The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘But how are we to find her, Mrs Hawker?’ I said.

  ‘She said something about a ship, not meaning to, but she must plan to go to Bude and find passage from there. That’s the best chance of getting clean away. The roads will be too slow. I don’t think she cares where she’s bound as long as she saves her neck. She has the money – she could go anywhere. Start again. You must—’

  There was the sound of the porch door being tried. Then a knocking, for the caller had found he couldn’t get in. Parson Hawker’s voice came loud as if he was just outside the dining room.

  ‘My dear?’

  Mrs Hawker threw down her napkin and hurried us from the room. ‘Quick – go out the kitchen. He mustn’t see you. Go to Bude, stop her. I’ll keep Robert here. Try to explain … Heaven preserve us.’

  And we were back in the garden, the kitchen door shut and bolted on us.

  FORTY-FIVE

  ‘We’ll ask at the Bush for a gig, a cart – anything,’ Anna said, already rushing into the dusk.

  I ran after her, but my thoughts were running likewise. They were scat all over the place by what we had learnt that day.

  ‘Anna, wait! What do you think happened to Joseph?’

  ‘We know what happened,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Nancy Seldon killed him.’

  ‘But Mrs Hawker didn’t see her do it. All she heard was that voice, calling his name.’

  ‘You think it was the mermaid?’

  ‘It could have been, couldn’t it?’

  She grabbed my arm to make me go faster. ‘Here’s what I think happened. Joseph Ians was at the hut, signalling to his sister at the vicarage, just as they’d arranged. Nancy left the vicarage at ten, which is when Mrs Hawker thought she saw the light. Nancy could have seen it on the way home and gone to investigate. Did she fear a return to the past, when people did signal from this coast to lure ships to their end?’

  ‘If that ever happened at all, Anna.’

  ‘Yes, all right. If. Who knows why Nancy went to the hut, but she did. And there, to her complete shock, she finds her sweetheart, now an old man. She’s overjoyed – at last, he’s returned!’

  ‘Until he tells her that he only came for the money promised by his sister. He’d forgotten all about Nancy.’

  ‘And in her rage, Nancy pushes him over the cliff.’

  ‘Or, Nancy doesn’t see the light, doesn’t go to the cliff, and it’s the mermaid that calls Joseph Ians to throw himself from the cliff path. When she has him in her claws, she tears him to pieces, as she tore the squire’s nephew who abandoned her.’

  Anna looked at me in such astonishment that her steps slowed, stopped. ‘Do you really believe that, Shilly, after everything else we’ve heard? Nancy being missing that night, lying to us about her movements. The fact she has fled Morwenstow after first stabbing her employer, then robbing her.’ These crimes Anna counted on her fingers. ‘Not to mention Nancy’s motive as a forgotten fiancée who has wasted her life waiting for her lover to return.’ Anna lifted her eyes to heaven as if she couldn’t believe the Lord would couple her with such a simpleton. ‘Nancy Seldon killed Joseph Ians. What else could it be?’

  ‘But say Nancy did push him over the cliff. How did he end up the way he did, so torn … How did she do it?’

  The Bush was in sight.

  ‘With a rock, I expect.’ Anna said this like she was speaking of her supper, or her hopes for the weather. ‘An easy murder weapon to rid oneself of. She could just throw it in the sea afterwards and it would be washed clean.’

  ‘I still don’t—’

  ‘Nancy was enraged. Mrs Hawker heard her screaming Joseph’s name. She was sent mad by the shock of seeing him, her hopes raised and then just as quickly dashed. Most of her life she’s spent waiting and she sees at once that it was for nought. That could unsettle even the most quiet of minds. I believe she pushed Joseph off the cliff, then, with no thought to her own safety during the storm, she went down the path to the shore below.’

  ‘And there?’

  ‘There she took a rock and carved him to pieces. It was anger that caused her to go down the cliff path, to carry out such violence. I don’t believe she was thinking clearly, not at first.’

  Nancy’s anger was strong as the sea’s. She was violent as the waves that dragged people over the rocks. And she did that with her hands. That made Nancy much like the mermaid of the story, even if she was a woman of the land.

  ‘But then,’ Anna said, ‘when it was done, Nancy must have come back to herself, realised what she’d done. She couldn’t easily hide the body on the shore, and she couldn’t rely on the tide to take it out either. The sea might have just washed it straight back in again. So she did what she could and tried to erase Joseph’s identity. She had already gouged away his face, but she had to take the tattoo as well.’

  ‘Which left the gobbet.’

  ‘There were two kinds of injuries on Joseph Ians’ body – the random and the deliberate. Left by two different states of mind. But it’s just one woman we’re after. And we have a good idea of where she’s gone.’

  And Anna was away into the Bush to ask about a means for us to get to Bude.

  The rain came then, and though I knew it was falling on my head, I couldn’t feel it, for my thoughts were dark and sore. It seemed to me as I waited for Anna in the rain that Mrs Hawker was to blame for her brother’s death just as Nancy was, for it was she who’d called him back to these shores. She’d given him a reason to return. But it was more than that, more than a letter, I was sure of it.

  What if Mrs Hawker had been out here on the cliffs, calling Joseph’s name into the wind many times since he’d left? Those who called at the Bush for drink to ease their fears on stormy nights, they had heard someone calling. So had Inchin Ben. Parson Hawker thought the noise the calls of the dead, but it could have been Mrs Hawker calling her brother.

  Until the night the voice was Nancy’s, screaming with rage. Or was it Nancy’s voice all along, all these years, calling for the man who left her? I’d seen her, hadn’t I, on the cliffs, her back straight, her head held high though the rain pounded her face. I could believe it of her.

  Or both women calling, for both had lost him. Both had mourned.

  But only one of them had been betrayed.

  But then what of me and Mrs Grey? We had each heard our own name called, not that of Joseph. What if Mrs Hawker hadn’t spent years calling Joseph home, nor Nancy either – what if they’d both been drawn to the cliffs to answer the mermaid’s call instead, and it truly was the mermaid that Morwenstow people heard? There seemed only one way to know.

  We had to catch Nancy.

  Anna called me from the doorway. She’d found us a dog cart, she said, and a boy to drive it. I followed her round to the stables, the ground now puddled.

  ‘Captain Ians has agreed to bear the cost,’ she said once we were on our way. The boy had whipped the horse and we were racing along the lanes.

  ‘You saw the captain inside?’ I said.

  ‘I did, and I told him we nearly had our man. Or woman. If we can get to Bude in time, that is. Can you go any faster?’ she called to the boy driving us.

  He flicked the reins and we lurched quicker still. I had to hold onto Mrs Williams’ false hair to keep it from streaming away in the wind. The hair was a wet nest.

  ‘I had a job to stop the captain coming with us,’ Anna said. ‘He’s been so long without proper sleep, he’s like a madman.’

  ‘Let’s hope we find Nancy before she sails away, then.’

  ‘I’m told there’s a constable at Bude, which is something at least. If we can get there in time …’

  The dog cart tilted as we rushed a bend, and I had to grab Anna to stop her falling out. If anyone was driving towards us, or heaven forbid walking in the road, they’d be dashed to pieces, and us too!

  ‘But how to find her?’ Anna said once we were righted. And then to the boy, ‘How big is Bude’s harbour? Are there ma
ny ships that dock there?’

  ‘Not usually, sir. Most passing this coast don’t want to come in for they say the mouth was made by the Devil it’s so tight. But when the weather’s dirty—’

  ‘They’ve no choice,’ Anna said. ‘With this wind, it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  A very wet haystack, I thought, as the rain came on worse.

  The boy took us through the town to the water, and there we saw a forest of masts and ropes, the tangle I’d heard Boscastle people call ‘rigging’. But there was more of it here, for Bude’s harbour was bigger, busier. Voices came to me on the wind but they were men’s voices. No women called.

  The wind and the rain seemed to have eased, but was that only because of the cold? I was soaked all the way to my drawers. I couldn’t feel the weather any more. But then I saw that it must be better at Bude, for a ship was risking the harbour mouth to leave port. Her lights pitched as she swayed into the darkness of the open sea beyond.

  Anna sprang from the dog cart and raced to where the ground dropped away to the harbour’s water. The boats and the ships rocked in the strong swell, and all around us was the creak of wood, the smell of salt. The few lamps guttered and spat.

  Anna was counting the boats. ‘Fifteen, sixteen. And how many already gone, now the wind’s dropped?’ She shook her head. ‘A fine detective agency we are, Shilly. Our third case and the murderer will once more evade justice. He was right.’

  ‘Who? Who was right?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. None of it does now. It’s over.’

  She looked so wretched that I didn’t press her on what she meant, and she was wrong besides. There was still time, and I had a thought where Nancy Seldon might go in Bude.

  I took Anna’s hand. ‘We’ll find her.’

  ‘How?’

  She was almost blue with cold, and I wondered if that was the colour of a mermaid’s flesh too, them living in such cold water.

  ‘The cup, Anna – didn’t you see it, on Nancy’s shelf?’

  ‘Cup? I don’t understand.’

  I pulled her from the harbour, but she was slow, her steps heavy. She had given up. Too soon, Anna. Too soon.

  A shadow passed us on the other side of the road. I ran to it. It was an old man with a beard near as long as his stick. He cowered away, as if I was a danger, and I must have been, the way I grabbed at him with my hands so numb they felt to me like clubs to beat a person.

  ‘Please – where is the Bude Haven Hotel?’

  ‘Oh, that’s long gone,’ he said.

  ‘Gone? How can it have gone?’ I thought of Nancy – had she managed to vanish with a hotel?

  ‘The Temperance,’ the old man was saying. He spat. ‘The Temperance has it now.’

  As we ran through streets dark and narrow as dreams, I told Anna of the dirty cup on Nancy’s shelf.

  ‘She’s kept it so long without washing, it must mean something to her. All she has in the world are things that speak of Joseph.’

  Anna kept looking back, towards the harbour. ‘But what if she’s got on board? She might leave while we try to find the hotel. We shouldn’t risk—’

  ‘You have to trust me, Anna.’

  ‘If you’re wrong, Shilly, it’s over.’ She tripped on a drain and I ran back to help her. ‘If we don’t get paid by Captain Ians, I—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!’

  I had no breath to ask what she was talking about. And no courage either. For something wasn’t right, but Nancy – we had to get to Nancy.

  A light ahead – warm, glowing, big as my heart fit to burst at that moment. And a sign above it that made my heart beat faster still. Just enough to help me reach the door.

  The Temperance Hotel.

  Anna and I fell inside, and everyone there looked up, of course they did. Everyone but the woman seated in the far corner. The woman in an old, worn dress I knew, the woman slumped, her hands tight round the cup on the table before her. The same cup as the one she’d left behind in her room.

  FORTY-SIX

  Anna was all for rushing over and catching Nancy, to tie her to a chair, I supposed. Hit her over the head with the cup to see her senseless.

  I held Anna back. ‘Nancy’s not going anywhere.’

  Anna bucked against me with the last of her breath. ‘How do you know? She’s a murderess, Shilly – she could do anything!’

  ‘Look at her. She’s worn out with it. With waiting.’

  Nancy hadn’t moved. She gave no sign she was even alive.

  ‘So what do you propose we do?’ Anna’s body softened. She was trembly with relief. Was it only because we’d found Nancy? I said to myself, don’t think about it, Shilly. Don’t let those fears come into your thoughts and dash everything about.

  ‘You fetch the constable,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here. Make sure she doesn’t leave.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Go, Anna! I can do this.’

  With a last glance at Nancy, Anna took her leave, but not before speaking quietly to the man behind the long, wooden counter that wasn’t a bar, couldn’t be a bar, not in that place where no drink was poured. Anna spoke to the man and then both looked first to me, then to Nancy. The man who was not a barman nodded. Anna left. The man shut the door behind her. Then quietly locked it.

  Nancy didn’t look up as I came near, but I saw that her hands weren’t fixed, as I’d thought. They twitched against the cup. Her fingers stroked it, gentle as if it was a baby’s cheek, or a cat loved as much as a child.

  ‘Hello, Cro,’ I said, and the word was a charm. Her head jerked up, her back jerked too, and she was staring at me. And then she was even sadder than she’d been before, because I was not the person who had called her that name long ago. He who had forgotten her. He who was gone. And she had done it.

  ‘Cro …’ She went back to staring at the cup. ‘You’ve seen them, then, the letters. You must think me a foolish creature, Mrs Williams.’

  ‘There’s nothing foolish about hope.’ I sat next to her. ‘Hope can keep a body alive more than bread and water does. Can hurt it too, though.’

  ‘You sound as if you’ve known the same suffering,’ she said, and lifted the cup as if to drink. It was tea in there by the look of it. But as the cup touched her lip, she set it down again, hard on the table, as if the smell made her want to purge her insides. Perhaps she needed something stronger. The Lord knew I did in that moment.

  ‘Who hasn’t known the price of hope?’ I said.

  ‘It’s cost me dear, I know that much.’ She patted her thin, lank hair as if to check it was well set. Oh, my sweet Nancy. What have you done? And what will you do, Shilly? I asked myself.

  I had told Anna I would keep Nancy from running away, when in truth I wanted her to run, to get on a ship and sail away, all Joseph’s money in her pocket. For she had been true to one who hadn’t been true to her. She’d done what he’d asked and waited, and what had that got her? Nothing but sadness. How many others were there, like her, all along this coast, or the coast of the country, the coasts of other countries, the names of the places Anna had read out to me, in the letters? The world was full of the betrayed. Them that did the betraying, they deserved to have their heads staved for the crime. To be torn to pieces.

  But the thought of Joseph Ians’ wreck of a body made me think another way, of Anna’s way of thinking. A crime had been done to Joseph. The woman seated before me, looking at me as if she saw something in me that was the same as her, she had killed a man.

  ‘We’ve spoken to Mrs Hawker,’ I said.

  ‘Have you now?’ Nancy pushed the cup further from her, as if she feared it was creeping.

  ‘My husband,’ I said, ‘he thinks that you killed Joseph Ians. That you killed him because you learnt he’d only come back to Morwenstow for the money his sister had promised him.’

  ‘And what do you think, Mrs Williams?’

  ‘That’s not my name.’ Why did I tell her that? Because of the way she was l
ooking at me. Because of the letters kept all these years.

  ‘What is your name, then?’ she said.

  Could I tell her? Would she call me? Would I get up, tell the man at the counter to unlock the door, then walk back through the darkness to the harbour where I would gladly step into air, into water, into her arms?

  I hadn’t answered her, and she was looking at the door. I said to myself, you must make sure she keeps talking, Shilly. While you wait for Anna. While you decide what to do.

  ‘You came here with Joseph, didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Only once. The day he left. We made a promise, right here, in this very spot, before the Temperance bought the Bude Haven, of course. We promised to wait for each other. That no one would take the other’s place. No matter how long it took. I was seventeen when Joseph left Morwenstow. I’d never been outside the parish, save coming here, to Bude. What did I know of the world, of men? We made our promise. We drank to it.’ She laughed. ‘As if that meant anything.’

  ‘It meant enough that you kept the cup you drank from,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t have much of him. Had to keep safe the little pieces. The cup. The crocuses when they flowered each spring. I used to tell myself they were sent by him. They were signs he would still come back. I kept the notes too, the first ones. He used to leave them under the sacks in the barn. My mother could never fathom why I was so happy to fetch the turnips in.’ Her fingers twitched, as if she was remembering how she drew the notes from beneath the sack. As if there could be one there now, a note that said all that had happened was nothing more than a way to judge her, to see if she really would wait for her lover. ‘But that was before,’ she said. ‘Before they made him leave.’