The Devil's Chair

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Nobody’s going to be like Dad,’ Sukey said with heavy, resigned firmness. It was obviously a well-worn phrase, dog-eared as an old book.

  Then suddenly Martha laughed, throwing back her head and laughing loudly to the bright blue sky which seemed to laugh with her with her mouth wide open. Sukey watched, puzzled. ‘What?’

  Mischievously, Martha chuckled. ‘And I’m sure you’d really like Armenia and Jocasta as your stepsisters.’ Her chuckle grew even louder as she watched Sukey’s expression of doubt as she absorbed the question. The next minute they were both running through the woods, Bobby snapping at their heels, barking joyfully. They ran until they were both breathless and stopped, still laughing in gasps of humour, Sukey bending over, hands on her knees. Martha felt like Christian at the end of Pilgrim’s Progress, her burden rolling from her as she realized that she didn’t have to love Simon. She didn’t have to love anyone. She didn’t have to fall in love again. There was no law that dictated she must marry again. And suddenly she was intoxicated with the pure expansive freedom of it. She was as free as a butterfly or a bird or any other of God’s unfettered creatures. She could travel the world if she so wanted. And the word alone held no fear for her any more.

  Sukey put her arms around her and pressed her cheek to her mother’s. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  And they ran again.

  I read the papers too. I see what they make of the story. Nothing, actually. They have no perception, no insight. But my job is almost done. What job is that, you ask. Wait and see. You must be patient. The time must be right. So I study my fingers. I see the power that gleams from them; the ability to control is better than drinking the blood of infants. Even unbaptized infants. I can convert order into disorder. I am the destroyer as well as the creator; the healer as well as the cause of injury. I am both virus and bacteria. I am everything. I deliver a message so mystical only the blessed can read them and I am the blunt instrument of information, the knife that cuts through ties and slices through knots. I am Shiva and Parvati, both love and destruction. For isn’t one simply the other in deceitful form?

  Saturday, 27 April, 5 p.m.

  Alex Randall was not allowing himself Saturday off in such a major and so far fruitless investigation. Besides, weekends at home were to be avoided as much as possible. Why stay, Alex? he asked himself frequently. Why stay? Why not go? Be free? There was no logical answer to this particular poser.

  But for now he must leave behind his own private problems and focus on the missing child. Feeling that the answer had to lie somewhere in the vicinity of the Stretton Hills, he had driven down to Carding Mill Valley himself, parked and headed up the slope towards Hope Cottage.

  Signs had been left all over the place appealing for any help tracing Daisy but they were rain-stained now, dog-eared and torn in spite of being laminated, and some had dropped to the floor, trampled into the mud. If anything signified the depressing lack of progress in this case, these were the tangible evidence. An area around the stream was marked with Police Do Not Cross tape and two personnel were searching the ground, but Randall could have told them that they would find nothing there. He was beginning to understand the subtlety of their adversary. She was not careless.

  On the warm, weekend day, plenty of people were around; more than usual, Randall sensed. Some of them, he guessed, were not pleasure-seekers but thrill-seekers hoping to find a trace of Daisy and maybe claim the £20,000 reward that had been put up by Shrewsbury Police. In the absence of anything but the false trail of clues which was leading nowhere it was to be hoped that the money would flush out some of the secrets surrounding Daisy’s disappearance.

  He could see Charity’s four-by-four parked outside so it was reasonable to assume that she was at home.

  He was right.

  She opened the door, her smile fading when she realized who her visitor was. She looked questioningly at him, vaguely hostile.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Ms Ignatio,’ he began, ‘but we’re still curious as to the connection between the accident, the disappearance of the little girl and the mystery call.’ He opened his eyes wide. ‘Why your cottage?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘Oh, come on, Inspector,’ she responded, her eyes hard. ‘Look around you. It’s not exactly a housing estate here, is it? It’s practically the only house in the vicinity.’

  ‘I know,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but there are others just down the track. If this person was local they would have known that. Besides, if you climb only a little way up the hill you get a perfectly good mobile signal so they needn’t have broken into your cottage to use the phone. I would have thought they would have known that too.’

  ‘The caller may not have had a mobile phone.’

  ‘Practically everybody does these days,’ Alex Randall pointed out gently. ‘And whatever the facts of the case, why leave the scene? Why not wait for the emergency services to arrive? Why take the child? For what purpose?’

  Charity simply shrugged as though it was nothing to do with her, implying that she didn’t care either.

  But Randall didn’t want to leave it at this. He hesitated on the doorstep, anxious not to leave. He felt instinctively that either Charity or her home held some sort of clue. There were these fragile and tenuous connections. The bunch of herbs, the Death Cap left on the doorstep, the use of her home which surely pointed to something? And he still had the card of her old maybe-crime hidden up his sleeve ready to flourish when it would produce the biggest reaction. Aware that he was still grasping at straws he prompted her, conversationally, ‘Tell me a bit about Hope Cottage.’

  She looked a bit embarrassed. Then she smiled. The smile transformed her face into something almost open, almost happy. But only almost. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing anything else today. The weather’s so lovely, why don’t we sit in the garden and I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

  Randall practically rubbed his hands together. What an attractive proposition. He sat at the small wooden table and chairs and surveyed the valley, waited for the rattle of tea cups. Then a sliver of unease trickled down his back like cold sweat.

  A cup of tea? Mushroom soup? Hell – was she going to try to poison him?

  It gave him some insight into people who have been acquitted of a crime. They may be acquitted but are they ever really free? Is it possible that the human mind never really forgets? That some small doubt always creaks in through the cracks underneath the door?

  He pasted a deliberately bland expression on his face.

  Charity reappeared with a tea tray, sat down and poured, not asking him whether he wanted milk or sugar, simply pouring it with milk and pushing the sugar bowl across.

  ‘You ask me about Hope Cottage,’ she began. ‘There was a family tragedy when I was a teenager and so I came into money when I was twenty-one. That enabled me to buy here.’

  She had pre-empted him. Her dark eyes mocked him, her mouth curving into a smile.

  Randall nodded to show that he was listening and made no comment about the family tragedy. Charity took a lady-like sip of tea, and continued. ‘When I bought it,’ she said in her pleasantly husky voice, ‘seven years ago, it was in a very bad condition. It had been derelict for a number of years and needed a lot of renovation. Bringing up to date,’ she expanded, waving her hands in apology.

  The question about the cottage had simply been preamble. Randall really wanted to question her about the old poisoning case but he suddenly sensed a secret. He focused his eyes down as he stirred sugar into his tea. Then he looked up. Charity’s face was flushed, her pupils dilated, her mouth open and the hand that held the dainty china cup shook as she lifted it from her saucer.

  ‘Who lived here before you?’

  ‘An old lady in her nineties who was taken eventually into a nursing home. Her name was Eva Taylor.’ She flushed slightly. ‘She was a bit batty.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was se
ven years ago. She would be about a hundred by now so probably not.’

  She looked at him expectantly as though she fully expected him to pursue the subject.

  ‘Which nursing home?’

  ‘I don’t know the name. I’m sorry. It’s probably somewhere near here. Why?’

  Randall made a mental note to trace her. Why? He didn’t know.

  ‘Did she have any family?’

  ‘I did speak to a daughter once or twice but I never met her.’

  ‘In what way was Mrs Taylor batty?’

  Charity looked slightly bored. ‘Oh, the usual – forgetful, full of old stories, wandered around the Long Mynd in all weathers, at all times apparently, day and night, collecting herbs and fungi and such like for her spells.’

  Randall realized this was just the sort of person he had imagined had planted the bouquet of herbs. He frowned. ‘Spells?’

  Charity looked bored with the subject. ‘Oh, the usual,’ she repeated. ‘She had a reputation for being a witch.’ She laughed, putting her hand in front of her mouth as though it was impolite to giggle. ‘She did have a few hairs sprouting on her chin and she was bent up with arthritis. She walked with a stick, not flew on a broomstick.’ She smiled. ‘And she did have a black cat too. I only met her a couple of times. She just seemed like a typical old woman to me but people in Church Stretton told me they’d come to Hope Cottage to sort out life’s little problems.’

  DI Randall lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, yes. She claimed to be able to make love potions and things to make people lose a baby or …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I suppose if she wasn’t so aged and almost certainly dead by now she’s just the sort of person that it’s rumoured has spirited little Daisy away.’ She giggled. ‘Probably needed a little girl who hadn’t been christened for one of her black magic spells.’

  Randall frowned. He did not like supernatural explanations for what was patently not a supernatural abduction of a little girl and there was nothing funny about any of this.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, suppressing his disapproval. He deliberately did not mention the flower message. There were always facts the police held back.

  ‘In fact,’ Charity said with another embarrassed laugh, volunteering information now, ‘it seems I’m the first non-witch to live here. The entire area …’ She looked across the valley, ‘is full of folklore, all of it evil and connected with the Devil. But …’ She put her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her palm and looked up into Randall’s face with a small hint of a smile. ‘I just love it here. It’s so raw and wild.’ She smiled. ‘The very opposite of my work environment, the manufactured world of the Middle East. Everything there is … so,’ she frowned, ‘false. Everything.’

  And yet that was the world she chose to work in. But then it would be a well-paid job and give her financial freedom. He met her eyes and saw a determined, ambitious and professional woman.

  What was he missing? What else?

  ‘Have you ever had the feeling before that someone’s been in your cottage while you were away?’

  ‘Well … Shirley usually comes in just before I’m due back and gives the place a tidy over, puts the heating and hot water on. That sort of thing, you know?’

  ‘You’ve never had the feeling that somebody other than Shirley has been in?’

  ‘No-o-o.’ But she was frowning and her tone was dubious. She added quietly, ‘At least, sometimes I’ve thought things have been moved but I’ve always decided it’s probably Shirley.’ She sounded less sure of herself now and was frowning. ‘It’s a horrible thought,’ she said softly, ‘someone invading your home, your private space, your inner self.’

  ‘Yes,’ Randall agreed.

  Why did she live out here? Why in such a lonely and wild place? She had given an explanation of sorts but it didn’t satisfy Randall. Charity Ignatio was keeping something from him. And it wasn’t the old tragedy. She had flaunted that in front of him, waving it as audaciously as a national flag.

  But she was hiding something else. What he wanted to ask her was What?

  ‘More tea?’ she asked sweetly. Randall shook his head. ‘No, thanks,’ he said, ‘one’s enough.’

  Not too many, he thought.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Saturday, 27 April, 6.55 p.m.

  Randall tracked Eva Taylor down in an old folks’ home just outside Church Stretton – easily done if you’re in the police. She was not gaga by any means but a sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed lady with sparkling blue eyes and an intelligent manner. He shook her hand.

  ‘Now why have you come to see me?’

  He had the feeling she knew perfectly well why he was here. But she was calling the shots.

  ‘The little girl,’ she said. ‘Oh, my, there’s evil there all right.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  The old lady sat back and regarded him. ‘Where do I start?’ she said, perfectly at ease.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Hope Cottage. She’s there now, isn’t she?’

  ‘You mean Charity.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s a name I wouldn’t have chosen for her.’

  Randall decided to play her game. ‘So what name would you have chosen for her?’

  She whispered something in his ear.

  Randall made one more phone call before he clocked off for the evening.

  ‘Mansfield,’ he said, ‘DI Randall here. Just one small question. Was Daisy christened?’

  Mansfield spluttered. ‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Something someone said,’ Randall replied. ‘So was she?’

  ‘No. Neither of us believed in it,’ Neil said.

  Randall thanked him and put down the phone.

  Saturday, 27 April, 7 p.m.

  In the end, uncertain what the instruction ‘casual dress’ meant, she’d chosen a pair of snug-fitting jeans teamed with a black T-shirt and high-heeled black leather boots, with the result that she felt underdressed to be going out for dinner with Simon Pendlebury.

  Right up until he arrived in similar garb of jeans and a check shirt. She gaped at him. His hair was tousled and he looked comfortable, relaxed compared to the habitually tense person usually turned out to immaculate perfection.

  She regarded him without saying a word, simply looking curious and intrigued.

  ‘I meant what I said,’ he said, smiling. Not grinning. ‘Casual dress and you’ll need something for your hair.’

  Still bemused, she fished out a headscarf, tied it under her chin Audrey Hepburn style, and followed him outside to a gleaming white Mercedes E Class with red leather seats, the hood down. He held the door open with a little bow. ‘My lady.’

  Still feeling a little more like Audrey Hepburn than Martha Gunn, coroner of Shrewsbury and its environs, she slid into the seat and sat back, wondering where this was heading and she didn’t just mean which pub.

  Simon eased the car out on to the bypass.

  Martha had always believed that you could judge a man by his driving. But if this was true she’d been wrong about Simon. She would have imagined he would have driven furiously, recklessly and fast. Taking no prisoners, as her father would have said.

  In fact, he drove rather sedately with a lot more patience than she would have imagined, sizing up the road and the opportunities before pulling out to overtake. After half an hour they drew up outside an unpretentious country pub. Simon opened her door and she stepped out, shaking her hair free. She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Whatever are you up to, Simon?’ she asked, half laughing.

  ‘I just wanted you to see a different side of me,’ he said seriously. ‘I feel …’ He steered her towards the pub door. ‘Oh, let’s get a couple of drinks in and chat across a table,’ he said.

  Martha was bemused. She really didn’t get this.

  He returned with a glass of red wine and a beer, his face still cheerful and friendly. There was none of the tight-lipped stare he had adopted sinc
e Evie had died. He looked happy – happier than she had seen him for years.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you said.’

  ‘I’m finally putting my house in order.’

  ‘Ri-ight?’

  He leaned in. There was nothing threatening about his proximity. He simply looked like a very good friend who had something to say.

  ‘When I said to you about working so hard,’ he said, ‘I realized.’

  She didn’t even prompt him with a go on. She knew this was a significant moment in their relationship.

  ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘that with a successful business …’

  What is your business?

  ‘You’re all too aware how easily it can all go under.’

  ‘But you have …’ she grasped for the word. ‘You have managers?’

  ‘It sounds like a cliché, Martha,’ he said, ‘but they don’t do the job as well as I do.’

  She nodded. ‘So you have no one to delegate to.’

  ‘Exactly. And …’ again he hesitated, ‘I’m not looking for sympathy,’ he said, ‘but what’s the point of pretending you want to lotus eat alone?’

  She snorted. ‘I’ve never been a great one for lotus eating,’ she said. ‘It sounds great but, well, I’m happier working.’

  And suddenly he was like the older brother she didn’t have, looking at her slyly from narrowed eyes. ‘And what if you meet someone special?’

  She flushed. What she wanted to say was, I have. But he’s not for me.

  What she actually said was, ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I reach it.’

  The evening passed pleasantly. They had reached a new and happy place in their relationship and any awkwardness between them had melted. She felt the parameters had been set. He dropped her off a little before eleven p.m. with a chaste kiss on her cheek and a very chummy hug. Again, nothing threatening. The car roared off as she closed the front door behind her.

  To an empty house.

  Sukey had gone out with friends and Sam had left a message to say he was staying overnight with his buddy. She was alone. It was a taste of the future.