The Devil's Chair (29 page)

Alex nodded the woman a greeting while Martha sat down next to the little girl on the floor. ‘Hello, Daisy,' she said softly and picked up one of the large Lego bricks. The child put her head on one side and regarded her solemnly, saying nothing. Martha clicked the brick on to its partner and reached out for another one while the child continued to watch her warily.

‘Is your leg better?' Martha asked, still playing with the bricks, forming them now into a bridge. The child's attention was split between Martha and Martha's building activity.

‘Yes,' she said.

‘Well, that's good,' Martha said, reaching out for one of the Lego people to stand on the bridge. ‘It must have hurt.'

The child nodded. ‘A lot,' she said.

‘It's a good job the lady made it better.'

The mention of the lady increased the child's tension. Her shoulders stiffened but she handed Martha one of the Lego people, a little girl. Now she was making a face, considering.

Considering what?

Whether to speak? Whom to trust? She licked her lips and Martha reached out for a red Lego car. Daisy Walsh drew in a deep breath.

Martha changed the subject. ‘That's a pretty dress,' she said.

The child's attention was focused now on her frock and she stroked the flowered material and looked up at Martha. ‘She bought it for me,' she said.

‘Well, I think that was very kind of her.' Martha hesitated before pushing on. ‘And she was very kind to look after you too.'

Daisy nodded. And then she smiled, the sun coming out from behind a cloud. ‘She made me better,' she said firmly. ‘Like she
promised
she would.'

Martha took a chance. ‘I think her house is nice too.'

Randall was watching from the doorway, his expression softer than usual as he watched Martha with the child.

The child looked up. ‘It's
quite
pretty,' she said. Then added, ‘Yellow.'

Martha picked up a yellow brick. ‘Like this?'

‘Not the same yellow,' Daisy said.

‘Paler?'

Daisy nodded and picked up the red car. She looked at it thoughtfully, then back at Martha. Tracy's car. Red VW.

‘It's a pity it fell off the mountain,' Martha said, deliberately vague.

Daisy nodded, then threw the car right across the room. It hit the wall with a soft smash then landed on the floor. The social worker's head flew up. Alex put a hand on her arm.

‘Did you like the dog, though?'

Daisy started giggling, putting her hand over her mouth. ‘He had a funny name,' she said. ‘Sick something.'

Martha giggled too. ‘Was it really sick?'

The child was still frowning. ‘No,' she said, puzzled. ‘Not sick. His
nam
e. Seck
something.
'

Martha did not want to prompt her. She bunched her shoulders up in a silent query. ‘Oh, I'd really like to know,' she said.

Daisy was frowning fiercely. ‘Seck Met,' she said.

Martha could hardly conceal her triumph. She blazed a smile at Alex.

Oh, what a neat little puzzle this was turning out to be.

‘Q
uite extraordinary,' Alex said, handing Martha a cup of coffee. They had left the little girl still playing with her Lego. Instead of returning to their respective offices they had elected for neutral ground – Costa Coffee on the High Street, near Grope Lane and Waterstones.

‘The whole thing is quite extraordinary,' he repeated.

‘So what do we actually know, Alex?'

Alex paused, put his cup down on the saucer deliberately. ‘We know that our person is a lady,' he said, ‘who has looked after Daisy and then given her up. We know she lives in a yellow house and has a dog called …' He eyed Martha suspiciously.

‘Sekhmet,' she supplied innocently.

Randall raised his eyebrows. ‘And the significance of that is?'

‘You'd like to hear a story?' Martha asked teasingly.

Randall smiled, knowing he was playing her game, and enjoying it. He nodded, picked up his cup of coffee and eyed her over the rim.

‘Right then.' Her eyes were merry. ‘You asked for it. Sekhmet is an ancient Egyptian goddess usually associated with war and destruction, but also with both plagues and healing. Her name means “The Powerful One”. She is usually depicted as a woman with the head of a lioness, sometimes also with the sun disc and the Egyptian cobra on her headdress.'

‘Go on. This is more interesting than I thought,' Alex prompted, ‘though exactly what it's got to do with our abductor I'm not sure.'

‘Yet,' Martha said. ‘It's a pretty nasty tale,' she said, ‘typical of the Egyptians. The story is that Ra, the old king of the gods, became angry with wayward humans and in his wrath ripped out his eye and threw it down to Earth. This divine eye became the Goddess Sekhmet, who in the form of a lioness, set about slaughtering humans, butchering them and drinking their blood.' She made a face at Alex, who was watching her, a tilt of amusement lifting his normally straight mouth.

‘Ra, seeing the appalling habits of Sekhmet and realizing that at the rate she was going no one would be left alive on Earth, tried to calm her. But she refused to listen. She was enjoying her killing far too much. So Ra filled a lake with a mixture of beer and pomegranate juice, and Sekhmet, thinking it was blood, drank the lot then fell asleep. When she woke the next morning, she was much calmer but had a terrible headache!'

Alex was puzzled. ‘I can't work out what this has to do with Daisy's abductor.'

‘Patience,' Martha said. ‘Though Sekhmet was known primarily as a violent goddess, she was also known as a healer who set and cured broken bones.'

Alex was thinking about this. He was silent, then looked up and asked quietly, ‘What was the plant, Martha?'

‘Comfrey,' she said. ‘Sometimes known as knitbone. Daisy had a broken leg. This woman, whoever she was, healed it using traditional remedies.'

Randall drank his coffee thoughtfully before speaking again. ‘But it still doesn't tell us what happened that night, why Tracy took her car out, why she tried to reverse and how or why Daisy was removed from the scene.'

‘And I don't know either. We'll have to ask her.'

I
n the end, it was surprisingly easy. It had taken less than twenty-four hours to find Primrose Cottage, partly through the recall of some of the team who had conducted the house-to-house searches and remembered its yellow exterior, the only yellow-painted house in the area, and partly through the unusual name of the dog. Vets proved very helpful and in this case led them straight to the cottage, which was owned by a woman called Violet Taylor, daughter of Eva, the woman who had once lived in Hope Cottage.

Things were turning full circle.

Alex was left in a quandary over whether to take Martha along with him. As coroner this was nothing to do with her but Martha, yet again, had proved pivotal in this case. Besides which, it appeared that Violet Taylor, whatever her connection, wanted the coroner to come along. The letter had been addressed to her. It had been an invitation. There was a backstory, which the police didn't know. It was something to do with Charity Ignatio but Randall couldn't make a connection. Charity had checked out. So he needed not only Ms Taylor's help here but Martha's too. His instincts might scream that there was something strange, something sinister about the events on that night, of 6 and 7 April, but he wasn't going to be able to piece together the inexplicable fragments without help. He was only too aware that he was still missing many of the pieces. And so, after a great deal of thought, when he was sure that the remote cottage near Snailbeach was the one, he decided he would take Martha with him.

They both knew it was irregular but Randall believed that Violet Taylor, daughter of Eva, wanted to speak more to the coroner – for whatever reason – than to him.

Snailbeach was an old lead mining area on the edge of their search zone to the north-west of Church Stretton. It was a rural village with a few mine workers' cottages and little else.

As the car drew up on that Thursday morning the first thing they heard was the staccato barks of Sekhmet. Martha couldn't resist giving Alex a grin which he acknowledged, cocking his head. The cottage door opened and the dog came flying out. A ginger-coated terrier. In the doorway stood a woman.

Randall stared. His mind had been unable to produce any sort of picture before. If anything Violet Taylor looked just like the popular image of a witch. Long grey hair, a floor-length skirt, piercing black eyes. But looked at with more realistic eyes, she was less intimidating. Mid-fifties, an ageing hippy rather than someone with magical powers.

She was unsmiling and looked wary, but her face warmed a little when she saw Martha Gunn climbing out of the squad car.

There was no verbal greeting. She simply regarded them.

It was Martha who spoke first. ‘Hello,' she said. ‘I'm pleased to meet you. It is Miss Taylor, isn't it?'

Violet nodded. ‘I'm glad you came too,' she said, adding, ‘at last,' in a dry tone which robbed the words of any warmth. Her accent was just as they had imagined it: a rich, Shropshire burr.

The butter-coloured walls of the cottage seemed to absorb the spring sunlight so it looked as though the walls generated some of the glow themselves. Violet Taylor turned her back on them and went inside, the dog, quiet now, following warily. The interior of the cottage, in contrast, was dingy and dull, with heavy black beams criss-crossing the ceiling. Like many old houses the windows were too small to let in sufficient light, but there was a pleasant scent of lavender and a few early roses cut from the climber which had grown so thick it practically blocked the front door, its thorns meant to catch the unwary.

Randall followed the two women in, feeling strangely out of control. Whoever was pulling the strings in this case now, it certainly wasn't the senior investigating officer.

Martha found herself staring up at the painting which hung over the fireplace. She turned and confronted its owner. ‘Horrible,' she commented. ‘It's horrible. A really nightmarish subject.'

‘To some, maybe,' Violet said, her words thick. ‘Not to me. Everyone needs a source of inspiration.'

Randall shifted uncomfortably on his feet, unsure what revelations were about to pour from this person. He couldn't cope with the supernatural and disliked images of the Devil and his minions. He cleared his throat noisily and fingered his mobile phone, keeping his mind aware of the fact that this really was the twenty-first century. He only had to call and officers would come from all directions.

Violet's beady eyes were small and suspicious, hard enough to drill holes right through Martha. But Martha was unfazed. She knew she was here by invitation. She eyed Violet Taylor right back without flinching.

‘I think you'd better tell me the full story, Miss Taylor,' she said, ‘before the police press charges of abduction.'

It broke the spell. Violet gestured for them to sink into the chintzy sofa which faced the fireplace square on so they had no option but to look up at the painting. ‘You're right,' she said, heaving a big sigh and dropping into the armchair. ‘You're right.'

She looked from one to the other. ‘I don't know how much you know,' she said. ‘So I don't know where to start.'

‘Assume we know nothing,' Randall said, speaking with difficulty.

‘It all starts with Charity,' Violet said and Martha nodded. She had suspected as much.

Violet pointed an accusing knobbly finger at Martha. ‘
You
should remember the case.'

Martha nodded. ‘I do,' she said. ‘But I have the feeling that you know more than I did – or do.'

Violet nodded. ‘That girl murdered her family.'

Randall cut in tersely. ‘How can you know that?'

Violet's face was firm. ‘I know.'

Martha waited. This woman would not be hurried. She would take her time. Like a cheese with a vein of blue mould running through it, this story had been a long time maturing. Let them wait.

‘My mother and I used to live in Hope Cottage,' Violet said, her eyes skimming first the picture, then the room and its occupants. ‘People thought of us as witches but that just wasn't so. We simply understood our plants and fungi. We knew the medicinal values of what grows around us. Some of these herbs and fungi need to be collected at strange times. In the dark. With dew on them. On certain days of the year. And so it was on that day. I was collecting fungi when I saw Charity. You have to realize that we not only understand plants but people too. We sense good and evil by the aura which surrounds a person. Charity grabbed my attention because the aura around her was anger and violence and resentment too. Pure hatred. Black as blood, and it's never left her. Bitter to the end. A hateful girl who grew into a hateful woman.'

Randall and Martha waited.

‘I was searching the woods at the bottom of the Long Mynd and I saw her. She had a basket with her and she had some Death Cap in the basket.' She drew in a long, sucking breath.

‘I told her,' she said. ‘I told her it was poisonous. Yes, I told her. I warned her what happened to people who ate them.
By mistake
,' she added mockingly.

Martha was still. Then she leaned forward. ‘Why didn't you come forward at the inquest?'

Violet stuck her pointy chin out. ‘You think I don't regret it?'

Alex Randall was becoming impatient. ‘What does this have to do with Daisy's abduction?'

Violet gave him a withering look, as though he was of no account. ‘Wait,' she said. ‘If you don't know all the facts you're not going to understand. Believe me.'

Martha tried to silence Alex with a brief look and whether it was that or Violet's request, he was quiet.