‘My father!’ Hettie gasped.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What about him?’
‘What do you want to know?’
There were so many questions Hettie had wanted to ask – so many she knew she should ask. Yet now the moment had come – now she had her opportunity – she couldn’t think of a single one of them.
Zelda was waiting patiently for her to speak.
This was another trick, Hettie thought. Another way of getting her off the subjects of the policeman and Pat Calhoun. Yet this time it was worth it. This time the bait was irresistible.
‘Who is my father?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Where does he live? What does he do?’
Zelda thought back to the last time she had seen Stan Dawkins alive. She had watched him leave the funfair and walk towards Hallerton. He had seemed so strong. So graceful. What a fine man he had been. What an upright man. What a beautiful man.
‘Well?’ Hettie demanded. ‘Tell me. Have I ever met him? Is he with one of the other funfairs? What does he do?’
‘He doesn’t do anything any more,’ Zelda said.
‘What’s that suppose to mean?’ Hettie asked aggressively.
And then she noticed the tear that was running down her mother’s cheek – a tear so large and so perfect that it seemed to encompass a whole world.
‘He doesn’t do anything because he’s dead,’ Zelda sobbed. ‘He was murdered.’
Twenty-Six
They didn’t welcome his custom in the Black Bull. Woodend was well aware of that. And, as a matter of fact, he didn’t particularly feel like drinking there himself. But he was buggered if he was going to let a bunch of inbred locals dictate his actions, and so before driving back to Throckston for the night he decided he’d pay the Hallerton pub a visit.
He bought a pint and took it with him into the corridor, where the public phone was located. After setting his drink down on the shelf provided and lighting up a Capstan, he fished in his pocket for change, dialled Whitebridge headquarters, and was connected to Bob Rutter.
‘Got anythin’ for me, Inspector?’ he asked hopefully.
‘I’m not sure of how much use it’s going to be to your actual investigation, sir,’ Bob Rutter told him, ‘but I have found the answer to your little war memorial teaser.’
‘An’ that answer is ...?’
‘There’s no war memorial because there are no dead from Hallerton to commemorate.’
Woodend remembered film footage he had seen of the First World War. Wave after wave of men urged on by the commanders into the hail of deadly enemy machine-gun bullets. Thousands upon thousands of brave soldiers falling in a single day’s fighting. And if he needed any further confirmation, he had the war widows he’d known in his own street, when he was growing up. There’d certainly been more than enough of them!
‘What you’ve just said isn’t possible,’ he told Rutter. ‘There isn’t any way that men from Hallerton couldn’t have been called up an’ sent to France.’
‘You’re half-right,’ Rutter said. ‘Several of them were called up, but they were never sent to fight.’
‘An’ why’s that?’
‘Because just before they were due to be shipped to the Front, they all deserted.’
It made sense, Woodend thought. ‘Country’ didn’t mean anything to the men of Hallerton. Bloody hell, county didn’t mean anything to them. Of course they would have deserted. But they would have been captured again almost immediately. The lucky ones would have spent the rest of the war – and beyond – in a military stockade. And as for the unlucky ones – the ones who the court martial decided were the ring leaders ...
‘How many of them were shot for treason?’ he asked.
‘None!’
‘None?’
‘Oh, they probably would have been, if they’d been caught. But they weren’t. They seemed to have completely disappeared off the face of the earth. The military police went to Hallerton to look for them – in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, apparently, deserters would head back for their own village – but there was no trace of them there. The files are still open, of course, but fifty years is a long time, and nobody seriously expects any results now.’
Fifty years might be a long time in the rest of the world, Woodend thought, but in Hallerton it was the mere batting of an eye.
‘What about Hallerton men in the Second World War?’ he asked. ‘Did they desert, an’ all?’
‘No,’ Rutter said. ‘But apparently there was no attempt to post them abroad, either.’
No, there wouldn’t have been, Woodend told himself. By then, the military authorities would have understood that this place was different to every other village in the country – and, knowing the effect that desertion could have on the morale of the soldiers left behind, they would have done nothing to provoke the men from Hallerton.
‘Thanks, Bob,’ he said.
‘Was that any help?’ Rutter asked.
‘Buggered if I know,’ Woodend admitted.
The first thing that Woodend noticed when he returned to the bar was that the eyes of all the locals were fixed on the table in the corner, and turning towards it himself, he understood why. Who, after all, could not look at the graceful woman in the colourful sari and sheepskin jacket who was sitting there?
The Chief Inspector made his way across to the table, and sat down opposite Dr Shastri.
‘I thought I’d find you here, Chief Inspector,’ the doctor said. Then she held up her hands to her mouth in mock horror. ‘No criticism intended. I was not suggesting for a moment that you are an alcoholic. Far from it. I am well aware, as a qualified medical doctor, that you are a special case – that you suffer a rare physiological complaint which means that your brain simply does not work effectively without sufficient lubrication from best bitter.’
Woodend grinned, but said nothing.
‘I am afraid I can be of little help on your current murder,’ Dr Shastri continued. ‘Indeed, my detailed examination has revealed no more than the information I gave you at the scene of the crime, which was that Harold Dimdyke was first rendered unconscious by a powerful blow to the back of the head, then was tied to the post at which he was garrotted.’
‘You’ve got something else for me though, haven’t you, Doc?’ Woodend said.
Dr Shastri smiled. ‘What makes you say that, Chief Inspector?’
‘Because if your findings on Harry Dimdyke were all you had, you’d have given the details over the phone. Instead, you drove all the way here to see me personally. Now why was that?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Because you’ve got a bit of a bombshell to drop – an’ you wanted to see the look on my face when you dropped it.’
The doctor raised one eyebrow. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ she agreed. ‘And what do you think this small bombshell of mine might concern?’
‘My guess is that it’s about the death of the other murder victim – Stan Dawkins.’
Dr Shastri laughed delightedly. ‘Then you are guessing up a blind alley. Though I do have a little information about Mr Dawkins.’
‘And that little information is?’
‘The speculation of the medical examiner of the time was that Dawkins was beaten to death by a gang. I have examined the gruesome black and white photographs that your police photographer so lovingly took at the scene of the crime, and from the nature and angle of the bruisers, I would guess they were all delivered by a single assailant. Of course, I could be wrong.’
Woodend nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let’s have the bombshell now, shall we?’ he suggested.
‘As I told you, it is the tiniest of bombs. Possibly no bigger than a hand grenade.’
Woodend grinned again. ‘Let’s see you pull the pin on it, then.’
‘I examined the post-mortem reports on the women who most recently committed suicide. The two deaths were quite different. In one case, the liver was completely destroyed by an overdose of sl
eeping pills. In the other, death was caused by a blocking of the breathing passage, which thus denied blood to the brain. But there was one feature they had in common – both of the women had suffered quite heavy vaginal bruising.’
‘They’d been raped?!’ Woodend asked, astonished.
Dr Shastri shook her head. ‘No, I do not think so. If they’d been raped, there’d be other indications.’
‘Like heavy bruising to thighs, and bruises on the arms where they’d been restrained.’
‘Exactly. And there is no evidence in the reports of that kind of thing.’
‘So what—?’
‘My conclusion is that shortly before their deaths, they’d both indulged in energetic – almost brutal – sexual intercourse. It was almost certainly voluntary, but I would be very surprised if it were not also quite painful. And there had been anal penetration, which I would imagine is a dangerous and forbidden novelty, not often practised in darkest Lancashire.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Woodend said.
‘That one of the women had undergone such indignities is scarcely worth comment,’ the doctor continued. ‘But I did find it strange that both of them should have borne what might be called the same “signature” of sexual abuse. I may be quite wrong, of course. Perhaps these two women did not see it as abuse at all. Perhaps the men in this village do have a different approach to love-making from men in the rest of the county.’
Perhaps they did, Woodend thought. But he still couldn’t imagine Alf Raby, the shell of a village shopkeeper, treating his wife in the way that the doctor had just described.
Twenty-Seven
There were two pubs in Throckston and, for the sake of variety, Woodend suggested that that night he and Paniatowski should try the Red Dragon instead of the Wheatsheaf.
He knew he had made a mistake the moment he walked through the door. The pub had retained its old oak beams and horse brasses, but – in a crime almost as horrendous as murder in Woodend’s book – the wall between the public bar and the saloon had been knocked through to make one big room.
Paniatowski caught the expression on her boss’s face and laughed. ‘The trouble with you, sir, is that you don’t like progress,’ she said.
‘Progress!’ Woodend snorted, walking over to one of the round, copper-topped tables. ‘You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. It’s not progress to go meddlin’ with things that were perfectly all right as they were. It’s not progress to change things just for the sake of change.’
Paniatowski’s grin widened as she sat down. Pushing Woodend’s buttons and releasing the inevitable tirade was not something she did often – but it was certainly fun once in a while.
‘The thing about a decent pub is, it’s organic,’ Woodend continued, not seeing the trap he was walking into. ‘It’s as natural to a village as the hills which surround it, or the stream that runs through it. It’s taken hundreds of years of slow development to get it how it is. Then some smart alec in a pink shirt comes in from the brewery in Manchester or Preston, an’ decides that he knows more about how the pub should look than the people who actually use it.’
Paniatowski lit up a cigarette. ‘It seems to me as if you think Hallerton is the ideal community,’ she teased.
The remark had more of an effect on Woodend than she’d ever intended it to. Because perhaps she was right, he thought with a sudden mental jolt. Maybe he had got his gaze fixed too firmly on the past. Maybe he was more like the narrow-minded, tunnel-visioned inhabitants of Hallerton than he’d care to admit.
‘Not all changes are bad,’ he said gruffly.
‘For instance?’
Woodend struggled to find an example of one that wasn’t. ‘Well, Whitebridge Rovers got promoted to the First Division last season,’ he said finally. ‘Now that was a good thing.’
Except of course, that now the team would have more money to play about with, it could bring in players from outside the county, he added mentally. Except that success would probably mean the end of the Rovers as a local institution, and the start of its metamorphosis into a big sporting business.
‘Perhaps I should move with the times a bit more,’ he suggested. ‘How do you think I’d look in one of them new collarless Beatle jackets?’
‘Ridiculous,’ Paniatowski said, without hesitation.
‘Aye, that’s what I suspected,’ Woodend agreed.
They gave the waiter the order for their drinks, then Paniatowski said, ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up, sir.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘I think I’ve been followed around Hallerton.’
‘Who by?’
‘An old man.’
‘Not an old man with a black an’ white check cap an’ green muffler, by any chance?’ Woodend asked, thinking of the one he’d seen when he’d been knocking on the shopkeeper’s door. ‘Leaned heavily on a stick?’ he elucidated. ‘Dived for cover when you noticed him?’
Paniatowski shook her head. ‘No, this man wore a trilby and didn’t have a stick at all. In fact, mine was very nippy for his age. But there was definitely something furtive about him.’
‘Maybe Tom Dimdyke’s hired him as a private eye, an’ his job is to trail you,’ Woodend suggested.
‘Not likely though, is it?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘I suppose not,’ Woodend agreed.
And since there seemed to be nothing more to say on the subject, he found himself looking around the bar and examining the customers. They were a mixed bunch, he decided. Some – going by their flat caps and wellington boots – were obviously farm hands, snatching a pint between the last milking of the day and their suppers. Others, wearing jackets and cravats, were equally obviously office workers of some kind – part of the new generation of townees who had moved their families into the countryside. And standing at the bar, looking questioningly at him, was a man wearing a check shirt and brown knitted tie.
Woodend signalled that the man should join them. ‘This is Mr Tyndale,’ he told Paniatowski. ‘He’s somethin’ of a local historian.’
‘So you know all about Meg Ramsden?’ Paniatowski asked.
Tyndale smiled diffidently. ‘I’ve read all the available records. And I suppose I know as much about the way her mind worked – and the way the minds of the villagers worked – as any modern man possibly can.’ He gave a lopsided grin. ‘Of course, if you ask the folk in Hallerton, they’d say that since I wasn’t born there, I know nothing at all.’
‘Tell us somethin’ about Meg,’ Woodend said. ‘Do you think she was a witch?’
‘Are you asking me if she really had magical powers?’ Tyndale said, his smile transforming itself into an amused grin.
‘No. Since I don’t believe in magic myself, there’d be no point. What I am askin’ is whether she thought she could perform magic.’
‘Absolutely not. She was far too level-headed a person for that. The power that Meg worshipped was much more tangible. And that’s where the real problem was.’
‘Would you care to be a bit more specific?’ Woodend asked.
‘Meg was no witch, and everybody in the village knew it. But what they also knew was that she had the ability to make their lives a total misery – and very often did.’
‘An’ how did she manage that?’
‘Meg inherited a fair amount of money from her father. Enough to live comfortably on. But she didn’t just sit on it – she put it to good use. Villages like Hallerton always exist on the edge of disaster, and when times are particularly hard, the people who live there have no choice but to borrow money.’
‘An’ Meg became the village moneylender?’
‘She did indeed. And a particularly harsh one she was. In those days, villages were real communities. Everybody supported everybody else. But Meg was having no truck with that. A debt was a debt, and if it couldn’t be paid in cash, then it had to be paid in some other way. There are at least three or four documented cases of Meg calling the bailiffs in to evict
families that had fallen behind with their payments. By the time she died, she owned half the village.’
‘Can’t have made her popular,’ Woodend said.
‘But there was one way in which she was generous,’ Tyndale continued. ‘She was very free with what we used to call “her favours”.’ He turned to Paniatowski and blushed slightly. ‘Sorry if this is getting a little indelicate for you.’
‘I’m a detective sergeant in the Mid Lancs Police,’ Paniatowski told him sweetly. ‘It comes as no news to me that there are some women who never wear knickers.’
‘I see,’ Tyndale said, still not sure of how to take her. ‘Well, anyway, if you took Meg’s fancy, she’d soon let you know it, if you understand what I mean.’
‘Sounds like a woman who’d be on top more often than she’d be underneath,’ Paniatowski said.
Tyndale coughed awkwardly. ‘Exactly,’ he agreed. ‘It’s not known how many of the men from the village she took to her bed – they weren’t going to admit it, were they? – but it is absolutely certain that any good-looking traveller who was passing through Hallerton would soon fall prey to her.’
And they probably wouldn’t have put up much of a fight, Woodend thought, remembering the portrait – the one which looked so much like Mary Dimdyke – that hung in the Meg Ramsden Museum.
‘Anyway, then the witchcraft trials started in Lancaster, and that was just the excuse the villagers had been looking for. As you know, they tried her themselves, and then carried out their own execution.’
‘But was it just an excuse?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Didn’t they really believe she was a witch?’
‘Perhaps a few of them might have pretended they did. But even by the standards of the time, there was very little of what you might call “evidence” of witchcraft. Oh, a couple of children died in the village, but infant mortality was very high in those days. And a few sheep went sick – but shepherds back then were too good at their job not to know the cause, even if they didn’t know the cure. So while they might have said they burned her as a witch, they actually burned her for being Meg Ramsden.’
The Witch Maker Page 14