So instead of grieving she had kept herself busy, tidying the house, washing the kitchen floor (so much mud trodden in because of the mucky weather), making the beds, laying new fires in the sitting room and the great hall, anything to keep herself occupied. It wasn’t that she didn’t think of Cam – his lovely face was a constant image on the screen of her mind, but only partially formed; it was when she closed her eyes that all the colours and features of his face were filled in. She was coping, that was all she could say of herself, but she did not know how long it would last. Until her emotions filled to spilling point once more, she supposed.
Right now, she was preparing her daughters’ evening meal while they rested (their crying seemed to have left both girls utterly worn out). As she checked the softness of the boiling potatoes with a sharp knife, she heard the rumbling of distant thunder. Crossing over to the kitchen sink, she leaned forward and peered out of the window.
It was too dark to see much outside but when, after a few seconds, sheet lightning stuttered along the gorge, she saw the swing beneath the big oak rocking from side to side, pitched by strong winds. The bridge was lit up too, and the boiling river that passed under it. Disconcertingly, the water level was high, almost brimming over the top of the riverbank. The sight made her drop the knife into the sink.
The thunder that followed the lightning was much louder now, as if it were rolling round the gorge itself, and its noise made Eve cringe. Gabe. She needed Gabe to be with her. But she had urged him not to drive all the way back from London. He would be weary with all the travelling, plus he must still be shocked, having had to identify Cam’s little body (he hadn’t told her how their son looked, but she realized that after a year in the water – No! she mustn’t think of that, she mustn’t try to picture the condition his body would be in!). She insisted that her mind should stay on Gabe. All she knew was that she needed him here, with her and the children. But he shouldn’t drive, not all that way, not in this weather. Would he see sense and stay in London?
A fierce gust of wind shook the window and kitchen door, causing Eve to take an involuntary step backwards.
She heard other parts of the house creak, contracting timbers, storm-battered windows, the oaken front door shifting on its hinges. Eve hated this place. Even though it was she who tried to persuade Gabe to stay, she loathed Crickley Hall for what it was: a morgue in which eleven children had perished along with their cruel guardian. You could almost feel the house’s pitiful history . . .
She gave a little shudder. So cold, always so cold here.
The lights suddenly dipped, brightened, dipped again, then became bright once more.
Oh, please no, Eve thought almost drily, please don’t let the power blow. That’s all we need on a night like this.
She jumped when a loud crash came from the hall. Walking quickly to the kitchen’s inner door, she went out into the hall to see what had made the racket. It happened again, but this time she saw the cause.
The cellar door had swung open, its edge hitting the wood-panelled wall behind. The door began to swing back in rebound, but it stopped halfway and was thrown wide again.
Eve hurried forward, shoes briskly clattering on the stone floor. She caught the door just as it was about to repeat the process and smash into the wall behind it. Holding it still, she looked into the dark cavernous cellar below, the draught that came up the steps from the well strong enough to ruffle her hair. It was silly, but to her the dense blackness there seemed to be pressing upwards as though riding the current of chilled air.
Eve closed the door and locked it, even though she knew it wouldn’t stay shut. The key was icy to her touch.
60: THE KILLING
Maurice Stafford had decided another Hennessy was in order – but no more after this one, didn’t want his breath to stink of alcohol when he went up to the house – and he had brought it back to his cosy little nook in the inn. He hooked his walking stick over the curved back of his chair.
The pub was getting even busier and he detected a collective nervousness in the drinkers’ banter, their occasional laughter just a decibel or two louder than it ought to have been. Oh, they felt comfortable enough inside the bar, but he doubted any one of them was unaware of the storm outside for one single moment. The crack of thunder was directly overhead now; it had moved across country and found a nice little harbour bay to torment. It was quite funny to watch the inn’s patrons glance towards the thick leaded windows whenever lightning flashed or thunder boomed. Bumpkins, the lot of them. Not his type of folk at all. But then, there were very few that were. Maurice wasn’t very fond of people.
He picked up his previous train of thought. One day, Nancy Linnet had arrived at Crickley Hall, sent there by the education department to help out with the teaching of the evacuees. Probably they didn’t know what to do with her.
Prissy Missy Nancy Linnet couldn’t do enough for Augustus and Magda at first. Pretty little face with tumbling locks of copper-coloured hair and Maurice had been quite smitten with her until he realized the shawl she wore round her back and over her lower arms concealed a hideous deformity. Oh, that spoilt the effect all right, that marred her looks. Her hand was a withered twisted claw, the arm above it up to the elbow just as unsightly. But she couldn’t hide it all the time. When her shawl slipped and Maurice saw the disfigurement it had almost made him sick. God’s punishment for her past and future sins, Magda had quietly told him. The Lord was wont to punish in this life as well as the next.
The young handyman/gardener had taken a shine to her, though, as if he didn’t notice the horrible affliction. It had turned out to be propitious when Percy Judd was drafted into the army and taken away from Crickley Hall.
She loved the kids. Spoilt them. Always smiling at them and patting their heads as if they were angels from God. Didn’t have a clue how to discipline them, although they always behaved when she was around; they weren’t afraid to open their mouths to her. The kids adored Miss Linnet.
Well, she never patted Maurice’s head. He couldn’t even remember her smiling at him. Maybe the first couple of days. Then she turned against him, even though he tried to please her. So he turned against her, reported her soft ways with the orphans to Magda, knowing Magda would tell Augustus.
But as the weeks went by, the teacher became more and more rebellious, protesting whenever Augustus had cause to chastise the older children with the cane, and actually blocked his way when he tried to punish the younger ones by the same means. She was against all other punishments too, the denial of food, the hall vigil, Magda’s leather-belt strapping – she decried all these punishments.
Then one day it happened: Miss Linnet threatened to go to the school authorities and denounce the Cribbens for the cruel (her word) way they treated the evacuees. Susan Trainer had been the catalyst.
It was evening and the children were taking their turns in the bath. Susan had been washing the smaller ones until it was time for her to dip into the three inches of water with Brenda Prosser. Maurice had been at the landing door that led up to the dormitory, making sure the children went straight to bed after their baths, when a panicky scream had pierced the air.
Magda Cribben, at her usual place on a chair outside the bathroom, shot to her feet. Over the balcony, Maurice saw Augustus quickly striding across the hall, alerted by the noise. His footsteps were heavy on the stairs and he passed by Maurice with a look of thunder on his face. Maurice followed him to the bathroom’s open door, where Augustus stopped abruptly, the boy almost bumping into him. Maurice peered over his guardian’s shoulder.
Brenda was out of the bath, dripping water onto the tiled floor. She was naked and shivering, her frightened eyes on the cowering figure still in the bath. Magda slapped her face to stop her gibberings.
The naked figure in the bath was Susan and her legs were bent, her shoulders hunched, and blood was visible on her fingers as she clutched herself between her legs. The blood had streaked her legs and turned the bathwater
red. Maurice remembered the scene as if it were yesterday.
‘Susan’s hurt,’ Brenda wailed, pointing at her older friend.
Maurice was fascinated, not by the sight of two nude girls, Susan with her budding breasts, but by the blood on Susan’s legs. Augustus seemed to be transfixed.
‘Stop it, child!’ Magda told Brenda briskly, and pushed her to one side. The teacher’s eyes narrowed and her voice was full of disdain. ‘You horrid, dirty girl,’ she rasped at Susan. Grabbing a damp towel from the metal rack, she shoved it at the distressed eleven-year-old. ‘Use this! Soak up the bleeding!’
‘What is it, miss?’ Susan asked timorously. ‘Am I dying?’
‘Of course you’re not.’ There was no compassion in Magda’s reassurance, only anger and disgust. ‘There’s nothing the matter with you.’
‘Why am I bleeding?’
‘Because you’re impure. This is a woman’s illness, a curse from the Lord to punish them for Original Sin.’
‘But I haven’t sinned, miss. I promise, I haven’t done anything.’
‘Well, you must have. You’re far too young for menstruation.’ She spat the word out, as if it’s mere expression was iniquitous. ‘You’re a wicked girl!’
Augustus finally spoke, and his voice was brutal. ‘She must be kept away from the others or her uncleanliness will taint them all.’
In the corner of the bathroom, Brenda was now crouched and sobbing. Susan had shrunk away from Magda and was cringing against the tiled wall.
‘Please help me,’ she pleaded, first looking at the woman, and then at the man.
Magda snatched her wrist. ‘Come with me. We’ve a place for dirty girls.’ She pulled Susan to the edge of the bath and, to stop herself falling, the girl stepped out still clutching the reddened towel to her body.
Augustus grabbed her by the other arm and Maurice quickly stepped aside as brother and sister brought the bowed girl out of the bathroom between them.
‘My clothes!’ Susan shrieked, dragging her feet.
Augustus and his sister merely tightened their grip and pulled her along the landing.
‘You will not need clothes where you’re going, child,’ Magda sneered.
The other children had gathered at the bottom of the stairs to the dormitory, none of them daring to venture out onto the landing. Two of the youngest, Stefan and Patience, were clinging to Eugene Smith, both of them crying.
Maurice would never forget the shame on Susan’s face as she was led naked past her friends, and he would never forget the smugness he felt as he trailed behind, even though he was mystified by the girl’s condition. Had she cut herself somehow, would she bleed and bleed until she was dead?
Susan screeched as the brother and sister dragged her down the stairs and across the grand hall, spots of blood dropping behind her as if to mark her path. They ignored her desperate entreaties, for she knew where they were taking her. Maurice watched from the landing balcony and was afraid for himself. There was grim spite on Magda’s hard face, while Augustus stared resolutely ahead, his deepset black eyes burning wickedly, a glistening of spittle on his thin lower lip. It was then that Maurice, only twelve years old but big for his age and both cunning and smart, truly understood that there was madness in his guardian, which ran just beneath the surface, ready to erupt at any given moment. The boy had witnessed the man’s wrath many times, but this evening there was a light behind Augustus’s dark eyes that hinted at barely suppressed violence and insanity. Maurice sensed it as much as he saw it and he was in a terrified kind of awe. Somehow, perception told him he would always be in terror and awe of Augustus Cribben, even after the man was dead.
Magda waited at the cellar door as her brother took the recalcitrant girl below. The sound of Susan’s shrill remonstrations came back out into the hall, amplified by the cellar’s brick walls and the narrow staircase. Suddenly, her cries were cut off.
Maurice heard heavy footsteps on the creaky narrow stairs, and then Augustus stood in the doorway next to Magda. The children, who had at last crept out onto the landing to look through the balustrade, all scooted back upstairs to the dormitory. Brenda Prosser, having dressed and left the bathroom, followed after them. But Maurice continued to watch, scared but fascinated. At that point, he seriously wondered if Susan Trainer had been murdered in the cellar. Augustus’s words to his sister swiftly put an end to this notion.
‘She’ll remain there until the impurity has been purged from her body. I’ve counselled her to pray for her damaged soul and she is not to eat until her discharge is complete.’
‘That will be days, brother,’ Maurice heard Magda say.
Augustus’s features were like granite, tough and uncompromising. ‘That will be her penance. You’ll give her water only.’
Without another word being said, Magda locked the cellar door and followed her brother into the sitting room that was used as an office. Another entry for the black book, thought Maurice, glad that his own name had never featured on its pages.
He sat on the stairs for a while afterwards, waiting to be called by his master or mistress. An hour went by and still they hadn’t left the office, so reluctantly Maurice made his way up to his bed in the dormitory.
It was the next morning that things began to go wrong at Crickley Hall.
Maurice Stafford settled more comfortably in his corner seat at the Barnaby Inn. As he sipped his last brandy, he listened to the storm that raged outside. It was ironic that as a boy he had looked much older than his age, for now he looked much younger than his seventy-five years. The crowd in the bar had thinned out considerably, some customers having openly admitted they were worried about the ceaseless downpour and the effect it might have on the high moors. All were aware of the harbour village’s history, even though the last great flood was more than sixty years ago, and they wondered if all the precautions taken since were enough to avert another disaster.
Maurice placed the bowled glass on the table and smiled to himself. He was unconcerned. He’d survived one flood, he could survive another. At ease with himself, he resumed the contemplation of his former life.
Miss Linnet. Miss Nancy Linnet. That fucking seditious little bitch. Maurice rarely swore, even in his thoughts. Augustus Cribben wouldn’t like him to swear. But it was difficult not to be furious with the teacher who had upset everything.
He remembered she had arrived at Crickley Hall that morning at her usual starting time of 7.45. As soon as she’d gone into class she noticed that one of her pupils was missing. Where is Susan Trainer? she asked the children. No one answered at first, they were too frightened to, but when Miss Linnet asked again, Brenda Prosser, the ten-year-old girl who had been with Susan in the bathroom the previous night, hesitantly spoke up. She told the teacher that Susan was locked in the cellar. Miss Linnet had been aghast, especially when she learned the girl had been down there all night, and then she had been angry when she found out the reason for the punishment.
She marched straight out of the classroom.
Maurice gave Brenda a threatening look. ‘You’re in trouble,’ he told her.
Timid though they had become at Crickley Hall, the older children crowded round the classroom’s open door and listened. Only Maurice was bold enough to take a step outside the door.
They could hear Miss Linnet remonstrating with Magda Cribben in the office, and although they could not catch every single word, they caught the drift of what was being said.
The young teacher was telling the older woman how outrageous it was for Susan Trainer to have been incarcerated in the cellar all night. Magda’s replies were spoken in a low, even voice, but the children could tell she was cross. She warned Miss Linnet not to interfere, that school discipline had nothing to do with her. Only when Miss Linnet insisted that Susan had done nothing wrong, that what had happened was perfectly natural for a growing girl, did Magda raise her voice.
‘The girl is dirty! She’s too young to bear the curse! She must have done somet
hing very wicked to have such punishment brought down on her so soon!’
‘There is too much punishment for all the children in this school. They are afraid even to speak. It’s all I can do to coax a smile from them, so browbeaten are they.’
‘Mr Cribben will hear of this impertinence,’ Magda responded stiffly.
Maurice remembered that Augustus Cribben had left the house earlier that morning to catch the bus to Merrybridge where he had business in the local council offices.
‘Very well.’ Miss Linnet sounded defiant. ‘I want to take the matter up with him. The situation cannot continue like this. I’ve a mind to report you to the school inspectors and the local authorities.’
With that, the teacher strode back through the office doorway and went straight to the cellar door. As always, the key was in the lock and she turned it with a swift twist of her good wrist. Reaching inside, she switched on the stair light, and they heard her clumping down to the well room below.
She must have had a conversation with Susan Trainer, or at least spent time comforting her, for it was several minutes before she reappeared again, now with the naked girl, who cowered against her, ashamed and exhausted. Susan held the blood-sodden towel to her lap, but blood still managed to drip and leave tiny spots across the hall’s stone floor. The older children were frozen in the classroom doorway, watching the teacher help their friend up the broad stairway, taking her to the bathroom or dormitory. But when Magda appeared in the office doorway, her face incandescent with rage, they scattered back to their desk tables.
The Secret of Crickley Hall Page 38