Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

It was the effect of the mist on the moor, that was why he was so jumpy. If there had been a ghost, he would have seen something. Apparitions appeared . It wasn’t logical to worry about a sound.

Logical! Logic was a word Simon had grown to detest when he was schooled by the Canons at Crediton. They taught him philosophy, grammar and logic, or tried to, but Simon, who could pick up and comprehend Latin easily, who could write and read with facility, found logic impossible. It was partly this that persuaded him he had no vocation for the priesthood. Not that he minded. He was happy to aim at becoming the steward to his Lord Hugh de Courtenay, as his father had been.

Baldwin would treat any suggestion that there had been a ghost crying to him with amused contempt, and Simon wasn’t prepared to leave himself open to an accusation of credulity. Instead he took a deep breath, then walked into the inn.

Coroner Roger glanced up as he entered. ‘Good Christ, man, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost!’

‘No!’ Simon said, perhaps a little louder and more emphatically than was necessary, for several people in the room looked up. He repeated his denial more quietly. ‘No, but I feel in sore need of a pint of wine. Is the taverner about?’

‘His daughter is,’ Coroner Roger said, and bellowed, ‘ Martha! Baldwin’s with Jeanne and they’ll be coming here for some supper. God knows what the cook will produce, but I suppose needs must…’

‘Did you have any luck in South Zeal?’ Simon asked, taking a large pot.

‘No. No one there knows anything. The lot of them could have had their tongues ripped out and it wouldn’t have made a difference,’ the Coroner said gloomily. ‘What I am supposed to do when confronted with useless, silent halfwits, I do not know.’

‘You are supposed to continue questioning them, Coroner,’ Baldwin said, entering with Jeanne. He grinned at Roger, then gave Simon a speculative glance. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ Simon said, moving to make space for Jeanne. ‘How are you, my Lady?’

She smiled at his enquiry. ‘I am well. This is a terribly depressing place, though.’

‘The whole vill is silent. Someone must know something,’ Baldwin said. ‘I cannot believe that every peasant here is determined to hold his tongue out of fear of our rank, yet they are resolute in their dumbness.’

‘It is almost as though the whole vill shares in a secret,’ Jeanne said.

‘Maybe they’ve moved a parish boundary and fear someone will notice,’ Simon scoffed.

Baldwin mused. ‘The messenger’s suggestion of cannibalism was an embarrassment to the Reeve. Also, the Reeve had little choice in sending for the Coroner, do not forget, because Miles Houndestail was with the two girls when Aline’s body was discovered. What if other deaths were not reported and the whole vill knew? Surely everyone would keep silent on the matter. Just as they are.’

‘You suggest that there might be more dead?’ Coroner Roger said, appalled.

‘There could be another reason for their silence,’ Simon suggested.

‘Name it!’

‘You don’t believe in them, but what if the people thought that there was a vampire?’

‘Oh, so we are back to vampires!’ Baldwin scoffed.

‘You don’t believe in ghosts?’ the Coroner asked.

Baldwin considered. ‘Demons can certainly reinvigorate a dead body. That is why the dead must be protected, so that demons do not take corpses and animate them to scare people, but I find stories of vicious ghosts persecuting an area entirely unbelievable.’

‘The dead can return,’ Jeanne said quietly. ‘I remember many stories from when I lived in France.’

‘Come, Baldwin,’ Simon said. ‘Put aside your prejudice for a moment and look at it from the perspective of the people here. If they feared a vampire, they would surely hide the fact. They might even seek to conceal his victims, from shame.’

‘True enough,’ Baldwin agreed.

‘And they would have attacked any man who they thought could have been the vampire!’ Jeanne declared.

‘You mean the Purveyor?’ Baldwin asked. ‘I think he died some time before the girls.’

Simon stared at Jeanne. ‘But what if there was someone else, someone they thought was the vampire, and they killed him?’

Jeanne nodded. ‘And then they realised it couldn’t have been him. That would be a secret worth keeping.’

Baldwin was non-committal. ‘Perhaps. It makes more sense than a real vampire, anyway.’ Yet even as he spoke, he saw in his mind’s eye that figure of his nightmare, the figure at the tree, and he shuddered. This vill was making even him become superstitious. He thrust the thought aside as Jeanne spoke.

‘Are you all right, Simon?’ Jeanne asked.

Simon looked at her, but he thought that at the edge of his hearing he could pick up that curious, low moan once more. ‘I… I don’t know.’

Long after Drogo had gone, Gervase tidied up the altar and swept the floor. At the door, he bowed, making the sign of the cross, and then changed his mind, walking to the altar and praying for strength. Drogo’s words had reminded him that he was not solely guilty. ‘If You would help me, Lord God, I could become a sober, useful priest again,’ he begged.

Later, pulling the door shut behind him, he noticed that the cross in the cemetery was damaged. His first test, he thought. He stepped over the low mounds where bodies had been laid to rest, and touched the cross member gingerly. Only four years ago he had paid a carpenter to make this, and already the wood was rotten. The churl must have knocked it up from any old stuff. He would get a piece of Gervase’s mind next time they met. In the meantime he would have to get a new one made.

The hounds were still howling. It was a miserable sound, as though dead souls were calling to the living, desperate to rejoin their families and friends, he thought. Strange that an animal could form so close an attachment to his owner, but oddly comforting, too. Even a man like Samson, a fellow universally disliked, was mourned by his own creatures.

A breeze passed over the tree tops and Gervase shivered. His robes felt thin. Perhaps it was his age, he thought. He never felt warm these days; even his spiced wine failed to remove the chill from his bones.

He was about to walk to the gateway once more when there was a pause in the howling and he heard a low, coughing moan. He spun sharply on his heel, but there was no one there. Frowning, he peered into the murk, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

At the low groaning he made the sign of the cross once more, murmuring a Pater Noster to give himself courage. Stiffening his resolve, he stepped forward boldly. ‘Drogo, is that you?’ he demanded.

The only answer was a sobbing wail which seemed to come from the earth at his very feet.

Uttering a choking cry, the Parson leaped back and, looking down, he saw he was standing on Samson’s grave. A breeze caught at the cross, and it squeaked and groaned, and Gervase gave a great sigh of relief: it was only the cross. For a moment he had believed that a ghost was with him.

All was well. He walked from the cemetery along the roadway past the puddle. As he went, he saw Drogo. The Forester was up near the spring, watching the priest. At his side were Peter and Vincent, the latter with his air of faintly baffled seriousness which always reminded Gervase of a hound which had lost a scent, and Peter, looking joyless, as he had ever since the day they had found his daughter.

Gervase nodded to them, but Drogo and Peter made no response. It was as though he was too insignificant to merit acknowledgement. Vin lifted an apathetic hand, but allowed it to fall, and Gervase licked his lips nervously. He felt threatened by their grim features and silence.