Witchmoor Edge
Page 4
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The moors above Baildon are Ilkley Moors and they were neither quiet nor still. The wind was only light but it stirred the heather and whispered through the rough grass. Bees hummed softly and the cry of the odd curlew and bleating of sheep provided a soothing background to the sound of Millicent's stout shoes on the path. The weather was as glorious as August can be: dry, sunny, gentle.
The moors, though alive with sheep, birds and insects, were empty of human life. Millicent had seen nobody for some time but she was mildly surprised to someone among the standing stones. As she approached she watched the man walking round the outside of the circle, arms stretched out in front of him.
Closer to him she watched with a frank interest and saw that he was holding a bent metal rod in each hand. The rods were steady most of the time but swung inwards suddenly. As they did so, the man turned outwards and began looking for something far away on the horizon. He nodded as if satisfied and turned towards Millicent.
"Good Afternoon," he said with an almost pedantic politeness.
"Hello," Millicent answered. "I didn't mean to be rude, but I take it those are dowsing rods."
"Exactly so," he said, holding both rods in one hand and holding out the other. "Tobias N'Dibe," he added.
Tobias N'Dibe was darker than Millicent and more obviously of African origin, somewhat older and had a cultured air, but the same pedantic preciseness about him.
"Millicent Hampshire," Millie said, taking the proffered hand.
"You are interested in dowsing?" NDibe asked.
"I suppose so," Millicent answered. "I find the whole topic of ... of.." She struggled for an appropriate phrase.
"Psi talents?" NDibe suggested.
"I find the whole subject interesting, yes."
N'Dibe was looking at her, not appraisingly in any sexual sense, but weighing her up nonetheless.
"But you are interested because you have some talents yourself, I think," he said at length.
Millicent thought about Carlos again and how she had not admitted her feelings to anyone since his death. "Well," she said, finding the cultured black stranger easy to talk to, "I have had some ... err ... experiences over the years. Insights into problems where I seem to know for a fact things for which there are not established facts at all. What you might call visions. But they're not something a detective should admit to following."
"I see." N'Dibe nodded slowly. "I thought detectives were allowed their hunches. So you are a police woman?"
"Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire. You don't sound like a farm labourer yourself."
N'Dibe smiled. "I rather hope not," he observed. "I am a moderately senior civil servant at the Regional Development Office. However, senior civil servants do not generally experiment in dowsing, any more than detectives admit to visions."
"What were you dowsing for?" Millicent asked.
"I was about to have some tea from my flask," N'Dibe said. "Would you care for a cup?"
"I'd rather have coffee, if you don't mind," Millicent said. "I have a flask with me too."
The afternoon was pleasantly warm without being unpleasantly hot. Sitting on a fallen stone in the August sunshine with the soft breeze holding the temperature down a little made it a delightful day. Millicent luxuriated in calmness and peace like wallowing in a warm bath after a hectic day's work.
"Do you come up often onto the moors like this?" N'Dibe asked.
"I rarely have time," Millicent answered. "Do you?"
N'Dibe shook his head, watching Millie and frowning slightly. "Not often," he said, and added, "That we should both choose this afternoon is perhaps an interesting synchronicity, rather than mere coincidence."
Millicent thought he might be right, though she couldn't see where he was leading. He continued to study her.
"I think you drive yourself too hard," he said at last. "There is something obsessive about you. A crusade. I detect a certain sadness about you too and a connection with the military. Did you serve in the armed forces?"
Hampshire shifted a little uncomfortably. "Yes," she said. "I was in the army for a few years. In the bomb squad."
N'Dibe sipped his tea but continued to watch Millicent, nodding again slowly. "Yes. I think some one close to you was hurt by a bomb."
For some time Millicent said nothing. At length she said, "My late husband." And added, "You never told me what you were dowsing for."
N'Dibe noted the change of subject and did not pursue Millicent's problem. Not there and then anyway.
"From the heel stone of circles like this," NDibe said, "there are sightlines to distant markers showing the sunrise and sunset lines at the solstices. For reasons not entirely clear to me such lines are easily found by dowsing."
"What I don't understand," Millicent remarked, looking around at the rolling vastness of the moors around them, "is why anyone should build a stone circle up here, so far from anywhere."
"Ah," NDibe answered, "At one time these moors were all woodland. This stone circle would have been in a clearing. The soil beneath the woodlands was too poor to sustain agriculture when the trees were cleared."
"I suppose the people just moved away?"
"To the valleys," N'Dibe agreed. "Now about your visions. I am involved with a little group, which could help to control them. Make them, perhaps, come to order. I think I will contact you again in the next few days."
Was N'Dibe was being deliberately enigmatic, Millicent wondered, and he did nothing to ease the obscurity of his remark. He stood and stretched.
"I have almost finished what I came to do," he remarked. "I was thinking of a leisurely walk back to 'The Craven Heifer' public house on the East Morton road for an early evening meal. Would you care accompany me?"
Millicent had likewise been at a loose end. "That would be rather nice," she agreed. "But would you just demonstrate those rods to me again?"
"With pleasure," N'Dibe said. However, I suggest that it may be more enlightening for you to try it yourself." He stood up and added, a trifle obscurely, "For me too, perhaps."