‘Thank you for coming.’ Tess’s voice was very low, but still carried clearly through the night. ‘It’s saved a lot of trouble.’
Mildred cleared her throat. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name isn’t important.’
Maltravers and Sally instinctively moved back further into their hiding place as Mildred switched on a torch, pointing it straight at Tess’s face. She responded by deliberately stepping forward and the beam flickered nervously.
‘See? You don’t recognise me, do you?’
There was a moment’s pause, then Mildred Thomson shook her head. ‘No. But I can see you’re from here. What do you want?’
‘First of all, I want some answers. It’s all right, Michelle. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just tell me how this all began.’
‘All what began?’ Mildred Thomson snapped.
‘I’m talking to Michelle,’ Tess told her sharply. ‘You’ll get your chance in a moment. Michelle?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The aggressive, egotistical teenager was a very frightened little girl.
‘Yes, you do,’ Tess said with a coaxing softness. ‘Shall I say it for you? After Patrick Gabriel died, Mildred told you there was a way in which he might be brought back. She gave you one of Ralph the Talespinner’s stories to read, didn’t she? About a woman called Mary of Medmelton and a man she was in love with. Why didn’t you just laugh at her, Michelle? You’re too grown up for fairy stories. Why did you believe her?’
The girl lowered her head and scuffed the toe of her shoe in the gravel of the path. ‘I didn’t believe her. I wanted to in a way, but I knew it was stupid. I just did it because ... because it helped.’
‘Helped? In what way?’
‘Because ... no.’ Sulky defiance came to her defence. ‘If you’re so clever, you tell me.’
‘I know a lot, Michelle. I know that you’re in very serious trouble. But I don’t know everything.’
‘Then I’m not going to tell you.’
‘But you’ve got to tell me. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to talk to the police.’
‘And what can they do?’ There was a trace of rebellious contempt at the threat of authority.
‘Oh, stop being stupid!’ Tess was suddenly impatient. ‘Do you think they’ve forgotten about the murder and that it will all just go away? They’re going to want to know about you and Patrick Gabriel ... including who killed him.’
Her voice had barely risen, but its icy savagery stung the girl. She shook her head violently.
‘I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘Stop it! I didn’t see anybody! I just found him! He was dead!’ In the porch, Maltravers and Sally Baker stopped breathing.
‘Found him?’ Tess sounded appalled, then was instantly sympathy and understanding. ‘Christ, darling, that must have been awful.’
She stepped forward, but Michelle backed away in alarm. ‘It’s all right. You’re quite safe. It’s me, Tess.’ The girl peered at her in the gloom, then sobbed with shock and relief. Tess put her arm round her, then glanced at Mildred Thomson. ‘What the hell have you been doing to this kid?’
The woman looked down, torch beam shining on the ground. ‘Nothing she didn’t want.’
‘Which you put her up to,’ Tess said bitterly. ‘She was scared and grief-stricken and you bloody well played games with her.’
‘She said she wanted him back,’ the woman muttered. ‘To talk to him.’
‘And instead of listening to her, instead of telling her parents, you fed her crap. She needed help and you told her ghost stories.’ Still holding Michelle, Tess stepped back towards the Lazarus Tree. ‘Do you really believe what you told her? Because if you do, you are sick!’
‘There are things you don’t know, but you should.’ There was angry excitement in Mildred Thomson’s voice. ‘You’ve got the power!’
‘What power, you ...’ Tess stumbled in disbelief, ‘... you stupid bitch! There is no power.’
‘Of course there is. You’ve got the eyes!’
‘Sod the bloody eyes! This brown one’s a contact lens and even if it was real, it wouldn’t mean anything!’
‘What do you mean?’ The torch beam flashed back at her face. ‘Who are you? What are you playing at?’
‘Turn that thing off,’ Tess ordered. ‘We’re not playing. We ...’
‘We?’ The question cracked like a whip. ‘What do you mean, we?
Inside the porch Maltravers touched Sally Baker’s hand. ‘Stay here,’ he breathed, then stepped outside, ‘She means me too, Mildred.’
As the woman whirled round, he switched on Sally Baker’s torch and the two beams crossed like lances. Raising her head from Tess’s shoulder, Michelle recognised him and gave a gasp of shock.
‘What’s going on?’ Startled by the sudden light on her face, Mildred Thomson backed away, staring urgently from Maltravers to Tess. ‘I’ve not done anything wrong. I’ve not broken any laws.’
‘Yes you have,’ Maltravers contradicted. ‘Withholding evidence for a start. You knew that Michelle found Patrick Gabriel’s body and didn’t tell the police. There may be a few other things as well, but that’s up to them to sort out.’
‘She never told me she found the body.’ The denial came out too quickly. ‘She just said ... just said that she wanted to ... wanted to ask the cards about him.’
‘What cards?’
‘The ... you wouldn’t understand.’
‘I might, but we won’t bother about that. What did she want to ask them?’
‘She didn’t say. She ... she wouldn’t tell me everything. I didn’t want to do it, but she insisted. I didn’t think there was any harm in it.’
Michelle suddenly clung very tightly to Tess, burying her face in the raincoat’s damp fabric.
‘No!’ she sobbed. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’
‘It’s all right,’ Tess murmured soothingly as she stroked her hair. ‘We know she’s lying.’
‘And that’s what you’re going to tell the police, is it?’ Maltravers asked caustically. ‘That you let a terrified child who’d found a murdered man talk you into playing insane superstitious games? That you told her to come here and secretly put things under the Lazarus Tree, that you said she had to recite the burial service backwards — oh, yes, I know about that as well — and that this has been going on for months? And you never wanted to do it, but you didn’t think there was any harm in it. You’re brilliant at self-deception, Mildred.’
‘It was her idea.’ Michelle did not raise her head from Tess’s shoulder and the resentful words were muffled. ‘It was all her idea.’
‘Of course it was,’ Maltravers said. ‘And it was very wicked of her.’
Mildred Thomson backed away further. In the silence, they could hear her panting with panic.
‘Who sent you?’ she demanded. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Nobody sent us,’ Maltravers replied impatiently. ‘I know everybody’s been making hysterical guesses about who I am and why I’m here, but I’m just a friend of Stephen and Veronica’s, nothing else.’
‘But you’ve been asking questions,’ the woman said accusingly.
‘Yes, I have,’ he agreed. ‘And now I have some answers. Not all of them yet, but enough to be going on with.’
‘If you’re not from the police, I’m not saying any more.’ She pointed the torch beam at Michelle, then flicked it away again. ‘She’s crazy, that one. They always are when the eyes are reversed. Nobody’s going to believe her.’ Michelle moaned in Tess’s arms.
‘My God, you really are vile.’ Maltravers shone his torch straight at Mildred Thomson’s face again, then shook himself in disgust. ‘Just get the hell out of here — and leave this girl alone from now on. If I want to hear from you again, I’ll bang on your bloody cauldron.’
Angry, defiant and frightened, she sneered and Tess closed her eyes as though in pain. ‘Bloody off-comers with your fancy London ways. You don’t belong here. I�
�m going all right, but not because you tell me to. This is my village and nobody tells me what to do. Go and tell the police for all I care. They can’t touch me.’
Maltravers sighed as she clumped away in the dripping darkness. The lychgate squeaked again, then her footsteps faded.
‘At least she didn’t spit,’ he muttered to himself, then went over to Tess and Michelle, putting his own arm around the sobbing girl. ‘Come on, we’ve got to talk. Let’s go into the porch out of the rain. There’s someone else there, but it’s all right. She’s on your side as well.’
Little inarticulate noises choking from her throat, Michelle let them lead her into the porch. When she saw Sally Baker, she looked blank, beyond any more reaction. Tess sat her down on the stone seat and put a protecting arm round her again.
‘You’ll be in bed soon,’ she promised. ‘Come on, you can hack it. Just tell us everything that happened.’
The girl shook her head feebly. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ Tess insisted gently. ‘I’ll tell you what. We’ll tell you what we think and you say when we’re wrong. All right? Well, that’s what we’ll do anyway ... Patrick Gabriel was your lover, wasn’t he?’
She tightened her grip as the girl instantly tried to pull away. ‘No! That’s not what we want to talk about. It doesn’t matter. You used to meet him by the Lazarus Tree, didn’t you?’ Unexpectedly she laughed. ‘Oh, you silly girl. Believe me, darling, there are millions of better fish in the sea. I bet he told you he was going to take you away to live in London with him, didn’t he?’
Michelle gave a tiny nod. ‘He promised,’ she whispered.
‘Of course he did. He’d promise anything, that one. Start getting angry at him. He used you and ...’
‘He said he loved me.’
‘Oh, they always say that,’ Tess told her. ‘So you’ve learnt something, haven’t you? Remember it. How long did it go on for?’
‘Four or five weeks — but not every night! I know how many times we ... it’s in my diary ... I can’t remember exactly, but it must have been about ...’
‘We don’t need the details,’ Tess interrupted. ‘It’s happened and it’s over and done with ... did you take precautions?’
‘He said there was no need. He’d had an operation.’
Tess groaned and took hold of her by the shoulders, turning her face towards herself. ‘Now listen to me. Never believe that. You got away with it this time, but you might not be so lucky again.’ She smiled apologetically, then cuddled her. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound cross. But please be careful in future.’
As the girl gave a nervous smile and nodded, Maltravers felt that Tess’s commonsense talk had managed to calm her down sufficiently. He moved forward and was about to speak, when Sally Baker touched his arm to stop him before crouching down and taking hold of Michelle’s hand.
‘Look at me, Michelle,’ she urged softly. ‘That’s it. Now come on. You hardly know Gus and Tess, but you’ve known me a long time and there’s something very important we have to talk about. Just now you said that you found Patrick Gabriel. It was going to be one of your arranged meetings, was it? Was that a yes? All right, now tell us everything you can remember.’
There was a very long silence before she spoke. ‘I just found him. I thought at first he’d gone to sleep, then I saw ... I thought he was wearing a red scarf, but when I touched it ...’ She shuddered.
‘What did you do?’ Sally asked.
‘I think ... no, I didn’t faint, but I went very dizzy and the next thing I was running back to the cottage. I could hardly see, I was crying so much. I went to my room and locked the door and ... I jumped into bed and pulled the duvet right over me. I was so scared.’
‘Of course you were.’ Sally squeezed her hand. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘I couldn’t!’ she protested. ‘They’d have wanted to know what I was doing out at that time of night. They might have thought I did it!’
‘Michelle, nobody would have thought that! Why should they?’
‘I’d still have had to explain why I was there and it would all have come out about me and Patrick and what we’d done.’ She gulped and sobbed again. ‘I went to sleep for a bit and by the morning someone else had found him and it was all ... all panicky. There were police all over the place. I remember praying for Steve to take me to school so I could get away from it. I had to make myself ask him about it in the car, because I knew it would seem wrong if I didn’t. He didn’t say very much — I think he was trying to protect me in a way and I knew he was being kind, but I wanted to know what the police were doing. I had to know.
‘It was awful at school because everyone had heard and kept asking me questions. The teachers kept asking me if I was all right and I had to bottle it all up inside me.’ Tears were spilling from brown and green eyes as the words came faster. ‘And if you keep something like that inside, it becomes ... I don’t know ... it sort of hardens, like a shell or something and you can hide inside it and nobody can get at you. I remember acting stupid, laughing at silly things. At break time, I even played chase and I never did that because it was for little kids.’
She dropped her head. ‘And I wanted to be little again.’
Sally Baker straightened up and when she turned to face Maltravers she looked dreadful.
‘You do it now,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t any more.’
Maltravers nodded understandingly then leant forward, arms resting on his knees.
‘And you’ve kept it bottled up all this time? I wish I was as brave as you. Anyway, you’ve told us now and it’ll soon be over. Just a couple more questions and then we’ll get you home. How did you and Patrick arrange your meetings? You said it wasn’t every night.’
She shrugged. ‘They just happened. We’d just meet like it was casual and decide. Sometimes I wanted to, but he didn’t. We always made it for just after midnight because I knew Mum and Steve would be asleep by then. They always go to bed early.’
‘And why by the Lazarus Tree?’ Maltravers asked. ‘You could have gone to his cottage.’
‘That was his idea. It was something to do with the story — you know, about the girl waiting under it. I didn’t really understand, but he said it tied in with the poem he was writing and ... God, I feel so stupid!’
‘Hold on to that,’ Maltravers told her. ‘You’re finding your temper. Anyway, the important thing is the night it happened. Now we realise how awful it was for you, but just think about it for a moment. When you went out — before you found him — was there anything at all you can remember?’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I was hurrying because it was nearly half past midnight and I thought Patrick might have gone. Uncle Ewan and Auntie Ursula had come round and they stayed late. I had to wait until I was certain Mum and Steve were asleep. I didn’t see anyone or hear anything or ... it was a summer night, but very dark. I’ve thought and thought about it, but I just went out and it was quiet and I climbed over the wall and ...’
‘All right.’ Maltravers stopped her continuing. ‘You’ve told us the rest. Come on, let’s get you home.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked as he stood up.
‘Nothing at the moment,’ he replied. ‘Except to repeat one thing that you’ve just learnt. Mildred Thomson is very bad news. Right?’
‘I know that now — it was stupid, but I ...’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t explain it ... but aren’t you going to have to tell Mum?’
Maltravers had to look away. ‘I can’t promise, but if we can avoid it, we will. All right? In the meantime, just hang on in there. We may need to talk to you again, but for the time being all this is just between the four of us. Now home. If Mum or Steve hear anything, they’ll assume it’s just us coming back. Go with Tess and I’ll catch you up.’
He and Sally Baker remained in the porch, watching them walk towards the lychgate with their arms round each other. Michelle was wearily resting her bead against Tess.
‘What a bloody mess,’ Sally murmured.
‘Ain’t that the truth?’ Maltravers lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t see how we’ve got much further on the murder, but we’ve stamped on Medmelton’s secret, black and midnight hag. Jesus, she should be locked up. Do you think she’s been doing this sort of thing with any other kids?’
‘I have a horrible feeling it’s possible,’ Sally said. ‘But leave that with me. She doesn’t know I was here tonight, so I can do things without her realising.’
‘I’m sure you’ll sort it,’ Maltravers acknowledged. ‘In the meantime, we’d better have another talk tomorrow. Come on, I’ll see you home.’
‘I can manage. Medmelton’s safe enough.’
‘Is it?’
‘Nobody stops me walking through my village. Goodnight, Gus.’
After she left, Maltravers stared at the Lazarus Tree as he finished his cigarette and. the depth of Mildred Thomson’s malevolence began to sink in. She ran the local shop, everyone knew her, she was an institution in a secluded Devon village. When she died, they would pack the church for her funeral service, full of stories about her gossip and her eccentricities. Bernard Quex would recall how she had been a part of so many lives, how they would miss her, how Medmelton would never be the same again. Somebody else would take over the stores, but for years people would say, ‘It’s not like it was in Mildred’s day.’ They’d never know and perhaps they wouldn’t want to ... the glowing cigarette end spun into the darkness as he walked back to Dymlight Cottage.
The front door was still unlocked as he let himself in and went quietly upstairs. Tess was sitting in front of the dressing table, bowed head over cupped hand as she removed the brown contact lens.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘She was almost asleep in my arms. Reaction. I just took her shoes off and put her into bed.’ She raised her face and looked at him through the mirror. ‘So what do we do now?’
He shrugged. ‘Sleep on it — if we can — and see if the morning brings any ideas. I’ll tell Stephen what’s happened when he gets back tomorrow afternoon. At least we’ve sorted out one of his worries.’
The Lazarus Tree Page 16