Murder in the Goblins' Playground (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery Book 1)

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Ah, from the Scottish play,” Ravyn said. “Three women, a close association, faint suspicions of a kind of lesbian relationship, maybe a hint of paganism to bind them, as with those who gathered around the cauldron.”

  “Paganism?”

  “Old Religion, the witch-cult hypothesis of Margaret Murray,” Ravyn explained. “A skein of paganism runs through Hammershire, especially in places like Ashford. The Church suppressed many of the old beliefs, or absorbed them into the Christian mythos, and the Crown sent out witchfinders to try and kill the practitioners.”

  “Matthew Hopkins,” Stark murmured, digging deep into half-forgotten history lessons.

  “Yes, most notorious of the Witchfinder Generals,” Ravyn said. “Tigon Studios made a film, and Paul Roland even wrote a song.”

  “Mental, all of them,” Stark said. “Hunted and hunters.”

  Ravyn ignored the sergeant’s casual dismissal. “Who was the fifth interviewee?”

  “Maratha Chandler.”

  Ravyn smiled fondly. “I didn’t know the dear old thing was still alive. I’m sure she fed you tea, biscuits and information.”

  “Tea and biscuits, but not so much information,” Stark replied. “She jabbered like a monkey, but everything was mixed up with ravings and hallucinations. A pry bar couldn’t separate what’s real and not for her.”

  “Despite your depiction, Miss Chandler is a dear old thing and I trust you treated her with respect,” Ravyn said.

  “Yes, sir, I took your advice to heart,” Stark said. “Even if they all really were nutters.”

  He shrugged. “You might be right, Stark, but they’re the type of nutters that made England great.”

  Ravyn fished the keys out of his coat pocket. Instead of turning the door lock he went to the rear and opened the boot. He took out the kit bag he always carried and his laptop.

  “Sir, what are you doing?” Stark asked.

  “I’ve engaged rooms at the pub.”

  “What?”

  “Keep your voice down, Stark,” Ravyn said. “For me, not you. You can go home to that wife of yours and explain why you’ve not returned her calls or answered any of her texts.”

  Stark kept his mouth shut.

  “I’d like your interview report as soon as possible,” Ravyn said. “Also, you’ll be attending Cutter’s postmortem at eight o’clock. Do not keep Dr Penworthy waiting. She lacks my patience.”

  Again, Stark kept his words behind gritted teeth.

  He tossed Stark the keys. “I’ll arrange for an incident room, likely in the village hall. If I am not here when you return, find Monty Spooner. He’ll either be in the pub or the incident room.”

  “He’s the…” Stark racked his memory. “…the local constable.”

  “An old codger, should have retired years ago, but he knows the village and the people like we never will,” Ravyn said. “Use him as a resource and a dogsbody if needs be, but don’t give him too much rope; that rope is bound to lead to a bottle of gin.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll keep that in mind,” Stark said. “Where might you be, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I’m meeting Smith at dawn,” Ravyn replied. “He’s taking me to Cutter’s caravan, which, by the way, Cutter seems to have found in place, rather than moved there.”

  “Is that wise, sir?” Stark asked. “Smith might be the murderer.”

  “We’ll see,” Ravyn said. “You had better be on your way.”

  Stark opened the door, climbed in, and started the car.

  “Give your wife my regards.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stark acknowledged, even as he dismissed it as the worst suggestion ever.

  As he drove off, fighting the urge to spin gravel with the tyres, he wondered how the Guv knew he had not answered Aeronwy’s calls or texts, or, for that matter, how he knew she had sent any.

  Ravyn watched the tail lamps grow small and vanish. He turned toward the pub, saw Woodcock at the door.

  “The room’s ready, Mr Ravyn,” Woodcock said, giving him a heavy key attached to a plastic disc. “Number Three. Top of the stairs, to the left. Will you be wanting anything to eat or drink?”

  “No, I think not, but could you manage a container of coffee in the morning?”

  “Yes, I’ll have a nice full breakfast for you,” Woodcock said. “I serve starting at six.”

  “Just coffee, but I’ll need it at half-five.”

  Woodcock’s mouth dropped a little. “Five-thirty?”

  “I’m going out at dawn.”

  “Where the blazes would you be going…” He stopped when he saw Ravyn’s mouth tighten, an eyebrow arch. “No, of course, none of my business, is it?”

  “By the way, when PC Spooner shows up for his morning nip, don’t you serve it to him,” Ravyn said.

  “Of course not.”

  “If I am not back when he comes in,” Ravyn continued, “tell him I want an incident room set up in the village hall and that he is to assist DS Stark when he arrives.”

  Woodcock nodded.

  Ravyn started up the stairs, then turned. “And please bring the village constable up to date on the evening’s events since not even a murder managed to penetrate the sleep of the innocent.”

  In his room, Ravyn slipped off his coat, loosened his tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He unpacked his kit and set up his laptop. After typing his own notes of the evening, he began his nightly wash-up, giving Stark time to complete his own report. His ability to report accurately was improving, but not even Ravyn could fault the sergeant’s typing skills.

  Thinking of Stark, Ravyn picked up his mobile. He listened to the message and scrolled through the texts. The station would never have given her his mobile. It was unlikely Stark had shared it, but he probably jotted it down somewhere. Possibly Heln, but the Superintendent rarely left threads leading back. He was hardly invincible, Ravyn knew, but a George Medal and the aegis of the Chief Constable’s favour did go a long way.

  The number of transposed and multi-struck letters in the texts was curious, but she might have been tired or rushed. Or furious, he thought. The one verbal message was clear, but Ravyn knew people often wore masks well, whether the deception was for the benefit of others or simply themselves.

  None of his business, he ultimately decided. None at all.

  He deleted the message and texts. Pulling a slender book from his kit bag, he read while waiting for Stark’s report.

  * * *

  Aeronwy was not asleep when Stark got home, but they both pretended she was. He looked in, listened to her measured breaths, then went to the study. He seated himself before his laptop and put his notebook to the right of it.

  He typed swiftly and fluently. Getting it all sorted in his mind beforehand helped both his typing and recollection. Memory, he was learning, was like any other skill. At the Met, his old Guv had been undemanding. Only results mattered. Ravyn demanded results and impeccable adherence to procedures. Not that Stark blamed him. For whatever reason, Superintendent Heln was obviously gunning for him. The real trick was to stay out of the line of fire.

  Stark blew through the interviews at the pub. Nothing much to them, though Westerham had tried to play himself up. Just a stuffed peacock, that one. He went through the other interviews, those with an overview of Hob’s Lane, with more care, referring to his notes frequently. Since Ravyn knew these people, perhaps he could make more of their ravings than could he.

  He finished typing, read it over, made a few corrections, then sent it to Ravyn. He looked at the clock. Just forty minutes to get it right the first time, rather than hours spent correcting errors and explaining fuzzy details. Though it annoyed him to do so, he had to admit there were advantages to Ravyn’s tutelage. The post at the Met brought money and excitement, but he never would have made Inspector, which was what Aeronwy desired. Now, he just might, if he survived Ravyn. And if Ravyn survived Heln.

  He went to the kitchen. There was a tumbler in the sink. He started to ri
nse the glass, then paused. It had been rinsed already, but he could still smell the faint juniper scent of gin. Rather than break the glass in his tightening fingers, he put it back in the sink. He took another tumbler from the cupboard, half filled it with water and sipped slowly.

  He showered quickly, then climbed into bed. Aeronwy shifted away from him.

  “I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do,” Stark said.

  She remained silent. Her breaths were steady and shallow. He imagined he caught the hint of juniper rising up like misty tendrils from a bog, competing with her natural scent. He fought the urge to grab her, shake her, demand the truth.

  He lay back, settling his head against the hard cold pillow. He kept his arms against his sides, fists balled. His breaths wanted to rush out his nostrils, like those of a bull catching sight of a red rag, but he fought the old battle, and won, again.

  “There was a murder in Ashford,” he said. “The Guv’nor is still there, spending the night, but he sent me home when he could.”

  She did not move, did not speak.

  “I’ll have to be up early, to a postmortem by eight,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but it won’t be late. I promise.”

  “Promises are made to be broken,” she said, her voice small in the immensity of the night.

  Stark thought about the ill-rinsed tumbler in the sink, the smell rising from her, of which she was likely ignorant. When he got the chance, he would search for her hiding places. And when he found them? No point confronting her, he realised. Perhaps it would be enough when she found the bottles gone.

  “You know I love you, don’t you, Aeronwy?”

  “Go to sleep, Leo,” she said. “It’s late.”

  Stark lay quietly and ran through his mind the interviews of the night. He had surely heard lies, but had there also been truths?

  * * *

  Ravyn read through Stark’s report a third time. No doubt the sergeant had left out some of what people had told him, but that was inevitable. Despite all his efforts, Stark’s mind was yet a piece of carbon, not faceted into the glittering diamond it could become. Still, he was quite pleased with how far Stark had come in just three weeks. He was not stupid, which had been one of Ravyn’s fears in the beginning, when the young man assigned by Heln seemed a cipher. Heln had at various times saddled him with some outrageous clods, all sent packing, but of their own volition, by quiet adherence to standards no one could question. That Stark was still with him, and improving, after three weeks did not necessarily mean he was a keeper, but Ravyn had high hopes.

  Ravyn skimmed through the pub interviews only once, though he read slowly through Stark’s questions of Woodcock before he had taken over. Certainly, Woodcock was hiding something, but he doubted it had anything to do with the murder of Allan Cutter.

  He directed more attention to those the five cottages having a back view of Hob’s Lane. He knew of Miss Chandler and Mr Brianson from Aunt Althea—the first was a terrible gossip while the second was an even more terrible drunk. From Stark’s account, time had not been kind to either, Miss Chandler courting dementia while Brianson poured himself into a grave.

  He had met Miss Nettle once, his one trip to the village library to see its meagre collection, and that one time had been enough. He had not been whispering, as had the two boys near whom he sat, but his knuckles had been soundly rapped all the same.

  Miss Mayhew he knew from his thrice-weekly visits to the post office for Aunt Althea, either to pick up mail or make a deposit into her account. He remembered a thin woman, reserved in manner and speech. She had a way of not looking at him when making change or handing over letters. The way she appeared, the shape of her head, eyes and ears, put him in mind of some of Rackham’s fairy drawings. The few times he had engaged her in conversation, all with questions about the village, he had found her a repository of folklore and all thing historical, from Roundheads and Romans to Druids and Dolmens.

  Then there was Marion Stone. Ravyn suppressed a shudder at the memories. He would open the door for Aunt Althea, as he had been taught a gentleman should, but he would hesitate in entering. She would always take his thin hand and drag him into the choking cloud of meat and blood smells.

  He had, of course, studied copperplate illustrations in biology and anatomy texts, but that was poor preparation for seeing whole cows and lambs on hooks, sectioned carcasses and hanging birds with feet and heads intact. He knew the difference between fact and fancy, between reality and imagination, but that did not stop him from seeing similarities between the products of Marion Stone’s butcher shop and the woodcuts found in missionary travelogues set in Africa or the Pacific Islands, or in Aunt Althea’s 1563 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which she had forbidden him to read.

  They always waited, even if they were the only customers in the shop. Miss Stone was ever away from the counter, working. Till she stepped up to ask Aunt Althea’s needs, Arthur stood close by his aunt, staring through curved glass at sausages that looked like fingers, at the offal that revolted him so, listening to an unseen but well-imagined blade hissing through meat and thunking against the heavy scarred wooden block.

  Miss Stone was a large woman even then, with arms like the ham hocks she lifted with ease. She almost filled his entire vision when she finally came to take their order.

  Even when she stepped forward, another sound came to him, a rhythmic scrape of metal against metal: shree…shree…shree. Looking behind the huge woman, he noted a figure beyond her, small, pale and flitting, moving among the tables and their grisly burdens. At the time, Ravyn thought he might have imagined it, the pale blue gaze and a shy and fleeting smile, gone by the time it registered in his memory.

  That must have been Gwen Turner, he thought. She would have been even younger than me.

  Of all the errands upon which he accompanied Aunt Althea in Ashford during that season, none had so filled him with dread as the occasional sojourn to the butcher shop. But what of Gwen Turner? He had only been a reluctant visitor, but she had spent her days in the company of dead things, learning the trade of the meat cutter, probably since she was old enough to hold a knife. Ravyn did not know which question bothered him most: what mother would think a butcher shop the proper place to abandon a child, or what woman would use a butcher shop as a nursery?

  The synchronicity of Jung continued to haunt him. Here were three women living next to each other in a tiny village, linked by threads to the dead man. They were also linked to each other in the minds of others.

  The Weird Sisters, Brianson had called them. Aunt Althea had used the same term on two occasions, not to him but to callers upon whom he was not supposed to eavesdrop. At the time, he had not understood the term, Macbeth still being in his future, nor did he know to whom it was being said. In every conversation, there was what was said and what was understood, one on the surface while the other was like a black current in a deep river.

  Aunt Althea’s enigmatic conversations with callers were with him still, and he listened to them again. Forty years had not dimmed them in his memory, but meanings remained elusive. As then, he was still a visitor to Ashford, lacking roots penetrating deep into the history of the place.

  Ravyn leaned back, stretched out his legs and half closed his eyes. He did not drift into slumber, but neither did he remain awake. Voices murmured in his mind, bodiless since he was supposed to be in bed. At various times, Miss Mayhew’s face drifted into view as she answered some question about Ashford. The lines of Stark’s report weaved in and out of his memory, illuminated by words spoken years ago.

  Eventually, all the skeins of memory played out, Ravyn opened his eyes, and made his way to bed for a few hours sleep.

  He dreamed of standing stones, raw meat and diamond eyes flashing in the deepest part of the woods.

  Chapter 6: The Caravan in Red Cap Woods

  Ravyn picked up the carton of coffee he found waiting on the bar, slipped two nested paper cups into his pocket and
entered the grey morning. As he walked along Hob’s Lane he glanced at the cottages. If Stark called on them later and asked after a lone man walking the lane at dawn, he doubted there would be any witnesses, even though he felt their gazes on him now.

  He found Smith waiting where they had parted ways.

  “Want some coffee?” Ravyn asked, pulling out the cups.

  Smith nodded. “It’s a raw morning.”

  Ravyn poured Smith’s, then his own. “How far is the caravan?”

  “Not far, but it’s slow going,” Smith said. “Especially once we get into the deeps. Not much light, not much of a trail, and roots and loam can be difficult if you don’t know your way.”

  “How long to get there?” Ravyn asked.

  “Hour.” He looked at Ravyn’s shoes and suit. “Maybe.”

  “And if you didn’t have me in tow.”

  Smith ginned. “Twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes.”

  “Do we go past the Goblins’ Playground?”

  “It’s not on the way.”

  Ravyn drained his coffee, then poured another for each of them. The blister of the sun appeared on the far horizon but did little to illuminate the forest before them.

  “Shall we be off?” Ravyn suggested.

  They climbed the low fence, crossed the thick cover and came to the edge of the forest. Smith plunged into the darkness without hesitation, his feet treading a trail Ravyn had not seen and could barely trace now. Despite a resolution not to do so, he paused before following the man into the gloom. He hoped Smith had not seen him pause, but feared he had.

  Smith moved with a quiet confidence. Ravyn did his best to keep up. Stark’s warning returned to haunt him. More than a few times, Ravyn had been called arrogant, and not all of those instances had been by people set against him. On the face of it, his decision to let Smith guide him alone to Cutter’s caravan seemed both arrogant and reckless. If Smith were indeed the murderer, he could easily kill him and leave the body in the woods, never to be found, unless by chance when one of Oscar Lent’s earthmoving machines came to dig out trees that had seen the migrations of savage tribes and the rise of more savage empires.