Agnes slit the paper with her talon-like nail.
“Oh my God,” Pettibone whispered.
“Cor!”
In her surprise, Agnes dropped the envelope. Money spread across the table. Some notes dropped to the floor. Pettibone scooped them up and tossed them on the others as if they burned. The notes were in ten- and twenty-pound denominations. All were crisp and uncreased, as if they had never known the touch of a human hand.
“What does it mean, Aggie?”
“It means all our problems are over!”
“But who…”
“Does it matter?”
Pettibone’s fear of the Warlock returned. After all, the envelope did bear the sign of the Warlock’s god. He tried to convince himself there was a gentler spirit behind the gift, perhaps that of Gaites trying to fulfil after death the promise he had made in life, but that symbol seemed to hang before his eyes, burning into his soul.
“It might,” he said. “We’ve found many stories over the years about people getting a boon from a ghost. How many actually prospered? None! All came to some terrible end. That’s what happens when you take treasure from a ghost. It’s cursed!”
“Ghosts don’t use doors,” she said, her voice full of resolve and her eyes filled with gold. “They don’t leave envelopes filled with new banknotes, and they don’t play silly buggers in the middle of the night…well, they do, but not about money.”
“We can’t keep it,” he said. “It will come to no good.”
“We can keep it,” she countered, “and it will come to all sorts of good. We can pay off the vendors and have more than enough left over to make sure tomorrow’s events and the final séance get some nice extra touches.”
Pettibone shook his head.
“We have to keep it, Freddie,” she said. “Besides, what else can we do with the money?”
“Give it to Mr Ravyn,” he replied. “It may be a clue. It has the sign of the Warlock. If the Warlock is killing people, he might…”
“Alfred Pettibone, that is the most daft thing you have ever said,” she snapped. “And that covers a lot of territory.”
He cowered before her. It was never a good thing when she used his full name, as his mother did when she was cross.
“Maybe we can take part of…”
“It’s all or nothing, Freddie,” she said. She gathered the notes and counted them. “Five thousand pounds! I don’t care if it came from some silly villager, the guilty shade or Jameson Gaites, or the hand of the Warlock himself.”
Pettibone quailed as he thought of a boon from Hezekiah Boil. His great-gran scared him witless with stories of Warlock Boil, hanged from the oak down the lane. The consecrated rope left his throat pale and scarred, yet the Devil never let him die. Little Alfred shivered in his tiny bed, covers pulled up, terrified of the window lest he see the Warlock’s yellow eyes. Once, he thought he had seen the Warlock, but later decided it was Victor Boil, an older boy who later killed his own parents. Everyone was glad when he killed himself and that evil stain was finally banished from Little Wyvern.
“All of it,” Agnes said. “We’re keeping all of it.”
He sighed at the finality in her tone. “What shall we tell Sir Phineas? What about Prudie?”
“Nothing and nothing,” Agnes replied. “Sir Phineas, because he does not need to know, and Prudie because she could not possibly understand. I’m sure that gold-digger would come up with some reason why we should split this with them.”
“They are part of FOG,” Pettibone reminded her.
“This isn’t for us personally, Freddie,” she explained. “Don’t you want to see Little Wyvern become England’s premier psychical research centre? Don’t you want Little Wyvern to be known as the most haunted village in England?”
“Well, yes, of course, Aggie, that was the whole reason we got started on this,” he said. “We’ve got to save Little Wyvern from the same fate that’s come to other villages.”
“When we’re the most powerful people in the village, no one will ridicule us or laugh at us,” Agnes said. “Think of Sir Phineas. Don’t you want to pay him back for all the kindnesses he had shown us over the years?”
They owed the old man a lot for his friendship and patronage. Against his better judgement, Pettibone nodded.
“Good!” Agnes stuffed the money into the envelope and the envelope into her forbidding cleavage. “Then it’s settled.”
* * *
Aeronwy Stark watched her husband. Dinner was simple—spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread and salad. He ate slowly, methodically. Given that he did not care for Italian food, she had expected some sarky comment when he saw the set table, but he merely smiled and kissed her on the cheek
“How was your day?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Busy. Back to Little Wyvern with Ravyn. Some witnesses interviewed. The usual.”
“I heard…” She paused. “…another body was found.”
He stopped eating. One rule put in place almost as soon as they were married was, no shop talk after quitting time. He could take home a file if he wanted, if a case were more important than spending time with his family, but he had to keep it in his study.
“Yes,” he admitted. “We don’t know if it ties in with the first.”
“Are you staying up late tonight?”
He thought of the FOG data he had declined. “No, I didn’t bring any work home.”
“Ravyn expects too much of you, Leo.”
“It’s not his fault.” He realised he had put more emphasis in his tone than intended. This is Aeronwy, he reminded himself, not Heln. “Besides, Ravyn expects more from himself than from me.”
“Are you sure defending him is in your best interest?”
Stark frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not held in high regard by other detectives,” she replied. “If he takes a fall, you might go own with him.”
“Who’s been telling you that?”
She shrugged. “I have lunch sometimes with a few of the other wives. You hear things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Just things. People talk. You know how it is.”
He pushed aside the red wine she knew he did not like and sipped the water he had got for them. “No, I don’t know how it is. Who are these other wives?”
“So you can tell Mr Ravyn?”
“No, I’m just curious, since you brought it up,” he said. “I did not know you had lunches with the other wives.”
“Not often,” she said. “But I do.”
“Oh.”
She sipped her wine.
“Should you be drinking that?”
She glared at him.
“I mean, because of the baby.”
“No.” She took another sip.
“Why are you doing this, Aeronwy?”
Her eyebrows lifted and she gazed at him with innocent eyes.
“You know what I mean,” he snapped. “Who have you been talking to? Exactly what was said about Ravyn? And me?”
She sighed. “They say Ravyn is not respected, that people fear him because he keeps to himself and seems to know all about others. As far as you…why would anyone talk about you? Other wives talk about their husbands, but what can I say? You’re the poor bloke stuck with Ravyn, who hasn’t the nerve to ask for a transfer.”
He might have told her about Ravyn’s success rate, highest in the CID; he might have told her of sergeants who, under Ravyn’s tutelage, were promoted over those held to lower standards; he might have told her about the esteem in which Ravyn was held by the Chief Constable. He might have told her a number of things, but in the end he said nothing, because he knew nothing would matter.
“Some say he is gwallgof, or at the very least twpsyn.”
He hated when she lapsed into Welsh, usually after too many drinks or when angry. She had only sipped her wine, but her anger was frosty, the worst kind. Or it could be, he thought, not a slip at all, but a slight. S
he knew his knowledge of Welsh was poor. Ravyn was neither mad nor stupid, but Stark again refused the bait tossed his way…he was beginning to feel like a stubborn fish.
“I have no choice but to stay with Ravyn, whether you like it or not.” He paused. “Whether I like it or not.”
She remained silent.
“Just like I had no choice but to accept the post in Hammershire when it was offered,” he continued. “I was lucky to get it after the incidents in London.” He fought the urge to smirk at her discomfort, then felt guilty that an effort was required; it had not been all her fault. “I also had no choice but to accept the assignment with Ravyn when it was made by Superintendent Heln.”
She looked up sharply.
“It was made clear to me, if I declined the assignment, there were no other CID positions available,” Stark said. “It would have been a demotion, probably to custody sergeant, maybe traffic. A cut in pay. Things were hard enough on us already.”
“I didn’t know that.” Her voice was soft, almost inaudible. “I thought you chose…I thought you deliberately asked for a job that would keep you…I was told…” Her voice trailed into silence.
“You can’t always believe what you hear, Aeronwy.” Though he wanted to know who had steered her wrong, he knew better than to ask—if other wives, she would take it personally; if another, he did not think he could keep from acting foolish. “When anyone tells you something, always apply the common sense and intelligence I know you have. Everyone has a point of view shaped by beliefs, prejudices and eccentricities. It is part of their unalterable natures. The trick is to see past those natures and uncover the truth.”
“Leo Stark, you are at times an insufferable prat.” The corners of her mouth lifted in a faint smile. “I love you.”
“I love you, Aeronwy,” he said. “I always have; I always will.”
She reached for her glass, then paused. She pushed aside the wine and picked up the water he had put on the table.
“Once I’ve been here, proved myself, I can probably put in for a transfer,” he said. “Maybe after a year.”
“To someone other than Ravyn?”
“To elsewhere,” he said. “What if I applied to the WPS, the Welsh Police Service? A post in Cardiff or Swansea. Maybe up north. Since the devolution of responsibility they’ve been hurting for manpower.”
She got up, walked behind him, laced her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. “Leo, I’d love to be back in Wales, but you’d be a fish out of water, always be a dieithryn, no matter how well you tried to speak Cymraeg.”
“If you mean a stranger, that’s what people see me as now.”
“At least they speak English.”
Stark chuckled. “Of a sort.”
“If you have no choice, well there you are. But be careful.”
“I will,” he said. “And you take care who you listen to.”
She nodded. “Like a roast beef sandwich and chips?”
“I’d love it.”
“Half a mo’ and I’ll get it ready.”
She removed the pasta and busied herself in the kitchen, slicing leftover beef and starting oil for the chips. He listened to the homey sounds. They were back on track again. He hoped it would last, but knew it would not.
* * *
DCI Arthur Ravyn leaned back, let his eyes half-close, and called forth the FOG data, mostly anecdotes gleaned from old documents and mined from memories of Little Wyvern residents. Considering it was compiled solely by the efforts of Alfred Pettibone and Agnes Swanner, it was remarkable, covering a thousand years of ghostly lore and local occult traditions.
A dealer in rare books and manuscripts, Pettibone had chased down leads in public archives and private libraries. To Agnes fell the task of dragging skeletons from family closets, forcing people to divulge their deepest secrets. Where they might have slammed doors on Pettibone or ignored his supplications, no door was Agnes’ equal and no one dared ignore her, about anything.
Ravyn’s Stafford home, bequeathed to him by Aunt Dorcas, an Oxford Don, allowed him his required solitude. The room was soft-lit by shaded lamps. Built-in bookcases contained part of his vast collection—old mysteries, folklore, chess, psychology, and cinema history. A glass-fronted case held his own books, mostly texts about the subjects he collected, plus his one foray into fiction, an unmitigated disaster fortuitously written under a pseudonym.
A glass display cabinet held an array of tin soldiers. Next to it, an odd, slotted tall-chest held one of the largest accumulations in England of music hall sound recordings. Small tables about the room held antique chess sets, all in various stages of play. The one frame on the wall, layered lightly with dust, held his George Medal, presented to him by the Chief Constable.
Visitors were rare, but one appearing now might have thought the room tranquil, the occupant completely at rest in an overstuffed chair, perhaps dozing. The visitor would have been wrong.
Ravyn saw a swirl of papers, pages constantly shuffling back and forth as connections were considered and made, or discarded. Of particular interest to him were comments about or allusions to Hezekiah Boil, also known as the Warlock. It seemed almost every old family in Little Wyvern had a story about him, even when he was not mentioned by name.
The Warlock had died nearly four hundred years ago and, yet, he still cast a titanic shadow over the village. Part of that heritage lay in the Family Boil, a line that stubbornly endured, generation to generation, scorned as much as they were feared by villagers.
From the background of his thoughts, Ravyn pulled forward the information uncovered by Stark about the demise of the Boil lineage in Little Wyvern. He drew lines from the police report about the fire forty years earlier to various eyewitness accounts of the end of Hezekiah Boil, as well as modern witnesses who spoke as if they had indeed seen the Warlock hanged from Hopkins’ Oak.
It was a common phenomena in folklore studies, Ravyn thought, merging past and present. A statement made by a witness to the fire, preserved in the police report, echoed an account from a statement filed with a Crown archivist by a member of the good company of Matthew Hopkins, who had actually strung up the Warlock.
Josiah Goodhusband wrote: The Warlock Hezekiah Boil, also called Heart-Eater, didst struggle 'gainst bonds, but knots by a nautical sir of our companie held festinate. The Warlock curs'd us, tried to biteth us with teeth liketh those of a rabid cur, but we clubb'd that gent insensible and did place about his neck strands His Holiness the Archbishop hast blest. Smoke didst poureth from his neck wh're hemp toucht his skin. As he didst kick and flail, th're wast heard the insane cackling as yond a hideous hobgoblin. We crost ourselves and didst prayeth for God's protection.
A constable three hundred thirty-four years later, recorded: The boy, that nasty Victor Boil struggled to flee the scene of the fire, but was held fast by Oscar Lattimer, pensioned Chief Petty Officer. Victor tried to bite him like a wild dog and uttered curses no lad that age had any business knowing. He made like to go in and save his mum and dad, but it was clear to all of us thereabout his was the hand that lit the fire what killed them. Victor kicked and flailed, finally succeeding in breaking free. As he vanished into the night, he cackled insanely, like a hideous hobgoblin. Good riddance to that dark stain!
Similarities in the accounts were amazing, but he had no reason to believe a woman interviewed in the Twentieth Century’s eighth decade would know of a statement made by a man in the fifth decade of the Seventeenth. More likely, Ravyn thought, the woman interpreted Victor Boil, who was well known to her, through the filter of fireside stories heard all her life.
Ravyn smiled as the name of the modern witness rose in his memory: Margaret Banberry.
By the time he finished surveying the thousands of pages in his mind he was quite weary. It was not the quantity of information that fatigued him, but the rigor of drawing of parallels between separate time periods. It was one thing to remember what he saw, but quite another to, as Stark put it,
connect the dots.
No ghosts required for this case, he had told Stark. He still held to the truth of that statement, even after examining all the evidence accumulated by FOG, but there was an enduring spirit of sorts. The Warlock had died, but Family Boil had persisted until extinguished in Little Wyvern by its own scion, and now people were dying by the method of murder made infamous by the Warlock.
Ravyn rose and went to the kitchen, followed by a cloud of shifting pages only he could see. He shoved into the microwave the take-away curry he had got on the way home and set the timer.
What about young Victor Boil? he wondered.
After the boy ran away (dementedly cackling like a hobgoblin, if a youthful Mrs Banberry could be believed) he was never seen again, not in Little Wyvern, nor in Hammershire or surrounding counties. Since he never appeared in London, elsewhere in the Isles, or even on the Continent, it was assumed the boy, overcome with remorse, had committed suicide somewhere in the woods.
The Stafford CID marked the case closed and counted Victor Boil as dead. In Little Wyvern, the lad lived on. Sightings persisted for years, peaking on anniversaries of the fire, when screams of the dead mixed with cackles of their murderer.
Eight-year-old Victor Boil murdered his family. No one was surprised. No family allowed their children to play with him, but newcomers, always anxious to prove they were unprejudiced, invariably learned a bad seed always puts forth poisonous fruit.
According to statements by villagers, dutifully recorded by a baffled constable, the Warlock, dead these centuries, had returned to Little Wyvern in Victor Boil. He had the Warlock’s penetrating eyes and the feral face that was the Devil’s mark. Of course there were no life engravings of the Warlock, no death mask to prove their claims. Even Ravyn, who knew better than anyone the persistence of memory, failed to see how the villagers could make such claims, yet he was not surprised they did.
Victor spoke of his infamous ancestor often, and, from what witnesses told the recording constable, sometimes even spoke as the Warlock, lapsing into a form of speech that was a cross between Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Possessed or not, it was clear Victor had an evil nature. Dead puppies, unexplained fires and malicious mischief followed in his wake. Other children complained he ‘did things’ to them, but grew silent when pressed for details. Had the complaints been actionable, the future of Family Boil might have been different, but Victor was as cunning as he was malevolent. Also, his parents protected him from outsiders and lied to cover his excesses.
Village of Ghosts (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery Book 2) Page 15
