The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross: Read online

  “Well, this poor woman believed she had been cursed, by creatures she never dared name. She hoped to make amends, by apologizing and bringing a gift, but she was afraid to go alone. She begged me, as a representative of the Church, to go with her and protect her soul.” He sighed heavily and shook his head.

  “I was young. I wanted to help. Reason made no more impression upon her simple mind than a stern injunction to reject the ways of Satan—that is, the old superstitions—and cling steadfastly to the true faith. It seemed the only thing I could do to provide the support I was required by my office to give was to go along with her into the woods.

  “I was there for her, but I kept my distance. I could have nothing to do with negotiations with imaginary beings. She went to the edge of the pit and mumbled her apologies, then dropped her offering—whatever it was—inside. When I walked her back home, she was much easier in her spirits.”

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Was her petition successful?”

  I could see he did not like my question, but with a glance at Mr. Jesperson, he decided to give an honest answer. “She believed it was. They did not lose their farm. The harvest was better that year—not just for them, for everyone, of course—and they were able to pay their debts.”

  “So you did not regret having pandered to her superstition?” asked Mr. Jesperson. “But when Mr. Cooke asked—”

  Dr. Ringer interrupted. “Cooke was not looking for spiritual succor. He wanted a local guide. I am not sorry I did not go with him. I only regret that he managed to find that foul place on his own. But had I been with him, I could hardly have stopped him from doing what I guessed he meant to do.”

  “What did you think he meant to do?” I asked.

  “Why, to eat some of the toadstools—or gather them for distribution and later consumption. Amanita muscaria—is this truly not known to you?—causes extreme inebriation. Even though it is usually accompanied by sickness, the Laplanders and some other primitive peoples use it regularly—as part of a pagan ritual. Felix Ott wrote an article claiming our British, pre-Christian ancestors achieved enlightenment by consuming this fungus, and other allegedly sacred plants.” He looked again at his watch. “Is that all? I would rather not keep my family waiting any longer.”

  Dinner began in a similar fashion to that of the previous night, with the same group gathered around the dining room table. The soup was an elegant consommé; this was followed without delay by fried whitebait. The main course was beef brisket cooked with onions and carrots, and there were light, soft bread rolls, still warm from the oven. The conversation was less interesting than the food, but I found it a relief no longer to be the center of attention, and everything was going well enough until, as we waited for our plates to be cleared away before the final sweet course, there was a shrill, distant cry from outside.

  “What sort of bird was that?” inquired Mr. Mavesin.

  Then we heard it again, closer.

  Mr. Jesperson jumped to his feet. “That was no bird,” he said. “It was a woman’s scream.”

  Footsteps pounded through the house and the dining room door flew open. The maid, Maria, staggered into the room, in evident distress, her eyes wide and staring, face white as a sheet.

  “Help me,” she gasped. “My baby—my baby is gone!”

  After delivering herself of those words, her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed, senseless, in a heap.

  Chapter 9

  The Stolen Child

  “Hilda, my smelling salts,” said Mrs. Ringer, rising from her seat without haste, looking down with some distaste at the collapsed figure of the maid.

  “Shall I fetch the doctor?” Mr. Mavesin asked the question generally.

  “The village constable, too,” said Mr. Jesperson. “Or must a message be sent to Cromer?”

  Both the reverend and his wife stared at Mr. Jesperson. “She has only fainted, she is not dead,” said our host. “No need for—”

  “But her baby is missing—”

  “Baby! There is no baby—the girl is delirious,” said Mrs. Ringer impatiently.

  “Delirious . . . I had better get the doctor,” muttered Mr. Mavesin, and hurried out of the room.

  The girl on the floor stirred and moaned and tried to sit up.

  “Now, now, take it gently,” said Mrs. Ringer, bending over her.

  “My baby!” she cried. “She’s gone! It was only for a few moments that I left her, and now she has vanished.”

  Mrs. Ringer said gently, “You have been dreaming, Maria. Perhaps you are overtired. There is no baby in this house. Why, even our little boy left babyhood behind some years ago. And he has Miss Flowerdew to tend to him, so there is no baby for you to worry yourself about.”

  Maria stared at her mistress, looked wildly about the room, then wailed, “My baby! My baby!” Covering her face with her hands, she shook and sobbed with a terrible grief.

  Seeing that Mr. Jesperson was heading for the door, I made haste to follow.

  There was no one in the kitchen; after setting out seven little bowls of pudding to be collected and served by the maid, the cook had gone home for the night. It would be the job of the live-in servant, the maid-of-all-work Maria, to serve and clear away and do the washing up and any other work necessary before she was allowed to retire. Mr. Jesperson stalked past the sink piled with unwashed dishes and opened another door, and there it was, Maria’s tiny room. In it was a neatly made bed, and a wooden chest that probably served as both table and chair as well as for storage, for there was room for nothing else in that small space.

  Mr. Jesperson stepped inside, opened the chest to glance inside, then bent nearly double to peer beneath the bed before he straightened and backed out again. “She went outside,” he murmured to himself.

  He looked at me. “The Ringers keep a horse and carriage, do they not? So there might be a carriage house, certainly a stable.”

  I tried to follow his thoughts. “So you think there really is a baby?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “She was surely not pretending. Could a dream have seemed so real that she would continue to cling to it under the circumstances?”

  Recalling her screams and tears, such obvious signs of grief and terror, I could not believe her anguish anything but real. But still I protested: “How could she keep it secret, though? Mrs. Ringer at least must certainly have known if there was a baby in the house—and noticed before then if her maid was . . .” I struggled with a polite way to refer to something to which no unmarried lady was supposed to speak of to a gentleman.

  “Certainly poor little Maria would have been out on her ear the moment she roused the least suspicion in her mistress. But if the girl managed to keep her condition a secret, and continued working until the last minute . . . Do you remember what Mrs. Ringer said yesterday, when Maria came rushing in late?”

  I gasped as the maid’s distracted air appeared in a different light. I remembered her disordered clothing and the dark patches on her breast when she had arrived in the dining room last night, and realized all was explained if she had been sneaking out to nurse her newborn baby between courses. “Mrs. Ringer commented on it—she said Maria used to be so reliable, and now she was forever disappearing.”

  “Yes, but now it is the baby who has disappeared.” His mouth settled for a moment into a grim line as he headed for the door to the outside, snatching up the lantern that hung beside it. “Let us hope we are not too late!”

  I hurried after him, into the dark, cold night.

  The side of the stables loomed ahead, only a short distance from the kitchen door. Upon entering that building we found a warm, well-kept space. The carriage occupied one large area, with three stalls behind it. Only one of the stalls had a tenant—a glossy chestnut mare who put her head over the bars to observe us with an expression of intelligent interest in her large, dark eyes. Of the other two stalls, one was bare and swept clean, but one contained a p
ile of hay. It was only when we entered the stall and approached it, my partner holding the lantern high, that we saw what was hidden behind the hay: two wooden boxes, one overturned to make a rough seat, the other holding a hempen sack stuffed with hay. There was a hollow in that sack that clearly showed where something else had rested upon it, and my mind quickly filled in the missing elements, interpreting the two boxes as a stool for mother and a cradle for baby.

  “I wonder if there is a stableboy in residence.” As he spoke, Mr. Jesperson was peering around, looking up at the low ceiling. “If we’re lucky, he sleeps in the hayloft.”

  Raising his voice, he called, “Hello?”

  “Who is there?” The reply, in a boy’s treble, came from the doorway.

  Turning, we saw a short, sturdy-looking boy, dark of hair and dirty of face, dressed in ragged old clothes that had been cut down to his size. I guessed his age as around eleven years.

  “I am Mr. Jesperson and this is Miss Lane. We are houseguests of the Ringers. And you are . . . ?”

  “Billy. Stableboy.”

  “Do you stay here, Billy, or do you have family in the village?”

  “This is my home,” he said. “The reverend took me in, gave me a job and a home after me mam died last Christmas.”

  I murmured a conventional expression of sympathy as Mr. Jesperson continued, “I suppose you know Maria.”

  A look of wariness appeared on the dirty face, and he took a step back. “’Course I do.”

  “Where were you just now, Billy?”

  “In the privy.”

  Beside me I felt my partner tense. “Show me it.”

  The boy stared in surprise. “Oh, no, sir, you can go in the house—that is for the servants and—Reverend wouldn’t like—”

  “Just show me. I do not intend to use it.” His voice was crisp, brooking no argument, and Billy responded obediently, turning and leading us out of the barn, and away from the house.

  A weight like cold lead settled in my stomach as I understood Mr. Jesperson’s suspicion. Although it had taken place before I was born, the case known as the Road Hill House Murder remained a familiar object of horror to a later generation. The victim was a three-year-old boy; the confessed killer, his half sister, Constance Kent; and the little boy’s body had been discovered stuffed down the hole in the servants’ privy, with his throat savagely cut.

  As we followed Billy out into the grounds, I prayed we were not about to make a similarly horrid discovery, and when he indicated the wooden shed, half hidden behind some shrubbery, I hung back, letting Mr. Jesperson enter to inspect the interior.

  It did not take him long. He stepped out again and gave me a look to say all was well. “Nothing there.”

  “And what should be there?” Billy asked me as we followed Mr. Jesperson back to the stables, but I made no reply. This boy was the first possible suspect we had encountered, and I thought it best to leave it to Mr. Jesperson to handle his questioning.

  “Show us where you sleep, Billy,” he said when we were back inside the building. Puzzled by his interest, but not unwilling, the boy led us up a wooden ladder into the hayloft and revealed his snug, Spartan quarters. Again, there was nothing to indicate that a crime had been committed by its occupant.

  “Now, Billy,” he said, fixing the boy’s eyes with his most compelling gaze. “You are Maria’s friend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know her secret.”

  The boy flinched but appeared unable to look away. “I will never tell it. I gave her my oath.”

  “It has been discovered. Maria has told it herself. Did you not hear her screams, even from the privy?”

  His eyes widened. “Screams? Yes, I thought I heard something—I thought it might be—But—that was Maria? Why? Is she hurt?”

  “Her baby is gone.”

  “Gone?” He broke away and ran to the stall, into it, and around the pile of hay. At the sight of the empty box he gave a shriek. “No! No! Where is she?” He began to cast about wildly, then to dig into the hay as the only possible hiding place. As he hauled out handfuls of the dried grass he gabbled, “I said I’d keep watch . . . I said she would be safe . . . But I needed the privy, and the babe was sleeping, so I thought it would be all right, because I’d heard Cook leave, and I knew that meant Maria would soon be able to slip outside again. I thought she’d be no more’n a minute, and I really had to go.”

  “Billy. Billy.” Speaking gently and taking him by the arms, Mr. Jesperson managed to pull him away from his desperate but useless excavations. “It was not your fault if someone else took the baby. I hope you can help us find who that was. Who else knew Maria’s secret?”

  The boy shook his head. There were tears in his eyes. “No one. She didn’t tell no one. She didn’t even tell me—only I was here, when the baby came. I saw it happen.” His expression changed to one of dreamy wonder as he recalled the night the serving girl had given birth on the bare floor, alone.

  “Like the baby Jesus, born in a stable,” he said. “She was scared. She didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know, either, but I helped her, gave her a knife to cut the cord, and helped her clean it up, and it was all right.

  “I thought it was all right,” he ended bleakly.

  We left him still searching the stables. In the kitchen, the seven pudding bowls were still untouched, and the door to Maria’s little room was shut, but from within were sounds suggesting the doctor was in attendance.

  In the family drawing room we joined Dr. and Mrs. Ringer. The children, including Hilda, had been sent up to their rooms, under Miss Flowerdew’s supervision, and Mr. Mavesin had returned to his own lodgings. I sensed the Ringers wished that we, too, would withdraw, but we were invited guests, and could not be dismissed as servants or children, so they must suffer our involvement in this private scandal.

  Mr. Jesperson asked a few questions about Billy. The answers accorded with what he had told us about himself, and the information that he was just eleven years old removed any thought that he might be the father of Maria’s child.

  A rumpled-looking, gray-bearded, balding gentleman with a large, reddish nose came in and was introduced as Dr. Vokes.

  “I have given her a sleeping-draught; she will not wake for nine or ten hours now,” he said, sinking into a chair near the fire.

  “And will she then be restored to her senses?” asked Mrs. Ringer.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Will she have forgotten all this nonsense about a baby?”

  “You cannot call it nonsense. From my examination, I found she has given birth very recently—I should say three days, at most.” He frowned at Reverend Ringer. “You had no suspicions?”

  Dr. Ringer shifted uncomfortably, casting a sidelong look at his wife. “I really have very little to do with the servants; my work keeps me busy.”

  “I cannot believe it,” said Mrs. Ringer firmly. “How is it possible? If she was with child—”

  “There is no ‘if’ about it, I assure you,” said Dr. Vokes. He looked expectantly at the reverend. “I wonder, as it is such a cold night, and I feel rather . . .”

  Alert to the physician’s unspoken request, the vicar jumped up. “Will you take a glass of brandy? Or would you prefer something else?”

  With a sigh of pleasure, Dr. Vokes said, “Brandy would be most welcome, thank you.”

  “Forgive me, I should have offered you something at once.” The Reverend Ringer went to a cabinet, which opened to reveal glinting glass and crystal. He took out a bottle and a stemmed, deep-bowled glass. “We are most obliged to you for coming at once. We had no notion that the girl had become a mother. Sometimes, lately, her service was erratic, but she looked the same as ever, and never even complained of feeling ill.”

  “I think it came as a surprise to her,” replied Dr. Vokes, stretching out his hand for the brandy glass. “When I asked about the father, she declared she never had a sweetheart.”

  Mrs. Ringer scoffed. �
�She certainly fooled us.”

  “She is a remarkably ignorant child,” said the doctor. “When I pressed her on the matter, explaining the facts of life, she admitted that something happened in the early spring—a man forced himself upon her; it was over quickly, and she put it out of her mind.”

  “The father must be informed,” said Mrs. Ringer. “He must be made to do his duty.”

  Dr. Vokes contemplated his glass of brandy before he replied. “That might do more harm than good. He is already married, and the father of Maria’s two little nephews.”

  Mrs. Ringer gasped. “I gave her leave to go and help her sister in her confinement—last Easter.”

  “Yes, that is undoubtedly when it happened. To inform her sister would be an act of needless cruelty. Particularly needless since there is no child now to be taken care of, and Maria can continue to support herself by working in your household.”

  Mrs. Ringer looked as if she might object, but her husband quickly intervened. “Yes, of course, although she has sinned, I am sure she is repentant, and it would be un-Christian to turn her out. We must set an example. But why did she not tell us before? She could not have expected to get away with keeping such a secret for very long, not even with Billy’s complicity.”

  “Undoubtedly she was desperate, terrified of losing her position and being turned out with nowhere to go. Her mind may have been affected by her travails—I have seen it before,” said Dr. Vokes. He swirled the brandy in the glass, sniffed, and then took a healthy gulp.

  I was beginning to feel a bit desperate myself at the leisurely pace set by the physician. “What about the baby? I think we should send for the police at once.”

  He shook his head and looked at Mr. Jesperson. “Where did you search?”