The Slay of the Land (The Heathervale Mysteries Book 1)

by Matilda Swift

  It only took a couple of minutes to reach Sampson’s house. By the time they arrived, Arrina’s senses were alive to the subtleties of the ancient woodland. She saw the small white flowers of enchanter’s nightshade on the ground, smelled the sap of freshly cut trees, and heard the distant drilling of a woodpecker hunting for food.

  The cottage was set in a small, grassy clearing. It looked like it had come straight out of the pages of a fairy tale—not quite the rose-trellised cottages of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but the hand-hewn rustic hut of a heroic woodcutter who saves the day.

  Sampson’s door was unlocked, and Wallace led Arrina inside. The front door opened straight into a large, dark kitchen. Arrina had not told Sampson she was coming—the man had no phone to do so—but the kettle on the stove began to whistle just as she walked in. Arrina wondered if there was truth, after all, to the tales of Grandma Morgan and her all-seeing abilities.

  Sampson was sitting in a deep armchair in front of the wood-burning stove. He wasn’t wearing the sturdy black work trousers and dark-green shirt that he usually did. Instead, he had a lumpy brown jumper on over a pair of thin, loose trousers with mossy knees.

  ‘How do?’ he asked in a low voice, just as Wallace had done a few minutes earlier. Arrina nodded in response, unsure why Sampson didn’t get up to greet her. On her previous visits to his house, he’d been as polite and proper as Victorian Victor. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder, tucked her hair behind her ears, and glanced around the spartan room as subtly as she could. Something didn’t seem right.

  Wallace lifted the kettle off the stove, and its whistle slowly quietened. He took a huge teapot down from a shelf and filled it with black twists from a battered square tin. Arrina had been to Sampson’s cottage a few times over the years. He always served the same tea, which he said had no name but which was strong and smoky enough to linger in Arrina’s mind for weeks each time.

  Wallace poured water in and set the teapot and cups down on a rough but sturdy side table. Arrina stood awkwardly in the centre of the dimly lit room, still unsure why Sampson didn’t invite her to sit.

  ‘You’re not having any?’ Arrina asked Wallace, gesturing to the pair of cups on the table. He said nothing in reply. She wondered then if it was her who wasn’t having any tea.

  Wallace glanced over at his uncle, who made no movement that Arrina could perceive. But the young man quickly walked across the room to get an axe that was propped against one dark, wood-panelled wall, then he headed for the door.

  ‘I’ve wood to chop,’ he said and left with a brief smile and a nod.

  Arrina stood in silence in the middle of the room. Sampson sat still in his chair, his gaze fixed on the big brown teapot in front of him. His grizzled face was set into a frown. Arrina opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t know how to break the tension in the room. She shut her mouth and tucked her hair once more behind her ears.

  Perhaps she’d offended Sampson by coming to his house unannounced. Or maybe she should have come sooner. She was about to apologise for both of these oversights when she realised what the real reason for his quiet anger must be.

  She hadn’t got a message to him on Tuesday to warn him that the police were coming. Sampson hated police involvement with the college even more than Arrina did. He would have especially loathed them tracking him down without warning.

  Slowly and silently, Sampson stood up from his armchair.

  Arrina prepared her apologies. She knew that Sampson was a man who held grudges well, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His keen observations would surely be the key to working out what had happened to Hugo, so Arrina couldn’t risk falling out with him.

  As Sampson reached his full height, Arrina saw that he looked smaller and older than he normally did. He wasn’t a big man, but he carried himself with presence. Right then though, he looked like one of the flat-capped husbands who pottered behind their wives on trips into the village.

  Sampson reached into his pocket slowly, pulled out a crumpled envelope, and handed it over. ‘I couldn’t tell as I should post it or bring it by your cottage,’ Sampson said. ‘Didn’t neither seem right.’

  Arrina had no idea what the envelope might contain, though the serious expression on Sampson’s face made it clear it wasn’t good. She opened it and pulled out a single sheet of handwritten paper. The smudged black cursive was difficult to read.

  Dear Miss Fenn,

  I am very sorry for what has happened...

  Arrina skimmed down to the bottom of the letter. It was signed Sampson Morgan, Esq.

  She looked over at Sampson to understand what she was reading. He sat down in his armchair again and poured out two strong black cups of tea. He turned Arrina’s brick coloured with a dash of milk and left his own a depthless black.

  Arrina scanned the letter quickly.

  In it, he apologised for having left his post on the morning of Hugo’s death and went on to take full responsibility for whatever security issues had led to the man’s death in the first place. As Arrina got to the part where Sampson resigned from his job as head of security, she stopped reading.

  She glanced over at Sampson, who refused to meet her eye. This was why he was acting so strangely—he thought that Hugo’s death was his fault somehow, and he was quitting his job as penance for his mistake. Arrina couldn’t let him do that. She needed him now more than ever.

  Arrina quickly crumpled the letter into a ball. Then she stepped over to the stove behind Sampson, swung open its heavy metal door, and threw the letter into the flames. ‘I don’t accept it,’ she said.

  ‘But—’ Sampson said.

  ‘Really. I appreciate that you’ve given this a lot of thought. There’s just no way I can accept your resignation.’

  ‘I can’t let tha—’ Sampson started, looking back at the hot stove as though he could pull the letter back out of it.

  ‘I’m the one who sent you off-site that day,’ Arrina said. She sat down and picked up her cup of tea. ‘And I’m responsible for whatever happened there in the early hours of the morning. The reduction of patrols during the holidays was part of a budget-cutting initiative that had nothing to do with you.’

  In fact, Arrina recalled, it had been Victor’s decision to do that. He’d made a sensible argument for it at the time, but looking back, Arrina wondered if she should have fought back harder against it.

  He picked up his cup of tea and held it in his strong and well-worn hands. ‘I ought to—’ Sampson said before Arrina cut him off again.

  ‘If you really want to play the blame game here, then I assure you I’m going to win.’ She took a sip of the fortifying drink in her own hand. ‘Or lose, depending on how you look at things.’

  ‘Tha munt say that,’ Sampson said. ‘Folks round here do nowt but skrike.’

  Arrina had lived in Heathervale long enough to know what skriking was—a whiny, shouting cry, like a baby cutting its first teeth.

  ‘Well, skriking aside,’ she said, ‘I can’t let you take the blame for what happened.’

  Sampson shook his head slowly. The wrinkles in his forehead had deepened since Arrina last saw him at the college.

  ‘Look,’ Arrina said, leaning forwards, ‘there’s something I haven’t told you. Hugo was due to start work at the college next week. I don’t think it was a coincidence that he was killed there a few days before the new term. It really wasn’t anything to do with you.’

  Sampson looked up at her finally. The lines in his forehead relaxed a little. He took a drink from his cup. ‘I thought...’ Sampson said before trailing off slowly.

  ‘It wasn’t you,’ she said again. ‘He was planning to come and work at the college in order to help the young people of this community, and somehow, that got him killed.’ She cleared her throat to keep her voice from shaking. ‘I only wish I could figure out how.’

  Arrina took a long drink from her cup as she tried for the hundredth time to understand why on earth someone woul
d want to hurt Hugo. ‘Is there anything you can remember from Tuesday?’ she asked Sampson. ‘Maybe you noticed something that could help me understand what happened.’

  Sampson scratched the silvery bristles that sprouted from his chin. Arrina drank more tea while she waited. Through the window by the stove, Arrina saw a figure pass by. At first glance, it looked like Wallace returning, but Arrina could still hear the steady thwack of his axe somewhere nearby. The person she saw now had a sack slung over his shoulder and both hands holding it.

  Arrina knew that it must be Wilfred, Wallace’s twin. The thickly clustered tattoos on his forearms confirmed it. From this distance, they looked like bright smudges, but Arrina knew them to be intricately inked characters from local legends and myths. Little John, the gigantic friend of Robin Hood, stretched the full length of one arm. The mermaid of Kinder Scout reclined along the other. Hannah Baddeley, in full petticoat flight, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight were amongst the other figures Arrina had glimpsed in the past.

  Wilfred walked around the cottage to the front door, knocked on it, then reached in to drop the huge sack he carried down on the rough wooden floor. He left without a word. When Arrina turned back to look at Sampson, he was still scratching his stubble and thinking. He looked as though he hadn’t noticed the visitor, but there was no way that he could miss the fresh, sweet scent of apples, which drifted over from the enormous sack just a few feet away.

  Unless, perhaps, his keenly observant mind was distracted by a clue, which was going to crack the Hugo mystery open in an instant. Arrina tried not to stare at Sampson as he pondered, careful not to frighten away whatever memory he was teasing open.

  ‘I reckon,’ Sampson said slowly, ‘that there weren’t nowt you don’t already know on.’ He spoke as though his words were of great importance. But they deflated the hope that had been rising in Arrina’s chest.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, draining the last of the tea. ‘Well, thank you for thinking so carefully about it.’ She wanted to ask him to think a little harder, but she knew she would only offend him. Instead, she forced her lips into something approaching a smile.

  Sampson nodded. Arrina waited for him to follow it up with a snatched recollection of something strange he’d seen. But he said nothing. The silence stretched on for so long that Arrina thought Sampson had forgotten she was there. But then he looked at her through the gloom and gave another nod.

  She stood up. ‘If anything comes to you, let me know.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, sounding far more upbeat than he had done when she came in. ‘On your way out, take a couple o’ pieces of fruit, why don’t you?’ He tipped his chin in the direction of the sack of apples. It turned out he had noticed it after all.

  Arrina headed to the door and stopped as she reached the enormous hessian sack. ‘Thank you,’ Arrina said. ‘But I’m fine.’

  ‘Wilf’s been working days on his collecting. Just have a gander. Like as not, you’ll be glad on it.’

  Arrina opened the top of the sack. The smell of apples grew even stronger. They were a beautiful pink-skinned variety, which she was fairly certain grew only on Gillian DeViers’s property. Arrina wondered if that was what Sampson meant about her being glad if she took a look. She had to admit, she did feel a little gleeful at the thought of Gillian discovering her trees bare from scrumping.

  But then she peered closer and saw that there was also a large black rectangle nestled in amongst the apples. She pulled it out and held it up.

  ‘Looks like a video, does that,’ Sampson said, his voice filled with Morgan mischief. ‘In fact, it looks reet like them from the college CCTV.’

  Arrina smiled widely. ‘I wonder how that got there.’ She wanted to run over and hug Sampson for asking Wilfred to get this. But she knew the older man wouldn’t appreciate it. Instead, she hugged the cassette to her chest.

  Surely, there would be something on there that would tell her what had happened on Tuesday. The murderer had smashed both of the CCTV cameras at the college—presumably to hide their identity—and Arrina was certain there would be a glimpse of something she could use to find out who did it.

  ‘Aye,’ Sampson said. ‘It’s a wonder what turns up.’

  Arrina scanned the room quickly, hoping that Sampson had something to play the video on. But the man didn’t even have a phone, so Arrina knew there was no chance really.

  ‘Can I take this?’ Arrina asked. She didn’t have her own VCR either, but she knew Julie had one, which she used for watching the CCTV from the café.

  Sampson looked at her with a sly smile. ‘Take what?’ Then he winked as she slipped the cassette into her bag. She fleetingly wondered what Tony would say if he knew about this, but she pushed the thought of him quickly from her mind, a skill she had practised often over the previous few months.

  Arrina headed back out into the Morgan woodland, following a path that Sampson said led to Julie and Phil’s farm. She hoped that their milk crisis was resolved enough that they wouldn’t mind a visit. Surely, it would be. Now that she’d got a lead to follow, she felt certain that everything else would work out in her favour as well.

  She set out through the woods with the sharp-edged cassette tape banging against her hip. She enjoyed the solidity of the sensation, which seemed to promise that solutions to all her problems were just around the corner. Surely, there was something on the tape to explain what had happened to Hugo. Once she watched it, she would track down whoever had killed the man and bring the murderer to justice.

  14

  Once she left the Morgan woods, the path Arrina followed climbed directly up a steep hill. She wasn’t quite sure which peak she was climbing, but Sampson had said this was the best way to Julie’s, and he knew this area better than anyone.

  When she reached the top, she stopped to gaze at the sight before her. It was a beautiful, wide-open view of Arrina’s favourite landscape in all the world.

  The whole of the Hope Valley was spread out before her. The shallow River Derwent churned a path through its middle, curving between hills and through tunnels of trees. Past that, there were the majestic cliffs of Stanage Edge.

  Arrina never tired of staring at Stanage. It seemed as though every time she looked at the rock formation, it was different. That day, the warm sunlight turned its Millstone Grit into a gentle peachy grey. On the edge’s flat top, purple heather bloomed, and below it, a carpet of ferns spread out towards the river, already hinting at autumn with its deep-green leaves rusting to orange at their tips.

  Arrina had been walking in the Hope Valley for years but had never come across quite such a spectacular vantage point from which to gaze upon it. The hard rectangle of the video in her bag urged Arrina onwards. She did not have time to linger. Well, perhaps just for one more minute. As she stared out at the deep seam of the long, winding valley, the tight knot in her chest loosened slightly.

  Far off at one end was the smooth mound of Mam Tor and, beyond that, the high plateau of Kinder Scout. The shape of the skyline there was etched deeply into Arrina’s brain. She had only lived in the Hope Valley for five years, but before that, she had often visited from her home town of Manchester. She had always loved the Peak District and this part in particular. Nowhere on earth could surpass the beauty of the place.

  It seemed almost impossible that something as terrible as Hugo’s murder could have happened here. But the Peak District was a darker place than that sunny August day suggested. Just below Mam Tor was a road called Winnats Pass. Local legend had it that a wealthy young couple was murdered there by a thieving group of miners in the eighteenth century. Later, all five members of the violent gang were hunted down to meet their own grisly ends.

  Arrina pushed that thought from her mind and swept her eyes once more across the lush, sun-soaked valley. There were no dastardly miners blinded by greed, no ghosts of star-crossed lovers seeking their final revenge. Something terrible had happened here, but it would have a clear explanation, which she could discover and
take to the police. Then, whoever had killed Hugo would be locked away in jail, the village could start to return to normal again, and the college could open up in time for the new term.

  Arrina set off, walking slowly down the hillside. The path sloped sharply, and Arrina had to be careful of her step. Ragged-fleeced sheep wandered around as though the steep incline meant nothing, but Arrina’s knees were glad when she reached the flat road halfway down the hill.

  She looked at her phone to see if she’d got another message from Julie. Though it was almost noon by then, she had nothing. It wasn’t too surprising—her phone got no signal out there and probably hadn’t picked any up since before she’d hit the Morgan woods. She would just have to take her chances and drop by, even if things were still in crisis mode with the milking machine.

  The road that wound around the hillside was unevenly tarmacked, and its crumbling, patched surface showed the wear of heavy traffic and penetrating winter frosts. As Arrina walked along it towards the farm, she stuck close to the drystone wall on its outer edge. Day trippers were known to zoom around these narrow country lanes with little regard for the pedestrians and cyclists who shared them.

  Arrina needn’t have worried about speeding motorists that day though. The road was unusually empty. In the absence of traffic, she could hear the bleating of sheep in nearby fields and the trickle of streams that raced down to the River Derwent at the valley’s base.

  Then she turned a corner and saw the reason for the empty road—a huge black tractor chugged slowly down its middle, almost entirely blocking the way. Behind it, a long ribbon of cars drove bumper-to-bumper, unable to get past. Several cars going the opposite direction were pulled into lay-bys, waiting for the road to clear. As the traffic drew closer, the sound of engines filled the air.

  Arrina hopped up to sit on the sturdy drystone wall by the road. She could probably keep walking, even with the tractor there, but after almost being run over by one of the hulking machines a few months earlier, she preferred to keep her distance. No matter how eager she was to watch the video in her bag, it was best to stay put for a little while.