by Deryn Lake
Tennant leant forward. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me, Ekaterina. But I wanted to ask about Araminta. When she had finished with the stall and the fair ended, do you know if she went to the Great House pub?’
‘Yes, I think she told Rufus she was going. She is eighteen now, Dominic. She can do what she likes.’
‘Do you know if she covered her face with a Venetian mask?’
‘Well, she’s got one. I don’t know whether she had it with her. Possibly. Why?’
‘Because a young woman answering her description was seen talking to a Mr O’Hare, who leads the morris dancers, Mr Grimm’s Men.’
Ekaterina looked at him with misty blue eyes. ‘So did she do something wrong?’
‘Not wrong exactly. It is Mr O’Hare that we are interested in. I would just like to hear her side of the conversation.’
He left out the fact that she had been seen walking away from the dancer when the young man who worked at the children’s home had been out for a late-night cigarette.
Ekaterina finished her cup and looked pleased. ‘I am glad that is all. I would not like to think she is in trouble of any kind. I regard her as my stepdaughter now – and soon she will legally be so.’ Tennant smiled but did not answer and Ekaterina said, ‘I will ring her room on the house phone. Excuse me.’
She phoned through and the call was obviously picked up.
‘My darling girl, that nice Inspector Tennant is here and he wants to speak to you. No, I don’t know what it is about. Darling, I really think you should. Shall I tell him you will meet him in the Georgian parlour? Oh, thank you. Yes, I’ll say.’
She gave the inspector a slightly conspiratorial smile. ‘She says she is in a hurry because she is going out, but she can spare five minutes. I’ll take you to the Georgian part of the castle now.’
As he walked behind her, Dominic looked grim. He wished he had a five-pound note for every stroppy teenager he had been forced to interview in his long progress to inspector. Young tarts, boys high on drugs, negligent blacks, rude whites, and aggressive creatures of every size and description. At least Araminta was going to be polite.
She was already seated but rose and shook his hand.
‘Hello, Inspector. Nice to see you again.’
‘And you too, Miss Beaudegrave.’
She did not say ‘Call me Araminta’ as he had hoped.
‘How can I help you?’ she said now, icily polite.
Dominic decided to be cold and direct.
‘I have had a report, Miss Beaudegrave, that you were seen talking to Christopher O’Hare at some extremely late hour on the night of the first murder.’
She went terribly pale, looking like Snow White with her ashen skin stark against her jet-black hair. ‘I see,’ she said in a whisper.
‘Well?’ asked Tennant, sparing her nothing.
‘It is true that I met him at the fair and he invited me to go and have a drink with him afterwards in the Great House.’
‘Was this your first meeting or had you known him before?’
‘No, I met him at the fair. I congratulated him on his dancing. I liked it a lot.’
‘I see. And tell me, where did you go after the drink was finished?’
She went from pale to waxen. ‘Nowhere. Just out for a walk.’
He leant towards her. ‘Look, Araminta, I’m not trying to get at you. What you do is your own affair and entirely up to you. What I am interested in is did you see anybody when you were out on this walk? Did you pass anyone? Those are the sort of facts I need to have.’
She looked at him with eyes that were very wide and honest. ‘Well, I did pass that old tramp that’s always hanging round the place. And the young chap from the children’s home.’
‘Anybody else?’
‘Well, I didn’t actually pass them but I could hear little whispers coming from the hedge.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think there were some children about – or else it was adults doing children’s voices. Anyway, I could hear them whispering to one another. Chris started to look for them but then Ned came up and I thought he’d come to fetch them. And anyway Chris had started getting a bit … well, you know. And I wasn’t interested so I went back to the pub and fetched my car from the car park.’
‘And drove home?’
‘Yes. But I had to brake really hard on the way back because a ghostly figure ran across the road in front of me.’
‘Who was it? Do you know?’
‘No, honestly. I think it was a ghost because I didn’t hit anyone and when I peered round it had gone.’
‘How frightening.’
‘I tell you, my flesh was creeping when I had to let myself into the castle. Fortunately Daddy had left the lights on, otherwise I think I would have had hysterics.’
‘Is the castle haunted?’ asked Tennant, genuinely interested.
‘Massively,’ and Araminta smiled for the first time.
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, the medieval bit is packed with them but I’ve never seen them because we don’t go wandering round that part on our own after dark. It’s out of bounds – and I still obey the rules.’
She gave Tennant a smile full of secret meaning and he thought he understood and grinned back.
‘But one I have seen – well, two actually – are a sad little girl who used to come and watch us when we were playing. We used to be frightened of her but in the end if she came we just said, “Oh, there’s Alice”, and continued with whatever it was that we were doing.’
‘And the second?’
‘Well, you’re not going to believe this but all five of us have seen her. She sits in the Georgian dining room at the head of the table. She has a powdered wig on and looks just as if she’s stepped off the set of some old black and white film. Whenever she’s appeared – and that’s about six times to my knowledge – she always bows her head graciously and smiles, showing tiny little seed-pearl teeth. And then she sort of fades out. But she always comes when something lucky is going to happen. We call her Lady Luck, which is a bit corny, but there it is.’
‘Your father has seen her?’
‘Yes, just before he met Ekaterina. So he believes in her too.’
‘To get back to the ghost that ran in front of your car. Tell me exactly what you saw.’
‘A frightened-looking little boy ran across the road directly in front of me. He glanced at me for a second and then he disappeared.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘Short trousers and a white shirt.’
Tennant nodded, sure that she had seen Billy. ‘The fact that he vanished, could that have been because he was pulled into the hedge?’
Araminta frowned. ‘It could have been. I was concentrating so hard on doing an emergency stop that all my attention went on that.’
The inspector got up, ready to go, then he turned to the young woman. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you’re a great girl, Miss Beaudegrave. Don’t waste yourself on the Chris O’Hares of this world. Find yourself a really nice young man.’
‘But I don’t want to marry a chinless wonder, as my grandmother used to call them.’
‘There are plenty out there who’ll suit you. It’s just a question of taking your time.’
She laughed and said, ‘Will you marry me, Inspector?’
‘If I was twenty years younger I would do so like a shot.’
As he was driving over the footbridge his mobile rang and Potter’s voice spoke over the ether.
‘Boss, there’s been a development. Mrs Chambers, who lives at the farm close to the murder spot, saw people dancing round the maypole. In the middle of the night.’
‘Can she identify them?’
‘No, but she said there were two of them.’
‘I’ll go and see her directly. Give me her address.’
Potter dictated it, then added, ‘She’s pretty old but she’s sharp as a blade.’
‘Sounds like my own mama.
I look forward to meeting her.’
The sun had lost a little of its brilliance as Dominic Tennant drove down the lane to the pair of farmworkers’ cottages, whitewashed, both with wooden porches smothered with rosebuds getting ready to burst into bloom.
He thought it rather an isolated spot and felt worried about Mrs Chambers, whose only neighbours were weekenders. He decided to put an unobtrusive police guard on the cottage until the investigation was over.
‘Oh, good evening, Inspector. Sergeant Potter just rang and told me you were on your way.’
Tennant shook her extended hand. ‘Good evening, Mrs Chambers. What a lovely cottage – and what a lovely spot.’
‘Yes, it is. Sussex is such a beautiful county. I adore living here.’
Tennant smiled wryly, thinking of the ugliness that lay beneath the surface everywhere. Why, oh why, did mankind have to ruin the natural beauty all around? He thought of the indescribable perfection of a blossom tree and then thought of a lout vomiting in the street on a Saturday night. I’m in the wrong job, he considered for the millionth time.
Mrs Chambers insisted that he have a small glass of sherry before conducting him up to her bedroom and showing him the view from her window. Tennant could still see the maypole and various figures in white wandering about.
‘I notice the forensics crowd are still at work.’
‘Oh yes, they’re so wonderful. What did we do before them?’
‘Well, they’ve been around in various early forms for quite a while now. But today’s teams are exemplary. In my opinion, anyway.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t agree more. I move my chair by the window and sit and watch them for hours on end.’
‘And casting your mind back to the night of the first murder, you really couldn’t see their faces at all?’
‘No. I couldn’t. But I got the impression that they were all quite short. But that was probably a distortion due to the distance.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
Very, very faintly a bell tinkled in the back of Tennant’s mind. But it was a true will-o’-the-wisp and was gone as he tried to form the idea. Nevertheless he fell silent.
‘Another glass of sherry, Inspector?’
‘Thank you, but no. I must go back to the incident room and talk to Potter before I go home.’
‘Do you live far away?’
‘I have an apartment in Lewes but I am staying with a friend during the course of the investigation.’
‘Oh, good. That must save you a lot of driving.’
Tennant grinned at her. ‘It is very pleasant, you can rest assured.’
Potter was grim but determined. He had made four attempts to call on Chris O’Hare and every time nobody had answered the door. And, moreover, there had been no sound from inside the house and he felt certain that it was temporarily empty. There was nothing for it but to drive back to Lewes.
He had seen his boss in the incident room and they had compared notes and looked briefly at the computers. There was no new information and both men had the nasty feeling that the case was beginning to stall.
‘I’ve put a guard on Mrs Chambers,’ Tennant had said.
‘Why, other than for the fact she’s a bit isolated?’
‘That, but I think that she knows more than she is saying.’
‘You mean she’s withholding evidence?’ Potter had asked incredulously.
‘Not deliberately. But I feel certain that she has seen something but is discounting it.’
Potter had shaken his head, not certain what to make of that remark and now, driving through the depths of Speckled Wood, he was still puzzling about it. He thought of the inspector, safely tucked in for the night at Olivia’s cottage, and envied him. His – Potter’s – trouble was that the run-of-the-mill girls he met just didn’t do a thing for him. He wanted someone different, a girl with brains, not one of the present lookalike brigade, flashing their leggings and their shellacked nails about the place. But he supposed that was all he was destined to meet and felt infinitely sad.
He had found a quick route home by cutting through the deep woods that ran down to the sea and then making a sharp left turn. And he was just about to do this when he became aware of a glow to his right. Thinking it might be a fire, Potter stopped the car and got out, suddenly becoming terribly aware of the sounds of the night, the rustlings and slitherings, the sharp, quick, little snapping of twigs. He crept forward towards the glow, conscious of the noise of his own breathing.
A ring of lanterns had been placed in a circle within which stood a group of people, stark naked except for the masks over their faces. Potter gawped, amazed. There was a great deal of pubic hair which glistened in the faint light as the circle started to dance slowly round. They linked hands and chanted, a noise that sounded like ‘Rah, rah, rah’, which was so incongruous that Potter felt a grin start to creep over his face. There were some women with rolls of fat hanging on their backs and others that looked as if they had come from a concentration camp. But of one person’s identity he could be absolutely sure. The peroxide locks of Chris O’Hare were glistening in the uncertain light.
It all looked quite harmless until one young woman went into the midst of the circle and was crowned with a circlet of black laurel leaves. Then a male came forward, extremely erect, and they proceeded to have sex, standing up, and very much in public.
Potter was not quite sure what to do. He didn’t feel like taking on a group of rampant – in every sense – males, so decided to leave while the going was good, which it clearly was for the couple in the middle, who were having a whale of a time. He began to back out quietly and then he saw a blond head turn in his direction. He had been seen by Chris O’Hare. Potter took to his heels and ran, not feeling safe until he was in his car and driving hell-for-leather in the direction of his home town. Had he been recognized? He was not certain. But he now had the proof he had been looking for. Chris had a coven that got up to fairly harmless high jinks in the woods.
EIGHTEEN
Life, for the Reverend Nicholas Lawrence, seemed to have deteriorated into a humdrum round of parish duties. But thank God for them, for they kept his mind from wandering to thoughts of the girl who had entered it and refused to go away. Nick was prepared to admit that he was thoroughly preoccupied with the unusual and creative Patsy Quinn. But tonight the organizing committee of the Medieval Fair were to meet at the vicarage for their debriefing, as Nick had once laughingly called it. Now his laughter had been silenced. He knew that this was going to be the most miserable meeting of all.
One by one they trooped in, all wearing a pall of gloom and speaking in quiet voices. The bell rang again and Nick discovered Hugh Wyatt standing on the doorstep, but was not so pleased to see Melissa and Isabelle standing behind him.
‘So sorry I had to bring the family,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Quite frankly, Melissa gets a bit nervous being left on her own. We’re rather isolated.’
‘Of course, of course. Come in. Would you like to watch television in my living room, Belle? There’s only the old cat in there at the moment.’
‘Thank you, Father Lawrence,’ she said, and allowed him to get her settled on the sofa.
Meanwhile the doorbell kept ringing and Hugh stepped into the breach while Nick bustled about handing round refreshments. Melissa, looking quite dreadful, pale, drawn and with suitcases under her eyes – as Nick’s mother used to say – sat apart listlessly, not even offering to help hand round the small glasses of sherry that Nick had felt appropriate to cheer the mood. The doorbell rang once more and Hugh went to answer it.
‘Oh, I hope it’s not inconvenient,’ said a voice with a lift in it. ‘I’ve come to see Father Nick.’
Nick knew, his mother being very fond of musicals, that there was a ridiculous song from Kismet which said something about nightingales singing at noon on the mulberry bough, and momentarily believed it was true. He felt that he glided towards the front door and stood bowing and blushing and gener
ally behaving like a total idiot as he kissed the hand of the wonderful, the beautiful, the totally unexpected Miss Patsy Quinn.
He ushered her into the meeting and there was a general buzz of curiosity.
‘Miss Quinn, who I’m sure you’ll remember opening the fair for us.’
There was a universal swell of conversation and Nick, just for a moment, felt frozen in time and knew, quite certainly, that he was going to marry her and live contentedly ever after. That is, of course, providing that she wanted to marry him.
Popping his head round the living room door, he saw Belle watching something quite unsuitable on television with Radetsky purring on her lap.
‘I’ll bring you some biscuits and lemonade,’ he said and she turned and smiled at him in quite an adult way.
The evening went well, considering the awful aftermath of the fair, to say nothing of the second murder in the field beyond. It was as if the spirits of everyone had been raised by the arrival of Miss Quinn and Nick was fairly sure that those who felt like a good gossip would repair to the Great House to do just that.
As they were leaving, Hugh had shaken his hand warmly and said, ‘Good luck, old man,’ and there had been the suspicion of a wink about his eye. Nick, feeling young and light-hearted, had done the very unvicarish thing of winking back. He had turned to Miss Quinn, who was putting on an amazingly stylish jacket.
‘Must you go, Patsy?’
‘I promised to pop in on Granny. She’s expecting me for the weekend.’
‘So am I.’
‘What?’
‘Hoping you’ll spend some time with me.’
‘Why? Do you fancy me?’
‘More than I’ve ever fancied anyone in all my life.’
Patsy eyed him closely. ‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh, good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about.’
‘And the others are?’
‘Seducing a man of the cloth.’
‘Are you going to?’ Nick asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ answered Patsy with feeling and put her arms around his neck.
‘How wonderful,’ Nick replied, and just stood there while she took the first steps.