He leaned forward and peered at her intently, his cruel eyes searching for any sign of recognition, of recollection. She remained impassive.
She remembered many things though, dear Maurice. How he had spied on the other children, reporting their misbehaviours to either herself or Augustus. And she also remembered what she and Maurice had done to the young teacher whose prettiness was marred by the ugliness of her withered arm. Oh, they had taken good care of her, the prying, interfering little wretch, but it was Maurice who had killed her, creeping up behind the silly girl and bashing in her head with one of the stouter logs piled on the boiler-room floor for winter fires.
‘You remember what we did to the teacher, Magda? How we killed her next door to the cellar? I was, shall we say, agitated afterwards, but then I was a mere child of twelve years. You took charge, you knew what had to be done to conceal the crime. We carried Nancy Linnet’s body back into the cellar and dropped it into the well. You were brisk and efficient, utterly cold – if there was any trepidation, you hid it from me.’
Yes, she had hidden her panic: she’d had to be strong for Augustus, she could not allow him to be betrayed. It was only at the very end, on the night of the fierce storm, that she’d had to desert her brother in his madness. She had fled with the boy, Maurice Stafford, braving the storm because they were too afraid of Augustus to stay, terrified that in his insanity he would turn on them.
‘The game was up that last night, we both knew it. Augustus could no longer be protected from the outsiders, the snoopers, the government people – he had gone too far. In the end, he wreaked havoc, didn’t he?’
Those street urchins only had themselves to blame! They were bad boys and girls, incorrigibly wayward! They had planned to run away from Crickley Hall that night and they had to be stopped!
Magda sat perfectly still on her hard chair.
But in the end it was she and Maurice who had run away.
‘We defied the storm and reached the train station. We sat on the platform bench, bowed and shivering, until the next morning when the storm had ceased and all was calm once more. But when the train came along, quite early, you refused to get on it with me. You had sunk into yourself, Magda. You refused to speak and you wouldn’t be moved. At the last moment I caught the train myself. Your face was as expressionless as it is now. Like stone. I could tell you how I survived in the city on my own for almost a year before I found someone to take me in, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t mean a thing to you.’
He rose to his feet.
‘You really are mad, aren’t you?’ he said.
Certainly not. She was just . . . just cautious, that was all. She could talk if she wanted to, couldnt she? Of course she could. It was safer this way, though. They left her alone now, didn’t even try to coax her to speak. To confess. Oh, she could talk all right, but this way was best. This way they thought she knew nothing and could tell nothing. Hah! Fools, all of them.
‘You’re harmless, I can see. I came today because I was curious after all these years. I saw you once – what was it, thirty years ago? – when they kept you in a locked cell, and you were as silent as you are now. You’ve grown old, Magda. You must be at least ninety-three, ninety-five? I don’t suppose you even remember me and I doubt you remember anything about those days in Crickley Hall.’
He walked to the door, paused and turned back to regard her.
‘Let me assure you,’ he said with a faint smile, ‘I’ve never forgotten Augustus Theophilus Cribben and all the things he – and you, Magda – taught me. I hear his call even now. He won’t be denied, do you know that?’
Magda refused to look at him. She went on staring at the blank wall.
‘At least, Magda, you seem to be at peace in your lunacy.’
The visitor left the room.
A lunatic? Yes, perhaps she was. Perhaps all the years of silence had finally made her that way.
But she wasn’t as mad as Maurice. His madness shone from his eyes.
Magda listened to his footsteps fade away. Inwardly she smiled, but her face did not change expression. Someone might be watching.
53: THE MORTUARY
Detective Inspector Kim Michael was waiting for Gabe at the mortuary entrance, which was in the basement of a huge teaching hospital. They shook hands in a perfunctory manner, both men wanting to get through the ordeal of viewing the body as quickly as possible.
DI Michael was just below average height but fit-looking, with dark-brown hair and intelligent greeny-brown eyes that softened his tough features. From experience Gabe knew the policeman was a good listener, whose sound advice and quiet encouragement had helped Eve and Gabe through the bad times after Cam’s disappearance. He looked at Gabe sympathetically now.
‘How was the journey?’ he asked as he led the engineer down along sloping corridor with pale two-tone green walls.
‘I used the motorways, made good time, although the rain didn’t help,’ Gabe replied.
DI Michael nodded. He stopped before black plastic swingdoors, pushing open one side and ushering Gabe through. The engineer found himself in another but broader corridor with doors left and right, all of them closed except one, the nearest.
‘I’ve got the clothes ready for you,’ the detective said, indicating the open doorway. ‘Let’s see how you do with them before we try anything else.’
Gabe entered and found himself in a viewing room, along plain table on one side, a few metal chairs set against another wall. To his right was an interior window, the drapes behind the glass closed. It was a viewing window and he wondered if the child’s corpse was already lying there beyond the curtains. There was a door beside the window.
On the long table was a semi-clear plastic bag in which items of clothing were bundled. Gabe could just make out a faded reddish jumper lying on a blue anorak.
DI Michael went to the bag and began to pull the rumpled clothing out, laying each item along the table. The woollen jumper was ragged and now closer to pink in colour; when Cam had worn it, the jumper was a vivid red. Gabe almost choked. There were holes where the wool had unravelled or had been nibbled by scavenging fish. He managed to get a grip on himself before moving on to the blue anorak. The colour had paled but it was truer to its original tone than the woollen jumper. Next to this was a tiny vest that had been white but was now a dirty grey, as were the small underpants close by. The material of both was torn and punctured as though river fish had gnawed through to get at the meat beneath. That image caused Gabe to waver and the detective held on to his arm to steady him.
Gabe forced himself to continue looking. The little pair of shrunken jeans came next; they were so drained of colour they were almost white in places.
‘As I told you on the phone,’ Kim Michael said, ‘the shoes are missing, but I forgot to say the socks were gone too. We think the underwater currents took them away. As far as the pathologist can tell, there are no signs of violence on the body before drowning.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure as we can be after all this time . . .’
Gabe could not tear his eyes away from the shrunken, damaged garments displayed on the table. He wanted to sink to his knees before them and wail his son’s name, wanted to scream denial. But there was no doubt – the clothing had been Cameron’s. Now, as if to confirm the gut-wrenching truth of it, he noticed the tiny crocodile logo stitched to the jumper’s chest, some of the stitching broken, the crocodile no longer green but a colourless smudge with only the outline defined. Cam had loved that little cartoon emblem.
‘Gabe?’ DI Michael had dropped his hand away from the engineer’s arm, but he angled his head, trying to look into Gabe’s downcast eyes. Gabe knew what was expected of him.
‘The clothes belong to Cam,’ he said without apparent emotion.
‘You’re sure?’
He nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
‘If you are certain, there’s no need to see the body.’
‘I got to.’
Gabe nodded towards the interior window. ‘He’s in there, isn’t he, Kim?’
‘Yes, he’s there. But I’m telling you, there’s no need to see the body itself.’
‘I don’t want to see the body,’ Gabe replied grimly. ‘I just want to see the hands.’
Gabe slowly sank down onto Cam’s small bed, leaned his elbows on his knees and cupped his face in his hands. He was still numb from the shock of finally accepting his son really was dead, that there was no more hope, that their little boy was gone for ever.
With its Shrek posters, brightly patterned wallpaper and robust transporters and the like spilling from an open pine chest, the cheerfulness of the room belied the desolate mood of its occupant. A Lion King mobile hanging from the overhead light-fitting stirred only slightly in the draught he had caused by entering the room. Early evening shadows gradually deepened and cohered as he sat there, his heart a dead weight, his thoughts dulled by the trauma of unbearable truth.
At the mortuary, Gabe and DI Michael had gone through to the room where Cam’s poor decomposed body was laid out beneath the green sheet. Horribly, a few strands of hair – blond hair that had been bleached white by the dirty shifting waters – protruded from one end of the sheet and Gabe had forced himself to look away, to concentrate on the only parts of the body he needed to see. The mortician who had accompanied them had been considerate; he had pulled up the cover so that the exposed hair was concealed. Then carefully, after instructions from the detective, the man had folded back both sides of the green cloth, revealing the corpse’s hands and arms.
Gabe had felt nauseous and horrified when he saw the skeletal fingers, scraps of corrupted flesh still clinging to the digits and the wrist. He had sucked in a sharp breath when he compared the little fingers of both hands and found the one on the right was shorter than the one on the left.
He had wanted to see no more than that, but the temptation to draw back the sheet and reveal the whole of the body was almost irresistible. It was Kim Michael, as if reading Gabe’s mind, who deterred him. He tugged gently at the engineer’s elbow and led him back to the viewing room next door. Gabe knew he would always be grateful to Kim for that: full sight of Cam’s despoiled little body would have haunted him for ever. He officially identified the corpse as Cameron Caleigh, then left the mortuary and drove to his Canonbury home.
Ringing Eve was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, but unexpectedly she had not broken down or become hysterical; rather she had taken the news calmly, as if he were telling her something she already knew so it was no shock. He realized her denial this past year had been a sham, something she would never admit even to herself especially to herself. Part of her had rejected the idea that Cam was dead, but another, deeper, part of her, had already accepted his fate.
He sat on Cam’s small bed, with its gaily patterned duvet, its pale blue pillow, and his emotions began to surge, to rise to the surface, overwhelming that numbness he felt, finally bursting through so that his chest spasmed, his shoulders shuddered, and the tears he had held back for so long flooded his eyes and wet his cupped hands. It was as if at last he had been given permission to grieve properly.
He remained weeping for his dead son until the room’s darkness was almost complete.
54: MAURICE STAFFORD
Sam Pennelly, landlord of the Barnaby Inn, wiped the bar counter with a teacloth, surveying the room as he did so. It was all very well keeping the pub open all day, but where was the trade? Two customers, that’s what he’d had since three o’clock. Old Reggie (as he was known) with his halves of bitter, each one lasting at least an hour before he ordered another, was sitting there in his regular place by the fire, cloth cap and muffler still in place but his storm coat laid over a chair opposite. Because he was long retired, Old Reggie spent most afternoons and evenings in the Barnaby, ready to engage anyone who gave him a greeting in conversation, but most of the time content to sit alone and no doubt reminisce about the old days. Earlier, when he’d ordered his first half-bitter, he had complained about the inclement weather, likening it to 1943 when Old Reggie was just a nipper and the constant rainfall had caused the Great Flood. Sam didn’t like such talk – it made his other customers edgy, afeared it might happen again.
‘Can’t resist the force of nature,’ the old boy had remarked glumly as he’d handed over the exact amount for the beer. Mebbe he was right, but there was no cause to go alarming people. Some villagers were even talking about moving out, going to stay with relatives or friends on safer ground until the downpours had passed, but Sam saw no sense in that, not when it meant he might lose his regular customers. In any case, the widened estuary and fortified embankments would see the village all right if a flood ever occurred again.
He wiped his hands on the teacloth and his eyes wandered to the bar’s other solitary customer, who sat at a small corner table. The man seemed thoughtful too, mebbe reminiscing like Old Reggie.
Sam was glad of his custom. Large brandies, the man drank, and he’d had two since he’d arrived. The landlord frowned. He hadn’t said much to his customer, just the usual pleasantries when the first Hennessy had been ordered, no more than a polite welcome and a short exchange about the foul weather, but Sam had thought he recognized the man. Couldn’t place him, though.
It came to him then. The man was an infrequent visitor to the inn, dropping by once or, at the most, twice a year. Sam only remembered him because he always had the same tipple: a double brandy, always a Hennessy, and never with ice or soda. Yes, the man had been coming in for a few years now, always as a stranger because of the length of time between visits. Not one for conversation, Sam recollected, just a ‘good day’ and a ‘thank you’ when he took his drink.
Without a newspaper or book to read, Sam’s occasional customer seemed to be concentrating on the glass of brandy before him on the small round table. He was certainly lost in thought. He had a half-smile on his face.
Maurice Stafford was hardly aware of the coppery-gold liquid in the tumbler. His fingers encircled the bowled glass and he leaned his elbows on the tabletop, but although he gazed into the brandy, his thoughts were on other things. Like the old man who sat by the pub’s warm fire, he was sifting through his memories, remembering a different era . . .
Most of the evacuees had been collected by the LCC (London County Council) from meeting points at schools, orphanages and town halls all over south London and brought by coach (or charabanc, as they used to be called, Maurice reflected with a faint smile) or bus to Paddington railway station, while a few had been taken there directly by fretful and remorseful mothers. Hundreds of children were gathered on the station’s great concourse, all with identity labels attached to collars or coat buttons, gas-mask boxes hung around their necks, a few possessions in cardboard suitcases or brown paper parcels tied with string. Ministry of Health and Board of Education officials were in charge of the mass exodus of children, and they were fraught with disorganization and noise.
Maurice stood and waited with nine others from the same orphanage. None of them were crying like many of the evacuees, because they had no family from which to be parted. In truth, the ten of them regarded the evacuation as an exciting adventure. At the last moment, another boy joined them, hurriedly brought there by two members of the RCM (Refugee Children’s Movement). Documents were checked by officials before the five-year-old boy, Stefan Rosenbaum from Poland, was formally handed over. After the first evacuee-laden trains had departed the station, the eleven orphans were herded towards an already crowded carriage and put on board. One of the older orphans, a girl called Susan Trainer, had immediately taken charge of the overwhelmed Polish boy, holding his hand tightly and calming him with soft words he did not understand.
A
fter a long journey, the eleven orphans were taken off the train by their adult guardians at a town none of them had ever heard of in North Devon, and from the small rustic station a yellow bus carried them to a house in Hollow Bay called Crickley Hall, where they were cheerlessly greeted by their new custodians, Augustus Theophilus Cribben and his sister Magda.
Cribben was openly furious at the addition of the Polish refugee, while Magda was plainly hostile towards him. They had not been expecting the boy. The guardian, who had accompanied the children from London, explained that it had been a last-minute arrangement. Stefan’s parents had been shot when they tried to flee Poland with their son, and he had been brought over to England by other escapees and turned over to the authorities. The boy was shy and spoke very little English.
Cribben had gone through the relevant papers concerning Stefan’s status with a fine-toothed comb before reluctantly accepting the boy into his care. He had stated his disapproval of the situation forcefully and the temporary guardian looked relieved to get away at last.
On that first day, and despite the long journey the children had made, the harsh regime began. They were immediately ordered to wash themselves, two at a time in the house’s one bathroom. A waterline was marked in the bathtub of three inches rather than the government’s water-saving limit of five inches. The tepid water was only changed twice during the bathing and Magda supervised it from a chair on the landing outside the bathroom, issuing orders through the open doorway. Even Maurice, who was considerably bigger and older than the other boys, had to share the bath, as did Susan Trainer, who at eleven was the eldest girl.
After the communal bathing, it was nit-seeking time. Magda carried out the searching with a metal comb. Then everybody’s hair was cut short, the boys having a pudding basin placed on their heads to set a line for the barber’s clippers that Magda used, the hair up to that line so short that the lower scalp and back of the neck was exposed to the air. The boys looked ridiculous and the girls fared not much better – they had to have short bob-cuts that just covered their ears. As well as a toothbrush each and a spare set of underwear, the LCC had provided the orphans with black plimsolls, which they were ordered not to wear inside the house (which would be for most of the time, their only outings being the Sunday-morning visit to the local church) so that they would not leave scuff marks on the floors and stairs, nor make undue noise.
The Secret of Crickley Hall Page 35