A woman – a member of staff, presumably – was sitting on the teacher’s desk. She was around forty, he estimated. She had long greying hair which was a tangled mess, and a large ladder in one of her nylon stockings which looked far from recent. She had just lit up a cigarette, and was sucking on it with a greed which surprised even a champion chain-smoker like him.
The woman looked up. ‘Yes?’
‘I was just passin’, an’ I thought I’d drop in,’ Woodend said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Mind?’ the woman replied. ‘Why should I mind?’
‘I’m a policeman,’ Woodend told her. ‘I’m investigatin’ the murder in the village.’
‘Oh yes?’ the woman said, without displaying any real interest.
It was then Woodend saw the bottle – a quarter pint of cheap brandy – which was lying on the desk next to a set of dog-eared exercise books. The woman noted that he had seen it, but made no effort to cover it up.
‘It struck me that you an’ the other teachers might be able to give me an insight into the life of the village,’ the Chief Inspector pressed on.
The woman seemed to find the remark hysterically funny.
‘The other teachers?’ she said. ‘What other teachers?’
‘You’re the only one?’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’
‘But I must have seen fifty kids come out of this place.’
‘Fifty-seven! What’s your point?’
‘You surely don’t handle them all on your own, do you?’ Woodend asked, astonished.
‘There’s very little choice – considering that no one else will come and work in Hallerton. Besides, it’s not as arduous as it seems. It’s not as if they actually want to learn anything, beyond the very basic reading and writing skills. And why should they? Most kids in this country don’t know what they’ll be doing tomorrow, but these little buggers know what they’ll be doing forty years from now – and nothing I offer them is going to make very much difference to that.’
‘Even so, just keepin’ them in order must be a bit of a problem. Fifty-seven kids crammed together in one room! It’s not a job I’d like to take on.’
The woman sneered. ‘It’s a piece of cake,’ she said.
‘You’re jokin’.’
‘I don’t make jokes. This place has drained away any sense of humour I might once have had.’ The woman took another drag on her cigarette and coughed violently several times. When the fit subsided, she said, ‘You’ve seen the little swine at their liveliest today. They’re excited, you see.’
‘Yes, murders do, unfortunately, seem to thrill small children,’ Woodend said.
‘Oh, it’s not the murder that’s got them going,’ the teacher said scornfully. ‘It might have done a few weeks ago – especially since it was the almighty Witch Maker himself who was killed – but not now.’
‘Not now?’
‘Not so close to the big event itself. They’ve been waiting for the Witch Burning all their short dull lives.’
‘You don’t seem to have much rapport with the children you teach,’ Woodend said.
‘Rapport!’ the teacher repeated. ‘How can you have rapport with a pudding. And that’s what they are! Puddings! They just sit there. I tried – once upon a time – to awaken a curiosity in them for the world outside Hallerton. They weren’t interested. I told them fairy tales to stimulate their imaginations. What a waste of time that was! The only story they care about is the story of Meg Ramsden – and they already know more about that than I’d ever care to learn.’
‘I take it from what you’ve said that you’re not a local woman yourself.’
‘No, thank God! But if I had been a local woman – if I’d known what the people in the other villages round here know – I’d never have taken the job in the first place. It’s soul-destroying, working here.’
‘So why do you?’ Woodend wondered.
The woman glanced across at the brandy bottle. ‘I’ve no choice,’ she said, without any hint of shame. ‘I need a job – and this is the only place which will have me.’
‘Drink problem?’ Woodend guessed.
‘It’s no problem at all – as long as I can get my hands on one.’
Woodend shook his head, but said nothing.
‘I’ve always had a slight inclination towards the drink,’ the woman continued. ‘It runs in the family. But it’s only since I’ve been working here I’ve realized what a real friend it can be. You couldn’t do this job sober. Believe me, I’ve tried it a couple of times.’
‘Have you checked the toilets since the children left, Miss Simpkins,’ said a stern but rich baritone voice from the doorway.
Woodend looked up. The speaker was a man in his early thirties. He was wearing a tweed jacket – somewhat less hairy and more stylish than his own – and a clerical collar.
‘What?’ the woman asked, as if she still didn’t quite comprehend what was happening.
‘The toilets,’ the vicar repeated, contemptuously. ‘You are to check the toilets once the children have gone, in order to make sure they haven’t left anything there. We agreed on that at our last meeting.’
For all that she was a lush, Woodend thought, the man could have been a bit pleasanter in the way he spoke to her – especially considering his calling.
‘You do remember, don’t you, Miss Simpkins?’ the vicar said.
‘I suppose so,’ the teacher answered, sliding rather awkwardly off her desk, then walking with exaggerated care to the door.
Once he was sure she had gone, the vicar ran his eyes over Woodend’s clothes, and clearly found the Chief Inspector’s appearance did not come up to scratch.
‘This is a school,’ he said.
‘Aye, I’ve noticed,’ Woodend agreed.
‘And are you a parent of one of the children who attend this school? Or are you, perhaps, a member of Her Majesty’s School Inspectorate?
‘Neither.’
‘In that case, and since this institution is not open to the general public, I wonder if you would tell me who you might be?’
‘I might be the bishop’s special representative, come to see if any of the clergy are skivin’ off,’ Woodend said.
‘I beg your pardon!’ the vicar said, outraged.
‘Granted,’ Woodend replied, with a slight smile. ‘But as a matter of fact, I’m nothin’ to do with the diocese. What I am, is the chief inspector of police from Whitebridge who’s come to investigate the murder.’
‘Ah, I see!’
The look of supercilious suspicion vanished from the vicar’s face and was replaced by an expression which said that, despite Woodend’s obvious failure to dress the part, he was now prepared to accept the policeman almost as an equal.
‘You must excuse our Miss Simpkins,’ the man of the cloth continued. ‘You seem to have caught her on a bad day.’
‘Is that right?’ Woodend asked. ‘To tell you the truth, I was beginnin’ to wonder if she ever had any good ones. Still, she’s not workin’ under ideal conditions, is she – not with fifty-odd kids in her class an’ a boss who looks at her as if she’s somethin’ he’s found on the heel of his shoe?’
The vicar coughed awkwardly, while he decided what to do next. ‘Would you like to see the church?’ he asked finally.
‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Might as well, now I’m here.’
Ten
Wilf Dimdyke gave Meg Ramsden’s carved left foot a last going-over with the sandpaper, then stepped back to look at the results.
It was still not right, he told himself. He still hadn’t quite captured the way the foot should look – the way the foot had looked on every effigy which had been produced since the first one.
‘Bugger it!’ he said.
‘What’s the matter?’ his father asked, alarmed.
‘The foot.’
‘What’s wrong with it? It looks fine to me.’
It would do, Wilf thought. It would look fine to anybody wh
o was not seeing it through the eyes of a Witch Maker.
‘There’s no point in fiddlin’ with it any more,’ he said. ‘I’ll just have to carve a new one.’
‘There’s not time for that!’ Tom said, his concern now teetering on the edge of panic.
‘There’ll be time,’ Wilf told him. ‘There always is.’
‘But what if there isn’t? What if, when it comes round to Sunday mornin’—’
‘Dad!’
Tom Dimdyke looked down at the ground. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t have said anythin’. It’s not my place.’
‘It’s all right, Dad.’
Tom shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. You’re the Witch Maker now, an’ what you say goes.’
‘Maybe you were right about the foot,’ Wilf said. ‘Maybe I can improve this one enough so that I don’t have to carve a new one.’
But he didn’t believe it – and now neither did his father.
Wilf picked up a chisel with one hand and a mallet with the other, and considered the foot. But while part of his mind was struggling with the technical problems he faced, another was considering the change in the nature of his relationship with his father.
He should have expected the change, he thought. He had expected it! It was natural. It was part of a pattern which had repeated itself eighteen times since the village had taken the momentous decision which changed its destiny.
Yet it was still hard to come to terms with – because whatever else might have happened, Tom was still his dad.
His sister, Mary, was too young to remember anything about their mother. But he wasn’t! He’d been just old enough to sit by her bed – holding her hand and watching her cough up blood – as she slowly died of consumption.
Her death had devastated his father – even a small boy like him could tell that. But Tom was a man – a real man – and he’d put his own grief aside and got on with the business of bringing up his children. There’d been offers of help, but he would have none of them. The kids were his responsibility, and if that involved doing women’s work, then so be it. He’d painstakingly learned how to cook, and how to wash and change his daughter’s nappies. The house was a credit to him, the neighbours said. And so it was.
Other memories came back to Wilf as he worked on the effigy’s foot. He remembered sitting on the older man’s knee and giggling furiously while Tom tickled him under the chin. He remembered them going down to the river together at a time when his fishing rod was taller than he was himself, and how Tom – with almost infinite patience – had taught him how to use it.
Tom’s word had been law. If he gave you a clip on the ear, you didn’t ask why. You knew why! It was because you had earned it; because – even if you didn’t fully understand your crime – you accepted that you’d done wrong. Not that there were many clips around the ear to speak of. Tom had ruled the house through love, not through fear.
And now this!
Now, on becoming Witch Maker, he was experiencing a great sense of loss. It was almost as if ...
It was almost as if the man he had known since his earliest childhood had suddenly become a stranger to him.
‘You do what you have to do with Meg,’ Tom said encouragingly. ‘An’ whatever you decide, I’m sure your Uncle Harry would have been more than happy with the way you’ve taken care of his Witch.’
He meant well, Wilf thought – but he didn’t understand. None of them understood.
They all believed that the Witch Maker’s greatest moment came as he stood on the Green and watched the Witch burn, just minutes before he stepped down from his position to make way for his successor.
How could it not be so? they asked themselves.
He had served his term – had endured all the sacrifices that being the Witch Maker entailed – and now, the heavy burden of responsibility almost lifted from him, he could look on with pride as his Witch went up in smoke and flames.
But it wasn’t his Witch.
His Witch – the one he had truly put his heart and soul into, the one he had made the most sacrifices for – had been built while he was an apprentice, and consumed by a fire twenty years earlier.
The Witch Maker reached the height of his skill during his apprenticeship. After that, he became no more than a teacher – training his successor to build his masterpiece.
Wilf knew all this as only a Witch Maker could. Knew that while the Witch Maker had the authority in the village, it was the Assistant Witch Maker who had the power – because true power came only through the act of creation, and once he became Witch Maker, a man’s creative days were over.
‘Pass me another piece of sandpaper,’ he said to his father.
He realized, even as he spoke, that it sounded more like a command than a request, but before he had time to soften his words his father had place the sandpaper in his hand without comment.
He was above being corrected now, he thought. He was above being questioned. He was the Witch Maker.
Eleven
‘At first glance, the church seems to have very little architectural merit,’ the vicar said in a tone of voice which suggested that he was about to embark on an oft-repeated lecture. ‘Nonetheless, there are certain features of it which I am sure that even you, as a layman with little specialized knowledge, should find interesting.’
Woodend scowled. His Nonconformist background had made him naturally suspicious of vicars with a High Church leaning, but this feller would have got right up his nose whatever line of work he’d been in.
‘Look, for example, at the steeple,’ the vicar continued. ‘You’ll notice that the weather vane—’
‘Why don’t we just cut the crap?’ Woodend suggested, mildly.
The vicar looked as if he’d just been struck by an errant thunderbolt. ‘What did you say, Chief Inspector?’ he asked icily.
‘You didn’t bring me here to see the church,’ Woodend pointed out. ‘You wanted to get me away from the school – and especially, you wanted to get me away from Miss Simpkins.’
The vicar seemed unsure of how to react to the comment. For a moment, it looked as if he would choose outrage again, then his expression shifted to one of haughty Anglican disdain. Finally, however, he decided to opt for at least temporary honesty.
‘You’re quite right, of course,’ he agreed. ‘The poor woman has a lot of troubles in her life, and as both the vicar and the chairman of the board of school governors, I try to shield her from the consequences of her own weaknesses as much as I possibly can.’
Especially since, if she left the school, you’d find it almost impossible to replace her, Woodend thought.
But aloud, all he said was, ‘What do the other governors of the school think about her?’
‘There aren’t any,’ the vicar admitted.
Then there wasn’t much to be chairman of, either, Woodend reflected.
‘Only one teacher, an’ only one governor,’ he said. ‘Seems like a rum kind of school to me.’
‘It’s a “rum kind” of village – as you’re no doubt already coming to appreciate,’ the vicar said. ‘In most villages, seats on the governing body of the school are very much sought after. As are seats on the parish council. A title gives ordinary people some kind of status, you see. But in this village there is no parish council, and no one – seemingly – is willing to serve on the board of the school.’
‘Couldn’t you recruit them from the pulpit?’ Woodend suggested, with only a touch of malice. ‘That’s what most vicars I know do when they want to press some poor bugger into reluctant service.’
The vicar laughed bitterly. ‘If they came to church, that might work,’ he said. ‘But they don’t.’
‘Which means that you can take Sunday off, does it?’ Woodend said whimsically.
The vicar glared at him. ‘I have two parishes in my care. This one and Throckston. I hold my services in Throckston.’
‘There’s more of a congregation there, is there?’
&nb
sp; ‘My church in Throckston is reasonably full, given the times we live in,’ the vicar said. ‘Certainly it is fuller than the churches officiated over by some of my colleagues.’
‘But the only business you can drum up in Hallerton is for births, marriages and deaths, is it?’
The vicar shot him another look of dislike, thought of twisting the truth slightly, then opted for honesty again.
‘Here it’s just deaths,’ he said. ‘If they want someone to be buried in my churchyard, they have to come to me. But I think if they could do it without permission, I wouldn’t even see them then.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You obviously have no interest at all in my church, but perhaps you’d care to have a look around my churchyard.’
The invitation was delivered casually, but Woodend was not fooled. He had made the vicar feel inadequate, and now the vicar was planning to get his revenge by making the smart-mouthed bobby feel the same. How he hoped to achieve his aim in the churchyard was anybody’s guess, but it might be interesting to find out.
‘Yes, I’d be delighted to take a look,’ he said.
They walked through the lych-gate. The closer they got to the church, the more Woodend could see how neglected it was. The churchyard, on the other hand, was as neat and tidy as a formal garden.
He stopped to examine one of the tombstones.
Oswald Warburton 1896–1912
Only child of Walter and Catherine.
Sadly missed.
The youth had been dead for over fifty years, and the parents, too, must have passed on long ago. Yet this grave – like all the others around it – had been kept in immaculate condition.
‘You shouldn’t be surprised,’ the vicar said, reading his mind. ‘In Hallerton, the past is all that matters. In Hallerton, the dead are more important than the living – far more important.’
Was this what the vicar had brought him to see? Woodend wondered. Was this the surprise that the man had been aiming at? If it was, then it was a pretty watered-down revenge by anybody’s standards.
‘Yes, they really do care about their dead,’ the vicar said. ‘Which makes it all the more surprising that the one thing you find in every other village churchyard is missing here.’
The Witch Maker Page 6