“Headmistress of Marldale C of E Primary School for the inside of her life,” Mosley said. “Including the days before they used to ship them off to Pringle at the age of eleven. There’s a generation in Upper Marldale that received all the education they ever had at the hands of Priscilla Bladon. And it was literally at her hands. Take a look at those hands when you see them, Sergeant Beamish. You could picture them fixing a pit-prop. If you got one of those callused old palms round the back of your head with a well-judged arc of follow-through, you left off whatever it was she’d caught you doing.”
Mosley nodded through the car window at a man who was pushing a cycle along the Upper Marldale pavement. He was taking a rabbit-hutch somewhere.
“Never trained, of course, but none the less monumental for that. You get half a dozen old pupils of Priscilla’s together in a bar—which is likely to be happening at any moment in Marldale, irrespective of licensing hours—and it’s a fair bet what the talk will get on to. Take spelling, for example. Very keen on orthography, was Miss Bladon. If a lad got a word wrong more than once, she used to chalk it back to front on the sole of an old plimsoll, on the grounds that if she couldn’t work it in at the top, she’d knock it in at the bottom. Hullo! I thought our friend would be turning up.”
Mosley was looking back over his shoulder. Beamish could not see who it was that he had spotted.
“And of course, Miss Bladon didn’t consider that her responsibilities stopped at the classroom door. And by that I don’t mean a stamp-collecting club after four o’clock. If there was anything affecting a child in her school, then it became her business at once—and it was remarkable what did come to her ears. Take Matty Walton. When he was about six, Matty Walton had a spell of coming late for school, looked as if he hadn’t slept, used to faint during school prayers. Leave it to Miss Bladon. She soon found out that the trouble was the terrifying night he always had when his father came home pie-eyed from the Crook. So she ups and sees Jenny Walton. Little shrimpy woman she was, scared stiff of her Arthur, a damned great ox of a man, either amorous or aggressive or both when he’d had a pot or two. If she hadn’t got him a supper on the table, he used to throw everything out of all the food-cupboards. If she’d cooked him a meal, he’d scrape it on to the fire. But then one night when Arthur came home the worse for wear, he found two of them waiting for him—only Priscilla hid in the scullery till he had hold of his wife’s wrists and started shoving her up against the door as if he was making love to her down some alley. Then Priscilla came up behind and clouted him two or three times across each ear-hole with those hands of hers. She put a mark or two on him that he took to work with him the next morning, then laid him out cold when she got bored with playing games with him.”
Mosley looked again over his shoulder.
“Pull over into Market Square, Beamish. We’ll waylay that young lady.”
Beamish still could not see who he was talking about. He followed Mosley over to the Community Centre, where they pretended to read the notice-board.
“Another time, young Tommy Haslam sat at his desk all one day snivelling. Wouldn’t for the life of him tell her what it was about. She couldn’t tempt him this way or that to let on what was going on at home—but she had no difficulty in prising it out of the neighbours. Tommy Haslam Senior had gone off to shack up with a barmaid in Bradcaster. So Priscilla Bladon pays Joe Scragg to give her a lift in one evening on his coal-wagon, and when Joe comes back three hours later, he has two passengers. Thomas Haslam hasn’t left home ever since. Nobody knows what Priscilla said or did to him.”
Mosley suddenly twisted round to face the pavement. Deirdre Harrison had come shambling up. There seemed something unco-ordinated about her gait: she might from a distance have been taken for a fifth-year secondary-school educationally sub-normal.
“Ah! Deirdre! Come to square up your yarn with Priscilla, have you?”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Mosley.”
“Did you find out what I wanted to know?”
“That didn’t take two minutes.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
There was normally a placidity about Mosley suggesting that all he had to do was to wait for events to explain themselves. But once or twice when they had worked together Beamish had seen a certain nervosity come over him. The signs of it were apparent now. Beamish wondered what Mosley would be like if he actually did become impatient. Maybe it would be no bad thing, once in a while.
“Do you really want us to talk here?”
Deirdre Harrison looked significantly about them, and there were one or two people in the High Street not known by sight either to Mosley or herself. A man in an Arran sweater was talking to a girl in a toggled duffel coat. Across on the other pavement two middle-aged men with telephoto lenses fitted to their cameras were chatting outside the Craft Shop.
“They can’t hear us,” Mosley said. “And if you could find out in two minutes, you can tell me in less.”
“Three punks,” she said. “One man, one woman, one indeterminate. Red Indian tonsures. All the trimmings. Age mid-twenties—or could have been drug-raddled adolescents.”
“What time was this?”
“About three in the afternoon. Joe Murray booked them in. Officially they should have been vetted by a subcommittee, but that often goes by the board. They’ve got a basic drill for casual visitors—but all it amounts to is that no one’s turned away on their first night, unless they’re fighting drunk. After that, it depends on how they fit in.”
“And whether they can be got rid of.”
Deirdre relaxed enough for a short-lived grin.
“Some of their methods are quite unscrupulous. I’ve actually heard an undesirable threatened with you.”
“That’ll be the day. So Joe Murray admitted these three?”
“They said they only wanted one room, and in the Glasshouse people don’t ask questions about personal pastimes. He put them in what used to be an NCOs’ annexe at the end of one of the huts. And what a bloody night the Glasshouse spent—at least, anybody within earshot of those three. Fighting, swearing, singing, three-ended sex—though which three ends was anybody’s guess.”
“Till what time?”
“Joe and one or two others went out to read the Riot Act between two and three. They’d locked themselves in, and Joe threatened to set fire to the hut if they didn’t pipe down.”
“Pity he didn’t.”
“Well, anyway, that shut them up to some extent. There was one more outbreak of singing—one of them had a guitar—but nothing to complain about by Glasshouse standards.”
“And then, came the dawn, they were gone?”
Deirdre looked curiously at Mosley.
“You on to something already?”
“Only what’s obvious.”
At this moment the man in the Arran sweater came up with the girl in the duffel coat, having beckoned to one of the photographers, who was unbuttoning his camera-case as he crossed the road.
“Miss Deirdre Harrison?”
Even for an outdoor shot he was using electronic flash, wisely for the afternoon murk of Marldale.
“And you must be Inspector Jack Mosley.”
Shopkeepers would have been readily helpful to the pressmen. Rather to Beamish’s surprise, Mosley co-operated quite meekly and gave the photographer the grouping he wanted. And already other reporters were appearing, like ants busied by the lifting of a stone.
“Are you yet in a position to make a statement?”
“Can you give us a slant on the witchcraft angle?”
“When is the next meeting of your coven, Miss Harrison?”
“Do you seriously think that there is any connection between this killing and twentieth-century black magic, Inspector?”
“May we say that you three ladies are putting your talents at the service of the police?”
“Will you be holding a session in the near future to look into your crystal ball?”
“What would be the official attitude to an offer of help from the ladies, Mr. Mosley?”
“You can quote me as saying that I shall be glad of help from whatever source it is offered.”
Beamish sighed. Mosley seemed determined to walk into it.
“Including sorcery?”
“I’ll consider everything on its merits,” Mosley said.
“Is there any truth in these rumours about the cats?”
“I don’t deal in rumours.”
“I believe you’ve carried out several investigations in this town within the last week or so. A cabbage patch. A hen run. Would you like to say whether you think there’s any connection?”
“Not until I know.”
“Is it true that Miss Cater had been refused admission to the coven?”
“That’s a new one on me,” Mosley said.
“If it’s true, would you say it has any significance?”
“If it’s true, I dare say it signifies something.”
“Do you see significance in Mrs. Cater’s relationships with the inmates of the former Glasshouse?”
“Yes. It signifies that some of them interested her.”
Beamish had a horrifying vision of some of the headlines that might more or less legitimately arise out of this exchange.
CID CONSIDERS SORCERERS’ HELP—MURDERED WOMAN REFUSED ADMISSION TO WITCHES’ SECRETS—PRESS PASS INFORMATION TO POLICE—INSPECTOR SEES SIGNIFICANCE IN GLASSHOUSE CONNECTION—
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mosley said. “You want my help, and I want yours. I will meet you in the Crook Inn at nine this evening, and I promise you a statement about anything I consider you old enough to know.”
Beamish noticed that Mosley signalled to the Social Worker with an inclination of his head that might have been no more than a loosening of his neck in his collar. Deirdre Harrison slipped away from the edge of the crowd as Mosley engaged their attention with a new cryptic point.
“There’s just one thing I’d particularly ask you ladies and gentlemen to do. And if you work with me, I think I can promise every one of you a front-page by-line for the next few mornings.”
“What’s that, then, Mr. Mosley?”
“Just keep well and truly out of my bloody sight,” he said.
Laughter: very thin, uncertain, and in most cases delayed. But by then Deirdre Harrison had made good her escape.