The Witch Maker (16 page)

Wilf shook his head. ‘In this village you don't ask questions – you accept things as they are.'

‘I wonder how your dad felt about it,' Woodend pondered. ‘Do you think he resented not bein' Witch Maker?'

Wilf laughed hollowly. ‘Why should he have? It's not much of a prize.'

‘Not to you, maybe, but, as you've already pointed out, he'd have put his heart an' soul into it.'

Wilf's fingers tightened around the chisel in his right hand. ‘What are you suggestin'?' he demanded, furious. ‘Are you sayin' my dad killed Uncle Harry because he was jealous of him?”

‘No,' Woodend said. ‘But I rather think you are.'

‘My dad's the gentlest man alive!' Wilf screamed. ‘An' if he was goin' to kill Uncle Harry because of jealousy, wouldn't he have done it years ago? When they were both still kids? When there was still a chance of him becomin' the Witch Maker himself?'

‘There was
never
any chance of him becomin' the Witch Maker,' Woodend said.

Both the words themselves and the certainty with which he had expressed them came as a surprise to him – such a surprise that he felt a shiver run down his back.

‘
There was never any chance of him becomin' the Witch Maker,
' he'd said.

But he hadn't always thought that way. Indeed, at the start of the investigation he had automatically assumed that Tom
would
replace his brother. So what had brought about this change in his way of thinking? What had made him so convinced that Tom had never had a chance?

The impression had to have come from the man himself, he decided. Not so much from what he had said, as from how he had acted. There was an aura about Tom Dimdyke which suggested that he knew that the one thing he desperately wanted – desperately
craved
for – had been denied him from the very start. He was not to be Witch Maker, and he had understood that from much the same age as his son had understood that he
would
be.

I
f Woodend had had to choose one word to describe Zelda Todd's caravan, that word would have been ‘cosy'. But it was not cosy like some of the gypsy caravans he'd seen – all exotic hangings and bright wood carvings. No, this was cosy in a front-parlour-in-Whitebridge way, with its Boots' prints hanging on the metal walls, and its shelves of knick-knacks which would surely have to be carefully stored in cotton wool every time the fair moved on.

Zelda herself was in her late thirties. Her hair was set in a sensible salon perm, and she was wearing a cardigan and skirt which could have been bought from any of the high-street chains. The only things which distinguished her from an ordinary housewife were a number of large and elaborate rings on her fingers, and the fact that when the sunlight caught her at the right angle, it gleamed on her three gold teeth.

‘You know why I'm here, don't you?' Woodend asked, settling himself down as comfortably as he could on the narrow bench which ran along one side of the caravan.

‘You're here to ask me about Stan Dawkins,' Zelda said.

‘That's right, I am.'

‘Well, I'm not sure there's much I can tell you. He was only with the fair for a few months before he was killed.'

‘Yet even in that short time, accordin' to your boss, you got to know him quite well,' Woodend countered.

Zelda sighed. ‘We were both young,' she said. ‘It was all very romantic – almost innocent.'

‘
Almost
innocent?' Woodend asked, pouncing on the word. ‘It seems to me that means that it wasn't innocent at all?'

Zelda shrugged. ‘You can believe what you like, Chief Inspector. Whatever it was, it's long past now.'

‘So are you sayin' you
didn't
sleep with him or that you
did
?' Woodend persisted.

‘You wouldn't have been quite as blunt as that if you'd been talking to a middle-aged woman back in Whitebridge, would you?' Zelda asked. ‘If I'd lived in a semi-detached house – rather than been a traveller – you'd have found a much nicer way to say it.'

Woodend couldn't remember the last time he'd blushed, but knew that he was blushing now.

‘You're right, of course,' he admitted. ‘I made an assumption you wouldn't be offended by my comin' directly to the point. But it was an assumption I had no right to make – an' I apologize for it. Still, you do see my dilemma, don't you?'

‘No. But maybe I will if you can be bothered to explain it to me.'

‘I'm tryin' to find out what happened twenty years ago. I'm tryin' to get into the mind of a man who's been a long time dead. An' part of understandin' what made him think like he did – an' act like he did – is your relationship with him. If you were keepin' company together in a serious way ...' He paused and smiled. ‘Is that tactful enough for you?'

Zelda smiled back. ‘It'll do.'

‘If you were keepin' company in a serious way, he might have acted differently to if you'd only been at the pressed flowers an' love notes stage. Do you see what I'm sayin'?'

‘No.'

Woodend wasn't sure she was being entirely honest with him. In fact, he suspected that she was using his early insensitivity as a weapon with which to keep him on the hop. This was a very intelligent woman he was dealing with here – and if he didn't watch himself, she'd run rings round him.

‘Perhaps it would help if I told you what I felt like when I was Stan's age,' he suggested.

‘Perhaps it would,' Zelda agreed.

Woodend sighed. ‘I was brought up in a different world to the one that the lads growin' up now know. In my day, you didn't “keep company in a serious way” with the lass you were plannin' to marry until you
were
married – an' that meant waitin' while you'd come out of your apprenticeship an' were earnin' a decent wage, so you could rent a house of your own.'

‘Go on,' Zelda encouraged.

‘Well, when a lad's eighteen or nineteen, he wakes up in the mornin' with a hard ... he wakes up feeling amorous. There's nothin' he can do about it. It refused to go away. An' somehow, for the lads of my generation, that seemed to make all the waitin' until we could afford to get married even more difficult to take.'

‘So what was the solution?'

‘There were always a few girls in any town who didn't want to wait for the weddin' ring to be placed on their fingers, an' if you bought them a few port an' lemons on a Friday night, there was the chance they'd “keep company in a serious way” with you on a purely temporary basis.'

‘Is that what you did, Chief Inspector?' Zelda asked.

For the second time in just a few minutes, Woodend felt himself starting to flush, which – he was well aware – was exactly what she'd intended.

‘I ... er ... considered it,' he said.

‘But you didn't follow it through?'

‘Well, no, I didn't,' Woodend admitted, almost as if he were ashamed of himself.

‘I didn't think so,' Zelda Todd told him. ‘Can we get back to Stan Dawkins now?'

‘Aye, we'd better,' Woodend agreed. ‘You see, the way my mind is workin' is that Stan might have gone in the village in search of one of them port-an'-lemon girls an'—'

‘He didn't.'

‘... an' that the local lads might have given him a worse beatin' than they intended to, and killed him.'

‘That's certainly what Mr Masters thinks,' Zelda said. ‘And it's what the police
probably
thought at the time, though they'd never have admitted it. But it's not what happened.'

‘How can you be so sure.'

‘I just am,' Zelda Todd said evasively. ‘Anyway, what's that got to do with the murder of the man yesterday?'

‘I'm not sure it's got
anythin
' to do with it. I'm just makin' general inquiries.'

‘No, you're not,' Zelda Todd contradicted. ‘Shall I tell you what you're
really
thinking?'

‘Will that involve readin' my palm, or takin' out your crystal ball?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘This is what you're really thinking,' Zelda said, ignoring the comment, and making Woodend feel ashamed of himself all over again. ‘You're thinking that Stan was murdered by some of the lads in Hallerton, and it's been a festering wound in the side of this funfair for twenty years. So when we finally come back, some of our lads decide they've finally got an opportunity to take their revenge. Now, they either think they know who killed Stan, or they decide that – on the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth – it doesn't matter which of the villagers is killed, as long as it's one of them. How am I doing?'

‘You're nearly right,' Woodend admitted. ‘Except that if it did happen that way, I don't think the killer necessarily had to be someone who was with the fair the last time.'

‘No?' Zelda Todd asked, expressionlessly.

‘No,' Woodend said. ‘Most violent killers are youngish men, an' anybody who was here the last time must be well into middle age by now.'

‘So?'

‘So fairground folk are a tight bunch – an' they have what might be called a collective sense of honour. Somebody wanted Harry Dimdyke killed – but that doesn't have to be the same person who actually carried out the murder. In other words, one of the older folk might have talked one of the younger folk into doin' the killin' for him. Or for
her
.'

‘You think I arranged it?' Zelda Todd asked.

‘I didn't say that. But if the theory that Harry Dimdyke was killed by somebody from the funfair is correct, then that certainly makes you one of the main suspects.'

‘I swear on my daughter's life that if anybody from the fair was involved, I know nothing about it,' Zelda said.

‘An' I'm
almost
certain I believe you,' Woodend said. He rose to his feet, being careful not to bang his head on the caravan roof. ‘It's been nice talkin' to you, Mrs Todd.'

‘
Miss
Todd,' Zelda corrected him.

‘
Miss
Todd,' Woodend amended.

Head bent, he made his way to the door. On the threshold, just before stepping out into the bright sunshine, he stopped and turned around. ‘By the way, there is one more thing.'

‘Yes?'

‘I asked you if you were keepin' serious company with Stan.'

‘I remember.'

‘But somehow, you managed to avoid answerin' one way or the other.'

Zelda Todd laughed, and the sunlight caught her gold teeth again. ‘Yes, I did, didn't I?' she said.

E
ven at that late stage in the afternoon, the light which flooded in from outside was almost blinding. So for a few seconds after the barn door swung open, all Wilf Dimdyke could make out was two dark shapes – one broad and solid, the other slimmer and almost insubstantial. Then the two figures advanced into the barn, and Wilf saw the new arrivals were his father and a young woman.

Tom Dimdyke had his hand on the woman's shoulder. There was nothing sexual about the contact – but neither was it entirely casual. There seemed, in fact, to be both avuncular concern
and
a certain amount of control in the way that the large palm rested on the slim shoulder.

The woman herself seemed a little unsure of how
to react. Her stance suggested, if anything, that while she was not exactly reluctant to be there, she was not quite sure that she wanted to be, either.

Wilf thought about saying something, then decided against it. Instead, he picked up his chisel and mallet again, and began to gently shave the edge of Meg's thigh bone.

‘You'll know Lizzie Philips, won't you?' his father said.

Of course he knew her. How could he
not
know her? They were from the same village – which was the only village in the world which mattered to either of them. They had gone to the same village primary school. And when age – and the law of the land – had forced them to attend an alien secondary school in the nearest small town, they had spent their breaks huddled together in the playground – along with all the other children from Hallerton.

‘Lizzie's gettin' married soon,' Tom said, with a joviality which didn't quite work.'

‘Is she?' Wilf asked.

‘She is indeed,' his father replied, as if answering an eager enquiry rather than an indifferent one. ‘She's gettin' wed to your cousin Sid – so she'll be part of the family!'

If an outsider – Woodend, for example – had been listening, Wilf thought, he'd have assumed from Tom's enthusiasm that Sid was his nephew, and that the two families were never out of each other's houses. But that wasn't the case at all. Sid Dimdyke wasn't a
first
cousin. He wasn't a
second
cousin – or even a
third
cousin. Part of the clan, certainly, but definitely not part of the family. So why was his dad getting so worked up about this marriage?

‘Well, what have you got to say about that, son?' Tom asked.

Not a lot, Wilf told himself. But aloud he said, ‘Congratulations, Lizzie.'

‘It's Sid you want to be congratulatin', not Lizzie,' Tom Dimdyke said. ‘Like I said, he's a lucky man. There's plenty of lads in the village who wish they were in his shoes on his weddin' night.'

Lizzie giggled. ‘Oh, do be quiet, Mr Dimdyke,' she said.

‘I'm only speakin' the truth,' Tom Dimdyke said firmly.

At school, Sid had always been a bit of a drip, Wilf remembered – the sort of lad the playground bullies would naturally have picked on even if he
hadn't
come from Hallerton. But if Lizzie was marrying him, there had to be a reason for it. So maybe, while he himself had been totally absorbed in the Witch, Sid had grown up a little.