The Lost Village

by Neil Spring

  Now the commander was right beside us. ‘She’s delusional,’ he said. The woman spat in his direction and he rounded on her, his face revealing the full colour of his anger. ‘Madam, this is your last warning. If we catch you on this range again, outside of the permitted public opening hours, there will be consequences.’

  ‘Oh, you’re right about that, commander,’ she said bitterly, raising her head in defiance. ‘There will be consequences. For all of you.’

  – 16 –

  DECEIVED

  ‘Dammit!’ Price said, and slammed his fist down on the commander’s desk. ‘I have a good mind to make a formal complaint to the War Office. Failing to keep an intruder off the range compromised our entire investigation! Not to mention very nearly costing us our lives.’

  A strained silence.

  Sitting stiffly behind his desk, Commander Williams raised one eyebrow – the one with the thin scar running through it. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see him throw a quick glance at the military plaques and awards that adorned the office walls.

  ‘Mr Price,’ he said, finally, ‘I had hoped your late lunch might have calmed your spirits.’

  Price scowled back at him, practically trembling with anger.

  Back at Westdown Camp, four miles from Imber, it had been a good three hours since the distressing incident at the millpond. Our investigation had been cut short. Now the afternoon was ending, and, although still a little in shock, and weary, I was eager to calm Price’s temper.

  ‘Harry, the woman who accosted us in the village—’

  ‘She was following us the whole time!’ Price cut in, glaring at the commander. ‘So, tell us! Who the hell is she?’

  Nothing but a stony silence from the commander.

  ‘How did she obtain a set of keys to the church? Clearly, it was her we heard, ringing the bells. Why did she call you murderers?’

  The commander’s mouth twitched at that. ‘Please try to calm down, Mr Price.’

  ‘I’ll calm down when you tell me what I want to know!’ Price bellowed. Then, with an exasperated sigh, he reached down and grabbed my hand and held it up for the commander to see; scratches striped my fingers from the trees and underbrush. ‘Fighting through the woods, for you. All for nothing.’

  I yanked my hand away.

  ‘You were warned not to enter the woods, Mr Price.’

  ‘That was Marie Hartwell, wasn’t it?’ I said. The commander shot me a look, surprised, and I added, ‘Warden Sidewinder told us Oscar Hartwell met his wife, Marie, in Paris.’

  And the woman’s accent had been unmistakably French.

  Price leapt in: ‘Who was she searching for?’

  The commander raised his eyes to us self-righteously. ‘Mrs Hartwell is gravely unwell, Mr Price. She—’

  ‘We have been misled!’ Price shouted. ‘Deceived! We came to help your men, yet it’s them – you – who have failed us. Kept crucial information from us. Crucifixes inside the old mill, all over the blasted walls! Were you going to mention those?’

  I stood up. ‘All right. That’s enough for now, Harry.’

  He was on the verge of crossing a line, though I understood why he was angry. He had been made to feel foolish – gullible, even.

  ‘Commander,’ I said, adopting a tone I hoped was reasonable, ‘given that Sergeant Edwards sustained his injuries so close to that location, and that he witnessed the apparition of a child at that exact spot, it would be very useful to understand the history of the mill, and why its walls are covered with crucifixes. Why did we find candles there, recently burned? Commander, has someone been worshipping there?’

  The commander’s face arranged itself into an expression of utmost consternation. ‘Clearly, the conditions on the range took their toll on your imagination.’

  This was insulting and frustratingly evasive, but I kept my temper, even as he instructed us both to forget what we had seen, to say nothing of it to anyone. But at last we had a tangible lead: the crucifixes and candles. We had photographs, too. It was imperative now that we discover to whom the objects belonged. To do that, though, I had to keep Price on side, and judging from his exasperated expression, that seemed unlikely.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ Price announced.

  ‘What about the investigation?’ the commander enquired.

  ‘Excuse me? I very nearly drowned this afternoon. You don’t seriously imagine we’d wish to return? You invited me here to detect trickery, and I have done so. You’ve been hoaxed by Marie Hartwell.’ A pause. ‘I’m afraid we all have.’

  *

  By the time we excused ourselves from the commander’s office, Price had at least recovered his temper, but he was still nursing his bruised ego. As we stood in the concrete corridor outside, I saw to my dismay that he had reached a decision. There were two things Price could never tolerate: being humiliated and being undermined.

  ‘We leave tomorrow at dawn,’ he said.

  I stared at Price, at the briefcase he was holding.

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’m made to look a fool by a—’

  ‘Careful, Harry!’ I said curtly, throwing up a hand. Just one derogatory remark from his mouth about that poor woman and I’d strike that stubborn face hard enough to leave a mark. ‘No one has made you look foolish. Marie Hartwell was distraught, probably unstable. Unwell. And the fact that she was on the range has only demonstrated that you were right to be sceptical in the first place.’

  His chest expanded at that. ‘I suppose so,’ he said, a touch reluctantly. ‘It’s just so bloody disappointing. When those bells rang, I thought that maybe we were on to something.’

  ‘I thought that too,’ I said. ‘But I’m not ready to go.’

  He shook his head. ‘This investigation has been like the history of spiritualism itself. One long trail of fraud, folly and credulity. Come morning, I’m off.’

  ‘You can do what you damn well like. But I’m not going anywhere.’

  He blinked. ‘Sarah . . .’

  ‘Clearly, the army is hiding something. The questions we need to answer now are who was Marie Hartwell looking for at the mill, and why were there candles and crucifixes in the building.’

  Price folded his arms. ‘I’m not spending another day in this blasted place,’ he said obstinately.

  I couldn’t accept that. So far, our investigation had raised more questions than answers. Questions about the military’s work here, questions about the village’s former residents, and questions about its alleged ghosts. If anything, I only felt more determined to stay and see this through.

  Convincing him of that wouldn’t be easy, but I thought I knew how.

  *

  While Price went out for his walk, strutting briskly away like an infuriated child, I took a light supper in the officers’ mess, doing my best to ignore the many curious glances from the soldiers eating there. Dusk fell and I decided on an early night. My simple bed was waiting for me in Hut Three. After scraping my plate clean, I went straight there, still pondering the strange sensation of recognition that had struck me outside the mill, and the pale little boy in rags I had encountered on the downs on my arrival. I was so preoccupied with these mysteries that I failed to sense someone behind me.

  ‘Miss Grey? I have news. Bad news.’

  I spun round to see Sidewinder standing on the path, his deeply set eyes magnified by his circular silver spectacle frames.

  With a shiver, I nodded. Tensed. I didn’t trust the warden. He didn’t wear a black suit, but he carried with him the distinctly unpleasant air of a funeral director, and everything about him made me uneasy.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of my voice.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know – the commander has made his decision. Imber Service Day will go ahead as planned. Tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock.�
��

  Just when I had thought our predicament couldn’t get any worse. How wrong I was.

  – 17 –

  THE HARROWING

  In my darker moods, I often wonder how different things might have been at the service if we hadn’t so thoroughly exhausted ourselves the day before, if we had only been more alert and noticed the dreadful thing that was happening, right before our eyes, before it was too late.

  I did my best, I tell myself. But my best was nowhere near good enough.

  That Sunday morning, we woke to discover that snow had fallen overnight and blanketed most of Salisbury Plain. I’d heard people say that the world seems quieter when it snows, but I never truly felt the sentiment until that glistening morning in October 1932, as I emerged from Hut Three with a plan in mind. The snow hadn’t just made the desolate plain completely white, it had made it deathly quiet.

  Although the snowfall had eased off by eight thirty, the steel-grey clouds suggested there would probably be more to come. Perhaps the Imber Service would be cancelled after all? Not that it made a difference either way to Price.

  ‘I’m leaving now, before this weather worsens,’ he told me.

  We were outside at Westdown Camp, standing beside Price’s handsome Rolls-Royce saloon. I looked at him, remembering his panic-stricken face as he struggled in the pond, and felt real sympathy. How close I had come to losing him. It was an effort, but I had to restrain the urge to just let him drive back to London

  ‘We have a duty to stay, Harry. Can’t you speak to the commander? Get him to call off the service?’

  But when did Harry Price ever agree to do something that might inconvenience himself?

  ‘If we give the military a reason to close Imber,’ he said, ‘the civilians will be up in arms. Their little campaign will be all over the newspapers, and I’ll be forced to explain why I believe Imber should be off limits. I’m not prepared to put myself on the line like that.’

  ‘So, you’re thinking of yourself. Again. We can’t just give up—’

  ‘There’s no evidence,’ he interrupted, taking my hand and squeezing it firmly. ‘Don’t allow your father’s memory to bias your interpretation of what we’ve experienced here. We already know we were hoaxed yesterday by—’

  ‘We don’t know that! Not for sure. It’s what you’ve assumed!’ I shook off his hand. ‘And besides, Harry, there’s something I haven’t told you. Something that might persuade you to stay.’

  I still hadn’t mentioned the wandering child. It wasn’t just that I was afraid of being accused of exaggerating . . . The memory of my own baby, my torturous guilt, had been in my mind a lot recently. I lived with the fear of Price ever discovering I had given away our child. A child he knew nothing about. And sometimes the mind was the biggest deceiver of all, wasn’t it? How did I know that the child I had witnessed at the roadside, his dark eyes boring into me, hadn’t been a projection of my own guilt?

  If I had hallucinated, then telling Price about it would be risky; might betray my guilt, my secret. A revelation like that would cut him deeply. He had black moods, I knew that, and I had no wish to discover just how black they could be.

  Now, however, we had come to a turning point.

  ‘I’ve also seen him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The little boy with the pale face and bloated stomach. The same little boy Sergeant Edwards saw at the old mill. I saw him too. On the journey here.’

  I don’t think I’d ever seen him so astonished.

  ‘Sarah, are you asking me to accept that you witnessed an apparition – a ghost?’

  ‘I’m only asking you to take me at my word.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’

  ‘I had my reasons,’ I said quietly. ‘But the one thing you can’t do now is dismiss this as a crude case of locational bias, because I didn’t know anything about the reports until after I saw the child.’

  He threw up his arms. ‘How do I know? You haven’t told me the first thing about how this case came to you!’

  ‘I made a promise.’

  He opened his mouth to reply, closed it.

  ‘Trust, Harry. This is about trust.’

  ‘You really think that boy is the key to this?’

  What had Marie Hartwell said? Her ‘angel’, her boy.

  ‘Well, I can’t be certain, but yes. I think it’s his grave we found defaced in the Imber churchyard. To learn more, we will have to ask his father, Oscar Hartwell, for a detailed description. Find out how the boy died. And that won’t be easy. Though Hartwell’s bound to attend the Imber service today. If we attend the service, convince him we support his campaign, perhaps if we offer to help . . .’

  ‘He may tell us all we need to know,’ Price finished.

  I nodded. Price nodded too, and granted me a half-smile. Perhaps he wasn’t sold on this investigation, but he did know I still cared about his mission, that there was a part of me, deep down, that believed I would return to his laboratory and, once again, take his hand and walk with him into the dark.

  ‘Fine. If I can’t prevent the Imber Service,’ he said, ‘we may as well use it to learn something.’

  ‘Harry, do you think someone in the army engineered what happened yesterday?’

  He nodded grimly. ‘And what better way to lend the whole thing credence in the eyes of the soldiers than by calling in an expert debunker like me?’

  ‘But why would they do something like that in the first place?’

  He calculated. ‘To conceal a darker, more insidious agenda, perhaps. I sense a weight of secrets hanging over Imber and its history. Remember the commander? His eyes? He doesn’t trust us, Sarah. I’d go as far as to say he’s afraid of us getting too close to the truth.’

  That remark called up Vernon’s words: ‘I have a bad feeling I can’t shake. A sense that there’s something deeper out in that village. Something darker.’

  ‘Sarah,’ said Price, ‘I’ll make you this deal. I’ll come with you to the service and learn what we can about this child you saw. But then, if we find nothing, we make our departure. Quickly.’

  It wasn’t the deal I wanted, but it was better than nothing, so I agreed.

  ‘Mark my words,’ Price said, as we went in search of the commander and Sidewinder, ‘when today is over, you’ll be ready to leave this blasted place and put this whole business behind us.’

  *

  Snow was swirling down again when the civilians were finally permitted to enter Imber. Inside the church, soldiers were doing their bit to help, putting out the chairs for the service – a token gesture to many former residents, I felt sure. These were the men they thought had stolen their homes, their lives. No amount of chair-arranging would excuse that. Meanwhile, Price and I stood outside, freezing, in the shadow of the church, and watched a string of motor cars, perhaps thirty or more, creeping along the single track towards the checkpoint, its white barrier raised. As the former residents of Imber drove past the abandoned tanks and warning notices, I couldn’t help but feel a warm admiration for every one of them. They weren’t going to allow the risk of getting snowed under to deter them from making this pilgrimage. What must they think, I wondered, when they see the ruined roads, the shell-shattered houses, the devastation?

  ‘Any sign of our man?’ Price asked.

  He meant Hartwell, but it was difficult to make out any faces through the drift.

  ‘Not yet.’ I was trying to sound hopeful, but perhaps I had been wrong to assume that Hartwell would attend. So many of his family were buried here, perhaps the service was just too painful for him to endure.

  ‘There are going to be a lot of embittered people here today,’ Price said in a low voice, and I had to agree. A few civilians ambled past us, holding their coats tightly around them, their eyes raking over the ruined cottages, dusted with snow. An eld
erly couple wandered like frail ghosts through the overgrown graveyard, stooping here and there to clear the weeds from the neglected headstones, their faces etched with anger and grief.

  Near them was a woman attired in black, attending to the Hartwell memorial. Did she look familiar? Possibly, but it was hard to be sure; her head was down and seconds later she moved away.

  Price saw her, then nodded to the church entrance and said, ‘Let’s get inside.’

  A cool draught brushed my face as we pushed open the heavy oak doors.

  Inside the church, down the central aisle, an enormous scaffolding supported part of the roof. The atmosphere was thickly sad as the civilians – I guessed there were forty or more – gazed mournfully at the church’s shattered windows and the fresh bullet holes that peppered the walls.

  Price’s quick gaze made a circuit of the church, taking in the slender candles in every corner, the Union Jacks strung between the pillars, the great metal chandeliers above.

  At that moment I heard a well-spoken, familiar voice and turned my head to see a sharp-featured man at the front, surrounded by a huddle of villagers. Tall. Bald. Bearded. Impeccably attired in a black suit. As he took questions, he fidgeted, twisting his signet ring.

  ‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘That’s Hartwell.’

  We hastened nearer, doing our best to eavesdrop.

  ‘I’ll be saying just a few words,’ Hartwell was saying, ‘much to the army’s dissatisfaction, I’m sure. Can you believe they actually asked to see the speech in advance?’

  Just then, the reverend entered at the back of the church – a compassionate-looking man with a flushed complexion, in his seventies. As Hartwell turned his head in that direction, he granted me a polite nod of acknowledgement.

  He didn’t smile though, and I wondered if he still suspected me of working for the War Office.

  At that moment, a string quartet – I heard later that they had travelled especially from Salisbury for the service – struck up a sombre melody.