The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense)

by D. M. Mitchell

  “But who were these men you speak of? The ones that pushed Jowan’s father to his death? They must be brought to justice if what you say is true.”

  “That’s it, Reverend. I recognised a couple of them. They were Mr Hendra’s men, in his hire at the time.”

  Biddle’s head cocked to one side, his eyes widening at the inference. “Do you know what it is you say?”

  “All I’m saying, sir, is that it ain’t right that the man’s being blamed for this, and Mr Hendra’s all but shouting it from the headland to anyone that will listen that young Jowan is guilty. His word is law around here. For too long it has remained so. If anyone can speak to him and help put this right, it’s you, Reverend.” He slapped his hat back on and went to the door.

  “Wait!”

  “I’ve said too much already. Remember,” he said, his face shaded by the brim of his hat, “do not let on who told you. I have your word as a man of God.”

  And with that he left Biddle contemplating what had just been revealed. At that moment the tripod slid down and clunked against the clock case. A deep, soulful chime, like the tolling of a distant bell, echoed around the room.

  * * * *

  Tunny sat and stared at the empty chair, the very chair Keziah had been in when she received his instructions. He ran a scraggy hand across his face. His mind was in turmoil, his very beliefs now tested to their limit. He felt that all through his life he had been living a lie, that he had been betrayed by the one person he had trusted. He could not bear to think that he had been nothing more than Yardarm’s cruel tool, and that his overwhelming desire to believe in the Baccan legend had been used in some way to put the blame of murder on an innocent man. If this were true, then what kind of a man was he; he that purported to have the interests of others at heart? Was there another innocent man being held prisoner, in danger of his life because of him? What should he do? He groaned deeply.

  There was a sharp rapping at the door. He opened it to Jenna Hendra. She did not wait for an invite but brushed by him and stood in the centre of the room with her arms folded.

  “Come in,” he said sullenly. “You wanted to see me?”

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  He gave a shrug. “Fire your bullets, Miss Hendra. I will not be a moving target.”

  “How could you? Jowan is kept tied like an animal, accused of murder, and all because you continue to pedal those absurd, old-fashioned and quite ludicrous stories. This has to stop, Tunny. I insist you hold that tongue of yours. Jowan is innocent.”

  “You are young, Miss Hendra. You are of the age when you think you know the answers to everything. It is so easy for you to dismiss all with a swipe of your finely manicured hand. There is still much for you to learn.” He motioned to a chair. Again, the one Keziah had sat in. “Please, Miss Hendra, take a seat.”

  She remained fixed, arms crossed, face pale and cold. “I have no intention of staying, Tunny. I only wish to say that I will do all in my power to discredit you, to drive you from Porthgarrow if need be. I will not stand for it. Your tales have damaged lives and continue to do so. ”

  He did not rise to her bait, but calmly nodded, indicating the chair again. She gave a grunt, turned and sat brusquely down. He sat opposite her, his eyes staring somewhere to the left of his boot. “I believe Jowan to be innocent too,” he said quietly. “And, I add in my defence, I am not the one who sent men to have him beaten, to drive him away. I am not the one who lays the blame for Keziah’s death at his door. For this you need to look closer to home.” She shuffled uncomfortably at this. He drew in a breath that rattled in his throat. “More than that, I have the suspicion his father also took the blame for something he did not do.”

  She gasped, her arms finally unfolding slowly, her body leaning forward. “You do? Why? What makes you say this now, after all this time?”

  He raised a hand, his fingers moving to rub the loose skin at his temple. “I have been much troubled, Miss Hendra. Much troubled by what I have recently learnt. It has thrown many of my beliefs into the air. You do not know how it pains me to say all this.” His eyes steeled again. “But I will not, like you, readily dismiss everything that I know – that I feel.” He jabbed a thumb to his heart. His mind went back to what passed through him when he gripped Gerran Hendra’s resisting wrist. The future he saw played out for him.

  “That does not excuse the harm you have caused.”

  His pale, watery eyes were rimmed with red, as if he had not slept for days. “That is true enough. There are no excuses but that whatever I did I did in the best interests of the people of Porthgarrow.”

  Seeing his crestfallen face, like stony ground blown dry by a harsh wind, she softened a little. “You said you have come into possession of knowledge that has changed your mind about Jowan’s father…”

  A lone gull wailed agonizingly overhead and his chin rose a little to the chilling sound. “On the night of the murder young Jowan was at my sister’s house. She was told to look after him, keep him there. She never thought much about it, for it is common practice for children to be looked after by others in the village.”

  Her smooth brow crumpled into a frown. “His mother must have had a good reason to want to send him to your sister. Perhaps she anticipated something terrible happening.”

  “Yet fail to protect the baby too, which remained in the cottage? In any event, Miss Hendra, I have recently found out that she didn’t ask my sister to fetch him; it was John Carbis, your father’s secretary, who came to my sister to tell her to go and take Jowan from the cottage.”

  Her eyes widened. “The same man that gave Jowan this old key…” She reached into a pocket in her coat and produced the ancient-looking iron key still threaded with its necklace of string. She had been to the ruins and searched frantically in the long grass for it. “Then it is the case that Mrs Connoch instructed this John Carbis to ask your sister.”

  He averted his eyes. “No, Miss Hendra, it was your father who gave the order to John Carbis.”

  She thought hard about this for a moment. “I don’t understand. Why would father want such a thing? Was he trying to protect Jowan, from his own father perhaps?”

  “It is a possibility, Miss Hendra. I cannot make sense of it.” His fingers knitted together before him. “We have but one thing in common, John Carbis and I. We were both sent by your father – he to my sister to have the child Jowan removed from the cottage; and me to find his father and tell him to leave Porthgarrow forever or face prison. Instead I find the body with Jowan kneeling over it. I never questioned this before, but now I wonder why he sent me, of all people, to tell him.”

  “Because the common people listen to you.”

  “Jowan hated me with a vengeance, as I loathed all Connochs. He would have taken the message badly enough, but coming from me it would have been like poison to him.”

  He saw the blood drain from the young woman’s cheeks, her lips pale. “What is it you imply, Tunny?”

  He delivered a heavy sigh. “The more I think on it the more I cannot shake off the thought that I was sent by your father not simply to give Jowan his ultimatum, but that he had other motives besides.”

  She rose to her feet sharply and in her hardening features he saw plainly those of her father. “You are a spiteful man, Tunny. You never tire of spreading malicious rumours and untruths. So now you accuse my father of being involved with the murder? That is preposterous! He is my father; he would never be party to such a thing, for he is a kind and gentle man!” Then her hand went unconsciously to her bruised cheek and she became aware of Tunny watching the movement. “Why do you seek to ruin him with these tales?”

  He shook his head. “I only wish to find out the truth. I accuse no one, Miss Hendra. But it has troubled me ever since Jowan came to see me. I am now no longer certain what happened that night thirteen years ago and I need to know. No one was brought to trial for the murder; everyone was convinced Jowan had done it. I played my part in helpi
ng everyone believe that. But, as his son says, what if he were innocent? Then what really happened that night?”

  “If that were the case the killer would still be at large.” She ran fingers through her hair as she paced the room in agitation. “Do you suppose it is a possibility the same person might have killed Keziah?”

  “I am not convinced that young Jowan murdered her, Connoch or no. But do you not think it strange that your father fans the flames of blame so strongly? He is the one who ordered Jowan to be kept a prisoner. He also had a hand in trying to force Jowan out of the village. Why is this?”

  “That is wild is speculation on your part. My father is no brute.”

  But Jenna recalled the burning anger in her father’s eyes when she spoke of Jowan; his insistence she never speak to him again. Yet if she were honest there was also a look of crippling fear beneath the anger. “He has been acting strange of late,” she said quietly, staring silently at the cold, rusting metal of the key sitting large in the palm of her hand. “This is supposed to be the key to the Jacobite Bolt. Jowan cast it away in anger when I told him it did not exist anymore. After speaking with him I have been to the ruins and retrieved it.”

  “Jowan spoke of this Jacobite Bolt but it did not mean anything to me.”

  “It is an old escape tunnel long thought lost with the building of the new stables. But I believe it is still there, beneath a locked trapdoor to which I am certain this is the key.” She looked up at him. “I do not believe my father was involved in that ghastly murder, but I think he is in some kind of trouble now. For some obscure reason the Jacobite Bolt is at the centre of all this. I intend to find and go down this Bolt.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  She appraised him cautiously but his expression was one of sadness. He looked frail and worn out.

  “Meet me at the stables tonight. Wait till dusk. Do not tell anyone about any of this. Bring a lantern with you but do not light it. You should be very careful not be seen by anyone at the house.”

  “And if the Bolt truly does not exist?” he asked.

  She rose, smoothed down her dress and placed the key firmly in her pocket. “It exists,” she said with certainty. “That’s where the truth to all this lies and I will find it out, so help me God.”

  * * * *

  16

  Generations Long Dead

  Shards of firelight flickered and danced in his brandy glass; tiny deformed demons that gyrated to a silent, devilish symphony. He swallowed the amber liquid, draining the glass, and it lingered hot in his throat. But the firelight demons were still there, still dancing, still mocking.

  Gerran Hendra stooped forward, grasped a bottle in uncertain fingers and slopped more brandy into his glass. A small puddle spread on the table around it. He did not pause to muse on the demons this time. He drank deep, his lips parting from the rim of the glass and exhaling a profound sigh; he had not touched a drop of alcohol since the night his wife had died. Since Jenna was born. For on that night he had been out late, drinking with business partners, securing investments, whilst at home his wife was screaming in labour. He arrived back at the house in the early hours, with cheeks flushed red and bearing good news for the future of his business an his growing family. But the house was in sombre mood, the maid turning from him in tears. The doctor came to him and told him that the baby girl was alive and well, but something in his grey demeanour spoke of darker things. His dear wife was dead. He could not believe, refused to believe, and rushed to her still, pale form lying in bed, sitting beside her and shaking her shoulders till the doctor gently pulled him away. In a crib by the bed his new daughter cried, and he lifted the tiny bundle to his chest and wept.

  Hendra looked at the hand that cradled the bowl of the brandy glass. A huge hand that had once cradled the head of his newborn daughter. The same hand that had struck her viciously across the cheek. His head sank, his eyes closing tiredly, but he knew he could not sleep. Though his body craved the warmth of its embrace he had been cruelly denied this for days now. Almost as if he were being punished. Yet he could not argue against this for he was deserving of it. No one could punish him more than he had already punished himself.

  Why was it so cold, he thought? Why, when it should be the tail end of summer still? And the storm, the cliff fall – was there a mighty hand at play here, directed fully against him? He drank the last drops from the glass, and as he bent to refill it again a knock came at the door.

  His boulder of a head turned. “Go away!” he yelled. “I told you…”

  Reverend Biddle was standing in the doorway. He slowly closed the door behind him. “Gerran, what are you doing, sitting here all alone in this tiny room, in the dark?”

  He continued to fill the glass whilst Biddle watched silently. “It is no business of yours. Please go away, Marcus, and leave me in peace.”

  Biddle went over to the fireplace. A small, smouldering block of wood had fallen onto the hearth, close to the edge. He nudged it back with the toe of his boot. He regarded Hendra with his hands behind his back. “You are drinking,” he noticed, not with malice or accusation but quietly spoken.

  “I cannot argue with the facts,” he fired abruptly.

  He removed his glasses, absently inspecting the lenses. “What is wrong, Gerran? You have not been yourself of late.”

  The brandy did not hit his mouth as it first had; it was all but tasteless. But the glass partly masked Biddle, shielded him from the man, so he held it there, sipping the alcohol. At length, when the silence between them became too oppressive, he wiped his lips with a drag of his index finger and said: “I am truly sorry about your equipment, Marcus. I will replace it.”

  He shrugged, slipping the glasses back on his nose and adjusting them for comfort. “Material things can be repaired or replaced, Gerran, but friendships are less easily restored. And we have been friends for many years, have we not?” He didn’t respond. “And I am here as a friend, to help you.”

  “I do not need your help. I am beyond that commodity.” Biddle remained quiet, and at length Hendra shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, placing the glass on the table. “My life has been a long and hard fight, Marcus. You know of my beginnings. I started out in this world with nothing, born kicking and screaming into a poor fisherman’s cottage, but I worked all the hours God gave me, and I dragged myself out of the mire of poverty.”

  “Something you should be justifiably proud of, Gerran.”

  “I vowed my family would never have to suffer as I did. They would never know hunger, feel the cold.”

  “It is a common and praiseworthy ambition.” Biddle’s eyes strayed to a mahogany desk by the window, its surface covered with paper. It was unlike him, he thought; he was generally such a tidy man.

  Hendra followed his gaze. “How many years I have sat here poring over the accounts,” he said miserably, “keeping the business afloat.”

  Biddle went over to the desk. He noticed a drawer was partially open. Within he saw the distinctive shape of a pistol.

  “What is troubling you, Gerran?” he asked, slowly sliding the drawer shut. “You can confide in me.” He turned to see the man reaching for the bottle again, his hand trembling as he did so, fumbling and all but knocking it over. “Gerran, must you?” he said.

  He hesitated. Fingers poised by the neck of the bottle. He grabbed it and poured more brandy into his glass. “Yes,” he said. “I must.”

  Biddle took the glass from him as it touched his lips. “You have had enough, Gerran.”

  His eyes flared angrily. “You will not tell me when I have had enough, by God!” He made a movement to grab the glass back but held himself in check and sank resignedly into his chair. “Forgive me. Forgive me…”

  “You are in some kind of trouble, my friend. Please, let me help you.”

  His bloodless lips wavered. “I am ruined, Marcus,” he said. “Everything I have worked for reduced to dust.”

  “You are feeling maudlin, that’s all. T
he events of today have been most disheartening and downing this vile brew is not going to help matters.”

  “No, trust what I say, I am ruined.” His fingers rubbed his closed eyes. “Why do you think I have been trying to marry Jenna off to some wealthy gentleman? Because I wish to see her married, given away to another man? No, because I wish to save the business. The last few years have been hard for me. I have borrowed heavily and beyond my means to keep the business going. Now I have no more investors, and my creditors hound me for their pound of flesh. The storm has destroyed hundreds of pounds worth of equipment, which I am unable to replace. And this business of the murdered girl has been the final straw. Now the men refuse to work and each day costs me more than I will ever be able to recoup. I am bankrupt, Marcus.” He indicated the room. “All this, everything, will be sold off and I will finish my days as a pauper. And Jenna, what of her? What future for her now?” He shook his head solemnly. “She wanted to invest in more modern equipment, did you know? She has a good head on her shoulders but I could not indulge her ideas.”

  “She does not know?”

  “Of course not. I thought I might be able to haul us out of this slough, before she found out, but I have failed.” The logs in the grate filled the silence with sparks and cracks. “The police were here,” he continued, “asking their questions. They have taken Jowan, you know, and the body of the girl.”