Caerwyss Hall
What it is
A manor house near Pegsea that has “gone corporate”: conference rooms, a swimming pool, an assault course, stables, quad bikes, a spa and a gym, marketed as a weekend retreat for team-building (C05). The assault course is the joke the book plays straight — by the last third the Hall’s clients are the thing the course was built to simulate.
The house matters because of one party. Just before New Year it was hired by Bullingdon Fopp, the PR firm run by Peter Judd, and catered by Paul’s Pantry, the Pegsea outfit where Lucas Harper worked; the personage of note in attendance was “exceptionally high born”, referred to at the time as Number Seven — his place in the line of succession (C07, C11). Something happened at that party: Lucas, smoking on a kit-room roof, watched five older men in evening wear and a girl in a silver dress have a crossbow put into her hands, and the bolt take flesh from her arm while the men laughed and the girl was led away weeping (C11). The book never stages the scene itself; it is reported by a seventeen-year-old, denied and buried. C10 has Diana Taverner understand that Frank Harkness’s presence in the country is “part of the deal Peter Judd had warned her about — that he was here to squash whatever had happened at Caerwyss”, and C14 has Judd telling her the Welsh deaths did not happen at all.
Harkness’s crew use the ground around the Hall. He scouts the woods there for a frightened boy who would head for familiar territory (C10), and Lucas knows the stables at the back well enough to describe them (C11).
Book 6 — Joe Country
- C05 — Its website, with the assault course and Bullingdon Fopp listed as a client, is what Louisa Guy finds in Lucas’s browsing history.
- C07 — Peter Judd tells Taverner about the New Year party and Number Seven, and what the guest’s presence implies about the deal.
- C09 — Frank says he will check the Hall out, because it is the other place they know Lucas is familiar with.
- C10 — Taverner works out why Harkness is in the country; Frank admits he has been up all night scouting its woods.
- C11 — Lucas describes the party: the catering job, Bullingdon Fopp, Judd, and the stables at the back of the Hall.
- C14 — Judd’s version: the boy has memory-wiped himself, his clients want the episode gone, and the deaths never happened.
Related
Pegsea · Peter Judd · Frank Harkness · Lucas Harper · Joe Country