The Woman in the Wood

by Lesley Pearse

  But what met her eyes was a man with a bushy dark beard sitting on the bench. It was a second or two before she recognized him, and only then because he was looking intently at something to his right. Grace, tied to a tree.

  A cold shiver ran up Maisy’s spine. Grainger! And what had he done with Duncan?

  Moving slightly, she spotted her brother tied to another tree, and what made it even more terrifying was that there were piles of firewood in front of both of them. And Grainger had a paraffin can next to him.

  Placed an equal distance between Grace and Duncan was Toby, clearly dead, the white parts on his face and coat stained with blood.

  For a second or two Maisy thought she was going to faint with shock. She bent over so her blood would travel to her head again, and then turned to go and get help. But she had only taken a couple of steps when it occurred to her that Grainger could strike a match at any time. It would take at least ten minutes to get to a phone, and heaven only knew how long for the police to get here.

  She had to act herself. But what could she do alone? He could easily overpower her.

  Then, like a flash of lightning in her head, she remembered Grace had a shotgun.

  It was fixed in a rack just inside the front door of the shack. She had told Maisy she always kept it loaded just in case anyone did try to come and hurt or rob her.

  There was no question of getting into the shack by the front door. Grainger would see her immediately. But there was a window at the back.

  Creeping on tiptoe so she didn’t even step on a stick or rustle a bush, she got round the back. The window was about five feet up, and there were no toeholds, so she had to get big stones and pile them up.

  Her heart was hammering. If she delayed or he heard her, they could be burned alive. After all, he had nothing more to lose now. Finally she was able to reach the window, prise it open, then climb in.

  Grace’s bed was just below the window. She had hung a curtain round it since Duncan arrived, and he slept on a mattress the other side of it.

  After the bright sunshine outside it was gloomy inside, and very warm, because Grace always kept a fire going to cook on. Maisy made her way across the room to the shotgun, offering up a quick prayer that she could do this.

  She had never held a gun in her life, much less fired one. But Grace had talked to her about shooting once, so she hoped she knew enough. The main thing was that she had to shoot straight and kill Grainger. A minor injury wouldn’t do. It was all or nothing.

  Glancing out through the small side window she saw Grainger hadn’t moved. His back was to her, and he was looking from Duncan back to Grace, taunting them with the paraffin can. To see Toby lying on the grass between them, and to know he’d killed that beautiful, clever dog was just too much.

  It was all she could do not to rush out of the door screaming in rage at him. But she took a deep breath and brought the gun up to her shoulder, then held it firmly and looked down the sights.

  ‘You have to squeeze the trigger,’ Grace had said. ‘Take your time to line up your target then gently squeeze.’

  ‘Guide me, Grace,’ Maisy murmured as she made her way out of the door and on to the veranda. She stopped there, gun to her shoulder, and looked down the sights till she had Grainger’s back right in the middle.

  Slowly, she went down the three steps on to the grass, and still keeping him in her sights, she walked closer.

  She didn’t dare look towards Duncan or Grace but she felt they had seen her, and she tried to breathe in their spirit to strengthen her own.

  When she knew she was close enough she stopped dead.

  ‘Prepare to die, you bastard,’ she screamed out, and as he spun on his seat to face her she squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the gun on her shoulder almost knocked her over, but not before she saw Grainger fall to the ground.

  24

  Maisy crumbled and fell to the ground, so shocked by what she’d done that she couldn’t stand. But a second or two on the ground, blood racing back to her head, brought her out of it and she got to her feet again.

  She checked first that Grainger was really dead, although she had no real knowledge of how you did this. He had a hole in his chest and blood was gradually soaking the whole of his shirt front. He certainly wasn’t breathing and his open eyes looked glassy and sightless. Maisy ran first to Grace, snatching the gag out of her mouth.

  ‘Oh Grace, how long had you been there?’ She tried to untie her, but her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t do it.

  ‘He had a knife,’ Grace said. ‘Get that for the ropes.’

  Maisy ran and took Duncan’s gag out, then back to Grainger to find his knife. It was beside his body. For a second or two Maisy stared at the hole in his chest and the blood slowly turning his shirt raspberry red, and wondered how she had been able to do it.

  The questions and praise came the second both Grace and Duncan were released.

  ‘You were magnificent,’ Duncan said, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘You never wavered. I watched you walk down from the shack and my heart was in my mouth in case you missed when you fired. I can’t even find the words to tell you how brave you were.’

  ‘I can,’ Grace said, coming towards Maisy with her arms wide open. ‘The bravest, cleverest and most cool-headed person I’ve ever seen.’

  Maisy let herself fall into Grace’s sweaty embrace and began to cry with shock.

  ‘There’s stuff we have to do,’ Duncan warned them. ‘First, call the police. If you two are OK to be left I’ll go and ring them. Grace, you make yourself and Maisy a cup of tea. I’ll just cover Toby up before I leave.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Grace said, her lips quivering with emotion. ‘My beloved Toby, he was such a loyal and devoted dog. I’m going to miss him so much.’

  ‘It’s so sad, and I’m terribly sorry for you, Grace, I know how much you loved him,’ Duncan said. ‘We’ll bury him tonight. But I must go now. Maisy, is your bike by Enoch’s? I’ll take that.’

  A short while later Grace and Maisy were sitting on the bench by the shack, with a mug of tea each. Maisy was still trembling with shock. Grace had covered Toby with his own blanket but she had refused to cover Grainger.

  ‘Let the flies lay eggs on him, it’s no more than he deserves,’ she said. ‘You know, Maisy, I thought I heard someone coming through from Enoch’s. I prayed it wasn’t you, and then I heard nothing more and I thought I’d imagined it.

  ‘I was looking at Duncan and saw him looking towards here, so I looked too and there you were with my gun. I was with you when you shouted, I swear I guided that bullet. But did the recoil hurt your shoulder?’

  ‘A bit,’ Maisy said, rubbing it. ‘I expect I’ll have a fine bruise tomorrow. But let’s talk quickly before Duncan comes back, because we know this is likely to shake everything up. Has he told you anything yet?’

  ‘A little, but I think he told your Mr Dove more. If the police leave him here with me, I think he will tell the rest now. He’s a great lad, and he’s going to grow into a remarkable man. I’ve loved having him here.’

  Maisy slid her hand through Grace’s arm and nestled closer to her. ‘We both love having you in our lives too,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought it? Remember that first time we came crashing through the bushes and you shouted at us?’

  Grace leaned nearer to Maisy and kissed her forehead. ‘I had a feeling that night I hadn’t seen the last of you. As much as I hate what that animal of a man lying there has done, I can’t be sorry he brought us three together.’

  ‘You are an honorary mum now,’ Maisy laughed. ‘I think we may start bullying you into going to live somewhere safer, warmer in winter and with a few modern conveniences.’

  ‘Maybe I’m even ready for that now.’ Grace sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ll like being here so much now, not without Toby and after all of this.’

  Maisy didn’t suggest she got another dog. She sensed that would be tactless right now. In truth she felt that, a
t this moment, nothing mattered for any of them: what to do with their lives, where to live, who to see. She had no doubt this feeling was partly due to shock. They’d lived under the Grainger cloud for a long time, and they had to put all that to bed now.

  She also had to come to terms with killing a man. Right now it didn’t seem real, as though it had happened in a film. But for the rest of her life she would know what she was capable of. And that was a little scary.

  ‘I’m staying here with Miss Deville,’ Duncan repeated a little more forcefully to Sergeant Williams.

  It was seven in the evening now. Several lots of policemen had come, including a police doctor to verify Grainger’s death, and afterwards his body was photographed from every possible angle, along with pictures of poor dead Toby and the piles of wood by the trees where Grainger had intended to burn them alive. Finally he was carted off to the mortuary, the shotgun taken as evidence, and both Grace and Duncan made statements about what had happened earlier.

  Maisy hadn’t made an official statement yet. She would do that in the morning at the police station.

  Sergeant Williams had been trying to force Duncan for the last half-hour to go home with Maisy to Nightingales.

  ‘I need to bury Toby and look after Grace,’ Duncan said, in a tone that suggested the policeman ought to keep his nose out. ‘Ideally I’d like Maisy to stay with us too, but that’s up to her.’

  ‘I would like to stay,’ Maisy said, looking defiantly at the policeman. She had never wanted to be with her brother more. ‘You can pop in to see our grandmother and tell her. I think she’ll understand, and anyway we’re old enough to make our own decisions.’

  ‘This is all very irregular,’ he grumbled. ‘When I telephoned Mrs Mitcham to tell her what had happened she said you were to hurry home.’

  ‘That’s what you say to children coming out of school,’ Maisy snapped at him. ‘Grandmother has got Janice and no doubt she’ll spend the evening on the telephone to our father. She’s not a victim; us three are and we need to stay together.’

  The policeman looked at Grace questioningly. She shrugged. ‘You heard her. I wouldn’t argue with a girl who can shoot that well!’

  Duncan sniggered at Grace’s joke and Maisy looked away so the policeman wouldn’t see her struggling not to laugh. She could see the funny side of this whole investigation. The police had done little to catch Grainger – it seemed they’d hounded his wife more than him. She and Grace had done most of the work, and in view of that she didn’t know how they had the cheek to try and tell them what to do now.

  ‘You do understand, Miss Mitcham, that you could be charged with the unlawful killing of Mr Grainger?’

  Grace stepped forward, her face flushed with anger.

  ‘Are you mad, insensitive or just very dim?’ she snarled at him. ‘Yes, legally I expect charges will have to be made. But right now you’ve got a couple of kids who have been astoundingly brave, and done your work for you. They need to stick together, so bugger off right now and tell their grandmother.’

  Sergeant Williams and the other men left the glade a few minutes later and the twins burst into laughter. ‘You were marvellous, Grace,’ Duncan said. ‘I can’t really believe you told him to bugger off!’

  Grace laughed, but there was real sadness in her eyes. The twins knew she was devastated by Toby’s death. He had been her only friend and companion for a long time, and she was going to find life hard without him.

  ‘I’m going to dig Toby’s final resting place, Grace,’ Duncan said gently. ‘Will you come and show me where you’d like that to be?’

  ‘He liked a spot over there,’ she said, pointing to a slightly raised area close to the bushes which surrounded her glade. ‘It gets the early morning sun and he liked to bask in it. But he was always back there on warm afternoons for the shade. He’d lie with his head on his paws and look down on me working in the garden.’

  ‘Then that’s where we’ll put him,’ Duncan said. ‘You go on in while I’m digging. I’ll come and get you when I’m ready to put him to rest.’

  At ten that night, Grace lit some candles and a tilley lamp. They had buried Toby earlier with his ball and his blanket, and all three of them cried at his graveside.

  They’d had sausages with potatoes baked in the fire for their supper, and they’d polished off the bottle of elderflower wine Maisy had brought with her that afternoon. A large slice of Victoria sponge afterward went down very well, while they had a post-mortem on the events of the afternoon.

  ‘Did you really think he was going to kill you?’ Maisy asked. ‘Or did you think someone might save you?’

  ‘There was no doubt he really was going to set fire to that wood,’ Duncan said. ‘You should’ve seen his face, he was really savouring how it would be. I couldn’t think of anyone who might come by. We’d seen Enoch in the morning, and he told me he was going to Southampton on the bus. He wouldn’t come over here anyway, and even if I’d thought you might turn up, I certainly wouldn’t have imagined you could save us.’

  ‘It’s weird the thoughts that go through your head when you’re scared. I thought of the dirty clothes by my bed that someone would come in and find,’ Grace said. ‘I was embarrassed about it. Imagine that!’

  Maisy smiled fondly at the older woman. ‘It’s silly thoughts like that, that make us human,’ she said. ‘An animal has no sense of embarrassment.’

  ‘I think his death has freed me,’ Duncan said quietly. ‘I feel lighter tonight, like something heavy has been taken from my shoulders. While he had me locked up, especially at first with the other boys, I felt he’d picked me because he knew I was weak and an outsider. The other boys were like that, you see. He would do terrible things to one of them, and make someone else watch. It was doubly horrible for the watcher because he knew the situation would be reversed in a day or two. Then it would be his turn.’

  Grace and Maisy just listened, both sensing that this was his time to talk, and they didn’t need to ask questions or pass comment.

  ‘But even though I thought I was like the other boys, I would not accept it. So I fought him. Not punching him or anything, I hadn’t got the energy or strength for that. But I didn’t cooperate at all, not the way the others did, hoping to gain favour. I let my revulsion show. I can’t tell you what he made us do, to him, or each other, it’s not something you can tell women. But I can tell you that it was my unwilling attitude that saved my life. I saw him take Michael and James out of that place, three weeks, maybe a month apart – I don’t know exactly as it was hard to keep track of time – and I knew he was going to kill them. We all did, and we all thought next it would be us.’

  He stopped, taking deep breaths as if trying to fight back nausea. Grace and Maisy waited.

  ‘He had a real thing for me. It excited him hoping I’d get so desperate that I’d become willing. But sometimes he’d get drunk and talk to me, and at those times I almost felt sorry for him. He told me he’d had a thing for our dad. But Dad called him a reptile. He didn’t say any more about that, but I got the idea that when he was young he’d been just like the other boys in there, weak, unattractive, kids that didn’t fit in, so he punished them because he’d been punished. Does that make sense?’

  Grace and Maisy were so surprised to be asked their opinion that they didn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘Yes, it does make sense,’ Grace said after a couple of seconds. ‘I’ve heard these things go on in a never-ending circle, the damaged child damages his or her own child, and so on.’

  ‘I think you are kind that you try to find an excuse for him,’ Maisy said.

  ‘Not kind, I wanted to kill him. God, I hated him. But he was so messed up. I don’t think he really fancied boys, even though he did that stuff. He was depraved, but it was all about having power over us. That’s what really thrilled him. He was the same this afternoon. He could have lit the fires straight away, but he didn’t because he wanted to enjoy seeing our fear and misery.

>   ‘Back in that place with the other boys I knew that the only chance of survival I had was to challenge him, be mean to him, to show I wasn’t going to lie down and take it. I got more beatings than I want to remember, but I tried to pretend I was in one of those Japanese prisoner of war camps, like in Bridge on the River Kwai, that I had to hold it together and survive so I could escape.’

  ‘Why did he move you to the cottage where we found you?’ Grace asked.

  ‘The other boys were all gone; Peter was really sick and would almost certainly die before long. I think he moved us there intending to leave us to die, but he couldn’t quite do it. He came back now and then with some food and water – never enough, but it was something. I don’t think he could actually bring himself to kill me. Not with his own hands.’

  ‘Yet he was going to burn you alive today,’ Maisy said.

  ‘He said he had cracked, and I think he had. He said he was going to become a Legend of the New Forest.’

  The three of them lapsed into silence, staring at the fire and sipping the wine.

  After about five minutes, Grace spoke. ‘As of tomorrow, you two must pick up your lives again,’ she said, looking first at Maisy and then at Duncan. ‘I think you need to go back to your grandmother’s, Duncan, with Maisy.’

  ‘But you’ll be alone, without Toby,’ Duncan said. ‘Come home with us. I know Grandmother will give you a room.’

  ‘I couldn’t live in someone else’s home now.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe I do have to find a safer, more modern home. I might go and ask Enoch tomorrow if he knows of anywhere. But you two have your whole lives ahead of you, and you must live them.’

  25

  July

  Alan stepped right in front of Maisy, his face a picture of delight at seeing her.

  ‘Hullo, Maisy. Gosh, it’s good to see you!’

  Maisy blushed. It was almost two years since they’d first met in Bournemouth, and a year and a half since he told her it was over after the Christmas dance. He was a bit taller now, his face had lost its boyish plumpness, and although she’d sworn a thousand times to herself that she would never feel the way she used to about him, she experienced that well-remembered lurch in her stomach.