Village Secrets (24 page)

The following morning Pat Duckett was banging on Kate’s door by five minutes past eight. Kate was already dressed and hurried to the door, toast in hand.

‘Ms Pascoe, you’ll have to come – the school’s been vandalised! Such a mess you never did see.’

Kate stood for a moment trying to take in what Pat was saying. ‘Vandalised? What do you mean?’

‘Everywhere’s had paint thrown over it, the piano music’s been torn to shreds, the books in the library corner ’ave all been torn up, and … Oh, it’s terrible – it’s as if a bomb’s dropped on it. They got in through the kitchen window – all the glass is in the sink. I’m so upset.’ Pat got her handkerchief out and blew her nose. ‘I’ve never seen such a mess in all my born days. If I’d known they were going to do it, I wouldn’t have wasted my time cleaning last night. I’ll call the police, shall I?’

‘Not yet. Let me see it first. I’ll just get my things.’

Pat waited for her and the two of them crossed the playground together and went in through the main door. One of the children had left his coat the previous night; the sleeves had been cut off and they lay on the floor of the passage.

The library corner was devastated. Some of the books had been thrown right the way to the other end of the hall, some had been dropped where they’d been torn up. The Maypole ribbons had been cut close to the top and what was left of them hung in silent condemnation. Chairs were overturned, and the piano stool had had its lid almost wrenched off; its contents were in shreds, strewn all over the floor. And over everything were huge splashes of the paint the children used for their artwork. Red. Blue. Green. Yellow. Black. Orange. Purple. Great vivid streaks of it thrown at random straight from the jars. The jars themselves had been smashed against the wall between the doors to Classes One and Two.

The glass window in Kate’s office door had been broken as though punched by a great fist. Kate stepped carefully through, broken glass littered the floor. Her filing cabinets hadn’t been touched, thank goodness. All those school records!

She came back out into the hall again to speak to Pat. ‘Don’t touch anything. I’ll ring the sergeant, though what he can do about it I don’t know. They haven’t exactly left their calling card, have they?’

Then, for some reason she didn’t know, Kate looked up at one of the hall windows. The windows were set so high that the children and the teachers could only see the tops of the trees at the edge of the playground. Whoever had painted on the window must have had a ladder or managed to climb up on top of the piano and reached from there. In each pane of glass except for the topmost ones, there was a crucifix, painted in black. But each and every one was upside down.

Pat drew in a deep breath which was audible all over the hall. ‘Oh, Good Lord! Ms Pascoe, what does that mean?’

Kate tried hard to disguise the fact that she was trembling. She cleared her throat. ‘We won’t call the police, I think. Better not.’

‘Oh, but we must! If you don’t, I shall. These children need protecting. Whatever would the parents say if we didn’t? There might be something here the police can detect that we can’t. Well? Shall I or will you?’

‘I think the thing to do is for us to clear up as best we can, and say nothing at all.’

‘The office won’t like that. What about the insurance? They can’t replace all this stuff without the insurance knowing the police have been. No, I’m phoning them now and then we’ll get in touch with the office when it opens. Better make it ten past nine as they won’t be there dead on time, I don’t expect – the lazy, idle beggars. Do ’em good to be at the sharp end for a while, then they’d know what life’s about. Come on, Ms Pascoe, don’t take on so. Once the police have been we’ll soon get this lot cleared up.’ Pat put her arm round Kate and gave her a hug. Kate was ‘white and shaking and unable to speak. She seemed rooted to the spot staring up at the upturned crosses.

‘I’m right, yer know, we’ve got to phone the sergeant.’

Kate nodded and Pat tiptoed amongst the broken glass in the office to look up the village policeman’s number in Mr Palmer’s old address book.

The sergeant was there within ten minutes. ‘Now then, what have we here?’ He was as appalled as Pat and Kate had been.

‘Well, this is a first, and not half. I’ve been ’ere fifteen years and this has never happened before.
Never
. They get it in Culworth but not here. That right, Pat?’

Pat nodded. She heard the sound of children’s voices. ‘Ms Pascoe, the children are arriving, and it’s raining now. What shall we do?’

Kate visibly pulled herself together. ‘I haven’t looked in the classrooms. Are they all right, Pat?’

‘Seem to be. Shall I put the first ones in your classroom then?’

‘Yes, please.’ Pat went off to see to the children.

‘Anything missing, Miss Pascoe?’

‘Difficult to tell, but I don’t think so. It’s just pure vandalism. Children, I expect.’

‘Them crosses upside down on the window – that’s not kids. No, them’s ominous they are.’

‘Just what is going on, Ms Pascoe? The welfare of these children and of the school is of the deepest concern to me. I want answers, please. Now what have you to say?’

Peter was sitting in the head teacher’s chair and Kate was perched on the edge of the washbasin. He folded his arms and waited. She hadn’t noticed before just how penetrating his eyes could be – a rich blue, not an icy Scandinavian blue, and they were looking straight into her soul, or so she felt. Kate had intended having the crosses washed off the windows before he saw them or, better still, before the news leaked out all round the village, but the pressure of keeping the children under restraint while Pat and she made everything safe had prevented her from climbing up to wipe them off. So now he’d seen them and he was utterly determined to find out what she knew.

Did she know, or was it only surmise? She knew all right. But just how little could she get away with telling him?

‘I really have no idea who’s done this. Just mindless vandalism, and it happened by chance to be our school.’

Peter looked reproachfully at her. ‘Please don’t take me for a pathetic nincompoop just because I wear a clerical collar. The two are not synonymous, believe me. It is not vandalism quite by chance at all. You know as well as I do that what has happened is
significant
. Crosses upside down have a special symbolic meaning, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’

‘Whoever did this has connections with black magic or witchcraft, or alternatively is trying to give that impression.’

Kate didn’t reply.

‘I am well aware you know far more than you are willing to tell me, Kate. I’m sorry, but you’ve made me very disappointed in you. As you are not willing to tell the truth, then I can only assume you are implicated in some way and I shall have to take steps. Quite what I don’t know, but something will be done about it, and don’t think I shall brush it all under the carpet and play a wait-and-see policy because I shan’t. Now get me a bucket of warm soapy water and a cloth and I’ll climb up and clean off the crosses. Being tall, I can easily do it from the top of the piano.’

Peter stripped off his cassock and, wearing only his shirt and trousers, climbed onto the piano with the bucket and cloth. The children leaving their classrooms to go out to play giggled when they saw him.

‘Give us a tune, Rector!’ Brian couldn’t resist saying.

‘Oooh, mind out, Rector. Don’t fall off!’

‘
When I’m cleaning winders
:’ Stacey thrummed an imaginary banjo.

Peter grinned down at them and pretended to flick water on them out of the bucket, then he grimly carried on wiping. Fortunately it was only the school water paint the vandals had used, so with only a small amount of energetic rubbing the windows quickly came clean.

Pat called up. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, Rector. I was going to get Barry to do it in his lunch-hour.’

‘Don’t you worry about that. Have you some window-cleaning stuff, Pat, then I can give them a good polish while I’m up here?’

‘That’s not for you to do, sir. The window cleaner’s due next week.’

‘I’d like to do it.’

‘Very well then, hold on a minute.’

By the time he’d got down from the top of the piano, the children were coming back into school from the playground. Kate was standing in the hall holding a mug of coffee for him. Peter took the mug from her and just before he drank from it, he said, ‘Well?’

‘Will you give me forty-eight hours?’

‘Then you’ll have something to say to me?’

Kate nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Very well. In the meantime I shall make my own enquiries.’

‘Thank you.’ Kate half-turned away and then turned back and said quietly, ‘Be careful.’

Peter raised his eyebrows at her but she had gone.

‘So there he is up on top of the piano cleaning the windows.’ Pat took another sip of her drink and then nudged Vera. ‘Tell yer what, he strips well. Can’t see nothing under that cassock he wears, but by jove, yer should have seen ’im! He looked great, he did. Muscles the size of cannon balls he has and such a broad back. Must be all that squash he plays.’

Willie disapproved. ‘That’s enough. It’s not decent to speak of the rector like that.’

‘Come on, Willie. He’s a man isn’t he, as he has well proved.’ Pat winked at Vera.

Vera giggled and gave Pat a dig in the ribs. ‘Shut up, Pat, show some respect!’

‘I ’ave a lot o’ respect for him. Can’t think of a worse job for a man to be doing. You ’ave to be devoted and not ’alf, to do what he has to do. He’s a wonderful chap, and I’d be the first to say so. He was lovely when Barry and me went to see him about fixing the wedding date. All I was saying was he looks great when he isn’t togged up.’

‘Tell us what happened then.’

‘Well …’ Pat launched herself on a description of the hall as she’d found it that morning. Vera and Willie were appalled. ‘But the worst was, the crosses were upside down. Before she saw that, she was all set for phoning for the sergeant, then she claps ’er eyes on them crosses and Bob’s yer uncle she changed her mind. Now why, I ask yer? Why should that be?’

Willie said, ‘I reckon she knows a thing or two and she’s protecting someone.’

Pat leaned forward across the table, pushed her glass aside and said in a low voice, ‘No, yer wrong there. Not
protecting
someone,
frightened
of someone ’d be nearer the mark.’

‘Frightened?’ Vera said loudly.

Pat gave her another sharp nudge. ‘Don’t shout. All the bar’ll know.’

‘It must mean something nasty-like, putting ’em upside down.’

Willie nodded sagely. ‘Something evil, I’ll be bound.’

They all three turned to look at the bar counter when they heard Ralph’s deep voice. ‘Good evening, Bryn. A double whisky if you please.’

‘Good evening, Sir Ralph. Still keeps cold, doesn’t it?’

‘It certainly does.’

‘Lady Templeton well?’

‘Yes, thank you, very well. She’s gone into Culworth with Celia Prior to an exhibition of quilting so I thought I’d come in here and catch up with the gossip.’

Bryn smiled and nodded his head in the direction of Pat’s table. ‘I’d sit over there then, if I were you. Pat’s in the thick of it about the vandalism at the school last night.’

Ralph paid for his drink and acknowledging Bryn’s advice, went across to join them.

‘Good evening. May I join you or would it be an intrusion?’

Willie moved along the settle and patted the seat next to him. ‘Sit ’ere, you’re more than welcome.’

‘Good evening, Vera, good evening, Pat.’ They both chorused together, ‘Good evening, Sir Ralph.’

His presence put rather a damper on Pat’s story and she found it difficult to carry on.

‘Your very good health.’ Ralph drank from his glass and then prompted her to expand on her story. ‘Bad news about the school today. I’m sorry.’

‘So was I. Took us two hours to clear up and all the children there and everything. All the piano music will have to go in the bin when the insurance has seen it, and most of the books in the library corner. Her on the mobile library ’ll have something say, I’ve no doubt. She swops our books over for us from time to time, yer see. It’ll have right depleted her stocks.’

‘Any idea who it was?’

‘No, none at all. The rector’s very upset. He cleaned the windows for us. Do you know what it means, Sir Ralph – crosses upside down?’

‘Work of the devil, I should think.’

Vera eagerly took him up on this. ‘Well, our Rhett said just the same. It’s upset him, it has. Thought he was going to start being all funny again, but he’s managed to master it.’

‘He thought so too, did he? Ever get to the bottom of what it was that upset him?’

‘No, all he’ll say is that it was the devil after him. He still keeps the cross round his neck that I bought him and he’s been real quiet since it all happened, not going out and that. Mind you, he’s that jiggered when he gets home after working outside and that in the gardens, he’s no energy for anything. Eating like a horse he is now. He’ll eat anything at all. Best day’s work the rector did, getting him that job. Doing him no end of good.’