Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Nineteen to you, sergeant. Or is that bribing a policeman in the course of his duties?’

  Surprisingly, he laughed, and got out a cheque-book. ‘I’m afraid I’m not the usual sort of police-sergeant; I’ve got A-levels. It worries my superintendent. He doesn’t think I’m quite human. First he sent me off to Bramshill College to get rid of me, and now he keeps me at headquarters for dealing with the nobs, and anything funny that crops up, like this church business.’

  ‘There have been developments, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of a sort. We know he’s got a key to the church.’

  I gave a grunt of surprise.

  ‘The vicar got a woman in to clean up, then he locked the church; thought he had the only key. A week later he went to look round, and the joker had been at it again. And three times since, in the last fortnight. I’ve been spending a few sleepless nights in that vestry . . . but nothing happens while I’m around. Then the first night I’m not, it happens again.’

  ‘I don’t envy you,’ I said. ‘It’s a nasty building. I don’t think I’d spend a night alone there for a superintendent’s wages.’

  ‘I wasn’t alone, sir,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘Local bobby was with me.’

  ‘What does he think?’

  ‘Hasn’t a clue. He’s new – came last year from Stropping. I’m afraid village bobbies aren’t what they were. I’d like you to come and see the place again, sir, if you will. I’d like your professional opinion.’

  ‘It wasn’t those kids, you know.’

  ‘I know it’s not kids.’

  As we went, I slipped the pictures I’d taken in church into my pocket. Or rather, one of them.

  I looked at the interior of the church aghast. Every tomb seemed to have been vandalized.

  WILLIAM TRENTON

  VICAR OF THIS PARISH FOR FORTY YEARS

  AND AN INDUSTRIOUS HARBINGER OF CHURCH

  MUSICK

  THE SWEETNESS OF HIS HARMONIES CHAMRED

  THE EAR

  AND THE MILDNESS OF HIS MANNERS THE

  HEART

  DIED MDCCV

  That one carried, scrawled in furious letters:

  THEEFE, EXTORTIONER, GIVE BACK THE TITHES

  YOU RUINED JACK BURTON FOR

  And, on the tomb of a lady of Invincible Virtue and Great Condescension:

  SHE PLAYED THE HARLOT WITH HER OWN SON

  I walked from one to the other.

  ‘Nasty,’ I said. ‘But not brainless. It’s almost as if he knew all about them. A mad local historian?’

  ‘It’s funny you should say that. I’ve checked the church records. There was a farmer called John Wilberforce Burton – died in 1783. Dispossessed of his land – killed himself – not buried in sacred ground. And the lady he made that comment on, she had a son who never married. She outlived him. The comments are all relevant. Almost like he’d known them personally.’

  ‘Has everyone copped it?’

  ‘He’s left the Victorian ones alone . . . and the schoolmaster, Dore.’

  ‘Oh, the pillar of virtue, yes. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Funny thing is . . .’ the sergeant paused in embarrassment ‘. . . I had a writing expert in – a graphologist. Superintendent went mad about the expense of getting him over from Muncaster. I got all the kids in that class to scribble stuff down for me. He went over them – that’s how I know it wasn’t the kids – but he did say one funny thing. Apparently the writing’s very old-fashioned. It seems that every century makes its own kind of mark . . .’ He ground to a halt.

  ‘You mean, like the young Georgian gents who carved their names so elegantly on the pews at Newhurst during the long sermons . . .’ And I ground to a halt too. We looked at each other in the gloom of the nave, then shrugged, as men do, and changed the subject. How different Dorinda’s story might have been if we hadn’t.

  I pulled out my photograph. The one with the bald head, watching the little girls brass-rubbing. I suppose now we’d got on to daft topics, I wasn’t afraid to raise the matter.

  ‘What do you make of that, sergeant?’

  ‘Oh, this is the famous photograph? I’d meant to ask you about that. Only I reckoned the lads were making up a tale, to get out of trouble. Rum-looking bloke, if it is a bloke . . . hard to tell . . . could be a lump of marble . . . statue’s hand or something . . .’

  ‘Let’s line it up from where I took it.’

  We looked. There was nothing on any of the tombs where the ‘head’ appeared in my photograph.

  ‘Could be anything. Maybe one of the kids left a packet of sandwiches on a ledge. It looks crumpled . . . crumpled and yet . . . bloated . . . bit like a turnip lantern. Could even be the head of another kid.’

  ‘A bald kid?’

  ‘Could be a trick of the flash, making him look bald. If he’s real, I wouldn’t fancy meeting him up an alley on a dark night.’

  We both laughed uneasily. Then he said: ‘D’you mind if I hang on to this? I’ll get some copies made. Somebody in the district might recognize him. Somebody who’s been to Madame Tussaud’s maybe.’ We laughed uneasily again.

  And there we left it.

  I must say the official opening of our exhibition at County Hall was quite a do. That was in the days when money was no object; the catering was elegant, and the whisky flowed like water. The exhibition looked great; they’d borrowed my negatives and blown them up to a yard square and very sharp, and the kids looked far keener and more industrious than they really had been. But their work was good, and beautifully mounted; good mounting can make a thing look worth a million dollars.

  You must remember that was also in the days before kids were taken out of school a lot; I think the county was trying to encourage project work in the primaries. There were a lot of teachers there that evening, and a lot of inspectors and organizers and advisers, and a lot of councillors who’d mainly come for the whisky (which they drank at incredible speed, never batting an eyelid; they must have had a lot of practice). Form 4C were there as well, brought by the Head from Barlborough on a coach, with four other teachers as reinforcements. The children looked incredibly clean: I didn’t recognize them till they spoke.

  Dorinda, I remember, came straight from home in her white Mini. She looked so happy and excited. There was such a press of people round her, complimenting her, or just touching their forelocks and asking to be remembered to her father, that I couldn’t get near. But I remember to this day how happy she looked . . .

  Working round the exhibits, I came face to face with my police sergeant, every inch the gent in natty thornproof; Mike Watkins as I knew him now, from his name on the cheque.

  ‘How’s your Vienna regulator doing?’

  ‘Fine. That’s about all that is.’

  ‘Not caught your mad local historian, then?’

  ‘Nobody recognized the photograph. Though I got some damned funny looks. You know, what strikes me is the way it all started after 4C had been to the church.’

  ‘It wasn’t them!’

  ‘I know it wasn’t. But things started happening immediately after . . . like they’d disturbed something. Something pretty nasty. I’ve got one new piece of evidence.’

  All the time we’d been moving round the exhibition. Now something old and beautiful and shiny caught my dealer’s eye, among all the cross-eyed cherubs and dim brass-rubbings. A padlock, thin and elegant, and polished with Brasso half out of its life.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. We went across together. The notice under the padlock, rather wildly written, read:

  A MEDIEEVAL LOCK, ON LOAN FROM

  TATTERSHAM CHURCH FROM THE CRIP

  (DRACULA) DONE UP BY J. HARGREAVES

  AND H. WINTERBOTTOM

  The lock was not medieevil, or even medieval. It was elegantly Georgian, with an interlacing pattern of crosses: the lock from the grille of the vault under the altar.

  An awful premonition gripped me.

  ‘What�
�s your nasty piece of evidence?’ I asked. He shuffled uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, you remember I scraped some of the black paint off that first tomb that was vandalized? I sent it to Forensic, and they couldn’t make head nor tail of it, so they sent it on to the Home Office. Lucky I’d scraped off plenty.’

  ‘Well?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Well, old Sir Bernard Spilsbury got to the bottom of it. It wasn’t paint at all – it’s the decomposed remains of tissue. Animal or human, they can’t really tell . . . it’s so old.’

  ‘How old?’

  He gulped. ‘They reckon . . . centuries old . . .’

  ‘Oh, my God, the lock . . . the crypt. Somebody who knew the owners of the tombs personally . . . It’s crazy, sergeant. If we say anything, they’ll throw us in the nuthouse.’

  He became very constabulary, the way even the best ones can. ‘I have evidence, sir, that party or parties unknown have entered the crypt and violated the cadavers, and are using their remains to write graffiti on the tombs. All of which are crimes.’

  As from another world, the voice broke in on us: from the cosy world of pretty girls handing round drinks and art-advisers plotting, and councillors knocking back whisky.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, in honour of this unique occasion, the Chairman of the County Council, Councillor Neil Fogarty, will present certificates of merit to each child who took part.’

  It went quite smoothly until the name ‘Hargreaves, J.’ was uttered. No Hargreaves, J., came forward.

  ‘I’m certain he was on the bus,’ said the Head, tetchily.

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone to the . . .’

  ‘Carry on,’ said the Head.

  They carried on, until they came to the name ‘Winterbottom, H.’. He was not only missing also, but a thorough search of the cloakrooms and corridors had revealed no trace of Hargreaves, J., either.

  ‘Where are they?’ hissed Dorinda, realistically taking the form-monitor on one side and shaking the life out of her.

  Eventually, there were tears. And the appalling admission that the two had slipped away from the bus, having asked to stop for the loo at Tattersham. The whole form had got off: Jack and Henry had deliberately not got back on. Others had answered their names on the roll-call. Jack and Henry had brought sandwiches and torches. They were going to lie in wait in the church for the bald-headed man who wrote the dirty words.

  The next second, Dorinda was running for her car; and the sergeant and I were pounding down the corridors of County Hall behind her.

  We nearly caught up with her in the car park; she drove off from under our very noses.

  ‘We’ll take my car,’ I shouted. Which we did, and by putting my foot down on the by-pass, I nearly overtook her at Selmerby. But at that point she took to the little winding lanes that she’d known on horseback since a child. And on those bends, the Mini left my shooting-brake standing.

  ‘We’ve lost her, sir,’ said Sergeant Watkins. ‘Drop me at the next phone-box and I’ll summon help straight to the church.’

  But I couldn’t bear to stop. One thing kept ringing through my head: Henry Winterbottom saying that whatever the thing was, it didn’t bother boys. It was the little girls it was in­terested in.

  In the end, Sergeant Watkins took the law into his own hands (as he had every right to do), and jumped out as I slowed down at a crossroads. At least he had the courtesy to slam the door, so I didn’t even have to stop. But the minutes ticked away; I took a wrong turning and got lost. And still the minutes ticked away.

  It was half an hour before I pulled up by Tattersham church. The white Mini was parked by the porch. No light on in the church, or in the big house; but in the moonlight, the church door gaped wide. Henry’s skill with a lock had worked again.

  I ran through the inner door; into pitch darkness.

  ‘Dorinda?’

  There was a kind of mindless animal sob.

  ‘Dorinda, for God’s sake!’ I shouted.

  Then I heard a slithering noise, somewhere among the box-pews; I was just beginning to see the outline of the windows now, but nothing else.

  Then Henry’s voice came, quavering, ‘Careful, sir. We’re in the corner, here. Watch it, he’s prowling round.’

  ‘He’d better not prowl round me,’ I shouted, ‘or I’ll break him in half.’

  ‘Watch it, sir. He’s all slippery . . . pongy . . . he sort of falls apart when you touch him.’

  Oh, God, the lights. Where were the lights? I realized I’d never known.

  ‘Where are the lights, Henry?’ I was moving towards him, slowly, stealthily. Listening for the slithering that was moving between us.

  Dorinda began to sob again, softly, mindlessly.

  ‘The lights don’t work, sir,’ quavered Henry. ‘They must have cut them off.’

  My outward-groping hand came into contact with something upright, round and hard. I knew what it was; one of the churchwardens’ staffs that are set upright at the end of the back pews. I got it loose, and felt for the top; a heavy brass bishop’s mitre; it would make a good club. I felt a little better, and moved on. The sound of Dorinda’s sobbing, the boys’ heavy breathing, came nearer. So did the slithering. And I could smell him now; the smell that had always been in this church, but a thousand times stronger. The smell of death; I had smelt it, plunging into the bowels of a crashed bomber in the War.

  I could smell him, I could hear him; but I hit him because I felt him: a sudden drop in temperature on the right-hand side of my face as he came at me – as if he drew the warmth out of the surrounding air . . .

  I had never struck a blow like it before, and I hope never to strike one like it again. It would have killed a man; but I could never have brought myself to hit a living man that hard. It had all the fear in me, all the rage, all the hate. And I could tell from the feel of it that the churchwarden’s staff hit him where his neck joined his shoulders. It felt like hitting a rotten marrow, with bone splintering inside. Cold drops splashed my face. But there was no shudder, no gasp of pain or groan; it was hitting a dead thing, and instinctively I gave up hope.

  The next second the staff was snatched from my hands so fiercely that I lost all use of my fingers. And the second after that I was flung against the pews with such force that the seat-back, like a horizontal axe, drove all the air from my lungs, and I thought my back was broken. But I had felt the large hands that flung me; cold as ice, even through my trench-coat. I lay on the floor and listened to the slithering go past me towards the corner where Dorinda was.

  I don’t know how I got back to my feet, but as I did so, a sound came to me from the sane world outside: the wail of a police-car siren. The windows of the church lit up from without, with the cold blue light of car headlights. And I saw him. Or it.

  For, sensing the flare of light, it turned, and I saw it across the tops of the box-pews. A bald head, with blank black eyes that shone in the light. A broad chest, with what might have been a growth of black hair. And round the head and shoulders, not a ragged shirt, as Henry had said. But the green rags of a shroud . . .

  Now there was a second police-car siren. Old Watkins must have had them homing in by radio from every point of the compass.

  For a long moment the creature paused, like a badger brought to bay in its own wood. Then it seemed to sense that there would be no end to the lights and the noise, and the men with whom it had little quarrel. Men who could run it to earth and destroy and demolish and block it off for ever. Though the unreadable expression on the bald face never changed, I knew that it despaired.

  The next second it was limping at great speed across the nave, towards the altar. I heard the grille to the vault clang, and it was gone.

  Seconds later, a torch-beam cut across the nave from the porch. There was a fumbling, and all the lights went on; Sergeant Watkins must have known where the master-switch was. And then the place was full of flat caps and blue uniforms.

  ‘Where?’ asked Mike Watkins. I nodded towards
the grille that led to the vault. He walked across, took something from his pocket and clicked it into place on the grille. He gave me a certain look, and I nodded. There are some things that are best not entered in policemen’s notebooks, if only for the sake of Chief Constables and the judiciary.

  ‘How did you get the lock?’ I asked him.

  ‘I confiscated it as material evidence,’ he said ruefully. ‘But it’s better back where it is. I don’t think we’ll have any more bother, do you?’

  I shook my head; but I rattled the old Georgian lock gently, just to make sure.

  There was a gaggle of blue uniforms in the far corner, but it was parting; someone was being led out.

  Dorinda was as white as a sheet, silent, eyes looking nowhere – all the signs of deep shock. But at least she was putting one foot in front of the other.

  ‘I’ve radioed for an ambulance,’ said Sergeant Watkins. The boys followed Dorinda out, with that same white, glazed look on their faces. Except Henry, who summoned up enough energy for a ghost of a grin and said, ‘Cor, sir, you didn’t ’arf fetch him one . . .’

  I went to hospital with Dorinda in the ambulance; the boys went in the police-car. Halfway there, she opened her eyes and knew me.

  ‘Geoff. . . thanks.’

  But it wasn’t the Dorinda Molyneaux I’d known. The unshakeable confidence had gone; the certainty that there was a practical answer for everything.

  ‘I never realized . . .’ She closed her eyes and was silent, then continued: ‘I thought if you were decent . . . and kept the rules . . . God wouldn’t let things like that . . . happen to you.’

  I didn’t ask what had happened to her. I just said, ‘God lets road accidents happen to decent people every day. Why should that kind of thing be so different?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with the sadness you expect from an old, old woman. ‘Yes.’ She reached out and grabbed my hand, and played with the knuckles. ‘I like you – you’re warm.’ She went on holding my hand till we got to the hospital.

  Mike Watkins joined me in the waiting-room; with his note­book.

  ‘I suppose you’re after the name and address of the accused,’ I said, with a weak attempt at humour.