Beast of Robbers Wood (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery Book 3)

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Have you seen PC Vainglory?’ Ravyn asked.

  Gail frowned at the sudden shift, her eyes wavering between anger and confusion. “He had better not show his face here again.”

  “He did not return after leaving?”

  “Even a tomfool like Delbert Vainglory has more sense,” she said. “This is his fault. Jimmy told him to calm her down, not spirit her away. Jimmy should have known better than to…” She glanced at the empty stairs, then lowered her voice. “Jimmy should have known he would muck things up. He may be Jimmy’s friend, but you can’t expect a mooncalf to be anything but what he is.”

  Ella came out carrying a small case. “I’m ready.”

  “Ella, you can’t do this to Jimmy,” Gail said. “You’re his wife. You owe him your loyalty.”

  “I can’t stay here anymore.”

  “But think what you’ll be doing to him,” Gail said. “Everyone will think less of him. That’s worse than death in a village like this. Think what you’re doing to your family.”

  Ella wavered for a moment. Her features softened. She still loves him, Ravyn thought, at least in some way, despite everything.

  “Mrs Treadwell, we need to look for your daughter.”

  At Ravyn’s words, a grim determination settled on her face. A wife’s love for a husband is voluntary and conditional, as enduring as steel even as it is as fragile as glass. A mother’s love, however, is inflexible, unbreakable, and subordinates all other feelings.

  “I’m ready to go, Mr Ravyn,” she said. “Now.”

  Ravyn and Ella left Gail on the landing. The older woman did not try to stop her, but stared after in anger and regret. They saw Treadwell in the parlour, standing where they had left him, still rooted in fury, but now with an expression of helplessness, like a lost little boy. He opened his mouth but no sound emerged. Ella slowed, but hurried past when Ravyn touched her elbow.

  Ravyn breathed as they abandoned the porch. Until that moment, he did not realise he had been holding his breath. James Treadwell was feared because of his influence and his fists, but Ravyn feared neither. At best, Treadwell was a bully, at worst a predator. Neither made any difference to Ravyn. His troubled youth taught him how to fight, and he was himself a hunter of men.

  When he heard Ella’s breaths, saw her bosom move, he was startled. Had he really held his breath in some sort of sympathetic reaction to Ella? He was surprised by his own unconscious action.

  “Do you have any friends in the village?’ he asked. “Family?”

  “No friends,” she said. “Mum died when I was Annie’s age, Dad a few years later. Then I married James. “I’ve been in that house seventeen years.”

  “It might be best, then, to take Patsy up on her offer of a room at the Ned Bly,” Ravyn said.

  “We were friends once; I hope we still are.” She gasped. “What will I do for money? James has all my money. I can’t ask for charity. I don’t want pity. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”

  “If you engage a solicitor, you’ll discover controlling money is not the same thing as possessing it,” Ravyn said. “I can refer you to someone trustworthy, if that is what you want.”

  She nodded, reluctantly. “And for the time being?”

  “I’ll make arrangements.”

  “But I don’t want…”

  “It’s not charity,” he said.

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “Penance,” he said. “And let’s leave it at that.”

  When Ravyn and Ella reached the Ned Bly, Stark was there with a coterie of police officers. He finished giving instructions to the constables from Stafford and nearby Deeping Well, then turned to Ravyn.

  “Most will be in Robbers Wood,” Stark said. “Two sergeants are in charge, sectioning off the forest between them. They have a few volunteers, mostly newcomers.” He winked. “You know, sir, people who have been here less than a thousand generations or so.”

  Ravyn raised an eyebrow. Stark lost his snarky smirk.

  “A few are checking elsewhere around the village for due diligence,” Stark said. “An unlikely thing might pan out, but money is on the woods. After all, it’s where…” He looked at Ravyn who gave a slight nod. He turned to Ella. “Ma’am, an escaped convict might be in the woods. We’re proceeding along those lines.”

  “My Annie? You think he…” Her words ended in a shuddering sigh. “Is there any hope that…”

  “We do not know anything for sure yet, Mrs Treadwell,” Ravyn said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to find both girls, for their predicament must be a shared one. Anything else would be a statistical anomaly.” She barely heard him. He motioned for Stark to wait for him. “Come with me, Mrs Treadwell, and we’ll get you settled in.”

  “I want to go with you,” she protested. “Be there when…if…”

  “You can’t help us, Ella,” Ravyn said. “We’ll inform you right away if there is a development. I promise.”

  Ella nodded. Ravyn escorted her into the pub to find Patsy and make arrangements with Morris Teype. Stark shook his head as he watched them vanish within. The guv’nor had never impressed him, or anyone else for that matter, as a sympathetic sort. He wondered what it was about Ella Treadwell’s situation that had unclogged the milk of human kindness in Ravyn.

  “Get your map out,” Ravyn said when he returned. “Here.” He pointed to the portion of the wood adjoining the Tucker place and explained its significance. “No less than six searchers entering there and working toward the others. No one is to be alone.”

  Stark relayed the instructions to the sergeant with the most men under him. Ravyn shared with him the gist of his interview with the occupants of the house on Water Street.

  “We should search that place,” Stark said. “Maybe it’s not the woods, Tremble, or even the Beast after all.”

  “We will eventually, but there’s no evidence linking him to Annie, and he’s not at all in the frame for Lisa,” Ravyn said. “He was in Stafford when she vanished. That road cannot be driven in much less than an hour. Two girls vanish…a small village…”

  “Guess they must be connected,” Stark said. “What happened to one happened to both.”

  “Those are the odds,” Ravyn admitted. “Reality, unfortunately, sometimes dumps sure odds into the dustbin.”

  Stark nodded. “So my bookmaker often tells me. By the by, I understand Vainglory may have done a runner. Do you think there could be anything in that, sir? If he was at the heart of it, no one would see him, would they?”

  “Like Chesterton’s invisible man?”

  “I guess so.” Stark, unlike Ravyn, was no fan of the classics. “If he’s behind the disappearances, no one would ever suspect it, not one of their own, a harmless duffer like him.”

  “It would simplify things, but I think not,” Ravyn said. “I don’t know where the constable is or why he rushed off, but it’s difficult to cast him as kidnapper or killer. It’s not in his nature.”

  To forestall another lecture, Stark asked: “The searches are under way and we can’t do anything about the Water Street house till we get a warrant, so what do we do now?”

  “Take a leisurely walk along Flintlock Lane.”

  Chapter 6

  Historian

  “The uniforms have already been along at the cottages, checking if anyone saw the girls, noticed anything wrong, sir,” Stark said. “Do you really think replowing the furrow will turn up anything new?”

  “Before, the cottagers responded to questions about Annie and Lisa,” Ravyn replied. “Now, we need to ask them about the woods as well. According to the interview reports, many of the residents were not very cooperative with the constables. Shaking a tree again sometimes makes a stubborn apple drop.”

  “Not if the branches are bare, sir.”

  Ravyn sighed. “Someone must have seen something. After all, they’re all pensioners. How busy can they be?”

  “They might spend all their time glued to the
goggle-box.” He saw Ravyn’s jaw suddenly set grim. “Though there’s always going to be a few dirty old geezers keen to watch the birds pass by. I don’t suppose they would admit that, would they? And nosey spinsters.”

  “There are six cottages before Maple Walk, then one after, the only one till those actually on Autumn Lane,” Ravyn said. “We’ll start at the farthest, then work our way down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Stark?”

  “Sir?”

  “As is always the case in these villages, everyone will peg you as an outsider the moment they see you.” Ravyn looked at Stark’s clothes. “Even before they hear that accent of yours.”

  Stark grimaced. His English would have pleased even the ear of Professor Henry Higgins. Months of immersion had acclimated him to the ‘Hammershire voice,’ with its drawn vowels, soft consonants and idiosyncratic vocabulary, but the isolated, probably inbred villagers remained less intelligible to him than a Yorkshireman. He almost preferred his wife’s tongue-twisting Welsh to what passed for the Queen’s English in Hammershire.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll try to mute myself.”

  “On no, Stark,” Ravyn said. “I think gentle intimidation might be the order of the day. Make them nervous. Chatty.”

  Stark smiled.

  “Gentle,” Ravyn said. “Just enough to make an apple drop.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stark said, “I’ll do my best.”

  The pensioners of Flintlock Lane, accustomed to being ignored, were agitated by police knocking upon their doors and the sight of people going into woods better left alone. When Ravyn and Stark pounded on their doors a second time—Stark did not pound, he thought, but the cottagers disagreed—they were all just as ignorant and surly as before, and in a lather about it, all but one.

  “A detective chief inspector and a sergeant now, is it?” said the resident of the last cottage on Flintlock. “Quite an improvement on the plods who came by yesterday. What is it now? A lost dog or is it about that girl again?”

  Stark glanced at his list. “You’re Mr Hardwick, are you?”

  “Leonard Makepeace Hardwick.” The man was tall, thin and pale as a grave-worm. He wore dark trousers, a cream shirt and a tweed jacket. He narrowed his gaze. “No, you’re definitely not from around here, are you? London, raised in Islington, but spent much of your time a little farther east.” He paused. “Ever been to Wales?”

  Stark closed the notebook. “All that from five words?”

  “Six, actually, if we separate that contraction,” Hardwick said. “Your use of it is as telling as the way you…”

  Stark cut him off. “You told the constables you did not see Lisa Martin or Annie Treadwell yesterday?”

  “No, that is not what I told them,” Hardwick said. “Nor is that what they asked of me.”

  “Did you see the girls or not?” Stark asked.

  “Of course I did,” Hardwick replied. “I see those two quite often in the lane, heading home after school”

  “Then why did you…”

  “Mr Hardwick, may we come in?” Ravyn asked. “Obviously the men you spoke to were not precise in their questions, nor did they comprehend the nuances of your answers.”

  “Finally,” Hardwick said, smiling. “Someone who understands the complexities of language. Yes, please come in.” He paused. “Even you, Sergeant. I, for one, don’t hold it against you that you’re a strapper. Everyone is born somewhere, and we really don’t have any choice in it, do we?”

  It was not the first time someone had used the local word for an outsider to describe him, but, for some reason, Stark felt the sting a bit more coming from the thin bloodless lips of Leonard Makepeace Hardwick. Perhaps it was the glint in the man’s eye as he said it, Stark thought, or the way he was putting on airs.

  Hardwick showed them to a sitting room, the window of which afforded a clear view of Flintlock past its intersection with Maple Walk. Across the way, Robbers Wood was like a black cloud upon the earth, impenetrable and menacing. Police cars lined its edge.

  “Please be seated,” Hardwick said. “May I get you some tea?”

  “No thank you,” Ravyn said. “Let us start at the beginning and put aside what was asked or told yesterday, shall we?”

  “Yes, if you wish.” It was apparent from Hardwick’s features that he was disappointed, that he had relished sharing the inadequacies of the ‘plodders’ with his visitors. “What would you like to know?”

  “You say you saw Lisa Martin and Annie Treadwell in the lane yesterday?” Ravyn asked. ‘Tell us about it, please.”

  “Yes, I saw both the girls yesterday, about mid-afternoon.” Hardwick replied. “They often walk home this way from the comprehensive, usually when they want to share a cigarette, giggle over a trashy teen magazine, or some foolishness like that. They don’t want to be observed by anyone who matters, which does not include anyone along Flintlock Lane. Don’t you know? We’re all frustrated spinsters or senile old buggers.”

  “How do you know the girls?” Stark asked. He gestured toward the window. “Do you sit here waiting for them, peeping at them?”

  Hardwick gave Stark a sour look. “Don’t be crass, young man, or repulsive. I know them because I know everyone in Midriven. It’s not that difficult, and if I see someone I don’t know, I ask.”

  “Did you ask Annie and Lisa who they were?”

  Hardwick sighed. “Hardly. Were I to walk up to young girls like that and ask who they are, it would, to put it into the modern vernacular, ‘creep them out,’ don’t you think? No, I know who Lisa Martin is, because her mum knows Patsy at the Ned Bly, and I know Patsy, and I’ve been at the Ned Bly when Helspeth was on and showing snaps of her girl. As to Annie, it’s not so much I know her as everyone looks at her and thinks, ‘There goes the daughter of that ponce James Treadwell, the poor girl.’ Now, shall I continue with yesterday’s events, or do you have some other pointless and offensive questions for me?”

  “No, go on,” Stark said, “sir.”

  Hardwick paused. “The Treadwell girl is now also missing?”

  “Yes, that’s correct, Mr Hardwick,” Ravyn said. “At this time, we are treating them as a joint investigation.”

  “Two aspects of the same case?”

  “Yes.”

  Hardwick went to the wide window overlooking lane and wood. “I can understand the Beast took Lisa Martin from Flintlock, but not Annie Treadwell. The Beast is an ancient creature tied to the woods, to the temple at its heart. It does not venture far beyond the limits of its own domain, mostly the fields and marshes westward.”

  “Despite what Zoriah Stoneman claims?” Ravyn asked.

  Hardwick turned and smiled. “So, you’ve met Mad Zoriah, have you?”

  “In passing,” Ravyn said.

  “Yes, he’s quite a hardship for Wendell, the son,” Hardwick said. “The old man has always been touched, a bit pixilated, if you know what I mean, even before his own father kicked off. He was half-mental then, but he got worse when Wendell took over the family business. He made Zoriah stay out of Robbers Wood.”

  “He traipsed around in the spooky woods? I thought no one went there because of…” Stark smirked. “…the Beast. Or did he have some high jadoo protecting him from bugbears?”

  “You mock our ways, but were you to enter the woods by the dark of the moon, you might emerge with a different opinion…if you emerged at all, Sergeant.” He looked to Ravyn. “I have studied the Beast for more than sixty years, have read all the accounts, both ancient and modern. I may not know the nature of the Beast—the stories are often vague—but I do know it exists.” He turned toward the window. “I’ve spent uncounted hours staring at the woods for some sign of the Beast, wondering if some malevolent eye was at the same time trained on me.” He looked back to Ravyn and smiled thinly. “But, no, contrary to what Zoriah claims, the Beast does not wander the streets of Midriven searching for…virgins.”

  “Getting back to yesterday…” Stark prompted.<
br />
  “I was here, having a cup of tea, watching the woods, when I saw Annie and Lisa approaching Maple Walk,” Hardwick said. “My attention was attracted, particularly, because they from time to time stopped and looked into the woods. At one point, it seemed as if the blonde girl, Lisa, was actually shouting at the woods or at someone in it, though, of course, I could not hear the words.”

  “Did you see anyone?” Stark asked. When Hardwick cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, as if Stark’s question might be as imprecise the ones asked before, he added: “In the woods? Anyone the girls could have been reacting to?”

  “No, I did not see anyone, no indication at all,” Hardwick said. “That I saw no one does not mean no one was there, for, as you can see, the woods are quite thick. An army could hide in there without being seen. The girls may merely have been nervous, letting their imaginations run wild…the woods often have that affect on people. It’s why most folk steer clear, not for what they see or hear, but for what they imagine they do.”

  “Except Zoriah Stoneman,” Ravyn said.

  “Old Zoriah is a pagan at heart, very much in touch with the beliefs of his ancestors, the ‘Old Gods’ he calls them,” Hardwick said. “Zoriah was always mad, but got worse when his father died back in the Sixties, as if death brought a kind of burden he was not able to bear and remain fully sane. As I said, the old man got even worse when Wendell decided he would run the family business and took it over.” He paused. “Really, it’s a wonder Wendell grew up more or less normal with a nutter like that for a father.”

  Pot calling the kettle black, Stark thought, but nodded.

  “Did Zoriah go to the temple?” Ravyn asked.