“You mean it was all a gag?” said Sam indignantly.
“No. Seems likely it’s a true story, except for the last bit. That’s just their way of dealing with things. Now I don’t believe in ghosts, but I learned two lessons from that tale. One was not to jump to conclusions. The other was, if ever I find myself dozing off in front of this fireplace, I get up and go to bed!”
“Wise man,” she said. “So, despite the story, you liked the place so much you asked if you could stay on here after you retired. That’s really nice.”
She heard in her voice the reassuring note she used on small children and nervous dogs. She guessed he heard it too for he smiled and said, “I didn’t spend all my career here. The cottage came on the market just as I was coming up to retirement. Change of policy, village bobbies out, two townies in a Land Rover driving by three times a week in. Progress! So they sold all the old police houses off. I pulled a few strings and got first refusal. Even then it cost more than I made on my place in Penrith.”
“Penrith?” The only Penrith Sam knew was back home in New South Wales.
“Where County Police Headquarters is,” said Melton.
Careful now, Sam said, “So you worked at HQ? That meant promotion?”
“Oh yes. Gradual. Sergeant… Inspector… Super… Chief Super… I ended up as the County’s Head of CID.”
He eyed her mischievously as he slowly went through the ranks.
Oh shit, she thought.
“That’s great,” she enthused. “You must have loved it here to want to come back.”
He frowned and said, “Loved it? Illthwaite?”
He spat the word out with the same force he’d used twenty-four hours earlier.
Illthwaite. An ill name for an ill place.
So what was going on here? wondered Sam, as she sipped the tea he’d made and nibbled a biscuit. He’d offered her bread and cheese as it was getting on for lunchtime, and she’d said no, though if he had anything chocolate, the darker the better… and he’d come up with half-coated milk digestives.
Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers of chocolate, but they could certainly pick their pitch, and she was starting to think this could be a complete waste of time.
Melton said casually, “They’ve probably told you I’m a bit cracked.”
“Something like that,” she said. “But I make up my own mind.”
“That’s the impression I get,” he said. “Which makes me think it might be better if before we get on to your story, I tell you mine.”
“I like a good story,” she said.
He laughed, a high-pitched whinny.
“That’s a perfect cue,” he said. “Do you like a good story? was what my first caller said back in 1949. Farmer called Dick Croft. Big man in these parts, family had been farming here since the Dark Ages. I said, yes I did. He nodded and said, ‘Then get yourself signed up with the traveling library next Monday, because you’ll have plenty of time for reading.’ I asked him what he meant and he said, ‘The law’s here already, son. There’s God’s Law and there’s Sod’s Law, and they take care of most things, and what they don’t cover, we like to take care of ourselves.’ And then he shook my hand and went.”
“Weird,” said Sam. “And was he right?”
“Mostly he was. I certainly did a lot of reading. But a young man can’t live on books alone, and after three or four years when I began to feel I’d got accepted as one of the community, I picked myself a girl. A local lass. Her name was Mary. Mary Croft.”
“Like in Dick Croft? His daughter?”
“The same. We didn’t make a big public show of things. Not that you needed to in Illthwaite. Break wind in the church and they’ll get a whiff in the Stranger thirty seconds later, that’s what they say. Anyway, I was smitten. I asked her to marry me. Imagine that. I asked Dick Croft’s daughter to marry me, and her only eighteen.”
“So?” said Sam, puzzled.
“Still a minor back in those days. Needed her father’s consent. Her mother had died when Mary was a lass. There was a stepmother, far too young to be a second mother to Mary. Anyway, her father had things worked out for her future. A neighbor’s son. Bring the two landholdings together. But Mary dug her heels in. She and her dad didn’t get on. He was a right hard bastard, but she had a mind of her own too.”
He paused. The sharpness of his eye was misted. It was hard to imagine this aged elf as a young romantic but Sam made the effort.
“So what happened?”
“She vanished,” he said.
He spoke the word flatly, leaving her to grasp at its meaning.
“Vanished? Like… what? She took off? Got abducted? Died…?”
He said, as if she hadn’t spoken, “We used to meet behind St. Ylf’s, by the Wolf-Head Cross. Popular place for courting couples. Well hidden — at least, that’s the theory.”
He rose from his chair and went to stand by the window from which the stumpy church tower was visible over a clump of blood-pearled rowan trees.
“I wanted to talk to her father, but she said it was pointless, he’d rather see her die an old maid than get mixed up with a thick copper. I could see only one way to get Croft to agree to a wedding. That was to get Mary pregnant.”
He turned to face Sam.
“You know what young men are like. I’d have been at it already, but Mary always said she didn’t want to take the risk. But now risk was our best hope. At first she looked at me like I was daft. When she saw I was serious, she said she’d think about it and we arranged to meet three nights later. I said, ‘Come to Candle Cottage if you decide yes. I don’t want our first time to be in a cold and drafty churchyard.’ She kissed me then. A real passionate kiss. It felt like a promise.”
He looked around the room, as if searching for something he had misplaced.
After a while Sam prompted, “So what happened?”
“You can imagine the state I was in for the next couple of days. I kept thinking of that kiss. God, how the time dragged. Then the night came. I couldn’t sit still. I must have walked twenty miles up and down this room. It’s a wonder I didn’t put my hand through the window the number of times I rubbed the pane to see if I could spot her coming.”
Abruptly he sat down once more.
“But she never came. I sat up waiting till I fell asleep in my chair. Early next morning I was woken by knocking. It was Dick Croft, demanding to know where Mary was. He burst in and started searching the cottage. It was the start of a very confusing period. I didn’t know if I was on my arse or my elbow. By the time things got official, the story had settled down to this: Mary had told her stepmother that I’d given her an ultimatum, either we had sex or it was all off between us. She was going to say no and wanted to do it to my face but was a bit scared. And then she’d vanished.”
“I thought you said she didn’t get on with her stepmother?”
“I said she couldn’t be a proper mother to her. Anyway, we’ve only her word for what was said. But the upshot was, suddenly I found myself sitting in front of a DCI hitting me with questions about whether she’d come to the cottage to break things off and I’d got angry and there’d been a fight and maybe there’d been an accident… He thought he was offering me an easy way out. I told him to sod off. God knows how it would have finished, but then things changed. Mary’s stepmother found some clothes were missing. And the following day she took a phone call from Mary. I’m OK. I’ll be in touch when I’m settled. Nothing more. There was no technology in those days to check where the call came from. Or even if it came at all. But it was enough for the CID. Now it was simply another runaway case. No crime, so I was no longer a suspect. Which was ironic, as I was the only policeman in the county who didn’t believe she’d done a runner.”
He shook his head and fell silent for almost a minute, rapt in his memories, till Sam, who had never been long on patience, rattled her teacup.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m talking too much about me. This should be a
bout you.”
“No, no,” said Sam. “I need to know what happened next.”
“That’s simple. I left Illthwaite. It’s funny, if we’d got married I’d have happily spent the rest of my days as the village bobby. As it was, Mary’s disappearance was the making of my career. A year later I transferred to CID. I was a natural. The trick-cyclists say a good detective will always have at least one case he keeps open in his mind long after it’s been closed in the files. I brought mine to the job with me.”
“And you’ve kept it open ever since.”
Sam tried to sound sympathetic but prevarication wasn’t her strong suit.
“You’re thinking that makes me a sad bastard, aren’t you?” he said, smiling. “I could have been, but I met a lass in Penrith. We got married, me and Alison. I never forgot Illthwaite, but it didn’t get in the way of having a life. If we’d had kids, or Alison had survived to share my retirement, I doubt if I’d ever have come back here. But we didn’t, and she didn’t. Cancer. God rest her.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sam.
“So am I, every day. She left a gap I filled with work. And when the work stopped, I had to find something else to fill that gap. When I saw the Authority was selling off Candle Cottage, it seemed like a message. So I bought the cottage, and came back here. Me versus Illthwaite, round two. First round Illthwaite won hands down. This time, I thought, it’s going to be different. If that’s sad, I’m sorry. But it’s kept me alive.”
“What about Mary?” asked Sam. “You get any nearer to finding out the truth?”
He smiled rather slyly and said, “Hard to say. Dick Croft died a few years later and the stepmother sold up and moved away. But I’m still here where everyone can see me. There’s two histories of Illthwaite, the official one, the kind that gets printed in books like Peter K.’s Guide. And the true history that only gets written in people’s minds. To read that you need to be around a long time. Passing through, you’ve got no chance.”
“Which is why you asked me here, right? To improve my chances?”
“I don’t know if I can, my dear, but if I can, I will. First you must tell me what it is you are truly seeking for.”
He settled back in his chair, fixed her with a keen unblinking gaze, and said quietly, “In your own time, my dear.”
8
A bag of stones
NOTHING HAD CHANGED, AT LEAST nothing you could factorize. But somehow it felt to Sam as if Melton had switched elderly eccentricity off and an interrogation tape on. She was beginning to think this wasn’t a guy to mess with. On the other hand, unless he started after her with a rubber truncheon, she saw no reason to give more detail than she’d already put on public record.
She said, “Like I said in the pub last night, I’m looking for information about my paternal grandmother. All I know is she was called Sam Flood, she came from England to Australia in spring 1960, and she might have some connection with Illthwaite.”
Melton took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and made a note.
He said, “Did she sail with other members of her family?”
“No. She was part of that Child Migrant Scheme there was all that fuss about when the details came out a few years back.”
“I remember,” he said. “Isn’t there a Trust that gives advice and help?”
“Tried them. Nothing positive.”
Not directly anyway, and it seemed best to keep things direct.
“Have you found anything to support this possible connection since you got here?”
“Only the name Sam Flood carved on the churchyard wall.”
He showed no reaction, which must mean he’d known about it too.
“It struck me as odd that no one made any reference to it,” she went on. “But I’ve just been talking to that guy Thor Winander and he filled me in on the story and now I guess I can see why people don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yes, he tells a good tale, Mr. Winander,” murmured Melton. “So now you’re happy it’s just coincidence? Mission accomplished? No link?”
She thought about this then said, “Almost. But once you write stuff on the board you can’t just scrub it off.”
He looked puzzled then said, “Are we talking mathematics here?”
“That’s right. Sometimes you do a calculation on a blackboard. Blackboards are good because it means you can see the whole thing at once. Most calculations aren’t aimed at finding something out but at arriving somewhere you want to be. But you don’t always get there. Maybe you’ve gone wrong. Maybe you started in the wrong place. But even if you wipe the board clean, all that stuff’s still in your mind to go over again and again, maybe for years, maybe forever. Sorry, does that sound crazy?”
“Sounds like good detective work to me,” he said, going to a tall mahogany bureau that occupied almost the whole of one wall. From his pocket he took a bunch of keys attached to his belt by a chain. He used three of the keys to unlock the bureau cupboard doors which swung open to reveal lines of files and a stack of cardboard boxes.
“My blackboards,” he said. “Nowadays it would be disks, but I’m a paper man.”
He removed one of the files then dragged out a box which seemed too heavy to lift. He sat down and opened the file on his knee.
“Samuel Joseph Flood. Appointed curate of St. Ylf’s in August 1960. Found drowned in Mecklin Moss in March 1961. Inquest held in April… Here we are.”
He took out a folder which held some typewritten A4 sheets stapled together.
“What is that stuff?” demanded Sam, impressed.
“Record of the inquest.”
Jesus, when he said he had connections, he meant connections.
“How’d you get a hold of that?”
He said, “I told you. I was Head of CID for fifteen years. All cases of sudden death came under my remit. Any linked to Illthwaite I took a personal interest in.”
She was starting to think there was something just a bit scary about Noddy Melton. Not the scariness of insanity, maybe, though it might have something to do with its near cousin, obsession. But if it prompted him to help her, why knock it?
“Now, what do we have?” he asked, studying the report. “Canceled Bible class that afternoon. It was a Sunday. At two o’clock the vicar, Mr. Swinebank, took Sunday School with the younger kids in church while at three Flood held a Bible class for the eleven-pluses in the church room attached to the vicarage. That day the kids found a notice on the door saying the class was canceled… no one much bothered till he failed to turn up for evensong… the vicar might have got worried a bit sooner but he was distracted by a family emergency… checked Mr. Flood’s room in the vicarage after the evening service… no sign… reported his concern to PC Greenwood circa 7.30 P.M…. Greenwood mounted a search but soon had to call it off because of darkness and foul weather…”
“PC Greenwood? Your successor?”
“Next but one. The one that followed me didn’t take, so they got him moved.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The power brokers — Woollasses, the vicar, Joe Appledore at the Stranger — ”
“You mentioned him before. What’s his relationship to Mrs. Appledore?”
“Joe was her father.”
“Then why’s she called Mrs.?”
“It seems she went off to catering college in Lancashire. Did her course, fell for one of her tutors, they got wed and set up in business down there. When her dad died she and her man — Buckle was his name — came and took over the Stranger. I gather Buckle didn’t like it round here. He wanted to sell up and move back south. That can’t have gone down well. There’s been Appledores running the Stranger for centuries and they don’t like change in Illthwaite. But, to general relief, he died before anything was decided. Heart attack. They said. So Edie stayed put. Pretty soon folk were back to calling her Appledore, with the Mrs. tagged on in acknowledgment she was a widow.”
“Weird,” said Sam. “What about her mother?�
�
“Died when Edie was fourteen. After that she ran the house and helped out in the pub.”
“With all that hands-on experience, why did she need to go to catering college?”
“Good question,” said Melton approvingly. “Story is she had a disappointment. Round here that can mean anything from cut out of a will to crossed in love. Anyway, same result, she almost got away, but the tendrils snaked out and pulled her back in.”
Like you, thought Sam.
“You were telling me about the local power brokers?” she prompted him.
“Oh yes. A lot of voices, but ultimately it’s the Woollasses who really make things happen. Local power’s nothing unless you’ve a line to the big power sources outside. Committees, dinners, charities, old-boy networks, that sort of thing. Upshot was that in the end they got the kind of policeman they wanted. Sandy Greenwood. Stayed here for nigh on twenty years till they pulled the plug on village bobbies.”
“So he’d know the patch pretty well?”
“He’d know which farm would dish up the best tatie-pot and how many free pints he could sup after hours at the Stranger and still be able to cycle home,” said Melton scornfully. “Likely if they’d told him not to worry about the curate going missing he’d have done nothing. But people were worried. The missing man was very popular. It was established that there’d been three sightings. One as he came out of the vicarage gate, the next along the main road through the village, the third and last on Stanebank, the track that leads up by the Forge and the Hall. If you keep going where the track bends round to Foulgate, you get to Mecklin Moss. First thing next morning the search was concentrated up there, and about nine o’clock a cross belonging to Flood was found. They kept on looking and the body was recovered at quarter to eleven.”
“Poor bastard,” said Sam. “And he’d definitely drowned himself?”
“Didn’t seem any doubt. No note, but they found that Flood’s pockets were filled with stones. I’ve got them here.”
Out of the box he pulled a Hessian sack which he opened to let Sam see inside. It was filled with smooth rounded stones, black and white and gold and ruddy brown.
The Stranger House Page 16