The Witch Maker (9 page)

‘No.'

‘Would you like me to give you a big clue?'

For a second Woodend was tempted to tell him to stuff his clue, then curiosity overcame him.

‘Aye, go on,' he said.

The vicar's smile was now so wide it looked as if it might crack his face in half.

‘Were you ever in the Army?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘In peacetime? Or during the war?'

‘Durin' the war.'

‘Then even if you're a very dim detective indeed, you shouldn't need a better clue than that.'

Of course he bloody shouldn't, Woodend agreed silently, as enlightenment dawned.

His war had been bad enough, but the one which had preceded it had been even worse. One million young British men had died fighting in the Great War – the so-called ‘war to end all wars'. The soldiers had been slaughtered like cattle, and there was no village in the country – not even the tiniest hamlet – which had not lost some of its sons.

And there was no village – not even the tiniest hamlet – which did not have its own war memorial.

Some of the memorials were large and imposing. Some were very unprepossessing monuments indeed. The richer parishes had used marble, the poorer an altogether more modest stone.

But they all had one!

Except Hallerton!

‘What happened to the cenotaph?' Woodend asked. ‘Was it taken away at some point?'

‘As far as I know, there's never been one
to
take away. Certainly, there's no mention of one in any of the church records.'

‘That's incredible,' Woodend said. ‘I wouldn't have thought it possible.'

The vicar smirked. ‘There are more things on heaven and earth than are ever dreamed of in a dull policeman's philosophy,' he said.

H
ettie Todd sat on the steps of the caravan she shared with her mother, idly watching the fairground workers putting up the rides. She loved the life which went with belonging to the funfair. She loved the aroma of outdoor cooking, and the strong smell of hot diesel from the generators. She loved the bright flashing lights, and the loud tinny music. It didn't bother her to be always on the move, because it was the people you shared the space with – not the particular space you happened to be occupying that night – which really mattered.

The men had been hard at it all day, she thought. They didn't care that there had been a brutal murder only a few hundred yards from where they toiled. They wouldn't have reacted any differently if the whole village had been massacred. They had a job to do, and what went on beyond the boundaries of the fair was no concern of theirs.

Their job – their whole function in life – was to create a fantasy world in which to envelop all those who came to visit it. Create it – and then destroy it. Because only a few days after it had gone up, it would come down again, and the funfair would move on, leaving behind it only the echoes of laughter to prove that it had ever been there.

Hettie smiled, self-mockingly.

Create a fantasy world! Echoes of laughter!

She might see it like that, but the men certainly didn't. To them, the machinery of the fairground – the exotic world which they built and then demolished – was nothing more than bolts to be slid in place and nuts to be tightened. Fairground folk might have the power to
create
an escape from reality, but within themselves they were the most practical, down-to-earth people in the whole world. And there was good reason for that – for while outsiders might view them as nothing but idle gypsies and slackers, they knew just how hard their lives could be.

It sometimes puzzled Hettie that she should muse and contemplate in this way. Where did these strange thoughts which seemed to fill her mind come from? Why did she alone – of all those involved with the fair – seem to think them?

She searched her own past – not for the first time – for some clue as to her singularity.

She had been born on the road. But that, in itself, was not unusual. Half the folk working on the fairground had come into the world that way, for though nature imposed its own timetable on pregnant women, the carnival season put in place an even more demanding one.

Then there was the fact that she was illegitimate. She'd once heard one of the men refer to her as ‘Zelda Todd's bastard', but she hadn't really taken offence. ‘Bastard', within the world of the carnival, was no more than a descriptive term. There were, as everyone was well aware, plenty of other bastards working on the fair.

Nor had her upbringing been radically different to anyone else's. During the season, she and all the other kids had worked all the hours that the god of carnivals had sent. Out of season, they'd all camped on whatever piece of land some local council had grudgingly set aside for them, and attended whichever of the local schools could come up with the least plausible excuse for refusing to admit them.

Had it been this schooling which had made her different? Again, she didn't think so. She had quite enjoyed her snippets of education – certainly more than most of the carnival children, who had no desire to be thought of as ‘scholars' – but she had felt no more of a sense of loss than the others did when the time came to get on the road again.

So what
was
the reason she was so odd? She wished she knew. She really wished she knew!

It was as these thoughts ran through her mind she saw – with a sinking heart – that her mother was standing by the Caterpillar, and was in deep conversation with Pat Calhoun.

She had no doubt what the conversation was about. Her mother wanted her married. Or at least – since carnival folk did not set much store by bits of paper – Zelda wanted her
attached
.

‘You're gettin' old,' her mother never tired of telling her.

‘I'm not old at all, Mam!'

‘When I was your age—'

‘I was already on the way. I know that! But it doesn't make any difference. I'm not ready!'

But would she
ever
be ready?

True, Pat Calhoun was her
mother's
choice, but she had to admit that he wasn't a
bad
choice.

He was tall.

He was well built.

He could be called handsome, in a sandy-Irish sort of way.

Though he could get violent when he'd had a few drinks, which of the carnival men couldn't? And unlike a few of the other men, he had never turned his violence on a woman.

So all in all, her mother had not made a bad choice for her. And yet ... and yet ... somehow it didn't feel right.

She had been expecting her mother and Pat to turn and look towards the caravan, as they usually did when they were talking about her. But they didn't. Instead they were gazing intently in the other direction – towards the village. And now she considered it more carefully, they didn't have their normal time-to-discuss-the-Hettie-problem-again faces on, either.

There was none of Zelda's usual persuasive cajoling in her expression – ‘
Hettie knows, deep down, that it's you she really wants, Pat. All you have to do is let her know that you're serious
.'

Nor was there any of Pat's diffidence in his – ‘
Hettie's a free spirit, Zelda. You should know that. All I can do is wait. If she makes her mind up that she wants me, she knows where I am
.'

No, there was none of that at all. Neither looked exasperated with the other, as they usually did. What they
did
look was worried!

Zelda pointed in the direction of the village green. Pat shook his head. Zelda pointed again, jabbing her finger violently through the air this time. Pat looked at the ground, scuffed his feet, and said nothing.

Now what the bloody-buggering hell was that all about? Hettie wondered.

I
t was well past six o'clock when Woodend noticed the old handloom weaver's cottage which stood in splendid isolation on the other side of the Green to the pub. It was the fact that it looked well cared for – but not lived in – that intrigued him, but it was not until he got closer to it that the mystery of what it was – and why it was there – was solved.

The answer came in the form of a small sign – skilfully hand-painted but still obviously amateur – which was mounted on the wall next to the door.

‘The Meg Ramsden Museum,' Woodend read aloud.

There were no opening times listed, nothing about the cost of admission. If it was being run for a profit, then whoever was behind it was keeping very quiet about the fact.

The door was ajar, if not exactly open. Woodend pushed it, and it swung further, to reveal a long room which must once have been a handloom-weaving gallery. That it
was
a museum was obvious from the exhibits, which were displayed in free-standing cabinets or else mounted on the walls. Woodend looked around for the inevitable box which would invite voluntary contributions, and could find none.

‘They don't want your money,' said a voice.

Woodend glanced in the direction it had come from. Standing at the other end of the gallery, partly hidden by one of the displays, was a tall, bald man in his fifties, dressed in a heavy wool jacket with leather elbow patches.

‘What was that you said?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘I was merely remarking they don't want your money. They don't really want
you
, if truth be told. The only reason they open the museum to the public at all is because, if they didn't, it would be like admitting that they'd got something to be ashamed of. And they'd never do that.'

Woodend took a few steps further into the room. The other man was wearing a white-and-green checked shirt and knitted brown tie beneath his jacket, and there were a number of tiny holes in the shirt which indicated that he was a pipe smoker. He was, Woodend guessed, either a schoolteacher or university lecturer with a keen interest in local history.

‘Are you from the police?' the man asked.

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed.

‘Thought you must be.'

‘An' why's that?'

‘Because you're certainly not a local. Nor do you have the look of a casual sightseer who's wandered in here by accident and is now wondering if it's worth the effort staying for a while.'

‘I take it you're not a local either,' Woodend said.

The other man laughed. ‘Quite correct. I'm an outsider too. John Tyndale's the name.'

‘Charlie Woodend.'

‘Yes, I'm an outsider, all right. I was born and raised not ten miles from here, but to the people of Hallerton, that's about as foreign as coming from Outer Mongolia.'

‘Aye, I got the impression it was a bit of a tight-knit community,' Woodend said.

‘That's not the word for it,' Tyndale told him. ‘If you examine the history of most villages in this area, what you'll be tracing is a gradual decline. And then you come across Hallerton!' He paused. ‘But I don't want to bore you,' he added, half-apologetically.

‘I'm not bored at all,' Woodend assured him. ‘I'd be very interested to hear what you've got to say.'

Tyndale smiled with the gratitude of someone well used to seeing others flee when he embarked on his particular obsession.

‘The decline began in the eighteenth century,' he said. ‘The aristocracy back then suddenly decided that they could make more money out of farming their land as large-scale units than they could from renting out small pieces of it to the local peasants. What followed was what was called the Enclosure Movement. It created a lot of landless labourers – and not only in Lancashire, but all over the country. The condition of the poor had never been very wonderful, but suddenly it had become a great deal worse. Many villages literally died.'

‘But not Hallerton?' Woodend said.

‘But not Hallerton,' the other man agreed. ‘A lot of the people lost their livelihood, but they somehow managed to scrape by and stay where they were. Then we come to the second wave in the depopulation, if I can call it that – the Industrial Revolution which occurred in the nineteenth century. Britain was suddenly the workshop of the world, and Lancashire, with its cotton mills, coal miles and iron works, was the very centre of that workshop. Towns sprang up all over the place, and the inhabitants of those towns – as well as the workers in the factories which were responsible for their growth – were drawn mainly from the countryside.'

‘An' that wave managed to miss Hallerton as well?'

‘Indeed it did. If you examine the registry in most villages around here, you can probably trace one or two families back three or four hundred years. In Hallerton, you can trace them all back.'

‘Do you mean “all”?' Woodend asked, with a smile. ‘Or do you just mean “most”?'

‘I mean
all
,' Tyndale said emphatically. ‘A lot of these rural areas were cut off from the outside world for most of the winter, so it was quite a common practice for your son to marry your neighbour's daughter. But in Hallerton, it was more than common. There are very few examples of Hallertonians marrying outsiders. Almost none, in fact.'

‘So Meg Ramsden's descendants still live in the village.'

‘Not having any children of her own, there are no
direct
descendants,' Tyndale said, ‘but I think it would be fair to say that Meg's bloodline runs through everyone here.'

‘No children of her own?' Woodend repeated. ‘Wasn't that unusual in those times.'

‘Very,' Tyndale agreed. ‘And that fact alone may have had a direct bearing on her fate.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, Point One: if she'd had the distraction of children, she might never have become the woman she
did
become. And Point Two: the villagers would probably never have burned her if she'd been a mother. Of course, if you take Point One to its logical conclusion, Point Two becomes largely irrelevant, because they'd never have considered burning her anyway.'