The Witch of Exmoor

by Margaret Drabble

  Their flesh crawled, shrivelled and listened. Rosemary sat heavily on an old basket chair and dropped her head into her hands. Her heart was beating loudly, for she too was marked for death. She was worn out, defeated. Gogo crossed to the window and stared out across the darkened garden towards the sea, the indecipherable scrabble of the interminable sighing of the water. She stood transfixed, like a dead person, like a statue frozen. She could hear her own blood. And Daniel, thinly, leanly pacing, came to a halt before the backgammon board, so neatly laid, before the game of patience. So she had wasted time, so she had eked away the dull long hours.

  The skeleton clock had died when they were small children, in the heavy stifled fatherless shame of Romley. It never struck the hour. Time had stood still. They had lived in a house without a man, and Frieda had worked like a man. Frieda had taught Daniel to play backgammon. Night after night, during his lonely, freakish boyhood, he had played backgammon with his mother for an hour before bed. He had forgotten this. In turn he had taught his sisters, and they too had played. Did they remember? Did they now, like him, recall?

  Daniel had tried to make for himself a rich light life without these grim shadows, yet here he stood, trapped. All three of them were motionless, silent, exhausted. The air was heavy. They could not move. She had brought them to this cave and turned them to stone.

  Rosemary, the youngest, was the first to break the spell. She groaned, tightened her fingers in her red-gold hair, clasped at her skull, rocked back and forth as though to wind herself up into motion, and made a gurgling sound in her throat, as though she were a sybil about to speak after long silence.

  ‘Shit,’ said Rosemary. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. I can’t fucking take this. Do you think there’s a drink in the house?’

  Daniel, who found, to his surprise, to my surprise, to your surprise, that his eyes were prickling with tears, was the next to move. He laid his hand upon the pack of cards, turned one up. It was the three of hearts. ‘I gave her these,’ he said, perplexed. ‘I bought her a couple of packs when I was killing time in Luxembourg. I can’t think why. Look, they’re the kings and queens of France.’

  ‘Well done, Danny boy,’ said Gogo bravely, turning back from the window, attempting the normality of sister scorn. ‘Clever lad.’

  But her voice shook a little, as though she did not trust it to find its register. She picked up at random black Marie-Antoinette, La Dame de Pique, and stared at her blue and silver dress, her blue and silver hair, her white aigrette.

  ‘A drink,’ repeated Rosemary. ‘She was never short of a drink.’

  And they jerked into action, opening cupboards, sniffing the dregs in the half-empty bottle (a perfectly good 1995 Chablis, noted Daniel, gone to waste), tripping over piles of papers, turning on switches to lamps. Some of them worked, and some did not. They found glasses, and, in the bottom shelf of the mock-Jacobean sideboard, a fine array of bottles–gin, whisky, sherry, vermouth, Marsala, cherry brandy.

  ‘She’d stocked up for Christmas,’ said Rosemary, her spirits rising as she poured herself a large Scotch. ‘Gogo, whisky for you?’

  ‘Who’s driving?’ asked Gogo, as she accepted a tumbler.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Daniel. ‘Cheers, Cheers, Rosie. Cheers, Gogo. Cheers, Frieda. Can you hear us, Frieda? Are you out there listening?’

  And the three of them stared defiantly at the dark windows, at the glimmer of sea and distant shoreline beyond, and they raised their glasses and they drank.

  There had been a crime, but this had not been the scene of it.

  Gogo knocks at Rosemary’s bedroom door, hears a tap running, hears her sister call, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m coming.’ Rosemary appears, in a shining white satin night-dress and a sage-green silk kimono, smelling of aloes. She is ready for bed. Gogo sits on the bed. There is nowhere else to sit, for Rosemary’s hotel room is small and cramped, and the only chair is covered with Rosemary’s discarded clothing. Gogo’s room is bigger, a double overlooking the sea. The sisters had thought of sharing, but had not been able to face it. ‘I snore,’ Gogo had said dourly, to discourage Rosemary, who had herself been trying to think of good reasons to sleep alone. Gogo, the elder, had claimed the best room.

  The hotel is an old coaching inn, perched on the cliff above the coast path. It boasts Fine Sea Views, but it is too dark to see them. It has known better days. Gogo, David and Benjamin had lunched there in the summer, eating scampi and chips from a basket. And Frieda Haxby too, it appeared, had lunched there. The elderly barman remembered her. He brought the subject up himself, as the three Palmers sat in the dark brown bar at a small round oak table, looking at the menu and eating Bacon Twirls. News of Frieda’s disappearance had spread along the coast, from headland to headland, from beacon to beacon, from pub to pub. For a recluse, she had aroused a fair amount of interest. Nor, it now seemed, had she been as reclusive as they had thought, for the barman, a grey-haired, moustached, melancholy, gentlemanly figure, who smoked perpetually, even while pulling pints, claimed that she had been in for lunch with another lady. They came in once or twice, for pensioner’s lunches, on a Thursday. A good value lunch–roast and two vegetables, or fish and chips, for £3.50. They’d seemed to enjoy it. Of course the weather had been a bit better, last month. They’d sat out, on one occasion as he recalled.

  He took a morbid interest in Frieda’s disappearance, probing for more details. He volunteered that he could tell they were family, there was a likeness. (Gogo’s expression of stony refusal at this suggestion was a wonder to see, and Rosemary got out her pocket powder compact to effect an instant cosmetic alteration.) Yes, they all knew she lived alone at Ashcombe, and had heard she was writing a book. About the Vikings, he’d been told, but he wouldn’t know about that.

  Daniel ignored the Vikings and ordered a baked trout, then asked if the barman knew the name of the other lady. No, he didn’t. He thought she came from inland, from Exford way, but he couldn’t say for sure. About the same age as Mrs Haxby, she would be. This, he had added, was a popular part of the world for retired people.

  Gogo, sitting on the edge of Rosemary’s bed, takes up this theme. ‘A popular part of the world for retired people,’ she echoed. ‘And Frieda, out for a cheap pensioner’s lunch. Do you really think it can have been her? And who on earth can she have been with? She didn’t know anybody round here, did she?’

  ‘God knows,’ says Rosemary, applying cream of almonds to her hands and elbows. ‘God knows what she got up to when we weren’t watching. But it doesn’t sound very likely. Still, he did seem to know where the house was. So I suppose it might have been her.’

  ‘Daniel says we’ve got to look for the will tomorrow,’ says Gogo. ‘I think that’s a bit crude and premature, don’t you?’

  Rosemary looked sharply at her sister, through the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘Well, he is a lawyer,’ she concedes. ‘Do you think Frieda made him an executor?’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t. He’d have known if she had. He’s been on to Howard Partridge, you know. Didn’t he tell you?’

  Rosemary shakes her head and starts to brush her hair.

  ‘He didn’t tell me either, but Patsy did,’ says Gogo.

  The room is hot and full of the smells of Rosemary’s nightly rituals, which overlay the older smells of tobacco. This is a heavy smoker of a hotel. The two sisters are rarely in such proximity, for they now inhabit larger spaces, so that even when they are together, they rarely find themselves as close. It makes them physically uneasy. They are troubled, as though something is expected of them. And it is. As Rosemary too settles upon the bed, high up on her pillow, her back to the crushed rose padded button plush velvet bedhead, and tucks her knees under the top sheet, Gogo at the bed’s foot speaks again.

  ‘Did Frieda ever speak to you about her sister Hilda?’

  Rosemary shakes her head.‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just wondered. What happened to her.’

  ‘She never mentioned he
r. Do you think she can still be alive?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. We would surely have heard something if she were.'

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘She’d have kept in touch with Grandma, surely.’

  ‘There was some quarrel,’ says Rosemary flatly.

  ‘It’s surprising that Frieda was so loyal to Grandma, really. Considering,’ says Gogo.

  ‘Considering what mean old cows they both were,’ says Rosemary with more energy, then, gathering strength, rushing at the fence, rising, clearing it. ‘Considering that we don’t know whether our own father’s alive or dead.’

  Gogo is silent. Rosemary is silent. These words have never been spoken between them. They have followed Daniel’s prohibition, and of their father they never speak. He has been written out of the text of their lives. It is as though he has never been. Unmentioned for so many years, he cannot now be invoked without a great tearing and rending.

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Gogo. ‘I can’t face all this. I want to go home.’

  ‘It’s not going to be as easy as that,’ says Rosemary, with a small note of satisfaction in her voice. She is pleased with herself for having braved Gogo, braved her father, braved the past. She has said the unsayable. She has cleared the fence and now, for a mile or two, she leads the field.

  ***

  No will is revealed by the Sunday search of Ashcombe, but other useful and interesting items come to light. Daniel, Gogo and Rosemary find the butler’s pantry and the family silver and the toenails of the devil, and they locate the boxes which contain Frieda’s genealogical research. There had been a bonfire, but not of these papers. They discover her word-processor, which is no longer attempting to speak to them, for one of the police visitors, disliking the waste of electricity, had thoughtfully turned it off. Rosemary, who understands such machines, turns it on, and brings up a list of what seem to be Frieda’s files. This, they agree, may be vital, but the labels of the files are, like the labels of all such files, cryptic. It will take them time and some luck to unlock the secrets of the box, and they are not calm enough to try.

  Not many communications seem to have reached Ashcombe from the outside world. A request to fill in the Electoral Register, a couple of religious pamphlets and an appeal from the Lifeboat Association he neglected on a window-sill inside the front porch, together with an opened Jifiy bag addressed to Mr F. H. Palmer. This Daniel investigates, and finds that it contains a booklet called The Householder’s Guide to Radon, fifth edition, published by the Department of the Environment, and an envelope containing a letter from the National R.adio-logical Protection Board addressed to Ms Frieda Haxby Palmer. Daniel scans the letter rapidly, and notes that it had thanked his mother for her co-operation in testing her home for radon, and advised her that, if her detectors had been accurately placed according to instructions, they recorded, when corrected for seasonal variations, ‘an average radon level over the year of 850 Bq m-3. As this is above the Action Level, it is advisable to reduce the level as soon as reasonably practicable.’

  Daniel replaces the Jiffy bag on the window-sill, and pockets the letter, without drawing it to the attention of his sisters. He will ponder its ominous implications later.

  They also discover a highly coloured postcard of Mount Teide on Tenerife from one Susan Stokes, correctly addressed and including a post code, which says, enigmatically, ‘Doing a Sleeping Beauty at the moment. Great fun. What about you?’, and a letter from a Mr Glover in Yeovil, thanking Miss Haxby for her great kindness in looking after his prize pigeon Paula. Paula has returned home safely (to join Peter, Paul, Priscilla, Pansy, Posy, and all the other Pees!) and is now restored to full health, thanks to Miss Haxby’s care: he had taken the liberty of enclosing the introductory leaflet of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, and a copy of Homing World, in case her experience of sheltering Paula has led her to think of keeping pigeons herself!

  What is one to make of these small fragments of an Ashcombe-based social life? They present Frieda Haxby as an innocent pensioner, a responsible citizen, almost as a good neighbour (though Yeovil, it is true, is fifty miles or more away): there is nothing here to suggest that she might be, or have been, either more or less than the nice if slightly eccentric old lady into whose contours the barman at the Royal Oak had tried to squeeze her.

  And what is one to lift, of her leavings? Should they take the box files, the computer, the silver? They have not time to explore further, and they are afraid that if they take their spoils, even in her own best interests, she will arrive screeching like an avenging angel, clouded in wrath. ‘Do you remember,’ says Rosemary, giggling nervously, ‘how cross she used to get when we went into her room when she was working.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Gogo, ‘and how we were always ignoring her. We were always interrupting her. God knows how she got anything done.’

  ‘She worked nights,’ says Daniel. ‘She had a will of iron, and she worked nights.’

  As they hesitate, in the butler’s pantry, they hear a loud knocking at the door, and jump guiltily, like thieves. Rosemary returns the Swedish medal to its box, Gogo shuts the lid of the tarnished Palmer cutlery, as they hear a door bang, and footsteps approaching down the stone corridor. A man’s footsteps, heavy, deliberate: they sigh with relief.

  The detective inspector is clearly not satisfied with their answers, although he is very polite. Nor do they themselves find their own answers satisfactory. They sit in the drawing-room and try to explain, but of course they cannot explain.

  Why had Mrs Haxby Palmer (he’d got that right, for a start, which was improbable) decided to settle in this part of the world? What had first brought her here? Had she intended to stay? What were her connections?

  Their replies sound thin. They are unable to say why she had chosen to live here. They agree that the house is large, for a woman alone, and in bad repair. As far as they know, she has no connections here. (Shall they mention that friendly pensioner? As they have never met her and do not know her name and doubt if she can exist, it seems unwise.) How did she come across the house in the first place?

  They look at one another, unhappily. They have not had time to collude, and Mr Rorty knows it. Daniel is getting irritable; he dares not risk showing it, but his sisters can tell. They do not know whether they want Daniel to assert himself or not. After a pause, he does.

  ‘She saw it advertised in an estate agent’s window,’ Daniel says, a little coldly.

  ‘In Taunton?’

  ‘We understood it was in Taunton,’ says Daniel, even more coldly.

  The detective inspector does not ask what she was doing in Taunton, but his silence, his attentive expression, ask the question for him. This time it is Gogo who answers.

  ‘She was in Taunton in search of a meatless hamburger, we believe,’ she says provocatively. She has had enough of being intimidated. Mr Rorty looks even more quizzical, so she pursues. She tells him the story of Frieda’s investigation of the meat-free burger, of her visit to the Trading Inspector in Taunton, of her interest in the firm that made Hot Snax. She does not tell him about Timon’s feast, but the memory of it fortifies her, and she can see–all three of them can see–that she has made a wise decision in expounding Frieda’s case. Mr Rorty listens with interest. The story is ludicrous, but he does not appear to find it so. Mr Rorty makes notes in his notebook.

  ‘And so,’ concludes Gogo, ‘finding herself in Taunton, at one stage in her quest, she saw the picture of the house in the shop window, and she bought it. That’s the kind of woman she was. I mean, is.’

  Mr Rorty is mollified by this confession of idiosyncrasy. Yes, he knows Mrs Haxby Palmer is a writer, and appreciates her need for solitude. Writing her memoirs, you say? How interesting. Now can they, as her family, think of any reason why she might have chosen to disappear, of her own free will?

  Dumbly, they shake their heads. Are they suspects, accessories?

  He thanks them for their co-operation. The search wi
ll continue, and he will let them know as soon as there is any news. Meanwhile, if they will get in touch with him if they hear anything from Mrs Palmer, he will be most grateful. He hands them his card.

  As they part, in the courtyard–they are keen to see him off, for they wish to assert that this is their territory, not his–he asks them, casually, ‘Is your mother by any chance a smoker?’

  Gogo, again, takes it upon herself to answer. ‘I’m afraid she is,’ she says with disapproval. ‘She took it up late in life, but yes, I’m afraid she does smoke.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ says Daniel suspiciously.

  ‘Just checking,’ says Mr Rorty. ‘Checking the possibility of intruders, that’s all. Somebody had been smoking, and there are butts in the garden, that kind of thing. Butts down on the beach. But from what you say, it was probably just your mother. Not many people walk along here.’ He grins, collusively. ‘Too steep for most folk, isn’t it?’

  And off drove Mr Rorty, congratulating himself on not having mentioned the fact that in the next cove three plastic-wrapped bales of high-grade Moroccan cannabis had been washed up earlier in the week–the second big haul in two months. It didn’t seem as if the old girl had had anything to do with it, but you never can tell. She’s certainly been smoking the stuff, but that was another matter. That was her own affair. She’d chosen a fine and private place to do it, and it looked as though, wherever she’d got to now, she was beyond prosecution. It looked like it was just a coincidence. He’d tell the local boys to get the dogs out on Monday. You could rot for years in this undergrowth.

  ***

  At the end of the next week, an Identikit impression of a young man was posted up outside the police stations of West Somerset and Devon, and released to the local press. A copy of it was also sent to each of the Palmer family. Daniel Palmer opened his over breakfast, and silently handed it to Patsy. She looked at it for a cold moment and said, ‘That’s Will Paine.’ The backs of her wrists prickled, as they did when she’d had a near hit in the car.