Demon on a Distant Shore

by Linda Welch

  “And Sylvia.”

  “They lived in Little Barrow their entire lives.” I paused to frown. “They had to know most everyone there. I know what it’s like in small communities - how can their neighbors not know where they went?”

  “Perhaps they did not have a specific destination. People do sometimes just take off. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation. And how hard can it be to find two people in a small country?”

  Yeah, like he believed that as much as I did. I knew, from the tiny frown between his brows, his compressed lips, he was no happier than I for the news. Call us overly suspicious if you like, but in our experience tiny twists often lead to whacking great bends in the road.

  “I would like to stay here a few days and show you London, but perhaps another time,” he said.

  I would not have minded lingering. A few streets didn’t constitute London. At the same time, I felt the itch to be on our way to Little Barrow and find Scott Norton’s newly discovered nephew. Where were the Nortons? What had we got ourselves into this time?

  We drove a little way until we stopped at a booth. Royal showed the paperwork to the lady on duty.

  “Enjoy your visit!” she said as she handed back the ticket.

  “I’m sure we will,” Royal replied with a smile.

  “Cheerio!”

  I spoke beneath my breath as we drove away. “Did she just say Cheerios?”

  Royal rolled his eyes. “Cheerio. It means goodbye, or see you later.”

  “Which one, can’t be both,” I snapped.

  “Is someone in a bad mood?”

  “Sorry. Someone is worn out.” I had not slept a wink during the three hour flight from Salt Lake City to Dallas/Fort Worth, nor the nine and a half hour flight from there to Heathrow. Royal, on the other hand, woke only to eat the airline meals. Call me childish for finding his bright-eyed perkiness annoying.

  Thus began one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Have you driven in England? One word: don’t.

  Royal is a good driver, but this day I learned he’s an excellent driver. He had to be, to keep us alive and accident-free in London. The city streets were insane, with traffic bumper-to-bumper on those narrow roads. It didn’t improve when we got on the motorway, the British equivalent of an interstate highway. Still bumper-to-bumper, we roared along at the speed of light with spray from the wet road clouding visibility. And we were on the wrong side of the road. Automobiles slalomed around us, forcing their way in front of us and clinging to the rear end of our rental. I kept whacking my foot down on a brake pedal I didn’t have on my side of the car. I thought my face would permanently freeze in a rictus around my gritted teeth, and I gave into road rage more times than I want to admit.

  Forty-five minutes outside London, I heard a poorly suppressed snort.

  “Something funny?”

  “You. It’s not so bad, no worse than driving in LA or Denver, or a dozen US cities I could name.”

  “Could have fooled me,” I grumped.

  “I suppose a trip to France is out, then. The French do not believe in traffic regulations.”

  “And the British do?”

  Royal gave me mini tutorials on everything which caught his eye during the next hour or so. Why some places are towns and others are cities, and how to pronounce them. A variety of idiom, to which in retrospect I probably should have listened. Which flag flies over Windsor Castle to indicate the Queen is in residence - I’m sure that knowledge will be imperative to my survival one of these days.

  We stopped in a small town just off the motorway so I could visit the Ladies Toilets. Royal explained they are not called bathrooms. “It’s only a bathroom if there is a tub. A three-quarter bath with a shower is called a shower room.”

  It was a novel experience. A uniformed woman sat behind a grill like a guard and I had to put a twenty pence coin into a slot to get inside. The place seethed with desperate women waiting for a vacant cubicle and I didn’t understand one word from any of them, as if they spoke in Tongues.

  I kept my nose stuck to the car window for the rest of the drive so I didn’t see our near-brushes with death, and I pretended an intense absorption in passing scenery, so deep I couldn’t listen to any more tidbits of information.

  I came awake to the blare of a horn. Straightening in my seat, I peered around blearily. “Where are we?”

  “We reach Hungerford in a few minutes.”

  Hungerford was a quaint little town with old hotels, pubs and antique shops among more modern establishments. Royal pointed out which structure was thirteenth-century, or fourteenth, ad infinitum. This was interesting, because architecture fascinates me, and these old places were in good repair and still inhabited, when so many wonderful old buildings in the States are torn down to make way for modern developments.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Plaques on their walls.”

  I didn’t see any plaques, but Royal has super-Gelpha eyesight.

  Past Hungerford, we drove through countryside with only the rare house or farmyard beside the road. Grassy banks topped by hedges and trees on both sides of narrow country lanes rose high above the car. When the trees bowed over the road, it was like driving through a tunnel of foliage. And the lanes became so narrow, I tended to list toward the bank when a car passed us from the opposite direction. I don’t know how we got by without one of us knocking off the other’s side mirror. And when a red double-decker bus came roaring toward us, well I just closed my eyes and prayed it would be quick and painless.

  Royal laughed at me. I crunched up my mouth and drummed my fingers on my knee, and refused to look at him.

  We drove through the town of Pewsey with its little white-walled cottages and stores slumped against one another and over a bridge beneath which the Avon River shallowly flowed, the water so clear, the pebbles on the riverbed shone. An old, eroded statue of King Alfred dominated a small roundabout. Roses of every imaginable color trailed over white-walled cottages, partly veiling small square windows. Pansies frothed from urns on sidewalks, begonias cascaded from hanging baskets and nearly every house wore rainbow colors in window boxes.

  We were through the little town all too fast. Royal said we would have to go back for a better look. I was all for it.

  We passed fields, cottages and two pubs. Half an hour after leaving Pewsey, we drove into Little Barrow and our destination, The Hart and Garter Inn.

  Chapter Five

  Little Barrow sits in the Vale of Pewsey with Salisbury Downs circling it and roads from the village lead to Salisbury, Pewsey, Marlborough and Devizes. A Vale is a kind of depression in the land, not deep enough to be a valley, and usually has one or more rivers. With gently rolling hills and the River Avon meandering through, the definition fit the area.

  Starkly grand, the seventeenth-century inn looked out of place in Little Barrow, its three-story bulk of creamy stone towering over the village’s squat cottages. Fluted stone framed the door and each tall window. A large sign portraying a leaping brown deer wearing a fancy red garter on one hind leg stuck out horizontally from the wall, level with the second floor.

  We parked in a small lot beside the inn and toted our bags around to the front. Half a dozen wide stone steps led to a pillared portico with tall double doors and fluted stone lintels. Inside, we found a small, narrow, rather spartan foyer with high white ceiling, white walls and aqua-blue and white tiled floor. Wooden cubbyholes sat behind a big oak desk, with a pair of swinging doors on the right.

  The floor tiles continued through a rectangular opening opposite the main entry to a passageway, and on our left through a bigger square opening to the main barroom. I glimpsed cream walls, a high ceiling decorated with large plasterwork medallions, tulip-shaped sconce lighting of opaque white glass and tall windows with sills deep enough to sit in. Many of the mismatched tables which made a haphazard procession down the middle of the room and all the stools at the bar were occupied.

  Royal smacked
a brass bell on the desk, which gave out a tiny ting.

  A short, rotund woman in her early fifties came through the doors near the desk, the top of her head level with my collarbone. Green barrettes pinned her brown-gray hair behind her ears. Her hazel eyes held a calm gaze, a kind of serenity in a face which looked like a dried apple. Tiny smile lines fanned from the corners of her eyes and edges of her mouth; rosy cheeks made mounds on her tanned skin. A big white apron complete with bib covered most of a short-sleeved summer dress with a blue and white floral pattern.

  The door swung open again, and out came an equally short, oval-faced, bespectacled young man with slicked-back black hair so glossy I could probably use it as a mirror to do my makeup, if I wore makeup.

  Royal casually laid his forearm on the surface of the desk and lounged over it while he spoke to the woman. She watched his hair slide forward over his shoulder in a silken stream. Her gaze traveled to his face, then swept down. Ah, yes - checking out the bod. Knew just how she felt.

  The guy tidied a stack of Where To Go/What To Do brochures. “Hello there,” I began, hoping I would be able to understand him. “You look busy,” I added, jogging my head at the bar and customers.

  Smiling, he spoke in soft, musical tones, unlike the harsh, hearty voices rising in conversation behind me. I understood him just fine. “Good afternoon to you. Aye, they are having a wee drink before lunch is served. How can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Paul and Sylvia Norton.”

  He kept his smile. “Know the Nortons, do you?”

  I smiled back. “Not personally. We’re on vacation and their friends in the States suggested we look them up.”

  “That is interesting. I did not know they had friends in America.”

  “You must know them pretty well then.”

  “Yes I do. I should think everyone in the village knows the Nortons.” He took his spectacles off and polished the lenses on the hem of his blue knit shirt. “But I do not recall their mentioning friends in America. Or perhaps I have forgotten.”

  He made a face, shook his head and put his glasses back on. “Ah well, I am sorry to say you missed the Nortons by a good two weeks. They moved away, you see.”

  I gave him a nonchalant look. “Shame, but no big deal.” Then, as if an afterthought, I added, “You happen to know where they moved to?”

  “Sorry, no I do not. I could try to find out for you.”

  “Well … no … not necessary.” I half turned away, then swung back. “Come to think of it, I bet their friends would like to know whereabouts they are.”

  He smiled again. “Then I will ask and let you know.”

  I nodded my thanks, but his show of cooperation didn’t fool me. At the beginning of my conversation with that nice man with his nice smile, for an instant, the smile disappeared from his eyes when I mentioned the Nortons.

  And if he knew them so well, why didn’t he know where they were?

  He disappeared through the swinging doors.

  Royal was smiling at the woman, who seemed to have lost her self-possession and stood kind of slumped and loose-limbed, as if she would melt all over the front desk at any minute. She cleared her throat. “Malcolm!” she called. To Royal she said, “Malcolm will show you to your room.”

  Royal joined me and we stood near the desk with our bags at our feet.

  “Malcolm!”

  A short, wizened, elderly man wearing a jacket with elbow pads and a flat cloth cap came in from the street and spoke to the woman at the desk.

  “Do we know our room number?” I asked Royal. Surely we could find it without this Malcolm’s guidance.

  The woman looked over her shoulder at the swinging doors. “Malcolm!”

  The man at the desk joined in, yelling, “Get yer lazy arse in ‘ere, Mal!” He rolled his eyes at the woman, “Some mothers do ‘ave ‘em, eh?”

  I laid my fingers on Royal’s sleeve. “Some - ”

  “I’m coming, woman!” a gruff male voice growled.

  A stocky man appeared from the passageway. In his fifties, with a wide body going to fat, his belly hung over the waistband of baggy blue jeans and his white T-shirt clung to man-boobs. His thick gray-white hair stuck out like thatch and small blue eyes peered from a doughy complexion. He noticed us and hustled over.

  His gaze traveled up our bodies to our faces. “Well, well. I heard everything’s bigger in America.”

  “Malcolm! Mind your manners,” came from the desk.

  “Room Two I do believe, m’dears,” he said, bending down to our bags.

  With a pronounced wince and a groan, he stopped moving, his hands outstretched for the bags but not quite there.

  Royal bent over him. “Are you all right?”

  Malcolm turned his head to the side to show us a pained expression. He tried to straighten up, winced again and put one hand to the small of his back. “Just my old back, Sir. Not your concern.”

  “Perhaps you should let us get those,” Royal said solicitously.

  “No, no, it’s my job to see you to your room, Sir. I’ll get there in a minute, don’t you worry.”

  He bent a fraction nearer the floor and I thought he would collapse to his knees, but he grasped the handle of a bag in each hand and came upright. Or tried to come upright. He couldn’t seem to get our little carry-ons off the floor. His breath came out in small, panting gasps.

  Royal took my case from Malcolm’s hand, leaving him to tug away with both hands at Royal’s case, which being a guy case, held practically nothing. I could have picked it up with two fingers.

  Malcolm groaned again, but managed to get the bag two inches off the floor. “An old injury; plays up in damp weather,” he gasped.

  I glimpsed the leaden sky through a window. Wasn’t the weather always damp in England?

  “But I like to stay active and the extra cash comes in handy. A pension doesn’t amount to much these days.”

  Poor guy. What were they thinking, making him carry bags? Surely the inn could assign him a lighter task. I looked toward the desk, but the man and woman were no longer there.

  I took Royal’s bag from Malcolm’s limp fingers and helped him upright.

  “That’s kind of you, Miss.”

  With Malcolm now erect, we followed him past the front desk and along the passageway, Royal’s hard-soled shoes tapping the tiled floor. We passed doors labeled Ladies and Gentlemen and reached a staircase. Malcolm led us up, giving out a low, pain-filled grunt with every other step.

  Our room had to be on the third floor, the last door at the end of the landing. Malcolm opened up and preceded us inside.

  We dropped the bags on the floor. Royal beamed at Malcolm. “Thank you.”

  “Anything else I can do for you?” Malcolm nodded at the small fireplace with its narrow mantle and blue-and-white Delft tile border. “Evenings are getting nippy; I could bring up some firewood.”

  Royal’s voice held a hint of desperation. “No need.”

  If anyone brought up wood, I bet it would not be Malcolm. Royal held his hand out, which Malcolm took in his, and I realized Royal had passed the man a tip.

  Long and narrow, our room covered the breadth of the inn, giving us a view of both back and front through windows veiled by filmy white curtains. The plastered ceiling hung low and carpets with a tapestry look mostly covered the well-worn, scuffed floor. A fringed, off-white Candlewick bedspread draped the double bed, which matched a big old dresser and freestanding wardrobe. A fat cushioned armchair with a cream and green floral pattern and nightstands either side of the bed filled the rest of the space. Perfume intensified by the day’s heat, lavender in a small lead-crystal vase sat beside a radio-alarm clock on one nightstand.

  “Why would anyone give the man a job he cannot perform?” Royal asked once Malcolm had gone.

  I went to the west window and countered, “Why would anyone give him a tip for a job he didn’t perform?”

  The window looked over a flagstone yard bound on
three sides by the inn and outbuildings. A waist-high white wood fence separated the yard from a large green paddock, or meadow, or maybe just a field. More fields, hedges, two narrow lanes and a few cottages climbed a ridge beyond.

  Two young men below were putting up tables and covering them with white cloths. A woman wheeled out a trolley laden with covered platters and dishes. It looked like they were setting up a lunch buffet.

  We went in the en suite bathroom together, if you could call it that. Tiny, just big enough for a shower, washbasin and commode, I think it started as a closet. We tried to freshen up, but after knocking elbows and generally getting in each other’s way, Royal backed out so I could go first. Done with that, I went to our room’s east window. I folded my arms as I gazed out. “Something’s wrong.”

  Royal spoke from the bathroom. “You always think that.”

  “And I’m usually right.”

  You can tell a lot from expressions and gestures, and I’m very good at interpreting them. If I was not mistaken, mention of Sylvia and Paul Norton put the guy at the desk on alert.

  “The guy I was talking to in the lobby… .”

  “Greg Short. He and his mother Sally run the inn.”

  “Did you hear what he said?”

  “Is that what makes you think something is wrong?”

  “Not so much what he said, but you didn’t see his face when I said their name.”

  He sighed as he came behind me. “Could it not be this is just a minor setback? The Nortons lived here, they moved away. We will track them down.”

  “You don’t think it’s odd they conveniently disappear just when we’re looking for them?”

  His arms came around my waist. I folded mine over his and let my head rest back on his shoulder. His lips touched the side of my face. “There is such a thing as coincidence.”

  “Nope, don’t believe in it.”

  Royal was probably right and I read too much in the Nortons’ departure from Little Barrow. Nothing odd in a young couple leaving for a new frontier.

  I revolved in his arms, and spotted a piece of paper on the floor, as if it had been pushed under the door.