The Woman in the Wood

by Lesley Pearse

  Grace walked and walked, looking over hedges and across fields with Toby padding along beside her, but the Jaguar was nowhere to be seen. She was on the point of turning back when she heard a car engine, and because of the narrowness of the lane, she grabbed Toby and stepped right back against the hedge for safety.

  It was Grainger in his Jaguar, and he drove so fast that if she had hesitated before moving out of the way he would have mown her down.

  She stood still for a minute or so, weighing up whether to walk on to where he’d been, or to go back and get the van. She decided to walk on, mostly because she felt he’d come from somewhere close by or she would have heard his car well before she did.

  About a mile further on there was a track off to the right, and in the mud were recent damp tyre prints. It led down a slight incline towards a copse, and tucked behind the copse she could just see a small cottage. In summer with the trees in full leaf, the cottage would be invisible from the point where she was standing. Beyond it she saw it was all woodland. The land around the cottage was stony, not good for growing crops or for grazing, but she thought in the past it might have been used for sheep, and maybe a shepherd had lived in the cottage.

  As there was no smoke coming from the chimney, Grace didn’t think anyone was in, but she would walk down and knock. If someone did answer she would pretend she was lost.

  She looked down at Toby, who was watching her expectantly. ‘Come on then, Toby, let’s go and see what we can find.’

  It was clear no one lived there. It was just a single-storey stone-built cottage. She went right round it, checking each of the four boarded-up windows, but they were all secure. Yet she could see weeds and grass had been trampled recently by the sturdy back door, so even if not Grainger, someone had been in there in the past few days.

  She called out loudly and listened carefully, but she could hear nothing. Walking round the cottage again she noted that it was built on sloping ground, so the stone wall beneath the windows at the front was much higher than the one at the back. This could mean there was a cellar, good for storing vegetables during the winter. But she could see no old door or even a small window on ground level and she went round twice checking to see if there were signs of one being bricked up.

  She could see nothing unusual; it all looked as if it had remained the way it was built back in the last century. She banged loudly on the stone with a metal rod lying on the grass. It sounded to her like gunshot, so loud the people a mile away could probably hear it. No reply. She banged again, but this time she thought she heard something from inside. Faint, but it was a response.

  A bubble of excitement ran through her. She banged again, harder still, and once again, there was a feeble answer, either coming from very far down or the person was weak. Either way she needed to get into the cottage now.

  But how? She had no tools, and the boarded-up windows were very secure, the front and back doors strong. Short of having a jemmy or crowbar she couldn’t think of any way of getting in.

  Walking backwards away from the cottage, Grace studied it as a whole. While all the walls and windows looked virtually impenetrable, the roof tiles didn’t look so good. In theory it should be possible to lift some tiles and get in through the ceiling. But she knew she couldn’t climb up there. Ten years ago she would have managed it easily, but she was stiffer now, afraid of falling, the penalty of ageing.

  There was a straight choice between calling the police and getting Maisy.

  She stood for a moment weighing it up. The police were unlikely to believe a well-known solicitor could be snatching boys, using them and then killing them. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed it herself.

  Maybe she had imagined that answering rap on stone. It could’ve been an echo. Yet she had a gut feeling someone was in that house and they were in a bad way.

  She looked down at Toby. ‘We get Maisy,’ she said.

  That too was problematic. Would she be allowed out? That grandmother of hers was likely to get one glimpse of Grace and throw a fit that Maisy was consorting with her.

  Grace decided she’d cross all bridges as she came to them and walked back to the van as fast as she could. She was very tired now – she’d walked miles and her legs were trembling – but she took off the old clothes and put her smarter things back on. She really hoped she could get Maisy’s attention without having to knock on the front door. But maybe the smarter clothes might mollify the old lady if she caught a glimpse of her.

  It took less than half an hour to get back to Burley, and Grace left the van at the bottom of the lane and walked up to Nightingales, her heart thumping with nerves.

  During the war, she had once brought some eggs and a chicken to the house, a present from Mrs Brady when she heard the old lady was ill. Mrs Mitcham was so rude, snatching the parcel out of Grace’s hands and slamming the door in her face. She did send a thank-you letter to Mrs Brady later and apologized for being what she called ‘offhand’, her excuse being that she was very poorly, so that was something. She couldn’t have known, of course, that it was the first time Grace had ever plucked up enough courage to deliver anything, and that reception set her back months.

  It was nearly five now. With luck Mrs Mitcham might be dozing by the fire and the housekeeper preparing the evening meal in the kitchen. From what Maisy had said about Janice, she sounded a kindly soul, but one thing Grace didn’t want was her interfering and calling the police.

  The gate at Nightingales was set at an angle to the front downstairs windows, which was fortunate. Grace ordered Toby to wait in the lane and then slipped in through the gate, holding it so it wouldn’t bang, and tiptoed along the path. It forked at the side of the house, right fork to the front door, left around the back.

  Grace went left. She bent right over as she went past windows, just in case anyone was looking.

  As she approached the kitchen door she heard a bell tinkle, and she stopped dead.

  ‘Oh, what does she want now?’ she heard someone say, presumably the housekeeper.

  ‘More tea, I expect. She said the soup at lunch was very salty. Shall I go?’ The voice was Maisy’s and Grace thought her luck was in.

  ‘No, I’d better. She’s bound to have some instructions for supper,’ the older woman said wearily.

  Grace waited till her footsteps had passed the door and then she opened it. ‘Maisy,’ she whispered. ‘Come out here.’

  Grace slunk back against the wall. Her heart was hammering.

  ‘Grace!’ Maisy exclaimed as she came out. Her face was a picture of astonishment. ‘What is it? Why are you all dressed up?’

  ‘Long story, no time. Meet me at the end of the lane as soon as you can, wear clothes for climbing. Don’t ask! Just do it.’

  Grace took in the girl’s puzzled expression, but she didn’t want to risk waiting there any longer. She turned away and slunk back past the back windows.

  She didn’t chance going out through the front gate as the housekeeper might see her. Instead she went straight down the side garden and wriggled through a small hole under a bush that she’d noticed on her way up the lane. She whistled to Toby, who bounded down to join her, then hurried to the van.

  It seemed forever before Maisy came out. She’d put on a dark jacket, slacks and plimsolls.

  Grace started the van, turned it round swiftly, then beckoned at the girl furiously to get in.

  ‘What on earth is this?’ Maisy gasped. ‘Grandmother and Janice will kill me when they find I’ve gone missing.’

  As Grace drove she told Maisy what she’d found. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ she said firmly. ‘He might not be in there, but I’m sure someone is. I’ll take the blame for involving you when I get back.’

  Maisy was excited to think they might be set to rescue Duncan, but also terrified. This had all happened too quickly and she wasn’t totally convinced that Grace knew what she was doing. ‘I left a note on my bed saying I had to pop out to see someone,’ she said. ‘But Janice wil
l panic if I’m not back for supper.’

  ‘Supper! How can you even think of that when your brother might be in that house, sick and in pain?’ Grace pulled up outside a small cottage in the forest which Maisy had cycled past dozens of times.

  Maisy looked to the cottage and back at Grace, eyes wide in disbelief. ‘Surely this isn’t it?’

  ‘No, of course not. It belongs to old Enoch. I leave my van here with him, and I’m just going to ask him to lend me some tools. You stay here.’

  Grace disappeared into the cottage and within a few minutes she was back, holding a cloth bag.

  ‘That’s the most he’s ever said to me at one time,’ Grace said, as calmly as if she was talking about what he needed from the shops. ‘He wanted me to tell him what I was doing. But I said I couldn’t explain as it was an emergency and I didn’t have time to go and get my own tools.’

  The light was just beginning to fade by the time they got to the remote cottage and to Maisy it all looked very spooky as she got out of the van. ‘You really want me to climb up on that roof and pull tiles off?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Grace nodded, then told Toby he had to stay in the van. ‘There’s nothing to it, tiles just lift off. It’s what’s underneath which is more of a problem.’

  ‘Umm, how am I going to get up there?’

  Grace caught hold of Maisy’s arm and led her down the slope towards the cottage. ‘Look up at that corner,’ she said, pointing to the back of the house. ‘It’s not as high as at the front and there’s that drainpipe to hold on to. If you get on my shoulders you should be able to pull yourself up from there.’

  Grace had obviously thought it all through. She put the bag of tools over Maisy’s head and diagonally across her chest, then clasped her hands together to form a foothold so that Maisy could jump up and climb on to her shoulders.

  That part was easy enough with the support of the drainpipe, but as Maisy straightened up she found she was still a couple of feet short of the guttering around the roof.

  ‘Hold the top of the drainpipe rather than the guttering,’ Grace called out. ‘It’s usually stronger. Think of rescuing Duncan and you’ll do it.’

  Maisy managed to throw the bag of tools on to the roof, and clinging to the pipe and digging her toes into the stone walls of the cottage she hauled herself up to the top and over on to the roof.

  ‘Well done,’ Grace called out. ‘Best to stay at the back of the house. Start lifting tiles as close to the gutter as possible. Mind you don’t slip.’

  As Grace had said, it was easy to lift the tiles – they came off like jigsaw pieces one after the other. Once the hole was big enough she shone the torch which she’d found in the toolbag down through it to see what lay below. There was some dark brown stuff that looked and felt like thick felt. She took the knife from the bag and poked it through: it was relatively easy to slice open.

  ‘There’s an attic,’ she called back down to Grace. ‘Not much headroom, but I’ll climb in and look around.’

  ‘Be careful you stand on the rafters or you’ll fall through the ceiling,’ Grace called back.

  There was still some light in the sky, and holding the torch Maisy lowered herself through the hole, feeling around with her feet until she found something reassuringly solid enough to stand on. At the point when she found a beam, the top half of her body was still sticking out of the roof, so she had to lower herself down to a crouch to see the attic better.

  It was empty, very dusty, and only high enough to stand upright under the apex of the roof. Maisy shuffled along to that point, and saw there was a trapdoor in the centre. Using the knife, she prised it up enough to get her fingers in, then pulled it right back.

  Beneath her was thick darkness because of the boarded-up windows, but shining the torch around she saw a sink on one wall, an old table, a couple of chairs and in the corner of the room a mattress. It was very dirty and it smelled horribly of mould and festering rubbish. The next problem was going to be getting down there.

  Maisie hadn’t admitted to Grace that she wasn’t much good at climbing, and she certainly wasn’t brave enough to lower herself into that filthy room and just drop. But she knew she had to, there was no other way, and if Duncan was in there somewhere it would be worth breaking her leg.

  So she tied the bag of tools around her neck again, held the torch in her mouth and sat on the side of the trap, putting her hands on the front edge. She got a good grip, then taking a deep breath she swung down then dropped the last three feet or so.

  The first thing she did was go towards the back door to open it. But there were two locks, both locked from the outside. She found that the front door was the same.

  This was a major setback and panic washed over her. To be locked into a pitch-dark room which stunk of something horrible, was too awful. But she controlled her panic enough to bang on the back door to alert Grace.

  ‘It’s locked from the outside,’ she called out. ‘So is the front door.’

  There was a moment’s silence, Grace clearly digesting this news and how to deal with it. ‘Stay calm,’ she said, her voice muffled by the door. ‘There’s a jemmy thing in the bag, try to force the door with that. If you can’t, break a window then try and jemmy out the board over it.’

  ‘I’m going to look and see if there’s a cellar here first,’ Maisy called back.

  She shone the torch around. It was clear someone had been holed up in here quite recently: there were empty food cans, dirty crockery, lots of cigarette ends on the floor, and on a shelf by the window there was a one-ring camping stove with a camping kettle.

  There was another room with a mattress, but she couldn’t see a door to a cellar.

  It was while she was in this room that Maisy heard a cry. It was very faint, almost like a child’s. ‘Is that you, Duncan?’ she called out. ‘Or is it Peter Reilly? It’s Maisy. Answer me if you can hear.’

  She waited, hardly breathing with the effort of listening.

  ‘We’re both here, Maisy,’ the voice came back and she knew it was Duncan speaking.

  Tears of joy ran down her cheeks unchecked. She and Grace had done it.

  14

  Maisy concentrated the torch beam on to the floor, going round the whole room looking at the floorboards. Just beneath the bedroom window at the front of the house she saw a piece of old carpet. She pulled it back and there was a trapdoor, secured with two bolts.

  She drew back the bolts and pulled on the metal ring attached to the heavy door. As it opened the evil smell which rose up nearly made her drop the door to cover her nose. It was a vile mixture of excrement, mould and blood, a smell that said something hellish was down below.

  She fixed the trapdoor back against the wall and shone the torch down. There she saw two white faces staring up at the light. They were lying down beside one another and even without being able to see clearly Maisy knew they were badly hurt. Close to the boys she saw three, no, four pairs of eyes glinting in the torchlight. Rats!

  She shuddered. How could she go down there?

  ‘Grace is here with me, Duncan,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm and measured. ‘But she’s outside and the doors are locked. I came in through the roof. I’m going to try and open a window up here so she can get in and help me, but I may have to send her off to get the police and an ambulance. Just bear with me for a few moments.’

  There were no steps down to where the boys were, but she had seen a wooden ladder lying on its side across the room. First she needed air. Trying to suppress the urge to vomit at the smell she went over to the window. The glass was broken already, and she knocked the rest out with the jemmy.

  Grace was there immediately, wanting to know what she’d seen. Through the cracks in the boards Maisy reported about the boys, the terrible smell and the rats. She was sucking the fresh air from the window into her lungs as she spoke, and trying very hard not to cry.

  ‘You must go for help,’ she said. ‘We won’t be able to get them out of t
hat cellar on our own. But I’ll see if I can get the boards off the window while you’re gone.’

  ‘Will you be scared in there without me?’ Grace said, her voice the softest Maisy had ever heard it.

  ‘Yes, I will be,’ Maisy said, ‘but the sooner we get help, the sooner we can be away from here. You could knock on anyone’s door where they’ve got a phone line. It’s an emergency.’

  ‘OK. You’re right, it’s the best thing to do, but I don’t like to leave you.’

  ‘Oh Grace,’ Maisy sighed. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the witch of the forest with no kind feelings.’

  ‘So did I until I met you and your brother,’ Grace replied, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘Bye. Be brave, little one.’

  She must have run to the van because Maisy heard the sound of the engine starting up just a few seconds later, and then the van pulling away fast.

  Knowing she was now alone in the dark and filth with two seriously injured boys in terrible conditions was terrifying, so much so that she had to force herself to breathe deeply in order to think.

  The ladder was so old and heavy Maisy could barely drag it towards the trapdoor. She had to put the torch down to do it, and then the room became so dark she almost lost her bearings. But little by little she inched it towards the trapdoor, and then manoeuvred it into place so she could lower it down.

  She shone the light down first to make sure she wasn’t going to drop it on the boys, then, warning them what she was going to do, she gradually fed it down. Her arms felt as though they were being pulled from their sockets with the weight of it, but finally it reached the cellar floor and she wedged it tightly at the top so it couldn’t fall over.

  She didn’t want to go down there. Her whole being was silently pleading for her to wait for the police and ambulance men to do it. But he was her brother and he must have been through hell. She wasn’t going to leave him to strangers.

  Climbing down that ladder was the most frightening thing she’d ever experienced. She could hear the rats she’d seen earlier scuttling about. Adding that to the smell, and the darkness, plus the knowledge that both boys might have appalling injuries, it was as if she was descending into hell.