Look to the Lady (20 page)

‘What is ut, boy?' whispered Peck. The dog turned silently from the path and disappeared into the darkness, to return a moment or so later with something hanging from his jaw. The youth squatted down on his heels and lit a match. The tiny flare showed the great yellow dog with a young rabbit in his mouth. The animal was quite dead, a piece of wire drawn tightly round its neck.

Peck took it from the dog and the Professor produced his torch.

‘Ah,' whispered the boy contemptuously as he threw the rabbit down. ‘There's someone about don't fear no ghosts. That ain't been snared above a 'alf-hour.'

He rose to his feet, and with the dog walking obediently behind him set off once more into the silent depths of the wood. The path was one left by woodcutters in the winter, and led directly through the scrub into open space beyond.

Pharisees' Clearing was uncanny enough in the day-time, but at night it was frankly awe-inspiring. The narrow stony strip between the woods was ghostly in the starlight, and here, hemmed in between the long line of trees, the air was suffocating.

The Professor nudged Mr Campion's arm. ‘Almost too good to be true,' he murmured.

Campion nodded. ‘So much for background,' he whispered. ‘This is the place and the hour all right. When does the performance begin?'

But if Campion could be light-hearted, Mr Peck was certainly not in the same mood. As they halted in the shadows on the edge of the clearing his voice came to them husky and alarmed.

‘Reckon this is the place. You draw that under 'ere and I'll catch un,' he murmured, indicating the oak beneath which they stood. Then he disappeared like a shadow into the blackness, and they heard the soft scrape of his rubber shoes on the bole of the tree. He climbed like a monkey, no mean feat in the darkness with two stone of ropes tied round him, and they heard him grunt softly as he pulled himself up. A few moments later a whisper came from just above their heads.

‘I'll rest 'ere time that comes.'

‘Where's the dog?' said the Professor softly.

‘That's at the foot of the tree. That won't move.'

Mr Peck seemed to have made his arrangements complete.

‘What does A do now?' murmured Mr Campion.

There were faint, almost indetectable sounds all round them in the wood, minute rustlings like stifled breathings in the dark. Neither was insensible to the eeriness of the moment, but each man had his own particular interest in the matter.

‘I think,' the Professor whispered, ‘that if you'll work round the left side I'll go round the right. I got my photograph from the point where the Colonel's woodpath reaches the clearing. If we all three wait at equal distances round the oval, our quarry can't very well escape us, if it appears at all.'

‘I wish I'd brought my twig of rowan,' said Mr Campion with apparent feeling, as he set off in the direction indicated. He moved along the side of the wood, keeping well in the shadow of the overhanging trees. Apart from the breath-taking moment when he disturbed a hare at his very feet, there were no thrills until he reached a spot about thirty yards, or so he judged, from the entrance to the Tower Wood. Here he sat down in the long grass and waited.

From the absolute silence in the clearing he guessed that the Professor had reached his point of vantage somewhere across the faintly lit stretch opposite him. The thought that there were three men and a dog watching anxiously for something unknown to appear among those loose stones and sparse clumps of coarse grass in front of him made the scene slightly more terrifying. He hunched his knees to his chin and composed himself for a long wait. He had not underestimated his vigil.

The minutes passed slowly. Once or twice a sleepy squawk sounded from the wood behind him, and, as his ears became attuned to the quietness, somewhere far away in the Tower garden a nightjar repeated its uncouth cry like an old-fashioned policeman's rattle.

And then, for the first time, Mr Campion became conscious that someone was moving clumsily in the depths of the wood behind him. He turned his head and listened intently. There was certainly nothing supernatural about this. The movements were those of a man, or some animal quite as heavy. For a minute or so he was puzzled, but a single sound reassured him, the sharp metallic click of a spring trap being set.

He listened to the rustling going farther and farther away, with occasional pauses as other traps were set. Someone evidently paid very little respect to the horror which had killed Lady Pethwick and driven Lugg into hysterics.

Once again all was silent. The illuminated hands on his watch showed half-past twelve. He sighed and settled down once more. His face in the darkness still wore his habitual expression of affable fatuity. His eyes were half-closed.

‘Angels and ministers of grace defend me, I hope,' he remarked under his breath, and turned up his coat to obscure the whiteness of his collar.

The oppressive warmth of the night was giving place to the first cool breath of dawn when his senses, which had gradually become drowsy, were startled into tingling life by one of the most terrible sounds he had ever heard. It was not very loud, but its quality made up for any deficiency on that score.

It was a noise that could only be described as a gentle howling, coming swiftly through the trees, and he was reminded unpleasantly of Mr Lugg's description, ‘the sort of song an animal might sing'. Not even among native races, of whom he had some little experience, had he ever heard anything quite so blood-curdling. Quite the most terrifying point about the noise was that the sound was rhythmic. It rose and fell on a definite beat, and the pitch was high and quavering.

The sound came nearer and nearer, and quite suddenly he saw the figure.

It had advanced not from the Colonel's path, as they had expected, but from the narrow opening at the northern end of the clearing, and now stood silhouetted against the lightening sky.

Mr Campion rose to his feet, only vaguely aware of his numbed and aching limbs. The creature, whatever it was, certainly had points of elemental horror about it.

It was immensely tall, as Lugg had said, and almost inconceivably thin. Long caprious horns crowned its head, and its body showed grotesque and misshapen.

It advanced down the clearing, still wailing, and Campion caught a clearer glimpse of the front of it as it came nearer.

He felt suddenly sick, and his scalp tingled.

Almost at the same moment the creature came to windward of him, and he was aware of the aroma of putrefaction, strong and unclean in his nostrils.

He darted out of his hiding-place. The figure halted and turned towards him. As it did so he caught sight of a single dead eye, blank and revolting.

Mr Campion stood his ground, and the figure came nearer. From somewhere beyond it Peck's dog had begun to howl piteously. Mr Campion gave way cautiously, edging round towards the sound, allowing the apparition to gain a little upon him as he did so. Every time it came a step forward he retreated, leading it unerringly towards the trap.

Suddenly it made a rush at him, and he turned and ran for the opening, his long thin figure a picture of terror in the night. The horned thing padded after him.

He passed the whimpering dog, and for a giddy moment the creature seemed almost upon him. There was a rustle above his head and something seemed to hover for an instant in the air like a great bat. Then the weighty stack net dropped over his pursuer and a terrible half human howl went shattering through the leaves.

‘Call off the dog!' shouted the Professor as he came running up. ‘For God's sake call off the dog!'

—

A
S HE
levelled his torch, the Professor's hand shook violently.

The dog, after its first frenzied attack, crouched cowering by the tree trunk, while Mr Campion bent over the struggling mass in the heavy net.

The almost blinding beam of light after the intense darkness seemed paradoxically to add to the confusion. The creature, whatever it was, had ceased to struggle and lay motionless in the net, shapeless and hairy under the tangle of ropes.

The fact that the ‘ghost' actually lay captured at their feet brought home to both men how slender their hopes of success had been the previous evening. Yet there it lay, still incomprehensible, a grotesque and reeking mass.

Peck dropped to the ground from his branch, and they caught a glimpse of his face, pale, and glistening with great beads of sweat.

‘Lumme,' he kept whispering to himself pathetically. ‘Lumme.'

The Professor bent over the net, and when he spoke there was more excitement than horror in his tone.

‘I knew it,' he said. ‘I'm right. This is one of the most remarkable survivals I've ever heard of. Do you know what we've got here?'

‘A woman,' said Mr Campion.

‘A witch,' said the Professor. ‘Look out – gently now. I'm afraid she has collapsed.'

Very carefully he began to lift off the net. Young Peck, fighting his terror with what was, in the circumstances, real heroism, set about lighting the hurricane with hands that trembled uncontrollably.

Mr Campion and the Professor gently removed the tangle of cords. The figure on the ground did not move.

‘Lands sakes! I hope the shock hasn't killed her!' There was real concern in the Professor's voice. ‘Bring that lantern over here, will you, Peck? That's fine. Now hold this torch.'

And then, as the light fell uninterruptedly upon their captive, the horror of Pharisees' Clearing lay exposed.

In many respects it differed from the conventional ghost, but chiefly it did so in the fact that none of its horror was lost when it was clearly seen.

The figure was that of a woman, old, and scarcely clad at all save for great uncured strips of goatskin draped upon her gaunt yellow form. Her headdress was composed of the animal's skull to which the hair still clung, and her face was hidden by a mask of fur, slits having been cut for the eye-holes. Her bony arms appeared to have been smeared with blood and the effect was unspeakable.

The Professor bent down and removed the headdress, picking it up gingerly by the horns. Mr Campion turned away for a moment, sickened. When he looked again a fresh shock awaited him. The woman's head lay exposed, and above her closed eyes her forehead seemed to stretch back unendingly. She was perfectly bald.

Young Peck's voice, husky with relief, answered the question in both their minds.

‘'Tis owd Missus Munsey,' he said. ‘The old 'un said she were a witch, but I never took no heed on ut. Lumme, who'd 'a' thought ut? I never believed them tales.'

The Professor produced his travelling rug. ‘Since we know who it is, it makes it much simpler,' he said. ‘Where does she live? Alone, I suppose?'

‘She lives with 'er son, sir – Sammy,' put in Mr Peck, whose courage was reviving apace at the discovery that the ‘spirit' had human substance. ‘'E's a natural. They ain't neither on 'em right.'

‘Can you lead us to the cottage?' said Campion. ‘Is it far? We shall have to carry this woman.'

‘No, that ain't no distance. One thing, that's some way from any other house.'

The Professor in the meantime had succeeded in disengaging the old woman from her grisly trappings and had wrapped her in the rug.

‘It occurs to me,' he said, ‘that if we could get this poor thing to her house before we attempt to revive her it may be better for all concerned. The discovery of herself still out here surrounded by her regalia – and us – might send her raving.'

Young Peck, who had stolen off some moments before, now reappeared with a light wooden hurdle, part of the boundary fence between the two estates. ‘I thought I seen this,' he observed. ‘Now, if you're ready, sirs, our best way is to set 'er on 'ere and cut through the clearin'. It ain't above a 'alf mile.'

They lifted the repellent figure on to the rough stretcher and set out. Since the first outburst no one had spoken. This extraordinary finish to an extraordinary expedition had silenced them for the time being. Peck took the head of the procession. The hurricane clanked at his side, throwing a fitful distorted light on his path. His dog ran behind him, beneath the hurdle, and the Professor and Campion brought up the rear, stumbling along on the uneven ground.

For some time the Professor seemed lost in thought, but as the track led them up through the northern exit from the clearing he glanced at Campion.

‘Do you get it?' he said.

‘Vaguely,' said Campion. ‘I shouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.'

‘I suspected it all along,' the older man confided. ‘The goat horns, and those yarns of the curious chantings put the idea in my head at once. It's an interesting case. There hasn't been one approaching it for fifty years that I know of. It's an example of a blind spot. Modern civilization goes on all over the country – all over the world – and yet here and there you come across a patch that hasn't been altered for three hundred years. This woman's a lunatic, of course,' he added hastily, as he became aware of Peck's large red ears strained back to catch every word. ‘But there's no doubt at all in my mind that she's descended from a regular line of practising witches. Some of their beliefs have been handed down to her. That costume of hers, for instance, was authentic, and a chant like that is described by several experts. She's a throw-back. Probably she realizes what she's doing only in a dim, instinctive sort of fashion. It's most interesting – most interesting.'

‘Yes, but
why
?' said Campion, who was more rattled than he cared to admit. ‘Had she any motive? Did any one put her up to it?'

The Professor considered. ‘We must find that out,' he said. ‘I should say, since her nocturnal trips were so frequent, she must have had some very powerful reason. But doubtless that will emerge. Of course,' he went on almost hopefully, ‘this may have gone on for years. Her mother may have done the same sort of thing. You'd be astonished to discover what a lot of witchcraft has been practised in this country, and my own, in the last three hundred years. It wasn't so long ago that the authorities stopped burning 'em. A couple of years before I was born, D.D. Home was expelled from Rome as a sorcerer. A lot of it survives to this day in one superstition or another. You come across extraordinary stories of this sort in the police court reports in local newspapers.'