There was more banter behind the words than there was truth, Mary thought. Her dad was as vigorous as he’d ever been. And what pride he’d put into those three words – ‘our Witch Maker’.
‘I’ve b ... brought you some tea,’ she said, holding out one of the mugs to her father.
Tom Dimdyke looked at it longingly, but shook his head. ‘Not at the moment, thank you, lass.’
‘S ... somethin’ the matter with it, Dad?’ Mary asked. ‘I m ... made it the w ... way you like it – so st ... strong you could st ... stand your spoon up in it.’
‘I’m sure it’s just right, Mary, love, but I think I’ll hold off on it a while,’ her father told her, all the while making a frantic sideways gesture with his eyes.
And suddenly Mary understood what he meant, and why he looked so uncomfortable.
‘Here’s your t ... tea, Wilf,’ she said, holding out the other mug to her older brother.
Wilf took the mug with the barest nod of his head, and turned his mind back to the problem of Meg’s left foot.
‘I think I’ll have my mug now,’ Tom said, and when Mary gave it to him, he slurped it down greedily.
‘Will you be w ... wantin’ me to bring you anythin’ else?’ Mary asked.
Tom looked uncertain. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Will we be wantin’ anythin’ else, Wilf?’
The young man made no reply.
‘I was askin’ if you thought we’d be wantin’ anythin’ else,’ Tom Dimdyke said, louder this time.
‘A few ginger biscuits would be nice,’ his son replied, not looking up from his work.
‘Aye, a few ginger biscuits would be grand,’ Tom agreed gratefully. He ran his eyes quickly up and down his daughter’s slim frame. ‘You look a proper picture, lass,’ he said.
Mary glowed with pleasure. ‘Th ... thanks, Dad.’
‘Move into the doorway, where I can get a better look at you.’
Mary stepped back. ‘Is th ... this all right?’
‘Perfect,’ Tom said. ‘The way the sunlight catches your hair is lovely. It’ll look perfect on Sunday.’
The glow disappeared, and Mary rocked on her heels as if she’d been hit by a hammer. ‘But I th ... thought ...’ she gasped.
‘You thought what?’
‘I th ... thought that after everythin’ that’s h ... happened ...’
‘Everythin’ that’s happened?’
‘Uncle H ... Harry ...’
‘Your Uncle Harry’s death was a terrible, terrible thing, but it changes nothin’,’ Tom told her firmly.
Mary felt hot tears start to trickle down her soft cheeks. ‘W ... Wilf!’ she sobbed.
Her anguish was so obvious that it managed even to permeate her brother’s Witch-absorbed mind.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘D ... Dad says that even though Uncle H ... Harry’s dead, I’ll still have to go th ... through with it.’
‘There’s no point in appealin’ to your brother, because he can’t do anythin’ about it,’ Tom said, his voice suddenly harsh and unyielding.
Wilf’s body stiffened. ‘What was that, Dad?’ he asked.
‘I said there’s no point in your sister appealin’ to you.’
‘Is there not?’
‘No, there bloody isn’t.’
For a moment it seemed as if Wilf would accept his father’s judgement on the matter. Then Mary sobbed again.
Wilf straightened up. ‘She’s my sister,’ he said.
‘An’ she’s a child of this village,’ his father told him. ‘She has Meg Ramsden’s blood runnin’ through her veins.’
‘That doesn’t mean—’
‘Yes, it does. You know it does.’
The two men – father and son – faced each other across the effigy. Their fists were bunched, their eyes locked, and their noses almost touching.
A panic swept over Mary, so intense she felt that she could almost drown in it.
She had caused this, she told herself. She alone had set the two men she cared most about in the world at each other’s throats. If it came to blows, their father would win, despite the fact that Wilf was younger and stronger – because her brother, for all his rough talk, was gentle and kind, and simply did not have Tom’s determination.
‘D ... Dad! W ... Wilf!’ she pleaded. ‘There’s n ... no need for this! We d ... don’t want any trouble!’
‘Stay out of this, Mary,’ Wilf said, his gaze still fixed on his father’s. ‘So you think you can overrule me, do you, Dad?’
‘It’s not me,’ Tom said.
‘Isn’t it?’ Wilf looked around the barn. ‘Well, I certainly don’t see anybody else here.’
‘You’re the Witch Maker now,’ Tom said. ‘I honour you for that. You have my respect, an’ – whenever it’s necessary – you have my total obedience an’ all.’
‘So if I say that I don’t want our Mary to have to go through the ordeal of havin’ her—’
‘But even though you are the Witch Maker, there are some things you don’t have any choice about,’ Tom interrupted.
His father’s eyes had begun to moisten over, Wilf noticed with astonishment.
His big, strong dad – the man who carried him for miles on his back when he was a kid – was almost on the point of tears which were every bit as deep and bitter as Mary’s. It wrenched at his heart to see his father in such distress. But there was still Mary to consider – still Mary to protect.
‘If my position means anythin’ at all—’ he began.
‘Bein’ the Witch Maker doesn’t give you freedom,’ Tom told him. ‘I thought you’d have realized that by now.’
‘Then what does it do?’
‘It’s a burden. It’s a responsibility. It binds you to what has to be done – even more tightly than it binds the rest of us.’
Fifteen
Throckston was only four miles from Hallerton. Yet it would have been impossible to confuse the two, Woodend thought as he parked the Wolseley outside the Wheatsheaf Inn.
It wasn’t just that the outward signs of the twentieth century seemed to have reached this village in a way they had never managed to reach its neighbour. It wasn’t even that the locals watched the two police officers’ arrival with frank curiosity, but without any sign of hostility. Put simply, it was obvious from the moment he and Paniatowski stepped out of the car that even the air in Throckston seemed lighter and easier to breathe – as if, unlike the air in Hallerton, it was not forced to carry on it the heavy weight of three hundred and fifty years of history.
They took their luggage out of the boot of the Wolseley, and walked across the car park to the pub. A man sitting on the wall nodded to them, and they nodded back. The dog sitting at the man’s feet looked up and wagged its tail.
‘It feels good to have got away from darkest Hallerton,’ Woodend said.
‘Yes, it does,’ Paniatowski agreed heartily.
Not that there’d been any choice in the matter. The landlord at the Black Bull had been adamant that he had no rooms available for them – or for anybody else, for that matter.
But every pub in this part of Lancashire let out rooms, Paniatowski had protested.
Maybe all the rest did, the landlord had replied. He wouldn’t know about that. But he did know that this one didn’t.
How about bed and breakfast places? Paniatowski had asked. Were there any widow ladies in the village who would welcome the chance to supplement their pensions by providing accommodation for a couple of police officers?
If there were any, the landlord told her, he didn’t know about them. And neither, it seemed, did Constable Thwaites.
Thus, they had been forced to come to Throckston.
And thank God they had, Woodend thought, as he pushed open the public bar door and heard the happy buzz of conversation which had been wholly absent from the public bar of the Black Bull.
The landlord of the Wheatsheaf was a jolly, red-faced, balding man, wearing a bright
check waistcoat which strained against his ample beer paunch.
As he slid the register across the counter for Woodend to sign, he said, ‘So you’re investigatin’ that murder of the Witch Maker, are you?’
‘That’s right,’ the Chief Inspector agreed.
‘Well, you’ll have your work cut out for you, there’s no doubt about that,’ the landlord assured him. ‘They’re funny folk over in Hallerton. Always were, an’ always will be.’
‘You seem be talkin’ from personal experience,’ Woodend said.
‘Bitter experience,’ the landlord replied. He chuckled. ‘An’ I’m not talkin’ about the kind of bitter that comes out of my pumps.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Woodend suggested.
The landlord needed no further urging. ‘Well, when I was younger – an’ didn’t know any better – I tried to get off with a girl from Hallerton myself,’ he said. ‘A lovely lass, she was, by the name of Bessie Potts.’ He sighed, and a faraway look came into his eyes. ‘But it never came to anythin’.’
‘Why was that?’ Woodend asked. ‘Didn’t she fancy you back?’
‘Oh, she fancied me, all right.’ The landlord paused and patted his stomach. ‘I wasn’t born with this, you know. When I was young, I had a belly as flat as a washboard, an’ an arse so tight you could have cracked walnuts in it. So as you can imagine, I never had any difficulty pullin’ women.’
‘Except for this Bessie Potts,’ Woodend prompted.
‘Like I said, she wasn’t the problem. She’d have gone for a ramble on the moors with me at the drop of a hat. But she never had the chance, did she? I went to pick her up for what I suppose these days you might call “our first date” – an’ she wasn’t there.’
‘But someone else was?’ Woodend guessed.
‘You’re so smart you should be a detective,’ the landlord said, laughing heartily at his own joke. ‘Yes, you’re right, somebody else was there – half a dozen somebody elses, as a matter of fact.’
‘Local lads?’
‘That’s what you’d have thought, isn’t it? But it wasn’t lads at all. These fellers were all old enough to have been my dad.’ He chuckled again. ‘Nasty enough to have been that dad of mine, an’ all.’
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘No, though I suppose it would have made a better story if they had’ve given me a beltin’.’
‘So what did they do?’
‘They made it as plain as the nose on your face that if I didn’t take their first “friendly” warnin’, there wouldn’t be another one. An’ we’re not talkin’ about a few bruises, you know. They as good as said that if I showed my face in the village again, they’d make sure I’d lose the use of my legs. An’ I believed them at the time – so I’ve never been there from that day to this.’
‘Probably wise,’ Woodend said.
The landlord shrugged. ‘Aye. Probably.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘Supper should be ready in about half an hour. I know for a fact that the missus is makin’ a Lancashire hotpot – but she can soon do you somethin’ else if you think that won’t suit you.’
‘Do you think it’ll suit me?’ Woodend asked.
‘Well, though I say so as shouldn’t, it’s the best hotpot I’ve ever tasted. An’ it always wins first prize at the village fête.’
‘Then I’d be a fool to turn down the opportunity to try it for myself,’ Woodend said.
He had picked up his bag and was heading for the stairs when the landlord’s cough made him turn round again.
‘Was there somethin’ else?’ he said.
‘Not really,’ the landlord said wistfully. ‘I was just thinkin’.’
‘About what?’
‘There were lots of other pretty girls around at the time I was after Bessie. Some were almost as pretty as she was, an’ I married one of them.’
Woodend smiled. ‘But?’
‘But I still can’t help wonderin’ if my life would have been any different if I’d ignored that “friendly” warnin’.’
Sixteen
It was nice to be back in the normal world, Woodend thought. Nice to be sitting in a bar with Monika Paniatowski by his side, a pint glass in his hand and his stomach well-lined with the landlady’s justly famous Lancashire hotpot.
It was only a temporary release, of course. The following morning they would return to dark, brooding Hallerton, and attempt to solve a murder that no one there seemed particularly keen to have solved. In fact, he couldn’t even put aside thoughts of the village for even that long, because there was a phone call he needed to make.
He took a swig of his pint and stubbed out his Capstan in the already-overflowing ashtray.
‘I’d better go an’ call Bob on the off chance he’s come up with somethin’ useful,’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s probably a good idea,’ Monika Paniatowski said, her voice giving away nothing of the turmoil that was raging inside her.
Woodend stood up. ‘Shouldn’t be long,’ he said. ‘But if you start feelin’ bored, you can always order another round.’
He was at the point of turning towards the door when his sergeant said, ‘Could you ask Bob ... could you ask Inspector Rutter ...’
‘Yes?’
‘I ... I miss my little car. Could you ask Inspector Rutter if it would be possible for one his lads to drive it up here in the morning?’
‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ Woodend said, wondered what it was she’d really been going to ask him to ask Rutter. ‘I’ll tell you somethin’, Monika – I’ve known mother hens that lavished less attention on their chicks that you devote to that car of yours,’ he continued, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
Paniatowski smiled weakly. ‘You know how it is with the things that are important to you,’ she said.
Yes, Woodend thought. Yes, I believe I do.
Bob Rutter had lost track of time – he always did when he immersed himself in reports – so it was not until the insistently ringing phone reminded him there was a world beyond that of cardboard folders that he even realized it had gone dark outside.
He picked up the phone. ‘DI Rutter.’
‘See if you can find out why there’s no war memorial in Hallerton,’ said a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
Rutter was not quite sure that he had heard correctly. ‘A war memorial?’ he repeated.
‘There should be one, an’ there isn’t. I’d like to know why. It might not have any relevance to the case, but at least it’ll put me one up on that smug bastard of a vicar.’
‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’ Rutter asked worriedly.
‘No, I’m not. Nobody who knows he has to go back to Hallerton in the mornin’ could be feelin’ all right. It’s not somethin’ that I’d wish on my worst enemy.’ Woodend paused. ‘So have you come up with anythin’ that might help me solve the case in a hurry, an’ give me the excuse to leave the bloody place behind me?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Rutter admitted. ‘Aside from murder, there doesn’t seem to be much crime in Hallerton.’
‘Well, that’s a comfort,’ Woodend said sourly.
‘I’m been comparing the crime sheets from Hallerton with those of the other villages round it,’ Rutter continued. ‘The rest of the villages record a marked increase in petty theft and burglary since the war. Nothing really significant, you understand – bicycles taken, a few pounds stolen – but in Hallerton there isn’t even that. I don’t know why that should be. Perhaps the local constable keeps a tighter grip on things than the constables in the other villages do.’
‘Or somebody keeps a tighter grip,’ Woodend said.
‘I beg your pardon, sir.’
‘Nothin’. Just thinkin’ aloud. Have you got anythin’ else for me?’
‘There’ve been four suicides the last fifty years, two of them in the last ten. Isn’t that rather high for a small place like Hallerton?’
‘I haven’t got the statistics, but it is quite common for small farmers t
o take their shotguns an’ blow off their own heads. An’ in a way, who can blame them? They work their bollocks off, year an’ year out, an’ it only takes one particularly bad run of weather to ruin them. The banks won’t help – there’s no real money in it for them – and the poor bloody farmer’s got nobody else to turn to. If the government cared about the land as much as it says it does, it would never allow ...’ Woodend paused again. ‘Sorry, lad, I was off ridin’ my hobby horse for a second, wasn’t I? Tell me about these farmers.’
‘They weren’t farmers,’ Rutter said.
‘Weren’t they? I’d just assumed they’d—’
‘They were all women, and none of them was even a farmer’s wife.’
Woodend whistled softly. ‘Is there any common thread runnin’ through these suicides?’
‘Well, there’s their age,’ Rutter said.
‘Oh aye? How old were they?’
‘They were all in their middle-to-late twenties.’
‘An’ do we have any clue as to their motives?’
‘None. According to the reports, they were all healthy and had everything to live for.’
‘If you can call spendin’ most of your time in Hallerton livin’,’ Woodend said. ‘Did they have anythin’ in common apart from their age? Were they all from the same family, for example?’
‘The records seem to suggest that everybody in the village is related – through some obscure link in the past – to everybody else.’
‘But no close relationship? What about the most recent two? They weren’t first cousins or anythin’, were they?’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘So what else might have connected them?’
‘Nothing comes immediately to mind. One ran the village store with her husband, and the other was the postman’s wife.’
‘So they were both married,’ Woodend said, pouncing on the detail.
‘Most women are married by the time they reach their late twenties,’ Rutter pointed out.
And thoughts of Monika Paniatowski flashed through both their minds.
The Witch Maker Page 8