Cut Off

by Gill Mather

  “Did he live at the Hall?” Roz asked.

  “No. No. She came here to get away from him. But he’d turn up and create havoc. He was violent towards her.”

  “Like father like son, then,” said William.

  “What d’you mean?” Roz said.

  “Henry’s had a few girlfriends, more fool them. We’ve had to rescue the poor girls, sort things out with them to avoid prosecutions. I wish now we’d throown him to the dogs.”

  “We felt a sort of responsibility toward Henry,” said Amelia, “because of the difficult childhood he had. We hoped the philosophy of peace and harmony here would have a beneficial effect on him by and by.”

  “Well we were wrong,” said Jack. “We should have chucked him out years ago.”

  “But to get back to what to do,” said Roz, “have you any idea where Henry may have taken Guy? I read that prisoners were kept here in past times. Are there any dungeons for example? A building like this must have cellars. Would Henry have taken Guy somewhere underground? Where Amelia, where?”

  “Well there are cellars of course and obviously we could go and look in them. They’re largely for storing food, wine, other things.” She looked at Jack. “I suppose that’s the most obvious place in fact. But this is a big building. We’d need to get everyone that lives here up and searching. If we’re thinking Henry’s got Guy holed up somewhere, then it could just as easily be in someone’s flat. Some are unoccupied because people have gone away for Christmas. Or Henry could have taken over a flat and restrained the occupants. He has a firearm. Or he might have an accomplice….”

  “A firearm?” This was the last thing Roz had expected there might be in a place like this.

  “It’s not exactly in accordance with our ethos,” Jack looked uncomfortable, “but we have to keep vermin down. And Henry was the only one that seemed to want to do it.”

  “Yeah. Like he does it reluctantly,” scoffed William. “He loves killing things.”

  Roz felt weak. A firearm, a possible accomplice, a man who was violent towards his girlfriends.

  “Roz dear, I’m just trying to be practical and think of everything. It’s no good ducking issues,” said Amelia. “If you want my opinion, it’s not a practical proposition to try to search the whole building. People are very likely to object to having their homes searched just like that in the middle of the night. I think our best bet is to look in the cellars and check the gun cabinet to see if anything’s missing. I’ve got a key as I’ve got a firearms licence too.”

  “You have?” said Roz.

  “I can handle a firearm. Old huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ family, mine. The cabinet’s in a room just off the office, but the room’s locked at nights. And then….” Amelia paused.

  “Yes? What is it?” said a frantic Roz.

  “Well there is somewhere Henry might have taken Guy.”

  “What? Where?”

  “I’d have to think about it, I mean how to find the way there. But we used to make coracles and hire them out and run courses. Henry was involved in that. There’s a boathouse on the river. We had to stop when health and safety became too tiresome. You couldn't get to the boathouse overland at the moment. But there’s another, older, way.”

  “You mean a war-time thing?”

  “No. Older than that. It goes back to Victorian times. There was said to be some sort of stolen art works racket going on. I can remember where the passage starts, but there are concealed doors. They’re difficult to spot from what I recall. I haven't thought about it for years. I’ll try to find the way though.”

  “Are there any other boats?” asked Roz.

  “No,” said Amelia, “just the coracles. And they won't be fit for use by now. Probably dangerous.”

  “All right,” said Jack. “I’ll check the gun cabinet.”

  “I’ll check the cellar then,” said William.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Mark and most of his congregation offered to go too.

  “Wait until I’ve made sure nothing’s been taken out of the cabinet first,” said Jack.

  “Thanks Amelia,” said Roz.

  AN INSPECTION OF the cellars proved negative. There were no shotguns or rifles, cartridges or ammunition missing.

  “Well it looks as though we’re going to have to investigate this old route to the boathouse,” said Jack.

  Amelia had dressed in the intervening period and Jack returned wearing outdoor clothes. Mark and his crew were also booted and coated.

  William, on the basis that Henry might need overpowering, had summoned up half a dozen burly characters.

  “OK he hasn’t got a gun as far as we know. But do you think he might have a weapon?” Roz asked.

  “Possibly. On the other hand, do we really want to go down that route ourselves?” said Jack. “It could lead to unintentional injury.”

  “We can handle him,” said William. His team of heavies nodded, shuffled their feet, kept their eyes to the floor and their hands in their pockets.

  “We’d better get moving,” said Amelia.

  “I don’t think there’s any point in everyone going,” said Jack.

  There was general disagreement.

  “He’s right,” said Amelia. “From what I recall, the passage is narrow. I don't think we could walk two abreast. And it’s a fair way.”

  “I’m coming anyway. I don't care,” said Roz.

  “I’d suggest we limit it to twelve and no more,” said Amelia. “We have to have William and his friends. And me. So that leaves four others. I’d say it’s only fair Roz comes if she wants to, plus Jack, Mark and one other.”

  “I get on well with Henry,” said a middle-aged woman. “I’m Leonora Potter,” she directed this mainly at Roz who wondered if she was supposed to have heard of the name. She couldn't recall seeing this woman among Mark’s congregation. Perhaps she’d joined the group later. On the way to Jack’s maybe.

  “He’s possibly not totally beyond redemption. I’m a psychologist and I’ve sometimes counselled him informally. I think he trusts me. It might help for me to be there if we find him.”

  The ardent, possibly obsessional professional, Roz thought, willing maybe to help this man evade their enquiries and his just deserts, regardless of his actions.

  “No,” she said firmly. She couldn't risk it. “This affects me more than anyone. I think I have the right to decide. I choose….you.”

  She pointed to the woman who’d suggested asking Amelia. The psychologist pursed her lips and turned away.

  IN THE LIBRARY whence Amelia led them, she touched something. Roz didn't see what, but one of the bookcases the other end of the room swung on a central axis slowly and noisily, opening up a space the width of a man. Everyone jumped.

  “Very clever,” said Jack.

  After that they had to walk in single file. A short consultation established that William and his small force should lead the way with Amelia directing from behind.

  No-one spoke. The passage led up a flight of steps and down another shorter flight. It made several turns until they arrived at a run that ended abruptly in a brick wall. Amelia shouldered her way to the front and felt about but declared that they’d come too far, she’d missed the concealed door that led into the next part of the route. She turned around and headed the group past the first lot of steps they came to which they’d just descended.

  “Aha,” she said at length. Nothing was obvious but she felt amongst the mortar between a course of bricks. A grinding noise filled the passage and a section of brickwork yards behind them swung back, as the bookcase had done in the library. They filtered through the gap. Up a set of steps they climbed, along a straight section and down more steps.

  The twists and turns of the passage and its ups and downs was dizzying, though the general trend seemed to be downwards. It went through her mind however that it was strange if Guy had meekly allowed himself to be led via this route. He must’ve become suspicious. Did that mean he’d been subdued
and dragged along by Henry? Or drugged perhaps? She cursed to herself that neither she nor anyone else had paid any attention to the ground beneath them before stepping onto it. To any scuff marks or prints of recent footsteps. Was it too late to raise the subject, to halt the procession and have a look? She opened her mouth to suggest that they did just that but suddenly, around a corner, a figure appeared.

  If Roz had previously had any contact with Henry, she couldn’t recall it. But she knew immediately who the person was. He so resembled the medallion man in the photograph she’d seen in the library.

  Chapter 7 The Ark Among The Flags - Exodus 2.5

  STUART SIMPSON SAT at his bedroom window staring out across the white almost featureless landscape on the other side of the river. Leafless trees broke the monotony but the hedges were almost invisible beneath the pall of thick snow. The moon was up, nearly as bright as daylight.

  He did this almost every night, at least the nights he hadn't drunk himself into complete oblivion. It gave him a little comfort to imagine what Melanie might be doing, in the house in the town not five miles distant whose roofs and spires he couldn't see from here. Asleep probably. If she wasn't humping the doctor she’d run off with. He couldn't even call the kids at the moment, safe and snug in their city dwellings. The release of crying down the phone at them wasn't currently available. The mobile was out altogether. The landline worked intermittently, more off than on.

  He pulled the wine bottle towards him, ready to top up his glass but it was empty. His shoulders slumped. He stood up to go downstairs for another. The extra height and stepping to the left around the armchair positioned near the window altered his perspective somewhat, enabling him to see more of the countryside to the right of the house.

  It was then that he caught sight of a circular object rounding the bend in the river. This tributary of the Stour was rather overgrown in places, but in the summer months coracles were sometimes seen being rowed in their zig-zag fashion past the garden. This one was low in the water and there was no-one sitting up controlling the irregular motion with an oar to one side and then to the other, trying to keep an even course. It was at the mercy of the currents but sluggish and apparently in the process of sinking.

  A mound of some kind lay within the vessel. Stuart’s body stiffened. Some cruel, evil person trying to drown a dog? A big dog though. Worse maybe.

  Stuart knew that sadly there would be little he could do about it. By the time he’d rushed downstairs, donned some stout clothing, and clambered through the three-feet-deep snow, the coracle would be long gone.

  But some eddy, some undercurrent caught the vessel as it drew nearer. The coracle floated to the left hand side of the river into the path of their small jetty where it remained trapped for the time being until probably a stronger current washed it out into midstream again and it sped off out of his reach.

  Hurriedly therefore, Stuart threw on some outer clothes, wished for a pair of snow shoes but instead struggled into his trusty wellies, and rushed outside, his dogs too taking the opportunity of a night time frolic. In truth, he had daily been trying to keep a path of some sort open through his back garden since he had a range of emergency rations in his shed which doubled as a boathouse, and the going wasn't as difficult as it could have been.

  The coracle was still there when he leaned over the side of the jetty. To his horror, it was a human form huddled, soaked and apparently unconscious, in the bottom of the sinking coracle. A man probably.

  He couldn't quite reach the person from the jetty. To try to pull him out of the coracle that way would almost certainly see the coracle upended and both of them plunged headlong into the water. He went instead into the shed and sought out one of the boat hooks which he took to the side of the river, thinly frozen at the edges. He caught up the coracle and hauled it through the ice and into the reeds, themselves covered in snow. Freezing water pouring over the tops of his boots, he waded in a foot or so and, summoning all his strength, he heaved the inert form by its arms and clothing onto the bank.

  Stuart’s rear garden wasn’t very long. In the way of some of these country cottages, it was in fact the front garden that extended a good few hundred yards or so and it was in the front garden that they had undertaken most of their entertaining when it came to outdoor summer functions. There were few passing cars or traffic of any kind since his house was the only one in the lane and the lane was a cul-de-sac, ending at a hedge broken by a style into a field beyond.

  Even so, the rear garden proved a considerable challenge from the point of view of lugging the dead weight of an adult male all the way from the river to the house. At the back door, the person partially slipped from his grasp as he had to take one hand from under a shoulder to turn the knob. But, calling the dogs, he managed to get the man into his kitchen where he left him, cold and forming a puddle on the quarry-tiled floor, while he sat and recovered his breath.

  The kitchen, with its solid-fuelled Aga, a miracle of early twentieth century inventiveness and a boon to all country dwellers, was blessedly pleasantly warm.

  When Stuart had changed his socks and trousers and his limbs had unfrozen sufficiently, he gave a little thought what to do with the man. The dogs had taken a keen interest in the drenched form lying motionless on the floor and Stuart shooed them away. He didn't actually think the man was dead, though quite why he wasn't exactly sure. A corpse would presumably be paler, more limp or conversely stiffer, coming out in livid marks, the cheeks sunken, the mouth hanging open. Silent Witness had a lot to answer for. Stuart pulled up an eyelid to see if the man’s pupil was dilated but the reverse was true, the pupil a small pinpoint. The man might have taken drugs, more fool him, possibly been suicidal.

  Stuart hunted in the bookcase through the few works left behind by Melanie at her precipitate departure. There were two so-called medical encyclopaedias. The sections on hypothermia provided confusing and contradictory information. But generally, he gathered that unconsciousness wasn't a good sign at all and that you shouldn't try to raise someone’s temperature too quickly. Much hope anyway of somehow getting the man up to the first floor and soaking him in a hot bath.

  He tried the landline. No dialling tone. He looked at his smartphone. No signal. He couldn't call the emergency services, but would they have come out anyway? The lane outside was impassable and he doubted they’d send an air ambulance. Would they? The most he’d probably get would be telephone advice.

  But this conjecture wasn't helping. Stuart undressed the man as quickly as possible; difficult when all his clothes stuck to him and the shirt buttons would barely open. He wrung the garments out in the sink and slung them over the Aga’s towel rail. He dried the man’s slim body with tea towels and laid him on the sofa on which the dogs normally slept. He brought a quilt from the ground floor spare bedroom and tucked it round the man.

  The books mentioned taking the subject’s temperature rectally but he drew the line at that. And how would you know you weren’t puncturing the lining of the anus or something? You heard of cases where the thermometer accidentally got sucked up and disappeared. No. Too far off the wall and risky for his liking.

  Moonlight continued to pour through the kitchen windows making artificial light unnecessary. But the moon would go down far earlier than the sun would come up. Stuart needed to be able to see what was happening if this man regained consciousness within the next few hours and started lurching about. Therefore he took from the pantry two camping lamps and positioned them on surfaces strategically around the kitchen.

  Equally he didn't want to leave the man alone to do God knew what if he came round, and for the dogs to investigate in the meantime. Accordingly, he brought some settee seat cushions from the sitting room and bedding from his bedroom. He lay down on the cushions near the Aga with his dogs. And he slept peacefully for the first time in many months.

  IN THE TOURNAMENT room, whence Henry had been escorted, the boards, pieces and timers had been cleared from the table. The final
obviously wasn't going to be played to its conclusion when one of the finalists had disappeared and the other was suspected of having organised the disappearance. The particular advantage of the tournament room, declared William, was that there was no way out of the bower next door, not even any windows, therefore Henry could safely be kept in there when they’d finished interrogating him.

  Though so far the questioning had produced no useful information.

  Amongst the assembled throng, all watching keenly, were Mark’s congregation who’d hung around after being rejected earlier on.

  Henry, on being discovered in the secret passage, had simply claimed he’d been for a walk to the river, that he often did this when he couldn't sleep. And although Jack and a few of the heavies led by Amelia had walked on to the boathouse, they’d come back and related that there were no obvious signs of a struggle nor any sign of Guy at all.

  In the tournament room, to which Henry came without protest or resistance, the questioning began in earnest.

  “Guy’s disappeared Henry. He was last seen with you. You have a background of violence. It’s not credible that you had nothing to do with his disappearance,” said Jack.

  “Are you telling me this? Or asking me something?” Henry sat impassively staring Jack straight in the eye.

  “Well you are Mary’s son and your father did vanish. It seems very likely that the corpse in the chimney was your father. Did you put his body up the chimney?” This was Mark, with his mild manner, posing a specific question.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Henry.

  “Would you please answer yes or no,” said Mark sharply. The direct challenge seemed to surprise even Henry. “Did you put your father’s body up the chimney in the orangerie or did you not.”

  “I don't have to answer your questions.”

  “No he doesn't,” said Leonora.