The Devil's Footsteps. John Burke
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on your way home.’ Constable Rylot forced a laugh. ‘Happen I’d have to steer you into the lock-up.’
The young man said: ‘But aren’t you even going to go and see? Isn’t it your duty to follow up a report like this?’
There was an uneasy silence, broken by the constable with a thunderous clearing of the throat. ‘We know as well as needs be how to manage the affairs of our own parish.’
‘I’m certainly going to see for myself.’
‘Nobody to stop you, young feller. Us, we know what to take seriously, and what not.’
Joshua had reached the end of his second pint. ‘But there’s something brewing—’
‘And as long as there is, you’d best be content.’
‘You know what I’m talking about. Like those times before. Specially that last time, the special one.’
The landlord began noisily to blame Leah for a dirty pot he had just found by the sink, and made a great to-do about mopping the counter yet again. Constable Rylot finished his drink and, with a final admonitory glance around the other occupants of the bar, went out.
‘You’ll see,’ said Joshua.
‘And tidy up them bottles while you’re at it, girl.’
‘It’s not just the footsteps. There’s a sight more to ’ut than that. Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’...comin’ for all of us.’
When the young man had left to make his own inspection of the footprints, nobody else spoke to Joshua and nobody answered his increasingly aggressive questions. Grumpily he left the inn long before his usual time.
Five days later a boy’s dripping corpse was dragged out of the weed and slime of Peddar’s Lode.
CHAPTER TWO
The crossing gates were still open to the road, but a distant feather of smoke showed that a train was on its slow way from Withersey. Visible for miles, it puffed along the embankment above fields and dykes and washlands, for an age seeming to draw no nearer. Bronwen Powys, one arm about her camera so that it did not thump too heavily against the rail of the hired trap, felt like urging haste on the driver. But he knew the roads and the railway and their relative speeds. Allowing for the train’s short wait at Hexney Halt, there was plenty of time before Mrs. Dunstall came out to swing the gates across the road.
It had been a rewarding day. Excellent light, fine definition. Bronwen smiled at the inappropriateness of totting up a score on such matters. Yet it had undoubtedly been a worthwhile bag: those almshouses in the shadow of abbey ruins, two windmills, and the quite unlooked-for gem of an intricately pargeted cottage. Tomorrow she must tidy up loose ends in Hexney itself, try another study of the church tower and the gateway, and complete another chapter in her self-appointed task.
She shaded her eyes to see how well the scene before her compared with the picture she had taken last week. For a fleeting moment she seemed to see Tommy Dunstall in the foreground, just as she had captured him on her plate. It was a good picture. She must make a print for his mother.
She was about to lower her hand when she noticed something different about the cottage ahead. An assortment of objects had been stacked up outside, like a winter store of wood and peat propped against the wall, since she set out this morning.
They were her own belongings: her trunk, the developing tent, and clothes piled up in a heap.
There was a distant whistle. Smoke from the train streamed away over the levels, at one point wreathing into the swirling plume from a pumping station’s blackened chimney.
As the trap slowed between the crossing gates, the door of the cottage opened and Bronwen’s maid came out. She was dressed for travelling, her bonnet firmly in place, and carried a bag which she set beside the others. Mrs. Dunstall, close behind, might almost have been bundling her out of doors.
‘Oh, Miss Bronwen, there’s glad I am you’ve got here in time.’
‘What on earth is happening?’
Mrs. Dunstall’s face was blotched by tears. Two men, one with dried duckweed caking his trouser legs and sleeves, stood behind her in the shadow of the doorway.
Bronwen got down and reached into the trap for her camera.
‘Don’t bring that any closer,’ cried Mrs. Dunstall.
‘I don’t understand. What are all my things doing here, thrown out like this?’
‘You’d best be on your way, miss,’ said one of the men flatly.
‘Mrs. Dunstall—’
‘They brought him back. Not an hour ago.’
‘Him?’
‘My Tommy.’
‘Miss Bronwen, I’ve been packing so we could be on our way, it’s all been so dreadful.’
‘My Tommy. He was taken.’ Mrs. Dunstall’s reddened eyes glared terror at the camera. ‘In Peddar’s Lode.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Dunstall, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it. I....’
Bronwen was leaning awkwardly, the weight of the tripod on her shoulder, as she turned away from the trap, instinctively putting out a hand to Mrs. Dunstall. The widow let out a screeching sob, warding her off with a wild swing of the arm. ‘That thing!’ She struck the tripod so that it slid from Bronwen’s shoulder. One leg jarred on the flagged path to the door, stuck for a moment in a crack, and then tipped over. There was a crunch as the wood splintered.
‘Mrs. Dunstall, you can’t believe—’
‘I’ll not be doing with that in my house. Not after...after.... Should never have had you in the first place, you and that thing of yours. The train’ll be here any minute. Be you on it.’
‘I’m so sorry. Please, if there’s anything I can do—’
‘You can be on that train, that’s what you can do.’
The engine and two coaches drew in to the platform with a sigh of escaping steam. Hexney’s one porter and ticket collector stepped forward to open the door of the first-class compartment, a small saloon with four armchairs and a high-backed sofa.
A tall man about thirty years of age, with a silver-topped cane and a cloak lined in red silk, descended and set a large valise on the platform. He had lean features and a swarthy complexion, with darker streaks like bruises under his deep-set eyes, and a jutting imperial beard. When his head jerked to indicate that the porter should pick up his luggage and lead the way out of the station, his manner was that of one accustomed to summoning such service out of thin air.
But the porter had momentarily turned away, signalling to Mrs. Dunstall that she should now open the gates. The fireman leaned out from the footplate to add a similar exhortation.
‘I’m not opening the gates,’ said Mrs. Dunstall, ‘till she takes herself and all that mischief of hers on to that train.’
‘You can’t expect me to toss everything anyhow into a carriage.’ Bronwen was pleading rather than indignant, for she could see that Tommy’s mother was near to breaking point. Then she realized that her maid was already climbing aboard the train. ‘Eiluned, what do you think you’re doing?’
‘Do come along, Miss Bronwen. Not safe to stay here a minute longer, is it.’
‘Get down at once.’
The girl gulped, but pushed her case ahead of her into the compartment. ‘There’s sorry I am, miss, but I can’t, not another minute indeed.’ She groped for the door to pull it shut behind her.
The porter was leaning over the fence.
‘Evil eye? Oh, now, Mrs. D., that’s no concern of the railway company. We want those gates open, and sharp.’