A Pale Horse

3

YORKSHIRE

Late That Same Night

Hugh Tredworth, the ringleader, possessed a goodly amount of charm. It was his stock-in-trade. Whispers claimed that his real father had been a Scottish tinker, but Hugh’s grandfather had had the same red hair and wicked smile—and his auntie as well, come to that. As his mother was fond of pointing out. Hugh had also been cursed with older brothers, the butt of their jokes and malicious tricks for as long as he could remember. These had sharpened his wits and taught him cunning, which he was careful to conceal.

At eleven, he was the eldest of his four cohorts. Johnnie and Bill, cousins, were ten, as was Tad. Robbie, only nine, tagged along because he had always been his brother Tad’s shadow. They had fallen under Hugh’s spell when he’d missed a year of schooling after complications of scarlet fever. Their scrapes and escapades had never drawn blood, and for the most part their parents looked the other way.

This night—it was well on toward morning in point of fact—the five boys had tramped nearly five miles cross-country to reach their destination.

Robbie, tiring, lagged a little now, and Tad threatened to leave him by the wayside. Hugh hissed them to silence. “Hurry! Or we’ll be too late.”

Ahead lay the grounds of the estate and, beyond, the ruins of the great abbey. One of Hugh’s neighbors had worked as undergardener there for a summer, regaling everyone with descriptions of all he’d seen. Only, everything appeared larger and harder to find in the dark. Or else Mr. Pritchert had been a liar and made up half his tales. Hugh moved his precious book from one hand to the other, unfamiliar nerves getting the better of him.

He’d purloined the book from the schoolmaster’s shelf. The subject was alchemy, about which he knew nothing. But there were spells in these pages, and he intended to try them out.

Bill, the tallest, carried a sack with apples, a corner of cheese, and a heel of bread in it. Like Napoleon’s army, he traveled on his stomach. They’d wanted to bring cider, but hadn’t discovered a way to steal a stone jar for the night.

They skirted the grounds of the estate—Mr. Pritchert swore it had dogs that bit first and barked later—then threaded their way through a wood so dark the moon vanished. But soon enough they arrived at a point where they could see what lay ahead.

It was awe inspiring. An enormous complex of mellow stone stood before them. Ranges of monastic buildings jutting across the lawns, a square soaring tower, great arches running high into the moonlit sky, tall, haunted windows with no glass, doorways that opened into blackness unlike any they’d ever looked into.

“Gor!” Johnnie whispered, stopping short.

Robbie felt his bowels stir.

“It’s naught but a ruin,” Hugh scoffed. “At least, naught until we work the spells. Come on.”

He started forward toward the nave, but when they didn’t follow, he said in disgust, “I should have brought my sisters.”

They crept at his heels then, hoping that whatever struck him down would spare them if they could only appear small enough. Bill, trying for bravado, said, “It’s stood empty long enough for bones to rot.”

Robbie squeaked.

An owl flew out of the empty west window above their heads, gliding on silent wings across the moonlit sward.

“I told you there were owls,” Hugh whispered. “Has to be, if there’s spirits here. And a black cat.”

“We could have brought Cinders,” Tad offered.

“And have Ma down on you like a thunderclap?” Robbie demanded. “He’s her cat, not yours.”

“Not to harm him, silly. Just to borrow.”

“I thought people sacrificed to the Devil,” Johnnie asked.

“Only if you want something. Do you?” Hugh retorted.

“No,” Johnnie admitted, minding his footing as they went through the gaping door.

Now they were in the shadows cast by the massive columns, in the long roofless nave with moonlight visible above. The moon was past the full, but it helped, a little, with the gloom. The high walls seemed to stretch forever, pinning them in the eye of God.

“We aren’t desecrating the altar, are we?” Tad was an altar boy. “Vicar won’t care for that.”

Even Hugh was having second thoughts. “We’ll begin in the cloister. There should be a way to it along there. Nobody can say we didn’t show respect.”

With more relief than they cared to admit to, the other boys hurried after him in the direction of the doorway leading into the cloister.

There was brighter moonlight here, but the gallery was ominously dark. It seemed to be peopled with the unseen dead. Whispers of sound came to their ears, like monks walking to compline and condemning the souls of interlopers on sacred ground.

“The wind,” Hugh told them when his followers stopped to listen. “See? Over there. We can use that stone in the center. It’ll work a treat.” He glanced up at the moon, then went sprawling. Scrambling to his feet, he looked down. But nothing he could see had tripped him up.

He’d have sworn a hand had caught at his ankle. The fingers had felt cold on his flesh.

Shaking off his own fears, he blamed them on his companions.

“Didn’t anybody think to bring a candle? We’ll break our necks, without.”

Tad held out three, with a fistful of matches. Hugh lit them with a flourish, dripping wax onto the round stone and then setting the candles into each puddle. They formed a rough triangle.

He opened the schoolmaster’s book at random and found a page where there was a drawing of a great iron kettle on the boil and an oven red hot to one side.

He scanned the words, found them very unlike a spell, and turned the page. Ah, much better. This was what he’d seen a week ago and determined to try out. He’d only a nodding acquaintance with Latin, but if God understood it, so would the Devil.

He stood up straight, his hands above his head, palms out in supplication, and began to intone the words on the page, turning them into gibberish as he struggled with them. An echo, soft and unintelligible, sent a shiver down Robbie’s spine, and he clutched his brother’s hand.

The words rolled on, and Hugh thought his voice had deepened toward the end as his confidence grew.

But nothing much happened, and he was disappointed.

He tried twice more with other spells, and still the Devil was afraid to come to him.

Tad said, tentatively, “He’s busy elsewhere?”

But Hugh wasn’t to be deterred.

“It’s not sacred enough ground here in the middle. We need to stand closer to the church wall,” he told them, as if he knew what he was doing. “See, just over there.”

They turned to look, then got up from their haunches and followed him into the shadows, carefully shielding their candles. But the night wind blew out one of them, just as Robbie tripped, plunged headlong into the cold grass. He began to scream, high-pitched and terrifying.

They turned to clamp a hand over his mouth, then saw what he had seen first.

The Devil was already there, sitting against the wall, his grotesque face staring up at them with wide, blank eyes and the long nose of a donkey disappearing into the hood of the cloak he was wearing.

They ran until their lungs were ready to burst and their legs were trembling with the effort.

Away from the ruins, through the dark wood, as far as the road, and on toward the path they’d taken across the fields to reach the abbey.

When Robbie fell behind, Tad stopped for him, and then Bill, his hands on his knees and his breath still coming in frightened gasps, stopped too. His cousin pulled up, and Hugh, a little ahead, turned back to them.

“What was it?” Tad asked, his voice quivering.

“The Devil,” Hugh retorted. “It must have been.” He had never been so shaken.

“No, it was a man,” Bill said. “He was wearing shoes.”

“Do you think the Devil goes about with that cloven hoof in plain sight?” Hugh demanded, regaining a little of his confidence.

“What are we going to do about it?” Tad asked. “If we tell, we’ll be blamed. Pa will take a strap to me!”

“What if Vicar won’t let us come to service?” Robbie added. “Mama won’t like that.”

“We’ll swear a blood oath never to tell,” Hugh suggested dramatically. “I’ve my pocketknife. We’ll cut our thumbs and swear.”

“I don’t want my thumb cut,” Robbie said, and to his great shame, began to cry.

“Ma will see the cuts,” Tad agreed. “She won’t give us any peace over them until she knows everything.”

“Why can’t we just swear?” Johnnie asked. “And we’d better hurry about it, or someone will be up milking before we’re back in our beds.”

They swore, as fierce an oath as Hugh could devise on the spot.

“May our tongues blacken, and our faces run down our chins like hot pudding, if we speak one word about tonight to any soul, living or dead, good or evil. So help us God!”

They turned then to hurry home. But Johnnie spoke for all of them when he said, halfway there, “What if he follows us? What if he wants us to be dead, because we’ve seen him?”

It wasn’t until the next morning that a caretaker stumbled across a dead man in the ruins of Fountains Abbey.

The owner of Studley Royal was in London with his family, and so the caretaker took it upon himself to summon the police.

The local man, standing over the body, took note of three things. That there was no immediate indication of cause of death. That the man was wearing a cloak like a monk’s, complete with a hood that had fallen away from his face. And that over his face there was a respirator, one from the war. He reached down and pulled the mask away.

He didn’t recognize the face staring back at him.

“No one from around here,” Inspector Madsen said aloud to the two constables standing at his back.

“No,” the older of the two said. “But what’s he doing here?”

“If I knew that,” Madsen answered repressively, “I might know how he died and who has killed him. If anyone did.” He had been called out before he’d had time to eat his breakfast and his wife had had a thing or two to say about that. She was a great one for cooking, and expected those she cooked for to enjoy and appreciate her efforts.

“Yes, sir.” The younger constable trailed him as he turned to survey the cloisters and began a slow circle. “There’re three puddles of wax, sir, on that stone in the center. A stub of candle over here, and that book you’ve noticed, just by his foot.” He had been first on the scene.

Madsen examined the wax puddles, noted they were in the shape of a triangle, and grunted. He went next to the stub of candle. The kind, he told himself, his unthrifty wife would throw out. She was particular about her candles.

“Was this one longer to start with?” he mused. “Was this the third night of a vigil? It would explain the three puddles.”

“The caretaker swears no one had been here before last night. He says he’d have noticed.”

“Any sign that someone else was with the dead man?”

“It’s hard to say, not knowing how active he himself was.”

“All right, then, let’s have a look at yon book.”

Madsen picked it up and closed it to examine the title on the spine. “Alchemy, for God’s sake.” He flipped it open and saw the name of one Albert Harris Crowell on the name plate, and under it, Nether Bromley School.

“Is this Crowell, then?” he asked, lifting his gaze to Constable Hood, his voice flat.

“No, sir. I’ve seen Mr. Crowell, sir. He comes sometimes to The Dog and Cart—that’s the pub near Dilby. A quiet man. Before the war he was schoolmaster in Nether Bromley, and now he’s at Dilby School. Well respected, from what I’m told.”

The younger constable stirred. “He was a conscientious objector in the war, sir. I’ve heard my father speak of it.”

Madsen turned his gaze to Constable Pickerel. Pickerel’s father had been a policeman as well, retiring from the Elthorpe force as sergeant just at the end of the war. Six months before Madsen himself arrived. “How does your father know what Crowell did in the war?”

“My father also drops in to The Dog and Cart from time to time. It’s the talk there, some evenings.” Madsen was still staring at him, and Pickerel found himself adding, “The pub was never on his patch, you might say, and he likes that. Nobody to bring up what’s past.”

The next village over might as well be in a foreign land, in the eyes of most. Though the war had changed that notion to some extent, people clung to their prejudices.

“Does he never come to Elthorpe? Crowell?” Madsen asked him.

Pickerel glanced at Hood for confirmation. He shook his head.

Madsen held up the book. “Then he’s made an exception last night. Maybe he can tell us who it is we have on our hands.”

Later that morning he found the schoolmaster in a classroom, seven or eight boys busy with a project involving, as far as Madsen could tell, catapults and castle walls of small mud bricks.

Crowell came out to speak to the inspector. Madsen tried not to stare at him like a specimen under glass, but this was the first time he’d set eyes on the man. Youngish, with that fair slimness that came from long lines of pedigree. His manner was composed, and his voice well bred. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, and he removed them as if suddenly aware that they were there.

If he felt any anxiety about confronting an inspector of police, he hid it well.

“Inspector Madsen, isn’t it?” Crowell extended his hand. “What brings you to Dilby? Not one of my students, I hope.” He smiled and nodded his head toward the half-closed door behind him. “They’re a handful, but there’s no meanness, I can tell you that.”

“Yes, sir.” Madsen took the proffered hand, then held out his own to Constable Hood just behind him. Hood passed him the book. “Can you tell us, sir, if this is by any chance your property?”

Crowell took it, frowning. “Yes, here’s my name in it, but if you’d asked me, I’d have told you my copy is in the bookshelf in my office.”

“Shall we have a look?”

Crowell cast a glance into his classroom. Three of the lads were staring back at him, their eyes large with alarm, as if the police had come for them. He made a mental note to discover what mischief they’d been up to, and said repressively, “Young Tredworth, mind you finish your section of the wall. Don’t be standing about just because I’m not there. That applies to your workmen as well. I want to see progress when I return.”

Hugh Tredworth ducked his head and turned back to his task. His cronies followed his example with suitable haste. “Very well, then,” Crowell said to the policemen, and led the way.

As Madsen followed him down the passage, he asked Crowell, “Interested in alchemy, are you, sir?”

“Not particularly. When I teach science, I often make more progress with something that’s exciting than I do with dull experiments. I say, how did you come by this? It’s an old book, I doubt it’s still in print.”

“We’ll attend to that in a moment, sir. This your office, is it?”

Crowell went in and crossed directly to the low bookshelf behind his desk. But when he put his finger out to tap his copy, the finger stopped in midair. “It isn’t here.” He turned back to Madsen, frowning. “I’m at a loss to explain how it got away, but I thank you for taking the trouble to return it, Inspector.” He slid it into its proper slot, then straightened and waited, as if expecting Madsen either to take his leave or explain why it was an inspector and a constable had come to deliver a lost book.

“The problem is,” Madsen began slowly, “that this book—your book—was discovered lying by the foot of a dead man.”

“Good God!” Crowell was speechless for a moment, then recovering, said, “I don’t understand, Inspector, but I expect we should discuss this. I’m available at three o’clock.”

“Indeed, sir. Is there anyone who can take over your class, sir? I’d like you to come with me.”

“What? Now? In heaven’s name, can’t it wait until the end of the school day? We’re in the middle of a very important lesson. I have no idea why this man or anyone else would be interested in my book on alchemy, but surely it isn’t a pressing matter? This is a harmless enough study, it can’t do anyone any harm.”

“I’m afraid not, sir. It could be a case of murder we’re looking at.”

Crowell stood there, uncertain quite what was expected of him. Then he said, “I shall have to ask my wife to step in. At this age, boys are inclined to rowdiness if left unsupervised.”

As he went to find his wife, accompanied by Constable Hood, Madsen walked back to the classroom.

There was a ripple of wariness as the students turned one by one to look at him. He saw boys at the edge of the group hang their heads as if wishing the floor would swallow them up, and he smiled to himself. He could remember when he was that age and small sins loomed large.

“I’m having to borrow Mr. Crowell for a bit. I don’t want to hear you’ve been rude or rowdy with his missus,” he said, his voice stern. “You’ll answer to me if there’s any complaint of your behavior. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of Yes, sirs! that made the rafters echo.

He nodded to the class collectively as he heard footsteps approaching. A young woman with a scar across her face walked past him into the room, taking the chair at her husband’s table. She ignored Madsen, but he saw that her hands were trembling as she folded them together, and he shoved his own into his pockets as if to still them as well.

The students went quickly back to work, and Crowell smiled reassuringly at his wife before following Madsen out into the passage.

It was a long drive back to Elthorpe, not so much in miles but in the silence that neither Madsen nor Crowell felt free to break. But as they stopped in front of the police station, Crowell said, “All right, I’m here. As you asked. It’s time you told me what this is all about.”

“Where were you last evening, sir?” Madsen asked as he led the way into the station and back to the office where he kept his files and his pipe. “If you don’t mind telling us?”

“I was at the school. Reading. My wife can verify that, you needn’t have dragged me here. And what’s this about a dead man and possible murder?”

“I was just coming to that, sir.” Madsen sat down, leaving Crowell standing. “We found a body early this morning in the abbey ruins. A man none of us recognizes. But he’d spent some time there, from the looks of things, and it’s likely he wasn’t alone. My question is this. If he died of natural causes—and we’ll know the answer to that when the doctor has examined him—why didn’t the person or persons with him come for help?”

“As I wasn’t there, I can’t answer you.”

“But you were there, in a manner of speaking. There was candle wax on a stone in the center of the cloisters, a stub of candle nearby, and at the dead man’s foot, your book, with your name in it. A book you admit is kept in your private office.”

“And I’ve explained to you that I have no idea how it came to be there. I’d have sworn it was on my shelf along with the rest of my books. I can’t even tell you when it went missing, or how.”

“Indeed, sir. You’ve told me the book was old, out of print. There can’t be that many other copies floating about, and none of them, I expect, with your book plate inside. What we’re hoping is that you can put a name to our dead man. If he had your copy in his possession, he very likely knew you. If it wasn’t in his possession, why did you bring it to this meeting? No, don’t interrupt, let me finish. Did the shock of seeing him die put the book out of your mind? Was that how it got left behind? There has to be a simple explanation, sir, and we would be greatly obliged if you could tell us why he was hanging about in a medieval abbey ruin in the middle of the night. It must have been important, whatever it was you met to discuss, and a private matter at that.”

“Look, I’ve told you—I wasn’t in the abbey ruins last night or any night this past year. I don’t know who the dead man is or why my book should be there. I didn’t meet him, and when you find out who stole my book, you’ll have your other person.” Crowell was angry now, and feeling more than a little defensive as the evidence against him was being presented.

“Then you’ll have no objection to coming with us to look at the dead man.”

“I—don’t like the dead. That is, I’ve seen more than my share, and I’ll live very happily if I never see another one.”

“That’s as may be,” Madsen said. “All the same, I shall have to ask you to tell us if you can identify him.” He rose. “We can walk to the doctor’s surgery from here. I’m sure I can accept your word that you won’t make any trouble for us?”

“Make any—of course not, damn you.”

Madsen smiled as he led the way. He had his man now, he was sure of it.

But in the back room of the doctor’s surgery, where the body had been taken, Crowell stared down at the face on the bed and slowly shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“Can you swear to that?”

“Of course I can. I have never laid eyes on him as far as I know.”

But there was a subtle shift in what he’d said before and what he was willing to swear to. Madsen made a note of it.

The doctor came in just then and nodded to Madsen. “As far as I can tell on first examination I’d say he was overcome by gas. Which means he couldn’t have been wearing that respirator when he died. Nor could he have died in the ruins.”

Madsen frowned. “Are you saying he died elsewhere, was brought to the abbey, and left where he was found?”

“I can tell you he didn’t walk there himself,” the doctor retorted dryly. “Someone else was involved. Make of it what you will.”

Crowell, standing there between the doctor and the inspector, flinched. “I don’t have gas lamps. Not where I live.” He’d blurted it out, nerves getting the better of him. His brother had died from chlorine gas at the second battle of Ypres. He had spent years trying to wipe that memory away. It had been a horrid death. He had carried the dying too many times not to know what his brother had suffered.

Madsen and the doctor turned to stare at him.

“I’ve never seen him before,” Crowell repeated. “Can we go now? I’ve no taste for this.”

“Conscientious objector in the war, were you, sir?” Madsen asked, making no move to leave.

“How did you know—” But it was obvious that the police had already looked into his background. “If you’ve seen my record, you’ve also read that I served in France driving an ambulance. I didn’t want to kill, that’s all. But I could do something about the suffering.” He gestured toward the dead man. “And I’ve seen far worse than this poor devil, so making me stand here isn’t going to help you.” His voice had risen just a little, and he tried to get himself under control again. But it was hard. His temper these days was uncertain at best, and his wife had urged him to speak to someone about it. He wondered what Madsen would make of that if he’d learned of it.

But the inspector had already decided there was nothing to be gained here by trying to push the schoolmaster into betraying himself in the face of his victim. He nodded to the doctor and led the way out to the street.

Crowell felt himself sweating. A cold sweat that seemed to bathe him. “Am I free to return to my classroom, Inspector? I don’t care to leave my wife alone with the older boys any longer than need be. They tend to rowdiness after a while.”

“We shall have to speak to Mrs. Crowell. I’ll take you back myself.”

And so it was that Inspector Madsen found himself alone and face-to-face with Alice Crowell in the school’s small office.

“How did you come by that scar?” he asked before he could stop the words. “You didn’t have it when I knew you.”

“It’s not your concern.” Her voice was husky, but he couldn’t be sure whether it was fear or nerves.

There was a silence, fraught with what was not said.

“Did he do that to you?” Madsen pressed. “You may as well tell me, I’ll find out in the end.”

“What did you wish to see me about?” she asked. “Are you going to take my husband into custody?”

“Should I?” Madsen countered.

She made an impatient gesture. “Don’t play with me, Harry. I saw your face when you took Albert away. Whatever has happened, it isn’t just a matter of a truant student.”

“Is there one? A truant student?”

“You know there isn’t. I meant—never mind. What did you wish to see me about?” she repeated.

She had a very mobile face, her feelings clearly expressed. The scar seemed to alter with her emotions, emphasizing them in some fashion he couldn’t understand. He wanted to run his finger along it, and tell her she was still beautiful. But he knew she could lie too. She had lied to him about her parents and how they had felt about a policeman in the family. That, he tried to tell himself in the face of his bitterness, was a kind lie. And she had told him another, that she hadn’t loved him. He believed it then, but later convinced himself that it was to cover the first lie.

Madsen took a deep breath. This wasn’t the place to open up the past. “Where was your husband last evening?”

Her expression changed. “Here. At the school. He was finishing going over papers that he’s submitting for an award. Mrs. Scott’s prize for the best essay on Richard III.”

Mrs. Scott was the widow of the former rector of St. Stephen’s, in Elthorpe. She was something of a local historian, having written a small pamphlet on the architecture of the village church and another on the abbey. Both were available for sale on the table in the church porch. Madsen had seen them. It was typical of her that she’d asked Crowell to read the essays. Like to like. The schoolmaster in Elthorpe was an upstart from Liverpool. Well enough at what he did, but not the sort one invites to present prizes in a social setting.

“And you were here with him? Sitting in his office?” It brought such a cozy domestic scene to his mind that Madsen clenched his fists.

“No, I was at home, sewing the fringe on a shawl I was making for my mother’s birthday.”

“Then no one can actually prove he was here?”

“Of course he was here. Why would he lie to me about where he was? Where else would he go?”

To meet a man he planned to kill and whose body he intended to leave in the ruins of Fountains Abbey, to throw off the police. Madsen hadn’t explained the presence of that book yet, but in time he would.

He found he was staring at her. “I’m married now, myself,” he said. “Did you ever love me? Truly love me?”

She stood up. “I take it you have no more professional questions to ask me, Inspector. And I shan’t answer personal ones.”

But he stayed where he was, between her and the door. “There’s a man dead. Didn’t your husband tell you that this morning when he asked you to carry on in the schoolroom for him? A man dead, with one of your husband’s books lying at his feet.”

She drew in a breath. “Who was it?” she asked. “Who is dead?”

As if that were more important than the book. “We don’t know. Your husband can’t identify him, there is nothing in the man’s pockets to tell us who he is, and all we can be certain of is that he didn’t live in this part of Yorkshire. Else one of my men would have known him. And more to the point, no one has been reported missing.”

“Well, then, if you don’t know who the dead man is,” she said tartly, “there’s no reason to keep me penned up in here or to take my husband away. Meanwhile, there’s the school to be seen to.”

Her words stung him. “I haven’t kept you penned up, Alice—Mrs. Crowell. I was doing my duty.” He stepped aside and she swept out of the door as if he were invisible.

He watched her walk down the corridor, and he felt an urge to clap her husband up and throw away the key.

At the door of a classroom a boy stood watching him, wary and uncertain.

“What are you staring at, then?” Madsen snapped, and the child disappeared as if by magic, shutting the door softly behind him.

Hugh Tredworth was waiting for his friends at the end of the school day. One glance at his face made Bill distinctly uneasy as he came up to join Hugh, and Johnnie, trailing him, stopped to study his boots at a little distance, as if uncomfortable in Hugh’s presence. Then Tad came through the door, starting at the sight of them standing together in silence.

“What’s happened?” he asked anxiously.

“Where’s Robbie?” Hugh demanded accusingly. “He wasn’t at school today.”

“Sick,” Tad answered shortly. “Couldn’t keep his breakfast down this morning.”

“He’s not telling, is he?” Bill wanted to know. “We swore an oath!”

“Of course he’s not telling,” Tad replied with more force than he’d intended. But he couldn’t hold their eyes.

“Remind him,” Hugh urged. “Remind him his tongue will turn black if he’s not in school tomorrow.”

“Leave him alone,” Johnnie spoke up, and they all wheeled to stare at him. “You’ll only make it worse,” he said, “trying to frighten him. Why were the police here? What did they want?”

“I couldn’t hear.” But Hugh had seen the book in the constable’s hands, if no one else had, and he had had to swallow hard to keep his own breakfast down, the shock was so great. “It was Mr. Crowell they wanted, wasn’t it? Nothing to do with us.”

“Why did they come for him?” Bill persisted. “All the way from Elthorpe. And then take him away.”

“They brought him back, didn’t they?” Hugh pointed out.

“Someone found the candle we dropped,” Tad said. “It’s a matter of trespass. None of us missed school, so there’s nothing to point at us. Not counting Robbie, but they’re not to know that, are they?”

The four of them had been walking down the road as they argued, earnestly trying to assure themselves that there was nothing to show they’d summoned the Devil and succeeded in raising him.

Then Bill shattered their illusions. “Did he leave scorched grass, where he lay? The Devil? Is that why they’re questioning schoolmasters, they’ve found the grass and want to know if anyone’s different?”

“How different?” Tad asked anxiously. “Nobody else has been sick, just Robbie.”

“He’s possessed,” Bill said. “That’s why he’s sick. He’s possessed.”

Tad shouted at him, “There’s nothing wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with my brother!” And he marched off down the road, leaving them to look after him, their faces tight with sudden worry.

The doctor’s report was brought in to Madsen. The man hadn’t died where he was found, it was impossible that he could have, considering the cause of death. In fact, he’d been dead at least four-and-twenty hours before he was discovered.

Furthermore, there were no scars or other marks to make it a simple matter to identify him. He could be anyone. From anywhere.

And Madsen, though he didn’t care for unfinished business on his watch, reviewed the evidence and decided that his next step would have to be identifying the corpse before he could make any connection with Albert Crowell stick. If he could prove that Crowell knew the man, it would go a long way toward building his case. If there was anything between them, he could take the schoolmaster into custody.

But that was easier said than done. Where, for instance, should he begin?

He considered bringing Alice Crowell in to Elthorpe to look at the dead man. He even toyed with going back to the school to ask Crowell where he had been every minute of the past three days. But he already knew what Alice Crowell would say. Her husband had been with her—busy at the school—listening to her read. Standing by him even with a possible charge of murder hanging over the man’s head.

Madsen kept the file open on his desk where it could nag him every time he looked at it, and it became an obsession even when he was not there.

Why had Crowell’s book been found by the corpse’s feet? An old book, on alchemy of all things. He pondered that as he dealt with a quarrel between two farmers over the death of a prize ram. What did the book have to do with the dead man, except to betray the name of his murderer? Why had Crowell been carrying this book with him? Was it concealing something? Had it been the excuse that allowed Crowell to approach the victim?

Over his tea, Madsen was beginning to believe the two men must have met at the ruins, gone somewhere else, and the body had been carried back there to throw the police off. The caretaker could have been wrong, he might have simply glanced into the cloisters the day before and missed the corpse up against the wall. In a hurry as he made his rounds, and not wanting his employers to know he’d been slack.

Madsen went back to the doctor’s surgery and stood looking down at the corpse. Why the respirator that hadn’t saved the victim’s life, and why the cloak that at first glance looked like a monk’s habit? To lay a false trail for the police?

He tried to put it all together, but there was no making sense of it.

Walking back to his office he considered the fact that neither Crowell’s house nor the village school was served by gas. So where had he taken the dead man to kill him? Why did the man have to die?

He shut himself in his office to think.

Debts owed? Some scandalous connection between the two men that didn’t bear looking at? Then why leave the body here, if the man hadn’t died here? It only made the killing more blatant. What was it in aid of, that respirator and the cloak? A warning to someone else?

What was the schoolmaster involved in and how would it affect Alice Crowell when the truth came out?

It all came down to that bloody book, he told himself for the hundredth time as he walked home for his dinner. If the book hadn’t been there, the police would have been mystified. An oversight, a mistake, the kind that got murderers hanged.

What was there in Albert Crowell’s life that he was desperate to hide?

By morning, Madsen was unable to stay away from the Crowells. Three more visits to the school, three more frustrating interviews with the schoolmaster, three more missed encounters with Alice, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to be other than where he wanted her to be. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask for her outright. Not while he badgered her husband.

In the dark hours of the night he’d even considered the possibility that she had killed her lover and left the book to muddle the case. But he knew it wasn’t true. The man, according to the doctor, was pushing fifty and not the sort who could sweep any woman off her feet.

Twice on his excursions to the Dilby School, he found himself faced with staring boys, nosy little bastards, more eyes than face. He never remembered being so fond of his own schoolmasters that he wouldn’t have cheered to see them taken away for a week.

He had spoken to one of them, the Tredworth boy. “What are you hanging about for? Know anything about this business, do you?”

Hugh had shaken his head vigorously. “No, sir. I—it’s just—” He took a deep breath and blurted, “Thought I might be a policeman when I grow up, that’s all. And nobody will tell me what’s happened. They change the subject when I come into the room.”

“It’s not a matter for children’s ears,” Madsen had said, annoyance creeping in. “Stay clear of it, or I’ll have you in for questioning myself.”

After that he saw no more of Hugh or his friends.