Mists Over Mosley Read online

  “They bloody did.”

  “And then they told Harry Akeroyd arrow by arrow how he was going to win a darts-match for this pub. Isn’t that true, Len?”

  “It bloody is. Cup’s up on yon bloody shelf.”

  “So when they let it be known that they were going to get the old clock going again, it wasn’t easy to get odds-against that they’d fail. Though I must say, I’d started to say goodbye to my money, when I saw how long it was taking them. They did a moonlight dance in the churchyard, all around the graves. Had an old wind-up gramophone stood on top of the Mawdesley vault. Kept playing the same record over and over again.”

  “Horrible bloody thing.”

  “The Danse Macabre,” Hindle said. “Saint-Saëns. Went on for hours. Must have played it thirty times. Then suddenly the old clock boomed out. One in the morning. Spot on the minute, too.”

  “Makes you bloody think, dunnit?”

  “I’d have thought midnight would have been more appropriate,” Grimshaw suggested.

  “That’s what we all said. Only Priscilla reminded us we were on British Summer Time. So,” the Major said, ordering his round, which Len duly noted on a pad under the counter, “you may conclude that Upper Marldale is a rum community.”

  “But what lies behind this witchcraft?” Grimshaw asked him. “Presumably they are reasonable women.”

  “Admitting for the sake of argument that the breed exists, I’d say the simple answer is politics.” And the Major screwed up his face in distaste.

  “Nay,” Len said. “It was all done to get at her in the Old Tollhouse.”

  “Politics,” the Major repeated, with force but without rancour. “Red-raggers, all three of them. It was all done in the first place to divert attention from what was happening about Ned Suddaby’s field. Mind you, I’m not saying how it was done. That’s another question altogether.”

  “Yes, well, her in the Old Tollhouse had her own ideas about what should be done with Suddaby’s. And they hate her guts.”

  “Who doesn’t? But I still say you’re wrong, Len. Mrs. Cater didn’t join battle until later on. The council had already got the planning people in before she put in her bid.”

  “Aye. Because till then, nobody knew the field was coming on the market.”

  The Major turned apologetically to Grimshaw.

  “You must excuse us if we seem to be talking in riddles, sir. Little things loom large in Marldale. Just passing through, are you?”

  Grimshaw was ready for this.

  “I’ve been seeing the name of the place on the signpost on the main road for donkeys’ years. I’ve always meant to come up and take a look.”

  “Not much to see, I’m afraid. Church is mostly restored—and badly. Nearly as much new building in the village as there is old—though we ought not to complain: we don’t want the place to die, do we? You’re not from round these parts, then?”

  But this was a subject from which Grimshaw wanted to escape as neatly as he could. These bar-room quizzes about a man’s persona could be astute and wearing. He finished his drink, took his leave and walked out into the street, now sunlit. The grey mountain mists of morning had lifted while he had been in the pub.

  It was true that there was a fair amount of new residential development in Upper Marldale—in-filling, mostly, and not insensitively managed: all in the local stone, with due regard to contouring and roofing materials. There was a certain affluence here. Many of the newer houses were detached, and what must be wives’ cars stood on their drives. This led to interesting speculation: these people must be either retired or commuters to towns that lay ten, twenty, thirty miles away. They were people who could have chosen other places to live—so why come to Marldale? The streets of Marldale were sunlit, on the average, for not more than a hundred days a year—and for only a minuscule part of the day at that. Was it possible that these folk had caught their first sight of the place on one of its minority days and had been charmed by it? Marldale had a small sub-post-office, a one-time general shop that had been taken over by a chain, and was now trying to be a supermarket in an area not more than twice that of a cottage living-room. It had no doctor, no chemist, no fishmonger, no street lighting and no sewerage. Its school had been closed four years ago, its constable removed last year and the police-house sold. There was a weekly shopping bus into Pringle, now under threat. Mosley country, par excellence. Mosley detected crime in dozens of villages like this. Or rather, in nine cases out of ten, he deflected crime by anticipating it. Mosley would know by name two thirds of the people in Upper Marldale. How often, Grimshaw wondered, did he come here? Mosley’s working diary, which standing orders required him to submit, was a suspect document. Grimshaw had long believed that it contained only those items that Mosley cared to have known.

  Grimshaw walked to the southern extremity of the village and there he came across a dwelling that did not seem to belong to the rest of the community. It had started its existence in the eighteenth century as an irregular polygon, with quaint chimneys, lattices and mullions, conceited crenelations and amateurish pargeting. Then, in an all-permissive pre-planning era, it had taken unto itself a brick annexe overpoweringly bigger than itself. Its garden was excessively overgrown, or at least its outer boundaries were. Its privet hedge was so tall that it was difficult to see how, short of scaffolding, a man could ever trim it back into control. Its shrubs and bushes had been allowed to go their own way so luxuriantly that very little light could penetrate to the windows nearer the road. It must be impossible to live in the rooms of the polygon without permanent artificial light. Grimshaw could only hope for the occupant’s sake that the other side of the house was more accessible to daylight. He crossed the road in the hope of seeing something of the interior of the house, but all its ground-floor curtains were drawn to within their last two inches. He was able to form no impression of what kind of home had been so blatantly concealed from public curiosity.

  The entrance to the property was through a gate outside which a small van was parked, a vehicle with rusted wings and sills that looked unlikely to pass its next MoT test. Grimshaw was within about five yards of this gate when a woman’s voice erupted within the grounds.

  “When I commission a task, I expect nothing short of consummate workmanship.”

  Her voice was a vibrant contralto, her diphthongs richly rounded, her vowels those of the self-satisfied south of the kingdom. Even if the message she was delivering had been a pleasant one, her tone would be suspect in Marldale.

  “I shall deduct fifty pence from the price we agreed.”

  A man with a ladder balanced over his shoulder and a bucket in each hand came out of the gateway, his back hunched in dudgeon: a window-cleaner. He was about to clamp his ladder to the roof of his van when Grimshaw came abreast of him.

  “Sir!”

  His eyes looked into Grimshaw’s with a sort of canine appeal.

  “Could I ask you to come and look at something, sir?”

  It was not a situation that appealed to Grimshaw, but at the same time he saw the tactical opportunity. He went in at the gate and was able to get a proper view of the house. And it was indeed only on the side nearer the road that the windows were obscured by a jungle of foliage. The other three sides visible from the drive were mostly occupied by a reasonably well-kept lawn, beyond which lay the patio and French windows of the annexe.

  On this patio a woman was standing—a woman in her sixties, Grimshaw judged, height about five feet four, powder-grey hair in a vintage Beatle-cut, wearing lavender-coloured slacks that flattered neither her thighs nor the contour of her stomach.

  “Now I ask you, sir—can you see a smear on that window?”

  “From this distance, no—I have to admit that I can’t.”

  Grimshaw utilized the next five seconds to see all he could—he had the feeling that he was not going to be encouraged to remain long on the premises. He moved his position so that he could examine the glass from a different slant. Th
rough one of the French windows he saw an artist’s studio: an easel, trays of jars and brushes, a grubby sink and a paint-spattered white overall thrown over the back of a battered kitchen chair.

  “And who, may I ask, are you?”

  Her from the Old Tollhouse—whose guts everyone in Marldale hated—including Major Hindle. Certainly no one in this county was likely to love her for her initial impact.

  Grimshaw could see nothing wrong with the window-cleaning, but he was acutely aware of the wisdom of non-belligerence.

  “Is there some business you wish to see me about?”

  “No, ma’am. I came in at the invitation of this gentleman.”

  “He has no right to invite you or anyone else to come on to my property.”

  “I apologize, ma’am, and shall withdraw forthwith.”

  Lamentably lame, he knew—and yet it seemed extraordinarily effective, for it left her without riposte. Grimshaw and the window-cleaner came out of the gate together.

  “Brass-necked bitch!” the window-cleaner said.

  “In these parts, she’s going to run out of people willing to work for her.”

  “She has already. She ought to move out to the bottom of the valley. Then she could spend all her time with her freaks.”

  Grimshaw did not know at that stage who the freaks were, but he did not want to hang about asking questions within possible hearing of the Tollhouse. He said goodbye to the window-cleaner and walked back into the heart of the village, strolling the length of one or two streets that he had not yet visited. He found a tobacconist’s and newspaper-shop and one that hopefully offered treasures to tourists: lamb’s-fleece rugs, high-priced hand-loom weaving, cumbersome local pottery and cheap basketwork from the Far East. There was also a branch of the County Library (open two afternoons a week) and a Community Centre that looked as if it had not been entered for months. And that was Upper Marldale. Two women were gossiping outside the supermarket. One man was wheeling a bicycle, across the saddle of which he had roped a rabbit-hutch, and they were the only inhabitants of Marldale who cared to be out in the unaccustomed sunshine.

  But then Grimshaw heard something that halted him in his tracks. It was a man’s voice, and it came from a gateway which he could not at the moment properly see. It was saying, “Well, goodbye, Miss Bladon. I’ve made a note of the date and time of your next meeting, and I’ll be present if I possibly can. If I don’t show up, I wish you well in the new experiment.”

  Grimshaw knew that voice, and he knew the little man who now came out on to the pavement, knew his black homburg, his flapping raincoat and robust, dusty boots. It was a combination that he sometimes dreamed about at night. Mosley waved to him cheerfully.

  Chapter Three

  There had, of course, been previous occasions when Grimshaw had seen a smile on Mosley’s face: usually when he had been proved right after a long battle of attrition over some pathetic triviality.

  “I’d been expecting you to be along,” Mosley said. “Have you had lunch yet? They do a good ploughman’s at the Crook.”

  But Grimshaw was diffident about going back into the pub. To be seen in there talking shop with Mosley was sure to expose him as a policeman, and that seemed undesirable this morning.

  “I’m a bit pressed for time, Mosley. I have private business in Pringle early this afternoon, and I’d like to get over there as soon as I can. I’ll grab a snack there if tempus permits.”

  “In that case, you can give me a lift as far as Denniston.”

  Mosley was a past master of the art of getting other people to ferry him about. Grimshaw could hardly refuse. They climbed the hair-raising road back to the highway, several times within an inch of the sheer drop over the edge in order to give priority successively to a sheep, a down-coming milk-tanker and a Junior School on a field studies expedition.

  “You say you’ve been expecting me?” Grimshaw asked.

  “I gather that Mrs. Cater has been to see the Assistant Chief Constable.”

  “Mrs. Cater?”

  “She lives in the Old Tollhouse,” Mosley said.

  So the ACC had not picked this one up on the links. Mrs. Cater must have asked to see the Chief Constable himself, which was about the only way outsiders got into the office of one of his deputies. Grimshaw did not admit that he had entered the Tollhouse grounds. There were times when it was fitting for there to be a gap of mystery between senior officer and his work force.

  “You know the lady, do you?”

  “I have met her.”

  There was nothing in Mosley’s tone to indicate the sweetness or otherwise of their relationship. Grimshaw could not rid himself of the feeling that in his taciturn way Mosley was mocking him to his own satisfaction. He concentrated on negotiating a hairpin bend, where the road sank into a hollow to cross a fussy little brook.

  “Mosley—what is going on in Upper Marldale?”

  “That is an interesting question,” Mosley said.

  “I have heard unhealthy rumours, Mosley.”

  “I haven’t quite fathomed everything out yet.”

  “You haven’t?”

  That was a relief. How many times had Grimshaw known Mosley confess to ignorance of something that was happening in his realm? Ever?

  “No. There are reports that do not admit of ready explanation.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the sudden death of a man’s four rows of winter cabbages.”

  “Weed-killer, Mosley?”

  “Apparently not. I thought it worth getting Forensic to take a look at a soil sample. They found no trace of chemical interference.”

  Mosley had had recourse to scientific method? Mosley had been sufficiently worried to probe deeper than barroom talk and old women’s stories?

  “And the cats have been behaving in a most peculiar manner in Upper Marldale,” Mosley said. “All the cats.”

  “The cats?”

  “They have been refusing to be put out at night. Even the most adventurous of them, even the incorrigible nocturnal prowlers—they have either been remaining stubbornly in their homes, or else they have been found cowering in sheds or hiding under piles of rubbish.”

  “You believe all this, Mosley?”

  “I spent half a morning last week, interviewing cat owners and cross-checking.”

  It was not to be wondered that so many of his routine returns were outstanding.

  “I am sure there is a perfectly natural explanation,” Grimshaw said.

  “One would think so. Yet it seems particularly odd that this peculiar feline behaviour should have been predicted.”

  “It was, was it? By whom?”

  “By a Miss Priscilla Bladon, a retired school-mistress, now approaching her eighties. Well—she has never actually qualified as a teacher—but she was uncertificated headmistress of the Upper Marldale Primary School for many years. I know that Miss Bladon lays claim to extraordinary powers. In fact I attended a so-called coven at her house only last week, and certainly there were phenomena that cannot be accounted for in everyday terms.”

  Grimshaw had to reverse twenty yards to give precedence to a Post Office van. When he spoke again it was in widely separated words and a quavering voice.

  “You—attended—a—coven—Mosley?”

  “I thought I had better,” Mosley said, “since they throw open part of their proceedings to the public, and some of the more nervous souls in the village have been expressing concern.”

  “I see. So what is the raison d’être behind this coven, Mosley?”

  “That is something that I still hope to discover. The general public are excluded from the business part of the meetings.”

  “And the woman at the Tollhouse? She is also connected with these self-styled witches?”

  “Far from it. Some people believe that she is the reason why they have taken up witchcraft. They believe it is the only way to discourage some of her activities.”

  Chapter Four

  It was on the
Friday night after the coven’s next meeting that Mrs. Beatrice Cater’s activities were discouraged for all time. Ernie Hurst, the Upper Marldale milkman (who came from Pringle) entered the Old Tollhouse to find her hanging from a hook that had been driven into a beam in her living-room by, one assumes, one of the original Tollkeepers.

  It was rather less than a minute after seven o’ clock that Ernie Hurst made his discovery. The Tollhouse was his first call on entering the village, and local by-laws were unambiguous that no house-to-house deliveries were to be made in Marldale before the stroke of seven.

  Asked, as he was several times within the next two hours by ascending ranks of investigators, if it was his normal practice to enter a woman’s house, and indeed her living-room, in order to deposit her daily pint, her orange-juice and her cream, Ernie replied with steadily diminishing patience that it was Mrs. Cater’s cat, Boudicca, who was at the bottom of this daily ritual.

  “Rum bloody name for a cat, innit?” asked the resident constable from Pringle, who, fired by the mystique of sudden death, was on the scene from his home five miles away within three quarters of an hour.

  “Well, she was that sort of woman, wasn’t she? Anything she had she had to have a rum bloody name for. How the hell did she get herself up there, do you reckon, Sid?”

  Beatrice Cater was hanging from the beam by about eighteen inches of rope. Given that the room was eight feet high, that the beam was six inches thick, that her height was five feet four, and that her neck had been elongated by about four inches in the course of her terminal experience, her toes were actually in contact with the ground. They could not, however, have gained enough purchase to give her useful support if she (or an assailant) had undergone a last-minute change of mind. It rather looked, even to one with the intellectual limitations of PC Bowman, as if an assailant must have been involved, because there was no sign that any chair or stool had been stood upon to enable her (or an outsider) to fix the rope to the beam. Nor was it apparent that she had kicked aside any article of furniture to accelerate her irreversible despatch. The constable also noticed that coffee and some sort of liqueur for four people had been served, and that the hostess had not considered it desirable—or had not had time—to wash up the cups and glasses before hanging herself (or being hanged).