“When we nab the arsonist,” Stark said, “I’m pretty sure it will not be some bloody pixie.”
Lillian frowned and turned the side of her face to Stark. “You would do well, Chief Inspector, to school your sergeant. If he keeps talking like that, he is bound to have an accident of some kind.”
Stark rose slowly from his chair, but a slight touch on his arm by Ravyn returned him. He settled back, trying to make it seem as if he had merely shifted position for comfort’s sake.
“What do you mean?” Stark said.
“A stumble upon a walkway, an inopportune flat tyre,” she said. “Where you see neglect or bad luck, I see workings of Old Powers.”
“Superstitions,” Stark said, smirking at the older woman.
“Perhaps in London, but not in Hammershire, not in Ashford,” she said. “Here, old traditions hold sway. Unbelievers learn not to anger the Old Ones or their followers. Outsiders, such as yourself, learn that the world may change, that England may change, but change comes slowly to Hammershire. And when it does, it does not affect Powers in the lonely places, in the depths of old woods, around the stones erected to propitiate Dark Gods. You put your trust in the bright and shining toys of man’s technology. I put mine in Old Ones that existed millions of years ago, that exist now, and will rise again in the dusk of your technology.”
“Bloody hell,” Stark muttered.
“I take it, Allan had no real friends in the village outside Gwen and Raymond?” Ravyn asked.
Lillian started at the sudden change. “Not real friends other than them. Allan grew up a loner.”
“And enemies?”
She shook her head. “No one really liked him. He had a terrible temper, especially after drinking. He went out of his way to be unlikable. Raymond tolerated him, most of the time, and Gwen admired him more than liked him…which is why your question about them ‘seeing’ each other is utter rubbish.”
“How did you feel about him, Miss Nettle?” Ravyn asked.
“I raised him to the best of my ability, so there are obligations, but even a mother is not required to ‘like’ her child.” Her eyes grew soft for a moment. “He was a disappointment to me.”
“But no one truly hated him?” Ravyn asked.
“No,” she said. “It takes as much effort and passion to hate a man as to love him. In Allan’s case, it wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Nettle, Ravyn said after a moment. “We will keep you updated as we are able.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” she replied. “May I leave now?”
“Yes, ma’am. Please remain available for further questions, and please refrain from discussing this interview with anyone else.” He reached for the recorder. “End of interview.”
“Of course.” She stood. “Good day, Chief Inspector. Sergeant.”
Stark closed the door behind her. “I’ll bet you sixpence her first action will be to talk to Miss Mayhew.”
“Of course she will,” Ravyn said. “Marion Stone was supposed to keep her temper down and her mouth shut. If she had done that, Miss Nettle would have given us bare bones and more of a rattling about not notifying her. As it was, she had to muddy the water with ley lines and old gods.”
“I knew it was all occult piffle!”
“Her beliefs are quite genuine, but she should not have shared as much as she did,” Ravyn said. “Occult means hidden, and that is how beliefs are kept. Desperation drove her to lead us astray.”
“Think she knows who did it?” Stark asked.
“Or she suspects,” Ravyn said.
“Or did it herself.”
“Yes, but ‘the hand that held the knife was that of a stranger,’ she said.” Ravyn frowned. “Dr Penworthy states it was definitely not a knife, but Miss Nettle is a canny old woman. Others are more in the frame, including Raymond and Gwen. Keep that in mind during your interview with Miss Mayhew.”
“I’m underwater with all this occult nonsense.”
“Treat it as lies, if it helps, and interview her as you are led by your judgment and experience,” Ravyn said. “At the conclusion of this case, we will find very human motives for both murders, having nothing to do with elves, goblins or the Devil in Hob’s Lane.”
Chapter 8: The Weakest Link
DCI Arthur Ravyn looked at the array of cucumber, egg and cress sandwiches, all cut into neat little triangles, crusts removed and points as sharp as spears. There were scones with clotted cream and assorted biscuits, as well as thick slices of Battenberg cake and Victoria sponge. The tea was delicious, served in eggshell china cups decorated with vines and roses.
“Are you expecting anyone else, Aunt Althea?” Ravyn asked.
“Now, don’t be difficult, Arthur,” the old woman scolded. “A stickman, that’s practically what you are. I expect you to do more than gawk at the sandwiches and cakes.”
“Yes, Aunt Althea,” he said, dutifully placing two triangles and a chocolate biscuit on a tiny plate.
“And I expect you to take a box when you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Share them with whomever you have at the village hall.”
“It’s a small group.”
“And I am sure none of you are eating properly,” she said. “I understand you took rooms at the Three Crowns.”
“Well, I…”
“You could have had your old room,” she said. “You’re likely eating wretched fare served up by that wearisome Woodcock boy, fried foods, and shepherd’s pie all gristle and dishwater.”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” he said. “It was very late…”
“Pish-posh!” she snapped. “You know I keep late hours, always have, else how would I know all the times you snuck out.”
Ravyn reddened. “I was not…”
“Small boys always assume their elders are stupid, ignorant or deaf,” she said. “Here, have a skosh more tea.” She poured out. “Of course I knew you sometimes went out, but I also knew you were not up to mischief, at least nothing serious. It was your nature to be inquisitive, to suss out everything about your surroundings.”
Ravyn smiled. “Really, Aunt Althea. ‘Suss out’ is now part of your vocabulary?”
“I can also say ‘take a dekko at this, mate,’ and ‘he lay doggo while the coppers searched’,” she said. “I find detective thrillers a pleasant diversion. Not all the time, you understand, but now and then. I don’t suppose you read them, do you?”
“Now and then, from time to time.” The thought of his erudite aunt picking up words and phrases more suited to Whitechapel than Hammershire amused him, but he hid his smile behind his teacup. “I find the order they present a welcome change from the chaos that usually attends my investigations.”
“I particularly enjoy Christopher Fowler’s tales of the Peculiar Crimes Unit,” she said. “Always so inventive, even if convoluted, and I find it a nice change of pace to encounter literary characters older than me.”
“Might I suggest John Rigbey?” Ravyn said. “Very well written stories, very accurate.”
Aunt Althea wrote the name in a small pad she kept in a pocket of her jacket. “Accurate, you say?”
“He’s a former detective with the Met.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh no, not another one.”
“His first book was The Strange Michael Folmer Affair, about a killer who replicates Jack the Ripper’s murders in modern times,” Ravyn said. “His series character is DCI Michael Gregory, middle-aged, but a clever chap.”
“The story sounds interesting,” she said. “I shall look him up. Are you ever envious of your fictional counterparts?”
“No, not very,” he replied. “Of course, if life were really like a book, I could look at what was left to read, and know how close I was to a solution, or even skip to the end of the book.” He paused. “Though I don’t think that would necessarily be a good thing.”
“No, not a good thing at all,” she agreed.
“I take it you do not now how close you are to a solution?”
He shook his head. “And there is pressure from above to settle it quickly and quietly.”
“Because of Oscar Lent?”
He nodded.
“I cannot tell you much about Lent except that his character had much in common with what crawls out from under a rock when it is disturbed,” she said. “A loathsome man focused entirely upon material gain and destroying lives.”
“So I’ve been given to understand, but I didn’t…”
“Of course you did, Arthur,” she interrupted. “I am not such a vain old woman to think you asked to come to tea simply for the pleasure of my company.”
“It has been a long time, Auth Althea,” he said. “I thought it would be nice to have a chat while I’m here.”
“About old times?” she asked. “Or new?”
“Catching up, certainly.”
“Oh, Arthur, you were never good at subtlety,” she said. “You once told me an investigation is a study of the people involved, of their personalities and natures, more than the crime itself.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“You have memories of the Weird Sisters,” she said. “No doubt they are as fresh now as when they were imprinted, but they are old memories, and through a child’s eye. Natures may not change, but circumstances do. You probably know little of the children.”
“Of Raymond and Allan, nothing,” he admitted. “But the other, Gwen, I think it must have been her I saw at the butcher shop.”
“A terrible place to raise a child,” she said, shaking her head. “Working all day long with dead things, surrounded by the smells of fresh blood and raw flesh.”
Ravyn fought a flash of resurgent memory.
“Ask your questions, and I’ll answer to the best of my ability,” she continued. “You know I was never one for gossip, but I was always a keen observer of people. I may not have your memory, but I’m not sure I would want to.”
I’m sure, Ravyn thought.
“I appreciate the help, Aunt Althea, but I would be here now even if you didn’t know Ashford and its inhabitants better than any other person,” Ravyn said. “I enjoy your company immensely. I regret it takes something like this to bring me here.”
“You were always a good boy, Arthur.” She patted his knee. “Now, take some more sandwiches, have a piece of Victoria sponge, and ask your questions.”
* * *
“It’s so very terrible,” Dylwyth Mayhew said, trying to stem a seemingly endless stream of tears. “He was so young, and such a dear boy. So terrible! So horrible.”
“Try to calm yourself, Miss Mayhew,” DS Stark said.
WPC Stevens returned, gave her the tissues she had been sent for, then took a seat near the door. Stark had expected a bit of sadness but no tears now that the reality of the murder had settled in, but she seemed even more agitated than when they first spoke.
“I’m trying, Sergeant,” she said. “It just so terrible, a nice boy like Allan being murdered. It’s horrible!”
“Last night, you told me Allan Cutter was a small-minded child who grew into a most unpleasant man,” he said. “Actually, you did not seem too cut up about what happened to him.”
“Shock, Sergeant,” Dylwyth explained. “I was so in shock from the news, I hardly knew what I was saying.” She paused to daub her large moist eyes. “I don’t even recall what I said.”
“Was Allan Cutter a most unpleasant man?” Stark asked.
“He could seem that way to those who did not truly know him,” she replied, drying the last of her tears. “He was at heart a dear boy. He did not have enough love growing up.”
The previous night Dylwyth Mayhew had seemed quite fey to Stark. Now, however, away from the harsh glare of the porch light and the clinging shadows of the house, she seemed merely a small old woman. Adrenalin or not, Stark could not see her shoving anything through a man with enough force to gouge the stone face behind him. Her grief about Allan Cutter seemed real.
“You knew Allan Cutter well, did you?” he asked.
“All his life,” she replied. “He was a sweet child, so small and innocent, so free from sin. If only he had been raised with love.”
“You didn’t approve of the way Lillian Nettle raised him?”
She stiffened at the name. “It really wasn’t for me to say. He was given to Lillian to rear, but she could have…” She paused. “Do I need to tell you Lillian is a hard woman?”
Stark remained silent.
“Yes, you know how she is, it’s in your eyes, the windows of the soul.” She leaned forward, staring at him with black sinkhole eyes. “You have seen much, Sergeant, the terrible ways of the world, the evils that men commit. You’ve tried to keep yourself apart from the sin of the world but…”
“We’re not here to talk about me, but the murders of Allan Cutter and Oscar Lent,” Stark said harshly.
“Oh.” Dylwyth fell back against the chair as if he had slapped her. “Men are so brutal. It’s not your fault.”
“Was Allan a brutal man?” Stark asked.
“He never so much as raised his voice to me.”
“Others tell a different story about Allan Cutter,” Stark pointed out. “His temper, his moodiness, his excessive drinking. We’ve been told he kept himself to himself, and that people wanted it that way because he was so ugly to be around.”
“They all judge Allen by what he became,” she replied. “Yes, he could be unpleasant.” She wrapped her thin arms around herself and shivered. “Most unpleasant. But when he was a lad it was as if an angel had come among us.”
Stark frowned. Angel was not the impression he had received from the dead man on the floor of the snug. He had seen a husk ill treated by excessive drinking. Stark would not have been surprised had Cutter’s disappearance from Hammershire stemmed from a plunge into the maelstrom of hard drugs.
“Please don’t judge him too harshly, Sergeant.”
“I’m not judging him at all, Miss Mayhew,” Stark said. “My only concern is to find out who killed Allan. And Oscar Lent.”
She made a sound of disgust. “Now there is a man deserving of death at the hands of the Lord of the Woods.”
“So, you still think Allan’s killer was supernatural in nature?” Stark asked.
“Of course, Sergeant.”
“And Oscar Lent as well?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Obvious, how?”
“Why, just look at where he was found, in the ring of goblins turned to stone at the dawn of time,” she explained. “They, too, offended the spirit of the place. Mr Lent wanted to cut down the trees, gouge the earth mightily. If some dancing goblins moved the Lord to wrath, what would a man like Lent bring upon himself? We tried to warn him.”
“You…”
“Oh, yes, the three of us—Lillian, Marion and myself,” she said. “We tried to tell him his offences against the Old Ones would not go unpunished, but he would not listen.”
“How did you tell him?”
“Very plainly at village meetings, for all and sundry to hear.” She leaned forward and whispered: “They listen to us, you know, even though it has been years since we did anything. They call us the Weird Sisters, but softly, secretly, did you know that?”
“I may have heard something about it,” Stark said. “Were any of the villagers on your side?”
“Oh yes,” she assured him. “They have long memories in the village. All of them recall mams and grans warning them to stay on the good sides of certain families, lest they fall sick, crops fail or a cow’s udders go dry.” She sighed wistfully. “It has been a long time since any of us did anything like that.”
Stark smiled indulgently. “So, you used to hex people?”
“Oh no, not us personally, at least not me, it would be a most wicked thing,” she said. “Though Lillian and Marion…they can be most vindictive at times, very harsh, but even they…no, the times I mean were long
ago, even before the age of iron and steam, but the people of Ashford, they do have long memories…or used to.”
“Not like the good old days, is it?”
“I hear more than a little mockery in your tone, Sergeant, but, yes, things used to be different,” she said. “People lived and died in the village in which they were born, and you learned early on which people not to anger, which crossroads to avoid at the dark of the moon, which glades not to enter at certain phasings. Now, people only know what they get from the telly, and half the people living in Ashford are outsiders, strangers who haven’t been here more than two or three generations. They don’t know that the Old Ones still hold sway in the ancient places of Hammershire Country, or that a village like Ashford lies deep, deep in the heart of darkness. People would do well to remember that.”
“People like Oscar Lent?”
“He might be alive now if he had.” Then her lips curved into a sly and lopsided smile. “Or maybe not. If he had not met his death in the shadow of that which he sought to destroy, perhaps he would have met his fate elsewhere, at the hand of another. Do you believe in fate, Sergeant, in what the Orientals call karma?”
“No, can’t say that I do,” Stark replied. “Our lives result from the decisions we make. If we don’t like what comes from them, we need to make better choices.”
“Foolish boy,” she said. “Our nature determine our fates. Oscar Lent was a destroyer by nature, thus his fate was determined, one way or another. If had not come here to commit sacrilege, he would have been elsewhere destroying lives, and be just as dead.”
“And Allan Cutter?”
The smile that had attended her justification of Oscar Lent’s murder vanished like mist at dawn. Her large elf-eyes moistened. Stark feared she would start weeping again, but she merely touched a tissue to the corners of her eyes, then sighed.
“No, we thought he had lease,” she said. “Had been allowed to stay where he was.”
“In the heart of Red Cap Woods?”
“Yes.”
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