The Guardian Stones (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-eight

“Violet, don't you want your tea?” Meg Gowdy asked her daughter. “You always like shepherd's pie. What's wrong with it?”

The girl looked up from pushing her food listlessly around her plate and shook her head. “Not hungry, mum.”

“But you always like shepherd's pie!” Meg repeated. “Do you feel all right? You look pale.”

“Don't go on at her, Meg.” Duncan spoke through a mouthful of bread and margarine. “If she don't want to eat what's on her plate, I will. No sense wasting good food.”

An irrational flash of anger hit Meg like a lightning bolt. “Greedy pig! Finish your own and go and clean the windows like you said you would.” Shaking, she went to the sink to rinse her plate. How she hated the man!

“Yes, your majesty.” Duncan crammed the remaining bread into his mouth, got up, and stamped down the hallway.

Meg turned to Violet. The girl had pushed her plate away, leaned her head on her hand, and drew patterns in the tablecloth with her fork.

“Violet, are you sure you're not sickening for something? God, I hope not. We're sailing close to the wind with the bills as it is. Thank heavens you've already had measles. I don't think any of the village kids has chicken pox. Surely we would have been told?”

“No, mum, really. I'm just a bit tired.”

Meg sat down again. What could a child know about being tired? Tired of a useless husband, a pathetic little village, a wasted life. “Not sleeping well?” She tried to make her tone sympathetic. “Upset stomach? Had to go to the loo during the night? Broken sleep can be very tiring.”

Surely her daughter was still too young for the onset of the monthly curse?

Violet bit her lip and then blurted out. “Mum, I seen Bert!”

“Violet!”

“No, really I did.”

“When was this? And where?”

The girl lowered her gaze and began drawing patterns again. “It was Tuesday night. He was here.”

“Here? Violet, you must have been dreaming! How could he get in—no, wait a minute. I've told your father a hundred times about leaving the spare key under the doormat out back! But then again, it was a dream, surely?”

As much as she relished the idea of more proof of Duncan's fecklessness, she hated the idea of Violet being upset.

“I seen him,” Violet persisted. “Something come scratching on my door, but I wouldn't let it in. And then after a bit I heard Bert whispering, and he came in and we talked.”

“In the middle of the night? In your bedroom?” Meg's face reddened.

“It was all right, mum, we're friends.”

“What did he want? Is he in trouble? Why didn't you call me or your dad?”

Violet sighed. “He said not to. He came to tell me he wasn't dead. But he knew something he couldn't tell anyone. He wanted someone to talk to because he was scared.”

Meg stared at her daughter, amazed. She could always tell when Violet was lying. And she wasn't. “This was on Tuesday night?”

“Yes. He said he'd come back last night but he didn't. I stayed awake all night waiting for him.”

So that explained why Violet was tired. Meg rubbed her forehead. What did it all mean?

Duncan stuck his head in the doorway and spoke hurriedly. “I have to go out. If I'm not back, you can open up.”

“Well, isn't that nice? And what about the windows?”

“If you want the windows cleaned, you clean them. There's a fire not far from the Wainmans' farm!”

***

When Duncan arrived on the scene, Wainman and several villagers had already given up what was obviously a fruitless attempt to save Haywood's house. He joined them in using shovels to beat out small fires that threatened to set the surrounding shrubbery ablaze.

Duncan beckoned Harry Wainman aside. “Sorry about the old place. Louisa's bound to be upset.”

“No concern of mine,” Wainman growled. “Good thing we shifted it. Good riddance, I say.”

Already the house was in a fair way to being reduced to a black skeleton sagging over a pile of ashes and burnt wood.

“Seen a fire move that fast once.” Duncan leaned on his shovel. “In Scotland, it was. When I was a boy. A local farmer burnt down his neighbor's barn over a silly quarrel about a missing cow.”

Wainman frowned. “You mean you think this was deliberate?”

“Possibly,” Duncan said quietly.

Wainman grunted. “Could be he was storing petrol in there. That would account for it going up so fast.”

“More importantly, where's Haywood?”

Wainman stared at the ruins. “You don't mean you think what remains of him might be under that lot?”

Chapter Thirty-nine

The sturdy wooden door of Noddweir's church stood open, allowing the evening sun to stream into the interior, warming the stone-flagged floor. Dust motes danced in the light but the ceiling beams remained in shadows. Lamps set on the altar struggled against the dark pools above.

It was as if the shadow on the village was creeping into the church, Timothy Wilson thought as he entered the pulpit and surveyed his congregation. He delayed the meeting about the parade to allow those who dealt with the fire at Haywood's house to attend. It was impossible to make the simplest plans any more without having them disrupted by whatever was stalking Noddweir.

He had not planned on holding any kind of service but several women insisted. He hoped the unbelievers who had come about the parade would not feel ambushed. There were those in the village whose beliefs were pagan. He glanced up to the colored representation of Saint Winnoc endlessly grinding corn.

Weren't all beliefs an attempt to make sense of the unknowable?

He rubbed his eyes, exhausted from lack of sleep, and the strained, white faces with purple smudges under the eyes turned up toward him from the pews showed he was not the only one who had spent recent nights tossing and turning.

What was he to say to them, his poor flock wandering in the fields with wolves cutting their young out of their pack?

“My friends,” he began in a husky voice that barely reached the church door despite the utter silence brooding in the building, “it has been suggested that we pray for help as we travel along this hard road.”

There came to him the travelers' psalm, the song of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. It was dear to him, for his own road was hard and his destination still far away. “…The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night…”

He sensed the wariness between his parishioners. “Let us remember always that we must stay together and protect each other. Oh, I know there has been much drawing away from each other…” He glanced around the spread-out congregation, which looked uneasily at its neighbors. “…and it's understandable, but as Mark cautioned us in the Gospel, if a house be divided against itself that house cannot stand. So now, let us pray together—”

“I don't hold with all this praying business, Vicar!”

A man lounging in a back pew stood up. The vicar was surprised to see it was Jack Chapman. The entire congregation twisted round to see what Chapman had to say, and one or two were already whispering to their companions.

“Instead of praying, we should be patrolling with guns at all hours.” Chapman continued.

“We need to patrol but we need to pray too,” Wilson replied. “The psalm tells us that unless the Lord keeps the city, the watchman remains awake in vain.”

“Jack's right!” came a shout. “Anyone with no business what's caught on the street after dark should be arrested and—”

“We got no constable here,” Chapman pointed out, “unless you count Grace, and I don't.”

“We don't need a constable,” said a farmer in a front pew. “Anyone causes trouble, scrag 'em and worry about the law later. Sorry, vicar, but we have to fight fire with fire.”

“The devil's abroad in Noddweir!” a woman added. “Fire's his natural home!”

A piercing demonic yowl stopped her cold.

Heads swiveled to see Martha standing in the church doorway, silhouetted by the sunlight, her wild, white hair a radiant mist. She clutched a black cat which spat and clawed and yowled.

Martha hobbled down the aisle. “Susannah's cat come home! I got it off her doorstep. Susannah wouldn't go without Blackie!”

“You ought not to bring it into church, Martha, it's not the place for it,” Wilson remonstrated almost inaudibly. He'd let things get out of hand.

“Quiet, you stupid thing!” Martha shouted.

Was she addressing Wilson or the cat?

She grasped the cat by the neck and held the spitting creature at arm's length. “Where's Susannah? That's what I want to know! You all ought to be out looking for her!”

“Get that old witch out of here!” Chapman roared, lunging at her and getting a clawed face for his pains.

“Please, please, remember where you are,” Wilson pleaded.

Two men jumped up and grabbed Martha, who dropped the cat. It bolted from the building. There were screams.

Martha was marched out. She babbled in a fury. “It's them stones. You'll see. You'll see!”

The congregation was in an uproar. Wilson tried vainly to calm them with calls for respectful behavior in the Lord's house. His faint voice was drowned out.

It was a handicap not to be able to shout people down.

***

As the sun slid behind the mountains, red-gold light touched the topmost branches of the forest pressing in on both sides of the narrow dirt road. A smoky smell hung on the air and a deep stillness. The trees looked ready to spring on those unwise enough to be out in this lonely place after dark.

Edwin and Grace, for instance.

Edwin shivered though the air was still warm. “I don't think there's much point in continuing, Grace. It'll be too dark to see before long, and it's best not to be out here when night falls.”

“Just a little further.”

They walked on in silence and around a sharp bend. The dying sunlight's gilding faded.

Grace suddenly halted and grabbed Edwin's arm. “There!” She pointed to a black mass of bushes. “See that glint?”

Edwin adjusted his eyeglasses. “No.”

Grace dragged him forward.

A bicycle lay tucked under the thick foliage. The stray beam of sunlight that had fingered the bell on its handle died as Grace spoke. “Just in time! We'd have missed it otherwise, tonight at least.”

Edwin pulled the machine onto the road.

“It's Susannah's,” Grace said. “It's the only red bike in the village. See the cat carrier and the suitcase tied to the front?”

Edwin looked around. The sun was almost gone and a light wind was rising. “But where is she? How did the cat escape?”

Grace frowned. “The carrier lid's loose. It appears he ran into the forest.”

“He did?”

“You don't think Susannah hid her bike in the bushes unless there was a good reason, do you?”

“It'll soon be too dark to go in there looking—not to mention far too dangerous. We'll have to organize a search party tomorrow morning.” The words stuck in his throat. Yet another pointless search party.

Grace flicked on her torch. “Susannah could still be nearby.” She found a gap in the bushes and stepped into the forest. Edwin followed reluctantly.

Twilight enveloped them. Grace played her light over a chaos of tree trunks, ferns, rocks, all flashing into view and vanishing as she swung around. Susannah could be six feet away and invisible to them, as could her attacker.

There must have been an attacker.

“I don't see any signs anyone came through here. No footprints…” Grace waved her torch, letting its beam dance crazily in the treetops. “Susannah!” she yelled. “Susannah! Can you hear me?”

No reply. The forest swallowed up the sound.

“We should go back.”

“Not much further,” Grace said. “It feels like we're not alone. What if Susannah is hurt? She could be lying unconscious nearby.”

***

The old man and the woman stop where the path passes through a thick stand of laurel, now nothing but a solid mass of shadow in the darkening forest. The man is closest to the bushes blocking the narrow way. They exchange words. The man sounds afraid. His eyeglasses catch a glint of the last light as he shakes his head. The woman points down the path. They are only a few steps from the laurel.

The torch swings around again, licking over glossy, concealing leaves.

“What if Susannah is hurt?” the woman says distinctly.

The old man's reply is unclear.

The forest is filling up with night, trees and bushes vanishing, the sky drained of color. The searchers' expressions cannot be discerned.

The man says something else, too low to be heard. The woman steps around him to continue along the path.

Chapter Forty

Reflexively Edwin reached out and put his hand on Grace's shoulder. For an irrational instant he had a sinking feeling as if he'd suddenly, inappropriately, touched one of his students. He immediately regretted it. What right did he have? However, Grace stopped arguing.

“It's far too dangerous,” he said. “There's nothing the two of us can do. Except blunder into an ambush, as Susannah must have done.”

“You're right, Edwin. It looks as if people are being actively prevented from leaving the village.”

The road, glimmering in the dusk, looked bright by comparison to the forest. They started back and after a couple of minutes Grace moved closer and put her arm through his. Was the gesture meaningful, Edwin wondered?

By the time they reached Noddweir, blackout curtains were closed as dusk purpled into darkness.

“Black as a coalman's hat,” Grace remarked. Several rooks cawed overhead on their way to their roost, breaking the silence lying over the village. “Or as black as the heart of whoever's responsible for the current situation,” she added, opening her front door. Before entering her gaze swept the street. A figure approached the pub. “Go in, Edwin. I want to talk to someone.”

Edwin had followed her gaze. “Don't you think I should come with you?”

“It's Louisa Wainman,” Grace said. “She shouldn't be here this time of night. Be a dear and make us tea.”

***

Happy to have got Edwin safely back into the house, Grace hurried down the street. She intercepted Louisa, who carried a suitcase.

“I'm leaving Harry,” Louisa announced defiantly. “Tonight I'm staying at the pub. Tomorrow I'm gone.”

“What happened? Where will you go?”

“Birmingham or Newcastle. Maybe Birmingham. Lots of factory jobs, good paying ones. I'll be all right.”

“You walked from the farm by yourself? That wasn't wise.”

“You were out walking too. I saw you coming in with your lodger. Nice man, that, for a Yank.” She gave Grace a meaningful smile.

“Don't change the subject. I don't think you'd up and run off right now, considering everything that's happening here.”

Louisa smiled grimly. “I'll be glad to see the back of the place. I'm a bag of nerves.” She sighed. “You know, Harry was hoarding petrol. Kept it in the barn. It's gone.”

“Stolen, you think? Dear God, surely we're not in for more arson?”

Louisa shook her head. “No. I suspect Harry used it to help the blaze along at Haywood's place.”

“But why? It makes no sense!”

“Does anything make sense? Now mind, I have an idea. I think it was to make it seem like we're under siege here.”

Grace observed further proof was hardly necessary. Hadn't Louisa heard about Susannah?

“Ah, but that wasn't the only reason,” Louisa continued. “Harry's a cunning bugger, or at least likes to think he is. The fire was part of his scheme to cover up. He killed Issy, Grace, I am as certain of it as I am I stand here.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Don't look so shocked. I've known for a while now they were having an affair—”

“Louisa! She's only a child!”

“Don't matter to certain men, and it didn't matter to him. They met in the church when she was arranging the flowers. Imagine that. The filthy swine! In a church! Was bound to be noticed sooner or later. But he couldn't pull the wool over my eyes for long. I told him I knew about it. He denied it a couple of days ago.”

Louisa gave a sob, her expression changing from anger to grief. “I feel it in my bones, Grace. They started to meet elsewhere. I think it was at Haywood's house. He killed that girl to stop her blabbing about them or else it was an accident. Then he set fire to the house to get rid of the body. People will write it off as just another of the terrible things that have been happening. Caused by the bogeyman they're all imagining.”

“But the fire was only today. Where's he hidden Issy in the meantime?”

“Plenty of places round here. An entire forest. The farm's outbuildings.”

“The ruins will have to be gone over carefully, in any case,” Grace replied. “We'll know more then. And for that matter, where's Haywood?”

“Probably in Craven Arms picking up more little comforts for the good folk of Noddweir. Won't he be surprised when he comes back and finds he's been put out of business by losing all his stock?”

***

Although relieved to be back inside, Edwin regretted that his walk with Grace had ended. He put water on for tea, then sat at the kitchen table, chin on hand, trying to forget the warmth of the much younger woman walking close beside him in the nighttime chill, the pressure of her arm against his, the way her hips brushed him every so often.

She had said villagers were being prevented from leaving. But surely that didn't follow simply because one elderly woman, out alone, was attacked?

Martha wasn't about, he was glad to see. He recalled her babbling about the Guardian Stones' malign influence as she'd been escorted from the church. He cast his memory back over supernatural legends connected with standing stones. It was his experience that when traced to source, there was a prosaic explanation for impossible events, like magic tricks, where sleight of hand and clever misdirection produced apparently miraculous results.

Magicians could make people disappear, mystifying and delighting audiences. But the people they caused to vanish always returned.

When Grace came in she was crying.

She dropped into the chair beside him and sniffled and wiped at her eyes. Her shoulders shook.

Edwin almost put a comforting hand on her arm, then decided against it. He felt acutely awkward, not sure what he should do to alleviate the distress of this woman he didn't really know, although he felt he did. “What is it?”

“It's father.”

“You haven't had bad news?”

“No, but I'm afraid of it.” She looked at him with wet eyes. “I'm worried about him.”

“I'm sure he'll be fine.”

Grace glared at him. Now there was anger in her eyes. “I said I was worried about him, not for him.”

“But what does Louisa Wainman have to do with it? You don't think he and she—”

“Nothing like that.” Grace described her conversation with Louisa.

Edwin shook his head. The idea of the coarse middle-aged farmer and a child Isobel's age repelled him. “I still don't understand what it has to do with your father, Grace.”

“You can be as thick as pea soup at times, Edwin! Issy was always over here having her ear bent by Martha. Everyone knew that. But a week or so before father left, the wretched girl started dropping hints that the two were carrying on.”

Edwin sat back in his chair. “Grace!”

“Never mind. There's nothing that can be said. Do you know since I found out I haven't managed to force myself to pray for his black soul? God help me. I burnt the only photo of him we had and the filthy note Issy left and said nothing. I tried not to believe it. Issy's always had a vicious tongue and liked to cause trouble. But then, suddenly, out of the blue, he joined up. Or claimed he was joining up. When Louisa started talking about Harry silencing Issy, I thought what if it wasn't Harry, what if it was my father who came back to shut her up?”