by David Hodges
‘The mother of Martha’s suspected killer.’
He nodded soberly. ‘Fred Laycock, yes. Bit of a backward youth who was heavily influenced by his mum. Ended up drowning or whatever you would call it in a peat bog, either accidentally or by his own hand – we really don’t know which, as the records kept by the local constable at that time don’t tell us.’
‘You say in your book that he considered himself to be some sort of supernatural spectre, called Strawfoot?’
‘Ah, yes, old Strawfoot, the vengeful scarecrow, reputed in the mythology of the Levels to be the entity who punished wayward children. “Behave yourself, boys and girls, or ol’ Strawfoot will git yer!”’ And he laughed. ‘But Fred’s paranoia about that was down to his mother. She resurrected the ancient myth – which goes right back to pagan times, long before the 1800s, actually – and used it for her own purposes.’
‘And that purpose was to punish Martha Tinney?’
‘Sadly, yes. Martha was a rebellious outspoken youngster and well known locally for her promiscuity. When she poked fun at Dark Annie while the old woman was trying to sell her father clothes pegs one day, she overstepped herself and signed her own death warrant. Annie evidently responded by cursing her with the name of Strawfoot but afterwards allegedly got poor Fred to enact the curse by murdering Martha, partially stripping the poor girl to indicate that her promiscuity was the reason for such a severe punishment and leaving the grotesque charm at the scene as Strawfoot’s unique sign. Unfortunately Fred exceeded his brief and, before killing the poor girl and leaving her in the obscene state in which she was found, he humiliated her even more by viciously raping her.’
‘And what happened to Annie Laycock?’
‘They burned her.’
Kate stared at him, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise. ‘Burned her?’
‘Yes. You have to understand that the folk on the Levels at that time were intensely superstitious. When Martha was found and the finger was pointed at Annie by her father, Jeremiah, they actually believed she had employed black magic to call up Strawfoot. They didn’t connect simple-minded Fred with the crime, even though the local constable had a more pragmatic view of things. So they took the law into their own hands, hunted Annie down and burned her alive on a pile of straw bales in front of her own cottage. Then they set about torching every scarecrow they could find in the hope that one would prove to be Strawfoot.’
‘How stupid.’
He nodded again. ‘Stupid to us, yes but that was 150 ago and things were different then.’
Not so different, Kate mused, thinking of the savage way Melanie Schofield had died.
‘But what has all this to do with your current investigation, Sergeant?’ the historian asked suddenly, shaking her out of her momentary reverie.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Fallow,’ she replied, ‘but I can’t tell you that.’
He nodded again. ‘Strangled like poor Martha, was she?’ he suggested. ‘Partially stripped and left with a straw or corn figure stuffed in her mouth?’
Kate grimaced. ‘I’m afraid the circumstances of the case amount to privileged information which I can’t share with you, Mr Fallow,’ she said firmly. ‘And I would be grateful if you would keep our conversation confidential.’
He sighed. ‘As you wish but you have to realize I am a historian and, if I may say so, quite a good researcher. I’m certainly no fool, Sergeant, and it doesn’t take the intelligence of a brain surgeon to put two and two together with a fair degree of accuracy.’
Kate smiled. She liked Will Fallow. He seemed a nice, genuine man. But she had no intention of confirming or denying things. ‘Quite so, Mr Fallow,’ she said. ‘But one last question. Any idea who still makes these corn figures and where one can get hold of them?’
‘Quite a few people still make corn dollies,’ he said. ‘You know, folksy creative types – sell them sometimes at village hall events or craft fairs – but if it’s the sort of talisman or charm that was left at the scene of Martha Tinney’s murder, you’re talking black magic, witchcraft, that sort of thing, and I know of only one person who might be able to help you there.’
He wriggled himself off the desk, then rummaged through a drawer before producing a dog-eared business card. ‘Tamsyn Moorcroft,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘The Grey Mill, out at Shapwick. Self-confessed witch, actually. She might talk to you, if she’s in a good mood, that is but she’s a bit of a recluse, just like me.’
Kate took his warm dry hand and shook it. ‘Thanks for all your help, Mr Fallow,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in touch if I need to ask you anything else.’
He hesitated, then studied her for a second. ‘Just be careful, Sergeant,’ he advised. ‘Believe it or not, there are some folk in these parts who still believe in the old religion and they may not take too kindly to someone turning over stones, if you get my meaning?’ He laughed. ‘After all, you don’t want old Strawfoot coming after you, do you?’
Kate didn’t answer, but in spite of the fragile sunlight licking the weeds of Fallow’s unkempt garden as she left, she couldn’t repress the shiver that went right through her.
CHAPTER 7
Despite the sunlight, tendrils of mist twisted and twirled, like delicate strands of white hair, in front of the car’s windscreen when Kate pulled away from Will Fallow’s cottage and turned left on to the main road, heading back through Wedmore and taking the Mudgley road towards Westhay, out on to the Levels. She made a face as she glanced across the marshy fields on both sides of the road. The mist was never far away in this part of the world and she suspected it would be coming down with a vengeance later that evening. She hated the stuff – it blotted out everything, making driving a total nightmare – so she was determined to get her last job over and done with and shoot back to Highbridge nick as soon as possible.
A few miles further on she reached Westhay village and carried on towards Shapwick, stopping briefly to seek directions from a postman emptying a postbox, before turning off up a rutted track, which cut through fields of scrub slashed by exposed peat and tiny streams.
The track ended after about a quarter of a mile in a large cleared area, ringed by stunted trees and hawthorn bushes with a rhyne to one side. The Grey Mill – a tall three-storey building, faced with wooden slats and in an advanced state of disrepair – stood at the end of the clearing close to a river, its water wheel broken and silent. Nice, Kate thought grimly, pulling up alongside an old Mercedes car, laced with rust, a few feet from what was apparently the front door.
For a moment she studied the building, looking for any sign of life but there was none – not even a bird flying over the slate roof – and when she finally climbed out of the car, she was met by a near-total silence, broken only by the gurgle of water from a nearby stream.
There was a rusted iron knocker on the front door but her sharp tap produced no response whatsoever. No one called out with the customary, ‘Wait a minute,’ no dog barked, no footsteps sounded on creaking floorboards. The place seemed to be totally deserted. She checked the Mercedes next and saw that it was apparently in use; the keys had been left carelessly in the ignition and there were groceries in a couple of supermarket bags on the back seat that someone obviously hadn’t had the chance to unload, although the radiator was now cold. So, if the car was in use and still parked there, where was the owner? It wasn’t as though they could simply walk out on to a main road and catch a bus or hail a taxi.
She frowned. Maybe Tamsyn Moorcroft just didn’t want to answer the door to a stranger? Will Fallow had said she was more or less a recluse and would only speak to her if she was in a good mood. It could be that she’d had a bad day and was even now peering at her visitor from behind one of the curtained windows, determined to stay hidden.
Walking back to the front door, Kate knocked again, then lifted the letterbox and shouted through it. ‘Miss Moorcroft, it’s the police – Detective Sergeant Lewis. Can I have a word, please?’
She straig
htened up and stood there for a few moments, waiting but there was still no response or sound of movement inside the place. She frowned again. To come all the way out here for nothing was a pain – especially if the woman she wanted to see was skulking inside. OK, so it was a free country and no one had to answer their door if they didn’t want to but Kate was already in an impatient mood and she was not particularly interested in democratic rights.
Acting on impulse, she tried the door latch. It lifted with a soft clunk. She hesitated. ‘Anyone here?’ she called through the widening gap as the door creaked open. ‘Police.’
Silence. She saw that the door opened straight on to a square sitting room, separated from a tiny galley-style kitchen by low-level cupboards surmounted by a wooden work surface, which was littered with unwashed cups and plates. There was a staircase on the right of the sitting area, climbing upwards into darkness and a low arched doorway, to one side of it. Drapes were partially drawn across the windows but, despite the gloom, she could see that the room was furnished with two armchairs, a settee and an oak sideboard, plus an antiquated-looking wood-burning stove equipped with a pipe that rose from the top to a metal plate in the ceiling. There was no carpet on the floor and no television in evidence.
Stepping inside, she looked for a light switch but there wasn’t one of those either. The Mill was apparently without mains electricity and, glancing across the room, she now saw a couple of oil lamps hanging on brackets affixed to opposite walls. Gordon Bennett, she mused, talk about living the simple life.
‘Hello?’ she called again. ‘Anyone here?’
Still receiving no response, she crossed to the window and jerked back the drapes to let what sunlight there was into the room. Other features now emerged – glass cabinets, containing a stuffed owl in one corner and a big black raven in another, what appeared to be animal skulls and bones littering the top of the sideboard and a collection of tiny medicine-type bottles on a tray at one end, each containing some form of colourless liquid.
Then she saw something a lot more interesting. Hanging in a line on a piece of cord above the sideboard were four tiny straw-type figures, each with a number of long needles thrust through them and each identical to the corn dolly that had been forced into the mouth of Melanie Schofield
Her heart pounding like an old whistling pump, she swung round and shouted again. ‘Tamsyn Moorcroft. This is the police. Show yourself!’
The old building seemed to release a weary sigh but nothing else stirred.
Striding back across the room, she approached the arched doorway, conscious for the first time of a strange unpleasant smell that seemed to be coming from behind the part-closed door. Her skin crawled as she recognized the smell for what it was and, even before she pushed the door right back, she knew why Tamsyn Moorcroft had not responded to her calls.
Like Melanie Schofield, the twenty-something young woman was lying on her back on what appeared to be the floor of some form of stone-walled outhouse or shippon, locks of her shoulder-length blonde hair partially obscuring the upper part of an elfin face. She was naked from the waist down and, also like Melanie Schofield, quite dead, her sightless bulging eyes staring at the beamed ceiling and a small straw figure protruding from between her bloodied lips.
‘From the condition of the body, I would say this one’s been dead several days at least,’ Lydia Summers commented from behind her surgical mask and straightened up from the dead woman. ‘As I gather the curtains were drawn when your DS arrived, it’s also likely that she was strangled during the night sometime – and, once again, with considerable force. One of her eyes has haemorrhaged quite badly, causing her hair to adhere to the discharged fluid in a couple of places.’
She frowned, indicating with one hand a trail of straw leading from the body to the door. ‘All that straw’s a bit weird, though,’ she said. ‘We found the same sort of trail at the Melanie Schofield crime scene, if you remember.’ She glanced around the room. ‘But, unlike the Schofield barn, there’s no reason for any straw to be in here. Really strange.’
‘Maybe the killer brought it in on his shoes?’ Kate suggested.
‘Maybe but there’s rather a lot of it for that. It’s almost as if it was deliberately left behind.’ Summers gave a short laugh. ‘Unless we’re dealing with a man of straw, as it were?’
Kate shivered. The pathologist obviously had no idea how near the knuckle her unwitting remark was. Before she could think of a suitable reply, however, there was an impatient cough at her elbow. ‘But you’re saying her death pre-dates Melanie Schofield’s murder?’ Detective Superintendent Ansell queried sharply, plainly irritated that they were getting off track.
The pathologist nodded. ‘Very much so. Your man did this one first.’
‘No doubt to silence her,’ DI Roscoe growled. ‘We found a drawer in the sideboard half full of corn dollies or whatever you like to call the bloody things but only a couple like the ones the killer used. He was obviously a bit particular about design.’
‘Well, he would be, Guv, wouldn’t he?’ Kate put in. ‘He’s sending us a message and he needs actual straw figures for the purpose – not just fanciful shapes, like the knots and plaited horseshoes that are usually produced.’
Ansell ignored the pathologist’s quizzical expression and turned to study her, a half-amused smile on his face. ‘So, what is his message then, Sergeant?’ he said indulgently.
Kate reddened. ‘I don’t know exactly, sir,’ she replied, ‘but it’s linked to the old murder case of Martha Tinney I briefed you about, I’m sure of it. The straw trail left at both crime scenes also suggests that.’
‘Ah, your copycat crime?’ he said, his smirk even more noticeable. ‘From a hundred and fifty years ago? Taken our man a long time to get underway with it, though, don’t you think?’
Kate’s mouth snapped shut like a mousetrap. The bastard was patronizing her as if she were some kind of naive schoolgirl. She felt like slapping him across the face but thought better of it. There were easier ways of committing career suicide. ‘Just a theory, sir,’ she retorted coldly over her shoulder as she turned for the door. ‘Maybe someone else will come up with a better one.’
Roscoe joined her outside the mill and, even though it was now dark with the anticipated mist swirling in across the Levels, she knew he was chewing, as usual – she could hear the chomp of his teeth and the suck of his jaws.
‘How was the PM then?’ she queried, knowing Roscoe and Ansell had attended the grisly event earlier that afternoon.
She heard the bubble from his gum pop as it burst, followed by more chewing. ‘Didn’t tell us a lot,’ he replied. ‘Melanie Schofield was manually strangled, as we thought – windpipe crushed – and Doc thinks the straw doll was inserted after death. Interesting thing is there were no signs of sexual interference. In fact, the girl was actually still intact.’
‘You mean she was a virgin?’
‘Yep.’ He emitted a hard laugh. ‘Must be unique for this day and age.’
‘So why strip her and leave her in that degrading state?’ Thinking of Ansell’s put-down, she added bitterly, ‘Unless it was, exactly as I have suggested, a copycat crime?’
He grunted, declining to comment on her theory one way or the other. ‘And why stiff her in the first place? What does the perp get out of it? Knocks my theory about sex being the motive right on the head.’
‘Not necessarily. Our man could be a voyeur or someone who gets an erection from the act of killing. He may even be suffering from some form of erectile dysfunction.’
Roscoe emitted a hard chuckle. ‘About time you changed the type of books you read, Mrs Lewis – or maybe the company you keep.’
He glanced briefly at the SOCO in her ghostly white overalls going through the back of the Mercedes car under the glare of a pair of spotlights. ‘So who was this one then?’
Kate followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Tamsyn Moorcroft. Self-confessed witch, according to Will Fallow,’ she said. ‘Th
ese things are apparently not corn dollies but evil talismans or charms associated with witchcraft and black magic—’
‘Bad luck tokens?’
‘Something like that, yes, I think that is what he was saying – just like the straw figures hanging up in the living room.’
She hesitated, thinking for a minute. ‘Thing is, how did the killer know about her? She wouldn’t have been someone who advertised in the local newspaper or parish magazine. And what about these straw dollies? He must have researched his subject pretty well to find out about Strawfoot and Martha Tinney.’
‘Your man, Will Fallow, would have been ideally situated for that.’
She gave a pointless shake of her head, thinking of the affable little writer with a faint smile. ‘He would be the last person I would see as a cold-blooded psycho.’
‘But he could have been approached by someone else. Maybe our man did what you did and got hold of his name after dropping in at the local library? Could be where he got his ideas from?’
She nodded slowly. ‘You might be right there. I’ll check it all out in the morning.’
‘You want to run any of this past the boss?’
She snorted. ‘No point in running anything past him. He just thinks I’m a neurotic dipstick.’
Roscoe was saved from commenting one way or the other by a sharp voice at his elbow. ‘Guv’nor?’
At close quarters, the SOCO who had been checking the car looked even more alien than before, tendrils of mist curling around her like a form of phantasmal ectoplasm and just for a second the carrier bag held up in one hand took on the form of a grinning skull.
‘Shopping,’ she explained, ‘from Tesco.’
‘So?’ Roscoe queried, turning to face her.
‘Got a receipt in the bag,’ the woman went on, ‘with last Friday’s date on it – timed at exactly 7.00 p.m. – 1900 hours.’
‘Which suggests she was murdered about five days ago,’ Kate summarized, ‘probably at some time during the night.’
‘Yeah,’ Roscoe retorted gloomily, ‘so all we have to do now is find out who by!’
