“Yes. And it’s confidential. OK?” I offered her a sausage roll, but she shook her head.
“Well, I didn’t like the way he suddenly hooted like that. Made me jump, it did. And now his wife’s gone missing.”
Hello?
My tea slurped over the edge of the cup and into its saucer. I mopped it up with a paper napkin.
“You don’t think,” she leaned forwards, tea glossing her wrinkled lips, “that he’s blamed you? I mean Stephen Vickers. Sorry, Professor Stephen Vickers.”
“You never said you knew him or his name.”
“Folk assume a lot about me, Mr. Lyon. You see, I used to be a nifty bridge player and my motto still is ‘never show your hand too soon.’ But I can trust you. Not that other man noseying around in the dark, yesterday evening. Said he was a retired musician, if you please. I thought he was going to bump me off, till I managed to sidetrack him with this and that. You know…”
Was I looking at an octogenarian street walker? Hardly.
“Did he drive a black four by four?”
She shook her head again.
“No. A beige-coloured saloon car.”
“Aha.” I took a bite out of one of the sausage rolls. Salty, but addictive.
“What does that mean?”
“Just that if you see him again, call the police.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Lyon. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“I can see that. Anyway, who told you about the missing wife?”
“The fish monger. Likes to choose her fish. Every Monday morning, he said, like the rest of us, but she wasn’t there this time. No note left for him either.”
*
The hot tea was entering my bloodstream. Neither me nor Stephen had been aware of him calling. “Anything else?”
“There’d been terrible rows going on when he’d turned up last month. So loud, they’d not even heard the doorbell…”
“Did he her what was being said?”
I was thinking of that beautiful young man who’d accompanied his mother to her publishers. The tensions engendered by him not being allowed a home.
“Yes. That he, Stephen Vickers had everything to lose and she nothing.”
An odd thing to say, given the history.
“What’s this fishmonger’s name?”
“Kurt, that’s all I know because his van’s unmarked to deter thieves. But he said his grandfather had been a German POW over in Diss. He’s a real gentleman. Always gives me more than I can pay for.”
“Rare indeed.” I finished my sausage roll and drained my teacup, feeling more human. Ready for a fight if need be. A proper fight, to find out exactly why I’d been thumped and where Stephen was now. Why too, Nicholas Beecham had seen it so important to pay a visit to Myrtle Villa during the hours of darkness.
“Have you ever come across the name Parminter?” I ventured, noticing another flicker of surprise.
“Not East Anglian is it?”
“On my travels someone mentioned them as having moved into this area just after the end of the Great War. A family from the New Forest…”
Rosemary Harding’s eyes were fixed on the steaming coffee machine.
“Hundreds came here from all directions. People wanting to start a new life in the country. Those who’d survived the Spanish ‘Flu and those who’d been bereaved.” She poured herself another cupful of tea from the dented, metal teapot, and again heaped in the sugar. “You couldn’t blame them, but some brought nothing but trouble.”
“According to my research, the Parminters all had leprosy.”
Her cup almost fell from her hands.
“What?”
“Doctor Lovell claimed the same in a very important letter. Which is why, second time around, it would be helpful if you could say where exactly Wombwell Farm is.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why? I’ve only got to ask someone else who’s local.”
Those luminous eyes suddenly on me, unflinching.
“It’s just a ruin. Full of ghosts. If you’ve any sense, you’ll leave it alone.”
Just then, I recognised Arthur Stock, the station master standing at the café door, dishevelled like me. But something was clearly wrong. His seemed face bleached of colour.
“Mr. Lyon?” he said, short of breath. “Sorry to disturb you, but can you spare a minute?”
“Of course.” Wondering if it might be about my recent appearance in the Ladies’ WC.
“See you shortly,” I said to my elderly companion, aware that a possibly useful contact might have just bitten the dust. Her look of disdain said it all.
*
I followed the station master outside and along the wet platform until we reached his office. With a trembling hand he unlocked the door and closed it behind us. That something was badly wrong, was soon confirmed by the female voice on the public address system ekeing into his small space with only the words ‘delay’ and ‘line closure’ discernible.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’ve just called the police and an ambulance, but there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s terrible. Truly terrible, and in broad daylight, too. I was told a car was blocking the line on Catchwell crossing,” Stock carried on. “Five miles up from here. Must have ignored the automatic signals or they weren’t working. Or it’s a suicide. The 11a.m service train to Stowmarket didn’t have a bloody chance to stop…”
“Who’s in this car? A family? A…?”
“Man.”
“How did you find that out?”
The old boy seemed taken aback. “A call came through just as I was brewing up. A woman, I’m sure of it. Seemed genuine, and then… then, I actually heard the awful din coming from the Crossing.”
“What car is it, d’you know?”
“She didn’t say. Apparently, there’s blood and metal everywhere,” Stock went on. “Whoever might still be in it, didn’t stand a chance. Not a hope, this person said.”
My recent cup of tea revisited my throat. My heart quickened under my damp clothes. I had to get out there, but the station master kept me back. Took two gulps from his mug of cold coffee on his desk, letting the drips slide down his chin. “Nothing we can do ‘cept wait,” he said.
“I need to know the car’s make and its number plate,” I said, trying again to leave his stuffy rabbit hutch. Thinking yet again where Stephen might be, and what kind of car was involved. Also, who’d made that call.
*
Just then, Rosemary Harding passed his less-than-clean window without noticing us and made her way towards the exit as if going back home. She’d either not heard the announcement or been less than curious. Nevertheless, why couldn’t she help look out for Stephen as well? He might have been returning home too.
“I must go and see if I can assist…”
“Wait here. Please. There’s nothing anyone can do at this stage. Besides, I’m all on my own today. Two staff off sick, and…”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Any ID?” he relented. “It’s procedure.”
My old card would do.
He studied it for a moment, then me, as if the discrepancy between my photo and the reality wasa problemt. “You been in some bother, then?”
“No, and I’d better be away before this rain gets any worse.”
“You can tell me about it, Mr. Lyon, because I have to confess, I took to you immediately we first met. You seemed a dependable sort and there’s not many around here you can say that about.”
So, I did. How the professor who’d attacked me had seemed a troubled man. And the rest. How, if the car happened to be red and a Fiesta, the possibilities of who might be dead inside it, growing more and more worrying.
Also, who’d been the helpful caller? Or had the seemingly stable, ageing Arthur Stock became prone to fantasies?
37. SARAH.
Wednesday 28th July 1920. 2.30 p.m.
After lunch, I helped Ann Bulling give the
kitchen a thorough clean, before taking Bessie’s cooling remains out to the store room fitted out with a range of metal cages. All designed to keep meat cool in the heat. Most were empty, but here and there were other pork legs, bellies and shoulders and the occasional head, wrapped tight in muslin for the weeks and months ahead. My mother had taught me to recognise bad meat, and I could tell by the slightly pungent smell lacing the stillness, that we’d have to be careful. None of us could afford to be ill.
Then I remembered that I’d neither seen nor heard the children since they’d eaten.
Having closed the cage I’d decided to use, I returned to the scorching bricks and stones under my feet. The sun targeting my bare head. Of Buck and Mollie there was still no sign.
*
“The children have gone!” I shrieked to anyone who’d listen. “Where on earth are they?”
No-one replied, and I kept calling out as I ran to the front of the farm where sounds of activity were coming from the Dutch barn.
Will was helping Walter Bulling weigh the pigs’ second dry feed of the day.
“Have you seen any sign of them?” I shouted, and immediately shut my mouth against the dense, pungent stink coming from the wet, soiled straw. But neither man turned my way, so engrossed were they in shovelling dark green feed pellets into each long, steel trough lining the furthest pens, that I might as well have been mute and invisible. Their noise resembled so many death rattles, like my late father’s passing from vigorous life into somewhere so silent and far away.
“Will!” I shrieked.
He glanced up, confused.
“It’s yer wife,” said the farmer, pushing away the rising tide of black and white bodies straining for their first bite. “Summat’s up.”
“Buck and Mollie have disappeared!” I shouted again, before retreating towards the barn’s wide, bright opening. “I can’t see them anywhere.”
The old man downed tools and came over, gesturing to Will to keep on with the feeding. “Ye spoil ’em, ye do,” he said. His breath little different from the pig smell. “Me and Ann let our Stanley make his own way. Up at six. Bed at eight on the dot. That was it.”
“And it really worked,” I muttered under my breath.
“Yer two may have tried followin’ that police car. All kids is curious.”
“They’d never do anything like that without asking us first.”
I scanned Priest’s Field’s expanse of dead grass edged by that line of poplars like so many black spears. The soil heaps strewn around the water pit.
Buck and Mollie had definitely gone.
“Go and ask the wife,” he said, obviously impatient to rejoin his new employee. “The kettle’ll be on soon and they’ll be back.”
And this was how it would be.
Right.
I was soon on the brittle, mustard-coloured strands of grass that criss-crossed into the hazy distance of Fifty Acre field. With my skirt pulled up and my blouse freed from my sticky waist, I was a child myself, all over again, but no cooler. Buck had been wheezing, and like his sister, far too interested in the farmer’s ungainly son, and while I kept running towards the gate by Longstanton Road, other nightmares took hold.
What other secrets did that ordinary looking riverbank hide? Was Stanley Bulling really a cold-blooded murderer? And what if Mollie and Buck really had overheard that Matthew Crane called in on Lord Helvin? He’d know where we were, and surely be lying in wait to pounce.
The hot afternoon air scorched my throat. I wasn’t used to running. Hadn’t needed to back in Oak Leaf Cottage, and my ribs felt about to burst from my chest with the effort. My head to explode. My arms to feel useless. Empty.
All I wanted was to feel my children’s warm bodies next to mine. To get their new beds ready for the night ahead; help them feel at home, as if such a thing were possible.
And as for Will. Right then, I hated him.
Wait…
I’d spotted a shadow. Moreover, a moving shadow extending in front of me along the road towards Hecklers Green. A straight, treeless stretch of grey, yet memories of our recent robbery further along that same road, made me quicken. However, the more I did so, the more that shadow increased.
Then came a tap on my right shoulder. The whiff of sweat and beer. A man’s laugh that made me stand stock still and turn around.
Jesus and Mary…
In an instant, my hot blood became like ice. My legs numb. Everything, dangerously so. It was him. Matthew Crane like some dark Devil who kept his hands around my waist and pulled me off the road and into a wilderness of brittle, dead vegetation that snapped and cracked as we lurched together ever deeper into undergrowth where, despite my screams for help, his filthy palm began to push up my skirt.
“Time you and your spawn went from here. That what you said, so why…”
“You enjoyed it the last time.”
“Go away!” I yelled out. “Back where you came from, you wicked man, or I’ll…”
“What?” he laughed, finding my knickers. “This is just the start, Mrs. Parminter. And it won’t ever end. Now then, where’s that tight little muffin of yours? The one I got to know so well when…”
My kicks were useless. Also, my shrieks.
Help me, Lord…
He didn’t help either. Just let my buried memories rise again like Lazarus. How I’d been weak and foolish while Will had been called away from Iwerne Minster to a farm near Shaftesbury and stayed there a week repairing machinery. How I’d met this striking northener by chance at a local market, and by the day’s end, begged him to pleasure me with his fingers. His wide, wet tongue. Which was why, since my moment of madness with a man I could never love, I’d joined the Church and, once both children were old enough, took them there with me every Sunday.
“Take that thing off your neck. I won’t have him gawping at me.”
My crucifix…
“No.”
He fought me for it and won. Threw it amongst the deepest clump of brown bramble. I knew then I’d never bother searching for it. What was the point?
The sky overhead seemed to descend like some vast, blue boat on to that tinderbox of deadness as the verderer unbuttoned the front of his breeches. His big-boned face red, blackened in parts by stubble. His keen blue eyes on my naked shame.
Afterwards, as he’d shrunk inside me and boiling seed trickled away between my thighs, that shame multiplied, as did my dark secret, swelling to block out everything else, save the knowledge that it must never be told. Never.
*
I was back on the road with thankfully not a soul in sight. Certainly not the man who’d humiliated me for Will’s crime but also because thirteen long years’ ago, I’d been his eager partner.
An old woman riding a tricycle wobbled alongside then pedalled more swiftly away as if I were a beggar. She’d have been quite entitled to think it, given that my skirt and blouse were creased and torn. My hair matted, still full of dead grass.
I tried to tidy it as I went, but my arms had been weakened from fending off a beast twice my size. Worse than my smell was his smell.
Mollie? Buck? Where are you?
I closed my eyes against the early afternoon sun. It was as if the Sahara Desert lay under my shoes. The dust of drought, the heat and utter loneliness. That is, until I heard voices. Laughter crackling like small fires, and it seemed to be coming from not so far away. Being a country girl, I could usually tell the source of most extraneous sounds. Particularly those spelling possible danger. But these seemed quite the opposite, and the more I strode on over yet another bare, earthen field, beyond which lay a substantial red-bricked house, half-covered in creepers, standing in complete isolation, I realised that noise could only come from youngsters.
Mine.
*
None of the threesome even noticed me, as I found a convenient clump of hawthorn bushes whose black, shrivelled leaves fluttered down at just the slightest touch. Enough camouflage until I was ready to challenge
the sturdy, hairless Stanley Bulling as to why he wasn’t esconced at Vesper House, wherever that might be.
No, Stanley Bulling, naked above his stained trousers, was pretending to be a seaside donkey with Mollie dressed only in her knickers, sitting astride him, kicking him on, accompanied by Buck’s wheezy shrieks of laughter and bouts of coughing. The farmers’ son dragged his bandaged left leg behind him as she cried out, “faster, faster, Mr. Dickey. What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ll be quicker when the time comes, ye’ll see.”
When the time comes? What could that mean? And the more I watched that tomfoolery, the more I realised I’d not seen the children so happy in a long time. Surely they deserved it? But then I must have moved. Caused the lifelss, prickly hawthorn branches to break and fall, for he looked up at me with those sly, narrow fox eyes.
“Gerroff!” he snapped at Mollie. “Fun and games is over.”
“Oh, why?” she whined. “Don’t be such a spoilsport.”
“Mother’s here,” said Buck sourly. “Behind that bush.”
*
Events happened quickly after that, with Stanley Bulling limping away into the distance without once giving us a backwards glance.
“You should be in Vesper House, not out here!” I shouted after him. “And don’t you go near my children again until you’re cured.”
And then, while they were scrambling shamefacedly into their dirty clothes, I could swear I saw two figures clad in dark blue, running after him from the direction of that strange, isolated house. I squinted to see if they were those same two policemen who’d been at Wombwell Farm earlier, but it was hard to tell. Whoever they were, were gaining on him fast, small as insects, moving ever further away. Then came the first sound of gunfire. Bulling seemed to stumble, but from so far away, I couldn’t be quite sure. What I was sure of was my anger and fear that not only had my children been cavorting with an obvious criminal, and a possibly diseased one at that, but that I was halfway between my menses, carrying a rapist’s seed. Not only a rapist, but
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