Moon Rising (24 page)

Like every other visitor, Bram wanted to know why, when Robin Hood was supposed to be an outlaw of forests more than a hundred miles inland, he had given his name to this place on the coast. So I told him the forests were vast in ancient times, and anyway, the legendary outlaw had been summoned by the Abbot of Whitby to assist against a persistent band of Viking raiders. Robin and his men had defeated the raiders and earned not only a royal pardon but the right to reside by the sea at Bay, which place then took on his name to distinguish it from the older township, inland at Fyling. Nearby were the mounds known as Robin Hood's Butts, where his men had practised their archery.

With a teasing grin, Bram said the story was just about unlikely enough to be true. I was glad it appealed to him, but couldn't enjoy his good humour. I was too concerned about whom we might meet, and the closer we came to the Wayfoot, the more my anxiety increased. We passed the shops and the lifeboat house, pausing where the cobbled street became solid rock, a natural slipway into the sea. The tide was just on the ebb, beach and rocks still covered, but within the hour we would be able to walk along at the foot of the cliffs, searching for fossils and shells. It was the sort of thing visitors did, the sort of thing we could do without being remarked upon.

But Bram had different ideas. First of all, having spotted the Bay Hotel standing squarely on its rock overlooking the beach, he dismissed my objections and insisted on going in for coffee and hot buttered scones; and then, while perusing the scene from that vantage point, suggested we might hire a boat for an hour or so. It was something else visitors did, but local people did not.

I felt conspicuous approaching old Fred Poskitt to ask would he take us out for a trip on the water. But having decided to assume the role of local guide, I'd have felt worse letting Bram make the enquiries. As it was, I had to undergo old Fred's exclamations as to my sudden reappearance, all the enquiries regarding my health and present situation, and whether I'd been to see Mr Thaddeus. Of course I had to say I intended calling on him later, adding that I'd been very busy doing two or three jobs that summer which left me little time for visiting.

All the time I was silently cursing Bram, who was winking at me from behind Fred's back, but as the old man pulled away from the beach, he was soon distracted by the view. Mainly hidden from landward, Baytown made a pretty sight from the sea. I turned to look from time to time, although having no parasol I had to pull down the brim of my bonnet to shade my eyes. With my eyes half shut against the sun, I was aware that Fred was glancing behind occasionally, in the manner of all oarsmen; but then he looked, and looked again, and although his rhythm barely changed, we were both aware that something untoward was happening. Gulls were wheeling over a particular spot, their raucous cries drawing our attention to a group of three cobles just offshore.

‘Summat caught in t'nets, I'll be bound.' He rowed on, while Bram and I stared at the distant fishermen. Sunlight dancing off the waves made it impossible to see what had brought them together. ‘Storm last night,' Fred declared, ‘so't could be owt – bit o'wreckage, most like...'

A feeling of dread overwhelmed me. Bram and I had been talking earlier about tides and currents, about that southerly sweep from Whitby, and the knack wreckage had, within a few short hours, of fetching up in the Bay. Dragging my gaze away from the cobles, I asked about the quality and quantity of salmon being caught that season, and managed to keep on the subject of fish and fishing for several minutes. After that, I could endure it no longer, and made the increasingly choppy motion of the waves an excuse for asking him to return to the shore.

The three cobles were ahead of us, and by the time we beached I felt genuinely sick. I had a horrible suspicion as to that fouling of the salmon nets, and, from his glance at me, so did Bram. We saw people gathering by the Wayfoot, gazing at an ominous shape laid out on the slip.

‘Drowned man,' old Fred muttered flatly, as he grounded the boat and helped us ashore. Bile leapt to my throat as I saw the body. The worst thing was trying to pretend we did not know who it was. But I had to look, had to be sure. No good leaving it to Bram, who would have kept me behind him out of a misplaced sense of chivalry. He'd never set eyes on Magnus Firth, and I wanted to be certain.

It seemed to take an eternity to cross the beach. I felt my boots crunching on sand and shells, I felt the squelch of seaweed underfoot, but could not take my eyes from that group by the slipway. The gulls, determined and beady-eyed scavengers, were already alighting and taking a bold interest in the dead thing lying there.

Ghastly and somehow shrunken, his body looked so much smaller than I remembered, more like that of a dead seal than a man. But then I drew closer and saw his face, blanched, bloodless, streaked with weed and mucus, and marked by strange purple lines. From nose to mouth and between the brows, they made a hideous caricature of his face; but it was him, no doubt of that. Besides, I recognised his Whitby gansey, as would others too. Where so many drowned, the patterns were specific, to make identification easier.

I felt no grief for him, but had a light-headed moment of unreality in which I seemed to be looking down on everything from a great distance. I saw one of the herring gulls, a massive adult with a beak like bamboo, stride purposefully forward between the seaboots to take several vicious, darting pecks at the head before being kicked away by one of the fishermen.

Giddiness was replaced by horror, and as my gorge rose I had to turn aside to be sick. Bram was solicitous where I would have preferred to be ignored, but fortunately a constable from the police station arrived, distracting everyone's attention. Fred Poskitt took pity, said we should go before officialdom started asking questions no one could answer; otherwise, we'd be there for the rest of the day. Needing no second prompt, I thanked him and made for the slip.

Bram was shocked, like me wondering about that argument. We did not need words – one glance was enough. Was it an accident, we asked ourselves, or had Bella pushed him deliberately?

Left to himself, I think Bram would have lingered, no doubt returning to the hotel with other visitors to watch proceedings from the bar. I thought it morbid, but with a wry downturn of the lips, he said his friend Irving would have been fascinated. When in Paris, he liked to visit the morgue, to study the facial expressions of the dead.

Revolted, I strode away up the bank, needing distance and fresh air. There was a shop halfway, where I bought some mint imperials to sweeten my mouth. As Bram joined me, we continued uphill towards the station. With a swish of steam a train arrived; it departed, chuntering, and a few minutes later the road was busy with a lively throng of visitors. I longed to tell them to avoid the beach, but, as Bram said, for many the discovery of a dead body would be extra excitement. Nothing personal to them, nothing to get upset about – except as a reminder, perhaps, that death waits for everyone, and sometimes in unexpected places.

He was probably right, but I kept wondering why I felt so weak about the middle, as though the breath had been punched out of me. I'd feared Magnus Firth, even hated him a lot of the time. I might have been forgiven for being pleased at his death, but I was not even relieved; indeed, I was shocked, more fearful than ever. I could no longer fool myself that the storm and that violent argument were part of a nightmare. Seeing Magnus Firth dead on the beach proved it was real enough. And raised some frightening questions.

Suddenly, Bram gave a muffled exclamation and said something I barely caught until it was too late. He stopped, while I turned and glanced back in confusion, to see him smiling and raising his hat to two elegant ladies in pastel dresses and pretty hats. The elder of the two was a regular visitor to Whitby; I recognised her as the wife of Mr du Maurier, the artist. In the very same moment, to my dismay, she cast her eyes over me. I felt naked, seen through, judged and found wanting, and knew that no matter what Bram said or did to cover the situation, this woman would not believe him. In one glance she had seen what she wanted to see, and needed no further proof.

I think he sensed it as well as I did. For form's sake, however, he performed a belated introduction, as though I was merely the daughter of people with whom he was staying. I forced a smile and tipped the brim of my bonnet against the sun, while Bram went on to explain in sepulchral tones the tragedy we had just witnessed on the beach.

‘Most unfortunate, really, as Miss Sterne offered to be my guide today, and – well, it's been upsetting for her. So I'm escorting her back to Whitby.'

He did it very well, making me sound like the sheltered child of doting parents, but I fear Mrs du Maurier was too much a woman of the world to be convinced. By the time they were ready to move on, having agreed to explore Bay's tiny squares and footpaths before taking luncheon at the hotel, I was rigid with tension. As Bram raised his hat in farewell, I could see the band of sweat around his forehead. I wanted to clutch him, hang on to his arm, have him circle my waist in a declaration of unity, but instead we had to turn uphill and walk on, keeping a foot or more apart.

‘Would you credit it,' he muttered under his breath, ‘meeting those two
again?
Do you think they believed a word?'

I shook my head, unable to speak for a sudden fit of hysteria which insisted on breaking out every time I met his glance, or thought of the ordeal we had just been through. Not that it was funny in the least – indeed, the laughter felt very close to tears. It was cured, however, by another shock. As bad luck would have it, Bram was just buying our tickets for the train back to Whitby when I noticed a tall, white-haired gentleman in grey crossing the station forecourt.

Old Uncle Thaddeus.

With a frantic signal to Bram, I dived for the barrier. Fortunately, the ticket collector let me through on to the platform, where Bram, looking mystified, joined me a moment later. Just in time I was able to explain and issue hasty instructions. As Old Uncle Thaddeus appeared, I slipped into the ladies' waiting room until I heard the train chugging up the incline from Scarborough. I peered out, judging the moment when he would be too occupied in finding a free compartment to notice me boarding at the far end in Third Class. I dared not join Bram for fear of being spotted.

On disembarking at West Cliff station, again I hung back, wanting to be sure that Old Uncle was well on his way into Whitby before I headed along the road in the opposite direction. Bram was waiting for me on a public bench about a hundred yards away, considerably more cheerful than when we'd parted. He was delighted to have met the head of the family at last, and travelled with him on the train. Not only had he travelled in the same compartment, he had even engaged Old Uncle in conversation about his book on local history and folklore.

‘He reminds me of Tennyson with that beard and those features,' he said warmly, ‘and a little of the American poet Walt Whitman – although with those eyes, I swear he looks fiercer than either.'

‘He should be wearing a horned helmet,' I said tersely, ‘never mind a top hat.'

Bram laughed at the picture, which made me smile too and went some way towards curing the alarms we'd both experienced. On the way back to Newholm we even congratulated ourselves on our handling of one difficult situation – Old Uncle Thaddeus – and told each other that with regard to Mrs du Maurier there was absolutely no reason why she should doubt Bram's story, or the impression he had been at pains to put across. I don't suppose we were convinced by that, but we said it anyway. There seemed little more to be said about the body on the beach.

That night it seemed we had to take the path to Ruswarp, crossing the river to Cock Mill Woods. They were as eerie as ever, with sudden cracks and sighs in the darkness all around us. I clung to Bram's side, almost pushing him along; but even as I sighed with relief at leaving the woods behind, he insisted on taking a detour up to the abbey. I begged him not to go, yet somehow we fetched up by Tate Hill, where a funeral procession was gathering.

Dozens of fishermen in their woollen ganseys and great leather seaboots were awaiting the arrival of the coffin. When it came it was more like a stretcher, carried by four closely shrouded figures. I was confused, but when I looked, I saw that the body was that of Magnus Firth, slumped exactly as we had seen him on the slipway that morning. A blubbery, bloodless corpse, with those indelible lines on his face. And Bram was saying to me: ‘Is it the blood? The blood that makes the life? Davy Jones has taken his...'

He kept on and on repeating those words. And all the while I was begging him to hush as we followed the procession up the Church Stairs, pausing, as the bearers paused, at every long flat coffin rest.

‘Rest – rest? He'll never rest,' Bram whispered in my ear. ‘They'll have to stake him down...'

The church was dark, not a glimmer to guide or speed the departing soul. By moonlight the procession ringed the ancient building, then moved out along the cliff, to the very edge of the graveyard, where the vastness of the open sea beyond seemed endless and eternal. As we stood gazing, a great black hole appeared at our feet; the shrouded figures took hold of the body, swung it three times, and dropped it into the grave with a sickening thud.

At once there came an ominous rumbling, a shaking of the ground like an earthquake. It seemed the whole cliff was collapsing, but from the shadow of the ruins careered a massive old coach drawn by six black horses, plumes tossing in the moonlight, mouths flecked with foam, hooves pounding through the graveyard. They came to a snorting, rearing halt, leaving a path down which came several figures in dripping oilskins. I smelt the dank smell of the sea as they circled the open grave. As the dead man arose to join them, they returned to the coach. Moments later, the horses were off again and that sinister conveyance was thundering and rattling all the way down Church Stairs, to turn at the bottom along Haggerlythe. As we peered down from the graveyard, it plunged on, beyond the end of the street and over the cliff, to be lost in the foam below...