennifer was feeling a little better. She had stopped crying and was in the bathroom trying to repair her red, blotchy face.

“Now the way I see it, Jenn,” said Anne, “we need to call Emyr immediately and get him ready for the time he’s about to spend in the media spotlight. We need to designate a spokesperson, and put together a media plan. And we need to do it tonight, before the police get here.”

The call to the police had been logged in at the small North Wales police station in Llanelen and then passed on to Llandudno. Missing persons cases are always taken seriously, and given the circumstances of this one, the sergeant who took the call gave it a high priority. The case was passed on to a senior officer, who summoned his sergeant, and together they set off for the Red Dragon Hotel in Llanelen.

“Now this case is a bit unusual,” Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Davies told his sergeant as she drove along the narrow country road trying not to scrape the high hedges or low stone fences that seemed to be about two inches from their unmarked car. “Normally, the husband would be the next of kin, but in this case, because they weren’t actually married, we’ll have to start with the parents and see what they can tell us. We’ll ask them to sign the release form in case we need to distribute photographs.”

The detective chief inspector was tall, in his mid-fifties, with a handsome head of grey hair neatly but not fussily trimmed. His face had a kindly, understanding look about it, which made him seem approachable, congenial even, but prime suspects in the past had learned the hard way that he was not the collegial fellow he seemed. His love of cycling kept him fit and his love of gardening meant he had something in common with just about everybody. His companion, Detective Sergeant Bethan Morgan, was considerably younger, and blessed with a head of dark curls and a ready smile which gave her a fresh, uncomplicated look. She was keen to get on in her career and radiated the kind of enthusiasm that her superiors found both endearing and mildly alarming.

Half an hour later they pulled up at the hotel, entered the lobby, and asked at the reception desk for the Thompsons’ room.

Their knock was answered by a distraught, worn-out woman.

“Yes?” she asked anxiously.

“Hello. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Davies and this is Detective Sergeant Bethan Morgan. We’re following up on a report of a missing person, Meg Wynne Thompson, and we’d like to talk to you. You are her parents? Good. May we come in?”

Mrs. Thompson stood to one side as the police officers entered.

“Please,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here. If you can find a place to sit, do.”

Accompanied by the sound of a toilet flushing, her husband emerged from the en suite lavatory to find the two officers standing near the window, their eyes scanning the room. Thompson was a big man, exuding bluster and resentment mixed in with the sour smell of last night’s drink. Decades of hard drinking and smoking showed in every line on his face.

“We don’t know anything about this,” he almost shouted at the officers. “We barely know her anymore. She’s got a mind of her own and what she’s done, we don’t know. She could be anywhere. We only know what the bloody bridesmaids tell us and that’s not very much. They’re the ones you should be talking to.”

“Right, well, let me just ask a few questions, so we can see where we are,” Davies said coolly. “Let’s start at the beginning. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

“That would have been last night at the dinner,” Mrs. Thompson said. “The Gruffydd family had a lovely dinner at the Hall, because Emyr’s father isn’t very well, you see. The wedding party with all the young people were there and the families.”

“The police don’t care about all that,” Mr. Thompson told his wife angrily. “Just let me answer the questions and they’ll soon be done with us.”

As he finished speaking his wife shrank back into herself. She looked down at the hands clasped in her lap, and was silent. Morgan looked at her thoughtfully.

“Can you think of any reason why your daughter might have suddenly decided not to go forward with the wedding?” she asked.

Mrs. Thompson looked at her husband, and seemed about to say something, then, thinking better of it, went back to the quiet contemplation of her hands.

“No, I can’t,” said Mr. Thompson. “She knew she was on to a bloody good thing.”

“Can you think of any place where she might have gone?” continued Morgan. “Did she come here in a car? Is it still here or is it gone, do you know?”

Thompson glared at them.

“Look, I’ve just told you that we don’t really know our daughter anymore. She’s been on her own, living in London for some time. We live in Durham and we don’t keep in touch. She can’t be bothered with us. As I said, she’s a very independent woman, knows her own mind, and to be honest, is much closer to her friends than she is to us. So you’d be better off talking to them, because we don’t know anything. We’re as surprised by all this as anyone else.”

When he finished speaking, Morgan stepped toward Mrs. Thompson and raised her arm to pat her on the shoulder.

Mrs. Thompson’s hands flew up to cover her haggard face in a gesture that was startling and revealing.

Slowly she lowered her hands as Morgan gently touched her.

“Mrs. Thompson,” she said, “we’ll do everything we can to bring your daughter back. Sometimes people turn up again after a day or two and wonder what all the fuss was about.”

Grateful for this small gesture of kindness and reassurance, Mrs. Thompson looked up at her with tear-filled eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and then added quietly, “she drove here with the girls, Anne and Jennifer. I think the three of them came in Jennifer’s car.”

Davies turned to face Mr. Thompson.

“Sir, there are certain formalities we have to go through, and one of them is to ask you, as the missing person’s next of kin, to sign this form. This will give us the authorization to release photos of her, if we feel this kind of campaign would help find her. Would you be willing to sign this?”

“I guess so,” snarled Mr. Thompson. “Do I have a choice?”

As he signed the document, Morgan asked Mrs. Thompson if she had any recent photos of her daughter.

“Oh you can get all that from her friends,” Mr. Thompson told her. “In fact, you’d be best off getting everything you need from them.

“Anyway, we’re off home tomorrow. I’ve got to get back to work and there’s nothing to hang about here for. She’ll turn up when she does.”

“Let’s hope so, sir. Oh, and by the way, what kind of work is it you do?”

A few minutes later, having learned from Mrs. Thompson where they could find the bridesmaids, the two officers were back in the hotel hallway. Morgan was barely able to contain herself.

“Men like that make me sick! The bastard! It’s too bad we didn’t learn anything.”

“On the contrary, Sergeant, we learned a great deal,” Davies told her.

“Really sir? What did I miss?”

“Oh, you didn’t miss it. You just haven’t put it together. We learned that Thompson’s a vicious, controlling bully who manages his family by intimidation. And experience has taught me that everything else we uncover here, no matter where this case leads us, will follow on from that. And it could very well lead us back to him.

“Now then, I’d like you to get on to Durham and see if they’ve got anything on him. With a drinking problem like he’s got, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t had a run in or two with the law.”

A few minutes later they had reached the bridesmaids’ room and were quickly invited in. While both women were subdued, Jennifer seemed the more distraught. Davies got right to the point.

“I understand you two were the bridesmaids. Who’s Anne and who’s Jennifer?” he asked.

“I’m Anne.”

Davies nodded at her.

“Right. Well, we’re very sorry to disturb you in your room, but we thought it would be better if we could talk in private. I have some questions I need to ask you and DS Morgan here will take a few notes.”

He looked from one to the other.

“Can you tell me when and where you last saw Ms. Thompson?”

“We haven’t seen her since last night, just before we all went to bed,” Anne replied and went on to describe the events of the day as clearly as she could—who they had spoken to, up and down the stairs, in and out of rooms, phone messages left, and hopes raised and dashed.

“And did you check with this manicure woman to see if Meg Wynne kept her appointment?” asked DS Morgan.

“Yes,” said Anne. “Jennifer went around there, and she said Meg Wynne kept her appointment, everything went fine, and then she left.”

“Well, since that’s the last place we know she was, we’ll start there,” DS Morgan said, “if you can tell us where we can find her. Now from your knowledge of your friend, would you say this is something she would be likely to do?”

“Not turn up at her own wedding? Absolutely not!” said Jennifer, “and that’s what we’ve been saying all day. This is so out of character and that’s why we’re really worried. What do you think could have happened?”

DS Morgan looked to her superior and then, choosing her words carefully, tried to be realistic but reassuring.

“It’s still very early in our investigation, so it’s too soon to say. But at this point, we’re treating it as a missing persons case. We know this Meg Wynne had enough money that if, for some reason, she wanted to disappear, she was certainly in a position to do that. We’re keeping an open mind. You’d be surprised how often the people turn up. We’ll also have a ring around the local hospitals. Sometimes people are hurt or injured and it’s days before they can be identified.”

She paused.

“However, if, for some reason she has chosen to disappear, remember that people always run from something or to something. Give that some thought. See if you can come up with anything.”

The two police officers got up to leave.

“There’s something else we’d like to know,” said Morgan. “Tell me about the arrangements here. Who was staying at the hotel?”