“A Mr William Bailey,” the clipped voice said, “who had been residing in his hut near Kites Ridge, had been out rescuing his flock on the night of the blizzard, when he spotted a small figure he thought to be a woman, walking away in the direction of Ludsmoor village. Interviewed earlier today by the local police, Mr Bailey said he had only come forth now having put two and two together.
‘It could be something’ Mr Bailey had said. ‘Or it could be nothing’ But he swore on his life that at around midnight on that dreadful night he had in fact seen a woman dressed in a long fur coat and high heels picking her way across the snow-logged moors in what was by all accounts a howling snowstorm. Quickly swallowed by thick cloud and driving snow, however, he couldn’t say for sure who it was, and in light of the sheer improbability had dismissed it from his mind. The local police are not taking this seriously at the present time, apparently accusing Mr Bailey of being on his own for far too long and having drunk too many tots of brandy. Sergeant Judd alleges that on the night in question it would have been physically impossible for anyone – even a hardy soldier – to have walked across those moors in such conditions, least of all a slip of a lady like Ms Holland.
We laughed. We all did. How ridiculous. You could barely have stood upright that night even holding onto each other on the lane, let alone up there. And she was supposed to have walked over three miles in the black dark up to her knees in snow… in high heels? And what about the bogs and the rocks, and the gullies and crevices – lethal enough on a normal day? Many had become lost and disorientated up there over the years, when sudden belts of fog had rolled in. The place was a notorious death trap. Crocker Bill was the only person alive who could work and live up there in that weather. It was preposterous. Absolutely. Why on earth would he come out with an accusation as far-fetched as that?
“Well she had a motive, I suppose,” said Dad.
“That’s as maybe,” Mum agreed. “If she wanted ’im but ’ou didna.”
“And she told you that, did she?”
“As good as.”
“You discussed ’er fancy man with ’er? Someone else’s husband? I didn’t know you were ’er confidante, Viv.”
“Not in front of the children, thank you, Harry.”
“Even so—”
“I said! Not in front of the children. And anyway, you know as I visit Annie and sometimes our Grace is there. Annie’s is Grace’s grandma too, you know?”
“Aye, I suppose.”
“Yes, well, think on and then!”
But next day, a few hours after we’d got back from Chapel when Mum was making lobby and suet dumplings, or stew as most people would know it, Auntie Flo turned up all of-a-lather. She stood in the scullery red-faced and out of breath, hand on her chest, wheezing and gulping for air.
“Steady on, duck,” said Dad, putting down the boots he’d been polishing.
It seemed a detective from outside Danby, not Puffer Judd, had been to question Auntie Grace again yesterday morning, only this time with a team of other policemen. Apparently, (and here Auntie Flo had lowered her voice, but my mother hadn’t got her wits about her being so keen to get the news, so we children heard it loud and clear) they had searched the premises but finding nothing untoward had been about to leave when the detective, who was halfway down the front steps, suddenly noticed something.
“We’d ’ad the thaw, you see,” said Auntie Flo, “since Puffer were there a week ago. Anyhow like I said, this fella were ’alf way down th’ front steps saying sorry to have troubled our Grace and all that, when he saw summat as were ’anging off th’ branches, just glinting in the light. Tiny droplets with specks of blood inside. They’d been preserved all that time in the snow…just thawing.”
My mother gasped. “So she murdered her outside on th’ steps?”
“Aye, with a ruddy, great big axe.”
All the life bled from my mother’s face, her complexion the colour of putty.
And Dad… he was just staring at her. Silent and staring. I’d never seen him look at her like that before. Never.
***
Chapter Thirty-One
Louise – continued…
You know when they say all hell broke loose? Oh, it really did. And it was so bad and my heart was thumping that hard it made me feel sick. Iddy was crying and we were both begging them to stop fighting, but no one took any notice; they were going at each other like demons, with teeth bared and spit flying. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it either before or since and I wouldn’t want to.
We’d just had the shock of finding out it was Grace who’d murdered the woman from Danby when my two aunties arrived. Nobody ever knocked in those days – they walked straight in through the back door and that’s exactly how I remembered it. Suddenly there they were.
Both Marion and Rosa were taller than my mother, and fair-haired with grey eyes. I had never thought of them as poor before that day because they were always so much better dressed than everyone else. While my mother, Flo and Connie lived in aprons and curlers, Marion wore floral dresses that wafted around her ankles and Rosa usually wore a tweed suit with a string of pearls. They always wore hats and gloves when out and smelled nice too, of soap and scent as opposed to borax and boiled vegetables.
That day they loomed into our tiny front room like a pair of ghosts – pale, grim and so, very, very angry. You could tell even before a word was spoken. Primed, I’d call it now – pumped-up and ready.
Flo was busy bringing Connie up to date with the news on Grace; and Mum and Dad were still staring at each other.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” said Marion when she spotted Flo and Connie. “Not that I’m surprised.”
This was a new voice. A new person. Everyone jumped. Normally Auntie Marion glided around saying very little and when she did you couldn’t make head or tail of it. But that day her face could have stopped a clock and every word fired out like a bullet.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Mum.
“Oh, don’t come the innocent with me, Vivien. I don’t suppose you’ve lost any sleep either, have you? Because you knew this was coming, didn’t you? And what’s worse is you couldn’t even wait for poor Mum to be cold in the ground before you frogmarched us over there to find out.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She indicated my dad. “Have you told him? Have you told him yet what you’ve done?”
“How dare you come in here and—”
“You knew me and Rosa had been stitched up good and proper all these years. You knew Agnes had the title deeds to our house and we’d have to be out the minute Mum died; and you knew how Victor had been able to buy up all the land and build that monstrosity right in front of our house, even though you swore blind you didn’t. You knew about the gambling debt. I saw it in your face yesterday. None of it was a shock to you, was it?”
“Of course it was. How the hell would I know what ’appened forty odd years ago? I was younger than you were.”
“What’s going on? What was it as ’appened forty odd years ago?” said Dad.
“Why don’t you tell him?” said Rosa. “Tell him why we’re all as poor as church mice when Dad was one of the wealthiest men in the county. Tell him who’s inherited it all and why.”
My mother’s eyes shot to flint. “I only know what you do. I heard it Friday afternoon same as you.”
“Heard what, Viv?” Dad insisted.
Still glaring at Marion, my mother snapped, “That Dad gambled away the house. That it was signed over to Sam Holland after a poker game in 1912. How was I to know what ’appened way back when, any road? Like it’s my fault? It seems to me, though, that Agnes was good enough to let her sister live there all her life—”
“Good enough? When Agnes told her son to build a house right in front of ours so her sister had no view? Why would she do that if she was being ‘good enough’? And you know darn well from everything Mum told us over the years and from how everyone in the vi
llage spoke of him that our Dad was no gambler and he loved us. It was a set-up and you bloody well know it.”
“Hang on a minute, let me get this straight,” said Dad. “So since 1912 Agnes has owned Lake View and all the land around it? What about the rest? And how have you girls lived?”
With Marion and my mother inches away from each other and taking no notice of Dad at all, Rosa spoke up. “The Danbys arranged a small allowance for Mum out of the estate, Harry. Enough to pay for some help and put us through school. Everything else went to Dad’s nephew, Thomas. And of course there’s been my teacher’s salary. But now Mum’s gone, Agnes wants us out of the house.”
“And she and Victor own the lot? Apart from this nephew–”
“Who’s dead,” said Rosa. “Hazel Quinn was his only daughter.”
Dad turned ashen. “Also now dead.”
“Yes.”
“And you say Aaron gambled away his estate?”
“He only had the house and the land it stood up on. We didn’t know that. We didn’t know the Danbys disinherited him from the businesses, the farms, the investments.”
“Why?”
Rosa shrugged. “Because of the family he married into. We think—”
“Not good enough?”
Again Rosa Shrugged. “I really don’t know. Probably. It seems likely.”
“So he staked his only asset on a game of poker with a rough-arsed miner? His home with the woman he loved and gave everything up for? I don’t get it. Wasn’t he a Methodist – dead set against drink and gambling?”
Marion, still staring at Vivien, said, “Precisely. Odd, isn’t it?”
Dad shook his head. “Hang on, let me think about this. So Hazel’s widow, Max – he was the one carrying on with Grace?”
My mother rounded on him. “That’s a totally separate issue.”
“Is it though, Vivien?” said Marion, who had still not taken her eyes off my mother, not for one second. “Is it? Because the result’s the same the way I see it. Victor gets the lot and if Grace had married Max Quinn then they’d have, between them, the entire Danby inheritance – Aaron and Thomas Danby’s - would they not?”
My mother shook her head.
“I mean… did they promise you a cut or something? Were you fed up of getting your hands dirty, is that what it was, because here’s what I don’t get. What’s in it for you to go siding with them against your own sisters?”
The mercury of my mother’s temper shot all the way up the gauge and over the top. “You bloody, little madam! You come in here shouting the odds and blaming innocent people when it’s you who’s done alright for yourself all these years, Marion Danby. You and Rosa and that backward idiot you spawned, have swanned around living in comfort your whole lives. It won’t do you any harm to get off your backsides and work like the rest of us have to do.”
“Oh, so that’s what it is. The nastiest, most dangerous sin of all – a cesspit of swilling, putrid, jealous hatred,” said Marion. “You spiteful cow!”
“Come on now, ladies—” My dad ventured.
“Shut up, Harry! I’ll sort this out,” my mother said, stepping close up to Marion with her finger pointing in her face. “You’ve done sod all with your life, Marion. You got yourself knocked up at fourteen and ever since then you’ve floated around with a paintbrush like some dopy, fairy half-wit. You didn’t earn a single penny or pull your weight through the war, and you’ve refused to get that retard put into a home where she can’t hurt anyone. You should be grateful you’ve had a wake-up call. Now’s your chance to actually do something.”
“So it is jealousy then,” said Rosa from the side-lines. “Good grief. You made your own life choices, Vivien.”
“Right, well you tell me why she couldn’t do a stroke of work all her life? Tell me why she shouldn’t be kicked out of our parents’ house?”
“And you tell me why she should be,” said Rosa. “Marion’s not well. She has nightmares and anxiety problems—”
“Aww—”
“She’s on prescription medication as you well know; and while I was at work she had to look after Lana, keep the house clean and do the cooking because Mum was increasingly forgetful and it’s a long time since we could afford any help. Meanwhile I’ve paid the bills and kept it all together. We’ve done nothing to deserve this and neither of us believe that our father would have left us in jeopardy, either. Your husband’s right – he was not a drinker and he was not a gambler. He was a staunch Methodist and how dare you bloody hags tarnish his good name!”
“Hags? Who the hell do you think you’re calling—?”
“You. We know you and Agnes and Annie, not to mention Vic and Grace, have secret meetings and we also know about the witchcraft. Don’t deny it. We’ve known about that for a long time, Vivien. We just didn’t understand why you’d want a part of it but now we do, don’t we? So come on then, convince us you didn’t know what was going to happen to us after Mum died?”
My dad was staring so hard at my mother I thought a hole would burn in the side of her cheek.
Flo and Connie had their mouths agape, cigarettes toppling with long tubes of ash.
“Witchcraft?” My mother snorted. “Now I know you’ve lost your marbles, the pair of you!”
Marion laughed then – a strangled sound in her throat. “Only you can’t play the innocent with me, Vivien, can you? Agnes wanted to rope me in too, you see – years ago – because she knows I’m a medium, a gift only Annie had. You don’t have it and neither does Agnes. I was the only one who inherited that one. And Agnes knew that for any black magic to happen you need an energy channel. Anyway, Agnes came calling one day. I was fourteen. Do the maths.”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
“Alright then, I’ll spell it out. And I bet Connie and Flo can remember this too? So cast your minds back, ladies. I was invited to Wish Lane Cottage for tea and a game of cards. Only the cards weren’t playing cards, were they? And the tea wasn’t tea. I didn’t know why you were all watching me so intensely but I saw all sorts of things I wish I hadn’t. I’d liken it to a gate opening, and after that I couldn’t shut it again; and what I thought were dreams turned out to be anything but. The thing is, when I woke up I was in the strangest place imaginable, lying on some kind of stone plinth in the black dark. Bonfire smoke stung my eyes and I could hear weird animalistic screeching like vixens or owls. I remember trying to get up but I couldn’t because I was chained. Strapped down and gagged—”
“You’re a mental case,” my mother said. “You and that thing you gave birth to.”
“That’s enough, Vivien,” said my dad.
But my mother went on, pushing home for the kill. “Have you heard yourself? You’re just a slut who got knocked up as a teenager in the woods—”
Marion flew at my mother then. First she smacked her face so hard her head rocked to one side, then backhanded her and knocked it right over the other way.
My mother grabbed Marion’s wrist before she could do it again and slammed her against the kitchen cupboard. “Do that again and you’re bloody dead.”
Dad tried to grab Mum, and Rosa tried to pull Marion away, but the two sisters had each other by the hair by then and were screeching like banshees. Chairs grated across the floor as they fell under the table, scattering the aunties and pummelling each other’s faces with drawn-back fists.
Dad and Rosa were desperately trying to stop the fight but they couldn’t. Auntie Flo and Auntie Connie were telling us children to go upstairs. None of us moved.
Eventually, Dad managed to drag my mother off by the waist while she yelled obscenities I didn’t recognise and am therefore unable to repeat, but I know enough now to say that a lot of it was some kind of terrible curse.
Spitting out blood having lost a tooth in the fight, Marion let Rosa help her to her feet. “That won’t work, Vivien,” she said. “I’m the only one with any power. The truth is you backed the wrong horse.”
“Wait a minute,” Dad said, still with a straightjacket hold on my mother. “Before you go… Have I really got this right? Annie and Agnes fixed things so their own half of the family would eventually inherit everything the Danbys ever owned – the land, the houses, the businesses, the lot. Not to mention cursing Ellen for marrying one of them. So much hate it beggars belief. Why, though? I can’t understand it. Just tell me why!”
“Dad built the chapel on pagan ground, Harry,” Rosa said. “That’s one reason, I suppose.”
“Pagan ground, my arse. Odin’s Tree was used for hanging.”
“Annie did a lot of folk favours round here and then they stamped her out of existence—”
“No, I still don’t buy it. There’s summat else… Must be.”
“Why don’t you ask your wife?”
My mother was still panting. Her glasses had skated across the kitchen floor and there were scratches gouged into her face and neck. “Ask her what?”
“Tell him, Vivien,” said Rosa. “Annie had her sights set on the Danbys right from the off, didn’t she? Admit it - it’s been a systematic attack using witchcraft—”
“What a load of bloody, old tosh. Just get out now, the pair of you, before I—”
“Really? So how do you account for this?” Rosa pulled from her pocket a bandage fuzzy with reddish-brown writing. And dropped it on the sink.
My mother stared. “What’s that horrible thing?”
“Evidence,” said Auntie Rosa. “Dried blood and dirt on a bandage of the type used decades ago. It’s lint. The words aren’t particularly clear but Marion and I have had a go. To be honest with being ill and then Mum’s funeral, I forgot I’d got it until recently, but it’s what we found in Grytton Forest on the night we got lost. We ended up at some kind of witches burial site littered with poppets and effigies…” She looked over at my mother’s dresser, then at the window sill, at all the dead-eyed dolls. “They were hanging in the trees – dolls - everywhere we looked.” Here she glanced over at us children and lowered her voice, although we still heard. “Evidence of the black arts – take a closer look at this. It came from a hideous poppet of a man distorted with wax and stuck with pins. The inscription, we think, says, ‘Donec meam libidinosam compleveris voluntatem.’ You did Latin at school like we did.”
The Soprano Page 22