Murder in the Goblins' Playground

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Lillian took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes, such is the nature of the universe. We should have known.”

  “However,” Ravyn continued quickly, “we’ve still a murderer to find. You and Gwen are still likely victims. The person seeking revenge for Douglas Trentmoore will not stop.”

  “No, not until I’m dead, ” Lillian said. “I don’t care anymore.”

  “What about Gwen?”

  “I never cared for her,” she replied. “At all.”

  Ravyn summoned WPC Stevens. “Please see Miss Nettle home. Stay with her until you are relieved.”

  “Yes, sir.” She took Lillian’s arm. “Please come with me, Miss Nettle. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea when I get you home.”

  Lillian went with the constable contritely, for the first time in her life. When the door closed, Ravyn reached under the table and withdrew a portable digital recorder. He switched it off and placed it in his coat’s inside pocket. Even the best of memories cannot be labelled as evidence, he thought.

  A soft knock sounded at the rear door. Ravyn admitted Stark, saw Gwen behind him. Her paleness was accentuated by her black hair. She was small, lithe. Her thin arms were hidden by her shirt, but Ravyn did not doubt they were corded with muscles. Only her hands gave any hint of power.

  “Where’s Auntie Lillian?” Gwen asked

  “She’s gone home to rest,” Ravyn replied. He pulled Stark in and kept his voice low. “Did she hear anything?”

  Stark shook his head. “Old, thick walls. Besides, we just got here. She insisted on properly closing up the shop.”

  “Pull forensics from the cottages, get them in that shop,” he said. “Check everything that’s not a knife.”

  Stark nodded and left through the main room.

  “Where’s the sergeant going?” Gwen asked. “He’s very nice.”

  “Always much to do in an investigation like this,” Ravyn said. “Especially toward the end.”

  “The end?”

  “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I’ve just a few questions for you. Please be seated.”

  Chapter 11: The Butcher’s Daughter

  “I don’t know anything,” Gwen said. “I don’t understand much of what’s going on. Auntie Lillian always said I was a stupid cow, and Auntie Dylwyth said I was a poor little mooncalf.”

  “What did your mother say?” Ravyn asked.

  “My mother?” She tilted her head. “I don’t know who my mum was. No one does. No one wanted me. I was left in the butcher shop, with all the dead things.”

  “Your adoptive mother,” Ravyn said. “Marion.”

  “She hated it when I called her ‘mum,’ especially with people around.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I did that on purpose. It made her face change colour. She really couldn’t blame me, though, could she, me being slow?”

  “Did you feel any love toward your mother?” Seeing the look on her bland face, he added: “Adoptive mother.”

  “I felt grateful.”

  “Grateful?”

  “For taking me in when no one else wanted me,” she explained. “She didn’t have to, you know. She could have carved me up like all the other animals, put me in the glass case in front or made me into sausages hanging from a hook. If she had realised how stupid I would turn out, she probably would have done just that.”

  Ravyn fought back his own memories of visiting the butcher shop with Aunt Althea.

  “You don’t seem a stupid girl to me,” he said. “Do you really think you are as stupid as you’ve been told?”

  “Oh yes, Mr Ravyn,” she replied. “I was very slow in learning my lessons.”

  “In school?”

  “Yes, there too,” she replied. “The other children teased me for being so slow. Allan would beat them up when they were mean to me. He was very strong, very nice.”

  “What about Raymond?”

  “He was very nice too, but he didn’t like to fight,” she said. “He was very smart, tried to help me with my studies, and with my lessons. But you can’t do much with a poor little mooncalf, can you? I left school soon as I was old enough. Wasn’t for me. No schooling needed to cut up dead animals for people to eat. Marion taught me all I needed to know about that.”

  “Your studies were for school,” Ravyn said. “Your lessons were what? The things you were learning with Allan and Raymond, what Marion and her friends were teaching you?”

  She lowered her gaze. “I’m not supposed to talk about that to outsiders. It’s not safe, and it’s secret.”

  “I think it’s safe to talk to me,” Ravyn said. “My job is to keep people safe. That’s what policemen do. That, and solve crimes.”

  She regarded him doubtfully.

  “And it’s only truly kept secret from people who don’t know it already,” he pointed out. “If I already know about the old mysteries there would be no harm in speaking to me, would there?”

  “Do you know…” She paused. “…the old ways?”

  “I know what powers rise at the fullness of the moon and which hide from the gaze of Hecate,” Ravyn said. “I know what the owl whispers and when the wee folk emerge from their bright chambers beneath the lake.”

  Gwen giggled, her laughter like tiny silver bells.

  “You learned the old ways with Allan and Raymond?” he asked.

  “Well, I tried.” There was a dull sullen tone in her voice. “I did not do as well as Raymond or Allan.”

  “I understood Allan did not follow the old ways.”

  “When he was older, no,” she said. “Younger, though, he was nearly as smart as Raymond. They both tried to teach me, but…” She sighed. “Well, I was just stupid, wasn’t I? I could feel the old gods near, could hear them whisper, but I couldn’t learn the words my aunties wanted me to speak, the signs and symbols.”

  “Some people don’t need words to speak to the old gods,” he told her. “It’s here.” He pressed his hand to his heart. “Not here.” He touched his forehead. “Some people are born to the ways, not taught them. You were smart in ways others were not.”

  “That’s what Raymond told me,” she said. “I figured he was just being kind. He was always kind, even to the animals he took for meat. He took them without malice. He had lease to do so, you know, just as he had lease to live at the edge of the woods.”

  “Yes, I heard that.” He gazed at her a moment, thinking of the digital recorder whirring softly in his pocket. “Did you like him?”

  “I loved Raymond,” she said. “Allan too. They were my only friends. Oh, and Auntie Dylwyth too—I was naught but a poor little mooncalf, but she was still very kind to me, not like Auntie Lillian or Marion.”

  “Did you dislike Marion or Auntie Lillian?”

  Gwen shook her head. “Auntie Lillian was a hard woman, but she was very smart. She tried to teach me the words and the signs, but I was but a stupid child who grew into a stupid woman. I don’t know why she expected me to be any smarter than I am.”

  “And Marion?”

  Again, she shook her head. “I was grateful.”

  “What was the relationship between you and Allan?”

  She stared blankly. “I don’t understand.”

  “Were you…” The words were in Ravyn’s mind, right behind his teeth, ready to emerge, but, looking at Gwen’s pale blank face, he had trouble bringing them into being. “Did you and Allan have a physical relationship of any sort?”

  The clouds of confusion dissipated and a sly smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Carnality?”

  “Yes,” Ravyn said, with a measure of relief. “Precisely.”

  “I wanted to, well, when we were younger I wanted to, but we were told not to,” she said.

  “By…” He let the question hang.

  “Raymond,” she replied. “He said it would displease the Elder Gods. He did not say why, but we believed him. Allan was smart, but Raymond was so much smarter than both of us. Besides…”r />
  After a moment, Ravyn asked, “Besides…what?”

  “They told me it would not be right.”

  “They?”

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  He smiled. “Ah, they who live in the woods.”

  She nodded. “I could always see them, see their pale forms in the night, see their diamond eyes flashing among the trees. When I was first taken to the woods I saw them, but I kept it secret.”

  “You didn’t tell your aunties?”

  “Or Raymond or Allan either,” she said. “I saw them. I heard them whisper, but it was some time before I could understand what they said. It’s not human-tongue, you know. When I began to have feelings…you know, those feelings for Allan, they said no.”

  “Do you still hear them?” Ravyn asked. “The voices of the Red Caps who live in the woods.”

  She put a finger to her thin pallid lips. “You shouldn’t say their names. They don’t like that.”

  He nodded. “Gwen, do you understand what happened to Allan and Raymond? To Marion and Dylwyth?”

  “They transitioned to another plane.”

  “They were murdered,” he said.

  “Yes.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “Are you sad about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Oscar Lent?”

  Gwen’s face darkened and her eyes narrowed as her brow came down to form unwonted furrows. When her emotions had run their course her features returned to a tabula rasa.

  “He was a very bad man,” she said. “He wanted to do terrible things to the woods, to them what live there. That is why he was taken at the place where the Goblins first displeasured the Lord.”

  “You know where he was killed?”

  “Everyone knows” she replied. “He went there thinking he was going to see someone, but he saw them, didn’t he? Humans ought not disturb the old places.”

  “Who did he think he was going to see?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “The folk of the forest have ways to cloud the minds of mortals.”

  “Do you know who killed Oscar Lent?”

  She nodded. “The Lord of the Woods.”

  “And Allan?”

  “The same.”

  “And Raymond?”

  “The same and the same and the same,” she said. “Now, there, I have said it three times, and that makes it all true, for everything.”

  Ravyn smiled wearily. Saying something thrice was a common formula in paganism and religion in general. Just as Christians held high the triune god, so pagans venerated the three faces of Hecate and the Three-fold Law. It was not only a way of stating a true thing, but also of making something true, even if it apparently ran counter to common sense and the laws of nature.

  “Have you ever seen the Lord of the Woods?”

  Gwen sighed impatiently. “Of course I have.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” she replied. “He might look like a man on a horse or maybe just a man walking along the road who asks you questions. He might come as an owl against the moon with flashing talons and a silver beak, or as a fox running through the moonlight. He can appear as anything and anyone. Sometimes he will come to you and you will not know his face, and the face you think you see may not be the face that is his. That is why you must always take care and not give offence. You might offend the Lord unawares.”

  “Have you talked to the Lord, Gwen?”

  “He asked me…things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Who people were,” she replied. “Where they lived.”

  “Whom did he ask about?”

  She looked down at her hands. “Allan. Raymond. Others.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  She looked at Ravyn as if he were simple. “I just told you, he can be anything. Anyone ever call you a mooncalf?”

  “I’m sure they would have if they had thought of it,” he said with a short laugh. “People call me many things, most of them not very nice. You get used to such things.”

  “You should keep secrets, Mr Ravyn,” she said.

  “Why is that, Gwen?”

  “Because, when people say bad things about you, or call you names, you can think about your secrets and smile.”

  “You’re smiling now,” he noted.

  She remained silent.

  “Do you remember me, Gwen?” he asked. “It was a long time ago, when you were a little girl.”

  She peered at him intently, then shook her head.

  “My aunt used to bring me to the butcher shop,” he said. “You remember her, I bet. Her name is Althea Haven.”

  For the first time, Gwen brightened. A smile that was neither sly nor secret flashed across her lips. “The teacher! Yes, she was very nice to me. She did not beat up people, like Allan did, but she punished the children when they picked on me. I did not know her long. I left school, then she retired.”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t like going to the butcher shop” Ravyn said. “Did you like working there?”

  She shrugged. “It was what Marion wanted me to do, and I was very grateful to her for not leaving me among the dead things.”

  “I think you were too young to do most of the work,” he said. “What did Marion have you do?”

  “I was taught how to grind meat, how to stuff the casings,” she replied. “Sausages are very popular. I stuffed loads of them. I also watched Marion cut the meat, learning all the cuts and joints, and I sharpened all the knives.”

  “That’s very important, I would think.”

  She nodded. “Every day. Every knife. The knives must be very sharp to do their jobs. A dull knife is as useless as a dull-minded girl. But knives are much easier to sharpen.” She moved her hand up and down her arm, tilting it one way, then the other on the return. “It’s an easy thing, making the edge bright and sharp. Move it down and slide it at the same time. Shree! Reverse the action. Shree! Do it one more time… Shree! And you’re done.”

  Ravyn settled back, exhaled softly, and stared at the girl sitting placidly across from him.

  “Shree…shree…shree…” she breathed. “Three times. It makes a knife true and useful. Shree…shree…shree…”

  The main door opened slightly. Stark motioned urgently.

  “Gwen, I must speak to Sergeant Stark for a moment,” Ravyn said. “Please sit here and wait for me. Can you do that?”

  “Of course, Mr Ravyn.” She looked at Stark, leaned forward and whispered: “He is a very nice man, that sergeant of yours.”

  “Yes, yes he is. Please wait here.”

  She nodded.

  When Ravyn joined Stark in the village hall’s main room, he left the door ajar, just wide enough to see Gwen Turner waiting for him to return. Stark held an evidence bag discreetly at his side. Ravyn motioned for him to speak, but softly.

  “We found this pretty quickly, sir.”

  Stark raised the bag. Ravyn shifted slightly so his body blocked sight of the bag and its contents from Gwen in the adjoining room. Inside was a steel rod. A ring separated a short handle from the rest of the rod, altogether about twenty inches. Not very wide at the base, it tapered to a blunt point.

  “Some kind of sharpening tool, sir,” Stark explained.

  Ravyn nodded. “Up and down and up. Three passes on that and any blade can be made true and useful.”

  Stark frowned in confusion, but continued: “If we had started with the knives, we’d have been forever. Long, round, sharp…and it has traces of human blood.”

  “Yes, this is Dr Penworthy’s mystery weapon.”

  “The murderer would have to be incredibly strong to drive it all the way through a man and gouge the stone behind him,” Stark said. “Whoever took it from the shop…”

  “She has unsuspected strength,” Ravyn said.

  Stark shook his head. “Not that girl.”

  “A lifetime of heavy labour,” Ravy
n said. “She was not large like Marion, but smaller, thinner, like her mother. Moving hundreds of pounds of meat every day, developing muscles that allowed her to cut through gristle and any thickness of meat, in time being able to manhandle whole sides of beef. It really only shows in her hands, and it’s easy to dismiss that as an odd trace of mannishness in a girl who never allows her muscled arms to show.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “The sound from my dream, it was her sharpening knives in the butcher shop,” Ravyn said. “The unconscious mind is a frightening thing. As a lad, I heard her using this steel rod, but without context it remained lodged in memory until events shook it loose.”

  “The only thing left then,” Stark said, “is to see what she has to say for herself.”

  Ravyn moved, unblocking Gwen’s view of Stark with the rod taken from the butcher shop. Her chair was vacant.

  “Damn,” Ravyn swore.

  He rushed into the office, Stark crowding behind him. The room was empty, the rear door open.

  “Sorry, sir, I should have locked that behind me.”

  Ravyn made no reply. Stark could claim responsibility, but he knew the fault was his, not the sergeant’s. The most important thing now was to gather Gwen back in. She had not been gone long and there were few places she could go.

  “There’s something else, sir,” Stark said. “In the drawer where we found this sharpening rod, there were spaces for two, but this was the only one there.”

  No wonder Stark had to wait while she ‘properly closed up shop,’ Ravyn thought. It also explained her stiff posture, her lack of movement during the interview. Ravyn burst into a run, Stark struggling to keep up with the older man.

  “Call Stevens on her mobile,” Ravyn said. “Warn her about Gwen. Tell her we’re on our way.”

  “Do you really think…”

  “Do it!”

  Stark made the call.

  Ravyn passed the Three Crowns as Stark caught up. Woodcock was pushing an irate Major Westerham down the steps of the snug bar. They paused only long enough to watch the policemen enter Hob’s Lane, then returned to their altercation.

  “Why did she do it?” Stark demanded.