Hiding From the Light. Barbara Erskine
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So he tried to sell the place. No one was interested. Not as a butcher’s. Then a woman came along in about 1950. She wanted to run it as a bakery. Fancy cakes and things she sold. She lasted a year – maybe a bit longer, but then she saw Dave as well –’
‘When you say she saw Dave,’ Mark interrupted smoothly, ‘would she have recognised him?’
‘No.’ Stan shook his head vigorously. ‘She weren’t local. She’d never met him.’
‘But she described him?’
Stan shrugged. ‘On the stairs, she said. And upstairs. She had a flat up there, above the shop. There were three rooms in them days and then there’s an attic, too. She said he used to walk up and down all night. She’d lie there listening and she could hear him pacing up and down. You might well shiver, young lady!’ He addressed Alice suddenly who, dressed in jeans and a skimpy T-shirt had hugged herself with a shudder as she stood nearby with Mark’s clipboard clasped importantly to her chest. The goose-pimples on her arms were clearly visible.
Mark sighed. It didn’t matter. They could cut that bit.
‘I take it she checked there was no one there?’
‘She wouldn’t go up there. She left. Halfway through the lease, she upped and left. After that there was a whole load of different people. Dress shop. Hardware. Another baker. Bikes. A little tea shop once. None of them stayed.’
‘And I understand you asked for the shop to be exorcised?’
Stan looked uncomfortable. ‘Stupid business. But nobody would take it on after my Da died, so I got the old rector up here. We reckoned if Dave had never had a proper burial wherever he died, poor bastard, perhaps a few prayers and that would sort him out.’
‘And did it?’
The camera moved closer, focusing on Stan’s face.
He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t Dave, was it. We’d said the prayers for the wrong bloke. His son turned up in the town one day to see where ’is dad had lived. Turned out he hadn’t died at all – or not till years later! He’d gone to Canada with someone else’s missus!’
A snort of laughter from Alice broke the tension abruptly. Joe and Colin both glared at her. Mark continued soberly: ‘So, what happened after that?’
‘Well, we thought maybe the prayers would work anyway, but the noises got worse.’ Stan looked down suddenly as though afraid to stare any longer into the camera lens. ‘Much worse.’
Mark found his mouth had gone dry. The question he was about to ask died on his lips. There was a long silence. Colin glanced at him with a frown. He stopped filming. ‘That’s great. Do you want any more, Mark?’
Mark fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and mopped his face with it. ‘Yeah. I do. We need to come up to the present. Why you’re trying to sell it again now.’
Stan shrugged. He shifted uncomfortably as Joe moved in to adjust the microphone clip and Colin started filming again. ‘There’s always noises. People walking up and down.’
‘And at what point,’ Mark took a deep breath, ‘did you decide that the house was haunted by Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?’
Stan stared round wildly. For a moment Mark thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he turned back to the camera and speaking fast and confidentially he started on an explanation which sounded, Mark thought suddenly, just a bit too rehearsed.
‘Him – the Witchfinder – he’s been seen in all sorts of places in the town. And they’ve seen him up at Hopping Bridge and at the Thorn at Mistley. That’s named after him, you know. The Hopping Bridge. So, why not here, too? The worst place is in the Indian across the road. Used to be the Guildhall or some such, that little place where they tried them. The witches. Well, I thought to myself, supposing it’s him here. And it was.’ He stopped almost triumphantly.
‘How do you know it was him?’ Mark glanced down at Joe, who had resumed his position slightly behind him, on one knee, second microphone in hand. Joe raised an eyebrow.
‘’Coz I do. I seen ’im.’
Mark wasn’t sure whether the shifty look in the man’s eyes was because he was lying or because he was afraid to admit the sighting.
‘Can you describe him for us?’
‘Tall. Wearing large boots. A pointy sort of hat. And a goatee beard. Everyone as sees ’im says he’s got a goatee beard.’
‘And he was here in this house?’
‘On the stairs. Right behind where I’m standing.’
He turned and they all followed his gaze to the point where the uneven oak risers disappeared around the corner. As Colin focused in carefully and panned the camera across the breadth of the stairs, Alice gave a small whimper.
Mark persevered. ‘And was there a historical connection between Matthew Hopkins and this building?’
‘He walked the witches here.’ Stan folded his arms defiantly. ‘Up and down. All night. Didn’t let them sleep. In the end they was so muddled they didn’t know what they was saying. He’d get a confession out of them, then they’d be packed off to the dungeons in Colchester Castle.’
‘What a bastard!’ Alice’s voice was shrill.
‘Cut!’ Mark brought his hand down sharply in a chopping motion. ‘Alice, one more interruption and you’re going home!’
Joe turned to his daughter with a frown. ‘Get a grip, Alice. You knew what this job was. Groovy, I believe you said!’
Alice shuffled across to the counter. She was scowling. ‘Sorry.’
Mark looked back at Stan. ‘So, having decided the building was haunted by Cromwell’s witchfinder, you decided to cut your losses and sell it. But no one wants to buy, is that right?’
Stan nodded gloomily. ‘Trouble is, the place is falling down. It needs all sorts of repairs. The roof leaks.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t afford to keep it on. Don’t want it. No way. And I need the money. I thought people would like a haunted house. Someone told me there was a market for such like. But, no one has gone for it yet.’
Joe glanced at Mark and winked. So, they had finally got there. The old bugger was making it up. He thought he’d get a better price for the shop if it had a famous ghost. Mark hid his irritation. This wouldn’t do a lot for the credibility of the programme.
‘Thanks, Stan. I think that’s all we need for now.’
‘Right.’ Stan moved away from the stairs with alacrity. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Just you remember I want you out of here by tomorrow. There’s a new tenant moving in Monday.’
‘Stan!’ Mark called suddenly as the old man moved towards the door. ‘What about the other part of the house. The shop next door. Isn’t that haunted, too?’
Stan shrugged. ‘Never heard that it was. They only walked the witches here, see.’ He jerked his thumb towards the stairs. ‘Never took them to the nicer side of the house. That’s where the family lived. Couldn’t hear them scream from that side of the house!’
There was a long silence after he had gone.
Colin eased the heavy camera off his shoulder and put it down with a groan as Alice closed the door behind their interviewee and stood watching him walk out of sight.
‘Christ, only one more day! I thought we’d got a week at least,’ Mark complained as Joe began to coil up his cables. ‘He told me it’s going to be an end-of-line discount shop, this and that, probably most of it fallen off the backs of lorries – just till Christmas. You’d think they could give us a bit longer.’
‘We can do it.’ Colin retrieved the clipboard from Alice. ‘If we spend the whole day at it tomorrow – and