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.
Perhaps everything will be fine once the murderer is caught. I wonder if the detectives from Dolgellau are any better than Sergeant Jones. If only I could find some clues. Maybe I’m looking at them but can’t see them, like when Mam sends me to fetch something from the sideboard or the larder and I can’t find it, and she says: It’s right in front of your beak, Gwenni.
I feel myself begin to drift like a twig in the stream. I mustn’t go to sleep. So, instead, I lift from the bed, high into the sky. Flying is magical; all the clouds disappear unless I need one to lie on, and if the moon is thin the stars give me plenty of their light. Is flying magical enough for me to find clues? I turn my back on the sea and the town, and soar up to Brwyn Coch. I hear the cottage sigh in its sleep when I fly above it. A night-light is burning in Angharad and Catrin’s bedroom, but all the other windows are dark. The geese are shuffling around in their shed, and Mot is whimpering as he sleeps in his kennel.
I float down slowly towards the Reservoir. From here the fields and paths, the Reservoir and the Baptism Pool below it, the winding road, all look like a drawing on a page in an old mapbook, so that I want to lean down and write all their names on them. Instead, I search – up and down from the Reservoir to Brwyn Coch, and back again, over and over. I can’t find one single clue. What if Ifan Evans’s death wasn’t murder? What if he fell against the stone wall at the edge of the Reservoir and hit his head on a stone and then fell into the water? I swoop lower and fly just above the wall to search for blood on the stones, but I can’t see any.
I’m just about to lift into the sky again when I see a fox running away from the Reservoir, up the fields towards Brwyn Coch. I fly after it. It’s running so fast that I can’t catch up with it. It runs along the side of the cottage and just as it disappears around the back I hear barking below me. I look down and see the black dog racing after the fox. It barks and barks as it nears Brwyn Coch and, as if it’s in a film at the picture house when the projector runs slow, the cottage begins to collapse. Its chimneys tumble down and the roof caves in. The black dog’s bark grows louder, until the sky is filled with its sound. Brwyn Coch’s windows fall out and the walls crumble into a heap of stones. And Mrs Evans, and Angharad and Catrin, and Mot and the geese have all vanished.
I wake up yelling at the black dog to stop barking, and find the bedclothes twisted and damp around me. My flying turned into a bad dream tonight. And Mam is banging on the bedroom wall and shouting, ‘Be quiet, Gwenni. I must have my beauty sleep.’