The Moonlit Door

by Deryn Lake

  The site of the fair, the big field which all day had been buzzing with people, was empty now, riven with shadows and black patches into which one would have to stare to check that nothing had moved. Only the maypole stuck out of the darkness, its ribbons wound tightly round its stem except for one place in which they bulged outward, quite a large bulge, but a very still bulge with an arrow protruding from it. An arrow that once had flashed through the air but now had found its eternal resting place. Eternal indeed.

  With every step, Daft Dickie began to feel more alert, the noises of the night ringing in his ears like the strains of a mighty orchestra tuning up. He began to sing:

  One day there sang a little bird

  From out the heavens blue.

  No sweeter bird was ever heard

  For, Love, he sang of you.

  Dickie began to sing the chorus which was a medley of ‘Ahs’, ranging up over some high crystal notes. His voice was good, unskilled but powerful. As he walked and sang Dickie thought of his grandmother, who had sat at the piano and sung all these tunes to him as a child, songs that would be with him forever. He recalled vaguely that she had been a professional singer but he couldn’t remember much about it. Just this vision of her in a long dress, turned to face him, a flower in her hair. Then he thought of his mother and all he could see was the mash that was left of her face, with his leering stepfather, his hands in bunches, stooping over her.

  Dickie sang more loudly to drown his memories but as he approached the field in which the fair had been held he suddenly grew silent. Why, he could not have explained. It just seemed wrong to him for his booming voice to fill the emptiness of what a few hours earlier had been a scene of such vivacity and life. Now, the great field was empty. The butts stood silently, the arrows all gone, which was a shame because Dickie would have liked to have had a try. Pulling the string back, feeling its tightness as you strained against the curve of the bow, and then the great rush of air as the arrow left and aimed for its target. And then suddenly he saw one. In this black and white moonlit landscape it was quite clear. Sticking out of a lump on the maypole. Just wanting to be pulled.

  Cautiously Dickie began to circumnavigate the pole, in the belief that if he approached in a circular manner he would keep evil at bay. Eventually, though, the circles he walked got smaller and smaller until he ended up stationary. Standing this close he could see that the lump was tied to the maypole by the fact that the ribbons had been danced round so tightly that whatever had been in the way had become enmeshed. Dickie stared at it curiously.

  It wasn’t flat on the ground. In fact, it was about a foot off, and about three feet in length. It had an odd shape, almost human, Dickie thought. After staring at it for a while he decided that it was a cocoon, that a gorgeous butterfly was inside but that someone had shot it and now it would never spread its lovely wings. He reflected on the sadness of this and eventually tugged at the arrow quite viciously, angry with the killer, whoever it was. It broke, the top half coming away with a strange little sound. Looking down at it Dickie saw that it was dark, coated with a sticky substance. He stared at it, standing motionless, because he knew perfectly well that the substance was blood.

  How it had gouted from that thick neck when he had crept up behind and slit the fat throat crossways. What pleasure it had given him to see the man start forward in his death throes before he had collapsed back into his chair, motionless. Yet pleasure wasn’t really the word. It was a feeling of justice being done, justice for all Dickie’s mother’s little moans of agony, for all the kicks aimed at Dickie’s blunt shaven head, for all the screams of the cat as his stepfather had wrung the life from the poor, blameless creature. How marvellous it had been to run naked through his beloved forest, his blood-soaked clothes in a bundle under his arm, how wonderful to feel the icy water close over his head. He had emerged cleansed and cold, the evidence sunk to the bottom, only a short sprint to Farmer Packham’s barn lying before him.

  But this was wicked blood. Somebody cruel had killed the butterfly – or whatever it was that was wrapped up in that cocoon. Suddenly Daft Dickie Donkin was filled with dread. He threw the broken arrow to the ground and, turning, ran back into the forest, where he found himself weeping with fear and horror as he made himself a nest of leaves and climbed into it and hid himself away from all the vileness in the world.

  NINE

  Olivia Beauchamp’s phone rang at 7.27 the following morning and eventually a reluctant hand stretched itself out from the depths of her duvet to switch off the alarm. After some fiddling about with the clock, her dark head emerged from the pillow and sleepily took in the fact that it was the phone that was making the noise. She picked it up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you so early, ma’am, but I wondered if Inspector Tennant might be with you.’

  ‘Would that be Sergeant Potter?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Beauchamp, it is. Is he there?’

  ‘Unless he moved out in the night, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Just a minute while I wake him up.’

  At the other end of the line Mark Potter grinned broadly. Good on you, he thought. And wondered if his boss had spent a really cosy night with the beautiful Miss Beauchamp, who had done much to raise the profile of the violin – and other things, no doubt.

  ‘Hello.’ The inspector’s voice was incisive, not in the least as if he had been spending many hours in the arms of the adorable Olivia.

  ‘Are you all right to speak, sir?’

  ‘What do you mean, am I all right? Of course I am. What’s the matter?’

  ‘999 have had a phone call redirected to Lewes, sir. It came through at just after seven. Something very odd has happened at Lakehurst. They want us both there.’

  ‘What sort of odd?’

  ‘Apparently they’ve been having some sort of Medieval Fair …’

  ‘Yes, I know about that. I went yesterday.’

  ‘Then you saw the maypole, no doubt? Well, the caller said that there was a body attached to it. Been put there overnight. Uniform are on their way but they want us in charge.’

  ‘Right. Pick me up at Olivia’s in thirty minutes. I’ll make myself presentable, I promise.’ And the boss gave a light-hearted chuckle, which Potter was most amused to hear.

  Forty minutes later he was ready, having spent ten of those saying goodbye to the violinist, who was amazingly calm about the whole situation.

  ‘Will I see you later?’ she asked from the folds of her cosy dressing gown as he went out through the front door.

  ‘Not even a murder will keep me away,’ he answered, vividly reminded of his marriage and the contrived casualness of his ex-wife, delighted to see the back of him as she was on her way to meet her lover. He turned in the doorway.

  ‘Do you like me?’ he said, meaning it.

  ‘Just a little,’ she answered, and gave him a broad wink that sent his heart zinging.

  The Crime Scene Manager had already arrived with his team and the top of the arrow which Daft Dickie had thrown on the ground was being examined by forensics. There were figures in white suits crawling everywhere but so far the lump on the maypole remained untouched. Dominic stared at it with a critical eye.

  ‘That looks like a small child to me.’

  ‘I hope to God you’re wrong.’

  ‘It could be a dog I suppose,’ said Potter lamely.

  ‘That stood obediently on a stool while the dancers went whirling round it?’

  ‘But why should a child do that?’

  ‘I take your point, absolutely. Come on, Dave. Let’s have a look at it.’

  The Crime Scene Manager called to two members of the forensic team who cautiously began to cut the ribbons binding the sad little lump, meanwhile ensuring that they were hidden from any outside gaze – not that this would have been possible with every member of the public ushered off the field.

  Despite his flippant tone, Tennant’s heart was in his mouth as the body of a small boy was revealed,
shot through the heart, a broken arrow still sticking out of that crushed little corpse.

  ‘What in the name of heaven could have induced a child like that to stand on a stool and await his execution?’

  ‘A dare, sir?’ asked Potter.

  ‘Pretty ghoulish one.’

  ‘That’s what modern kids are like. They see death so many times on TV and computer games and God alone knows what, that I don’t think any of them take it seriously any more.’

  But there was something so infinitely appalling about the child’s pathetically small body, impaled to the maypole by the broken shaft of the arrow and awaiting the doctor’s examination, that Tennant found himself averting his eyes. He didn’t like child slayings – who did? – finding the fact of innocence so cruelly and rapaciously savaged, hard to bear. He was a rotten policeman, he thought, as he gulped away unshed tears. Potter, sensing something about his boss said, ‘Poor little soul, eh?’

  ‘As you say,’ answered Tennant, giving a brief nod of his head.

  Even the doctor seemed moved, the smile of greeting wiped from her face as she took in the horrible circumstances of death.

  ‘My God,’ she said quietly.

  There was a momentary silence while the doctor bent to her bag. Tennant pretended to cough and surreptitiously wiped his eyes, and Potter thrust his hands in his pockets and stared round the field. Eventually the doctor looked up and Tennant saw that she had put on her highly professional face, which made her rather resemble a wasp in full flight. She approached the body and began by feeling it.

  ‘There’s no great sign of rigor mortis because he’s so small, though I can detect some. I’d say he’s been dead about nine hours, possibly an hour or two more.’

  Tennant worked backwards. ‘So this ghastly ritual was enacted at about midnight?’

  ‘You think it was that? A ritual?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know, Mark.’

  ‘More likely to be someone playing at William Tell and the joke going horribly wrong.’

  ‘That is certainly a possibility, but where’s the apple? Look, don’t let’s jump to conclusions at the moment. But several things have struck me.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The child was shot several feet above the ground. So he must have stood on something. Further, the killer must have gone down on one knee to do the shooting. We must interview that archery team as soon as possible.’

  ‘There’s something else, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was more than one person involved in the killing. Whoever murdered this child must have wanted the ribbons wound back over the body when it was done.’

  ‘Which would necessitate at least one person other than the killer.’

  Potter shuddered. ‘This has got to be one of the nastiest crimes I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Anything involving children is always pretty rough. But I agree, this one has some particularly unpleasant aspects.’ Tennant turned to the doctor. ‘Anything else, Jane?’

  ‘The poor child died instantly as the arrow struck him through the heart.’

  ‘I wonder who he is … was. There’s probably some distraught mother phoning Lewes while we speak.’

  At that very moment Tennant’s mobile began to ring. He put it to his ear and walked slightly away. Potter could tell by the very slope of his boss’s shoulders that the news was not good.

  ‘There’s a child called Billy missing from the Lakehurst Children’s Home.’

  ‘Age?’ asked Potter.

  ‘Five,’ said Tennant shortly. ‘Come on, Mark. Let’s get over there.’

  Dr Jane May looked up from her medical case. ‘I’ll do the post-mortem as soon as I can.’

  Tennant nodded and asked the photographer for a print of the dead boy’s face. Then, armed with a picture for identification, he and Potter left the field and headed for their car.

  TEN

  Dickie Donkin had finally fallen asleep in a ditch beneath a hedge full of bursting wild flowers, their combined scents blocking out the smell of blood. For that was what he had sniffed in the air when he had pulled the arrow out of the lump affixed to the village maypole. Or rather, the broken stump of an arrow. But whether there had actually been that sharp, heavy aroma or whether it had been a memory in Dickie’s confused brain nobody would ever know. To him, though, it had been real enough and he had looked up at the pink moon above his head and felt the wetness on his cheeks before bolting into the forest determined to walk through the night and get away. Yet reality had been far from the dream. The fact was that the whole experience had unnerved him to the limit of his physical capability. Daft Dickie had sat down under the hedge and wept with a combination of physical exhaustion and a chill feeling of terror which had touched him like a finger from the grave.

  Next morning’s awakening had been more muzzy that usual. He had searched in his tattered pockets for something to drink, something to drive the chill out of him, but there had been nothing and Dickie was left with no alternative but to walk to the nearest public house and beg for a bit of cheese and a cup of tea from a kindly landlord. His route took him past the field and Dickie – who had determinedly kept his gaze in the opposite direction – stopped short as out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something blue. The place was swarming with coppers and ghostly, masked figures clad in white. Daft Dickie stopped short and stared.

  An ambulance had drawn up at the far end and some men were carrying a small, black plastic bag on a stretcher towards it. Dickie knew, with a great leap of his battered brain, that there was a body in the bag and that the body was somebody small and defenceless. He wondered then whether he ought to go and tell someone in charge that he had been there last night. That it had been himself who had tried to take the arrow out of what he had thought was a chrysalis, only for it to break in his hand. But Daft Dickie Donkin had spent too many years on the run after his frightening brush with the police following the death of the creature that his mother had married. They had scared him then and they scared him now. Dickie was shuffling from foot to foot in indecision when he heard a noise behind him and, wheeling round, found himself staring straight into the face of the thing he dreaded most of all, a policeman.

  Mrs Starkey had stepped straight from the pages of a novel by Charles Dickens. Hair scraped back into a steel grey bun, eyes with rimless spectacles, which magnified them into watery blue bulbs, an obviously false set of white teeth that looked as if they had belonged to someone from the Scandinavian countries. No one, thought Dominic Tennant, might be found more unsuited to looking after a bunch of needy kids, yet appearances could be deceptive. When the formidable dame opened her mouth she spoke with a soft, mellifluous Scots accent and gave as kindly a smile as her teeth would allow.

  ‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’

  Tennant spoke. ‘Good morning, madam. I’m sorry to disturb you. I believe you are the superintendent of this orphanage.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, if you care to put it like that. You see, we look after all the unwanted children that anyone wishes to put into our care. We have a real mix here. Autistic, spina bifida, totally deranged, all living alongside children who just aren’t required in their parents’ life. But I take it you are here on official business?’

  Potter held out the photograph taken at the crime scene. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Potter, ma’am. And this is Inspector Tennant. Tell me, do you know this boy?’

  She stared at it and lost colour. ‘Why, that’s Billy,’ she said.

  ‘Does he live here?’

  ‘Yes. But his bed wasn’t slept in last night. Has anything happened to him?’ She looked at the photograph again. ‘My God, he looks ghastly. Oh my God. Is the poor child dead?’

  Tennant was at his best. ‘Go inside and sit down, Mrs Starkey. I’ll get you a cup of tea and send a WPC to sit with you. Now who is your deputy here?’

  ‘My husband. Not that he’s much use. It’s Ned really.’

  ‘I hear my
name being taken in vain,’ said a bright Australian voice and Ned, who turned out to be six feet four inches tall and built like a Roman gladiator, appeared in the entrance hall.

  He took over instantly and ushered a weeping Mrs Starkey into the kitchen, organized the making of tea, sent a message to the sleeping Mr Starkey and returned to where the two policemen awaited him in what was known as the parlour.

  ‘Well, gents, this is a turn up and all. Now what do you want to know about our Billy? Poor little bugger.’

  ‘You are aware that the wretched child has been murdered?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that. Well, for Christ’s sake! Who’d want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Potter answered. ‘Now, sir, could you tell me something about this home and about Billy in particular.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Well, it’s fee-paying as you will have probably guessed. Mrs S. makes a lot of dough through it. Mind you, she fair works her arse off for it. Some of the kids are quite crazed, let me tell you. Screaming and shouting and punching. Shit, it gives me the creeps.’

  ‘And what is your role here exactly?’ asked Tennant.

  ‘Me? Well I’m just backpacking round the world and ran out of money. Saw an advertisement for this place and took the job for six months.’

  ‘So you’ve no previous training?’

  Ned shot him a look from under a pair of impressively dark eyebrows. ‘No, I haven’t, as it turns out. But I’ve got a way with the kids and that’s undeniable. You ask the Starkeys.’