by Mike Ripley
‘Please, let me reassure you, Vicar,’ Campion soothed, ‘I have no interest in the whereabouts of Haydon Bagley.’
‘Good, because no one knows where he is and his poor mother and father have been pestered enough.’
‘I was merely commenting,’ Campion said quickly whilst he still retained the older man’s attention, ‘that among the many colourful characters in Denby Ash, I hear you boast a witch.’
‘Ivy Neal?’ The vicar seemed only mildly surprised. ‘Oh, some say she’s a witch and has the second sight: tells fortunes, predicts the future, that sort of thing. She’s not missing, though. She hardly goes anywhere.’
Mr Campion feared the vicar had drifted again but then he rallied.
‘She lives just over there.’ He pointed with a long, bony finger. ‘Beyond the chip shop, turn left on to Pinfold Lane and cut across the Common. She has a caravan there and I’m told she doesn’t mind company.’
‘Oh, good,’ Campion smiled inanely, ‘and if she really does have the second sight, she’ll be expecting me. She might even have the kettle on.’
FIFTEEN
The Feast Witch
Mr Campion, by no stretch of the imagination a serious student of the occult, had nevertheless been intrigued by Rupert’s early report of the presence of both a poltergeist and a witch in Denby Ash. Deciding, rather arbitrarily in the opinion of his wife, that he had nothing better to do, he had spent a morning in the London Library immersing himself in folklore, myth and dubious social history, enthusiastically collecting trivia whenever it referred to the county of Yorkshire.
He became familiar with the legend of the Simmerdale Witch from Wensleydale and the more famous ‘Mother Shipton’ of Knaresborough, universally and probably unfairly described as ‘fantastically ugly’. Then there were the real life, or rather real death, cases of ‘Old Wife Green’, said to have the distinction of being the last witch to be burned in England – in Pocklington in 1630 – and Mary Bateman from Thirsk, who combined the careers of prophetess and poisoner until she was hanged as a murderess in 1809 and strips of her skin were sold as souvenirs. Before her arrest and trial – events which, oddly for a prophetess, she did not see coming – Mary Bateman’s credentials as a confidence trickster had been established by the ‘Prophet Hen of Leeds’ which she claimed laid eggs engraved with religious messages. Mr Campion could not, however, discover whether a Leeds cockerel was complicit in the hoaxing. Denby Ash had not featured in his researches; indeed, it was the North rather than the West Riding which seemed to have taken to the dark arts. Perhaps Ivy Neal was a white witch, no more daunting than an eccentric herbalist and tolerated, even liked, by a local population which clearly took its religion seriously.
Mr Campion’s immediate concern was crossing the road in safety, and he took more care doing so than he would have done in Piccadilly Circus, fearing a speeding coal truck far more than a horn-honking London cabby. With a large exhaling of breath he reached the safety of the opposite pavement outside Elliff’s chip shop where a printed cardboard sign complete with a clock with plastic moveable hands informed him that the establishment would be open for Wet Fish Sales at 1 p.m. and then Frying Tonight from 5 p.m.
He turned down Pinfold Lane where the lorries serving the Shuttle Eye and Caphouse pits seemed to move with greater velocity than they did coming down Oaker Hill. It was with some relief that he stepped off the pavement and on to the greasy grass of the Common, although there was no evidence that the residents of Denby Ash had exercised their ancient rights to graze livestock there recently. But perhaps he was mistaken in that for he sensed, and then saw, that he was being stalked – he rather hoped not hunted – by something on four legs moving quietly through the damp bracken and dead brambles.
Ignoring the fact that the bottoms of his trousers were soaking up water as effectively as a syphon, he pressed on in the general direction of Denby Wood where he estimated, if he had judged the topography correctly, he would find the Oaker Beck. He kept an amused eye on the rustling in the underbrush to his right whilst carefully observing the only other sign of habitation on the Common – a much-weathered blue caravan. As he altered direction to move nearer, his bestial shadow broke cover and shot across his line of march.
‘Hecate! Stop pestering the gentleman!’
Both Mr Campion and the large, long-haired tabby cat froze in their tracks and looked towards the shrill commanding voice coming from the open door of the caravan. Then they looked at each other and Campion bent over and reached out a gloved hand, intending no more than a friendly stroke. The gesture may have been misinterpreted but it was emphatically rejected by the cat who responded with a swipe of paw and claw, causing Campion to rapidly reclaim his hand.
‘Did she catch yer?’ the caravan voice enquired as Mr Campion peeled off a brown leather glove to discover four red needle pricks in the heel of his hand. By the time he had replaced the glove the cat had joined the voice and was not so much nestling as hanging over the edge of a hammock formed by the folded arms of a formidable woman of indeterminate age.
‘A glancing blow,’ Campion said cheerfully, starting towards her. ‘Not even a proper flesh wound. She’s a fine animal and aptly named for a witch’s familiar.’
The woman tilted her sharp face to one side and scrutinized her visitor. ‘Hecate – aye, goddess of magic. Not that many round here would cotton to that. You must be from t’school; posh school up the ’ill, not the infants.’
Mr Campion raised his hat politely. ‘Only indirectly, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘My son is teaching there temporarily but I am only visiting, no more than a tourist.’
‘We don’t get many of them, so I suppose we should be grateful. Got a question for the Feast Witch, have you?’
‘Oh, nothing so formal,’ said Campion lightly. ‘The fact is I’m just being nosey.’
‘Now “nosey” is summat we’ve got plenty of round here, so you’d best come in and satisfy your curiosity. You don’t have to cross me palm with silver or owt like that, just make sure to clean your boots first.’
It was an offer Mr Campion could not refuse, despite the fact that this was no quaintly painted, hoop-roofed horse-drawn gypsy caravan but a rusting 1957 Eccles Aristocrat, its tow bar propped up on a pile of house bricks and its tyres so fat that its wheel rims rested in the muddy ground. A fine patina of green mould encrusted the door and window frames and the whole structure creaked and swayed as Campion followed the woman inside.
He took off his hat and stooped as he found himself in the van’s galley, an area festooned with hanging bunches of dried herbs and flowers and, on every flat surface, precariously stacked jam jars, many with white labels in spidery ink secured by strips of sticky tape.
‘You have quite the apothecary’s shop here,’ said Campion, surveying the display. ‘Liquorice I recognize and is it that pickled rhubarb? And coltsfoot … I ought to know what that’s for but I’m getting very old. Do you have anything for memory loss?’
The woman had sat down on the bench seat at the window end of the caravan, facing her visitor. Hecate the cat had settled on her knee and also kept her eyes firmly on Mr Campion.
‘You might know coltsfoot as coughwort and as you’d guess, it’s good for coughs. The liquorice and the rhubarb – well, I’m sure you know what they’re for.’
Campion held up a jar containing a swirling black sludge of vegetation and examined the label.
‘Pis-en-lit,’ he read. ‘I see you prefer the French terminology. It does sound more exotic than dandelion, I admit.’
‘Very good for them with high blood pressure,’ said his hostess, ‘especially men, and they wouldn’t pay for summat they give to their rabbits.’
‘I think you are absolutely spot-on there,’ smiled Campion, ‘but I am being rude. My name is Albert Campion and you must be Mrs Neal.’
‘I was never a “Mrs” anybody. My name’s Ivy Neal, plain and simple, though there’s plenty call me the Feast Witch.’
Campion had not been offered a seat, not that there was one to offer, and so he leaned his long, slim frame gently against a cupboard unit which rattled with the sound of shifting crockery.
‘I am unfamiliar with that expression,’ he said, then checked himself. ‘Goodness, that sounds pompous. I didn’t mean it to.’
Ivy Neal’s sharp face remained sharp. The cat on her knee yawned, showing white teeth and the inside of a salmon-coloured mouth.
‘They call me the Feast Witch because I came here with the Denby Feast; years ago, that was, before I got too old for touring and decided to settle down. Thought I’d come back here.’
‘Denby Feast …’ Campion said quietly, almost to himself. ‘I haven’t heard that expression for years. Are the old touring fairs still going? I thought everyone was watching the goggle-box these days.’
‘Plenty are,’ said Ivy Neal with a sniff of disapproval, ‘but the Feast still comes to the Common every year and pitches the vans and the rides right here outside my front door. It’s not the same, mind you. When me mother travelled with the Feast they had a dancing bear on a chain; nowadays it’s all fast roundabouts with loud pop music and flashing lights.’
‘I used to know a chap,’ said Campion rather dreamily, ‘who gave up a steady office job in London and took to the road, following the northern Feasts round places such as Hunslet, Hull, Whitby and the Nottingham Goose Fair. Fancied himself a grafter as he called it, doing card tricks and a bit of fortune telling, feeding off the gullible.’
‘Fortune telling and horoscopes – that was my first racket. They used to call me Madame Francesca afore I switched to love potions and remedies. You sound like you didn’t approve of your grafter friend.’
‘Oh, he was harmless enough,’ Campion replied, ‘but this was in the Thirties, during the Depression. He had a regular income and a family to fall back on, yet he was taking sixpences and shillings from people who could ill afford it.’
‘If he brought a bit of pleasure into folks’ lives, where’s the harm? I could do your horoscope for you, if you like.’
The old woman picked up the tabby cat with both her bony hands around its chest and held the beast up until its face was at her ear.
‘What’s that, Hecate? You reckon he’s a Taurus? Looks more of a Libran to me.’
‘Hecate got it in one,’ said Campion, ‘but I like the double act with your familiar, which immediately shortens the odds on you guessing the right star sign and impressing the customers. However, I’m more interested in the past than the future.’
If Ivy Neal was disappointed at the loss of new business, her sharp face did not show it. Hecate the cat, settling herself back on her lap, however, glared at Mr Campion, opened her mouth wide and issued a long, mewling howl.
‘Hecate says you won’t learn much from the past – you should look to the future,’ said the woman.
‘Forgive me,’ said Campion, ‘but I long ago stopped believing anything I was told by a cat. Have you observed that cats only talk to people? When they meet each other they are quite silent – no conversation at all. Perhaps they just like giving orders to humans. I mean, they would know that there’s little point trying to tell a cat what to do. In any case, I am of such a venerable age now that the future cannot possibly hold any surprises, so please indulge an old man’s curiosity in the recent past – an old man who is not averse to crossing a palm, or a paw, with silver if that proves necessary.’
‘I can’t tell if you’re a clever man or a daft apeth, Mr Campion, if that’s your name,’ said Ivy Neal, and Hecate squawked again as if in echo.
‘It’s certainly the name that I go by,’ said her guest, ‘and I suspect I lean more towards the daft apeth than the clever, though I am not terribly sure what an apeth is. Something simian, perhaps?’
‘Oh, stop your blathering!’ she snapped. ‘Say what you want or take yourself elsewhere.’
Hecate opened her mouth wide again but made no comment this time.
‘I was interested – purely out of nosiness, you understand – in why those two boys from the posh school came to see you the other night.’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘They are both star pupils of my son and his wife at Ash Grange School and both got rather badly beaten up after you scared them off.’
‘That wasn’t owt to do with me. There’s always hooligans hanging around looking for trouble.’
As the woman snarled at him, so too did the cat, and Mr Campion suspected that the Feast Witch was using a long fingernail to prompt Hecate into responding on cue.
‘I’m not saying it was, but you did scare them off, didn’t you? I’ve talked to the father of one of the boys and by all accounts you disappeared in front of their very eyes. That’s quite a trick in a van this size. When you were touring on the feast circuit did you count magician’s assistant among your achievements, as well as fortune telling and potion peddling?’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about, I really don’t.’ The woman’s hands cradled the head of the cat on her lap, making sure that Hecate’s eyes were pointed at Campion. ‘As for them lads – well, they wanted me to do an exorcism, if you can credit it, on Ada Braithwaite’s house.’
‘Ah, yes, the home of the famous Denby Ash poltergeist,’ said Campion. ‘I take it you couldn’t offer any remedy?’
‘Told them they should ask the vicar or one of the lay preachers – Lord knows we’ve got plenty of them on hand – and then sent them on their way.’
‘By disappearing before their very eyes! I do hope you’ve nothing similar planned for me; I’m not sure my old ticker could stand it!’ Campion’s face became a picture of innocence. ‘But of course, you really need it to be dark to do the trick properly.’
‘Don’t know what you mean,’ said Ivy Neal sulkily, turning her head away and staring out of the caravan’s bow window.
Hecate let out a loud, moaning mewl.
Mr Campion was dismissed.
From the window of the preparation room of Willy Elliff’s, where he had been cranking the handle on an industrial potato peeler, Adrian Elliff watched the thin man climb down from Ivy Neal’s caravan just as he had earlier watched him cross the Common and be invited in by the old witch.
He was too smartly dressed to be a policeman – in any case, Adrian knew most of them, just as they knew him, by sight. He was not a rent collector, as Ivy Neal didn’t pay rent to anyone and unlikely to be from the council as they knew better than to tangle with her. It was unlikely to be a doctor, as Ivy did her own doctoring, so perhaps he was a solicitor – but then he was not carrying a briefcase and in Adrian’s experience (which was considerable for one of his age), solicitors always had paperwork – usually paperwork which prevented you from doing things or which demanded the payment of a substantial fine.
As he got nearer, Adrian could see that the man was older than his bearing and languid movement suggested, though to Adrian, anyone over thirty was ‘old’. In fact, he must be a pensioner, but he was unlike the retired miners he knew who shuffled about the allotments or sat in the club making a half-pint of top mild last all evening. Those old men seemed tired, somehow finished. This one still had life and energy, a bounce in his step, probably due to never having done a hard day’s work in his life. Probably a rich old sod judging by the car he’d been driving yesterday, and definitely not from round here.
The boss man had told him to watch out for strangers and for anyone visiting that crazy witch, who was probably a gypsy if truth were known. Here was a stranger and he’d been to see Ivy Neal.
The boss man would be very interested indeed.
When her visitor had left, Ivy Neal sat immobile for almost an hour. Only when Hecate the cat was finally bored with being stroked and jumped off her lap, demanding loudly to be released on to the Common, did the woman stir herself.
As she waited for her battered kettle to boil to make a pot of tea – she might sell ‘herbal infusions’ to her customers but a
brace of Tetley’s tea bags was always her preference – she thought long and hard about what she should do.
The tall, thin-as-a-streak-of-water old man, a proper toffee-nose if she ever saw one, was nowhere near as daft as he liked to let on and unlike anyone she had come across in her colourful lifetime. Her skills at fortune telling and horoscopes had been earned over the years in her dealings with paying, and usually complicit, customers. She did not fool herself that she really had any psychic powers or sixth sense. Spotting him as a Taurus had been no more than a good guess and he had known that.
Yet there was something not right about the old gentleman’s presence in Denby Ash. He simply did not fit, but then in many ways, neither did Ivy Neal.
As the kettle whistled, she made up her mind. She would report to the preacher; he would know what to do.
But she would have to wait until dark.
Still determined to walk off his breakfast, Mr Campion strode fitfully up Oaker Hill taking in the smell of coal fires with every breath of cold, damp air. It was a scent which reminded him of a London which had disappeared.
Halfway up the hill, near the working men’s club, he stepped aside to allow a young woman, a headscarf protecting a huge beehive hairdo, pushing a pram the size of a pocket battleship the full use of the pavement and as she nodded a polite thank you, he took the opportunity to ask if by any chance she knew where Mrs Braithwaite lived.
‘Looking for the ’aunted ’ouse then? It’s number eleven but Ada won’t be there – she’ll be up at the big school now doing the dinners. Shocking what happened to her Roderick, wasn’t it? Shocking. You talk nice, don’t you? Got to go. See you later, alligator.’
Mr Campion watched the woman continue downhill, holding the heavy pram back rather than pushing it, and shook his head in amused wonderment. Both DCI Ramsden and Brigham Armitage had said that the people of Denby Ash might talk to him but not tell him anything.
Campion rather felt that what they didn’t say might tell him quite a lot.
