Encounters (39 page)

I could hear them opening the french windows, which overlooked the courtyard at the front of the house, and then their voices grew fainter and disappeared. Obviously Father and Duncan had decided to go with him.

I got up and slipped out of the front door. What I had heard nauseated me, but I was far too curious to be left indoors. I had to follow them. I saw the three figures striding through the rain towards the stable. The high loft door on this side was open too now and the bales of charred hay had been pushed down onto the cobbles. A man was standing up there with a pitchfork and I saw him raise his hand to my father in a thumbs up sign. The fire was well and truly out. Wisps of curdling steam crawled up through the loft doors and through the old red tiles but that was all. I could see the three horses from the stable standing on the far side of the courtyard by the orchard gate, sheltering beneath the old crab apple tree which overhung the wall. Beyond it our ponies were pale shapes in the dark.

I suddenly realized that there hadn’t been any thunder or lightning for several minutes now. The storm was moving off towards the north east at last.

I wondered briefly what had happened to Suki. There was no sign of her. It scared me that my mother hadn’t gone frantic with worry about her precious championship mare; everything was frightening that night and unreal. I shivered again in the dark. It was still raining hard.

I tiptoed across the wet cobbles to the stable door and waited, my heart thumping with terror. They had left it open and I could see the strong beam of Father’s torch as he walked slowly down the line of stalls, followed by Duncan and the doctor. I knew the stable so well. The eight stalls and the old loose box at the end, Suki’s box, with its blackened warped oak beam about ten feet off the ground.

Nothing could have made me take another step into that stable. The light stopped moving and I saw the three shadowy figures of the men stop. The torch beam raked up and down, roof to floor; I imagined it illuminating every wisp of hay in Suki’s box – and anything else that was there. I shuddered at the thought. Then the light was joined by another. The doctor too must have had a torch on him. The two thin beams crossed and recrossed flashing up at the walls and roof; then all three men moved out of my line of vision into the box itself. I could feel the sweat standing out on my forehead as I stood there in the doorway, just out of the driving rain.

At first I didn’t even notice the sound of hooves on the cobbles behind me. Then I heard a nervous whicker and turning, I saw the black pony standing, nostrils flaring, near the doctor’s car. It was almost a relief to have to do something. I reached for one of the head collars on the rack inside the door and made my way out into the rain again.

To my surprise she came to me, pushing her head into my hands, almost begging for the head collar to be buckled round her ears. I stroked her rather nervously – Suki had a wicked nip and only my mother usually handled her – and discovered that she was trembling from head to foot.

I started to walk slowly towards the house and she followed without my having to pull on the rein, her head pushed hard into the crook of my arm and it dawned on me that she was probably as scared as anyone else by what had happened and that she was seeking reassurance, just as I was.

I met my mother at the front door. She had at last done the sensible thing and having put Cathie to bed and left her with Jan, she had put on a mac and gumboots and collected a torch. ‘Vicky, you’ve caught her!’ She reached out for the head collar. ‘Is she hurt?’

‘I don’t think so.’ My teeth had started chattering.

‘Mummy. She’s scared. She really is scared. Whatever happened in there – it’s terrified her.’

‘I know.’ My mother was crooning gently into the pony’s ear. ‘I’ll put her into the back paddock. And the other ponies with her. They’ll be safe in there, and well away from whatever must happen.’

Whatever must happen? For the first time I thought of stretchers and police cars and ambulances racing up the long gravelled drive from the lane and I bit my lip as I watched my mother lead the trembling pony away round the corner of the house.

Then I turned to look back at the stables. They were still in the dark. I wondered suddenly why the lights weren’t on. The fire presumably had fused the switches or something. Then I saw the thin beam of torchlight crossing behind one of the windows; then the next. Someone was walking back down the line of the stalls towards the door.

The three men reappeared, crossing slowly towards me, talking earnestly together. I waited in the hall, kicking off my wet shoes, idly inspecting my toe prints on the scrubbed flags.

The door opened and the three men appeared. ‘I’ll give the chief constable a ring, Armstrong,’ my father was saying. ‘I think this ought to go straight to him. Go on in and give yourselves a brandy. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

Duncan and the doctor passed me, going into the sitting room, and I heard the chink of glasses as I followed Dad to the study and stood in the doorway as he dialled.

‘Hello? Bill?’ He sat down on the edge of the desk and then realizing how wet he was stood up again hurriedly. ‘Sorry to call you so late, old man, but I’ve a bit of a puzzle on my hands.’ There was a pause, then he gave a short tense laugh. ‘Yes. No, worse actually. Well, yes it was the storm in a way. No, I got the last of it in today, thank goodness. Listen, Bill. We had a bit of a fire in the hay loft – lightning struck a tree just behind it. We rushed over to get the horses out as fast as possible of course and we found something in there, Bill. A man has been hanged in there. What? Yes. In the loose box at the end. No, he was quite dead; no doubt about it I’m afraid. Three of us saw him: my son Duncan and myself and a girl who is staying with us. No, no idea who it was. No Bill, it wouldn’t have been suicide; there’s no question about that; someone had hacked off both his hands at the wrists. Yes.’ There was quite a long pause as the voice at the other end spoke agitatedly into the phone. I could see the beads of perspiration standing out on my father’s forehead.

‘Yes, there was a lot of blood. But listen, Bill. He’s gone. Yes – there’s no trace of him now – nor of any blood. Armstrong is here and I took him over to see what he could do, but there is absolutely no trace of the body now. No trace at all. We were indoors for, I suppose, perhaps half an hour. But it’s disappeared.’

I gasped and my father noticed me for the first time. He frowned and motioned me away, but I stayed where I was.

‘It did cross our minds,’ he went on into the phone, ‘that the stables could have been fired deliberately to destroy all trace of everything – but then the tree was definitely struck. No question of that. Yes – so you’ll come up yourself then? No, nothing’s been touched. We’ve sent everyone else home now; they don’t know what’s happened. OK.’

He hung up and turned to me. ‘The chief constable is bringing up a forensic team. He’s getting them all out of bed if necessary.’ He gave me a watery smile. ‘I suppose it’s no good telling you to go to bed, Vicky?’

I shook my head vehemently. ‘I’d have nightmares, Daddy,’ I said in a small voice and suddenly my eyes were full of tears.

I ran to him and he put his arms round me comfortingly. ‘I know, love,’ he said gently into my hair. ‘I wish you hadn’t heard – but there’s nothing to be done till the police get here. Come and have a sip of brandy. It’ll buck you up. Where’s your mother?’

‘With the mares.’

He nodded. ‘Just as well to keep busy.’ He frowned. ‘She shouldn’t be out there on her own, though.’ He stood up, releasing me abruptly. ‘I’ll go and fetch her. Go through to Duncan, Vicky, and stay with him, understand?’

‘You think they’re still here, don’t you, the people who did it?’ My voice quavered childishly.

‘Not for one moment. Don’t think about it. Look darling, Dr Armstrong is going to give poor Cathie another shot before he goes. To make her sleep through into tomorrow. Would you like him to give you something?’

I shook my head and swallowed hard. ‘No, I’m all right. Go and find Mummy, and I’ll go and have a drink of brandy.’

I went into the sitting room and accepted a minuscule dose of brandy from the doctor and then I sat shivering on the edge of the sofa while the two men talked until my parents came in together. Then of course my mother took one look at me and packed me upstairs for a hot bath and a change of clothes, although she didn’t insist that I go to bed.

The police arrived about half an hour later with searchlights and a large alsatian dog. They quartered the farm and nearly dismantled the stable block but it appeared that the rain, which hadn’t eased for hours, had been heavy enough to remove any trace there might have been of tracks of any land.

It must have been in the early hours of the morning that they eventually packed up and went. I had given in to my exhaustion at about midnight and crawled into bed, but I can’t say I slept awfully well. My bravado, what there was of it, had left me completely in the loneliness of my bedroom, with its pale chintz curtains blowing so innocently in the open window and I left my bedside light on all night, pulling the thin single sheet up over my head. Somehow I still couldn’t get the sound of Cathie’s terrible screams out of my mind.

She came down next day at about mid morning, looking pale and shaken but otherwise more or less her old self. It was a glorious sunny day. The early morning had been white with low-lying mist as I looked out, but later it heated up again, until the temperature was as high as ever.

The farm returned to normal very quickly; or nearly so. The stables were searched again by daylight, but nothing was found. The hayloft was swept and repaired. It was as if nothing had happened at all. It was hard to believe by the next day that there had ever been a storm, or a fire – or a dreadful, insane murder. Except that no one was allowed to go out by themselves any more; there had to be at least two or three of us – even the farm men went about in pairs and we locked the doors and windows as dark approached, in spite of the heat. And the horses remembered. When my mother tried to lead Suki back into the stable she laid her ears back, her eyes rolling in terror and reared up with a terrified snort. They didn’t try and make her go back in there again.

Cathie stayed with us another week and managed, with Duncan at her side constantly, to complete the rest of her photographs before she got ready to leave. She and Duncan arranged to meet in town as soon as his term started, and apart from the fact that it meant parting from him so soon, I suspected that she was very glad indeed to leave Camber Court. I was very sad to see her go. I liked Cathie enormously.

Nothing was ever found to give any clues as to what had occurred that night. There was no trace of any body; the poor man’s description, as far as my father and Duncan managed to provide one, fitted no one who had been reported missing and as far as the police file went the murder went completely unsolved.

No one would ever have been any the wiser had it not been by the most extraordinary coincidence that we found out who the victim was. It was more than a year later when Father’s Aunt Flavia arrived on a Christmas visit home from Canada. She was a tall, very upright old lady of, I suppose, about eighty, with brilliant blue eyes in her tanned face and a strong Canadian accent. It was tacitly understood by the family that no one would mention the horrible happenings of the summer before last but one night about three days after she had arrived when we were all sitting round the fire after supper, the incident was mentioned after all.

‘Well my dears,’ said Aunt Flavia, looking round with bright inquisitive eyes, ‘have any of you ever seen the ghosts of Camber?’

She seemed disappointed that no one had, although we were all to varying degrees excited at the idea. I had often wondered if there might be a ghost or two at Camber but no one seemed to know. The house had belonged to our family for four hundred years although my father himself had been brought up in Canada and had only inherited it during the war when his uncle John and John’s only two sons had all been killed, and although he loved it and felt it to be in his ‘blood and bones’ as he put it, he knew comparatively little about its history.

‘There are two ghosts actually,’ said his aunt, seeing that she had our attention. ‘A lady who walks in the rose garden on summer nights and a little boy who runs about the upstairs corridors sometimes.’ She looked round hopefully but none of us could claim to have seen either of them.

‘How on earth do you know all this, Aunt Flavia?’ my mother asked suspiciously. Aunt Flavia laughed.

‘Very old books, my dear. My father left me lots of books which mention Camber. I don’t know why he ever brought them out to Canada because they rightfully belong here. You shall have them all back when I die.’

‘There must be a lot of history attached to this house,’ Duncan commented lazily. He was sitting on the window seat, one leg up on the cushion in front of him. ‘Cathie’s book will be out soon; there’s a whole chapter on Camber in that. I know Charles II came here once. Did anything else exciting ever happen here, Aunt, I’ve often wondered?’

She frowned. ‘There was one time. At the time of the Monmouth Rebellion, against James II – do you remember? Judge Jeffreys and his ilk. There was a terrible fight here a bit later; young Marcus Nicholls, the son of the house, had fought for Monmouth at Sedgemoor and they captured him here in his own home. He was given a summary trial by some of the King’s officers in the dining room here at Camber according to my book and they sentenced him to be hanged.’ She paused, frowning for a moment. ‘I believe he is supposed to have stood up and shouted defiantly at his accusers something about giving his right arm to serve King Charles’s son and one of them said that in that case he would give Marcus the chance to give both.’ There was a long pause. Then she went on. ‘They cut off both his hands before they hanged him – somewhere in the outbuildings to the Court, I gather. According to the story he cursed King James and all his followers and said that if any of them or their descendants ever set foot in Camber again he would haunt them. They say he died very bravely, poor young man.’