Murder in the Goblins' Playground

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Yes, but they kept the Devil, didn’t they?” Ravyn said. “As to what’s planned…I don’t know. As I said, past and present are ever at odds in Hammershire. Sometimes it’s all the present can do just to survive.” He stopped suddenly, swung his torch one way, then another. “Looks like we’ve reached the end of the trail…or the beginning, depending upon how you look at it.”

  Stark looked into the darkness before them. “Where does Hob’s Lane ultimately go?”

  “It gets narrower ahead…”

  “Really?”

  “…and then curves toward where the Stafford Road intersects with the Old Pike, but ends near Yew Road,” Ravyn said. “For near a quarter-mile it runs alongside…” He paused. “Red Cap Woods.”

  “Where they’re wanting to develop?”

  Ravyn nodded. “There are many legends attached to that stand of forest and many ancient ruins within.”

  “Yeah, well, old stories don’t stop progress,” Stark observed.

  “A Pyrrhic victory is no victory.”

  Stark frowned. “A what, sir?”

  “Never mind,” Ravyn said. “I want you to go back and knock up residents on the adjacent street, see if any of them noticed anything out their rear windows. Maybe we’ll get lucky, as in that old American film.”

  Stark looked at the backs of the cottages behind the brick wall, barely visible. There were not quite a half-dozen, none of them showing lit windows.

  “Now, sir?” Stark questioned. “At this hour?”

  “Yes, now, Stark,” Ravyn replied. “At this hour.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning?” Stark said. “I don’t think any of them are even up.” He pointed. “No lights.”

  Ravyn smiled. “Don’t be misled, Stark. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny that every one of those villagers is watching us keenly this very moment, some with binoculars.”

  Stark looked dubiously at the darkened structures, then sighed and shook his head. “Very well, sir. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to continue on a ways?”

  Stark raised his eyebrows. “Alone?”

  “It’s just you and I, Stark, and I need you to knock up those householders while anything they might have seen is still fresh in their minds,” Ravyn said. “Go on now. I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you back in the car park.”

  Stark grunted and turned toward civilisation, such as it was. He glanced back, but Ravyn had already been swallowed by the night.

  Chapter 3: “Yobs, Toms & Pissed Geezers”

  Stark forced himself to remain calm.

  “Yes, sir, I realise the lateness of the hour, but this is a police investigation.” He kept his tone even and made an effort to slow his natural quickness of speech, something he had to do when talking to country folk, though he could do nothing about the way he clipped his words. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in Hob’s Lane in last few hours, see anyone walking there?”

  “What happens in Hob’s Lane ain’t none of my concern, now is it?” William Brianson glared at DS Stark with yellowish eyes, one a bit wider than the other. “You think I have nought better to do with my time than spy out the sin what goes on there?”

  “Of course not, sir,” Stark replied. “But the rear of your cottage does face Hob’s Lane. It would be an easy matter to glance out, see over the wall without meaning to do so.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose,” the old man said. “But I did not. No good ever happens there, been that way since the old vicar’s time.”

  “Oh?” Stark said with baby-faced innocence. “I wouldn’t know myself. I’m not from around here.”

  “That I knew, you being a strapper.”

  “A…what?”

  “Aye, not knowing what a strapper is marks you as a strapper, sure,” Brianson chuckled. “That, with your tongue and textile too.”

  Stark frowned. To his ear, the old man spoke the Queen’s English, but the meaning mostly escaped him.

  Brianson laughed. “I shouldn’t fun you, son, for it’s a sinning thing, but the Devil knows well a man’s weakness. It’s not your fault for being who and what you are, or the Father of Lies sending you to pull at my weakness. A strapper you are, but I don’t hold with those who throw up a wall. It’s not Christian, is it?”

  “What’s a strapper?” Stark paused. “Sir?”

  “It be an outsider,” the old man explained. “Not one of us.”

  “From outside Hammershire?”

  “Faith no,” Brianson replied. “Not of Ashford.”

  “Why did you say that nothing good happens in Hob’s Lane?”

  “Well, ‘twasn’t what I said, exact like, but close enough,” the old man said. “Probably you don’t know it was in Hob’s Lane that Vicar Meriwether met…”

  “The Devil,” Stark interrupted. “The dying parishioner, Satan wanting to bargain, the holy water…yes, I’ve been told all that.”

  “Well, then, you know it all, don’t you, young man?”

  “I know it all happened a long time ago.”

  “Not that long ago.”

  “But I don’t know what’s happened in the last eight hundred years since,” Stark protested. “And I don’t know what you might have seen tonight.”

  “There’s no need to fan your ember, Sergeant.” Brianson said. “I didn’t see nothing tonight, just to be clear. And to be like glass, I don’t watch out for anything. It’s the Devil’s work what still gets done there, and I’ve no wanting any part of it. It’s a sign of these sinful times, young man, the terrible pit into which Ashford is falling, that Hob’s Lane is fraught now with yobs, toms and pissed geezers wandering up from the Three Crowns.”

  Stark was a little taken back. That drunks might come up from the pub was no huge surprise, but since Ashford had no council estates, always a cesspool of crime, he assumed the village free of young toughs looking for trouble. As for prostitutes, that was indeed a surprise. It seemed out of character with what he had always thought about hick villages. Maybe, he told himself, the country was not so different from the worst of London. Of course, he had to make allowances for the old man’s religious bigotry.

  “I see you are surprised the sins of the world are visited on a village that seems so…quaint?” Brianson grinned. “City or village, the same black heart beats at the centre of both.” He glanced away into the darkness. “My place is the first you’ve come to?”

  Stark nodded.

  “The Weird Sisters,” Brianson said. “You’ve still to come upon those three, and then you might get an inkling.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Stark asked. “An inkling of what?”

  “Don’t you go saying I told you anything, ‘cause I didn’t,” he said. “But you keep in mind what I said about sin.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll try to do that,” Stark said.

  “And then there’s the noises,” Brianson continued.

  “Noises? What noises?”

  “From Red Cap Woods,” Brianson said, casting a subtle glance toward the forest hidden by night. “It’s not so far that you can’t but hear the Red Caps down in the black heart of the woods, gibbering and chittering, flitting among the trees with their flashing diamond eyes. By the dark of the moon they have their secret rites what no mortal has ever seen and lived.”

  Stark canted his head in confusion. “Do you mean fairies?”

  Brianson snorted derisively, but motioned for Stark to keep his voice down, as if there might be listeners unseen. Stark did not believe a single word, but the man’s wariness was infectious.

  “No, ‘tis not fairies, no more than goblins, despite what those stones be called,” Brianson whispered, leaning closer to Stark. “It was the Devil what raised the stones, his children what dance in the moonlight. And now they’re agitated, aren’t they? They know what is planned for the woods, and they don’t like it none, now do they? And Red Caps being Red Caps, well it’s no surprise if they gut a young buck, dipping their caps in his gushi
ng life!”

  Stark had smelled whiskey on the man from the start, but this close the stench was overpowering. He tried to pull back, but could not. He looked down. His wrist was gripped fast by Brianson.

  “The Red Caps, they took a life, didn’t they?”

  “Let go of me, Mr Brianson,” Stark said, his voice low.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Brianson hissed. “Living hard upon the Devil’s road with sinners at hand, close to where imps dance madly by moonlight, hearing their demon laughter, knowing they are raised to anger by what fools want done.”

  Stark grabbed the man’s hand, tried to dislodge his fingers but Brianson held on with preternatural strength. Suddenly, the old man looked down, gasped, and let go, staggering back against the jamb.

  “Sorry,” Brianson muttered. “Sorry. Sorry, Sergeant.”

  “It’s okay,” Stark said, taking a step back, rubbing his wrist.

  “Sorry,” the old man repeated. “So sorry.”

  “Are you all right, Mr Brianson?”

  Brianson nodded, wiping a thin line of spittle from his lips. He pushed away from the doorjamb, forcing himself unsteadily erect.

  “Pay no attention to me, Sergeant,” Brianson said. “I’m an old man what’s lonely and drinks too much ‘cause of it.” He glanced at Stark through narrowed lids. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Sir?”

  “A death tonight?”

  “Yes, we are investigating a suspicious death,” Stark admitted. “We think it may have happened in or near Hob’s Lane.”

  Brianson raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

  “Allan Cutter.”

  “I’m none surprised by that.”

  “Because he lived in Red Cap Woods?”

  “Not that, man, for if the Folk had not given him lease, he’d have been driven out yonks ago,” Brianson said. “Nor even that he lived as long as he did, since evil always flourishes, like weeds in a garden. Not surprised he’s dead, for he was a man born to die, but that it was not a earthly hand that sent him to hell.”

  “Actually,” Stark said, “we’re sure it was an earthly hand.”

  “Well, you know best, don’t you?” Brianson said, starting to close the door. “Strappers always know everything.”

  “Wait, Mr Brianson, I still have…”

  “Save your wind, Sergeant Strapper,” Brianson said behind the closing door. “Saw nothing in the Devil’s walk and all I know ‘bout that hellspawn Cutter is that I’m glad I didn’t know him.”

  Stark stared at the closed door a moment longer, then turned and slipped his notebook into his pocket. Halfway down the garden walk to the street, he glanced back at the old cottage. He thought about a lonely pensioner sitting in the dark, listening to God and drinking whiskey till it killed him.

  “Mad as a badger,” he muttered.

  The cottage behind him was one of five on the street, all with deep well-tended gardens and large rear yards. The street’s dog-leg form suggested it was laid to match the placement of cottages. The buildings were old, though not old enough to have witnessed the Good Vicar’s misadventure with the Devil, but the stone-piled walls separating one house from another was evidence of even more ancient habitations replaced.

  “Probably nutters all,” he sighed. “Old wrinkly nutters.”

  The door of the second cottage was opened by a lean girl with straight black hair and hands that could snap his neck like a dry twig. She gripped the front of her quilted dressing gown as if she thought he might ravish her. Her feet were in battered leather slippers.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

  He showed her his warrant card.

  “What do you want?”

  He put away his identification and took out his notebook and pencil. “What’s your name, Miss?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “We’re looking for witnesses to…”

  “Why come to me?” the girl snapped. “I haven’t see anything. I haven’t been out all night. You’ve got no call coming ‘round at such an hour and knocking up…”

  “Who is it, Gwen?” shouted a gravely voice from within.

  She turned her head, but kept her gaze on Stark. “Police!”

  Stark heard heavy footfalls thudding toward them. He expected a father or an older husband. He was surprised when a short, beefy woman appeared. Her grey hair was pulled back severely. Her arms were those of a stevedore.

  “You’re the police?” she demanded.

  “Detective Sergeant Stark of the Stafford CID,” he explained, again showing his warrant card, which she took. “There’s been a suspicious death. Might have happened in or near Hob’s Lane. I’m checking with everyone on this street to see if anything was seen.”

  While he spoke, she held his identification close to her black, deep-set eyes. She might have been examining it for defects, but she never took her gaze off Stark over the top of it. When he finished, she passed it back.

  “Who died?” she asked.

  “Chap by the name of Allan Cutter.”

  Gwen’s hands flew up to her mouth, not in time to stifle a gasp.

  “You knew him, Miss?” Stark asked.

  “Get inside, you daft cow!” the woman snapped, grabbing her by a thin shoulder, turning her about, propelling her back into the dark. She stepped out the door, forcing Stark off the covered stoop. “Bloody strapper! ‘Course she knew Cutter.”

  “And you are?” Stark asked.

  “Name’s Stone—Marion Stone,” the woman replied. “I run the butcher shop. Done it all my life, and my family before me.”

  “Anyone live here besides you and your daughter?”

  “Gwen Tuner,” Marion said. “She’s my apprentice.”

  “You and your…apprentice live here alone?”

  “You got a dirty mind, Sergeant, and I’ve a thought to shove your face down your throat,” she growled.

  Stark remained impassive. He held his place. With arms like hers, built up through years of manhandling sides of beef and probably whole hogs, she could no doubt do what she threatened. But this was a hick village, not the East End, and she was no hard villain. Besides, he knew that if he even took a half-step back or let the corner of his mouth so much as quiver, reports of his weakness would be all over Ashford before dawn. That was how it worked in these inbred and benighted villages in the sticks.

  “I’m just gathering information, ma’am,” he said. “We can talk here or we can conduct an interview in Stafford. If you wish, I can give you five minutes to get your coat and hat.”

  “Hang on, there’s no need to get stroppy, Sergeant,” she said. “I didn’t like your tone, and I still don’t, but I’ll answer whatever questions you put to me. So ask.”

  “Have you and Gwen been in all evening?” he asked.

  “We have,” she replied. “Closed the shop at seven, came here.”

  “Did you see anything in Hob’s Lane tonight?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even me and my guv’nor out there with a torch?”

  Marion Stone smiled slyly. “Well, I admit I did see the two of you out there, but I didn’t know it was a couple of coppers. No, I thought it was just a couple of wankers doing what they do.”

  “You didn’t see anything earlier?”

  “Nothing, Sergeant,” she replied. “We mind our own business in Ashford, not that you’d know anything about that. We came in, had our supper, then watched the telly. Gwen went to her room ‘bout nine, and me an hour later. Neither of us had cause to get up till you came ‘round battering down the door. We have to rise early for the shop, so we don’t keep late hours.”

  “Do you mind if I corroborate this with Gwen?” Stark asked.

  The woman’s harsh features softened slightly and her steady gaze flickered. “No, it’s okay, but can you put off questioning her till sometime tomorrow? You’ve tossed her quite a shock, you have, telling her Allan is dead, bold as you please.
”

  “They were more than casual acquaintances?”

  The harsh features returned. “They was friends, no more than that, though that was too much to my liking.”

  “What exactly was their relationship?” Stark asked.

  “Gwen is my apprentice, but I raised her up from a wee one,” Marion explained. “She was left back of the shop one day and I took her in, gave her a place to live, a trade to learn.”

  “I’m surprised the authorities didn’t…”

  “And who would call them?” she interrupted. “She’s a majority now, so it don’t matter. I did the best I could by Gwen, but born to mother I wasn’t. She was a lonely child, not well liked by others, teased something awful. Allan Cutter stood up for her, protected her. It was a decent enough thing to do, but it didn’t change his nature. I tried to warn her away, but it never did no good. No one could say a bad word against Allan, not one she would ever hear, especially from me, I suppose.”

  “So, she saw him like…what, an older brother?”

  She looked at him sharply. “Like the one she never had. As far as anyone could say, little Gwen had no kith or kin. Which is why I didn’t tell any of those meddlers in Stafford ‘bout her. No one ever said I was soft of heart, but I’d no desire to see her hurt, passed about like an unwanted thing. Her mum wasn’t from Ashford, but that’s no call to visit her sins on Gwen.”

  “How do you know her mum wasn’t from around here?”

  “We expect strappers to be daft, but don’t abuse the privilege,” Marion chided. “This is Ashford, Sergeant. If we know who’s got the sniffles and who broke the missus’ nose in a secret row, don’t you think we’d know who’s great with child? Besides, back then it wasn’t easy to keep such things secret.”

  Stark reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a card. “Have Gwen call my mobile tomorrow morning, make an appointment for an interview.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” she said, taking the card. “She won’t have to go into Stafford, will she?”