Crybbe (AKA Curfew)

by Unknown

  'That's the one, yes. Is she all right?'

  'I'm sorry . . . What do you mean, "all right"?'

  Alex, patting the dog, observed how inhibited Murray Beech became when Fay was around. Partly, he thought, because of what she did for a living and partly, no doubt, because he couldn't help fancying the arse off her. Open to that kind of thing now, too, since his engagement had gone down the toilet

  'This Mrs Byford,' Fay said, 'was throwing the most amazing wobbly. He' - looking at the dog - 'was howling in his cell at the nick, and Mrs Byford was reacting as if it was the four-minute warning or something. Really going for Wynford, the copper. "Get it stopped! I'm not having it! I don't like it!" Way over the top."

  'Perhaps she simply feels she has a right to peace and quiet,' Murray said tightly.

  'Living next to the cop-shop? Drunks getting hauled in on a Saturday night? What the hell does she know about peace and quiet?'

  Murray shrugged. 'I'm sorry, I have to go. I'll talk to you again, Alex.'

  'Yes, call in any time, old chap.'

  When the vicar had gone. Fay said, 'Creep.'

  'No, just a duck out of water,' Alex said, stroking the rigid Rasputin. 'He'd be far more at home in Birmingham, preaching peaceful coexistence with Islam. Who's your extraordinary

  friend?'

  'Um, yes. I'm sorry to spring him on you, but it all happened very quickly, what with this loopy woman - definitely something wrong with her.' Fay knelt down and detached the clothes-line from the dog's collar. 'He's called Arnold. He was Henry Kettle's dog. He seems to have been in the car when it crashed. Must have got out through a window afterwards. They found him this morning, sitting by the wreckage like the Greyfriars Bobby. Breaks your heart, doesn't it?'

  Arnold rested his chin for just a moment on Alex's knee. There was a savage hiss from Rasputin. 'Poor old chap,' Alex said. He thought the dog had strangely kind eyes. 'But he can't stay here.'

  Arnold glanced at Rasputin with disinterest then padded away. Fay said, 'I was afraid, to be honest, of what Wynford might have done to shut him up.'

  'Oh, surely not.'

  'I don't know, the police round here are . . . different. Wynford had him in this concrete coal shed kind of place. Hard door, no windows, no basket or anything. A metal bucket to

  drink out of. Barbaric. So I thought, that's it, he's not staying here. Then Wynford and I had this terrific battle.'

  'Oh dear,' Alex said. 'Poor chap.'

  ' "Oh, we has to let the RSPCA deal with it. We has to abide by the Procedures." "Bollocks,'' I said. "Send the RSPCA round to see me." '

  'No contest,' Alex said.

  'Listen, that guy is seriously weird. His features are too small for his head and they never alter. So I just opened the shed door and walked off, and the dog followed me. Wynford's left standing there, face getting redder and redder, like a pumpkin with a light inside on Hallowe'en.'

  Arnold was pottering around the room, sniffing uncertainly, huge ears pricked.

  'It's remarkable really, he doesn't seem to have been injured at all, though I don't suppose bruises would show up on a dog. Psychologically, though . . .'

  'Yes, it's a damn shame. But Fay . . .'

  '. . . psychologically, he could be in pieces.'

  'But he can't stay here, Fay.' Alex sat up, trying to look authoritative. 'Grace would have a fit. She wasn't at all fond dogs. And neither's old Rasputin.'

  'Dad' - Fay was wearing that expression - 'Grace is bloody dead. Anyway . . .' She squatted down beside Arnold, and cradled his black and white snout in her hands. Long black whiskers came out between her fingers. 'If he goes, I go too.'

  Canon Alex Peters took a long swig of cold Heineken.

  'Splendid,' he said.

  CHAPTER VI

  People kept looking at her.

  This was not usual. Normally, on these streets, even if you were greeted - 'Ow're you' - you were not looked at. You were observed, your presence was noted, but you were not directly examined.

  Maybe, she thought, it was the dog. Maybe they recognize the late Henry Kettle's dog. Or maybe they'd never before see a dog on the end of a thin, red, plastic-covered clothes-line that the person on the other end was now wishing she hadn't adapted because, every time the dog tugged at the makeshift lead, her right hand received what could turn out to be third-degree burns.

  'Arnold, for Christ's sake . . .'

  With Henry Kettle he'd appeared ultra-docile, really laid back. Now he was like some loony puppy, pulling in all directions, wanting to go nowhere, needing to go anywhere. And fast.

  You had to make allowances. He was disoriented. He'd had a bereavement. In fact, the worst thing that could happen to a one-man dog had happened to Arnold. So allowances definitely were called for. And one of the people who was going to have to make them was Canon Alex Peters. In Fay's experience all this cat-and-dog incompatibility business was grossly exaggerated. Even Rasputin would, in time, come around.

  But another animal was another root in Crybbe. And you don't want that, Fay, you don't want any roots in Crybbe.

  Bill Davies, the butcher, walked past with fresh blood on his apron, and he stared at them.

  Fay was fed up with this. She stared back. Bill Davies looked away.

  Maybe they were all afflicted with this obsession about dogs fouling pavements. She'd have to buy one of those poop-scoop things. On the other hand, did that kind of obsession really seem like Crybbe, where apathy ruled?

  'For God's sake, Arnie, make up your mind.' They'd come to the square and he seemed to want to turn back. He circled miserably around, dragging the clothes-line and winding it round the legs of a woman bending over the tailgate of a Range Rover, shoving something in the back.

  'Oh hell, I'm really sorry. Look, if you can stand still, I'll disentangle you. I'm very sorry.'

  'No problem,' the woman said, looking quite amused. She was the first person who hadn't stared at them, which meant she must be from Off.

  Of course she was - she was Max Goff's PA, Ms Coolly Efficient.

  'We're not used to each other,' Fay explained, it's Henry Kettle's sheepdog, the poor chap who . . . I'm looking after him.'

  'Oh, yes.' Rachel Wade stepped out of the loop of clothesline. 'You're from the radio.'

  'We all have a living to make,' Fay said and then, making the most of the encounter, 'Look, can I talk to you some time? I'm being hassled by my boss to find out what's happening to the Court.' That hurt, referring to Gavin Ashpole as a boss, which he wasn't and was never going to be.

  'Sure,' Rachel said, surprising her.

  'When?'

  'Now if you like. We could go over to the Court, Max is out seeing people.'

  'Great.'

  'Hop in then,' Rachel said. But Arnold didn't want to. In the end Fay had to pick him up and dump him on the back seat, where he flattened himself into the leather and panted and

  trembled.

  'Sorry about this.' Fay climbed into the passenger seat. 'He's - not surprisingly - more than a bit paranoid. He was in Henry's car when it . . . you know.'

  'Oh dear, poor dog. I didn't know about that.' Rachel started the engine, 'it's rather a mystery, isn't it. About Mr Kettle. Do you think he'd been drinking?'

  'I didn't know him very well. I think a heart attack or stroke or something seems more likely, don't you?'

  'He was a nice old man.' Rachel swung the Range Rover off the square into the street that wriggled down past the church, the graveyard on the right, a few cottages on the left. The street narrowed and entered a wood, where the late afternoon sun was filtered away and the colours faded almost to grey, 'I don't believe all that dowsing stuff. But he was a nice old man.'

  'Don't you? I thought . . .'

  'Oh, Max does. Max believes it. Good God, yes. However, I don't get paid to share his wilder obsessions. Well, he thinks I do . . .' Rachel exhaled a short, throaty laugh.

  They came out of the wood. A track to the left was barred by a gat
e with a metal sign. COURT FARM. Where the Preece farmed. Jack, son of Jimmy, the Mayor, and Jack's two son She'd seen Jack once, slinking almost furtively out of the church, his nightly duty accomplished.

  'And what exactly is Mr Goff's obsession with the Court?'

  'I'll show you in a minute,' Rachel said affably.

  This was too easy. Fay was suspicious. She watched Rachel Wade driving with a languid economy of movement, like people drove in films, only you knew they weren't in real, moving vehicles. This was the kind of woman who could change a wheel and make it look like a ballet. Made you despair.

  Rachel said, is that your father, the old clergyman? Or your grandfather or something?'

  'Father. You've met him?'

  'In the Cock. We got into conversation after my lighter fell off the bar and he picked it up.' Rachel smiled, in fact, if he'd been considerably younger, I'd almost have thought . . .'

  Fay nodded wryly. 'The old knocking-the-lighter-off-the-bar routine. Then he carries out a detailed survey of your legs while he's picking it up. He's harmless. I think.'

  'He's certainly a character.' Rachel pulled up in a walled courtyard amid heaps of sand and builders' rubble. Before them random grey-brown stones were settled around deepset

  mullioned windows and a dusty oak door was half-open.

  Fay took a breath.

  'Crybbe Court,' Rachel said. 'But don't get too excited.' She snapped on the handbrake. 'Leave the dog in the car, he won't like it. Nobody does, really, apart from historians, and even they get depressed at the state of it.'

  She wondered what had made her think it was going to be mellow and warm-toned like a country house on a Christmas card.

  'It's old,' she said.

  'Elizabethan.'

  She felt cold and folded her bare arms. Outside, it was a fairly pleasant midsummer's day; in here, stark and grim as dankest February.

  Somehow, she'd imagined rich drapes and tapestries and polished panelling. Probably because the only homes of a similar period she'd visited had been stately homes or National Trust properties, everything exuding the dull sheen of age and wealth, divided from the plebs by brass railings and velvet ropes.

  In Crybbe Court these days, it seemed, only the rats were rich.

  The room was large, stone-floored and low-ceilinged, and apparently fortified against the sun. The only direct light was from three small, high-set windows, not much more than slits. Bare blue sky through crossed iron bars.

  Fay said, 'I suppose it's logical when you think about it, the period and everything, but I didn't imagine it would be quite so . . .'

  She became aware of a narrow, stone staircase spiralling into a vagueness of cold light hanging from above like a sheet draped over a banister.

  'Ghastly,' Rachel said, 'is, I think, the word you're groping for. Let's go upstairs. It's possibly a little less oppressive.'

  The spiral staircase opened into a large chamber with mullioned windows set in two walls. Bars of dusty sunshine fell short of meeting in the middle. It had originally been the main family living-room, Rachel explained. 'Also, I'm told, the place where the local high sheriff, a man named Wort, held out against the local populace who'd arrived to lynch him. Have you heard that story?'

  'I've heard the name, but not the story.'

  'Oh, well, he was a local tyrant back in the sixteenth century. Known as Black Michael. Hanged men for petty crimes after allowing their wives to appeal to his better nature, if you see what I mean. Also said to have experimented on people before they died, in much the same way as the Nazis did.'

  'Charming.'

  'In the end, the local people decided they'd had enough.'

  'What? The townsfolk of Crybbe actually rebelled? What did they do, write "Wort Must Go" on the lavatory wall?'

  'Probably, for the first ten years of atrocities. But in the end they really did come out to lynch him, all gathered out there in the courtyard, threatening to burn the place down with him in it if he didn't come out.'

  'And did he?'

  'No,' said Rachel. 'He went into the attic and hanged himself from the same rafters from which he'd hanged his offenders.'

  'And naturally,' Fay said, 'he haunts the place.'

  'Well, no,' Rachel said. "He doesn't, actually. No stories to that effect anyway. And when Mr Kettle toured the house, he said it was completely dead. As in vacant. Un-presenced, or however you care to put it. Max was terribly disappointed. He had to console himself with the thought of the hound bounding across his path one night.'

  'What?'

  'Black Michael's Hound. Nobody ever sees Michael, but there is a legend about his dog. A big, black, Baskerville-type creature said to haunt the lanes on the edge of town. It comes down from the Tump.'

  Fay thought at once of the old lady who kept telephoning her, Mrs Seagrove. 'I didn't know about that.'

  Rachel looked at her, as if surprised anybody should want to know about it.

  'When was it last seen?' Fay asked.

  'Who knows. The book Max found the story in was published, I think, in the fifties. One of those "Legends of the Border" collections. The more recent ones don't seem to have bothered with it.'

  Fay wondered if it would help Mrs Seagrove to know about the legend. Probably scare her even more. Or maybe Mrs Seagrove did know about it and had either invented or imagined her own sighting, which would explain everything. The problem with old ladies was you could never be quite sure of their state of mind, especially the ones who lived alone.

  She asked bravely, 'Are we going up to the attic, then?'

  'Certainly not,' Rachel said firmly. 'For one thing, it's not terribly safe. The floor's pretty badly rotted away up there and Max isn't insured against people breaking their necks. Unless they've been hanged.'

  Fay shivered and smiled and looked around. 'Well,' she said. It could be wonderful, I suppose. If it was done up.'

  'With a million pounds or so spent on it, perhaps.' Rachel prodded with a shoe and sent a piece of plaster skating across

  the dusty wooden floor, 'I can think of better things you could do with a million pounds.'

  'Has it been like this since - you know - Tudor times?'

  'Good God, no. At various times ... I mean, in the past century alone, it's been a private school, a hotel . . . even an actual dwelling place again. If we had a torch you'd see bits of wiring and the ruins of bathrooms. But nothing's ever lasted long. It was built as an Elizabethan house, and that, in essence, is what it keeps reverting to.'

  'And now?'

  'No big secret. Max is a New Age billionaire with a Dream.'

  'You don't sound very impressed.'

  Rachel stood in the centre of the room and spread her hands. 'Oh God ... He wants to be King Arthur. He wants to set up his Round Table with all kinds of dowsers and geomancers and spiritual healers and other ghastly cranks. He's been quietly infiltrating them into the town over the past year. And there'll be some kind of Max Goff Foundation, on a drip-feed from Epidemic, hopefully with the blessing of the Charity Commissioners. And people will get ludicrous grants to go off an search for their own pet Holy Grails.'

  'Sounds quite exciting,' said Fay, but Rachel looked gloomy and rolled her eyes, her hands sunk deep into the pockets of her Barbour.

  'Money down the drain,' she said.

  'What's a ... a geomancer?'

  'It's some sort of spiritual chartered surveyor. Someone who works out where it's best to live to stay in harmony with the Earth Spirit, whatever that is, to protect yourself and your

  family against Evil Forces. Need I go on?'

  There were passages leading off the big room and Fay took one and found herself in a dark little bedchamber. It was the first room she'd seen that was actually furnished. There was an old chest under the pathetically inadequate window and a very small four-poster bed.

  'Like a four-poster cot, isn't it?' Rachel had drifted in after her. 'People were smaller in those days.'

  It was no more than
five feet high and not much longer with very thick posts and an oak headboard with a recessed ledge. On the ledge was a pewter candle-holder with a candle stub in it. The drapes were some kind of cumbersome brocade thick as tarpaulin and heavy with grease.

  'It seems they'd leap into bed,' Rachel said, 'and draw all the curtains tight. And then blow out their candle. Having first read a passage from the Bible - you see there's space on the ledge for a Bible. Because they just knew that on the other side of the curtains, the evil spirits would be hovering en masse. Cosy, isn't it?'

  'Claustrophobic' Fay had never liked four-posters.

  'However, if you want a real scare . . .' Rachel held out a box of matches,'. . . light the candle and look in the chest.'

  She stood there holding the matchbox, not much more than another shadow in the dim, grimy bedchamber, only a crease of her Barbour at the elbow catching the light. The coat's dull waxen surface looked right for the period, and Fay had the alarming sensation that the dingy room was dragging them back into its own dark era. Was Rachel smiling? Fay couldn't see her face.

  She found herself accepting the matchbox.

  'Go on,' Rachel said. 'Light the candle.'

  'OK.' She tried not to sound hesitant, asking herself. You aren't nervous, are you, Fay?

  No, she decided. Just bloody cold. It might have occurred to me to wonder why she was wearing a Barbour on Midsummer Day. And she might have warned me about the temperature in this place.

  She reached beyond the post at the bedhead and pulled the candle-holder from the recess. Struck a match. Saw the candle-tray was full of dead flies and bluebottles. Turned it upside down, but not all of them fell out.

  Yuk. Fay lit the candle.

  Shadows bounced.

  'The chest under the window?'

  She could see Rachel Wade's face now, in the candle-light, and it wasn't smiling. 'Look,' Rachel said, 'forget it. Come on. I was only joking.'

  'No you weren't.' Fay smelled wax, from the candle and from Rachel's coat perhaps. 'I'd better open the blasted thing before this candle burns away.'

  Rachel Wade shrugged. Fay crossed to the window which left only a smear of light across the top of the chest. Obviously not Elizabethan, this chest; it had black lettering stamped across its lid and was carelessly bound with green-painted metal strips.