The thought of Toby made me smile, something I suddenly realised I hardly ever did any more. At school Miss Dubois had called me Sunshine because of my cheery demeanour and the name had caught on. I would probably be Stormcloud now. Perhaps I should try to be nicer to the men and maybe I would if they would stop behaving like naughty children in kindergarten. I closed my eyes.
Jimmy was beginning to get very tired of sitting with his aunt on the bank and not having anything to do. Once or twice he peeped into the book I was reading.
‘What’s the point of a book,’ Jimmy with Adam’s face yawned, ‘with no action or dialogue?’
‘It’s the revised regulations.’ I turned the page.
‘Sounds thrilling.’ He unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was bronzed from the intense Maltese sun.
Watching the sea stretch and slide sleepily back over the shingle, it was difficult to keep my eyes open. I knew I must at all costs but I couldn’t remember why. I only knew the blade was coming towards me and I was trying to shout No! but Miss Dubois was clanging the handbell that signalled the end of break and I was just wondering why she was there when I realised it was the phone ringing.
I tumbled off my bed – helped by the whole thing tipping sideways as I rolled over – scrambled to my feet and hurried to the phone. If this was Mr Leatherbarrow insisting that the tree stump in the field behind him was a Nazi paratrooper, I abandoned any thought of being anything other than nasty.
‘Sackwater Central Police Station.’
‘Mam come quickleh.’ I recognised those northern tones immediately as one of two possibilities.
‘Snipe?’
‘Grinder-Snipe, mam,’ the voice corrected. The twins were adamant that they did not want to lose half of their double-barrels. The average life being no more than three score years and ten, we were all determined that they would.
‘Which one?’
‘Constable Lysander Grinder-Snipe, mam.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘It ’as not ’appened.’ His voice was high with excitement. ‘It is ’appening.’
I glanced at the station clock. It was ten to three. ‘What is?’
‘May’em, mam, murder and may’em in the ’Ouse of ’Orrors.’
60
THE HOUSE OF HORRORS
The House of Horrors stood on Jacob’s Point, the highest part of Sackwater, eighty yards from the cliffs. It had been over a hundred yards until the storm of 1929 finished the work of years of erosion, tearing an undermined chunk of Suffolk off into the North Sea. A winding footpath had been carved up from Cliff Road and given the suitably spooky name of Spectre Lane.
According to the regulations I should have told Sandy I couldn’t go out after dark, but there wasn’t a rulebook written that would have kept me inside that night.
The path was too steep and gravelled for me to pedal up and it was illegal to leave a bike unattended in case Heinrich Himmler parachuted in without enough money for his bus fare, so I dismounted and pushed my bike with some difficulty by the stem of the handlebars.
An eight-year-old Betty Church had chickened out of going in. She had sat on the grass trying to eat a toffee apple with her little fingers in her ears to block out the shrieks of the girls while Pooky went inside with her young man – a hay-boy from Great Medding – with Pooky’s dishevelled, breathless state on exiting twenty minutes later confirming my fears that it was a place where terrible things happened to anyone foolhardy enough to enter. By the time I wasn’t so scared, I was too old not to have felt silly, so I had never been inside.
The House of Horrors had been built by Erasmus Calendar, an Edwardian entrepreneur who had intended to build a whole village of gruesome attractions from the Red Barn to Bluebeard’s Castle; but, after finding his wife having an all-too-corporeal relationship with one of his hired ghosts, he slew them both with a handy executioner’s axe, then hanged himself on the gallows conveniently constructed in the same room. This turned out to be an exceedingly shrewd move, for business – sluggish up to that point – boomed. There is nothing like a real murder to pull in the crowds, so his grieving son did not try too hard to discourage rumours that the house was genuinely haunted now, even putting about a story that a young man who had sneaked in to spend the night there for a bet was found, white-haired and raving mad, the next morning, only to rush off and plunge over the cliff, joining the other ghosts, who were doubtless delighted to have someone who could make up a four at bridge.
In time, though, interest palled. The Chamber of Horrors in good old Anglethorpe had the mummified hands of Justin ‘Jack’ Waldorf the Nursery Rhyme Killer and the pail of water in which he drowned Jill Vinegar.
Arriving at the top, breathing harder than Pooky had, with the house silhouetted in a full moon, I could see why the House of Horrors had kept its reputation. It stuck, towering, up into the night, all dark turrets, blocked-out arched windows, tall chimneys tilting at odd angles and – incongruously, I thought – crenellations with gargoyles made of ghouls’ faces. If there ever had been such a thing as the Suffolk Vampire this might have been where he had his lair.
The House of Horrors was built of wood painted to look like brick, though the corrosive salt air had rather spoiled the effect because nailed planks were clearly visible in places and the sign over the door now read:
USE OF HORROR
At the top the path widened to encircle the house. A gibbet stood to the left, the disintegrating corpse in its cage disintegrating even more than it was supposed to. A pirate swung from a beam to the right, rather forlorn since children had stolen his hook. I could probably have done with that myself. A woman in a long dress was about to be beheaded by a masked and muscular man in a sleeveless jerkin and looking commendably calm about it. A man with a ruff had just been given the treatment, his concrete head looking distinctly indignant at being held aloft by his nemesis. He was minus a nose and chin, as if the executioner had taken a few wild practice swings before finding the neck.
Since I was last there two more figures had been added, swaying wildly in the gusting east wind, but these ones were waving their arms and rushing towards me.
‘Ohhh, mam, thank goodness,’ Sandy gasped like he had been struggling up a steep incline with a Raleigh Ladies’ Popular No. 27.
‘Ohhh, mam, thank ’eavens.’ Algy could not have spluttered more if he had just been rescued from the foaming ocean crashing a hundred feet below, smashing the rocks into more shingle to drag up and down the beaches.
‘Right,’ I puffed, because I had been doing all that Raleigh Ladies’ Popular stuff. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘Ohhh mam, it were,’ they said in unison before daringly going their separate ways with Sandy’s ’orrible and Algy’s terrible.
‘What was?’ The wind was being naughtier than Pooky’s hay-boy, trying to lift my skirt and peek underneath. I slapped it away and held the front down.
‘Screamin’.’ Sandy mimed it with his mouth stretched wider than the man with a Slazenger in his tonsils had managed.
‘And devilish lafter.’ Algy threw his arms down and out like a pole-carrying tightrope walker almost slipping into the Niagara Falls. ‘Like this.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Hahahahahahahaha.’ He sounded more like an asthmatic pug than the Lord of the Flies.
‘No, Algernon.’ Sandy put a delicate hand on his brother’s sleeve. ‘It were more like…’ Big breath. ‘Hahahahahahahaha,’ exactly like his twin.
‘Lysander, you are right, as always.’ Algy bowed his head stiffly.
‘How long did these screams and laughs go on for?’ I propped my bike against Anne Boleyn’s or Mary Queen of Scots’ or Lady Jane Grey’s block.
‘Oh for ever,’ the twins chorused.
‘Don’t be silly.’ I tucked my skirt in and held it between my knees. ‘Even Dr Goebbels’s speeches have a beginning and an end.’ I stretched my pinned sleeve down off my stump and tried to pretend my arm didn’t feel as sore as it kept telling me
it did.
‘We ’eard it when we was on the cliff path.’ Sandy waved elegantly towards the track.
‘We did.’ Algy put his hands on his hips.
‘What were you doing up here anyway?’ My stump felt damp but I didn’t want to look in front of the men.
‘Oh, we often come this way,’ Sandy told me.
‘The sea air is so invigorating.’ Algy inhaled appreciatively.
‘And the stars,’ Sandy enthused.
‘Oh the stars, the stars, the luvleh stars,’ Algy rhapsodised.
‘But it’s not part of your beat.’ I strode to the iron-studded massive front door with a normal-sized door inset into the left-hand leaf. Both were locked.
‘Rules and Regulations state that an officer may modify ’is route at ’is discretion should circumstances require ’im to do so,’ Sandy quoted, some of his words lost in a sudden gust of wind, and I was about to follow that up when we were interrupted by a scream.
I jumped. ‘What the…’
It was a woman, I was almost sure of that, and she sounded absolutely terrified.
Police officers do not, unless one is rescuing the other from drowning, clutch each other. They just don’t. Sandy and Algy did. They embraced like long-separated lovers. ‘That’s it,’ they screeched but even they could not compete with the long, piercing shriek. It came from inside the house and filled the air, flying out over the cliffs and over the waves and bouncing around the bay.
‘Pull yourselves together,’ I scolded.
‘Ohhh but we can’t,’ Sandy trembled and, before his twin could corroborate that, there came the laugh. It was even louder than the scream, wild and demonic, pausing only to let the scream begin again.
‘Let go of each other this instant,’ I commanded and the noises stopped.
Algy shook. ‘Ohhh but—’
‘Now!’ I shouted and they were just disentangling themselves when there was another gust of wind and the screaming started again.
‘Ohhhh there’s a maniac in there,’ Sandy quivered.
‘Cue the laugh.’ I clicked my fingers and it started again.
‘Oh ’eck.’ Algy looked about for an escape route, which didn’t take much planning – a run in any direction would have done it, though over the cliff might have been a bit risky.
‘Pause laugh for scream,’ I shouted over the racket and to their astonishment it was done. ‘Listen,’ I instructed. ‘It only happens when there’s a gust of wind from the north. It must be setting something off.’
‘A recording,’ Sandy deduced.
‘It does sound the same every time,’ Algy realised.
‘And if you listen next time, you’ll hear a click in the second scream where it’s scratched.’
Sandy giggled. ‘Oh silly uz.’ He punched his brother playfully on the arm.
‘Ow,’ said Algy, rubbing it. ‘You know that’s my sore arm since I ’ad that injection.’
‘But that were fourteen year ago.’ Sandy joined in the rubbing. ‘Oh mam, what a couple of twits you must think we are.’
‘If I had any doubts about your fitness to wear those uniforms, you have both confirmed them tonight,’ I said severely.
‘Oh thank you so much, mam,’ Sandy burst out.
‘No. I—’
‘For a moment I thought you was going to give us the sack.’ Algy sagged in relief.
‘I need to see you both in my office in the morning,’ I told them with a heavy heart. They were nice young men, I was sure, but there was a bit more to the work of a copper than being a sweetheart.
‘Oh that’s luvleh.’ Sandy almost did a Dodo skip.
‘Yes, thank you, mam.’ Algy actually did one. ‘We’ve never been invited into an inspector’s office except—’
‘—to be told off,’ Sandy completed the sentence. ‘Oh well, I suppose we should get back on our proper beat.’
‘Except,’ I told them, ‘that, every time the noises start, a light shows from upstairs.’
‘Surely not?’ Sandy said in surprise. ‘We would ’ave noticed.’
Algy nodded vigorously. ‘We are trained to notice things – like ’ow you, mam, hold yer fork in yer right ’and.’
The wind was blowing across from Anglethorpe again. Scream, laugh, scream complete with click – and all the time a flicker of light from the seaward side.
‘We’ll have the coastguard and the ARP accusing us of signalling to enemy submarines.’
‘Oh but that would be so unfair,’ Sandy protested.
‘A travesty of justice,’ Algy joined in.
‘We are completely innocent,’ Sandy said, with his brother repeating every word as he spoke, in a weird echo effect.
‘Is there any other way into the house?’ I asked and they looked at me blankly. ‘Is the back door locked?’
‘Oh we ’aven’t been all round,’ Sandy told me.
‘You two go round clockwise. I’ll go the opposite way—’
‘Anticlockwise, mam,’ Algy told me helpfully.
‘And we will meet round the back,’ I continued. ‘Look for any other doors or windows it might be possible to open.’ I set off, glancing back when I reached the corner. ‘Go on then.’
The Grinder-Snipes looked at each other dubiously.
‘It’s ever so spookeh,’ they synchronised.
‘Constable Chivers has got more guts than the two of you put together,’ I goaded and they gaped like beached codfish.
‘Oh that’s wounding,’ Sandy pouted.
‘You’ve ’urt uz feelings,’ Algy sulked.
‘If you do not buckle down and start doing your duty right now—’ but I didn’t need to finish my threat – which was just as well since I hadn’t decided what it was – because they scampered off in a very unpolicemanlike way but at least in the right direction.
I felt the wind change – not through some great meteorological skill but by the fact that while it had been cheekily tugging at the side of my skirt, now it made a sudden grab for it as I rounded the corner. I thought about shouting a warning but they were big boys and it was about time somebody treated them that way. The scream, expected though it was, still startled me. It was louder now and shriller and I didn’t remember anything like that from when I was waiting for Pooky all that time ago.
A flickering beam of light was coming through the side of the building.
The house was square and huge, maybe forty feet along each side. I clicked on my torch briefly and spotted Maria Marten lying on her back ten feet away, trying to fend off the knife of her lover William Corder. This must have been intended to go in the replica of the Red Barn where the real murder took place. Twenty thousand people watched Corder being hanged in Bury St Edmunds and thousands queued to view his partially dissected body. I wondered who the real brutes were in this sordid case. At least it took my mind off wondering why I was stumbling round a failed fairground attraction listening to silly sound effects in the middle of the night.
The light was just above me now and I saw that it came from a gap between the boards. One of them had swung sideways on a rusty nail. If I could push that loose plank back in, maybe I could block the light out and get the owner – whoever that was – to sort it out in the morning. I grasped the board and twisted it. The nail snapped and a section of wall about two feet wide and three high came away in my hand. I dropped it to the ground. The screams started up again and, of course, the light came flooding out now. I stood with my back to it to plug the gap.
‘Constables,’ I yelled above a Vincent Price cackle.
‘Was that Old Stumpy calling, Lysander?’
‘I do believe it was, Algernon.’
The laugh stopped and I heard the click louder this time.
‘Yes mam?’ the Grinder-Snipe chorus chorused.
‘Come here at once.’
‘Yes mam.’
I heard crunching on the gravel and two figures appeared, stopped and grabbed each other’s arms.
‘Oh
Lysander, ’e’s murdering her.’
‘No, it’s—’ I tried to explain about Maria Marten but Sandy was yelling, ‘Not if I have anything tuh do with it, Algernon,’ and hurtling at William Corder, going low into a rugby tackle that would have sent Mr Corder flying if he hadn’t been made of concrete.
There was a sickening thud. ‘Ohhhh,’ Sandy wailed. ‘I’ve gone and fractured me pelvis.’ He rubbed his shoulder.
‘Do you need a cuddle, Lysander?’
‘I need an ambulance, Algernon.’
‘Oh for Pete’s sake just come here,’ I snapped. ‘You pair of buffoons.’
It was a stupid thing to have done but I could not help but feel some pride and gratitude that Sandy hadn’t hesitated to tackle what he believed to be an armed man in order to save my life. Sandy’s moment of heroism was over though and he was massaging himself and mewling like a kitten as they came up to me.
‘Salute me with your left arm,’ I commanded and they both obeyed.
‘Is that a permanent instruction, mam?’ Sandy asked.
‘No, it was to check that your collarbone wasn’t broken and it isn’t.’
‘But why are you backed against the wall, mam?’ Algy eyed me uncertainly.
‘It’s because she’s frightened,’ Sandy explained.
‘No I—’
‘’Oo wouldn’t be?’
‘Our old dad wouldn’t.’
‘’E might be a bit,’ Algy theorised, ‘if—’
‘It’s because this board has snapped off and I’m blocking the light.’ I butted it. ‘While it’s still quiet in there, I’m going inside to see if I can turn the electricity off. You, Sandy, will take my place in case it comes on again.’
‘But won’t that be dangerous, mam?’ Algy looked anxiously at his brother. ‘’E could get attacked from be’ind.’
‘No he couldn’t,’ I insisted. ‘Because you are coming in with me, Constable Algernon Grinder-Snipe.’ I couldn’t see if Algy blanched but I think it was a fairly safe bet that he did. ‘I will need to hold my torch in there. How many hands do you think that leaves me to fiddle with any switches or fuses?’
‘Ooh I know the answer to that one.’ Sandy raised his arm to attract the teacher’s attention.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire Page 23
