That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

He had been intending to continue when the telephone started up at exactly the same time as the milk for his cocoa came to the boil. The jerk of his hand splashed enough of the boiling liquid to burn his thumb. Wincing, he cursed at the appliance – it never rang unless he’d made a prior arrangement for it to do so – then put both mug and pan down carefully before lifting the receiver.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” came a familiar voice. “But I’ve just had some very interesting news. How long do you think it would take you to drive to Worcestershire?”

  Spooner forgot all about his thumb. “Oh my word,” he said, “what’s happened?”

  “Some young boys out birds’ nesting this afternoon have found human remains in Hagley Woods,” said the Chief. “The local police have cordoned off the site until the pathologist can get to it in daylight, which I think gives us both the chance to join him as he gets there, if we leave now. Think you can manage that?”

  “From here?” said Spooner. “It’ll probably take about three or four hours.” The black Ford Anglia was now parked in his landlady’s otherwise empty garage. He hadn’t used it much lately, so it still had close to a full tank of petrol, and there was an illicit jerry can in the boot. On the tail of that came a more troubling notion. What if DS Houlston was among the police at the scene? Surely he would be, the moment he caught wind of it?

  Spooner ran a hand through his hair. There was an old pot of brilliantine, along with his grey suit, languishing at the back of the wardrobe. Maybe if he looked more like a real policeman, then Houlston wouldn’t recognise him.

  “You know this place better than I do,” the Chief went on. “Is there a landmark where we can rendezvous?”

  Spooner’s mind had scarcely left the ideal place since he had. “Wychbury Hill,” he said. “It’s right on top of the estate, the highest point of the Clent Hills. And just so you can’t miss it, even in the dark, it’s got a bloody great obelisk on the top of it.”

  Spooner arrived just after five o’clock, pulled into the layby and stared through the windscreen up at the hill. An almost completely full moon had been his guide from Manchester, sailing huge and ghostly above the grey tendrils of the clouds. It shed its silvery light across the hills and their protective trees, back to their full foliage now. The air was damp with the chill of the darkest hour and he was loath to turn off the engine, knowing the warmth it generated would soon evaporate. He had worn as many layers as possible, brought a blanket and a Thermos of ersatz coffee, to help him stave off both the temperature and tiredness – although he had not felt any inklings of fatigue so far.

  He had stopped by the office on the way, to put a letter through the door explaining to Oaten he’d had a summons to attend urgent family business in Scotland. That would be enough to buy him a few days’ leave, if he followed it up with reassuring phone calls. He still couldn’t quite believe he was here…

  Like the moon above him, Clara’s spectral form floated in his mind’s eye.

  Spooner reached into the rucksack he had placed on the passenger seat. It contained the Thermos of coffee, ginger cake baked by Miss Josser, a torch, a map of the Clent Hills and a book sent to him by his father, which he thought might help to pass the time while he waited for the Chief. It was a collection of stories written by a Victorian clergyman, called The Ingoldsby Legends. In it were directions for the making of a Hand of Glory. Written as a pastiche poem, they were considerably more humorous than other tomes he had consulted on the subject, not least that of Professor Margot Melvin.

  The sound of a motor brought him out of his literary reverie about an hour later. Spooner looked up as the Chief’s Bentley glided in beside him. The sky was now a pale grey, streaked with the first smudges of pink. He wound down his window. “Found it all right then?” he said.

  The Chief nodded. “It’s a good spot. I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

  Spooner put his book back in his rucksack and began unwinding himself from his blanket, folding it up and putting it on the back seat, while gathering everything he thought he would need for their day’s work.

  “You’ve changed,” his boss noticed, as he emerged from the Anglia.

  “Aye,” Spooner touched his now solid hair cautiously. “It’s in case we run into my old friend from Birmingham CID. Remember DS Houlston?” He glanced back at his motor. “D’you think it might be better if we took your car from here?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve had a good run but I wouldn’t mind you navigating from here.” The Chief glanced down at his wristwatch. “We should be on time. I’ve arranged to meet two officers at the site: Detective Superintendent Roy Haslett of the Worcestershire constabulary and Professor Nigel Willis, the Home Office pathologist.”

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” Spooner settled himself into the passenger seat.

  The Chief’s eyes narrowed as he pulled out of the layby. “I wouldn’t have come all this way if I wasn’t ninety-nine per cent sure. It’s strange, but when he was delirious in hospital, Karl Kohl told me Belladonna was trapped in the trees.”

  Spooner swallowed. “You’ve never told me that before,” he said.

  “No?” his companion went on. “Well anyway, it’s Haslett’s case and while we’re in his company, we’re going to have to be circumspect. They don’t know what our interest in this business is and probably won’t appreciate us joining them, there’s just not much they can do about it. But it’s essential we don’t divulge any part of what we know or think we know – even if these remains do turn out to be who we think it is. Understood?”

  “Loud and clear,” said Spooner, watching his car disappear in the rear-view mirror as they drove down into the valley.

  22

  I’VE FOUND THE RIGHT GIRL

  Monday, 19 April 1943

  “Good,” the Chief nodded. “Now all we need to do is find the entrance for this place. Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  “Aye,” Spooner peered through the windscreen. Patches of mist hung in the lower valley as they drove towards the Hall, making it look different from his first recce of the place. Revisiting both his memories and notes on a regular basis had kept the layout of the De Veres’ estate fresh in his mind, so that he didn’t really need to consult the map he had spread on his lap. “Turn left and go on about another hundred yards. We’ll be at the gates before you know it.”

  “Ah yes,” said the Chief, “and they’ve laid on a reception committee.”

  He wound down his window as they reached the two uniformed constables who’d been placed on sentry duty and produced his identification to the one that stepped forward.

  “Go straight ahead, sir,” the PC instructed as he handed it back. “Past the Hall and along the road about three hundred yards until it veers to the left and leads you into the woods. You’ll find the others parked and you’ll be able to follow your nose from then on.”

  His fellow sentry opened one of the gates and they drove on, past the slumbering house and deep into the valley. The road twisted through verdant foliage, allowing flashes of some of the sights Spooner had noted before and some that had been hidden – a waterfall tumbling into a stream around one bend, the ruined castle through another. With bluebells and anemones spread in knolls across the woodland floor, it seemed even more like a fairy-tale kingdom – except for the feeling of dread that pulsed inside him.

  They came to a cluster of parked cars opposite Wychbury Hill. From this angle, Spooner could see the one building that had been almost completely obscured by trees during his previous surveillance: six sandstone columns rising out of the mist and the trees, halfway down the slope from the obelisk. That icy finger tapped on his memory: it was exactly like the temple he had dreamt of on the night of the Duncan séance.

  “Wait here while I introduce myself to the superintendent.” The Chief brought the Bentley to a halt beside the other vehicles. There was no black Anglia among them, though that did little to abate the pinpricks of unease dancing down Spoone
r’s spine. It was as if Clara was somehow with him, directing him to the places she wanted him to see.

  “Actually, is it all right if I take a wee look at that ’til you’re ready?” he asked, nodding up at the folly, wondering if he could prove his subconscious wrong.

  The Chief followed his gaze. “Good idea. See if you can find what they’ve been worshipping up there.”

  Spooner knelt down beside the dark stain, bringing his penknife out of his pocket to chip a little of it away for analysis, although he was pretty sure of what had caused it – dripping wax from black candles. He dropped the crumbling flakes into a sample bag and put it back in his rucksack. There was nothing else visible to the naked eye that might suggest what the building may have been used for, but a faint odour lingered in the sodden molecules of air, the odour of aromatic herbs burned within these walls. Rue, he could identify as the most overpowering of these. It took a minute before he realised that the Chief was calling his name from across the valley.

  He stepped out, the smells of earth and flora replacing the mysteries of the temple. But Spooner still felt like he was walking through a dream as he headed back down the slope and into the woods, past the tent that the pathologist had just finished erecting, towards the group that huddled around the site where human remains had been found.

  Was this then where Nicholas Ralphe had hidden the Witch Queen?

  Nothing he could have projected from his subconscious could have matched the true horror of the gateway into the next world that stood before him when he reached it: its gnarled old bole like the distended stomach of a hag with dried-up ivy for veins and its spindly crown of branches her tangled green hair. Spooner drew in a sharp breath. Had Clara become part of the tree, or had the tree become part of her?

  Ahead of him, the pathologist had climbed the ladder placed against the trunk to give him access to the hollow and found what Terry Jenkins and his gang had recently disturbed from its clandestine embrace. Carefully, Professor Willis retraced his steps downwards, holding a pale object in his gloved hand.

  “It’s a woman’s skull,” he said. “Look,” he pointed, “you can see there’s still some flesh and hair attached. It can’t have been here too long.”

  “A redhead,” the Chief noted, looking across at Spooner.

  Spooner’s stomach turned a somersault. “I wonder if there’s anything else of her in there?” he said, looking past the grisly remains to its place of interment. “Do you think it’s possible to fit a woman into that tree?”

  “I should say so, provided you had only just killed her,” the professor considered. “Before rigor mortis set in. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Four hours later she was laid out on a tarpaulin inside the pathologist’s tent. There had been most of a woman hidden inside the hollow of the tree, but she had decayed to a skeleton now, rotted like her crêpe-soled shoes and the remains of her clothing, over the two-year period the professor estimated she had been there. It was a part of her attire that had been used to kill her, he further opined, though he would obviously give a more authoritative account after he’d taken her back to his lab and examined her properly. A ripped portion of material was wedged into the top of her throat, on which she had likely choked. More strangely still, she was missing her left hand.

  That was when Spooner knew for sure that he was finally looking at Clara – and the deed that had sent Ralphe to the asylum. He had to be careful now that he wasn’t the next person to be put in a straitjacket. Taking the Chief aside, he chose his words with care.

  “I think I know where to find her hand. I think that was what was going on in the temple back there. Can we take a recce, without making it seem too obvious?”

  The Chief looked ahead of them, at the superintendent in conference with his officers. He spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Go back over there now and if you find anything, call me over.”

  Letting go of logic for the moment, Spooner found a path through the woods that came to the temple at an angle recognisable from how the building had appeared in his dream. Then he knelt down and began to search systematically through the undergrowth with gloved fingers, finding himself drawn towards a patch of brambles less than a yard away from the portico, which matched the co-ordinates of his vision of a hand coming up through the earth. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he cleared the barbed runners away from a slightly raised mound of earth at their centre. His throat was so dry he could hardly call out.

  The now skeletal hand was laid upright in a clay pot, clutching a black candle and wrapped in black cloth, stems of verbena and fern fronds. This was roughly what Spooner had expected, although the specifications of the spell varied from source to source. What he hadn’t anticipated was the gold wedding ring still nestled around the third finger.

  Who, he wondered, had given it to her? It didn’t seem likely this was a token of the binding ceremony Karl Kohl had spoken of to the Chief. Could it have been a gift from the infatuated Ralphe instead, another secret he had hoped to bury with her?

  It was the second of Belladonna’s beaux who dominated Spooner’s thoughts as he watched the pathologist add the contents of the vessel to his grim haul and begin to pack everything away. He tried to imagine what had happened from Ralphe’s perspective: first murdering the woman he had once been so in love with, choking her in the manner Helen Duncan appeared to have experienced, by stuffing something down her throat. Then sawing off her left hand before dropping the rest of her body into that ghastly tree. Finally, having put himself through all of that, preparing his dark ritual and burying the severed hand where he thought it would never be disturbed again.

  Had he done it all in one night? He surely wouldn’t have risked any of these feats by daylight? Or had his sanity so completely evaporated by then that it made no difference?

  Spooner would never know the answer to that. Nor how Ralphe would feel now if he knew the protection spell he had so believed in could have been broken in an instant by a bunch of high-spirited boys.

  As quickly as they had gathered, now everyone seemed to be leaving the woods. The pathologist was driving Clara away, back to his lab at Birmingham University. The superintendent had the unpleasant task of relaying the news of their discovery to the inhabitants at the Hall. The mass of officers who had guarded the site and helped with the searches all started going their separate ways, mainly on bicycles, some on foot, and with seemingly no Houlston among them.

  The Chief put his hand on Spooner’s shoulder, led him back in the direction of the temple and away from the ears of any remaining policemen. “I know it’s been a lot to take in today. But, before we leave, show me what else you found in here.”

  Spooner stopped on the threshold, too overcome with fatigue and the overlapping in his mind of memory, dream and imagination to want to go any further. Instead, he propped himself up against the wall and watched the tall man with the large nose stalk his way across the floor, nodding to himself as he perambulated between the wax patterns.

  “Well, well,” he said. “I wonder if anybody else has made note of this.”

  Spooner shrugged. “This is where Ralphe made the Hand of Glory. You can still smell some of the herbs that he burned for the ritual. I just don’t want to think what was going through his mind when he did it.” He looked back out through the portico at the departing cars travelling through the gathering shadows.

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  “The superintendent must lead his murder enquiry,” said the Chief, “and do everything he can to ascertain the identity of the unfortunate victim. It won’t be easy for him, seeing as she isn’t exactly local. We’re going to let him get on with that and not interfere in any way, including offering our opinions on who that grim collection of bones might once have been, nor who laid them to rest. I doubt they will ever be able to ID her, but, from our point of view, there is just a tiny chance that news of this might flush out some of the other players in this game who are still missi
ng in action.”

  Spooner frowned. “What about Houlston? I think he knows as well as we do who that pile of bones used to be and I can’t see him keeping quiet about it.”

  The Chief raised his eyebrows. “I think you are overestimating his influence. Even if he was somewhere here today, there is still slim chance of him being able to make a positive identity on someone for whom no one in this country holds either dental or medical records. And he’s not going to get a rush of concerned friends coming forward to say they knew her. Everyone who did is either dead or absent, aren’t they?”

  Spooner shook his head. “Even so…” he began.

  “You would have heard if he had ever caught up with either of the others,” the Chief said. “Don’t concern yourself with him any longer. Now,” he held up the arm with his wristwatch on it to the fading light, “shall we get back to Birmingham for the night? I don’t think I’m fit to drive all the way back to London. But I do know of an hotel there where I don’t think they’ll recognise you and perhaps you’ll allow me to give you the best dinner you’ll have had in some time?”

  The hotel was near to New Street station. It had been built at the height of the city’s prosperity at the turn of the century, although its finery was now largely obscured behind taped-up windows, blackout curtains and scaffolding poles supporting areas that had had previous brushes with the Luftwaffe. Inside, however, life appeared to be going on much as it had since its Edwardian inception. As they passed through the lobby on the way to the lifts, Spooner could hear an orchestra playing “Moonlight Serenade” above the clinking of glassware and china in the ballroom beyond.

  Whatever the musical talent on offer, the Chief wasn’t moved by the idea of dining in public. He had obtained adjoining suites where a meal could be sent up and they could talk in private, though he made a thorough job of taking all the telephones off the hook, searching behind each mirror and in every light socket. As a final precaution against snoopers, he kept the radiogram on in the background while they ate.